Archive of Our Own ^beta

The dorms were quieter than they’d ever been.

Not the hush of midnight banter winding down or the early morning lull before coffee kicked in — no, this was something else. This was silence with a weight to it, silence that made Kirishima's ribs ache like they were being pressed inward from the inside. A stillness that swallowed the walls and made every little sound echo — the click of chopsticks, the rustle of paper, the low hum of the common room fridge. It was the kind of quiet that begged not to be broken.

He hadn’t expected it to feel like this. Graduation was supposed to be a celebration. Capes pressed. Suits clean. Diploma in hand. He’d told himself he was ready. But when Bakugou said it — said it — in that matter-of-fact way of his, voice calm, clipped, like it was just another status update, like it wasn’t the beginning of the end — something in Kirishima had cracked.

“I’m leaving next week,” Bakugou had said over the rim of his water glass, not even looking up. “Agency in New York. They want me now.”

Just like that.

The fork in Kirishima’s hand had paused halfway to his mouth. No one else had reacted much — Mina had clapped, Kaminari whooped. Even Todoroki had offered one of his subtle nods of approval. And Kirishima? He smiled. Of course he smiled. He always did. Broad and bright and blinding. His go-to armour, the same as ever. It was easier that way. But this time it didn’t fit right on his face. He felt the tremble in the corners of his mouth before anyone else did — that half-second catch in his throat when the word New York dropped like a stone through his stomach and straight into the space behind his heart.

The world was moving forward, just like it was supposed to. And Bakugou — Katsuki — was going to be brilliant. Dynamight on foreign soil. A comet streaking across skyscrapers, loud and glorious and sharp-edged, breaking ground like only he could. Kirishima knew this. He was proud. So proud it hurt. It was what Bakugou had always wanted. What he’d worked for. What he’d bled for.

But he hadn’t known it would feel like being left behind. Not really.

Not like this.

There was this memory — one that kept haunting him in flickers — of the first time they’d trained together at U.A. Kirishima remembered the sweat and the dust and the fire in Bakugou’s eyes. The way he’d looked at him — not through him, but at him — like maybe Kirishima was worth something after all. It hadn’t been love then, not exactly. Not the kind he could name. But it had been something. Something that set his heart alight in his chest and made him want to be more. Be braver. Be worthy.

It had grown, that feeling. Quietly. Steadily. Like moss on stone. Like a fire underground. Like something waiting.

He’d thought it would be enough — to stay beside him, to be the one who knew him best, to love him from an arm’s length without ever reaching further. He’d thought maybe that was his place — close, but never touching. And that maybe if he stayed still enough, he could hold on to it forever.

But now Bakugou was leaving, and Kirishima was still here.

Still here in this dorm that smelled like memory — burnt coffee and gym mats and the faintest hint of caramel from Bakugou’s shampoo in the shared showers. Still here surrounded by the echo of footsteps down halls he wouldn’t hear again. Still here with all this love, raw and unspent, turning sour in the back of his throat.

He stared at the back of Bakugou’s head across the table, blond tufts messy from wind and resistance, and tried to memorise the slope of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers curled around his chopsticks. He wanted to ask, Did you know I thought we’d always be together? Not in some dramatic, storybook way. Just — together. In the same city. In each other’s corners. Unsaid but understood.

But the words clung like molasses to his tongue, thick and unspoken.

So he just sat there, smiling that too-wide smile that made his jaw ache, nodding along to Kaminari’s jokes, and pretending his heart wasn’t slowly splintering apart.

When dinner ended, Bakugou stood up first. “Don’t wait up,” he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets, and turned without looking back.

And Kirishima — brave, bright, unbreakable Kirishima — stayed seated.

He didn’t say goodnight.

Didn’t say don’t go.

Didn’t say anything at all.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The airport was colder than he expected. All that glass and light and sterile shine, like it was designed specifically to drain things of sentiment. A liminal space, where people said goodbye and didn’t know how. Where time felt suspended, and yet still passed with agonising cruelty. It smelled faintly of coffee and disinfectant and something metallic underneath, and Kirishima couldn’t stop inhaling it, couldn’t stop being here.

Bakugou didn’t say much. He never did when it counted most, and yet Kirishima had always learned to listen to what he didn’t say. This time, though, there wasn’t anything under the surface. No coded message in the tilt of his mouth or the flicker of his gaze. Just silence — a steady, unyielding silence that left no room for questions or longing or the unbearable ache swelling in Kirishima’s chest.

They stood near the security gates, away from the bustle of families and lovers and weary businessmen — tucked off to the side where the light pooled grey and dull. Bakugou’s suitcase sat by his feet, rigid and military-grade, like everything else he touched. He looked tired in the sharp morning light. Not weary — not defeated — just spent, like his fire had been burning non-stop for years and he’d only just started to feel the smoke in his lungs. Even then, he stood straight, like he owed it to himself not to falter.

“Guess that’s it, huh.”

That was all Bakugou said. His voice was low and flat, a sheet of steel laid over whatever emotion might’ve tried to crack through. He didn’t smile. He didn’t scowl either. His eyes flicked to Kirishima for half a second, unreadable as ever, and then back to the looming gate ahead.

Kirishima wanted to say something. Anything. Something real, something raw, something that would reach Bakugou in the places he didn’t let anyone touch. But all that came to his mouth were useless things — Safe flight. You’ll be amazing. Don’t forget to text. Hollow things. He swallowed them all.

He clenched his fists instead, tucked them into the sleeves of his hoodie like he used to when he was small, when hiding his hands felt like hiding his fear. He watched Bakugou adjust the strap of his bag. He watched him scan the terminal, watched him not look at him.

The boarding call echoed through the terminal. Kirishima’s stomach twisted like something was being wrung out from the inside. That was the moment, wasn’t it? That was the point where he should say it — I love you. Please don’t go. Or at least look back, once. Just once. Prove I’m not the only one who feels like this.

But Bakugou shifted his weight and stepped forward, past the line of silver barriers, his passport clutched in one hand, and didn’t look back.

Not once.

Kirishima stood rooted to the tile, feeling the moment stretch and snap. The space where Bakugou had stood felt colder now, more hollow, like his presence had carved something into the air and then taken it with him. It was irrational, he knew. He’d known Bakugou was leaving for weeks. He’d helped him pack, for god’ sake. Had sat on the edge of his bed in the dorms while Bakugou meticulously arranged shirts into colour-coded stacks, listening to him grumble about American plug sockets and the state of international hero politics. They’d talked about this. They’d talked around this. And Kirishima had smiled the whole time, like it didn’t split him open.

But knowing it was coming didn’t make the goodbye any easier. Especially not when it happened like that — clean and wordless, like a wound cauterised too quickly to bleed.

He didn’t cry. Not there. He didn’t reach for Bakugou or call out or chase him. He didn’t move at all, just watched him walk through the gate until he disappeared around the corner. That sharp-shouldered frame, that tell-tale swagger. Gone.

It was a good thing, wasn’t it? Bakugou going to America. He was going to shine. He was going to destroy expectations and remake the landscape with his own two hands. He was going to become exactly the kind of hero he’d always said he’d be. It had never not been the dream.

And Kirishima — he was proud of him. God, he was proud. He could feel it like a burn behind his ribs. But he was also selfish, and scared, and so hopelessly in love that the pride tangled with bitterness until he couldn’t tell one from the other. He had imagined a version of their lives where they grew side by side, always within reach. He thought — stupidly, naively — that it might be enough. That his quiet kind of love, the kind that filled lunchboxes and walked next to Bakugou in silence and made sure he got eight hours of sleep after a mission, would be enough to anchor them both.

But Bakugou had never been made to stay in one place. And Kirishima — he’d made peace with that. Or at least he thought he had. Until now, standing alone in a terminal that was far too bright, with families reuniting and friends hugging, and his heart somewhere halfway down the runway.

There was a pang in his chest that no amount of logic could dull.

He wondered, absurdly, whether Bakugou would think of him on the plane. Whether the clouds over the Pacific would remind him of the nights they sat on the rooftop at UA, watching the stars in heavy silence. Whether he’d reach for his phone mid-flight, only to stop himself. Whether he even felt the distance growing the way Kirishima did, like tectonic plates shifting between them.

He didn’t think so. Bakugou was resolute. Always forward-facing. He was the kind of person who looked ahead with unwavering certainty, even if it meant leaving people behind.

Kirishima let out a breath that shook more than he meant it to. He turned away from the gate, his heart thudding like a bruise under his skin. The pain wasn’t sharp. It was dull and heavy, like a weight pressing against his chest, flattening the air out of him with every step. He walked through the terminal, past shops and cafes, past people hugging and laughing and crying and living.

And he felt stupid.

So stupid.

For standing there. For hoping. For loving someone who was already on a plane to somewhere else. For believing that love could ever be enough to make someone stay.

He didn’t look back either. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he knew if he did, he might never stop.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The city didn’t stop. That was the thing about Tokyo — it kept moving, even when you were barely holding it together. The sirens still howled at dusk, neon still blinked tiredly above izakayas, and newspapers still bore headlines of heroes and villains and everything in between. Somewhere in that chaos, Kirishima found himself again, or at least the version of himself that could pretend Bakugou hadn’t left a crater in his chest.

He filled his days to the brim. Mornings started early, stretching before sunrise, tightening the muscle that had dulled since graduation. His patrol schedule was brutal by design — chosen like a punishment, a discipline, a distraction. If he was tired enough, he wouldn’t think. Wouldn’t wonder if Bakugou had eaten lunch yet in New York. Wouldn’t scroll back to old messages just to reread his words like they meant something now. Wouldn’t look at the photos stuck to the walls of his flat — the ones Mina insisted he frame after they graduated. There was one of Bakugou, caught mid-yell, eyes ablaze and laughing in a way that felt rare and holy. Kirishima hated how he’d stopped being able to look at it without feeling like someone had wrung out his lungs.

So he worked.

He worked like the city depended on him and maybe some of it did. The civilians still smiled, his name still made headlines — Red Riot Saves Civilians From Quirk-Induced Tunnel Collapse — and his agency praised his consistency. But even through the compliments, he felt like a fraud. Like the Kirishima they saw was a papier-mâché version, painted bold red and lined with cardboard. The real one had gone with Bakugou through that international gate two months ago, stuck somewhere in an airport terminal, still waiting.

The texts had stopped. First slowly — replies with fewer words, more ellipses. Then nothing but the group chat. Occasional likes on the photos Kaminari spammed. He never messaged Kirishima directly. Not even a how’s patrol? or a saw this and thought of you.

Not that he was owed that.

He wasn’t Bakugou’s boyfriend, after all. Just someone who loved too much, too loud, too quietly all at once. Someone who had stood too close and never said anything that mattered.

Every now and again he told himself it was okay. That it made sense. Long-distance friendships were hard, and Bakugou had never been good at texting — no one expected him to be. But there was a loneliness that crept in like mould, unassuming and slow, settling in the corners of Kirishima’s heart until everything felt slightly damp with loss.

He caught himself staring at the same hero billboard one day, half-asleep on a night train. Dynamight’s image towered above Shibuya Crossing, backlit and righteous, a frozen snarl on his face. It was new — some licensing update no one had warned him about. It hit him in the gut. Kirishima blinked, mouth slightly parted as the image loomed above, cold and distant. That’s him, he thought dumbly, heart thudding too loud in his ears. That’s Bakugou. That’s my Bakugou. The thought was stupid, selfish, not even real — Bakugou had never been his.

But god, he wanted him to be.

And it didn’t stop. Every little reminder dug in. The way convenience stores stocked Dynamight-branded energy drinks now. How the same cologne he used to wear — the same one Kirishima bought him and he stuck to — had started popping up in high-end shops in Harajuku. Kids on the street mimicking his catchphrases, laughing like they understood the depth of him. Kirishima would smile, wave when they noticed him — “Red Riot!” they’d yell, and he’d give them a thumbs up like he wasn’t bleeding behind his teeth.

He found excuses to stay late at the agency. Claimed he had paperwork to finish or rookies to train. Anything to avoid the flat that still smelled like the cinnamon shampoo Bakugou used when he visited. He could’ve thrown it out, should’ve, but it sat on the edge of the tub like a fossil, untouched.

And the worst part?

The feeling never went. That gnawing ache of absence, the echo of a goodbye that wasn’t loud enough to mean anything, and too silent to forget. Kirishima had imagined it’d fade. That he’d adjust. But his body still turned instinctively when someone said Katsuki. His heart still lurched whenever a text notification came through, hoping, foolishly, it might be him.

Some nights he dreamed about the dorms. About the nights Bakugou fell asleep studying, head lolled back and mouth slightly open, the softest he’d ever looked. He dreamed of dorm kitchen arguments, of hands brushing too close when they reached for the same mug, of laughter in hallways and shared silences that were warm instead of suffocating.

Then he’d wake up. Alone. Light filtering through curtains, Tokyo pressing in on all sides. A flat too quiet, too tidy, with a sink that only ever had one toothbrush in the cup.

Time kept moving. He did too.

But god, he missed him.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The train was packed — shoulder to shoulder with the morning crowd, pressed into the metal curve of the carriage like sardines in a tin, the scent of cologne and shampoo and city sweat clinging to the air. Kirishima’s back was tight with tension, his feet wide for balance, swaying with every lurch of the rail. It was a day like any other, ordinary in its bleakness, sky heavy with grey light beyond the glass, his earbuds in and the music low enough to let the conductor’s voice filter through in garbled static.

And then he saw him.

A flash of sharp blonde in the sea of commuters, just a few feet down the carriage. The kind of blonde that demanded attention. Unruly and bright, like it was made to catch sunlight, even in the dim fluorescent pallor of Tokyo Metro.

