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Waking up isn’t always violent.
That’s not to say it isn’t ever; when the dreams are violent, Bakugou wakes up violently, and he’s well acquainted with the smell of burning bedsheets and the echo of his own voice against his ceiling. But then there are the can’t fight dreams, the can’t move dreams, the can’t breathe dreams, and those have a special, terrible sort of novelty that he resents more than anything, because he knows that for as long as he has them, he’ll never really get used to them.
If he did, he might start to forget just how many ways he can suffocate. And that, apparently, is not acceptable.
Sometimes he’s fourteen, buried in the reeking guts of some sentient liquid-solid nightmare and half-wishing he weren’t conscious to see Deku clawing at it like he’s desperate to prove he’s every bit as useless as his name says. All Might never comes, and in the dream Bakugou has the fleeting thought that if he dies this time around, at least his goddamn bitch of a mother won’t backhand him for getting his clothes ruined.
Other times he’s on the tallest level of a triple podium with clamps on his hands and weights on his feet, and maybe if there weren’t a muzzle on his face he could yell loud enough to drown out the grotesque sound of people screaming from the packed grandstands around him. He doesn’t know what they’re cheering for. They must like seeing him like this. It must be entertaining. All Might forces a gold medal over his head, and the muzzle tightens.
(People say the Sports Festival was probably what made the villains take such a liking to him. As if he needed another thing to hate about it.)
Recently, the dreams like to feature two hands around his neck, disembodied and necrotic. The pinky fingers hover, lifted off of his skin, and he knows what would happen if they weren’t. He wonders if it’d be worse to choke or disintegrate. He’s in a metal box from the forearms down, and it digs into his wrists like a constant reminder that if he tries to pull anything he’ll blow his own hands off. All For One could forcibly activate Bakugou’s quirk and make him do it, he thinks, and wouldn’t that be disgusting? In the dream, he always waits for the moment that All Might smashes through the door and lets light into the corners of the villains' awful dump of a dive bar. He’s always let down.
And that’s it. The formula for a perfect nightmare. Strapped to a shitty chair, crammed into a little blue marble, bundled up in a straitjacket because sometimes he thinks that’s where he belongs, at the end of it all. People like to call him crazy. Unstable, when they're being more tactful about it. It’s why the villains picked him in the first place.
It’s why he’s always dreaming like this, too. It must be. Waking up, sheets pasted to his back with sweat, letting it cool on his skin so he doesn’t detonate it. Lying still long enough to let his heartbeat slow to something vaguely resembling a resting rate. Breathing exercises, but never the ones that tell him to hold his breath for too long. Lead in his stomach, chills up his spine. Ghost hands on his neck.
Tonight when he wakes up it’s raining, and the white noise of the steady downpour is as soothing as anything could really manage to be. There’s a window by his bed, but if he turns over onto his side, he can watch the water run down the glass of his balcony door. It reminds him of being a kid, sort of, when he’d watch the individual raindrops roll down the car window and pretend they were racing. Picking two next to each other, betting which one would reach the bottom first. The rain against the door is too heavy to do it now.
Not that he wants to. It’s childish. He’s not a child.
He’s debating whether it’s worth trying to fall back asleep when he hears it. Knocks on his door, four of them.
Bakugou sits up in bed. His instinct is to be on guard, because when he checks his clock it’s almost two in the morning, and there are only so many scenarios where a knock on the door at two in the morning can come with good intentions. But this particular knock is familiar, and as much as Bakugou doesn't want to admit that he recognizes it, he recognizes it. Four knocks--always four--and awfully loud for something so hesitant.
Bakugou grits his teeth. He’s not sure he wants to deal with this right now.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to see Kirishima. He has nothing against seeing Kirishima. But his eyes are glassy, and his back and chest are bare and clammy, and he can’t get his hands to quit shaking for a single fucking second, so maybe it’s more about whether he wants Kirishima to see him. Because even if Kirishima won’t judge him--and he won’t, Bakugou knows he won’t--he’ll worry, and that’s just as bad, because Kirishima shouldn’t have to worry.
