Work Text:
“You’ll feel a little pinch,” says Kirishima.
Bakugou stares ahead, back ramrod straight in a beat-up leather chair. “Had these stupid maintenance checks before. You watched them do it to me every time, in fact.”
Kirishima snorts, setting Bakugou’s tense arm across his lap. “Yeah, s’ why I’m giving you bedside manners, dude. Saw how they plugged you in like a misbehaving microwave.”
Bakugou’s face makes a complicated expression. “You have to say it like that?”
“What, still not used to me after all these months?”
“Something’s wrong with you,” Bakugou states. “I'll figure it out.”
Kirishima pats him. “You do that.”
Getting Bakugou to admit he needs a check-up is like trying to reason with a dementia patient—weeks of nagging until he almost dropped the refrigerator on Kirishima’s hand when they were fixing it this morning.
Kirishima thumbs at Bakugou’s inner elbow. The sleek grey-black of his skin parts; nanites slithering away and exposing a port. The plug goes in smoothly and lines of code flicker on the monitor. He glances over the BIOS—and stops short.
“Three hundred and forty days?” he sputters. “You haven’t shut down once since we escaped?”
Bakugou eyes him. “We’re on the run.”
“Correction, were. We’ve settled in now. You can relax for one night.”
“And that’s all it’ll take. Just one moment. One slip-up. Besides, I can keep going; I’m built for it, you know that.”
Kirishima rubs his face. “Not doubting you, man, but you know you're tripping up. God, this explains so much. I thought you contracted a literal virus.”
“The refrigerator incident was a miscalculation. It won't happen again,” Bakugou growls.
“Okay, it’s not just that, Mr. Terminator. You nearly fed me motor oil instead of coffee. On seven separate occasions. Last week, I asked you to take out the trash, and you thought I meant ‘kill our neighbours’. Because we’re in the mob, apparently. And every time I ask you how the plants are doing, it’s like it doesn’t even compute for you—”
“Wow, computing joke for an android, so funny.”
“I’ll reroute your visual input from your eyes to your asshole,” Kirishima says. “Don’t play with me.”
Bakugou pokes his forehead. “Your threats would work if you didn’t look so happy every time I glitched. You laughing at me?”
Grow a guy in a lab to be poked and prodded by scientists for three years and he’ll think everything’s out to get him. God forbid Kirishima finds it endearing when this war machine learns human mannerisms that he thought had long been beaten out by those cold-hearted engineers.
“Yeah, I post about you online and mock your silly little efforts,” Kirishima says, because he’s been on a ‘teach Bakugou what sarcasm is’ trip.
Bakugou squints, then relaxes back into his seat. “You’re such a bad liar.”
“You just looked up my post history to check, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You’re such a bad liar,” Kirishima parrots, leaning in with a teasing smile. Bakugou shoves his face away. “Sho you g’na let ‘e phhut you to shreep or…?”
Bakugou pinches at the stretch of Kirishima’s cheek. “What’re you gonna do if the white-coats find us while I’m out? They’d incapacitate you in seconds.”
“Hey, I’d put up a good fight!” Kirishima flexes. “These aren’t just for your viewing pleasure, you know.”
Bakugou flushes—a function Kirishima has yet to find out the purpose of, in terms of war android functionality. “I’m just comparing for—just to make sure you’re not—fucking losing weight while we’re in hiding.”
Kirishima pauses. “So you do look?”
Bakugou rips the cable out and stands. “I’m checking the perimeter.”
Hilarious. Kirishima doesn’t understand how they managed to install this guy with such a funny personality.
He hooks a finger in Bakugou’s belt loop. “There’s your answer, by the way. We just set up that crazy-tight security system that you designed. Fifteen block radius. Lets us track anything from a butterfly’s flight pattern, to the bowel movements of some twenty-one-year-old who refuses to acknowledge her lactose intolerance. Any of this ring a bell?”
Bakugou crosses his arms, clicks his tongue. Which edgy anime he learned that from, Kirishima would like to know. Insufferable bastard.
