Chapter Text
Bakugou sighs and rubs his eyes. He’s been staring at messily written student papers for hours now and the kanji are swimming before his vision, pairing up and doing little dances across the page.
God. He really does need to take a break.
Tapping the papers into a pile he slides them into a folder, already neatly labeled. Bakugou is the first to admit he has a few flaws as a teacher, but organization is not one of them. There’s a light tapping at his classroom door and he looks up to see Uraraka smiling at him, arms full of folders of her own.
“What.”
“Okay, grumpy, I wanted to see if you’d like to come to that new ramen place that just opened over by the river.” At Bakugou’s sneer she says, wheedling, “They have spicy crab…”
“Ugh, fine, whatever. You’re paying.” He stands up, cracking his back, elbows, and wrists as he goes. Uraraka frowns as he falls into step with her, heading down the hallway.
“That sounds terrible. Are you seeing -”
“The idiot over at the clinic, yeah.” He stays silent for a few steps before grumbling, “She wants me to wear these wrist braces. They’re bullshit, the second I use my quirk they’re just going to explode or melt or some shit.”
“So control your dang self and don’t use it.”
Bakugou shoots a tiny spark off in her direction, just enough to light the edge of one of her papers aflame. Uraraka sighs and blows it out. “Now I get to explain to some kid why their essay on Deku is charred.”
“Eh, it’s Deku. The nerd deserves it.”
Uraraka giggles and links her arm through Bakugou’s. “It’s a good essay, actually. I was thinking of sending it to him.”
“Mmm. The dumbass texted me the other day, I owe him a call.”
Bakugou sometimes wonders what his old classmates would think if they saw him now. Close friends with - to the point of letting her touch him - with Uraraka. Friendly terms with Deku. A teacher instead of a ranked hero. None of it is what he wanted when he was sixteen and full of piss and vinegar and a single-minded focus on being the best hero ever.
But things…change.
Bakugou changed.
It took screaming and tears from multiple people - including him - and an immense amount of work that still isn’t over with, but he likes to think that he’s not a total asshole these days.
A kid on a skateboard nearly runs into him as he and Uraraka walk arm-in-arm down the park path. Bakugou spins to light the back of his board on fire with a flick and snarl, “Watch it, fuckhead!”
…he’s still a bit of a work in progress.
Dinner is pretty good, though the place is annoyingly crowded because it’s new. Just because Bakugou can deal with certain people nowadays doesn’t mean he likes crowds. Waving a goodbye to Uraraka, he makes his way back through the park to his apartment on the edge of the city proper.
Bakugou has a second floor apartment in a building nice enough to have a coffee shop and a doorman. He’s lived there for the better part of a decade, long enough to strike up a deal with the landlords to get free coffee in exchange for promising to protect the building. It’s bullshit, really - he’d keep the place safe whether or not he got the caffeine. It’s where all his shit is, anyways.
“I’m home,” he calls out as he opens the door, tossing his keys into a dish as he toes his shoes off. Two heads, one deep black and one snow white, pop up from behind the couch. The black one emerges first, revealing itself to be a small black cat that jumps up onto the back of the couch and meows, stretching his head out for pets. Bakugou rolls his eyes at the needy little thing, but it doesn’t stop him from leaning down to give him some scratches behind the ears.
The little black kitten had followed him home one day, all the way from just outside the school. Bakugou had no intention of getting a second pet and had planned to take him to the shelter, but his white cat Lady - short for Lady Explosion Murder Goddess - had adopted the sad little thing herself and not let Bakugou touch him for a solid week.
His next door neighbor’s kid decided to name him, and so Bakugou ended up with a small black cat named…Spooky.
The great hero Dynamight, whipped by two small creatures without opposable thumbs and a four year old girl with strong naming opinions. Again - if his old classmates could see him now.
After a quick shower he slumps on the couch, debating between working out or making himself a drink or maybe calling Deku back. He ends up doing none of those things, ending up stretching out on the couch with the cats on top of him and turning the TV on.
