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When Shouto confesses to Bakugou, it is a complete accident. He never plans to say anything in the first place, entirely set on taking it to his grave. But then Shouto gets distracted by the sharp-toothed grin on Bakugou’s face, the sweat trailing down his neck—over his collarbone and under his shirt, going down, down, down—during a training spar and forgets to dodge the right hook Bakugou throws his way.
“What the hell was that, Icy-hot?” Bakugou demands, crouching over him.
Shouto squints at the sky before groaning and pressing his cheek against the training ground. “You’re hot.”
“Wh—”
“And cute. Cute when you’re worried.” Shouto tilts his head and tries to look up at him, but gives up when a wave of dizziness rushes over him. He blinks. “I think I’m concussed.”
“No shit, you idiot,” Bakugou snaps before sighing and standing back up. For a second, Shouto thinks he’s about to leave, but then there’s arms lifting him up and calloused skin against the dip of his lower back. Shouto gazes up to Bakugou’s half-hearted glare.
“You’re so fuckin’ stupid.”
“Huh?”
“I know you saw the punch coming.” He scowls. “You could’ve dodged.”
“I…got distracted.”
“The fuck you getting distracted for in the middle of a fight?”
“S’not my fault you’re distracting,” Shouto sighs and lets his head fall against Bakugou’s chest. He can feel Bakugou’s heartbeat through the thin material of his workout shirt. Despite the headache, all it does is make him want to get comfortable and sleep, so that’s just what he does.
“You stupid—are you seriously going to pass out now?”
By then, Shouto’s already out.
When Shouto comes to, Bakugou is staring at him with an unreadable expression. Recovery Girl tuts at him disapprovingly for training recklessly outside of class and tells him to rest before turning to Bakugou and ordering him to accompany him to his room. A complaint and begrudging agreement later, Shouto is in front of his dorm room while Bakugou glares at him.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” Shouto tells him with a short nod.
Bakugou rolls his eyes. “Recovery Girl would’ve had my ass if I didn’t,” he says, before grumbling under his breath: “S’not my fault you’re such a dumbass.”
His lip twitches upward at that. “Sorry. You can go now, though.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Bakugou snaps reflexively. “You—” He cuts himself off, huffing and then shaking his head. “Go rest. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Shouto watches Bakugou until he disappears around the corner. He opens the door to his room and flops onto the futon, tilting his head thoughtfully at the ceiling.
Was he imagining it, or were Bakugou’s ears red?
Shouto falls asleep wondering.
It’s Sunday. There’s no class. No responsibilities, schoolwork, or obligations that Shouto needs to attend to. It’s nine o’clock. He usually sleeps in until noon. He should be asleep.
… Shouto is wide awake and it’s his own damn fault.
He buries his face in his pillow, willing it to suffocate and kill him. Embarrassment flares through him as he remembers yesterday. After nearly a year of silence, a concussion exposes him. He’s weak—so weak—to Bakugou. He isn’t surprised he got distracted, but he usually manages to reign it in during their one-on-one sparring matches.
It’s hard not to appreciate Bakugou—his athletic prowess, his intellect, and his refusal to give anything less than his best. Despite his abrasive personality and lack of general approachability, Shouto has never doubted that Bakugou is a good person. As a third-year student, Bakugou has only grown in character. Much to Shouto’s despair, he has also only become more attractive, and that really doesn’t help the fact that Shouto wants to hold his hand and maybe kiss a little.
God, Shouto called him hot yesterday. And cute.
He shoves his head into his hands with a groan. He wishes the concussion gave him memory loss because this, as Ashido often says, is not it.
At some point, Shouto dozes off. When he wakes up and manages to drag himself away from his room, it’s almost one in the afternoon and some of his classmates are in the lounge.
“How’d you sleep?” Kirishima asks in lieu of greeting. “Heard Bakubro gave you a concussion!”
“It was my fault. I got distracted.”
Kaminari gives him a sympathetic look. “Yeah, Bakugou punches hard,” he groans. “Seriously, he has no mercy!”
“Have you tried dodging?” Ashido teases, poking Kaminari in the cheek. He swats her hand away in mock offense before they both burst into laughter.