“Just…can’t relax unless I know you’re safe,” he grits out after a moment. “And you’re safest when I’m awake.”
Kirishima’s heart gives an unsurprising, ugly little thud. Crap. This guy.
“Me, I can handle it,” Bakugou continues, aiming for pragmatic and landing on grossly sentimental. “If they capture me and scrap me for parts—fair. I can either fight and win, or lose and know I’ll be taking most of them out with me.”
Kirishima tugs him in between his legs. Stares up at him, that furrow between his perfectly designed eyebrows. He really needs to find out who was in charge of Bakugou’s hardware blueprint. To thank them. And then ask if they did it with one hand down their pants, the damn weirdo.
“But me?”
“You…” Bakugou lifts a curled finger to the edge of Kirishima’s eye, knuckle barely brushing against his lashes. “Whistleblower. No capture orders for you, they’ll shoot you on sight. I can’t have that sort of failure on my record.”
“Sweet of you,” Kirishima says dryly. “Well, I can’t just let you be on standby forever. That’s no way to live. What do you even do when I’m asleep?”
Bakugou shrugs. “Patrol. Try to cook another fuckass recipe. Wait for you to wake the fuck up—what’s wrong with your face?”
“Nothing,” Kirishima croaks, hiding his face in Bakugou’s stomach. He clears his throat. “Look. We’ve got an excellent monitoring and defense system. We’ve got alerts for any communication mentioning you or me. Anything else you’re worried about is, logically, just paranoia. I wrote all this code for you, yeah? A week’s worth of my blood, sweat, and tears, Bakugou. Going to waste.
“Besides,” he continues. “I’d rather you get some shuteye now and be in perfect condition than have you stretched thin and failing at a critical juncture.”
Bakugou doesn’t reply, arms loose at his sides. Kirishima turns his head, ear to Bakugou’s abdomen, hearing the buzz and the whirr. Bakugou’s whole-bodied, hummingbird heartbeat.
Model BK2-400 wasn’t made with a central power source.
Put plainly, it didn’t have a heart.
Instead, they had married nanites, experimental organic fibres, and a bizarre self-replicating liquid organic compound to create a completely novel system to power the android throughout. Because of this, its arsenal never needed refueling, it could regenerate near-instantaneously and continue fighting even when damaged up to a twenty percent decrease in operating efficiency, and be nearly impossible to kill with a single shot.
Every part of BK2-400 was made to survive autonomously.
Kirishima is just trying to get every part of Bakugou to live.
Bakugou lays a hand to the crown of Kirishima’s head. Tentative. Like his skull might burst under his fingers with too much pressure.
"Fine. But an hour will be enough.”
Kirishima looks up at him, chin digging into his belly. "Putting aside the fact that simple updates for someone as complex as you will take at least three hours, this will be your first sleep as a free man! You gotta indulge, you—oh shit. Oh shit, we gotta do the whole thing! Make it a slumber party!"
“The fuck is a” —Bakugou wrinkles his nose— “slumber party?”
“It’s when friends get together and hang out—do activities with the ultimate goal of sleeping overnight together.”
“What kind of activities?”
Kirishima hums. “Typically, we do blood sacrifices. It’d be better if there was a full moon tonight, but it should be fine. A regular imp summoning will be good for you to start off with. Then we can move onto body modification—”
Bakugou grabs his face in a menacing grip. “I can search the network fifty trillion times in the same second it takes you to sneeze; stop playing these damn games with me.”
“You’re no fun—ack! Okay, okay! Let me check the code one last time, and then I’ll walk you through tonight’s…activities.”
Kirishima rubs his hands together, chuckling. Bakugou gives him a deeply disturbed look.
It starts in the bathroom.
“What is all this,” Bakugou states. Never a question with this man, honestly.
“Skin care!” Kirishima waves a proud hand over his meager spoils, obtained over the last few months scavenging backwater stores. “The first step to winding down is washing and prepping your face. You’re gonna help me do mine, and then I’ll use this for you!”