Kirishima’s breath caught, and something inside him — some deep, dangerous part that had been half-dead for weeks — lurched into flame.

It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be. Bakugou was in New York. Thousands of miles away. Six time zones apart, if he was keeping count (and god help him, he was). But there it was again — a shock of jagged blonde, a figure in red, tall and broad-shouldered, standing with his back to Kirishima like the universe had plucked him from memory and shoved him right here in front of him — cruel and close and impossible.

His mouth went dry. His heart hammered, thunderous and stupid in his ribs.

It had to be him. That stance, that weight in the legs like a coiled spring, the sharp slope of muscle beneath his hoodie — he knew it like his own shadow. He could feel it in his teeth, in his blood. Hope flooded him so violently he nearly dropped his phone. His hand trembled as he reached out — didn’t touch, couldn’t, but the instinct to move, to get closer, was stronger than air.

Bakugou. It had to be.

He hadn’t realised how much he’d been starving until now. Until this sudden, beautiful, devastating possibility of closeness. Of being near him again. Of maybe — maybe — Bakugou had come back and just not told him. Maybe he’d meant to surprise them. Maybe he’d meant to surprise him. Maybe—

The figure turned.

And everything shattered.

It wasn’t him.

Of course it wasn’t.

The blonde was too pale, more yellow than gold. The jaw was wrong. The mouth too soft. His eyes — not red, not even close — but brown, warm, unfamiliar. A red earring glinted where Kirishima had mistaken it for something else entirely. A smile flickered at the stranger’s lips, brief and polite and wholly unremarkable.

It wasn’t him.

Kirishima’s stomach dropped, nausea blooming sharp and sudden in his gut. His knees went weak.

God, he was so stupid.

The crowd surged around him as the train pulled into the next station, the flow of bodies nudging him forward, but he didn’t move. He stood there like an idiot, like a ghost, frozen in place while life carried on around him. Something ached deep in his chest — not a crack, not a tear, but something that had always been fragile finally giving way under the weight of missing.

His hand clenched around the rail. He couldn’t breathe right. The air felt thick, wrong, and his own reflection in the darkened window looked pale, glassy-eyed, hollow.

He missed his stop. Watched it roll past in a blur of platform lights and yellow tiles, saw the sign flash by and felt his chance to be fine disappear with it.

Because it wasn’t just disappointment. It wasn’t just the gut-punch of mistaken identity.

It was everything.

It was the sudden, brutal reminder of just how deeply Bakugou had carved himself into Kirishima’s world — how he’d embedded himself into every sense, every reflex, every hope, until even the mere shape of him in a crowd could send Kirishima reeling. It was how much he still wanted, still ached, even after weeks of silence and carefully manufactured cheer, even after pretending — day after exhausting day — that he was okay.

He wasn’t okay.

He was bleeding in the middle of a train full of strangers, his chest split open by a ghost that had the wrong hair and the wrong eyes.

Kirishima swallowed hard. Tried to bite down on the helpless, rising wave of grief, the anger at himself for being so weak, so gullible, so still in love it hurt to stand. He blinked and his eyes burned — sharp, dry sting that told him he’d been too close to crying for too long.

He took a breath and then another, shallow and shaky, gripping the pole like it was the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

It wasn’t him. He’d known it the second the stranger turned. But some traitorous part of him had wanted it to be so badly he’d let his heart leap first. Let it burn.

And that hope — that brief, beautiful hope — had done more damage than all the silence in the world.

The next stop came, and he stepped off without thinking, the crowd swallowing him whole as he moved.

He didn’t know where he was anymore. But he couldn’t go back, not yet.

He was afraid of what he’d see if he looked in the mirror.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The villain wasn’t particularly clever. Or dangerous. Or memorable.

It had been a textbook ambush, the kind they trained for in first year, all jagged bravado and predictable quirks, lashing out in broad daylight on a packed Tokyo street. Kirishima had responded instinctively, muscle memory and pro hero instinct kicking in before he even had time to think. He cracked his knuckles, squared his stance, felt the old familiar heat coil in his gut.

Hardening, strike, intercept. Done.

The fight was over in minutes.

But Kirishima stood still long after it had ended, his chest rising and falling with short, uneven breaths, fingers twitching faintly where they hung by his sides. His eyes were wide, too wide, like he was still in the middle of something. The street bustled around him again — bystanders picking up dropped phones, murmuring their thanks, someone sobbing quietly in the background. A child sniffled into their mother’s coat. Sirens whined in the distance. Everything was moving again.

Except for him.

He stared at the pavement, half-aware of the blood smeared across it, half-aware of the faint metallic scent of it in the air. His reflection looked back up at him from a broken shard of glass, distorted and hollow-eyed.

His hands were still shaking.

He flexed them, tried to make fists — couldn’t. His skin felt like it didn’t quite belong to him anymore. The world rang in his ears.

It wasn’t fear, not exactly. Not fear of the villain. Not fear of death. He’d faced that before, more times than most. No, this was different. This was something that gnawed beneath his ribs, something that made his stomach twist with a sick, slow churn. Something cold.

He knew what it was. God, he knew.

It was the hoodie.

Not the villain’s — some bystander on the edge of the scene. Black and with that god awful bleach skull. Just for a second, from the corner of his eye, it had been him. Kirishima’s breath had caught like it had been yanked straight from his lungs and he’d turned so fast his neck ached — and it wasn’t Bakugou. It wasn’t even close. But it had been enough to break him open, just for a moment. Just enough to remind him how fragile he still was. How little distance he’d truly put between himself and that damned international gate.

Bakugou wasn’t here. He hadn’t been here for months. And Kirishima — Kirishima was still waiting for him to come home.

He’d been so sure he was done waiting. Hadn’t he said that? Hadn’t he promised himself? Dive into work, focus on the mission, live day by day. He’d even bought new curtains. Rearranged the furniture. Told himself he was making space for new beginnings.

But today, with the villain cuffed and the danger passed, his hands wouldn’t stop trembling.

Because somewhere inside him — some stubborn, stupid part — still believed Bakugou might come back in the middle of a mission, charging into the smoke and flame with that explosive scowl and a barked, “What the hell are you doing without me?”

Kirishima crouched low and pressed his knuckles into the concrete like grounding himself might stop the world from spinning. He could feel the crackled grit bite into his skin. That was real. That he could feel. But his breathing was shallow. His jaw tight.

He hated how much he needed him. How much he still did.

He thought he’d learned how to stand on his own. That was the whole point of this, wasn’t it? To prove he could. To prove that love — if it was love — didn’t mean dependency. But it turned out that for all the strength in his arms and the steel in his bones, he hadn’t hardened where it mattered most. Not in the places Bakugou had touched.

His voice. His fire. His stupid sharp grin after a fight, like he’d been waiting all day just to see Kirishima swing that final punch. The little shared grins. The weight of his presence in a room. The world felt lighter back then — or maybe Kirishima had just been stronger with him in it.

He stood slowly, legs heavy, dragging his gaze back to the street. Civilians gone now. Police tape fluttering weakly in the wind. He gave his report to the responding officer like he always did — calm, collected, professional. But his hands were still shaking. Tucked behind his back. Out of sight.

The walk back to his flat was a blur. He didn’t remember the train, didn’t remember the change at Shibuya station. His uniform was stained with ash and blood but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not today. He barely remembered unlocking the door to his flat or kicking his boots off half-heartedly in the genkan.

He stepped inside and everything was exactly as it had been this morning. Neat. Organised. Clean. The way Bakugou liked it when he used to crash over. A pillow still out of place from the night before when Kirishima had sat up too late watching clips of overseas hero interviews, just in case Bakugou was in the background.

He collapsed onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands.

He didn’t cry.

Not really.

The tears didn’t fall — they just sat, heavy behind his eyes like they were waiting for permission. Waiting for some crack in the dam that he hadn’t given himself in months. His breath stuttered. His mouth opened, then closed again, no sound escaping.

He felt like a hollowed-out version of himself. A shell that could fight villains and laugh with friends and attend hero briefings, but couldn’t stop glancing over his shoulder in crowded places, hoping. Couldn’t stop trembling when the dust settled.

He thought he’d be stronger by now.

But the thing no one told him about love was that it didn’t leave all at once. It bled out in pieces. It carved out hollow spaces where someone used to stand. It haunted him in the shape of a laugh, in the scent of a drink, in the echo of a voice on a late-night interview halfway across the world. And when it was gone — when the person it belonged to had walked through a gate and never looked back — it turned everything else grey.

Kirishima closed his eyes and whispered Bakugou’s name like it might anchor him. Like maybe if he said it quietly enough, the pain would pass by without noticing.

It didn’t.

And when he opened his eyes, he was still alone.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The flat was too quiet these days.

Not empty — his keys still rattled in the bowl by the door, his boots still tracked city grit into the hallway after patrol, and the kettle still groaned its tired whistle at half seven each morning. But it was the kind of silence that crept between the cracks of routine, the kind that curled around your ribcage and settled heavy in your lungs. Kirishima could feel it now, pressing in at the edges of the room as he stood in the soft fridge light, two cans in hand. One was his usual; the other, unopened for months, was a drink he hadn’t touched since winter. Bakugou’s favourite. He never liked the taste himself — too bitter, too sharp on the tongue — but he bought it anyway. Habit, he supposed.

"Still keeping these around?" Mina’s voice was gentle, a tilt of something knowing threaded through the casual question as she leaned against the counter.

He didn’t look at her. Just offered a half-smile and handed her a can of lemonade instead. "Force of habit," he said simply. A lie, maybe. Or maybe not. The truth sat somewhere between those words, tangled up in the neat, untouched row of silver and black cans stacked deliberately in the fridge door.

They made their way to the sofa, the quiet shuffle of socked feet on floorboards the only sound between them. The film was some over-the-top superhero comedy — something Kaminari had recommended months ago. Kirishima couldn’t follow the plot. He laughed when he was supposed to. Let the sounds pass through him like wind through scaffolding. The laughter didn’t echo inside his chest the way it used to, didn’t sit behind his ribs with the same ease.

Outside the window, Tokyo glowed. Rain-slick pavements caught streetlight in golden pools, and the flicker of neon signs danced faintly across the far wall. In the muted hush of his flat, the city looked like a photograph — too still, too polished, like it couldn’t possibly be real.

Mina leaned against him partway through, her shoulder brushing his, the contact warm and familiar. She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either. He didn’t move away.

He was grateful, he really was. For her company, for the way she showed up without needing to ask what was wrong, for the way she never asked at all. She was easy like that — kind without pressing, perceptive without pushing.

But even now, with her beside him, there was a part of him that felt acutely alone. It stretched out from the hollow just behind his sternum, a quiet, aching void shaped too much like someone else.

Across from them, the TV flickered. Bright colours, exaggerated voices. Bakugou would’ve hated this movie. Would’ve made some scathing comment five minutes in and then begrudgingly watched the rest of it, muttering insults at the screen the whole way through. Kirishima could almost hear it — the rasp of his voice, dry with amusement he’d never admit to. You’ve got shit taste in films, shitty hair. The memory cut sharp and clean through him, like a glass edge. He tried not to flinch.

The TV was framed, unintentionally, by a collage of photographs — a few pinned haphazardly, others neatly framed, but all arranged in a way he hadn’t quite noticed until now. Mina didn’t look at them, but he could feel the weight of her gaze settle in their direction once or twice. One showed the two of them — him and Bakugou — standing shoulder to shoulder in the aftermath of a particularly rough patrol, grime on their cheeks and matching grins split wide across their faces. Another caught a rare, blurry candid of Bakugou mid-laugh, head thrown back, his hand half-raised like he was about to smack the camera out of Kirishima’s hand.

Kirishima looked away.

They didn’t talk about the photos. Didn’t talk about the unopened drinks, or the Dynamight hoodie slung over the back of his desk chair, or the little Dynamight figurine Mina had gifted him that still sat on the shelf beside a row of borrowed DVDs.

They didn’t talk about how he checked the time difference before he texted anything, then didn’t text at all. About the way the quiet made his ears ring sometimes, the way he still reached for his phone after missions, half-expecting a snarky message that never came. They didn’t talk about how every time he passed the airport, his stomach twisted like something was wringing it out from the inside.

And most of all, they didn’t talk about how Bakugou was still here. Not in the room, but in every part of it. In the blanket they were sharing that he’d once bought during a winter trip to Hokkaido, in the chipped mug Kirishima still drank from every morning, in the way Kirishima found himself smiling less, laughing quieter, feeling less — as if Bakugou had taken the best, brightest parts of him when he left.

The credits rolled eventually. Mina stayed curled against his side, and he let himself breathe in the stillness, let it settle deep. It wasn’t peace. Not really. It was something close to it, shaped like grief in slow motion.

“You wanna watch another?” he asked, his voice low, cracking slightly from the stillness.

Mina shrugged, eyes closed. “Only if you pick. I’m terrible at choices.”

He nodded, and didn’t move. Just sat there, letting the quiet stretch.

Outside, the rain started again, soft and patient against the glass.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

It was a Tuesday, which didn’t matter to most, but it mattered to them. Tuesdays had become a quiet agreement, a soft promise passed between glances and shared exhaustion, that no matter how many patrols, how many collapsed buildings, how many wounded civilians or PR disasters or sleepless nights—they would come together, even just for a little while.

The place was tucked down a Shibuya backstreet, half-submerged beneath a bookshop, the kind of restaurant that felt like home. There was music, low and old, jazz, maybe, something with brass and yearning in its bones. The lights were honey-gold and low, their table ringed in warm shadows. The wooden floors creaked under every movement, and the seats had old cushions that dipped under your weight like they’d been there since before quirks ever existed.