Bakugou shouldn’t have to be worried about.
“The fuck are you waking me up for?” he calls out, eyes fixed on the door.
“I’m not,” says Kirishima’s voice, and of course it’s the voice Bakugou expected but it’s the words that his heart stops at. “We both know I’m not.”
“You don’t know shit,” Bakugou says. He’s bluffing, and he knows he’s bluffing, and Kirishima knows he’s bluffing, but it’s not about making Kirishima believe him. It’s about making Kirishima screw off. Convincing him this isn’t worth his time.
But Bakugou can't keep his voice from breaking, and Kirishima doesn’t screw off.
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t come in your room right now.”
“Because I’ll kick your ass,” Bakugou tells him.
The doorknob turns. Maybe tomorrow night he’ll lock it.
Kirishima’s hair is down, and the hall lights are dimmed at night, so when the door opens it’s hard to see his face; even as he takes a few steps inside, the little moonlight that reaches him from the balcony is distorted by the water on the glass.
For a moment, neither of them speaks. The sound of the rain should make the silence more bearable. It doesn’t.
“Well?” Kirishima finally says. “I’m here for my ass-kicking.”
Bakugou isn’t sure how to respond to that. He feels stupid, really, because they both know he’s not in a state to be kicking anyone’s ass at the moment, and even if he were, he wouldn’t do it. So he just glares into the dark, pathetically hostile. It’s his last line of defense, and it’s a weak one, because Bakugou knows that as hard as he tries to stare Kirishima down like he’s some sort of intruder, he’s never going to feel like one.
“What are you really here for?” Bakugou asks. His hands are still trembling. He buries them in the folds of his duvet.
Kirishima shoves his own hands in the baggy pockets of his sweatpants, hesitating. If he hadn’t expected Bakugou to ask, then he must not have thought this through for very long.
“I don’t know,” he says. There’s a spot on the carpet that he suddenly seems very invested in. “I thought I heard you moving around in here or something, and I know you’re sort of a heavy sleeper, so I figured if I knocked and you weren’t actually awake it wouldn’t--”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Kirishima looks up, and even in the shitty lighting Bakugou sees the way his eyes widen, but the surprise only lasts a second before it melts into a loose, resigned smile.
“Fair,” Kirishima says. “Couldn’t sleep, I guess. Didn’t want to be alone.”
“What makes you think I don’t, either?”
This time it’s a challenge that Kirishima is ready for, and he raises an eyebrow, like he’d been waiting for Bakugou to ask. “Do you?”
Bakugou only lets a second or two pass before he says, “Doesn't matter.”
Immediately it feels wrong, like the kind of thing he’d watch a slightly dumber version of himself say. It’s his conscience reminding him he doesn’t like lying, his judgment telling him it doesn’t count if it’s just to yourself, his common sense coming back with but it isn’t. Because there’s Kirishima, hovering a few steps in front of Bakugou’s door, suspended in uncertainty; his mouth twitches, like he knows underneath Bakugou’s answer there’s either a yes or a no but he can’t quite figure out which it is.
“I guess I’ll let you sleep, then,” he decides.
He takes a half-step backward, and his hand reaching for the doorknob is slow, like he’s giving Bakugou time to tell him he’d read it wrong. Maybe he had.
Bakugou can’t lie to him.
“Wait,” he mutters, and it’s barely audible, but in a room where the only sound is the distant static from the rain outside, it’s enough. Wait, because no, he doesn’t want to be alone, and if Kirishima doesn’t either, it’d bother Bakugou a little too much to let him walk away.
Wait, which Kirishima seems to take literally or something, because he’s frozen in place with his eyes wide and his fingers hovering over the doorknob. He looks stupid. Stupid, but not in a bad way, and the next best thing Bakugou can think of is cute.