He intends to get to that one channel that has old foreign black and white movies, but ends up on a national news channel. Bakugou doesn’t watch all that much national news - he mostly keep track of what’s going on here in Hokkaido. He’s still officially a pro hero and gets called out enough to help out that he keeps a police scanner handy, but that’s about it.
Helping out at a collapsed building in Tokyo, the number one and two ranked heroes Deku and Shouto saved countless lives today, the newscaster states. The video is of a damaged apartment building surrounded by dust, the occasional piece falling off as people below scream. Up around the top are green-edged black flashes, twining around long white curves of ice and the occasional orange burst of flame. Bakugou can’t see them, but he can see their trails, the traces of their heroism.
Pulling out his phone, he thumbs to his messages.
>> saw you on tv, nerd. tell half n half his new suit makes his ass look huge
He can’t actually see Todoroki from the distance the camera is at, but Deku told him he got some new gear and the two of them needling each other is one thing that will never change.
<< He says that if you want his ass that much, you should text him in person. You up for a call tomorrow night? ↖(^▽^)↗
>> sure. and I don’t want his ass, just don’t need it to eclipse the sun more than his ego does
The news has moved on, now showing rescue efforts after a small tsunami down near Izumo. He smirks to see some familiar faces - Frogface pulling person after person from the water with her tongue while Kaminari crackles with electricity, holding on to some wires and keeping everyone from getting electrocuted.
To many people’s surprise, not the least Kaminari’s, Chargebolt has been in the top five heroes for most of his career. It turns out that his type of electricity control isn’t common, and the work he put in allows him to now channel billions of volts. The last time he was in town, Kaminari told Bakugou over dinner that he’d been called in several times over the past few months to stabilize nuclear reactors while they did tests. Not exactly reassuring, but Kaminari seemed confident that everything was all right.
Bakugou just told him that it was a good thing he didn’t want kids, because god knew what mutations his jizz had gone through.
He does see some people from high school, is the thing. He keeps in contact with Deku and Todoroki over text and video chat, Kaminari and Sero bounce around the country and so usually manage to stop by around once a year or so, and he works at school with Uraraka and Kendou from class B along with a few other familiar faces. He’s even in regular contact with Aizawa and Mic, thanks to inter-school activities and getting Bakugou’s school off the ground.
It still all just feels…surface level, sometimes. With the exception of Uraraka and Deku and maybe Kaminari, most of his old friendships are of the acquaintance-type. The kind when you get together you ask about how their kids are doing, have you heard from so-and-so lately, that’s a nice new addition to your uniform - oh it was added years ago? Man, sorry, time just gets away from you, huh.
Bakugou stares at the ceiling, absently running his fingers through Lady’s fur as she purrs on his chest. He has a routine, now. Get up, go teach, work out, come home. Every third weekend he has patrol shifts around the city. He hangs out with Uraraka and a few other people from the school, mostly when they drag him out. When he gets the itch he’ll go out to a club and pick someone up, making sure to go to their place because he doesn’t want strangers in his home. He has appointments with his shrink and with his physical therapist and with Hatsume that he dutifully attends, each one putting him back together in a different way.
Is this it, though? Is this what the next thirty years of his life are going to be like?
Fuck, that’s depressing.
With a sigh Bakugou shoos the cats away and goes to get ready for bed. Alone, like always.
-x-x-x-x-x-
“Oi! Goggles! Where the fuck are you?”
Bakugou’s voice echoes around the cavernous warehouse-cum-workshop, the echoes lost in the ceiling that fades into shadows above. He raises his eyebrows when a head pops out of the innards of some machine, a head with blue hair and thick glasses that blinks magnified eyes at him.
“H-hello? Can I help y-you?” the kid - for the boy does look like he’s still in high school - stutters out as he nervously tries to extricate himself from the machine.