Kirishima arrived third. Sero and Jirou were already there, Jirou half-slouched in the booth, her boots kicked off and tucked under her seat, while Sero animatedly waved over a server with one hand and reenacted some wild patrol story with the other, arms windmilling. Something about a cat stuck in a vending machine. Kirishima let out a laugh that felt like muscle memory more than amusement, ruffling Sero’s hair as he slid into the booth beside them.

Todoroki came in a little later, hair windblown and scarf loose around his neck, a chill still clinging to his coat. He barely greeted them before slipping wordlessly into the space beside Sero, snagging the cup in front of him and taking a sip without asking. Sero didn’t flinch. He just bumped his knee against Todoroki’s and kept talking, the edges of his smile softening. There was a rhythm there, something unspoken but steady. Kirishima watched it without meaning to, and he felt it again—that tug in his chest, that hollow weight.

Mina arrived just after, practically skipping in, all pink cheeks and crinkled eyes, her presence a little burst of colour that filled the space around them. She slipped in beside Kirishima and leaned her head on his shoulder before even speaking. He nudged her gently, half a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It was easy with her. She didn’t ask how he was doing. She never did. She just sat there, warm and alive, and it was enough.

The drinks arrived. The food came not long after. Plates clattered and laughter rose and Kaminari burst through the door late, soaked from rain and grinning like an idiot. They made fun of him, passed him napkins, called him a drowned rat and told him to sit down before he ruined the seat cushions. He did, all teeth and wide gestures, pulling Jirou into his story before she could roll her eyes. The world was loud and bright and moving forward.

Kirishima tried to let it wash over him.

He drank his beer slowly, fingers resting against the cold glass, eyes flicking to the door more times than he could count. He told himself it was just habit. But every time the little bell over the entrance chimed, something in his chest caught—hope and dread, cruel companions. He watched the door like someone might walk through it at any moment.

But Bakugou wasn’t coming. Of course he wasn’t coming.

He hadn’t been invited. He was across an ocean, breathing American air and shouting in English. Probably training, or shouting at his sidekicks, or breaking records, or biting into a greasy slice of pizza and insulting the water quality. He was there. And Kirishima was here.

But that didn’t stop his eyes from drifting, again and again, to the chair beside him.

It had been pulled out when he arrived—some automatic gesture from the staff, perhaps, or someone else thinking they'd need the space. No one said anything. Not even Mina. Not even when his gaze lingered on it too long, not even when the silence around it deepened. It was just there, quietly waiting, like it had always been his spot.

There was a photo on the wall behind Sero, tucked between the framed record sleeves and faded autographs—a polaroid of someone who looked a bit like them, years younger, huddled around a cake, laughing, someone’s hand blurry mid-gesture. Kirishima stared at it too long, the laughter too close to his own memories.

He could almost hear Bakugou’s voice, that particular way he’d bark an order for karaage and then immediately snap that the last batch was too dry. He could picture the way Bakugou would sit, legs splayed, one arm slung over the back of the chair, eyes sharp and fond when he thought no one was looking. Kirishima had a whole dictionary of Bakugou looks carved into his memory. He tried to forget them. It didn’t work.

He wanted to be Sero right now. Or Jirou. Or Mina. Or anyone else. He wanted to be someone who could lean into someone else without feeling like something was missing. He wanted to laugh and mean it. He wanted the ache to leave. He wanted to not be him, sitting here with a full table and an emptiness that wouldn’t shift.

Everyone was here. Everyone he loved. Everyone who mattered.

But Bakugou wasn’t. And that mattered more than it should.

He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and blinked slowly. He tried to focus on Kaminari miming some ridiculous accident involving a ceiling fan and a toddler’s glitter bomb. Jirou looked like she was going to throttle him. Todoroki looked like he was suppressing a smile. Mina passed him the last piece of gyoza without asking, bumping her knee against his. It was so full, so real, so loud. But in the midst of it all, Kirishima felt like a ghost. Like he’d shown up to his own life and forgotten how to live in it.

The chair beside him stayed empty. A reminder. A question he kept asking himself, over and over.

Would Bakugou have come if they’d asked?

Would it have mattered?

He didn’t know. He just knew that some part of him—small, desperate, foolish—had hoped he’d show up anyway. A flight back for some surprise reason. A last-minute drop-in. Something. Anything. That he’d walk through the door, scowl etched deep and travel bag slung over his shoulder, and bark something like, “Oi, you idiots better have saved me food.” That he’d drop into the chair and everything would fall back into place.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The place was still here. The chair was still empty. Kirishima was still waiting.

And Bakugou wasn’t coming.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

And Kirishima didn’t know how to stop waiting.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The café was nothing special. Just a quiet little place tucked between a bookshop and a dry cleaner, the kind you pass a dozen times without ever really noticing. Kirishima went there sometimes after patrol, when his limbs were sore and the city felt like too much, when he wanted to be anonymous for a while — just another tired twenty-something with aching feet and a craving for caffeine. He never expected it to undo him.

The bell above the door rang softly as he stepped inside, the warmth of the shop curling around his shoulders like a borrowed blanket. It was raining outside — that light, steady sort of drizzle that painted Tokyo in greys and puddled the pavements. Kirishima’s hood was damp, droplets clinging to the ends of his fringe, seeping cold down the back of his neck. He barely noticed. His mind was elsewhere — it usually was these days.

He was halfway to the counter when the smell hit him.

Warm caramel. A trace of cinnamon. Something smoky, like fire just before it crackled. There was an edge to it, sharp and heady, undercut with spice — the kind of scent that clung to fabric and made your heart stutter if it brushed past you on the street. Kirishima knew it intimately. His body knew it before his mind caught up. His lungs seized. His legs stopped moving. It was him.

The barista turned slightly, just enough for Kirishima to catch a glimpse — short hair under a black cap, dark apron dusted with flour. He was laughing at something the other staff member said, tilting his head back, relaxed. The sound didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The scent wrapped around Kirishima like a noose, pulling tight around the soft, fragile parts of him he’d buried for months now, suffocating the breath in his throat.

It was Bakugou’s cologne.

Not a knock-off or something similar. It was the exact one — the one Kirishima had bought for him on a whim, way back in second year, grinning like an idiot as he handed it over in a mess of wrapping paper and tape. “It smells like explosions,” he’d joked, cheeks red. Bakugou had scoffed, muttered something under his breath about it being too sweet, but he wore it every day after that. Every patrol. Every mission. Every night they’d shared on that shitty little dorm balcony, passing energy drinks back and forth, feet kicked up on the rail, laughing softly like they weren’t carrying the weight of the world on their backs.

That scent had lived in Kirishima’s clothes for months after Bakugou left. He’d found it on his pillow, on his training gear, in the soft hoodie Bakugou had once borrowed and never returned. He’d stopped wearing it when the smell faded. Couldn’t bring himself to put it on. Couldn’t bring himself to admit how much it meant.

And now it was here.

The grief hit him so fast it felt like a physical blow. His stomach dropped, a cold twist of nausea tightening beneath his ribs. His hands trembled where they hung at his sides, useless. His vision blurred. Something inside him shrieked to move — to turn around, to get out before he made a scene, before he completely fell apart in front of a café full of strangers.

He couldn’t breathe.

It was just a scent. Just a trace of something lingering in the air, a few harmless notes mixed in with espresso and pastries and too-loud music. But to Kirishima, it was everything he’d lost. It was months of aching silences and unanswered texts, of rooms too quiet and beds too cold, of staring at his phone and convincing himself not to call. It was that last glance at the airport gate, the one Bakugou never gave him. It was every moment since then that Kirishima had lied to himself — had said I’m fine, I’m strong, I don’t need him.

He thought he’d been doing better.

But the scent unravelled him.

Kirishima turned sharply on his heel, nearly knocking into someone behind him. He barely muttered an apology, the rain outside suddenly a welcome shock as he stumbled into it, the door slamming shut behind him. The cool air slapped his cheeks, but it couldn’t chase the scent from his lungs. He could still feel it, like it had sunk beneath his skin. His heart was hammering in his chest, and not from embarrassment. Not from panic.

From heartbreak.

He didn’t cry. Not then. Not in the street, not in the rain. His eyes burned, but he swallowed it all down — the lump in his throat, the heat behind his eyes, the scream lodged somewhere between his ribs. He clenched his fists instead, hard enough that his nails bit into his palms. His quirk sparked faintly under his skin, his body begging for some kind of release. But there was nothing to fight. No villain to punch. No fire to run into. Only the slow realisation that the world would never let him forget Bakugou. Not fully. Not really.

Even now, a year later, even across an ocean — he was still everywhere.

In the back of his mind, in the empty side of his bed, in the way Kirishima still double-checked his phone for messages he knew wouldn’t come. And now here, in a stranger’s cologne, worn casually by someone who had no idea what it meant — like it wasn’t the scent of Kirishima’s whole damn world. Like it hadn’t once made him feel safe. Like it hadn’t been the anchor he’d clung to in the dark, back when everything was falling apart and Bakugou was the only constant he had.

Kirishima hated the universe for it. Hated how cruel it was, how thoughtless. How it could give him something so small, so specific, only to tear him open all over again. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

He didn’t go back in. Didn’t get his coffee. Didn’t even look back. He walked until his legs hurt, until the rain soaked through every layer of clothing, until his fingers were numb and the scent had finally faded from the inside of his lungs. But even then, it lingered — soft and cruel in the corners of his memory, a ghost of something he couldn’t seem to exorcise.

Bakugou was gone.

But Kirishima was still here.

And everywhere he turned, he found pieces of the boy he’d loved scattered like glass across the city.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The box arrived on a Thursday.

Kirishima found it at his doorstep, dropped crooked against the frame like it didn’t quite belong there — like it had been left by mistake, or by someone who couldn’t quite commit to pushing it properly inside. The cardboard was dented slightly at the corner, watermarked with the faint trace of morning rain, and the customs sticker was still stuck haphazardly across the top. His name was written neatly in permanent marker, the sharp lines of it familiar in a way that made his stomach twist.

Bakugou had never been neat with his handwriting — but he was consistent. Even his scrawl had a particular shape to it. Kirishima recognised the S in his surname before he saw anything else, that sharp upstroke like the flick of an explosion mid-air. He stood there for too long, holding the box with both hands, not moving, not breathing, not even sure what he wanted it to be. Not sure what he wanted it not to be.

Inside, it was light. Rattling. The kind of weightless that felt eerie, like the absence of something that should’ve been there — a hole made physical. He brought it in anyway, set it on the coffee table with the kind of care usually reserved for fragile things. His flat was quiet. Too quiet. No patrol today, no housemates bustling in and out, no Kaminari knocking with a beer in one hand and a grin in the other. Just him, and the box.

He opened it slowly.

There was no letter. No note. No scribbled post-it stuck half-heartedly to the lid, no quick “Oi, dumbass, thought you’d like these.” Not even a signature.

Just the contents.

A newsletter — glossy and folded — from some big hero PR network in the States. Bakugou on the cover, half turned away from the camera, jaw set and arms folded like he wasn’t even trying to look cool but still did. The angle caught his profile just right, highlighted the hard line of his cheekbone, the familiar arch of his brow. His hero name in bold across the front — DYNAMIGHT TAKES AMERICA BY STORM. Kirishima stared at it for a second, then turned it over.

Inside the box were snacks.

American ones, most of them things Kirishima had mentioned in passing years ago — back when they were still just learning to be heroes, still fumbling through late night training sessions and early morning commutes with half-lidded eyes and sugar highs. There were sour sweets he used to buy on campus, the exact type of jerky he’d shared with Bakugou once during a cold patrol shift and offhandedly said was “kinda good,” even though it wasn’t. A chocolate bar they’d seen in a foreign import shop together, where Bakugou had grunted and said it looked disgusting and Kirishima had bought it anyway just to see his expression.

He’d laughed, that day. Bakugou, really laughed. Called him a freak and rolled his eyes, but took a bite all the same. That memory felt warm at the edges, and somehow unbearably sharp in the centre.

Kirishima sat on the sofa, staring down at the open box. The newsletter lay on his lap, and the sweets were still nestled in bubble wrap like tiny treasures. There was still no note. No message. Not even a text to say it was coming.

And that — that was what undid him.

Not the sweets. Not the cover photo or the imported snacks or the weirdly thoughtful way Bakugou had picked out things that only Kirishima would remember. It was the silence. The blankness of it all. The way it felt like Bakugou had said everything he wanted to without saying a single thing. It was loud, in a way that made Kirishima’s chest ache. Deafening, almost.

Because this — this box — this was Bakugou Katsuki’s version of a letter. This was what he sent instead of a call. This was what he did instead of reaching out.

Kirishima waited. Maybe there was a second layer. Maybe he’d missed something. He dug through the packing, fingers moving faster now, heart a slow thud behind his ribs, heavy and dull like a bruise. Nothing. Just more bubble wrap and the hollow sound of hope being punctured.

His heart beat loudly in his ears. His throat felt tight. Too tight.

The room looked the same as it always had — still clean, still lined with photos, still too full of Bakugou-shaped echoes in the quiet corners. There was a framed snapshot on the bookcase of the two of them in third year, both in hero gear, both grinning like idiots after a particularly messy save. Bakugou’s mouth was half open, mid-yell. Kirishima remembered that moment so vividly — the press of adrenaline in his blood, the surge of pride, the thrill of having him at his side.

Now the photo felt like a ghost.

He sat there for over an hour, unmoving.