“You okay, though?” Kirishima asks, eyebrows furrowed in worry. “He said he got you in the head.”
Shouto nods. “Recovery Girl treated me and told me to rest. I should be fine.”
“That’s g—” His sentence is cut off by Ashido launching herself into Kaminari with a war cry and accidentally toppling all three of them onto the carpet. As they dissolve into chaos, Shouto takes the opportunity to retreat into the kitchen.
And bumps straight into Bakugou.
“Sorry.”
Bakugou frowns at him. “You sure you’re not sick?”
“Why would I be sick?”
He just squints at him with a furrowed brow. “You’re not usually this fuckin’ scatterbrained.”
Shouto scrunches his nose. “I’m not sick.”
Bakugou scoffs disbelievingly. “Whatever. Here.” He thrusts a plate into Shouto’s hands before sidestepping him and pressing a calloused palm against Shouto’s neck. His head dips forward at the slight push.
“Where are you going?”
“Shower,” he answers shortly, and then leaves the room.
Shouto blinks after Bakugou’s back in pure confusion. He stands there for a moment in silence before glancing down at the dish in his hands. His eyes widen in surprise.
Cold soba.
Midoriya finds him still standing there with a hand against his neck, face pink and steam wafting from his shoulders.
Shouto isn’t really sure what friendship entails, considering he never really had friends until halfway through his first year of high school. He could ask Midoriya but he’s not sure he’s equipped to handle his friend’s inevitable teary-eyed look at the reminder of Shouto’s frankly terrible childhood.
Does friendship include getting home-cooked meals three times a week? For a month straight without fail? There’s always cold soba waiting for him once a week, either handed to him in person by Bakugou or somehow always fresh for him on the table. Except for the cold soba, the dishes are different every week. They’re left, still warm and wrapped, outside of his room to the right of the door.
Embarrassingly enough, Bakugou’s food has spoiled him.
… It would be great if everything didn’t suddenly taste lackluster compared to Bakugou’s cooking and make Shouto crave for it.
He sighs. He knows he’s developed an attraction to Bakugou, though he only realized it late during their second year. It took Uraraka’s weird looks and Midoriya asking him, gently, if there was something going on between them because—and then he’d start muttering and Shouto hadn’t been able to hear him but the blush on his friend’s cheeks clued him in.
This—the home-cooked meals and the knowledge that Bakugou takes the time to prepare them for him—is not helping. At this point, he might as well be too far gone.
Shouto’s forehead hits the desk with a loud thunk.
“Todoroki,” Aizawa drawls, sounding quite frankly tired of his shit, “if you’re going to give yourself another concussion, do it after class.”
“Sorry, sensei,” he says, muffled, into the desk.
He keeps his face squished against the desk for the rest of class.
It starts with the meals, and the occasional lectures about his shitty food intake—Bakugou’s words, not his own. He and Bakugou get paired to get supplies more often for the Class A dormitories, then get put together in class training exercises. Where Bakugou usually chooses to spar with Kirishima, he’s started approaching Shouto more frequently instead.
It happens gradually, and Shouto almost can’t believe he didn’t notice it sooner.
Lately, Bakugou has been a part of his everyday life, and there hasn’t been a day where he and Bakugou haven’t interacted in some way. He isn’t complaining—far from it—but he’s confused.
This is friendship. Probably. Even though Bakugou has never admitted that they’re friends. Shouto hasn’t asked since Bakugou vehemently denied it back in their first year. He thinks it might be friendship, but a part of him…
No. He shakes away the thought. It doesn’t mean anything. Besides, he told himself he would take it to his grave if needed.
A nudge to the shoulder snaps him out of his wallowing.
“Um, Todoroki?” Midoriya gives him a concerned look. “Are you okay? Lately you’ve been kind of… distracted.”
Shouto bites the inside of his cheek. “Bakugou has been acting weird,” he says carefully. “He’s—”
“Oh! You mean how Kacchan’s been taking care of you recently?” Midoriya interrupts, oddly excited. He’s practically vibrating in his seat. “You two have been closer so I was wondering, but I’m glad! I thought you seemed happier, and I think Kacchan has been, too! I mean—”
He stares at Midoriya as he talks, mouth parted but no sound comes out.
