kirishima has a crush on the dolphin swimming instructor at his summer job in the aquarium and they try to fall in love — but it’s a summer job and it’s a summer crush and there’s no way that anything can last because these kinds of things burn hard and fast

[dedicated to @what_a_l0ser]

kirishima is the embodiment of summer.

when bakugou first sees kirishima, with his apple coloured hair and obnoxious sharp toothed grin, that’s what he immediately thinks. he’s the embodiment of summer. he’s got warm, toasted skin and the brightest yellow shirt that bakugou has ever seen.

when he raises his brow, a tiny scar folds and dips in his forehead. bakugou wants to touch it. “oh, you’re working at the aquarium too?”

bakugou narrows his eyes. the way he talks it’s so. it’s so stupidly simple, like his words are clear as day, without ulterior motive.

“that’s so cool, man,” he says when bakugou tells him he teaches dolphins to swim. he’s fucking smiling through it all, his red eyes too earnest.

and this guy looks like everything summer: like ice cream trucks and melting popsicles and orange juice pitchers and lemon wedges and surfing shorts and the feeling of clear blue skies with the sun glaring down at you so you furrow your brows.

it’s like skipping stones across lakes and sneakers against concrete and baseball caps.

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work inevitably falls into routine.

kirishima’s in charge of feeding the fish at the underground section of the aquarium. it’s a summer job, anyway, and it doesn’t take long, though, so he ends up doing other small tasks around the place—

uraraka is one of the guides at the aquarium but she works at least two other jobs so she turns up late sometimes. kirishima memorises the handout and leads around a crowd through the section of sharks, covering for her.

then uraraka arrives, huffing and puffing, with the wrong work id around her neck and her shoes untied, flashes kirishima a grateful smile and takes over.

sero, routinely, pretends to not notice.

and towards the end of the day, kirishima waits for bakugou by the training pools.

the first time he watched bakugou with the dolphins, kirishima had watched transfixed.

there’s something, something beautiful about bakugou katsuki in water: he’s a clear figure of starched out block colours, tidied out muscles. the water is a layer of silk, and it glows golden in the sunlight.

bakugou walks deliberately, slowly, back paddling as he gently leads the baby dolphin towards him, shallow in the water.

he’s the most elegant thing kirishima has ever seen, as he pushes into the water and his blond hair spreads around him.

he works, one with the dolphins, and kirishima distantly thinks of ancient folklore—stories of ethereal creatures chanting hymns that heroes fall for, and hold them in the depths of the ocean till their lungs fill up with salt—

and as he watches bakugou resurface, push the hair out his eyes, kirishima finds his his knees week.

there’s something magical about how the water cascades down bakugou’s skin, lingering in the dimples of his back, the dips of his biceps. the sun plays a game of lights, and kirishima remembers fifth grade projects—

making kaleidoscopes with bits of glass and beads inside, the massive, shifting pattern of a thousand colours, ever shifting—and kirishima remembers being stupidly mesmerised as he shifted the base around.

and as bakugou turns to face kirishima, his pomegranate eyes stark, light caught in his eyelashes—kirishima can’t find a handle to all this. there’s nothing that kirishima can hold on to, unlike with his kaleidoscope.

and the thing about bakugou katsuki is that he’s not as imperfect as kirishima’s physics project with duct-taped ends.

bakugou’s prim and perfect like clear cut glass and sharpened edges and he’s—he’s well balanced.

around bakugou, kirishima finds it hard to focus. he feels like his clothes suddenly don’t fit him right, that his fingernails are unevenly cut and his cuticles are frayed.

but there’s something about this: about bakugou working with these dolphins that’s beautiful.

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bakugou’s sitting, back against a wall and his head is throbbing.

he doesn’t open his eyes, there’s the goddamn sun bleeding into his eyelids, casting his view in red. it feels hot against his face, and there’s sweat on his forehead, sweet and sticky in his tee shirt. he clenches his fists, nails digging tiny crescents into his palms.

his throat is dry, there is tannin biting at the back of his throat, and his tongue is uncomfortable against the roof of his mouth. his body feels heavy, hunched shoulders baring atlas’ sky. his neck hurts, his back is stiff.

his sneakers squeak against the concrete as he moves his legs to straighten them out in front of himself.
the sunshine is burning on his skin.

kirishima nudges bakugou.

of course it’s kirishima, bakugou knows before he even opens his eyes—only kirishima likes to push into bakugou, no regard for common personal space. bakugou isn’t sure where he’s stopped complaining.

bakugou cracks open an eye. kirishima’s leaning over him, grinning wide, his teeth razor sharp.

