Chapter Text
“—Spotted just outside of Narita Airport! Our shining star has returned! We—”
“—Looks like he’s making his way to a private shuttle, most likely on his way home after a long stint away from—”
“—Surrounded by an entourage of heroes, pros and sidekicks alike, from all over Japan! Several are classmates of his from his time at U.A. High—”
“—Hard to miss those bright green curls, and that smile that says, ‘I’m here!’ Japan has missed its Symbol of Peace, and we’ll be welcoming him back with—”
“—Oldest friend and breakout hero, Bakugo Katsuki, is suspiciously missing from the—”
The remote to the television on the far wall is squeezed hard enough that the plastic body fractures. Bakugo hits the mute button before he has to hear any more, and heaves a sigh as he tosses the wounded remote onto his coffee table.
Okay. I see how it is, motherfucker. Everybody but me, huh?
All of the major news channels were covering the same spectacle, in their own words—he was back. It had been just over a year since Midoriya Izuku left for his work study project across the sea. Bakugo knew that he’d been stationed on I-Island, following in their idol’s footsteps by spending his time in America, chasing after that Shield woman. His eyes flick back up to the TV in just enough time to see Midoriya ducking his head to sit in the back of a sedan, sticking an arm out of the open window to wave at the people surrounding it before it pulls away.
And they picked the littlest car they could find to make you look huge. Typical flattering fanservice garbage.
Bakugo nabs the remote once more and turns the TV off, leaning back on his couch to rub at his left elbow. No one had told him that Midoriya was back. Or on his way back. Or thinking about coming back. He hadn’t heard from Midoriya in nearly a year. Not a peep. He grunts in the face of a thought that floats through his brainspace, bright and sparkling and distracting—they were supposed to be a team.
I mean, I guess I didn’t really reach out either.
He hisses as a finger catches over a shallow, still-tender cut along the back of his upper arm, and quashes the rational bit of his argument before it can get too loud. It was true that he hadn’t made any attempts to chat Midoriya up in that time frame. His text history proves that without much fuss. He’d figured that the nerd must have been busy with all that whateveritwas he was doing, being at whatshername’s beck and call for 12 months. That he’d shoot him a text when some development was made. Something noteworthy. Something worth bothering over. Hell, he’d been busy, too. Just bad timing. Bad schedules. Whatever.
He stands quickly, snatching his phone from the armrest of the couch as he makes his way toward his bathroom. What he refuses to do right then is get contemplative about something stupid, so he decides to wash the grime from his body proper as a distraction.
He spends longer than usual under the hot spray, inspecting all of the little cuts and bruises and scrapes along the left half of his body. The villain was small-time, but he had a vicious quirk that made his skin thick and scratchy like sandpaper, and wasn’t afraid to use it to his advantage when Bakugo pulled into close range.
Once he’s satisfactorily clean and relaxed from the warmth of the water, he steps out, and towels off. His phone buzzes against the counter a few times while he’s doing so, and he tries his best to keep calm as the number racks up to four, one after the other—he ignores it for the time being, focusing instead on getting dressed and brushing his teeth. He takes his phone along as he exits the bathroom, and dares to check the texts as he strolls into his bedroom. There are nine of the goddamn things, which is bad enough, but what catches his eye is the name of the sender.
As he reads them, the little bubble that indicates typing on the other end pops up, and eventually turns into yet another text.
Bakugo detests the flip-flop that his stomach does as he realizes that Midoriya has his hands on his own phone, and is texting him. Live. This very second. He groans, determines that the unsettled feeling is absolutely, definitely lingering frustration about his name being dragged into the news, clicks his phone into darkness, and tosses it on his bedside table. With a hand running through his hair, he decides that if he could wait a year for that punk to text him, then he could wait an evening to hear back.
Petty.
He plops onto his bed, snagging his phone once more to set an alarm for the early morning hours, and slapping it back down on the table with its face down. He wrenches his blankets back, gets comfortable under them, and allows himself to drift off. He’s up way past his bedtime anyway.