He’s...been taking care of me?
Somehow, the words feel like too much. Too domestic. Too intimate.
He bursts into flames.
“—oh, my god, Todoroki?!”
It all comes to head a few days later after training. There’s scrapes and bruises scattered over his skin, but nothing bad enough for Shouto to bother seeing Recovery Girl. Instead, he takes a bath and sinks into the hot water for half an hour, blearily scrubs himself down, and then heads to his room to put away his clothes.
When he finishes dropping off his clothes and leaves his room to find something to eat, Bakugou is leaning against the wall in wait.
“Oi, come with me,” he orders, a plate of still steaming food in his hand. As if on cue, his stomach growls.
“Okay.”
With a nod, Bakugou leads him down the stairs to the fourth floor. It takes Shouto a second to realize that he’s being herded to Bakugou’s room. By then, it’s too late. Bakugou’s already opened the door and Shouto can do nothing but step inside. The door shuts behind them with a soft click.
“Did you want to talk about something?” Shouto asks awkwardly.
Bakugou looks at him exasperatedly. “Sit down and eat, idiot. You look like you’re about to fuckin’ collapse.” When he just stands there in confusion, he sighs and pushes him toward the chair at his desk.
“Um,” he says eloquently.
“Eat,” Bakugou repeats, putting down the plate in front of him. The smell of chicken, curry, and rice makes his stomach rumble again. “I’ll be right back.”
Baffled, Shouto plops himself onto the desk chair and picks up the dish as Bakugou disappears from the room. The first bite tastes like heaven, warm and savory and just a tinge of spice, and it doesn’t take him long to get lost in the hot meal. Before he knows it, he’s halfway done with his food and feeling less ravenous than before.
He finally takes a moment to look around the room. He’s seen glimpses of Bakugou’s room, but he’s never really stepped foot inside more than once or twice, and only very briefly. It’s clean and organized, textbooks and novels lined neatly on the shelves of a bookcase. There aren’t any clothes lying around except for a hoodie that’s been haphazardly thrown over the back of a rolling chair. There’s a few posters on the wall of music groups he’s never heard of, an alarm clock and a picture frame of the “Bakusquad” on the bedside table, and a singular plushie of a spiky, blond pomeranian on top of his pillow.
He finishes the rest of the curry chicken at a sedate pace, a wave of sleepiness washing over him. He’s warm and comfortable, hunger satiated and mind fuzzy. He’s almost fallen asleep in the desk chair but the creaking of the door startles him awake.
Bakugou shuffles into the room, clothes in hand and a towel around his neck, and closes the door behind him. He opens his closet, drops his clothes in the hamper, and sits on his bed.
“Finished?” Bakugou asks. He rubs his hair with the towel to dry it before letting it drop back around his shoulders. His hair poofs up, less spiky and more puffy and soft.
Ah, shit, Shouto thinks miserably. That’s really cute.
Bakugou sighs at his silence, and with a roll of his eyes, he carefully takes the finished dish from Shouto’s limp fingers and sets it down on his desk. He feels their fingers brush for a moment and then the sensation is gone. Bakugou retreats to the bathroom before returning with a large plastic box in his arms. It’s only when he kneels in front of Shouto and opens it does he realize that it’s a really big first-aid kit.
“Why do you have that in your room?” Shouto blurts out.
Bakugou gives him a look as if to say, And you don’t? “So I don’t gotta go to Recovery Girl for small shit and can take care of it myself,” is what he replies instead.
“Oh.” Okay, yeah, that’s fair. “So, uh, what are you doing with it?”
The sheer look of are you serious? he gets in return is kind of deserved. “You didn’t go to Recovery Girl, but I know you got hurt during training today, dumbass.”
Shouto is still confused, and it must show on his face because Bakugou exhales loudly before saying, “Show me. I’ll take care of it.”
Oh. Oh. “I—okay.” Gingerly, he pulls up both pant legs to show the bruises and cuts on his skin, and Bakugou goes straight to work. He disinfects every cut and scrape and then bandages them carefully, and then rubs ointment on the purpling bruises on his legs before moving onto his hands and arms. He’s gentle with each wound, calloused fingers pressed against Shouto’s skin, and the domesticity of it all strikes him with a sudden longing.