“i got you something,” he announces, and waits for bakugou to become excited: he raises his brows and continues to look at bakugou, expectant and clearly waiting.

/dumbass./ he’s got his hands behind his back as if he’s hiding something, his loud hawaii shirt’s sleeves rolled up, sunlight cast over his forearms.

bakugou sighs. “what.”

“popsicles!”

bakugou watches as a pretty smile spreads across kirishima’s face.

he holds out a pair of cheap popsicles in their tastelessly decorated wrappers—with the fifty yen stickers and little hello kitty-esque tiny chibi drawings printed out along the edges—and bakugou almost sighs again.

instead he shakes his head, pushes off the asphalt, dusts his palms and takes one of the popsicle sticks.

kirishima falls into step beside bakugou—again, too close: their shoulders brush—and they eat in relative silence, save for kirishima’s whine when the last bit of his ice lolly falls to the concrete. he turns back to bakugou, with his best puppy-dog eyes.

“heh, loser,” is all bakugou says.

kirishima whines, “please?”

he ignores.

“/pleeeaase/?”

bakugou grunts. looks at kirishima. he’s fucking pouting, lips pushed out, eyes blown wide and all of that bullshit. bakugou grunts again, then digs out a coin. “fuckin’ get your own, dumbass. how old are you, jesus.”

kirishima smiles brightly, face immediately lighting up. “thanks, bakugou!”

what the fuck.

he’s the embodiment of summer.

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the thing about being around bakugou is the feeling of distance.

bakugou is sitting right beside kirishima as they sort through the pins and biological name labels for different fish—the place may be a huge aquarium, but a lot of times the summer employees are handed with additional duties.

and kirishima feels bakugou’s knee pressing into his own as they sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor, but even then, there’s a distance.

because bakugou’s like a sight a thousand miles away, like a sunset dissolving into water: there’s the clouds, rusted orange and the sunlight breaking over.

there’s a hundred shades of pinks and yellows and blues and kirishima feels like reaching towards the sun, trying to feel the stew of the sky run through his fingers.

kirishima wants to hold bakugou’s hand, lace their fingers through, wants to ruffle his blond hair and wants to kiss bakugou’s cheekbones, his nose, the space between his eyebrows, the dimples of his shoulders and kirishima wants to run his palms over bakugou’s biceps except.

except bakugou’s a thousand miles away.

because, well. it’s a summer job.

it’s a summer job and it’s a summer crush and there’s no way that anything can last because these kinds of things burn hard and fast and they leave nothing but the dull ache of longing.

so kirishima tries to find comfort in this: sitting beside bakugou as they work through the laminated name tags with kingdoms and genus and species, with their elbows bumping, the warmth of their knees and their thumbs brushing as kirishima takes labels out of bakugou’s hands.

somewhere in the middle, kirishima says that he wishes he could swim with bakugou sometime.

bakugou grins, then, a boyish unhinged grin: and it spreads across his face as he locks eyes with kirishima—holy shit—and he says, “do you want to use these pools?”

kirishima blinks, first because /holy shit holy shit holy shit/—that shouldn’t be as hot as it feels and kirishima’s stomach stretches out like taffy. “what pools?” then pauses, lowers his voice, “you mean in here? into these pools? like breaking in?”

bakugou puts down a label. “where the fuck else, dumbass? of course these pools.”

“but why can’t we just. use, like, a normal pool. outside.”

“where’s the fun in that,” bakugou says, and there’s challenge in his red, red eyes, burning. he smells warm.

kirishima licks his lips, steadies his hammering heart. “but—” he stops here. thinks for a second, and says, “you’re going to do it even if i say no, aren’t you.”

bakugou shrugs, picks up the label again.

kirishima turns back to the laminator too. “then i’ll come,” he decides, finally. “you might do something stupid.”

bakugou glares at him. “right,” he says, “me. something stupid.”

kirishima just smiles. “you’re kind of impulsive, my man.” and it’s true.

kirishima has watched bakugou get loud and start yelling at some of the customers for trying to sneak food to the dolphins. heck, kirishima has recorded a whole exchange and uploaded it on r-slash-public-freakout and gotten the most upvotes in his entire reddit career.

bakugou scowls, twists his lips away. “shut up, get your fuckin’ work done.”