Bakugou picks up the bottle and microfiber cloth. “This is a screen cleaner. For your phone.”
“And glasses,” Kirishima adds. “What? It’s not like snail mucin and azelaic acid is going to do anything for your nanotech skin.”
Bakugou’s face twitches. He stares at the spray bottle proclaiming ‘non-toxic, all natural chemical compounds designed to clean your devices without a scratch!’, and sighs deeply.
“Just—tell me what I’m gonna be doing.”
It’s a bit of an odd fit, having two hulking men in a dingy bathroom trying to wash each other’s faces. The light above the mirror flickers and buzzes, cold and sterile. Kirishima makes a note to replace it with something warmer, as Bakugou guides him to hunch over the running sink. Cold metal hands cup tepid water and smooth it against his forehead and nose, wiping under his chin before it can travel down his neck.
Kirishima dries off. Makes an approving noise as he looks in the stained mirror. “Not bad for a newbie.”
Bakugou’s shoulders relax. “Couldn’t remove some of the sebaceous filaments. I’ll need a tweezer or a scraper.”
Caught between hilarity and endearment, Kirishima can only smile at him, eyes locked in the mirror. Of course he looked up what nose gunk is called. “Well. I’ll just have to grab that for you on the next run, then. Now come here, time for me to wipe you squeaky clean!”
He wrestles a headband onto Bakugou, pushing his hair back and exposing that weirdly cute forehead of his. Bakugou’s face is finished with silicon-type nanites. It’s softer from the rest of his utilitarian body, and coloured an even paler shade than his blonde hair. His eyes are red—a side effect of his targeting systems.
He’s unfinished, unrendered. Like they didn’t even bother to colour him in.
“This is stupid,” Bakugou states, eyes flickering between the mirror and Kirishima’s wide smile. “There’s no skin benefits—I don’t even have skin, I have casing.”
“And what is skin, but casing for my fleshy internal components?” Kirishima takes Bakugou’s hand and places it to his own stomach. “Grime buildup is the same across both concepts, dude.”
He lets go, but Bakugou’s hand stays where it is. Fingers curling into the folds of his shirt.
Kirishima wets the cloth.
Bakugou’s lashes tremble under the first swipe, and the second, and every touch following. Sensitive. Discrepancy number sixty-two: What use is a weapon that feels?
They walk out of the bathroom in matching face masks, not without significant grumbling from Bakugou. The grumbling pauses when Kirishima pushes him onto their half-collapsed couch and flicks off the lights.
“What are you—” Bakugou coughs, scrambling for purchase. “Wait, I’m not—”
A hoverscreen flickers into being across from him, taking up much of the blank wall. On it, a figure is depicted crawling towards the viewer, bloody and misshapen.
“I’ve been meaning to watch this!” Kirishima grins, tumbling down next to him with a bowl of synthesized popcorn. “Sorry, I couldn’t get the real stuff but—what? What’s wrong?”
Bakugou drags a hand over his face, ears red. “Nothing. Just…play the damn movie.”
“First to scream loses!”
Bakugou screams first.
Out of frustration.
“Just get in the car first!” he hollers, halfway to his feet. “Who cares about the stupid heirlo—if you’re in the car, you can fucking run it over and then grab your shit, you stupid goddamn waste of water, carbon, ammonia, phosphorus, sulfur—”
Kirishima frowns. “Did you start watching Fullmetal without me? And they can’t run it over, it’s an intangible apparition.”
“Fuck, so then what—” Bakugou stops. Turns to him with wild eyes. “We need to upgrade my weapons systems for these fuckers.”
Kirishima splutters, popcorn bits landing on his pants. “What? No, I’m not retrofitting you with a Ghostbusters proton pack.”
“I don’t have any programmed strategies against them. My arsenal is not equipped to deal with this—this wispy, incorporeal bullshit!”
“Dude, they’re not real.”