The sweets stayed untouched. The newsletter, eventually, slipped from his lap and flopped onto the carpet, the pages spread open to an article about Dynamight’s recent rooftop save in Chicago — a building fire, smoke and debris, Bakugou rising from it all like a star reborn. Kirishima didn’t read it. He already knew how it ended.

He stood.

Walked to the kitchen.

Opened the bin.

It was a small thing, the weight of the package in his hands. But it felt like hefting an entire chapter of his life. It felt like holding onto something that would never be enough.

And then, slowly, deliberately, he dropped the whole box inside.

It landed with a dull thud.

He didn’t cry. Not yet. Not for this. He just stood in the kitchen, chest full of something cold and familiar, something that had lived inside him ever since Bakugou walked through that international gate and didn’t look back. Something that had a name he hadn’t said out loud.

Longing.

Love, maybe.

Something in between.

Kirishima stared down at the closed bin, and whispered into the quiet —

“Why’d you even send it?”

There was no answer, of course.

And maybe that was worse than anything.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The television was still on, even though the flat had long fallen into silence. Kirishima sat stiff on the floor with his back against the edge of the couch, legs outstretched, ankles crossed, fingers laced loosely in his lap as if in prayer. The screen glowed dimly in the evening light, casting fractured shadows across the hardwood floor — an ethereal blue flicker that made the room feel colder than it really was. The heater was humming, there was a blanket at his side, a cup of half-drunk tea going lukewarm on the table beside him, but the cold settled in his bones all the same.

He hadn’t meant to leave the news on. It was background noise, filler to drown out the thick, sluggish quiet that clung to the walls of the flat now. Most nights, he didn’t even notice it, the way he’d trained himself not to flinch when he passed by the framed photos on his bookshelf or the way he no longer paused at the rack of unopened letters from pro-hero agencies — all addressed to Red Riot, all hopeful and bright, none of them from him.

But then the anchor’s voice had shifted, just slightly — perked up like someone had said something funny through the earpiece — and the screen had cut to a clip of a rooftop in Queens, the sky behind it smoky with twilight and the golden blur of traffic far below. And there he was. There was Bakugou Katsuki.

Kirishima didn’t breathe. Couldn’t. The air in his lungs just stopped, folded in on itself. The world slowed, narrowed. His heart stuttered once, then clenched tight like a fist in his chest.

The video was barely ten seconds long. A flyover shot from a local affiliate — grainy and poorly lit, but unmistakable. A crumbling rooftop, a burst of smoke, and then Bakugou emerging from it with soot on his jaw and an easy, ferocious grin stretched across his face. He was laughing — laughing — mouth open, head tossed back, the exact shape of joy painted across his features like it belonged there, like it had always belonged there. His eyes crinkled in that way they used to when Kirishima made a stupid joke and he pretended not to laugh, that sharp bark of noise he only let out when he was truly, undeniably alive.

There was no sound in the video, but Kirishima could hear it. He could hear it like it was stitched into his memory — could hear the pitch of it, the gravelled edge, the abrupt cut-off at the end when Bakugou would scoff and swat at whoever dared to notice he was enjoying himself. Kirishima had heard that laugh in so many places — across the training grounds at UA, muffled through dorm walls in the middle of the night, reverberating in alleyways during fights they barely won. He knew it better than he knew most things.

The video ended. The news rolled on. Another story, another face. Something about a traffic diversion in Osaka.

But Kirishima didn’t move.

The screen was still paused, a faint outline of Bakugou’s grin caught mid-frame. The play button pulsed silently in the corner, waiting to be pressed again.

He stayed there for hours.

There was no reason to. He had a patrol in the morning, his suit still needed repairs from the last scuffle, and his back ached from sitting on the floor like this. But none of it registered. None of it mattered. He stared at that frozen frame until the after-image burned into his vision, until the brightness of the screen dimmed to save power, until even the warm orange light from the hallway lamp began to feel like an intrusion.

Bakugou looked so alive. So happy. Like he belonged there, amongst those American heroes with their loud accents and big cities and everything he’d ever wanted. He looked like he’d found a place to burn bright, like he’d been waiting to bloom and finally had the right soil. Kirishima should’ve been proud. Was proud. He’d always believed Bakugou would go far — he was brilliant, relentless, impossible to ignore. The top of every list. The best of them. The best of him.

And yet, all Kirishima could feel was this aching hollowness spreading through him, blooming slowly in the space just beneath his ribs. Not sharp. Not even painful, really. Just vast. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and knowing you’re the only one still there. The only one who didn’t jump.

It wasn’t jealousy — not really. It was more like grief. The kind that didn’t come all at once, but slow and creeping. The kind that lingered, settled like dust in corners, waiting until you were still enough for it to catch your attention. It was the grief of realising the person you loved had stepped out of the picture, and you were left staring at the place where they used to be.

Bakugou had gone to America. Of course he had. Kirishima had known he would. Everyone had known. They’d talked about it for years — late nights in the dorms, whispered dreams between sparring sessions, Bakugou’s eyes always looking westward like the stars were brighter on that side of the ocean. It wasn’t a betrayal. It wasn’t even a surprise.

But Kirishima had foolishly, stubbornly believed that somehow, some way, they’d still stick. That love — the quiet, undemanding kind he carried in his chest — would be enough to keep them in orbit. That he could love Bakugou quietly, endlessly, and it would be enough to keep him tethered. Or at least enough to keep him close.

But Bakugou had gone.

And he hadn’t looked back.

Kirishima’s eyes burned. Not with tears — not yet — but with the kind of sting that came from trying too hard to see something that wasn’t there. Like if he stared long enough, Bakugou would turn to the camera, look straight at him, and see him. Acknowledge the space left behind. Offer something. A nod. A wave. Anything.

But Bakugou didn’t.

He laughed on that rooftop, eyes shining, hair wild in the New York wind — and he looked like the kind of person who didn’t miss anyone. The kind of person who’d made peace with everything he left behind.

And Kirishima — all red hair and raw heart — watched him from half a world away, a paused screen his only companion, and wished that he hadn’t. Wished he hadn’t made peace. Wished he did look back. Wished he’d been the kind of man to ache at goodbyes, to hesitate at gates, to write a damn letter or send a photo or call even once.

He shifted, slowly, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, the way he used to when the dorms were too quiet and sleep wouldn’t come. His chin rested against his knees. The blanket slid to the floor. The tea had gone cold. The night outside had deepened to full black.

Still, he watched.

Because it was the only piece of Bakugou he had left. And because he was stupid. So, so stupid.

He hadn’t even said goodbye properly.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The laughter was soft, bubbling up between sips of plum soda and the rustle of snack wrappers. The floor was warm beneath Kirishima’s knees, a cheap kotatsu draped with a fuzzy throw they’d dragged out of the closet for nights like this. Mina was lying on her stomach across from him, chin propped on her arms, half-focused on the end credits of some ridiculous romcom they’d barely paid attention to. The air smelt faintly of buttered popcorn and something citrusy from her perfume. Outside, Tokyo glimmered in gold and neon, but inside, things were low-lit and lazy, the way only real comfort ever was.

For a moment, just a moment, it almost felt like nothing had changed.

Kirishima took a sip of his drink, the carbonation buzzing against the roof of his mouth, and listened to Mina hum along to a song neither of them knew. Her voice was sweet, soft, too small for the space between them, and it made something inside him ache. He shifted, resting his weight on one elbow, glancing over at the photo frame tucked against the corner of the television.

He didn’t even realise he was staring until Mina stopped humming.

“You love that one,” she said, tone easy, like she wasn’t holding something heavier beneath it.

He didn’t answer. His gaze stayed fixed. The photo was from their second year at U.A., cheeks squished together after a joint patrol — Bakugou, messy-haired and flushed, tugging Kirishima into frame by the collar of his hero suit, grinning like a threat, and Kirishima beaming, all teeth and warmth. It was the sort of picture they’d never planned, the kind that just… happened. And now it sat in a cheap black frame like it was something sacred.

Mina reached for it, fingers brushing the edge before she picked it up with the gentleness of someone holding a living memory. She looked at it for a long time, her face unreadable in the low light. Then, with the same softness, she turned to him.

“You know… you don’t have to wait for him to come back just to keep going.”

The words didn’t sting. Not exactly. They didn’t catch like barbs in his chest or make him flinch. No — they landed like something truer. Something unbearable. Something he already knew.

He swallowed, throat tight.

It wasn’t the first time someone had said something like that. Not in so many words, maybe, but the sentiment had been there, in glances, in silences. In the way Kaminari would glance at his phone when Bakugou’s name never came up. In the way Sero would pause when Kirishima laughed too loud at something that wasn’t funny. In the way Mina hugged him longer than usual when she left his flat, lingering like she didn’t quite trust the quiet to hold him.

But hearing it now, said out loud — kindly, not accusing — felt like pressing on a bruise and realising it was worse than you’d thought.

Kirishima looked down at his lap. He fiddled with the label of his drink bottle, nails scraping softly against the condensation.

“If I move on,” he began, voice low, careful like he was afraid of what might break if he said it wrong. “If I move on, then it means he really left.”

He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. It felt too raw, too vulnerable, the kind of confession you whispered to the dark when no one was listening. Saying it now — out loud, to her — felt like splitting open.

“Like it wasn’t just a break or — or a bad patch or a long-distance thing we never talked about. It means he chose to leave. It means he’s not coming back. Not the way I wanted.”

Mina didn’t say anything. She just exhaled — a soft, understanding sound — and bumped her shoulder against his. It wasn’t playful. It was deliberate, anchoring. And when she moved closer to pull him into a hug, her arms around his back, he didn’t resist.

He let her.

Let himself fall into the contact. Let himself need it.

His eyes burned, but he didn’t cry.

He didn’t cry.

He just stared at the photo, at Bakugou’s wide grin and the way their cheeks pressed together, like they fit. Like it had been inevitable.

And maybe that was the worst part of all of this — the fact that nothing bad had happened. No screaming argument. No betrayal. No final fight with words thrown like grenades. Just — a plane ticket. A dream too big to hold both of them. A goodbye that was too quiet. A boy who loved too deeply and another who didn’t know how to stay without breaking himself in half.

It would’ve been easier if Bakugou had been cruel. If he’d told him to stop waiting. If he’d made it ugly.

But he hadn’t. He’d just gone. And Kirishima had been left here, heart still full, still burning, still trying to convince itself that the waiting was a kind of hope and not a wound.

Mina’s hand rubbed slow circles between his shoulder blades. Comforting. Present.

And still, he felt hollow.

Not numb — numb would’ve been mercy.

This was something else. A rawness that pulsed beneath every moment of calm. A sharpness behind the laughter. A silence between heartbeats that felt like a held breath that never exhaled.

He wished — God, he wished — that he didn’t still feel everything.

He wished that it didn’t still hurt every time he opened the group chat and saw Bakugou’s name with no message attached to it. He wished he didn’t still have nightmares where Bakugou called and he missed it, woke up too late, found the message deleted. He wished he could delete the way Bakugou said his name from memory — the way it always sounded like he was scolding him and caring about him in the same breath.

“I’m trying,” he whispered, mostly to himself.

Mina didn’t say anything, didn’t push. Just held him tighter.

The film had ended long ago. The TV played previews on mute, casting a flickering glow over the room. The snacks sat half-eaten between them. The drinks were flat. The moment should’ve passed.

But he stayed there, still as stone, locked in a photo frame, frozen in a love that never had a chance to end because it never got to begin the way he wanted.

And he knew — deep down, where the worst truths always lived — that moving on wasn’t the same as letting go.

But letting go meant admitting he’d been left behind.

And tonight, he just wasn’t ready to do that.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The guy had kind eyes. That was the worst part.

Kirishima sat across from him in the quiet glow of a late evening cafe, one of those tucked-away spots that tried too hard to feel intimate — low amber lights, mismatched wood panelling, old jazz playing from a speaker that occasionally crackled like it had something more to say. The table between them was small, round, cluttered with chipped ceramic and empty sugar packets, the remnants of shared dessert and cautious laughter. The air smelled like espresso and baked almonds. Someone in the back was steaming milk too aggressively. A breeze from the cracked front door carried it all through in faint waves, warm and cold, sweet and sharp. It reminded him of winter mornings in the dorms — Bakugou in his hoodie, hair still messy, yelling about the coffee machine being “a piece of shit.”

Kirishima blinked. The guy was talking again.

He nodded politely, trying to listen, or at least look like he was. His smile was easy, practiced. He leaned forward at the right moments, laughed when he should have, offered anecdotes just deep enough to seem vulnerable without opening anything that still bled. And still, the smile never reached his chest. It hovered just behind his teeth, delicate and distant, like it might fracture if he moved too quickly.

The guy was blonde — not platinum like Kaminari, not icy like Todoroki's streak, but a warm, golden tone. Softer than Bakugou’s, looser too, like he didn't have to fight it into shape every morning. He wore a faded denim jacket over a navy jumper and had a small tattoo just beneath the wrist of his right hand — Kirishima had asked about it earlier, and the guy told him it was a quote from his grandfather. Something poetic. Something meaningful. Kirishima had smiled then too.

He couldn’t remember what the quote was now. Only that it wasn’t something Bakugou would’ve said.

He shouldn’t have come. He knew that even before he got there, standing in front of his mirror adjusting his collar with trembling fingers, staring at his own tired eyes and wondering what the hell he was looking for. But he came anyway. Because Mina said it’d be good for him. Because Kaminari had gently teased him until he agreed. Because part of him wanted to believe he could want someone else.

He didn't. He didn't want anyone else.