That’s better, he thinks. That’s definitely better. It’s not a word Bakugou often feels compelled to use (and especially not as a compliment), but maybe it’s fitting that of all the people he could’ve given the honor of cute to, he had to pick the razor-mouthed, bullheaded force of nature who can squat twice his own body weight. Who could maybe even beat Bakugou in a fight if he learned a little tact.
Kirishima Eijirou, against all odds, is painfully, devastatingly cute. That, or Bakugou has just finally narrowed down his taste in men to something more specific than not Deku.
“The hell are you just standing there for?” Bakugou says, and the moon through the balcony door isn’t quite bright enough to see for sure, but he thinks Kirishima smiles--then lightning flashes as he’s walking toward Bakugou’s bed, and yes, he‘s smiling. He’s definitely smiling. The thunder lags the lightning by less than a second and Bakugou knows that means the worst part of the storm is close. The rain on the door and the window is torrential.
When Kirishima reaches the bed, he doesn’t sit down, just falls flat onto his back with his arms splayed out at his sides, like he’s made it his personal mission to take up as much of the scarce space there as possible. His hair is mostly fanned out in a messy halo around his head, but there’s a little piece in front of his eyes; when he turns to look at Bakugou, it flops down to join the rest and his face is just his face, open and pretty and smiling.
Bakugou’s chest hurts.
He doesn't know exactly when it started, this thing, but it's easiest to say it was after Kamino, because that's just basic psychology. Of course a person's going to get attached to someone who gets them out of a place like that, because suddenly this is someone coded with the ability to protect, and maybe that's why Bakugou was so hellbent on convincing people that he hadn't been rescued, he'd escaped. Escaped is safer, escaped means he doesn't owe anybody anything, escaped means everyone can detach themselves and move on and forget it ever happened. But that's not how it went, and what tells him this is the way he hears Kirishima and his brain offers up words like safe.
(There are plenty more words, too. Some have always been there, and those are the words like strong, and stubborn, and shitty hair; others are more recent, and those are the ones like soft, and warm, and pretty. Bakugou tries not to think too hard about it.)
And of course it had to be Kirishima, and of course it still has to be him--Bakugou knows Iida and Todoroki and Yaoyorozu helped, and he's past trying to deny that Deku did something, too, but it always comes back to Kirishima. Because Deku isn't the one who Bakugou subconsciously seeks out in a room full of people, and Iida's hand isn't the one he wants to reach for when he sees it, and Todoroki isn’t the one who makes him think cute or soft or pretty, and Yaoyorozu isn’t coming to his room in the middle of the night. It's Kirishima. It's just Kirishima. It's Kirishima chewing the end of his pen in class, it's Kirishima stepping on every crunchy-looking leaf he sees outside, it's Kirishima sprawled out on the sheets of Bakugou's bed and smiling like the sound of rain could put him to sleep.
“You’re the best,” he says, then, and Bakugou doesn’t know if it’s Kirishima’s way of saying thanks for letting him stay or just one of his oddly timed compliments, but his response is the same either way.
“Of course I am,” he says. Kirishima laughs at that.
“Seriously, though,” he says, and he rolls over onto his hands and knees, crawling up the bed to sit in the space beside Bakugou. “I mean it.”
Bakugou sighs. “Of course you do.”
Kirishima doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him.
There’s another flash of lightning outside, but this time Kirishima’s next to the window, and the light falls over his face in strips through the slatted blinds. One over his eyes, startlingly wide; one over his mouth, lips parted like there’s something he’s waiting to say.
“Why are you awake right now?” he asks suddenly.
A roll of thunder, a longer pause after the lightning this time.
“Because some idiot is sitting in my bed talking to me.”
Kirishima at least has the courtesy to breathe out a little laugh at that before he says, “You know what I mean.” It’s rushed, and his lips are pressed tightly shut afterwards, like it took every ounce of courage he possessed to say it. Maybe it did.
“Shitty dream woke me up,” Bakugou tells him, shrugging dismissively. “Happens. It’s whatever.”
“Oh,” Kirishima says quietly. “I’m--”
I’m sorry, he’d been about to say. He must’ve thought better of it. Known better.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks instead, and he can probably guess Bakugou’s answer to that, too, but a no must be preferable to a you don’t have to fucking pity me.
