when bakugou and kirishima first hold hands - without /any/ intention, except for wanting that contact: not when kirishima had soared through nights skies with villains crawling bellow, but with the intent to /hold hands,/ nothing more: is when they are both eighteen. https://twitter.com/gummyconcrete/status/1322261005968187392

they're at graduation, and the procession is over. they watch the ceremony wrap up and clear out bellow them, as they stand out on the balcony of the hall.

there's curtains, and the lights are shutting off as time ticks by.

their hands are on the railing.

kirishima's fingers inch towards bakugou first - but they stop, he breathes, holds - and waits for bakugou to take him up on it.

it's a game of chess, of sacrificial pawns and calculated moves and it /feels/ complicated, when kirishima doesn't want it to be.

which is why he dares.

he dares move without a care for the rules. he dares let himself forget the checkerboard of black and white.

he only has bakugou: the curve of his jaw, the set of his cheekbones, his unruly tufts of hair settled on temples.

kirishima dares, for bakugou.

and bakugou takes him up on it, after a lull - an inhalation of breath, somewhere a neighborhood dog barks and the lights switch off downstairs.

kirishima only sees the curve of one of bakugou's cheeks, caught in ambient light, he guesses the rest.

but bakugou takes him up on it, and it's a brush of pinkies. a burn of contact. kirishima drowns in the warmth and his skin hardens, toughens up and pushes out to stone, ridges and edges becoming defined.

bakugou slips his fingers into kirishima's hardened digits anyway.

and they hold this, quietly.

in silence, save for the race of their heartbeats - bakugou holds onto kirishima's hardened hand.

edit: i wrote the word below as bellow because my stupid trilingual brain only is wired for phonetic languages forgive me