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bakugou shakes his head as he toes in first testing out the temperature, before stepping in slowly, feeling the cold water surround him.

when he eases in, he plants his feet on the tiled floors, listens to the burbling water, the croaking of cicadas. the sounds of the night, the calm of the sky: an inky black slate, the speckled stars, the broken out pepper-clouds.

there’s some lights underwater, and it diffuses out in the chlorine: the pool looks a warm shade of blue-yellow, and there’s a pair of lamps keening over them. he’s the kind to take it slow.

kirishima, however, crashes in. he tucks his knees under his arms and he jumps in, the water breaking around him. bubbles fill the pool and bakugou watches as kirishima sinks to the bottom, hard as a rock. bakugou closes his eyes, counts ten seconds.

kirishima resurfaces. he’s pretty, endearingly pretty, beaming as he pushes his hair out of his eyes, stretching his forearms and heaving a deep breath as if all his tensed up muscle chords were relaxing, bleeding out tension.

bakugou looks at kirishima’s chest, at the tanned, warm surfaces of skin glistening in the moonlight. at the shape of his shoulder blades.

kirishima looks right back.

and. it’s slow, but kirishima’s stepping towards bakugou. water laps against skin. bakugou can feel the water getting warmer. he can feel the spaces in between. it starts to become—to become too much—

bakugou opens his mouth, wants to say something, because—because fuck, there’s something wrong, there’s a feeling, akin to standing in a choked metro bogie, packed up person to person and not enough room to breathe, much less move around and he feels sick to the bone.

bakugou's stomach feels like it’s about to push up and into his lungs and his eyes start to grow hot and there’s a piercing pain behind one of his eyebrows and his neck feels warm, even in the cool of the water, and he fucking breathe and my throat feels sore and.

and he wants to say something, as kirishima steps closer, charming mirth dancing in his eyes—

he wants to say stop, he can’t do this, it was a mistake to invite him over, he shouldn’t lead kirishima on like this when he can’t fucking. he can’t fucking manage his own issues, it’d be too much to burden kirishima with—with all the shit he has going on, he can’t do this—

and then kirishima’s face splits into a broad grin and he pulls bakugou under.

/fuck!/

bakugou should have seen this coming. kirishima’s /such/ an idiot.

bakugou grabs onto kirishima’s leg and then it’s a tussle: there’s blood roaring in his ears and they’re pushing and flailing and it’s a push and a pull and just limbs and the gargling of bubbles as they try not to laugh underwater.

and finally, finally kirishima goes slack, pulls up for a breath.

bakugou flings a handful of water into his face. “you’re a fucking idiot,” he informs him.

kirishima is laughing, though, and he just pushes the water out of his eyes, straightens up, starts staggering out his breaths.

of course kirishima would do this. he’s so simple, so easy, so much like. so much like childhood days spent aimlessly.

he’s chuckling loudly, dimples pushed in charmingly to his cheeks, pushing his sopping wet bright red locks out of his face and grinning and—he’s the embodiment of summer.

kirishima wipes a tear out of his eyes. “yeah, well, you let your guard down. bakugou, heh, dude”—he’s still laughing, gasping through breaths and pointing at bakuogu’s chest—“you should have seen your face, you really just went—”

bakugou splashes more water, warm in the face. “/idiot,/” he echoes, with feeling.

but kirishima’s still giggling, his skin flush and his hair down and water cascading and sharp-toothed and all that glory and, well, bakugou just kicks up more water when kirishima starts to snort and refuses to meet his eyes. /dumbfuck./

“let’s do this again, sometime, yo?” kirishima says, once he finally mellows out his laughter.

“fuck you, you’re not coming next time.”

“hey, come on, don’t be such a stick in the mud,” he says, grinning.

because it’s so /easy,/ when it comes to kirishima.

/fuck./

bakugou rolls his eyes, pushes up against one of the tiled walls, looks up at the moon. kirishima follows.

“i get why you like to come here,” he says. there’s a hollow echo that hangs off kirishima’s whispers, off the edge of each syllable. “but why… why break in?”

bakugou sucks in a breath. “you were the one who said ‘break in.’ i have the fucking keys. and that old fucker aizawa doesn’t mind if i come in or out.”

kirishima looks at him as if realising something. “ohhh! uraraka said something about this! you’re a goody two shoes!”

“the fuck?”

“yeah!” kirishima pushes a fist into his palm as if to say that’s what! “she said that you used to get straight as and stuff through-out highschool. and kaminari said—wait. woah, dude, isn’t it like, way past your bedtime—”

“shut the fuck up—”

“or did you take a nap in the day?”

bakugou’s face burns. he did. “shut the fuck up.”