“Screw that,” Bakugou says.
“Didn’t think so,” Kirishima says lightly. Hands resting in his lap, he picks at one of his thumbnails. It looks like it might be bleeding. It’s hard to tell in the dark.
“Stop,” Bakugou says, reaching out to grab Kirishima’s wrist. “You’re gonna get blood everywhere. It’s gross.”
“No I’m not,” Kirishima protests. “And I see you biting your nails all the time, which is definitely grosser. Like, can you not taste the nitro residue or whatever?”
“That’s beside the point, dickhead,” Bakugou says, even though it sort of isn’t. He doesn’t let go of Kirishima’s wrist.
“Sure,” Kirishima laughs. He doesn’t pull his hand away.
Bakugou still doesn’t let go, and when he lowers their hands to the bed, his slides down to cover Kirishima’s. All he’d have to do is curl his fingers, and he’d be holding it.
He’d like to. God, he’d like to.
“Your turn now,” he says. Distractions. “Why don’t you want to be alone?”
In the brief silence, Bakugou can hear the rain outside. He thinks it’s gotten quieter since he’s been awake, but he can’t tell for sure.
When Kirishima answers, he’s quieter than he’s been since he got here.
“Same as you, I guess.”
Bakugou’s chest tightens.
Kirishima is biting his lip but Bakugou doesn’t yell at him for drawing blood with his razor-teeth, he’s staring down at his lap but Bakugou doesn’t tell him to look up. He seems nervous, almost, like he thinks Bakugou’s going to tell him to screw off and deal with it himself. Which is fucking ridiculous, because if the shit Kirishima’s dealing with is the same type of shit Bakugou’s dealing with, then something about that just feels unfair. Kirishima doesn’t deserve it. He’s a good person. He’s a better person. He’s the best fucking person.
And if there’s something keeping him up at night, Bakugou wonders what it is.
Maybe Kirishima dreams about whatever happened to him during his internship, whoever made him doubt for a single fucking moment that he’s unbreakable. Sometimes Bakugou resents the fact that he’ll never get to know the sorry bastard’s name, but other times he thinks it’s for the best, because he’d probably go to prison for the shit he’d do if he ever found it out, and the rational part of him knows Kirishima wouldn’t want that.
But then, maybe Kirishima’s dreams look more like Bakugou’s.
Kamino burning, hands slipping, hands missing. It’d make sense. It’s a different point of view but it’s the same memory, and Bakugou wonders if Kirishima’s brain latches onto the same parts as his does when it’s looking for ways to fuck with him. If Kirishima was afraid of dropping him as he was of falling.
Bakugou wants to ask.
Rather, he doesn’t want to ask, and that’s the problem. He doesn’t want to ask the question, it’s the answer he’s desperate for, but if there’s a way of getting an answer without asking the question nobody’s taught it to him, so he figures maybe it’s the sort of shit he’s supposed to figure out for himself. Anything worth knowing usually is.
Where his hand still sits idly on top of Kirishima’s, he wraps his fingers around it and squeezes.
It’s not the same as it was in Kamino--the angle’s all wrong, this isn’t how you hold a person’s hand to keep them safe, this isn’t how you hold a person’s hand at all--but it’s enough. And for a moment Kirishima looks down at his hand like he’d forgotten he had one, but when he turns it over so their palms are pressed together it’s the silent yes to Bakugou’s unasked are you thinking what I’m thinking.
When Kirishima speaks, his voice is almost a whisper. Like if he tries hard enough he can make whatever big thing he’s about to say smaller.
“I’m gonna tell you something,” he says. “About the day that we--”
“I know what day,” Bakugou cuts him off. “You don’t have to say it.”
“Right,” Kirishima says softly, and there’s something like relief in his voice. He glances down at the bed and with his free hand, he picks at a loose thread in Bakugou’s duvet cover. When he speaks again, though, he stops. “Did you know I’ve never been that scared in my life?”