Bakugo wakes up at 4:42 in the morning, three full minutes before his alarm goes off, refreshed and ready for his day. He snatches his phone from its resting place to switch off the alarm before it has the opportunity to ring. While he goes about getting his daily orange, slice of toast, and glass of water, gym bag hung on his shoulder as he eats, it occurs to him that there are likely people at the gym. People who would ask him questions he’s not quite ready to bother with finding answers to.
He could be there. That’d be worse.
The likelihood that Midoriya was at his gym at 5AM, after losing more than half a day to around-the-world travel, was low. The thought still unnerves Bakugo just enough to frighten him away from his preferred gym, and he settles instead for the gym in his apartment complex.
He’s immediately at ease when he finds the place empty, and sets to work as usual. By the time he’s at the end of his regimen, and settled in on the treadmill for a jog, there are the 6AM stragglers wandering in to get a bit of exercise in before work. He can feel a few lingering pairs of eyes on his back, and luckily, that’s the end of it. He gets finished with his little bit of easy exercise, grabs his bag, and heads back up to his apartment for a shower. His daily routine is scrapped, and he finds himself with way more free time before his shift than he’s used to. Once he’s clean (yet again), he allows himself to sit on the couch, and just goof off before he needs to get going.
The amount of texts that he has by 7AM is jarring.
His nose wrinkles and his eyes narrow as he comes to grips with being called both rude and a jerk by 7:12AM. He pockets his phone as he stands, far too frustrated at the overwhelming amount of text-based detritus he has to sift through to bother with it at all. He turns instead to put away drying dishes from the night before, wipe down the stove, sort through the pantry, and generally waste time until about 8AM.
The train ride to the Genius agency is fairly short, and wholly uneventful. Bakugo enters, clocks in, sits at his desk, and begins to sort through the various forms he filled out in haste the evening before, checking for errors with instantly bored eyes. Once he’s certain of their validity, he delivers them to Reports and Revenue.
The majority of his day is spent behind that cursed desk—analyzing reports for interns, crunching numbers and fact-checking his colleagues on their own forms. It’s the part of the job he hates the most, but he can hear Best Jeanist’s stupid, always-right voice in the back of his head: Do the things you hate until you can no longer find flaw in the need, and then you’ll truly understand your job.
By one o’clock he’s up and digging his wallet out of his back pocket. He strolls over to the konbini on the corner, coming back with an obento and a cup of iced black coffee. He eats in silence while looking over yet another form, and does his very, very best to ignore when his phone begins to buzz. He gulps down the last bit of his coffee and reminds himself that if not now, then it’ll just be later, and whomever it is that’s bothering him will have even more opportunity to pester him if he waits.
He hates the nerve she strikes, so instead of responding, he drops his phone back down onto his desk with its screen down and shovels the rest of his food into his mouth. He gets through the rest of his lunch, and the rest of his day, without allowing for distraction.
As he stands and prepares to take yet another stack of files to R&R before his trek home, he can hear chattering from the row of intern desks on the other side of the room. The name “Midoriya” hits someone’s lips and Bakugo is all but bolting down the hall, forms clenched in one hand, before he realizes he’s projected himself from his spot. He slips the slightly wrinkled paperwork into the appropriate inbox, and discovers that he has neither his wallet, nor his train pass on his person. He turns with a grunt and strides back to his desk as if he had not just fled from it a moment earlier.
His approach is met by the call of a dark-haired intern, whose quirk Bakugo couldn’t remember if his life depended on it. “Hey! Bakugo! You’ve known him for, like, ever, right?”
“Who.” It’s not a question, but a statement, which he hopes will throw them off. He hopes beyond hope that they’ll get the hint, and drop the subject.
“Midoriya Izuku! Deku! He just got back yesterday. It was on the news!” No such luck.
“The HNS mentioned you—” A young woman at the desk adjacent pipes up, and is immediately cut off by a hand in the air from the person who addressed Bakugo initially. Instead she offers a nervous smile, clearly still interested, and changes the content of her own non-question. “They mentioned you two have been friends for a long time.”