“Who the hell are you, and where the hell is Goggles?” Bakugou rolls his eyes at the kid’s blank stare. “Fuckin’ - Hatsume. The idiot that owns this place?”
“Stop yelling at my intern, asshole.” Hatsume says as she strolls around a corner, wiping her hands off on a towel tucked into the unbuttoned coveralls that hang around her waist. “He just started and if I haven’t scared him off yet, I don’t want you to do it either.”
Bakugou rolls his eyes as he follows her back into the depths of the workshop. “You have interns now, huh? They’re letting you torture children for school credit?”
“You should know, he’s from your school.”
“I don’t know the support people, I don’t need to.”
Hatsume sighs. “And I’ve told you a million times that you really should. A closer relationship between support and heroes -”
“Isn’t worth a damn, as I’ve told you a million times. All your gadgets aren’t worth shit if the kids don’t know their quirks inside and out without equipment.”
Hatsume pushes Bakugou gently into a chair and holds out an imperious hand. “Okay, bitch, now hand over the equipment you think you don’t need.”
“It’s not battle equipment,” Bakugou grumbles, as he pulls off his hearing aids. He waves the right one at her as he hands them over. “This one shocked the shit out of me the other day.”
Hatsume pulls her goggles down, adjusting the magnification of one of the lenses. “Hmm. Looks like a loose connection, along with one of the wires touching the power source…” She devolves into muttering at a low enough volume that Bakugou can’t hear, especially without the hearing aids.
He had been warned all the way back at UA by Recovery Girl that his hearing would likely suffer because of his quirk. Between the explosions and the wind pressure when he flew through the air, it was a perfect storm for hearing damage. It was far from the last damage that his quirk would inflict on his body, but it was the first and the most visible to others.
Hatsume hands him a carrying case that reveals a sleek set of new hearing aids when opened. “Try these out,” she orders him. With an ungrateful grunt, Bakugou puts them in. At least she’s good at what she does - they fit perfectly.
“You can play with the settings - they pick up Bluetooth and can even hook up to that stupid police scanner of yours.”
“I told you, I don’t want any of that shit! I just want it to fix my hearing,” Bakugou grumbles.
“You don’t have to use the settings -”
“Yeah and what about when they inevitably get fucked up, and I’m just trying to hear my students but it’s blasting some idiot’s music? Or I’m on patrol and it does god knows what?”
With a sigh, Hatsume puts her hand out and makes an impatient gesture. He hands the small electronics over, which she promptly attacks with a tiny screwdriver. After a few minutes she hands them back. “No more other stuff, now they’re nice and boring. Hooks up to your phone and nothing else.”
Bakugou glares at her, but manages a sullen Thank you. Hatsume just smiles sunnily.
After checking her watch, Hatsume’s smile turns sly. “The intern has the front held down and I can take a break.” She slides a foot up Bakugou’s leg, workboot moseying up his inner thigh. “Come and try and break the cot in the back with me, I just reinforced it again.”
Bakugou thinks about it for a minute. He and Hatsume tend to fall into bed together a few times a year. She claims she’s too busy to think about a relationship but says that even her engineered toys can get boring after awhile. She’s wickedly creative with an endless amount of energy, so normally it’s an automatic yes from Bakugou if she offers. His off mood is still with him, though, so he shakes his head.
“Rain check. I’ve got shit to do today.”
She pouts for a moment, before cheering up. “Ah, it’s fine. Did you know this one company is making pro hero themed dildoes? A friend works for them and sent me a few prototypes. Maybe I’ll go test one of them out.”
Bakugou shudders. “Ugh. Have fun, I guess. Weirdo.” He leaves to the sound of her cackling laughter, but at least he’s able to hear it now without getting electrocuted.
He passes the hapless intern on his way out. Feeling magnanimous and kind of sorry for the kid, he pauses to meet the intern’s eyes. “I’d stay out of the back for a while, if I were you.”
The kid nods, eyes wide and already traumatized.
Fucking support. Crazy, the lot of them.