Bakugou’s silent for a moment. He doesn’t know how he feels about that. He doesn’t know how Kirishima wants him to feel about that. He doesn’t know if they’re the same thing. All he can really think is that Kirishima might have just read his mind, and that’s something he really doesn’t know how he feels about.
“No,” he says. “Was I supposed to?”
“I guess that was kind of a weird way to word it, huh?” Kirishima laughs, but it’s not quite a real one. It doesn’t sound like his. He looks at their hands, and when he continues, it’s quieter. “I mean it, though.”
“Obviously,” Bakugou says. “You never say shit you don’t mean.”
Then Kirishima’s looking at him again, and Bakugou’s not sure what he’d said that was so remarkable, but Kirishima has this expression on like he’s just received the greatest compliment of his life, which doesn’t make any fucking sense. Bakugou’s just telling the truth. It’s nothing Kirishima doesn’t know already. He’s staring at Bakugou like he didn’t, though, and his mouth isn’t quite smiling but his eyes are, and everything about his face is soft, and it’s so soft that Bakugou could kiss him.
He really could.
But then Kirishima's saying, "Lay down," and he lets go of Bakugou’s hand.
He's less upset about that when Kirishima lays both hands flat on his own thighs, and Bakugou knows exactly what he's asking. He sighs and rolls his eyes, like he thinks Kirishima’s being stupid, but he’s full of shit and they both know it, because when he scoots down the bed to lay on his back, his head settles into Kirishima’s lap like it belongs there. Fingers thread through his hair, and he closes his eyes.
For a moment or two it's just that. Kirishima's hand in his hair, the sound of rain outside. There's another roll of thunder.
“I was so scared you’d just disappear again," Kirishima says suddenly.
Bakugou thinks of empty black warp gates and little blue marbles. People can disappear. And suddenly it’s very important that he doesn’t stop touching Kirishima, and he knows that eventually he’ll have to, but this isn’t eventually. This is now.
"But I didn't," Bakugou points out.
“I was scared I’d drop you."
"But you didn't.”
"I know," Kirishima says. His fingers brush the base of Bakugou's neck. Bakugou shivers. "It's the kind of thing I dream about, though, sometimes."
Empty black warp gates, little blue marbles. Kirishima’s hand, there, pulling him out of it. Kirishima’s hand, here, doing it again.
“Do something for me right now, then,” Bakugou says. One of Kirishima’s hands is still buried in his hair, but it’s too easy to find the other one where it rests on the sheets and take it. For real this time, and Kirishima laces their fingers together like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Don’t let go.”
“Deal.”
When Bakugou opens his eyes, Kirishima’s already looking at him. There’s a gentle smile on his lips, and the way his hair frames his face when he wears it down makes him look younger than he is. Softer.
“Y’know, your shitty hair actually looks half decent like this,” Bakugou tells him, and maybe that’s all he means, but maybe it’s a pretense for reaching up to brush a piece of hair from Kirishima’s face and tuck it behind his ear. “You should keep it out of your eyes, though.”
“Yeah?” Kirishima says. “Why’s it matter?”
His smile’s crooked. He reads Bakugou like an open book, but then again, Bakugou’s not making it particularly difficult.
Of course, if he were really an open book, he’d answer something like, Because your eyes are beautiful, dipshit.
Instead, he says, “Because there’s no way in hell you can see like that.”
Kirishima laughs, eyes squinting as his hand slides down from its place in Bakugou’s hair. One thumb strokes thoughtfully over his cheekbone. “Guess I’d be missing out on a lot, then, huh?”
He’s looking right at Bakugou’s face, and they both know exactly what he’s saying. Rather, Kirishima knows exactly what he’s saying. Bakugou is left to hope.
"Hey," Kirishima continues, because evidently he can’t let Bakugou catch a goddamn break. “I really care about you, y'know."
Bakugou’s instinctive response is to ask why, but he doesn’t. Maybe it’s because it feels like a stupid question, and maybe it’s because he knows he’s probably not ready to hear the answer.