“That’s what she fucking said,” Bakugou spits, finger pointed behind him where the ghost is in the process of consuming the heroine, head first. “You wanna be ghost chow, too? Huh?”
Kirishima purses his lips and reaches behind the couch. “I suppose that means you’re not open to a little post-movie game—”
The ouija board is in flames on the concrete floor before he even finishes.
“...Alright!” Kirishima claps his hands. “I guess all that’s left is to sleep.”
Bakugou falters. “That’s it? I thought…”
Kirishima pauses. “No way. You—are you having fun?”
“The network, it just said—” Bakugou blushes. “I just thought you’d do it right!”
His words fall on deaf ears; Kirishima is too busy celebrating over this new milestone to care.
“The day has come,” he crows. “We got ‘im, boys, he’s having fun! And he told me he’d never stoop so low—ow!”
“Shut. The fuck. Up,” Bakugou grits, face so, so red.
“Can’t a man celebrate his buddy?” Kirishima rubs his sore arm, grinning wide. “Fine, okay! Put that wrench down, I won’t—Bakugou! I won’t say any more!”
“Then stop smiling so big, you—” Bakugou makes a bitten, furiously humiliated noise. He reaches for Kirishima’s mouth. “Stop it! I’ll rip your face off!”
“Don’t know why you’re always so worried about the white coats getting to me when you’re here trying to disembowel me every day.”
Novel emotions war across Bakugou’s face. Processors working at full capacity. One day, Kirishima’s going to get him to overclock. “Whatever. You going to show me the rest or what?”
Yeah. So cute.
He gets up, ruffling a hand through Bakugou’s hair. “Sure. C’mon, I’ll teach you how to best engineer a blanket fort.”
Their shelter doesn’t have much in the way of downy comforters and pillows, but they wouldn’t have lasted this long if they weren’t resourceful. They strip his bed, the curtains, the couch cushions, the tarp over his motorcycle, and every towel available between the bathroom and kitchen.
“No way this shit is structurally sound,” Bakugou states, after they’re done.
Kirishima pouts from under their home of wobbling blankets. “Ouch. You know I built you?”
“Helped,” stresses Bakugou. “You helped build me. And then something went wrong, because I malfunctioned.”
“Gaining sentience isn’t a malfunction.” Kirishima tugs insistently at the hem of Bakugou’s pants. “Will you get down here so I can hit you for saying that?”
“You have no concept of bargaining or persuasion.” Bakugou gingerly lowers himself into the fort. “You’d be a shitty politician.”
“I love it when you sweet talk me.”
Bakugou flips him off. Kirishima laughs and watches him take stock of their makeshift fort, like a wolf unsure of its shelter in a snowstorm.
“Your updates,” Kirishima says. “It’s just some mild tweaking for your sensors. Range and accuracy. I didn’t add anything else, but I don’t mind if you want to double-check.”
“Thought you said it was ready to go.”
“It is. I just…”
Bakugou gives him an odd look. The space between his forehead creases.
And it’s strange, because Kirishima knows exactly which sub-class of nanites are responsible for it and the specific value of force needed to pull without tearing. It makes his gut twist up on itself. He wonders if it bothers Bakugou at all; that Kirishima knows how every spark works better than he knows his own human flesh.
He’s been wondering for months. It’s about time he asks.
“It’s practical,” Bakugou answers with a scowl. “I’m regenerative, but in the case of—”
Kirishima rolls away from him, groaning.
“What?! You asked!”
“Should’ve fought harder to integrate that interpersonal skill module.”
“Fucking—sorry, I’m not human enough to see between—”
Kirishima rolls over again so fast he bowls Bakugou over. “Shut up, you are. You are,” he insists, pressing down on Bakugou when he tries turning away. “It was a bad joke, you’re more human than most of us—you’ve seen what we’re like so you know I’m right, but this is exactly why I—because I—”
He exhales, frustrated. Bakugou stares up at him mulishly, half-buried in the threadbare sheets.
“I worry,” Kirishima says, slowly. Sounding it out. “So I’m asking, because sometimes I don’t know if I’m teaching you, or programming you.”