The date was nice. Fine. The guy was lovely — funny in a thoughtful way, the kind who asked follow-up questions and actually listened to the answers. His smile was genuine. He stirred his tea with one hand and held his chin in the other when Kirishima spoke. He laughed like he meant it. He looked at Kirishima like he saw something he liked. But it was all wrong.

The eyes weren’t right. They were kind, yes, but not sharp. Not blazing. Not the kind that cut through you and saw too much and still stayed. His laugh didn’t come with the edge of defiance. His posture was relaxed in a way Bakugou never was — Bakugou sat like someone might attack him at any moment, like he had to be ready to bite. He always sat with purpose. Always tense, even when he was calm.

The man across from him — Hiroki, his name was Hiroki — reached out and brushed his hand against Kirishima’s knuckles. A question in his eyes.

Kirishima didn’t pull away. He didn’t lean in either.

Instead, he looked at their hands, then back at Hiroki, and something inside him sank. Not with drama. Not with shattering. Just a slow descent, like a body slipping beneath water, carried by weight he couldn’t name aloud. He wanted to want this. Desperately. Wanted to say yes to someone who was here, someone real, someone trying.

But all he could think about was how it felt when Bakugou used to bump his shoulder just hard enough to make him stumble and how that tiny moment of contact had meant more than anything else. He remembered the quiet huffs of laughter Bakugou gave him when Kirishima said something stupid. The heat of Bakugou’s gaze during sparring matches, wordless, unwavering. The brutal honesty of him. The way Bakugou had always looked at him like he was something worth believing in.

Kirishima had never stopped waiting for that look to come back.

He pulled his hand back gently.

"I'm sorry," he said, voice low, almost apologetic. "You're great, really. I just — I don’t think I’m where I need to be right now."

Hiroki’s smile dimmed, just slightly, the flicker of disappointment behind it so quickly hidden Kirishima might’ve missed it if he weren’t always looking for things people didn’t say.

"That's okay," Hiroki replied after a moment. “I kinda figured.”

Kirishima’s heart clenched. “I really am sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Hiroki’s voice was kind. “It’s okay to still be figuring it out.”

Kirishima nodded, throat tight. He stood, paid before Hiroki could offer, left a generous tip. They hugged in the street — a quick, slightly awkward thing that still held something real in it — and then Hiroki turned and walked away, disappearing into the late city dark, swallowed by the golden streetlights and the breath of distant traffic.

Kirishima stood there for a while after.

The wind had picked up. A light drizzle began to fall, soft and hesitant, like the sky wasn’t sure if it wanted to commit to rain. Kirishima shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking in no particular direction. The night wrapped around him, familiar in its loneliness.

He had tried. He had really tried. And maybe that counted for something.

But as the rain soaked through his sleeves and the city blurred around him, he knew the truth — the deep, sharp, aching truth he’d been dragging behind him for months —

He had been looking for Bakugou in every blonde head, every voice with a rough edge, every scent that sparked a memory. And the worst part? None of them were even close.

Not even a little.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The wind was sharp on the rooftop, but Kirishima didn’t notice it anymore. The sting of it had numbed to a background hum against his skin, a familiar companion to the ache in his chest. He was sat with his knees pulled up loosely, arms draped over them, his gaze cast out across the Tokyo skyline where the lights blinked like stars pretending to be real. It was high enough up that the world below blurred — cars, people, everything that kept moving — and the hum of traffic was reduced to a distant murmur. He liked that. It made it easier to pretend he was somewhere else.

The rooftop was the one spot no one ever came to unless they really needed air. Not just oxygen — but air. Space. Distance. Silence. The kind that wrapped around your bones and stayed. The kind that didn’t ask anything of you.

His uniform unzipped. He hadn’t bothered to take it off after patrol, and the fabric was damp with the sweat and cold of a late evening shift. He hadn’t gone home. Didn’t want to. Not yet. His phone buzzed once in his pocket — a message from Mina, probably, or maybe Sero trying to get him to go out. He didn’t check. He wasn’t in the mood for soft pity or louder distraction. All of it felt like filler. Like white noise pressed into the shape of a person’s concern.

The door creaked open behind him, slow and unhurried, but Kirishima didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. The wind curled around his ankles as he waited for whoever it was to say something, to break the silence with words he didn’t want. He already knew who it was. The footsteps were light, familiar — a quiet weight, hesitant and known.

Kaminari didn’t say anything at first. Just walked to his side and sat, knees up in the same way, copying Kirishima’s posture like he had back at school during long summer nights on the dorm balcony. He let out a slow breath, the kind that fogged in front of him like smoke. They both stared out across the city.

“Didn’t think anyone’d be up here,” Kaminari said after a while, voice soft and sanded down at the edges.

Kirishima let the silence stretch. He didn’t feel like filling it. Didn’t feel like making anything easier.

Kaminari didn’t seem to mind. He just sat there, elbow brushing Kirishima’s when the wind pushed too hard. They sat like that for minutes, or maybe hours. Time blurred on rooftops like this.

Then Kaminari spoke again. He didn’t look at him when he did. “Y’know,” he said, voice low, “I think you’ve been waiting to stop loving him so you can start living again.”

Kirishima didn’t answer. The words sank like stones. They hurt. They landed in that raw, hollow space beneath his ribs where everything had gone quiet and sore.

He swallowed. It felt thick and dry.

“I’m not,” he started, but the words caught. His throat closed up on him.

Kaminari turned his head just slightly, not enough to push, just enough to be there. His expression was unreadable in the half-dark, but his presence — steady, grounded — spoke louder than anything.

“I don’t know how to stop,” Kirishima said finally. The wind stole some of the sound, but he knew Kaminari heard. “It’s not like a switch. It’s not like,” He stopped. Rubbed the heel of his palm against his eye. “He left, and I just — stayed. Like an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

Kirishima gave a soft, bitter laugh. “Felt like one. Still do.”

The city twinkled beneath them. Distant and beautiful. Life went on.

“I told myself I could handle it. That I was happy for him. That this was always gonna happen. He was always gonna be the one to go farther, do more, chase bigger.” His fingers clenched around his own arm. “I thought I could stay back and hold the line. Be proud. Be supportive. Be enough, just like that.”

“You were enough,” Kaminari said quietly.

Kirishima shook his head. “Then why didn’t he stay?”

Kaminari didn’t answer. What could he say? They both knew the truth — Bakugou never meant to hurt him. That didn’t make it hurt less.

“I miss him every day,” Kirishima whispered. “And I hate that I do. I hate that he’s probably out there not even thinking about me while I’m here…” He trailed off, fists clenched now, knuckles white. “I still keep his drink in my fridge. I still think I see him in crowds. I still wait for his texts like some lovesick kid, and they never come. And even when they do, it’s not the same. It’s not him. Not really.”

Kaminari didn’t look away from the skyline. “He loved you too, y’know.”

Kirishima’s breath caught. His jaw tensed. He wanted to believe that. He wanted it with every aching inch of him. But he didn’t answer. Because love like that didn’t leave and never write. Love like that didn’t disappear and take your chest with it.

“I’m scared,” he admitted, voice shaking now, breath visible in the cold. “I’m scared that if I let go, it means he never mattered as much as I thought. That all of this—how I feel, how I felt—was just me. Just me standing still while he flew.”

He heard Kaminari exhale softly, a warm thread in the cold air.

“You let yourself love him,” Kaminari said. “That’s not standing still. That’s being brave, man. And yeah, maybe he left, maybe it wasn’t fair. But you stayed. You loved him anyway. Even when it hurt. That’s not weakness. That’s strength.”

Kirishima blinked. Hard.

“And maybe,” Kaminari added, softer this time, “you don’t have to stop loving him to start living again. Maybe you just have to stop waiting.”

The words settled between them like ash. Gentle. Heavy.

Kirishima let out a long breath, air shaky in his lungs. His chest ached in that slow, dull way it always did when Bakugou was mentioned — not like a wound, not anymore. Not sharp. But like scar tissue that hadn’t quite settled. A tightness he’d learned to live with.

He leaned his head back, eyes to the sky. The stars were blurred, hidden behind the city light, but they were there. Distant. Constant.

He didn’t say thank you. Didn’t need to.

Kaminari didn’t move. Didn’t press. Just sat beside him, silent and steady, as if to say I’m here. I always have been.

And for the first time in over a year, Kirishima let the silence comfort him instead of choke.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

Sero’s flat was warm in the way that homes sometimes were — not by design, but because of the people in them. The lights were soft and yellowed, strung carelessly across the ceiling like they’d been put up on a whim and never taken down, curling slightly in the corners. The place smelled like fresh laundry and something sweet baking, though Kirishima doubted Sero had baked anything in his life. He could hear Jirou’s laugh spilling from the hallway, Kaminari’s dramatic groan of protest, the muted thud of a throw pillow hitting someone square in the face. It all felt — good. Not perfect — not whole — but warm enough to trick him, just for a little while.

Kirishima’s back ached as he sat cross-legged on a pile of mismatched cushions, the kind Sero insisted were vibe-necessary, even though half of them were likely stolen from someone else's couch. The screen flickered against the wall, casting golden light across the room, and popcorn rained down from somewhere behind him as Kaminari tried to reenact a particularly dramatic moment from Love Is Blind, quoting the dubbed translation with a weird accent that made no sense. Someone booed him. Someone else threw a sock.

Mina was beside him, elbow-deep in a blanket the colour of crushed strawberries, her foot nudging his ankle every so often like a reminder that she was still there, still with him. She hadn’t said anything when he arrived, hadn’t pointed out the shadows under his eyes or the way his laugh still sounded like a performance — but she’d hugged him a beat too long, and in that moment it had spoken volumes.

Sero and Todoroki were wrapped in some blanket monstrosity they’d clearly claimed from the bedroom, the two of them crammed into a corner of the couch that looked far too small for two grown men, legs tangled without care. They were whispering something, Todoroki’s mouth pressed against Sero’s ear, and for once, Shouto looked younger. Soft. Like he’d stopped pretending to carry the weight of every unsaved person on his back.

Kirishima smiled without thinking.

Not the kind of smile he wore at work, the one polished and bright like hero-grade armour. No — this was something else. Smaller. Less forced. It bloomed somewhere in his ribs and stayed there, quiet and steady. He let himself lean back, shoulders sinking into the cushions, the weight of the room around him anchoring him down. No one was asking anything of him here. He didn’t have to be anything other than what he was — tired, healing, and just barely remembering how to breathe without it hurting.

It was strange, the way it hit him. The realisation didn’t come like a slap — no dramatic sting, no aching rush — just a slow, curling thought that stretched itself out and made a home in his chest — he hadn’t thought about Bakugou all night.

Not until now. Not until the absence hit him in a different way — not like a missing limb, but like a memory that no longer held teeth.

Everyone was here.

And for the first time, he wasn’t waiting for Bakugou to walk through the door. He wasn’t picturing how Bakugou would’ve complained about the blanket mountain, or how he’d shout at Kaminari for being loud, or how he’d fall asleep with his arms crossed and his head tilted to the side and his mouth parted just enough to snore. Kirishima wasn’t watching the door. He wasn’t counting the heads and waiting for a voice he knew better than his own. He wasn’t holding his breath in case the laugh he heard in the background belonged to him.

He was here. Really here.

Wrapped in the warmth of people who stayed, who saw him even when he didn’t want to be seen. Jirou was arguing over who got the last of the cider, and Sero was threatening to tackle her for it. Todoroki had stolen a biscuit from Kaminari’s stash and didn’t even deny it. Mina was leaning over now, tucking her cold fingers beneath his hoodie sleeve and making a face like she was dying of frostbite. He snorted. For once, the sound didn’t feel like it came from somewhere hollow.

This was his life now. Not the one he thought he’d have, not the one built around Bakugou’s orbit — but one he’d fought to find in the aftermath. Something softer. Something that let him laugh without guilt.

The air smelled like warm vanilla and something citrusy from whatever diffuser Sero had decided to use. The world felt small and safe in the best way. And when someone threw another pillow, hitting him square in the side of the head, Kirishima laughed — a real laugh, full-bodied and bright and honest.

He was allowed to feel okay.

Maybe just for tonight.

Maybe that was enough.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

It was a slow day, humid in that cloying late-spring way Tokyo liked to be — the kind of sticky warmth that settled on your skin like regret. Kirishima was halfway through a debriefing at the agency, sunlight pooling across the tiled floor in fractured rectangles, when the door opened behind him and someone stepped in with the sound of heavy boots and a rustle of wind. The voice that followed — low, rough, achingly familiar — didn’t so much interrupt as rupture.

“I can’t believe you lot run Tokyo now,”

He didn’t have to turn around. He knew.

His whole body knew.

There was a beat of stunned silence, as if the room itself stopped breathing. Kirishima’s pen hovered uselessly above the clipboard in his lap, the rest of the conversation fading into white noise. His fingers tingled, the back of his neck prickled, and for a moment — just one suspended second — he thought he might be sick. Not from fear. Not quite. But from the way everything inside him clenched and buckled and surged all at once, like a dam bursting without warning.

Bakugou Katsuki was standing in the doorway.

And he looked the same.

His hair was still a sun-bleached explosion, still defying gravity with violent stubbornness. His scowl still fit his face like it had been carved there. But he stood differently — heavier somehow, like the weight of the world had finally landed on his shoulders and he’d borne it for so long he’d stopped noticing. His frame was broader, movements sharper, posture taut with something Kirishima couldn’t quite name. He looked every inch the Pro Hero people whispered about on rooftops and idolised in photo spreads — but he was still Bakugou. Still the same set of eyes Kirishima had memorised over years of patrols and movie nights and lingering glances across shared meals. Still the same rasp to his voice, like crushed gravel soaked in sunlight.

And Kirishima — god, Kirishima — he froze.