-x-x-x-x-x-
“Team two, go!”
Everyone winces at the screeching sound of metal on metal as one student whose lower body is seemingly made of solid steel starts to run on the metal floor. Bakugou makes a mental note for her to go see support - being semi-indestructible isn’t worth anything if the enemy can hear you coming from a mile away.
Keeping an eye on his stopwatch, he calls for the next team to go, and a few minutes later the one after that. Once everyone has been sent out, Bakugou jumps into the sky with a few light explosions from his hands, getting enough altitude to keep an eye on everyone. Uraraka is at the end of the course, watching the various surveillance cameras.
“Oi, Cheeks. You see vine girl and wooden arms? Keep an eye on them, I dunno how they’re gonna be against that final robot.”
“You know that they do have names, right? Ones that you should probably know if you’re giving them grades -”
Bakugou cuts her off with a rude sound into his microphone from his perch on top of a water tower, eyes darting around as he keeps track of the various pairs making their way through the obstacle course. It’s an old argument, and one that Bakugou doesn’t ever plan on bending much on. His kids know that he knows their names, and he does use them when it’s important, for better or worse.
He never thought he’d be a particularly good teacher, certainly never thought he’d be liked so much. The like is tempered with a healthy dose of fear, but it’s the kind of fear that’s from an adult controlling your future, not from them being afraid he’ll hurt them.
Watching the last few students stumble through the end of the course with narrowed eyes, Bakugou takes off, landing next to Uraraka who is marking things off on a clipboard. She eyes him and his distinct lack of anything resembling paper. “You got notes?”
“I got ‘em in my head.”
She sighs. “You know that admin wanted more scores on paper for data collection and analysis -”
“Yeah yeah, I’ll write it all down later. It’s not like there’s a thousand of them.” Bakugou rolls his shoulders as he steps forward. The students quiet down, looking at him in nervous anticipation. He crosses his arms, his usual bored-tending-towards-a-sneer expression on his face.
“Tails. Bubble Hands. Good job with the robot and the landslide, but you gotta figure out a way around your mobility issues to deal with the building collapse. Sparkles and Turtle Head - pretty mediocre at everything, but that’s actually not a negative. Means you can only get stronger. Endurance is what you both need to work on. Windy and Invisible kid…are you even here? Make a noise or something. Okay, good. You two work well together - keep it up and improve your time.”
As Uraraka starts to talk to students to give her own analysis, Bakugou pulls aside the kids he’d been worried about. “Kuwae. Izumi. Over here.” The students wander over, both obviously depressed. “Listen. Your abilities are more suited for defense and rescue than sheer firepower. That’s not a bad thing - if all we had was offensive capabilities, a shitload of people would be dead. It just means you gotta get creative.”
“First - I know you’re friends, but try pairing up with people whose abilities are different from yours, you might find you mesh well with someone. Second, I want you to get fuckin’ mean, especially when it’s with nonhumans. Izumi: what if you slid those vines into all the cracks of the robot’s chassis, and then just ripped the goddamn thing apart? I know you have the power. Kuwae - you can control root systems, you did a good job using them to stabilize, now what if you used them to strangle something? Pull the robofucker’s head off.”
The kids look far more cheerful, and like they don’t hate themselves quite as much as they did a few minutes ago. Bakugou remembers that, how one bad bout would feel like the end of the world, the end of who he was as a hero. “I knew people in high school that would get depressed that their quirks weren’t strong enough, but they just had to figure out how to use them right and they ended up some of the most powerful people out there. And if you want real specific help, talk to Uraraka-sensei.” He raises his voice slightly. “All she can do is float that big round head of hers around and she still does okay.”
“Bakugou-sensei…” one of the students says timidly.
“What.”
Before the student can say anything else, the large clump of dead leaves that Uraraka levitated over Bakugou’s head is released, covering him in a shower of leaf mold and dead grass. The students stifle their laughter as best they can, scrambling out of the way as Bakugou goes after his colleague with a roar.