Someday, maybe. Just not today.
“I do know,” he says instead. “You never let me fucking forget it.”
“No--like, really really,” Kirishima presses, and now Bakugou’s wondering what the repetition is about, because he’s pretty sure he got it the first time.
But maybe he didn’t, because maybe really really is different from really and there’s something to the words that Bakugou’s supposed to read into. Kirishima knows that isn’t always Bakugou’s strong suit, but there’s a clue in his eyes that says he wants Bakugou to try--hesitation layered over hope, like there’s something he only wants to say if he knows Bakugou wants to hear it. And it’s something big, it must be, because there’s nervousness there, too.
Bakugou’s not an expert at these sorts of situations, but there are only so many words a person in Kirishima’s position could feasibly be nervous to say.
I really, really care about you--Bakugou’s never looked up love in an encyclopedia or anything, but he wonders if the definition’s close to that. Maybe it’s one of the entries important enough to have a picture with it, and how do you begin to choose something like that, anyway? Love can't possibly look the same for everyone, but in Bakugou's head it’s as simple as two unsteady hands on sweat-soaked gray bedsheets, or a good night’s sleep, or rain on a sliding glass door. It’s the things he finds in hidden places and knows they must’ve been put there for him.
“You can say it."
His voice is quieter than he would've liked, but it still must be one of the rare instances where Bakugou's chosen exactly the right words, because Kirishima breaks out in a smile that could probably solar power the dorms for a year and Bakugou is so, so weak for it.
And then he says it. With that dumb fucking smile on that dumb fucking face, he says it.
"I really, really love you, Katsuki."
Bakugou knows he's smart--he's third in their class, of course he's fucking smart--but there's the occasional moment where he thinks something really goddamn stupid. And when he'd thought he was ready to hear those words come out of Kirishima's mouth? That was really goddamn stupid.
It takes the breath out of him but for once in his life it's in a good way, and he has to lift his head out of Kirishima's lap, because as much as he loves it there Bakugou needs to be sitting up for this. At eye level, at mouth level. At you're so fucking beautiful level, at it had to be you level, at just the right level for I really, really love you, too.
"Good," Bakugou tells him. And then, since he's Bakugou fucking Katsuki, and he goes after the shit he wants, he says, "Guess that means I can kiss you, then, huh?"
"You—" Kirishima blinks. Frowns, cocks his head. Bakugou can almost see the gears turning. "Wait. Do you want to?"
God, he asks stupid questions. He's lucky he's so fucking pretty.
"Yes, dumbass," Bakugou says. He smiles, even if it probably looks a little manic. He can't help it. "I want to."
Before Kirishima can reply, Bakugou does it. Kisses him. Right on his stupid, pretty face.
And when Kirishima kisses back it's like a punch to the gut, except it's one that Bakugou doesn't ever want to stop, and he's never really thought about how it would feel to kiss someone who loves him, but he knows that even if he'd tried, he wouldn't have had the right words for it anyway. Neither of them is very good at it but it's still good, it's still more than good. Bakugou still isn't wearing a shirt and he can't be bothered to decide how he feels about that. All he can smell is whatever shampoo Kirishima uses to wash all that goddamn gel out of his hair, one of those kinds with the stupid names and the aggressively masculine branding, and all he can taste is the lingering flavor of Kirishima's toothpaste, and who the fuck actually uses cinnamon toothpaste?
Kirishima's free hand is back in Bakugou's hair and he melts, but then there's a sharp bite at his bottom lip and he burns, because it's not a thing Bakugou would've thought he'd be into, but fuck. He's into it. He's really into it. When he answers by running his tongue lightly over the points of Kirishima's teeth, Kirishima answers back by tightening his grip in Bakugou's hair, and it's sort of uncanny how quickly he's figuring out all the right things to do but Bakugou isn't complaining. Bakugou couldn't find anything to complain about if he tried. It's a strange feeling.