He wanted to stand. To smile. To run up and punch him in the shoulder and say something stupid, something Bakugou would scoff at before maybe, maybe smiling, if only barely. He wanted to say welcome home, or you look good, or I missed you more than I can live with. But his legs wouldn’t move, and his tongue was a stranger in his own mouth. All he could do was stare — wide-eyed, paralysed — as if he were seventeen again and Bakugou had just saved his life without looking back.

“Have you gone deaf, Eijirou?”

His name — his actual name — shouldn’t have hit so hard. It echoed in his chest like an aftershock.

He blinked, and when he finally managed to stand, it was slow, mechanical. Something inside him braced, like facing an old wound that never healed right.

Bakugou was looking at him now. Not just looking — watching. That sharp-eyed, cut-to-the-bone kind of watching Bakugou did when he was assessing a threat or trying to read a mission room before it went to hell. Except now, his gaze was resting soft and quiet and almost — no. Kirishima must’ve imagined that.

“Katsuki,” he said, and his voice didn’t crack, though it felt like it should’ve. “Didn’t know you were back.”

Bakugou shrugged, eyes flicking over him like he was trying to measure something invisible. “Didn’t feel like making a scene.”

“Guess you still did,” Kirishima managed, forcing a small grin.

The smile didn’t touch his eyes.

He didn’t think anything could, just then.

The rest of the team had resumed talking, distracted and curious in equal measure, but Kirishima only saw Bakugou. Saw the way the faintest tension settled around his mouth when Kirishima didn’t step closer. Saw how his hands — calloused and restless — flexed against the strap of his gear bag. Saw how he lingered, even when the briefing moved on, even when Kirishima gave nothing away.

There was a pause long enough to say everything, and Kirishima filled it with silence.

He didn’t hug him.

Didn’t ask why he was here.

Didn’t ask how long he was staying.

Didn’t ask if he’d missed him too.

He just nodded, kept his distance. Cordial. Professional. Safe. Like they were old classmates and not — not whatever they used to be. Not two halves of a rhythm now off-beat, now cracked. Not the boy who stayed and the boy who left.

Bakugou didn’t push. Of course he didn’t. He never pushed when it came to this — to them. Maybe that was the problem.

But his eyes lingered. God, they lingered.

And Kirishima wanted to scream.

Because this was what he’d dreamt of — prayed for — all those nights Bakugou stopped replying, all those mornings he woke to a screen that stayed dark, to a silence that grew colder with every week. He’d imagined this reunion a thousand times. Laughed at himself for it. Cried, sometimes, into his pillow when it all became too much. He’d wanted Bakugou back more than anything.

And now that he was here — in the flesh, so real it hurt — Kirishima was terrified.

Because it wasn’t a dream. And it wasn’t like before.

It was worse.

He’d survived the leaving. Barely.

But this? This might kill him.

He didn’t know what scared him more — the way Bakugou looked at him like nothing had changed — or the terrifying, shattering truth that everything had.

That Kirishima had rebuilt himself brick by agonising brick while Bakugou was gone, and now, suddenly, he was back. Standing here like the months hadn’t swallowed them whole. Like it was all fine. Like Kirishima wasn’t still quietly breaking every time he smelled caramel or saw that shade of red. Like Kirishima hadn’t loved him so deeply and so silently it became part of his bloodstream.

Bakugou said nothing more. Just gave him that unreadable once-over — all fire and confusion and something rawer beneath it, something unspoken. Then he turned to the rest of the room like it didn’t matter that Kirishima hadn’t met his gaze again.

But Kirishima felt it, the weight of that look.

Like he was a page Bakugou didn’t remember writing but couldn’t stop reading.

And god, he wished he could run.

Because love — real love — wasn’t meant to feel like this.

Like drowning in a memory that still looked back at you.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The restaurant hadn’t changed. Same worn wooden floors beneath their boots, same low-hanging lights that pooled warmth in amber circles across the tables, same quiet murmur of clinking cutlery and old jazz filtering through the speakers overhead. It smelled of soy and sake and sizzling garlic. The booth creaked under them in the same way it always had, a familiar groan like it, too, remembered.

But Kirishima didn’t feel at home in it anymore.

Not with Bakugou beside him.

He sat rigidly at the edge of the seat, hands clasped together so tightly beneath the table that his knuckles ached. The noise around him felt distant — Kaminari’s exuberant laughter, Mina’s teasing jabs, the clatter of Sero’s chopsticks hitting the soy dish as he animatedly retold some ludicrous patrol incident. Even Todoroki cracked a smile, one of those small, rare ones that tugged faintly at the corner of his mouth and made Jirou glance at him with an affection she’d never voice aloud. It should’ve felt warm. It should’ve felt like family.

But Kirishima’s chest was full of frost.

Because Bakugou was back. And he was sitting right there. So close their knees nearly touched beneath the table, close enough that Kirishima could feel the heat radiating off him in sharp waves — that ever-burning furnace he’d memorised in countless late-night training sessions, in quiet walks back to the dorms, in the sleepy pull of his shoulder against Kirishima’s during those rare peaceful train rides home. That heat had always comforted him. Anchored him.

Now it scalded.

Bakugou hadn't said much. Not beyond the blunt greetings, the one-shouldered shrug, the almost-smile he’d offered Kaminari when he showed up with a six-pack and an aggressive hug. He hadn't made a scene, hadn’t walked in with his usual explosive bark or launched into a tirade about how the food in Japan was better than the overpriced shit in Brooklyn. No — he’d just taken the seat beside Kirishima like he belonged there. Like no time had passed. Like his absence hadn’t gutted the room he used to fill.

Kirishima hadn't looked at him once.

He couldn't.

Not with the weight of all those months between them pressing down on his spine. Not with the sound of Bakugou’s laugh — that same sharp, bright, too-brief bark that had echoed through the television screen from a rooftop thousands of miles away — still rattling through his head. Not with the memory of unopened packages, unsent messages, unanswered ache sitting like lead in his stomach. His gaze stayed fixed on the middle of the table, on the sweating condensation running down his untouched glass of water, on the fraying paper edge of the menu that Sero had scribbled a moustache on last year.

Bakugou didn’t say anything.

But Kirishima could feel it — that gaze, burning into the side of his face, unwavering and sharp. Like a blade honed to edge. Bakugou was watching him. Through half the meal, through the clinking of glasses and the passing of dishes, through Kaminari’s enthusiastic toast — “to reunions and restarts and heroes who can’t stay out of each other’s orbit” — that gaze never moved.

Kirishima wanted to scream.

He wanted to turn, to meet those crimson eyes and ask why — why hadn’t you called, why did you disappear, why did you come back looking the same and feeling like a stranger — but his body wouldn’t obey him. His hands remained locked. His jaw clenched. He nodded at the right times, smiled when Mina caught his eye, even made a joke about Jirou stealing all the gyoza — but it was muscle memory, autopilot, a performance in his own skin.

And Bakugou just watched.

Like he was trying to see through him. Like he could sense everything that twisted in the silence Kirishima wouldn’t speak into.

Their arms brushed once when someone shifted the soy sauce bottle. Kirishima flinched.

Not visibly, not enough for anyone else to notice — but Bakugou did.

Of course he did.

There was a twitch in his jaw, a moment where his fingers tightened subtly on his chopsticks, where he shifted minutely away but didn’t leave. Didn’t speak. Didn’t ask. Kirishima hated how much he noticed. Hated that even now, after everything, Bakugou could still read him like a book he hadn’t picked up in a year but never really stopped thinking about.

And still — still — Kirishima couldn’t look at him.

Not with the way his heart was threatening to collapse in on itself. Not with the way the pain curled in his ribs like an old friend returning to roost. Not with the voice in his head screaming that if he looked, if he really looked, it might all come undone — the fragile peace he’d carved out for himself in Bakugou’s absence, the tenuous strength he’d layered over every day, every patrol, every stupid smile.

So he kept his eyes on his glass. Kept the smile in place. Let the heat of Bakugou’s stare sear a hole through the side of his head.

When the bill came, Kaminari paid, waving away protests with a grin and a flick of his credit card. “You’re all my beautiful children,” he announced, draping himself dramatically across Mina’s shoulder, “and Papa Kaminari is loaded thanks to those merchandising royalties.”

Mina kicked him under the table. Sero raised a toast with the last of his drink. The others laughed.

Kirishima forced a chuckle.

Beside him, Bakugou hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Just sat there, that damn gaze still trained on him like Kirishima was the only thing in the room.

He could feel the words pressing up behind it. Could feel them building like thunder behind a too-still sky.

But they didn’t come.

The laughter rose around them again. Glasses clinked, chairs scraped. Someone was calling for an afterparty, someone else was already checking the train schedule. The night carried on.

And Kirishima still hadn’t looked at him.

It was easier this way, wasn’t it?

If he didn’t look, maybe he wouldn’t fall apart.

If he didn’t look, maybe Bakugou wouldn’t see the cracks still spiderwebbing across his chest from the day he walked through that gate and didn’t look back.

If he didn’t look, maybe he could pretend — just a little longer — that he’d moved on.

But even as he stood, thanked Kaminari, and made some excuse about early patrol, even as he ducked out into the crisp night air and breathed in deeply like he’d been drowning — he knew it was a lie.

He could feel Bakugou’s stare still pinned to his back.

Like it had never left. Like it never would.

And maybe that was the worst part of all.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

Bakugou stops him just outside the restaurant, beneath a rusted old street lamp flickering like it can’t quite decide whether to live or die. The night is heavy and damp, Tokyo's humidity sinking into the seams of Kirishima’s jacket. He hadn’t brought an umbrella. Hadn’t thought to check the weather. Of course Bakugou would find him now — now, when the ache in his chest had settled into something quiet and jagged and almost manageable.

“Eijirou.”

The name lands sharp in the silence, edged with something raw, and Kirishima turns only halfway, the door still half-open behind him, warm yellow light spilling out onto the pavement like it might somehow save him. Bakugou stands firm. No fire in his shoulders, no sharpness in his voice — only confusion, tight and coiled behind his eyes like a fuse waiting for a match.

“What the hell’s going on with you?” he asks. It isn’t cruel. It isn’t soft either. It’s the kind of honest Bakugou has always been, but it scrapes across Kirishima’s ribs like it’s got claws.

Kirishima swallows, jaw clenching, the weight of the months heavy in the hinge of it. “Nothing,” he lies.

Bakugou’s eyes narrow. “Don’t give me that. You wouldn’t even look at me all night.”

“Yeah, well.” Kirishima huffs a breath that wants to be a laugh and isn’t. “You left.”

The words fall like a stone between them. Bakugou’s mouth opens, but no sound follows. The silence feels longer than it is. It tastes like copper and regret.

Kirishima turns to face him fully now, the weight of it all pulling him forward like gravity’s stronger around Bakugou, like the earth itself wants him to confess. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t need to. The emotion spills out anyway — slow and thick like molasses, like blood from a wound too deep to stitch.

“You left,” he says again, quieter this time, voice cracking. “And then you just… stopped. No calls. No messages. Not even a stupid meme in the group chat just for me.” His laugh is hollow, twisted around the ache lodged in his throat. “You were gone, Bakugou. Like I never mattered. Like we— like this— didn’t matter.”

Bakugou shifts on his feet, expression unreadable. “I sent stuff.”

“Snacks,” Kirishima bites, heat flashing in his gut. “You sent me snacks. Not even a note. I didn’t need jerky, man — I needed you.”

The confession comes out too loud, too sudden. A couple walks past, glancing curiously, and Kirishima flinches like he’s been caught bleeding.

“I needed you,” he says again, softer now, his voice barely more than a breath. “I needed to know I wasn’t the only one hurting.”

Bakugou doesn’t speak for a long time. He looks at the ground, then at Kirishima, then back again. His hands curl into fists at his sides, not angry — contained. Controlled in the way he only is when it matters.

“I couldn’t,” he says finally, and the words sound like they’ve been dragged from the pit of him, like they didn’t want to leave. “If I kept talking to you, I wouldn’t’ve made it. I would’ve been on the next plane back.”

Kirishima’s breath catches.

“I had to go,” Bakugou says, voice rough around the edges. “I had to see if I could be more. If I was strong enough to stand on my own. But I couldn’t do that while still talking to you every day. I would’ve— I wanted to.” He looks up then, and the grief in his eyes is so fierce Kirishima has to look away. “But if I’d let myself, I wouldn’t have left. And I needed to leave.”

The silence that follows is immense. Kirishima feels it settle over his shoulders like a wet blanket. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to fold into the space between them and forget the last year ever happened.

“You left anyway,” he whispers.

“I know.”

Kirishima closes his eyes. His pulse is thudding in his ears and there’s a lump in his throat the size of a fist. He feels like he’s standing at the edge of something — a cliff or a fire or maybe the moment his heart finally gives out.

“I thought we’d always be a team,” he says, because it’s the truest thing he knows. “Even if it wasn’t like that. Even if it was just friends. I thought— I thought we’d always be us. But you left and it felt like I didn’t even exist anymore.”

Bakugou doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. The light above them flickers again. Rain begins to fall — slow at first, then steadier. Kirishima doesn’t feel it. He’s too tired. Too raw.

“I just needed to know you missed me too,” he says, voice trembling. “Even just a little.”

When Bakugou finally responds, his voice is so soft it’s almost nothing. “I missed you so much it fucking hurt.”

Bakugou doesn’t say anything else after that — just stands there, rain beginning to slick his hair to his forehead, eyes locked on Kirishima like he’s still trying to memorize the shape of the damage. The kind of silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s full — of everything unspoken, of words they weren’t ready to say a year ago, maybe still aren’t now.