“oh, man, you’re so cute—”

bakugou pulls him under.

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kirishima takes him to a summer festival.

it’s noisy and bakugou complains the whole time but it doesn’t matter because kirishima catches him smiling sometimes, in the middle.

his eyebrows ease up in the middle and he allows a soft chuckle, something warm seeping into his eyes as kirishima wins him the biggest teddy bear at the darts stall with the cheap boards and frayed posters.

the lights burn bright and the night is alive. kirishima and bakugou compete over catching fish in little paper nets and bakugou calls him an idiot and kirishima just. just feels, through it all.

there’s the thundering of drums and people singing and they eventually find a place that’s relatively quiet at the fringes to watch the fireworks, a bag of potato chips between them.

and in the middle somewhere, there’s the noises that thunder on more muffled: like bass hitting your chest, and kirishima knows that bakugou is right here.

for once, he doesn’t feel a thousand miles away.

kirishima digs his elbows into bakugou’s sides as he points out the pretty firecrackers as they burst out in glorious colours.

and it’s here that kirishima looks at bakugou. the sounds suddenly grow slow, there’s the deafening pounds of kirishima’s racing heart and he leans into bakugou’s space.

and it /should/ be perfect.

it should, except it’s. it’s not. somewhere the pitch is off, the beat misses and the tempo is too fast and bakugou tenses up. pulls away a tiny inch.

kirishima freezes up, too.

“kirishima,” bakugou says, and there’s an edge to his voice. he bites it out, growls almost.

kirishima’s heart breaks. it aches. it really does, as he pulls back.

“fuck. i can’t. /fuck,/ this is all wrong—please, i can’t do this now, i’m—”

“i get it,” kirishima says, softly. it hurts. he smiles at bakugou. “hey, i get it.”

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bakugou's body burns all over. but he doesn’t stop talking, even as his voice hits the back of his throat wrong. he tells him everything. there comes a point where he can’t tell if he’s talking or not, he doubts kirishima can hear him over the incessant loud ringing.

noises surround them. the thrum of traffic, the rush of the city. there’s moths twirling around the streetlamps. all the lights around dim and blur into nondescript neon circles, the summer festival has long since wrapped up.

he holds on to the empty chips packet wrapper, though, and it crinkles as he turns it over while speaking, pretends to read the ingredients on the back—anything to not look kirishima in the eyes.

bakugou pushes his hand through his hair, feels the winds. he’s not crying, he swears he’s fucking not.

kirishima places his hand on his knee, though, and it’s warm. “i don’t think you’re a coward,” he says. “i think you’re just trying to adjust.”

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[timeskip]

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for kirishima, now, his summer job was a long time ago.

the world has moved on, since then: flowers bloom and wane and the sakura blossoms slip off the trees and the maple leaves start to rust then there’s snow.

and when he finally meets bakugou again—he’d like to say it’s chance, but it’s not, of course it’s not.

sero pushes kirishima and uraraka giggles from behind bakugou and then they both make matching lenny faces as they wave them goodbye and then it’s just the two of them. bakugou’s got a yellow scarf around him and kirishima can barely see his nose.

bakugou just glares at kirishima though, waiting, challenging him to speak first.

it’s never been a challenge for kirishima though. he smiles, warm. “you don’t look like one for winter, hey?”

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they finally settle down on one of the park benches and though the afternoon is cold, it’s still sunny. the winds are icy and they sting.

kirishima says, “you know. sometimes i want to eat the clouds. maybe they taste like candy floss.”

and bakugou swears to fuck, that’s when he fell in love with him.

because kirishima makes it so easy to love and—and bakugou realises he’s allowed to. just like that. or maybe he always was in love, and it’s only now that he’s okay with it.

whatever the case, bakugou feels the winds and then reaches for kirishima’s hand. this time, the pacing is perfect.

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[timeskip]

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kirishima kisses bakugou over the coffee he’s pouring. whispers his good morning.

“you’re like,” bakugou pauses here. really mulls over his next words, furrows his brows, turns the mug’s handle towards himself. meets kirishima in the eyes. “the embodiment of sunshine.”

[end.]

https://open.spotify.com/track/0ri0Han4IRJhzvERHOZTMr?si=49jzpoeRSsizDBeCAw6ogw

its just uh. you know. growing and changing as a person till you can love. and uh like. becoming the person that can be loved by that one person. and just. maturing. learning, unlearning. meeting at the wrong time but making it work (wipes tears) yo i just think its neat

its uhhhh waiting for each other, longing, pining - thats where its at