Uraraka levitates away easily, laughing, and the two of them ping pong around the clearing for a few minutes until Bakugou gets Uraraka in a headlock and gives her a noogie. “Next time I’m burning your pants off,” he grumbles as she lowers them to the ground.
“Next time you insult me in front of the kids you’ll get something much nastier than leaves dumped on your head,” she says mildly. “Now come on, I want lunch.”
-x-x-x-x-x-
“I got a text from Aizawa the other day,” Shiretoko says, in between sips of her drink that glows a worryingly green color.
Bakugou downs the last of his beer and waves to the bartender for another before asking, “What’s the old man want? Finally giving up on principaling?”
UA underwent some major changes during the first few years Bakugou was out of school. The community rebelled a bit, fed up with the damage that the various waves of villains had brought to Mustafu, even though by the time they graduated All-for-One, Shigaraki, and their cronies had finally been locked away for good. Nezu retired as principal, and the top administration spot was now shared by Aizawa and a retired-from-pro-heroing Endeavor.
“He was trying to track down Mandalay to ask her something, and while we were talking he brought up the idea of a joint UA - Sapporo Academy Sports Festival,” Shiretoko tells them. In a previous life, Shiretoko was known as Ragdoll, one of the Wild Wild Pussycats team before her quirk was stolen by All-for-One. She never did get her quirk back though she still had all her hero knowledge, so Bakugou recruited her to be the guidance counselor.
“I like the idea,” Kendou says, idly playing with the straw in her drink. “It would be interesting for students to go up against others whose quirks they’ve never seen before.” She glances at Bakugou and smirks. “Of course, we really should invest in a concrete pillar and restraints for the winner, huh Blasty?”
Bakugou snarls at her as Shiretoko looks between the two of them in confusion. “Restraints?”
Kendou grins. “When Bakugou won in our first year, he was…less than happy about it. They literally had to tie him down, they even put a muzzle on you, yeah? It was kinda kinky, in retrospect.”
Shiretoko looks positively gleeful. “Please tell me you have pictures.”
“No -”
“I’m sure they exist somewhere.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Let me just text Midoriya…”
“Leave the nerd out of it!”
They argue goodnaturedly for a while, until Kendou gets a text from her fiancé. She leaves, with Shiretoko following a few minutes later. Bakugou is left at the table alone, slowly finishing his beer. He likes his colleagues, but also likes this time after where he can come down from the interaction, come down from the day itself.
This izakaya is their regular haunt - close enough to school to be easy access, far enough that older students won’t wander in. Bakugou puts in an order of spicy karaage, not quite ready to go home yet. Head resting on a fist, he people watches. There’s a table of regulars he recognizes in the corner, loud but not quite enough to get thrown out. At the bar is a couple obviously on a first date, all awkward body language and overly nice clothing.
A little farther down at the bar is a man with his back to Bakugou. He’s tall, his sweatshirt not able to hide a thickly muscled body that makes Bakugou’s half-dormant libido twitch to life. It’s been…awhile since he’s slept with someone, and even with his back turned and across the room, this guy is ticking all of Bakugou’s preferred boxes.
Chewing slowly on his chicken and secure in the fact the guy can’t see him, Bakugou lazily watches as the guy drinks from a glass of beer. His hair is - interesting. Shaggy, almost spikes of black that remind him of the ruffles of a raven’s feathers. Instead of the purple-blue iridescence of a raven’s wing though, this guy has - red? When he moves, the low izakaya lights pick up on streaks and lowlights of scarlet, shining like blood through the black strands.
Bakugou shakes his head at himself - he’s had one too many beers, apparently, to be focusing on this stranger. He needs to finish his food so it can absorb the alcohol some and then get home. It’s a Friday and he doesn’t have patrol this weekend, so he has a few days of relaxation stretching in front of him.