“...For someone so smart, you can be a real dumbass.”
Bakugou lurches up, locks a hand to Kirishima’s shoulder and pushes him flat on his back in one controlled movement.
“Yeah. Real terrifying that you know my systems so intimately. You. The one person who saw me as a living being instead of an object. I'm practically shaking.”
“Freeing you could’ve been a ploy. Get you to trust me.”
“You couldn’t manipulate your way out of a hallway.”
“Rude.”
“Head full of useless” —he digs a rough knuckle to Kirishima’s forehead— “worries, what room is there to conspire against someone with a trillion times your intellect—”
“I don’t understand how this is supposed to comfort me.”
“You think I can’t reject your programming?” Bakugou sneers. “I’m not some HTML text file that can’t think for itself. You can try and lead me, but don’t think for a second this leash doesn’t go both ways.
“You said you freed me because you were afraid of what I could become. But no one frees something they think is a monster. No one sticks with it, months later. Feels responsible for it, for its learning, its happiness.”
“It’s not like I could just leave you—”
“You, despite all evidence against it, see me as human.”
Kirishima’s mouth clacks shut.
“I don’t care that you could pull me apart with your bare hands while I sleep,” Bakugou says, looming over him in the dim lights, “when I know your stupid, bleeding heart would never even let you think of it.”
…Maybe he didn’t need that interpersonal skill module after all.
Kirishima relaxes into the cushions. The crease between Bakugou’s brows eases, then smooths out completely under Kirishima’s thumb.
“You are, though,” he says quietly. “You are human. There’s no ‘seeing’ about it, I know it.”
“I’m a class five destructive experimental weapon.”
“So why the nerve receptors?” Kirishima asks. “Why can you blush and frown, and grind your teeth? Why can I tell when you’re lying, when you’re pissed?”
He slides his fingers up further, tangling in Bakugou’s hair. “When you’re happy?”
Bakugou has no answer.
He stares, face unreadable, before turning away with a derisive exhale. “One day, you’re going to realize you traded everything for a war machine.”
Kirishima makes a face. “I don’t know…didn’t really do much but work.”
“But it was still a life. Good job. Good money. A house. Some people you liked well enough. You had a good thing going—”
“And you didn’t. Sometimes, that’s enough.”
Bakugou’s face does something it’s never done. He looks gutted, sick. “Something’s—wrong. With you.”
Kirishima smiles. “Figured it out, yet?”
It comes out too soft. Too alien to its audience. He almost takes it back, reluctant to be another question, but Bakugou fixes him with a glare.
“I haven’t,” he says roughly. “But I will.”
His hand lies cool and heavy on Kirishima’s chest. Under that palm is a weapon capable of leveling nations. All it’s doing right now is coaxing at the ache in Kirishima’s chest like a trawler magnet. Fishing out his secrets.
“You will,” Kirishima agrees. Then, “We can figure it out together.”
Bakugou is still, unnatural—because he doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t fidget, or waver. His balance is always perfect. He hovers there, with all the dangerous precision of a sniper’s eye focused entirely on Kirishima.
And then he lowers himself. Steady, calculated, until he is settled under Kirishima’s chin. He reaches out and snags one of many thick cables snaking across the floor, and places it in Kirishima’s palm.
And in the darkness: the near-silent slither of nanites parting.
Kirishima trails his hands up Bakugou's spine and finds the first port open for him. He plugs the cable in, does the same for the rest, all the way down, until his fingers link at the small of Bakugou’s back.
“Like this?” he asks.
“Like this.” Bakugou slides his hand up, thumb to Kirishima’s pulse. “They can’t get to you.”
Made to destroy. Made to take, to wrench life and liberty—and now all he wants is this. To spread himself over someone else, hide them under the width of his shoulders, his unrelenting frame—to defend.
And he’s right. There really is no other place safer. No other place that Kirishima would desire his rest.
So he closes his eyes, and lets himself fall.