Kirishima breathes in like it might steady him. It doesn’t. His pulse is still a jackhammer in his ears, but his hands have stopped shaking.

Bakugou shifts first. Takes a small, uncertain step forward, then another. Doesn’t close the distance, not fully — but enough. Enough to be heard without raising his voice. “You wanna go somewhere?” he asks, and it’s so casual it might be nothing if not for the way his voice hitches halfway through. “I mean. Not like — not to talk more. Just. I dunno. Somewhere that isn’t,” He gestures vaguely at the restaurant, the street, the rain. Everything.

Kirishima doesn’t answer right away. Just stares at him for a long beat, then finally, finally nods.

They don’t talk on the way. Bakugou doesn’t offer an umbrella, and Kirishima doesn’t ask for one. Their shoulders bump once on the train and neither of them pulls away.

When they step out into the faded glow of the shopping district, Kirishima’s breath catches in his throat. The sign is still there — half-lit, flickering, the same obnoxious bubble letters that marked so many afternoons in high school. A beacon of crappy prizes and even crappier sound design.

“You remembered this place?” he asks.

Bakugou shrugs, like it means nothing. “You always liked it.”

And Kirishima does. Or did. Or maybe he just liked who he got to be when they came here — a version of himself that felt weightless, that laughed too loud and tried too hard but never had to apologize for either.

They stand outside the door for a second, just breathing, the sound of their rain-damp clothes whispering with movement. Then Bakugou reaches out and pushes it open.

And just like that, they’re inside again. Not in the past, not quite — but close enough to remember who they used to be.

The old arcade looked smaller than he remembered. Not physically, maybe, but in the way a place shrinks after heartbreak, like the universe had once stretched around it to make space for joy, and now had recoiled. Still, it buzzed with the same gaudy neon signs and saccharine music, the air thick with nostalgia and a faint scent of burnt rubber and buttered popcorn. The prize shelf was still crooked, and the crane machine still housed that stupid All Might plush with the eye a little too high up and the lopsided grin. The sight of it, stupid as it was, squeezed Kirishima’s heart like a vice.

Bakugou was already halfway across the room, making a beeline for the crane machine like no time had passed at all. “Oi, Eijirou,” he barked, tossing a coin at Kirishima’s chest, “you still suck at this, yeah?”

It bounced off his shirt and landed in his palm. Kirishima chuckled, fingers curling around it as he stepped into the space beside Bakugou. “I’m a pro now,” he said, not quite believing it himself. “You’re just gonna embarrass yourself again.”

The moment felt suspended in amber — familiar, warm, but fragile.

He watched as Bakugou hunched over the glass, intense as ever, tongue poking the corner of his mouth in concentration. His hands hadn’t changed — calloused, steady, knuckles faintly scarred from hero work. Kirishima could trace their history in those hands — every rooftop skirmish, every sparring match, every time they’d grabbed his wrist mid-fall like it was instinct.

Bakugou muttered curses under his breath as the claw descended. It caught the All Might plush — just barely, just enough — before slipping off like it always did. He slammed a fist against the side of the machine, not hard, not like before. Just frustrated. “Fucking rigged.”

Kirishima laughed. Not a polite one. A real, full laugh that cracked open his chest and rattled something loose. The weight in his ribs lifted a little, like air finally filling the spaces grief had carved out. “Some things never change.”

Bakugou looked at him then. Really looked. His lips twitched into a smile — a rare one, toothless and small, the kind Bakugou never used to share, not unless they were alone, not unless he let himself soften. Kirishima met it with something quiet behind his eyes, a look Bakugou didn’t shy away from.

They drifted from machine to machine — the basketball hoops, the whack-a-villain, the ancient DDR platform that stuck at the edges. They didn’t talk about New York. They didn’t talk about the year and a half apart or the silence or the ache that had never left Kirishima’s chest. They just — were. Two kids again, stealing time between school and patrols, between heartbreaks and broken ribs.

At the ticket counter, Kirishima pointed at a dumb spiky keychain that looked vaguely like Bakugou. “I should get that. Keep you on my keys.”

Bakugou rolled his eyes. “You already do.”

Kirishima blinked. “What?”

Bakugou shrugged, casually, like he hadn’t just thrown a grenade into his chest. “Bet you still got my old dorm key on there or something. Sentimental dumbass.”

He did. He did still have it. The rusted little scrap of metal, chipped at the edges, tucked between agency IDs and apartment fobs. He hadn’t touched it in months but he couldn’t let go. Didn’t know how to.

He felt the breath catch in his throat, but he swallowed it down, letting it settle beneath his ribs where all the other Bakugou-shaped things lived. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Maybe I do.”

Bakugou didn’t mock him for it. Didn’t smirk or sneer or scoff. He just bumped Kirishima’s shoulder with his own, barely-there contact that lingered like heat. “Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s hit the air hockey before I get bored of your dumb face.”

“Promise not to cheat this time?”

“I don’t cheat, I win.”

The air hockey table lit up as they approached, electric blue and too loud, and Kirishima remembered a thousand nights like this — laughter slicing through the arcade noise, the stutter of flippers and coins and claw machines, Bakugou’s voice calling him out with a grin he only wore when he thought no one was watching. It hadn’t been like this in so long. So damn long.

Kirishima hadn’t realised how numb he’d gone until now. How long he’d been living in grayscale, pretending he was alright, faking laughter and swallowing down longing like it wouldn’t choke him eventually. But here — with Bakugou barking insults and swearing at toy machines and nudging his foot under the table when Kirishima made a dumb joke — here, he felt colour seep back in.

He didn’t know what this meant. Didn’t know if Bakugou staying was temporary, or if this was just another spark before the storm. But for now, Kirishima let himself feel it. Let himself laugh, let himself hope, even if it hurt. Because being here, like this, was the first time in a long time he didn’t feel like he was pretending.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

They’d done nothing special. Not really. Just flour and eggs and butter and sugar, their fingertips dusted in white and laughter tucked between lazy conversations and quiet glances. It was easy, natural. Kirishima had spent half the evening watching the way Bakugou moved around the kitchen — sharp and efficient, yes, but softer too, more open than he used to be. Less armour on. There was music playing low from Bakugou’s phone speaker — some American band Kirishima didn’t recognise — and the smell of warm vanilla curled into the air like memory.

They were standing side by side, hips almost brushing, watching cookies rise through the oven window like it mattered, like this meant something more than just another night. Kirishima had let himself believe it did.

“Don’t burn them this time,” Bakugou muttered, eyes on the tray.

Kirishima huffed, nudging his shoulder. “That was once, and I was distracted.”

“Yeah, distracted staring at me.”

He chuckled — genuinely, because even now Bakugou could pull laughter out of him like it belonged there — but the sound caught somewhere in his chest. He didn’t deny it, “Shut up Katsuki,”

Silence folded over them like a blanket, comfortable and heavy. The kind of quiet that only came when the noise wasn’t needed anymore. Kirishima reached for his mug, warm in his hands, taking a slow sip as he leaned back against the counter. His heart felt full. That was the dangerous part — the way it always felt full around Bakugou. As if his entire body remembered how to breathe properly again.

Then Bakugou spoke.

“I don’t know if I’m gonna stay.”

Kirishima blinked.

The words didn’t register at first, not really. They floated through the air like smoke, like they’d dissolve if he didn’t touch them. But then they sank, hard and sharp, right into the centre of his chest. He gripped the mug too tight, and it slipped from his fingers with a dull thud against the counter. It didn’t fall, didn’t shatter — but he did.

His hands were shaking.

“What?” The word scraped out of him, dry and disbelieving.

Bakugou’s face didn’t change. That made it worse. “I’ve been talking with a couple agencies. Some of them are based in New York and L.A. I haven’t decided yet. But — yeah.”

There was no malice in it, no cruelty. It wasn’t said to hurt him. But that didn’t stop it from feeling like someone had reached inside his ribcage and started pulling.

Kirishima stared at him, lips parted, heartbeat pounding in his ears so loudly he could barely hear the rest of whatever Bakugou was saying. Words like "career move," "long-term," "don’t know yet." But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The only thing Kirishima heard was he's leaving again.

He stepped back. Once. Then again.

Bakugou paused mid-sentence. “Eijirou,”

“You can’t be serious,” he breathed, voice barely above a whisper. It was breaking, and he could feel it, the tremble in his jaw, the sting behind his eyes. “You just got back.”

Bakugou looked at him then, really looked, and his brows furrowed like maybe he didn’t realise how deep the blade had gone.

“I never said I was staying,” he said, quiet.

And that was it.

That was the moment Kirishima stopped pretending.

Because he’d lied. He’d lied when he said he was okay without him. Lied every time he smiled around the others, every time he said he was happy for Bakugou’s success, every time he’d laughed at a joke when all he wanted was to scream. He thought he’d made peace with it, with Bakugou being gone, with missing him. But having him back — really back, loud and ridiculous and brilliant — had reignited something he hadn’t even realised he’d snuffed out. And now?

Now Bakugou was in his kitchen, watching cookies rise, talking about leaving again like it wouldn’t tear Kirishima apart.

He couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t do this,” he said, shaking his head, his voice wobbling.

Bakugou stepped forward. “Do what?”

“This,” Kirishima choked out, gesturing to the kitchen, to the air between them, to everything. “Us. Hanging out. Pretending like— like none of it happened. You left, Bakugou. You left and it broke me, and now you’re back and I let myself believe you’d stay— I let myself hope,"

His voice cracked, too loud in the small space. He hated how pathetic he sounded. Hated how exposed he felt.

Bakugou didn’t say anything. He just stood there, staring, eyes unreadable, mouth pressed in a tight line like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how.

Kirishima couldn’t look at him anymore. The pain was sharp, immediate, all-consuming.

He turned.

Bakugou reached for his wrist, but he pulled away before he could be touched. He couldn’t be touched. If Bakugou touched him he might fall apart completely.

“I have to go,” he muttered.

“Eiji—"

“Don’t.”

He didn’t look back. He didn’t grab his jacket. He didn’t wait for an answer. He just left.

The night air was biting, cold and alive with city noise, but Kirishima barely noticed. His limbs moved on autopilot, fast and frenzied. His ears were ringing. His throat burned.

He didn’t even know where he was going.

All he knew was that Bakugou was going to leave again — and this time, Kirishima didn’t think he’d survive it.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

Kirishima didn’t know where he was going. Not really.

He didn’t remember leaving Bakugou’s flat, not the rush of cold air on his face when the door slammed behind him, nor the way his shoulder knocked hard into the doorframe on his way out. There was a ringing in his ears — not the sound of metal clashing or an explosion ripping through concrete like he'd grown up with — but something worse. It was the sound of a heart cracking quietly, somewhere between his lungs and his throat. Something so intimate, so internal, that it didn’t even echo. It just hurt.

The streets blurred underfoot, Tokyo’s lights smeared into long, cruel streaks of gold and red as the tears filled his eyes faster than he could blink them away. The air was bitter, but not enough to numb him. Nothing could. It scraped his throat as he gasped, breath catching in fits, the kind of sharp, ugly crying he hadn’t done since he was thirteen and didn’t know how to be strong yet.

He didn’t want to be strong now. Not if it meant this.

Not if it meant holding back the sob that ripped free when he realised — really, properly felt — that Bakugou might leave again.

After everything.

After claw machines and popcorn on the couch and late night walks like nothing had changed. After shared dinners and shared silences and cookies in the oven and the kind of laughter that cracked open the dark.

After that soft, impossible hope that maybe — just maybe — Bakugou had come back for good.

It was cruel.

More than cruel.

It felt like betrayal, even though he knew it wasn’t. Not truly. Not in the way people normally meant it.

But it was Bakugou. And Kirishima had loved him too long, too quietly, for this not to feel personal. Like something sacred had been picked up only to be put down again, without a second thought.

He stopped walking, somewhere between one neighbourhood and the next, somewhere anonymous and cold, blinking into the sky like he might find answers in the stars. They were faint tonight, washed out by the city’s heartbeat, but still there. Distant. Unmoving. They didn’t care that his heart was breaking. They didn’t care that he was standing on the side of the road with his fists clenched and his chest hollowed out, trying not to scream.

But he did.

He screamed anyway.

He screamed like the sky might care, screamed until his throat burned and the words didn’t come out in words anymore, just sound — raw and strangled and devastating. The wind swallowed it all, indifferent. A dog barked somewhere. A light flicked on in a distant flat.

No one came.

He crumpled.

Right there, on the pavement. On his knees, shoulders shaking, arms wrapped around his middle like he could hold himself together physically, because emotionally he was long past gone.

It was humiliation and grief and longing in equal measure, and it bubbled out of him like magma, thick and hot and impossible to control.

Why?

Why had he let himself believe that Bakugou staying in Japan meant he was staying with him?

Why had he smiled when they made cookies, leaned into the closeness, laughed at stupid claw machine games like it was safe again?

Why had he let himself feel whole again when he knew better?

He thought he’d moved on. Thought he’d rebuilt his days out of new things — agency work, and movie nights, and Sero and Todoroki’s awfully bitter tea, and Mina’s way of hugging without asking because she always knew when he needed it.

He’d made a home out of missing Bakugou.

And now that he was back, Kirishima had dared to imagine something else. Not even love — he wasn’t asking for that. Not really. He was stupid, but he wasn’t delusional. All he wanted was to be chosen. Not because Bakugou had to. But because he wanted to. Because Kirishima, in all his red-blooded, big-hearted, breakable strength, was enough to make someone stay.

But he wasn’t.

