your-love-must-b-explosive.mp3

kirishima writes a song about bakugou and maybe falls in love a little. and its a slow kind of high school love, and they're both imperfect but they're working on it because they're just boys (ft. ghibli film references + heart eyes kirishima)

kirishima doesn’t know what love is.

he doesn’t know.

maybe it’s camera shutters and flowers and those singing valentine’s day cards. or maybe it’s commitment and promises and those other grown-up things that he’s not sure about because he’s just a teenager in love—or not in love, he isn’t really sure.

but if there’s one thing he can say with certainty it’s that his heart starts pounding and his stomach starts twisting up and he feels warm, warm all over when he talks to bakugou.

but love? he’s not so sure.

it’s just maddening and fast and slow and all in a rush and yet so achingly slow when he’s with bakugou in the lunch breaks. sitting on the grass, their bentos out before them. they talk about things.

well, kirishima is the one who talks and bakugou just, kind of, yannow grunts or puts in a cherry-picked curse word or whatever.

they talk and kirishima eats and his fishbones stack up in his lid because he’s way too conscious around bakugou.

making sure he’s clean and his manners are in check and he thinks that his clothes aren’t fitting him right so he shuffles around and he wonders if his hair looks stupid—turns out it does, bakugou calls him shitty hair and broom head and a dozen other creative nicknames—

and maybe bakugou can see the little pen marks at the ridge of his thumb and the stupid chibi doodles that he let mina draw on the back of his hand and then. and then the bell rings.

and he closes up his bento and tries not to wipe his fingers on the back of his uniform trousers as they walk back.

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.
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kirishima lies down on the floor sometimes.

the cold tiles press into his cheeks and dig into his back and he feels just a tiny little bit alone, little bit empty.

“did you finish your essay,” kirishima asks.

and, uh. it’s a stupid question—because this is bakugou we’re talking about.

he’s the one with prim and proper day planners listed out in his diary with sticky notes and those neat little plastic tag headers and he writes out the important things that he aims to get down in neat kanji and spaces out his characters tidily.

bakugou looks over at kirishima, his ruby eyes set as stone and the sunlight hits his cheekbones and he glows golden.

there’s the shadows of the tree they’re sitting under cast across his face, little leafs carving into the planes of his cheeks and nose. it shifts slowly over bakugou’s neck as he turns.

“obviously,” he says.

there’s a bit of a pause, until bakugou says. “no, you’re not going to copy a whole fucking essay from me.”

kirishima laughs loudly, shakes his head. “nah, nah, that’s okay man. it’s just. yo, you’re so good at what you do.”

bakugou narrows his eyes here, question painted in his face.

“like,” kirishima rushes in to explain, playing with the forelocks of his red hair. “like i mean. okay so it’s like this. you know—back in, what, fourth, fifth grade? we learn dividing fractions, right?”

bakugou blinks at him. kirishima feels self-conscious under his friend’s gaze.

“i just. i couldn’t get why you would turn the fraction upside down.

“i couldn’t get why you’d want to divide fractions in the first place. and it’s just. listen, what the heck is two fifths of three fourths—if i were cutting open an apple, what the actual heck would that mean. you get what i mean?”

his blond brows are furrowed up, and they meet in a tense dimple at the centre. “the fuck?”

kirishima sighs, lets out a dry chuckle, and leans back against the bark of the tree. “i just think that. if you have that—like, fractions, or whatever—if you have that sorted out. then you know what you’re going to do.”

“going to do? do what?”

“like. do... in life. you’ll know what to do in life. so—okay, did you have any issues in dividing fractions?”

“no.”

“what do you want to do when you graduate?”