“Done.”
Shouto pulls down his pant legs, unsure of what to do next. Bakugou’s expectant gaze makes him fidget with his fingers nervously. Neither of them say anything for a long moment, but then Bakugou rolls his eyes.
“Take off your shirt.”
He feels his heart stutter, and then suddenly there’s steam rising from his shoulders and his ears are burning.
“Not like that, you goddamn moron!” Bakugou sputters, pink creeping up his neck. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Oh, my god.” Shouto breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth until he stops steaming. It’s embarrassing how much his ears are burning. “You meant—”
“Yes, you shitty excuse for brain cells,” he snaps.
He scrubs a hand down his face. “Sorry.” Before he can think too much about it, he pulls his shirt off over his head and holds it in his lap.
Bakugou huffs at him. He takes out more rubbing alcohol and gets to work on disinfecting the thin cut Shouto hadn’t even noticed on his shoulder. He’s attentive to every cut, no matter how small, and takes care of each one with the same gentleness as before. He’s still kneeling in front of Shouto, using the armrest to keep his balance as he leans closer as he continues taking care of him.
Taking care of Shouto.
The thought burns through him, lips trembling at the intimacy of the thought. Of this entire situation. Bakugou, unaware of his predicament, finishes bandaging the larger wounds and then moves onto the bruises. His fingertips press against Shouto’s arms, his shoulders, his chest. Every lingering touch nearly makes him shudder. When finally he stops, it feels like his skin is burning.
“I’m finished,” Bakugou says, hushed, before pushing himself up to stand.
Shouto sucks in a sharp breath. He doesn’t know when he stopped breathing, but he was so close, too close—
A hand presses against his cheek, thumb stroking it softly. His eyes flutter closed at the touch, and he unthinkingly leans into the warmth and sighs quietly. Something soft brushes against his forehead, and his eyes snap open, suddenly wide awake.
Bakugou hovers over him, mouth quirked into a slight smile, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Shouto feel weak.
“You need to stop,” he blurts out.
Bakugou takes a step back, hand falling to his side as he frowns. “Stop what?”
Shouto buries his face in his hands. “That—cooking for me, and touching me, and—”
“I thought you liked it?”
“I do, but that’s not—” He cuts himself off, and shakes his head. “Stop it.”
“Half-n-half—”
“I like it, but—”
“Look, Icy-hot—”
“—if you keep doing that—”
“Todoroki.”
“—my heart won’t be able to handle it.”
His face is red—so, so red—and burning, and he wants to dig himself a hole and lie in it forever. He’s indulged himself too much in this, in the way Bakugou has been treating him and caring for him, and it’s only going to make this harder for him.
“That was the fuckin’ point, though,” Bakugou says, breaking through his thoughts. “To, ugh, give you shitty butterflies and make you feel things. Fuckin’, Shitty Hair said that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re dating someone. To make them happy.” He looks off to the side. “To make you happy.”
Shouto’s brain stutters to a halt. “We’re dating?”
Bakugou scowls at him. “You frickin’ called me cute and shit and fell asleep in my arms?” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I was—”
“Oh, my god, were you trying to woo me?”
“What the fuck, where did you even learn that word?!”
“You’ve been trying to—to court me, and I didn’t even know?”
Bakugou stares at him in disbelief. “You think I just do this crap for anyone?”
“I thought you were finally admitting we were friends!”
“Are you fucking stupid?”
“Yes?” Shouto blurts out. “And I think I’m a little in love with you so don’t break up with me?”
It’s silent for a moment, and then Bakugou breaks into full-blown laughter. It’s cute, despite how rough and crackly it sounds, and Shouto kind of thinks he wants to hear that for the rest of his life.
“You’re such a dumbass,” he finally says, fond and amused.
“Your dumbass?” he asks, hopeful.
“Unfortunately, yes, so listen.” Bakugou smiles, a small curve of his lips, and it’s genuine and real.
He’s pretty sure he’s more than just a little in love with him.
“I like you,” Bakugou confesses, something quiet and tender in the dark of the room.
Shouto honestly has no idea what dating entails, but, as he feels his heart swell at the words, if it's with Bakugou, he thinks he'll be okay.