Bakugo levels both with a dark and mildly threatening look, snatches his pass from his desk, and pockets his wallet. “Ain’t your business.” Before either of them can manage another word he turns, and makes his way to the front of the building. He isn’t quite able to make it out the door before a familiar voice stops him cold.
“Katsuki.” Best Jeanist steps up behind him, his arms crossed loosely and his stance casual.
“Don’t,” Bakugo warns, turning to look at him with a mild sneer, and points up in the direction of his face. “Bakugo. You call me Bakugo.”
“If you had a hero name, I’d gladly use it,” Jeanist teases, and offers a small shrug. His tone is lilting, almost playful, and very much outside of his usual stoic demeanor. “Until you decide on one, I’ll help you along in your hunt by calling you innocuous things that bother you.” Bakugo lets out a noise of disgust as he drops his arm, and Best Jeanist continues. “I heard that a very good friend of yours has—”
“Save it,” Bakugo interrupts with a sigh.
“I was going to ask if you needed some time away from the office,” Best Jeanist cuts back in, extending a hand in an idle gesture. “He’s been away for quite some time, as I understand. If you need a few days to catch up, I’d be happy to offer them to you.”
Bakugo’s expression twists into one of general distaste, and his reply comes quiet and uncomfortable. “No.”
Best Jeanist dares to let an audible sigh past his lips. “You’ve come so far, you know. And somehow you still manage to baffle me with your brusque attitude, and flippant treatment of your own feelings.”
“Not lookin’ for another parent."
“And yet,” Best Jeanist continues. “You speak to me the same way you speak to the ones you already have.” He smiles behind the collar of his costume at Bakugo’s wrinkled nose. “The offer stands. If you need the days off after all, you have only but to ask.” Another shrug. “Nicely.”
Bakugo rolls his eyes, and gives Jeanist a questioning look. “Since when do you let people off for bullshit reasons?”
“I’d ask you to refrain from that sort of language, but I know you’ll choose to ignore me, regardless of how nicely I ask.”
“Don’t act like you know me.”
Best Jeanist fixes him with an oddly curious look, his head tilted slightly to the side. “Oh? Do you plan to surprise me?”
Bakugo makes a face, and finds himself unable to rein in the redness that tints his cheeks. “Screw off.”
“I would go as far as to say that reuniting with loved ones is one of the most important—”
“Do not use that word.”
Best Jeanist pauses, lets the silence speak for him briefly, and then continues as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all. “—Reasons to take leave, aside from the need to attend to one’s own health.” He looks down at Bakugo, his single visible eye bright, green, and piercing under the curtain of blond hair that swoops just above. “You know that all things that I do, I do with good reason.”
Bakugo chooses to stay quiet, returning Jeanist’s look with a challenging one of his own.
“Enjoy your evening, Katsuki.” Best Jeanist steps back, slipping his hands into his pockets as he turns to walk back up to his own office. “Perhaps a call to your friend might ease the tension in your shoulders, hm?” He slips through the double doors at the end of the hall without so much as a glance back.
Bakugo is out the door and swearing under his breath in less than a second.
The first thing he does when his apartment door finally closes behind him is curse in earnest. Expletives slip out in a nerve-cooling run-on sentence as he does his best to drown out his boss’ parting words. He drops onto the couch, and the faint buzz in his pocket alerts him to yet another text from god-knows-who. He wrenches the device from his jeans and tosses it onto the far side of the couch, then hops up to work on some dinner.
After about twenty minutes of work, he has a fat tamagoyaki on a bed of rice for dinner. He eats in blessed silence, avoiding his battered television remote, and takes a shower immediately after. The night is still young when he’s clean and dressed for bed, but he finds himself exhausted despite the slowly dying light filtering through his windows. He chances a glance in the direction of his phone, and eventually caves. He takes it over to his bed and sits, scrolling through his texts.