“tokyo university or maybe keio. chemistry major.”

kirishima smiles knowingly. “see? exactly.” he shakes his head again. “i’m just saying… i don’t know what i want to do—” he shrugs here, helplessly almost “—but you. you never half ass anything, yannow? and that’s really cool.”

bakugou leans back now, as well. the shadows shift over his face again. he’s taken off his blazer, folded it out. he's never worn his tie, and the first pair of buttons of his shirt have always been undone. but.

there’s something pristine in the way he looks: lose white shirt, trousers, sitting here beside kirishima, expression calmly thoughtful.

and oh, how kirishima yearns.

how he spends days in his bedroom thinking about how he could maybe, possibly hold bakugou’s hand on the walks back home from school.

maybe he could kiss him slowly in some alleyway, maybe they could rub their knuckles into the scruff of cat’s necks together and kirishima would tell his best jokes and they could exchange little pecks on each other’s cheeks.

[tw; implied non-explicit nsfw]

maybe—maybe, just maybe—in the throes of the dreams kirishima has, shrouded in shadows and the scent of musty candles:

maybe kirishima could rest his head in the space between bakugou’s shoulder blades, maybe he could place open-mouthed kisses in the dimple of his back, maybe he could let his hands wander low, map out his skin, and feel bakugou catch his breath in kirishima’s ears—maybe.

tw end

it’s a dream.

but more than anything he wants to spend hours with bakugou just. in kirishima’s room, dancing to a pop song, playing fuckin’ monopoly or whatever. sharing secrets, insecurities, hopes, nightmares. maybe they could be something more.

but it’s never going to happen.

the bell rings. they get up, collect their things.

it’s never going to happen because—because there’s no chance bakugou likes him back. not in a million years.

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kirishima kicks one leg into the air, idly, presses his hands into the tiled floor. there’s a warmth in the coldness somewhere.

the thing is—he’s not sad, not really. he hasn’t been, not since.

he hasn't been sad since middle school: days of dark hair and tears and some self loathing bullshit that he’s long since tried to overcome but fuck, sometimes it seeps through the bomber doors, sometimes creeps up on him like a ghost and he cries himself to sleep because yeah.

it hurts, and he’s allowed to hurt because that’s what it is. it’s stupid, a man who swore to grow up: looking back on his wallowing past, and wounds that he’d wished had scabbed over open up again—you’d call it a badly written story. and it is.

so he’s on the floor.

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.
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they’re walking back home from school and kirishima tells him a dumb made-up-on-the-spot knock knock joke.

“shut up,” bakugou says, and marches ahead. but kirishima catches his ears turning pink, and he pulls his houlder bag tighter.

and it’s here that kirishima suddenly feels, he /feels/ so much for this boy.

everyone thinks bakugou’s rough and hard and tough because he is, he always has been barked out words and curses. but there’s softer edges, somewhere, clipped to rounded corners that people don’t see.

he’s strong, he’s firm, with his feet planted in the ground hard and that unhinged boyish smile of his as he takes on everything the world throws at him, no questions asked.

he’s the epicentre of an earthquake, with cracks spider webbing out on concrete all around him but he’s the centre of it, he’s the one in control, he’s the focus:

ash parting away from his gorgeous red eyes and blond hair and broad shoulders and set cheekbones and that one mole at the base of his chin and his rounded fingernails and his broad grins.

kirishima wants to learn more about him.

kirishima wants to know when bakugou’d ran his first errand, his favorite brand of chips, what popsicles does he have the most.

does he like to take out all the fishbones before eating or pull them out his mouth, does he laugh at old memories when he’s alone, which movie can he watch over and over and—

and kirishima’s heart aches for a second here, and he lets himself believe for an instant—maybe. maybe bakugou might like him back.

how kirishima would thank every star that burned if it became true. he’d bow his head low at the shrines on new year’s mornings and he’d feel so, so blessed every time he dared reach out to hold bakugou’s hand—if it were true.

but right now his chest is soaring, he feels like he’s flying, and he feels so overcome with all these emotions. he stops walking, for a second.

bakugou halts, turns over to look at him, brow arched. “what?”

“nothing, nothing… i just.” he bites his lips, looks his friend in the eyes carefully. “i /really/ like you, bakugou.”