Bakugou might leave again. He was leaving again — he hadn’t said it outright, but Kirishima heard it in the way he said he didn’t know. In the way he avoided his eyes. In the way he could admit something so big, so crushing, while the cookies baked like it was just another Thursday.

Like it didn’t mean the world was ending. Again.

Kirishima’s voice broke as another sob cracked free. He let it. There was no one here to see him, to judge him, to tell him to chin up and be a man about it.

No one but himself. And he was so tired of being his own prison guard.

His hands trembled against the pavement. Gravel bit into his knees, his palms, but he didn’t move. Just sat there, crumpled and gutted and small under a sky that had never once looked down and decided to keep Bakugou close.

It wasn’t fair. But it was life. And he’d been stupid to think love changed anything.

He rubbed his eyes roughly, but the tears kept coming. Not in waves — waves could be ridden. These were like the tide itself. Relentless. Inescapable.

He sniffed hard, the sound too loud in the quiet. His nose was running. His chest was heaving. And he still had no idea where he was. The buildings around him were unfamiliar, neon bleeding into puddles on the road, traffic passing him like he didn’t exist.

Maybe he didn’t.

Maybe this was what heartbreak really was — not a single, devastating blow, but a slow erasure of self. A quiet unravelling. One thread pulled loose at a time.

First, Bakugou left.

Then the texts stopped.

Then the hope came back.

And now, here he was — unravelled. At the mercy of a love he never even got to confess, not properly, not really.

He squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth as he tried to pull himself together, to stop shaking, to breathe. But his lungs didn’t want to work. His body was betraying him now too.

And worse, still, he loved him.

Still.

Always.

Even now, when every reasonable part of him wanted to claw the feeling out of his chest and be done with it — he couldn’t. Because Bakugou was the shape of everything he’d built himself around. The flame he’d warmed himself by. The sun he’d been too scared to reach for, so he held out his hands and caught the light instead.

And now that the sun might set again — what was he supposed to do?

He pulled himself to his feet eventually, body stiff and cold. His legs were shaky, and his vision still wobbled at the edges, but he started walking. Slowly. Without thinking. Home, maybe. Or at least somewhere with walls. Somewhere where he could fall apart in peace.

He didn’t want to see Bakugou again.

Not like this.

Not while his heart was still cracked down the middle and bleeding out every unspoken thing he’d swallowed since their very first dorm dinner. Since Bakugou said “I’m leaving for New York” with a voice that didn’t shake and eyes that didn’t blink.

Kirishima had smiled then.

He remembered.

He’d smiled like it didn’t split him open.

Just like tonight, when Bakugou had said he might go again.

His voice had been steady.

And Kirishima had shattered in silence.

And now, now he was walking through the cold Tokyo night, tears drying on his cheeks, not sure if he’d ever be able to stop loving Bakugou Katsuki — not even if he wanted to.

And god, he wanted to.

More than anything.

Because hope was the cruelest thing of all.

˚₊‧꒰ა 🚇໒꒱ ‧₊

The knock on the door came like a mistake.

Kirishima almost didn’t hear it — the sound too soft, too tentative against the static of his grief, muffled by the low hum of the television playing some mindless rerun he wasn’t watching, the crinkle of a plastic takeaway bag half-open on the coffee table, the clatter of disposable chopsticks dropped and forgotten. His eyes were swollen, red-raw and stinging, crusted from the last wave of crying that had snuck up on him like an ambush. The flat stank of soy sauce and old heartbreak. His shirt was twisted at the collar, his hair unstyled, and there was a damp tissue stuck to the hem of his joggers, paper torn thin from being wrung too tightly.

He hadn’t expected anyone.

He didn’t want anyone.

He moved to the door on instinct alone, pulled by something underneath the ache. Maybe he’d ordered more food and forgotten. Maybe it was Mina. Maybe the universe was being cruel again — the way it always seemed to be lately — by sending someone else who looked a little too much like Bakugou from behind. Someone whose laugh caught in his throat and squeezed until he couldn’t breathe, until he tasted iron and memory. Maybe it was no one. Maybe he’d hallucinated the sound altogether.

But then it came again. Louder. Urgent.

He opened the door without checking.

And the world fell sideways.

Bakugou stood there like something out of a fever dream — panting, wide-eyed, rain-slicked and alive. His hoodie was askew and clinging to his shoulders, the colour dark with sweat or drizzle or both. His eyes — those stupid, perfect, explosive eyes — were frantic, burning into Kirishima like they were trying to make sense of him and the flat and everything in between. His mouth was parted, like he’d run the whole way here, lungs still catching up with whatever possessed him to come at all.

“Bakugou,” Kirishima breathed — or maybe it was just the shape his mouth made. He couldn’t tell. His heartbeat was too loud, his ribs too tight.

He moved to shut the door.

He couldn’t do this. Not now. Not when his walls were down and he had nothing left to hide behind. Not when he’d already cried himself into pieces.

But Bakugou’s hand caught the edge of the door, pushed it back, eyes darting past him into the flat.

And then he saw.

The apartment was dim, quiet except for the hum of the telly and the storm of unsaid things between them. On the shelves lining the wall behind Kirishima, framed in soft amber light, were years of them — photo after photo of the two of them tangled in laughter or triumph or exhausted grins. On the fridge, magnets held up hero clippings and post-mission snapshots, Bakugou’s name in headlines, Dynamight plastered across cut-outs and laminated with pride. There were bits and pieces everywhere — the little souvenirs of a friendship that had always meant more, even if Kirishima had never said it out loud. A coffee mug with a chipped edge from their first year at U.A., a faded hoodie once worn by Bakugou and never returned, an old All Might plush that had long lost the majority of its stuffing but sat like a relic on the windowsill.

Bakugou stepped over the threshold like he’d been pulled, like the flat itself had its own gravitational field. His movements were slow, uncertain, like he didn’t quite believe he was allowed to be here.

He stopped in front of the largest photo on the wall — the two of them leaning into one another, cheeks flushed, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, but smiling. Really smiling. It was after that joint mission in Nagoya. Bakugou’s hand had been on Kirishima’s shoulder. Their foreheads had been pressed together. They’d looked — happy. Whole.

Bakugou’s hand trembled as he reached out and touched the edge of the frame.

His voice, when it came, was small. Too small for Bakugou.

“You love me,” Bakugou said, voice simple and quiet like he didn’t mean to say it aloud.

Not loud. Not angry. Not even surprised, really — more like it had just struck him properly for the first time, like the words had always been floating in the background of his life, half-swallowed and ignored, until now.

Kirishima didn't answer. He couldn’t.

The words hung there, fragile and ringing, echoing through the tiny flat like they'd been shouted instead of whispered.

Bakugou stepped further in, the door clicking shut behind him, soft and final. His eyes were locked on Kirishima like he was seeing him — really seeing him — for the first time in years. Or maybe ever. Like everything was falling into place at once, too fast for him to handle, and he wasn’t sure whether to run or drop to his knees and beg for something he couldn’t name.

And then he turned — slowly, like his body weighed twice as much as usual — and looked around.

The photos. The Dynamight merch. His own face staring back at him from half a dozen frames, laughing, grinning, bruised, exhausted, loved.

It hit him like a fist to the chest.

“Oh,” Bakugou breathed.

Just that. Nothing else.

But it was the sound of something breaking.

He reached out, fingertips brushing the edge of a photo on the wall — the one from that trip to Kamakura, when it had rained all day and they'd taken shelter under an awning with cheap umbrellas and soaked-through smiles. Kirishima was half-laughing in the photo, his hand on Bakugou’s back. And Bakugou was smiling. Really, properly smiling. Soft in a way he never let anyone see.

Bakugou stared at it like he couldn’t quite believe it had happened. Like he was watching the ghost of something he’d thrown away without knowing how much it mattered.

“You love me,” he said again, quieter now. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even for Kirishima.

It was for himself.

Kirishima's mouth parted — instinct more than thought — but the words wouldn’t come. His chest was too tight, too full. There was a roaring in his ears like blood, like heartbreak, like the sound of two years’ worth of silence trying to climb its way out of his throat all at once.

Bakugou turned to him.

“Since when?” he asked, and his voice cracked right down the middle. “How long?”

Kirishima looked at him — really looked — and suddenly it wasn’t Bakugou standing there. It was Katsuki. The boy he’d met in first year, full of fire and teeth and something desperate underneath all that noise. The boy he’d watched grow into a man. The man who’d left.

“Since — I don’t know,” Kirishima said, barely audible. “Since before I realised. Since always.”

Bakugou’s mouth opened — and then closed again. He blinked. Just once. Like he’d been punched.

And then he said — so softly it hurt to hear — “Fuck.”

He stepped back, staggered almost, like the weight of it was too much. Like he'd looked his own guilt in the eye and finally understood what it meant.

“Fuck, Eijirou. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

Kirishima's hands curled into fists at his sides. He wasn't sure whether it was to stop himself from reaching out or to keep himself standing upright.

“You didn’t want to know,” he said. Not bitter. Not accusing. Just fact.

Bakugou flinched like it stung. His hands were shaking now, and he looked away, jaw clenched, eyes dark with something raw and unbearable.

“I thought I had to go,” he said. “I thought if I stayed, I’d ruin everything. Or I’d ask you to come with me, and you’d say no, and I’d hate you for it, and I couldn’t— I couldn’t let that happen.”

Kirishima laughed. Just once. Quiet and small and bitter enough to taste like blood.

“You didn’t even give me the chance.”

Bakugou met his eyes again — and something in him broke. Kirishima could see it. Plain as anything. That terrible, slow realisation of just how badly he’d fucked this up. That all this time, Kirishima had waited — every day, every stupid minute — while Bakugou had pretended the only way to protect what they had was to destroy it.

“I thought I was protecting you,” Bakugou whispered. “But I was protecting me. I couldn’t handle knowing you didn’t feel the same. So I — I just didn’t ask.”

Kirishima’s voice was a breath, a wound. “I did.”

“I know.” Bakugou’s voice cracked. “I know that now. But it’s two years too late and you,” He faltered, eyes flicking again to the photos. His throat bobbed on a swallow. “You put me on the wall like I died.”

“I grieved you,” Kirishima said, and his voice rose with it, unsteady, wet. “I grieved you like I’d lost a limb.”

Bakugou stepped forward. Not fast. Not demanding. Just one step. And then another.

Kirishima didn’t move.

“I thought about you every day,” Bakugou said, eyes burning. “I didn’t open your messages. I didn’t answer your calls. I thought that if I did, I’d get on the next fucking plane and never go back. I was scared I’d give up everything I worked for just to come home to you.”

He was crying now. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just quiet tears, streaking his face like they didn’t ask for permission. Like he wasn’t used to them and didn’t know what to do with them.

And Kirishima?

He didn’t stop him. Didn’t look away. Just stood there, feeling his own ribs creak under the pressure of every word.

“I hurt you,” Bakugou said. “I didn’t mean to. But I did. And I can’t take that back.”

“No,” Kirishima said. “You can’t.”

A silence stretched out between them, sharp as glass.

But then Bakugou reached for him — slowly, cautiously — and placed a hand over Kirishima’s heart.

It was pounding.

“Is it too late?” he asked.

And Kirishima — god, Kirishima — he wanted to say yes. He wanted to make Bakugou hurt the way he’d hurt. But he couldn’t. Because even now, even after everything, the part of him that loved — the part that had always loved — was still there.

He reached up and covered Bakugou’s hand with his own.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But you’re here. And I’m still breathing. So maybe not.”

Bakugou’s eyes slipped shut.

And then, without asking, without waiting, he leaned in and pressed their foreheads together.

Not a kiss. Not yet.

Just breath. Shared.

“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Bakugou murmured. “But I’m here. And I want to make this right. If you’ll let me.”

Kirishima closed his eyes too. Let the tears fall. Let the moment wrap around them like the gentlest storm.

“You’ve got a long way to go,” he whispered.

“I’ll walk every step.”

Bakugou said it like a vow. Not dramatic. Not performative. Just real. Plain. Unshakable.

Kirishima exhaled shakily. His hand still holding Bakugou’s over his chest.

And instead of answering, he leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn’t a perfect kiss. It was clumsy, tear-wet, mouths trembling with too much memory. But it was honest — the kind of kiss you give someone not to win them, but to tell them you never really left.

When they broke apart, foreheads still pressed together, the silence felt like something sacred. Not empty. Just full. Of breath. Of time. Of everything they hadn’t said, and everything they no longer needed to.

Kirishima smiled. Barely. Just the ghost of one.

“You still snore like a fucking monster?” he whispered.

Bakugou huffed. “Worse now. I upgraded.”

“Good.” Kirishima swallowed. “I missed it.”

And then, very quietly, like a secret, “I missed you.”

Bakugou’s hand tightened over his.

“I know,” he said. “I missed you too. More than I knew how to miss something.”

Kirishima pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes.

“Don’t leave again.”

Bakugou shook his head. “I won’t.”

“I mean it.”

“I won’t, Eijirou.”

There was a moment of stillness.

Then Kirishima turned, gently guiding Bakugou toward the sofa. The living room still smelled like him. The lights were still soft. The city still blinked on outside the windows, utterly unaware of what had just shifted inside.

They sat down together. Side by side.

Their shoulders touched.

Their fingers found each other again. Familiar, tentative. Then firm.

Neither of them said a word for a while. They didn’t need to.

Because it was all there now — in the way Kirishima leaned his head on Bakugou’s shoulder. In the way Bakugou turned and kissed the top of his hair, like apology and promise at once. In the way the silence finally felt like peace instead of absence.

This wasn’t a fresh start.

It was the start of something real.

Something that had been waiting for them all along — bruised and patient and quietly indestructible.

And this time, they didn’t look back.