The front door of the izakaya creaks open, and a familiar head of blue hair enters - Nejire Hado. Post-UA, after sidekicking together for a few years the Big Three split up, with Mirio and Amajiki opening up an agency together in Tokyo while Nejire Chan moved up north. Hokkaido doesn’t have that many agencies - there aren’t a ton of villains around but there’s more than enough natural disasters to keep everyone busy. Seeing her opening, she created an agency that’s now the top rated hero group in Sapporo.
She walks over to the guy at the bar that Bakugou has been eyeing, but catches sight of Bakugou. Smiling, she waves enthusiastically. She’s always weirdly happy, Bakugou never quite knows what to do with her. He gives a lazy wave back, burying his face in his beer so he doesn’t have to smile in return.
The man at the bar turns around to see who Nejire is waving to. Familiar red eyes meet Bakougo’s own, and the bottom falls out of his world.
It’s -
Kirishima.
Bakugou doesn’t remember putting his beer down, doesn’t remember getting up from his seat. One second he’s meeting the eyes of his former best friend and the next they’re standing in the middle of the izakaya, staring at each other. Fuck, he got tall - he has to be a good four or five inches taller than Bakugou’s own six foot one. And broad - the Kirishima that Bakugou remembers was pretty damn fit but now he’s just massive slabs of muscle slapped over bone.
“Bakugou.” His voice is deeper, smoother. Amazing what a decade and a half will do to someone.
“Shitty Hair.”
At the automatic insult that turned from mockery to fond nickname at some point during high school, a wide smile breaks out over Kirishima’s face. It’s - exactly the same, same sharp teeth, same eyes crinkling up, same dimple that appears out of nowhere on his left cheek.
“Oh my god,” he says, and suddenly Bakugou is wrapped up in a hug that’s overwhelming, strong arms around his back and his face buried in the crook of Kirishima’s neck. His own arms come up slowly as he inhales, breathes in unfamiliar shampoo and cologne but familiar spice and musk that’s always been the scent of Kirishima, of something like home.
They stay like that for a moment, for a minute, for long enough that it’s awkward but also not because it’s them. Finally Bakugou pulls back, taking a deep breath. “What are you doing here?” he asks, trying not to let his voice crack the way it wants to.
“Me, what are you doing here? I don’t see you in forever and you end up here in the ass end of nowhere. I mean, there’s snow! ”
Bakugou understands his surprise to some extent - cold and snow are historically bad for his quirk - but he can’t help but get a prickle of annoyance at hearing his city referred to as “nowhere”. Are they north, sure, but Sapporo is the fifth largest city in Japan, damnit.
He does his best to ignore it. “You’re talking to Nejire - you here for work?”
Kirishima’s face lights up with another smile, and seeing it again feels like someone punched Bakugou in the chest. “Yeah! There’s apparently some villain who’s created these polar bear-Yeti type critters who’s hiding up in the mountains, and they thought I’d be useful. Are you helping? Do you have your own agency, or are you part of Nejire’s, or what?”
It’s like a soft jab to the kidneys, hearing that. Knowing that Kirishima really had no idea what was going on in Bakugou’s life was a new, strange kind of pain. Bakugou shifts his weight to his back foot, not stepping back but mentally moving himself away. “I’m not with an agency, I’m not a fucking ranked hero.”
Kirishima blinks, mouth hanging open slightly with surprise. “You - ah - what?”
“We started up a school here. I’m a teacher.”
The tips of Kirishima’s sharp teeth gleam in the dim light. “You, you are teaching -”
“Riot!” Nejire’s voice cuts through the low level noise of the bar.
“Crap. I gotta go. Here - “ Kirishima fumbles his phone out of a pocket, handing it to Bakugou. “I lost all my old contacts, put yours in. We need to get together.”
Bakugou silently puts his number in and hands the phone back. Kirishima smiles, that broad grin that’s like the sun coming out and hasn’t changed at all. “I’ll text you soon, okay?” The smile fades, his face turning serious. “I. I missed you, man.”
Bakugou weakly tries to smile and fails.