Finally, Kirishima breaks away, but his forehead stays pressed up to Bakugou's when he says, "It's three in the morning, Katsuki." Quietly, right against Bakugou's lips. Like it's a secret.
Bakugou breathes out a laugh. "That's not even that late," he says, because there's something about being up at three in the morning that's a little more palatable than being up until three in the morning, even if he can't quite place what it is. Maybe the time has nothing to do with it.
Drawing back slightly to look Bakugou in the eye, Kirishima smiles. "When you have to wake up in the morning, you're gonna regret saying that."
"When I wake up in the morning it'll be Saturday," Bakugou says. "I won't regret shit."
"Guess you're right," Kirishima tells him, and Bakugou wants to say of course I'm right, don't you know the days of the fucking week--but then Kirishima continues, "When you wake up in the morning, can I be here with you?"
And that? Of all the people in the world that Kirishima could've fallen in love with, it's Bakugou who gets to kiss him, it's Bakugou who he wants to wake up next to, and it's not a secret that Bakugou's always had a thing for winning, but this might just be the greatest win of his fucking life. Because not only is it probably the smoothest shit Kirishima's ever said, it's the sweetest he's ever looked and the softest he's ever smiled, and maybe Bakugou's sort of entitled sometimes, but right now he knows that he is so lucky to have this. Bakugou is so fucking lucky to have this.
"If you're not, I'll come to your room and kick your ass," he says. "That's a promise."
Kirishima laughs, and he still has Bakugou by the hand, so when he falls backward onto the pillows, he pulls Bakugou down with him.
"I will be, then," Kirishima says. "That's a promise."
"Better be," Bakugou mutters.
Kirishima lets go of Bakugou's hand to lift his arm up, nodding toward the empty space on the bed. "C'mere."
"Who says I'm the small spoon?" Bakugou scoffs.
Kirishima raises an eyebrow, and one corner of his mouth quirks up in a smirk. "Are you telling me you're not?"
Bakugou looks at him for a second. He's never really considered it one way or the other, but the place under Kirishima's arm sort of looks like one he could get used to, so maybe he's on to something.
"Like you're complaining," he finally says, scooting forward to press his back up against Kirishima's chest.
Immediately he feels a strong arm wrap around his waist and pull him closer, and when Kirishima's hand finds his, Bakugou knows this was absolutely the right call, because it feels like this is exactly where he's meant to be--and now he knows he was right earlier, too, when he'd decided the word for what Kirishima makes him feel is safe, because that's what this is. Safe, warm. He doesn't like sleeping with his back facing the door, usually, but right now it doesn't matter, because Kirishima's there, and Kirishima loves him, and he's safe.
"I love you too, by the way," he says. Quiet, but just loud enough for Kirishima to hear--it's easier for him to say it like this, when Kirishima can't see his face, and he thinks maybe Kirishima knows that. "In case you were wondering or whatever."
"It's okay," Kirishima says. "I could tell."
Bakugou can hear the smile in Kirishima's voice. He imagines what it looks like--soft, glowing--and he closes his eyes to the thought of it and the sound of rain.
When Bakugou dreams, he dreams about the last thing that’s on his mind as he falls asleep. Usually if he's alone he tries his best to distract himself, but since he’s a stupid self-fulfilling prophecy or something, he always comes around to thinking about the nightmares, and some shitty gremlin in his brain tells him if you say so. It’s a cycle, and Bakugou has learned in about a dozen different ways that cycles are a bitch to break.
But he isn’t alone, tonight. He’s lying with Kirishima’s body curled around him, Kirishima’s arm draped over his side, Kirishima’s fingers loosely tangled up with his. He’s the furthest possible thing from alone, and he thinks maybe this particular cycle has a weak spot, because he’s thinking things that fill his chest with warmth instead of lead, and he doesn’t want to be presumptuous but he thinks there’s a chance this is something he can hold onto without fucking it up. He knows, at least, that he wants to try. Maybe that can be enough for now.
For the first time in weeks, Bakugou falls asleep quickly.
For the first time in his life, he dreams about love.