No sooner does he open the set of texts from Kirishima than his phone begins to ring, and the same name is blown up across the width of his screen. He briefly entertains the idea of ignoring the call, but ultimately decides to answer, and does so with an exaggerated frown on his face. “I’ve told way too many people to back the fuck off, hair. Don’t add yourself to the pile. Do me a favor and—”
He hears a bit of nervous laughter on the other end, and then Kirishima’s voice, clearly speaking to someone else, saying “Go, go!”
The chuckle is an alarmingly familiar sound, and sends a chill racing up Bakugo’s spine. “This isn’t going—” Not-Kirishima barely utters a few words before Bakugo scrambles to hang up.
That son of a bitch.
He moves as quickly as he can to turn his phone completely off. Once that’s done he sets an alarm on his clock, after fussing with it long enough to remember how to get the thing to go off at the proper time, and turns off his bedside lamp. He’s much too angry to sleep, but he hopes that if he pretends for long enough, his brain will get the memo.
Wednesday morning greets Bakugo with painfully loud wailing from his little digital alarm clock. He smacks it into submission, makes a point of turning the alarm off so it doesn’t bother him the next day, and heaves himself out of bed to get breakfast, and work out in the gym in his apartment complex once more. He returns around 7AM for a shower, and nearly walks out the door to head to the train station without grabbing his phone from his nightstand.
Bakugo finds himself holed up in Best Jeanist’s office by 11:00. He’s alone, with his work spread across a large, usually-empty desk to the side of the room, and pinned in organized groups to a corkboard wall just above. He’s analyzing routes, patterns of activity, and personnel placement in earnest, spending one day each week in his own extended work study. This part of the job is one he enjoys immensely, and he finds that his Wednesdays slip by faster as a result.
Noon comes and goes, and as his regular lunch hour rolls closer he finds himself more and more engrossed in the data before him, his determination fueled by his idle hunger. He hears the door open, and doesn’t make any move to look up from his work.
“You have a visitor,” the ever-calm voice of Best Jeanist calls across the room.
Bakugo is up on his feet and bristling with anxiety in less than a second. He shoots a wide-eyed look at the door, finds only his boss standing in the room, and lets out a deep sigh. “Jesus christ. Don’t do that.”
“I haven’t done a thing,” Jeanist insists, his eyebrows pinching together slightly with what must be a frown. “In fact, what I’ve done for you is a favor . I told him myself that you were working on things that could not be interrupted. You can rest easy.”
The reassurance is enough to help loosen Bakugo’s tense joints. “...Okay. Alright.” He turns and plops back down in his chair, swiveling to face the files on his desk once more. Bakugo closes his eyes, reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose in an attempt to ground himself and re-center his thoughts. The feeling of a pair of hands carding through his hair sends a little shiver of pleasant warmth across his scalp, and much to his own surprise, his hand drops back to his lap, and he leans into the touch.
Best Jeanist combs his hair to the side with gentle fingers, the action almost familial in its ease. He arranges his hands on top of Bakugo’s messy mop of hair, and rests them there as if to keep his hair from fluffing right back up. “This is emotionally strenuous for you.”
The almost blissfully simple moment dissipates in the second that Best Jeanist opens his mouth to criticize. Bakugo scrunches his face up tightly, and huffs a sigh. “Lay off.”
“You’re letting me touch your hair without cursing at me,” Jeanist observes aloud.
“Fine. Stop. Fuck you.” Bakugo leans forward to escape Jeanist’s touch, and reaches up with one hand to swat in his direction.
Best Jeanist steps closer, undeterred by the outburst, and rests his hands instead on Bakugo’s shoulders. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re a grown man. You can make the decisions that you feel are best for yourself.” He takes an uncharacteristic moment to gather his thoughts. “But I implore you to seek a solution, whatever it may be. This is very unlike you.”
Bakugo takes only the briefest of moments to consider what his boss has said before he’s leaning away again, pulling out of Jeanist’s gentle grasp with a scowl. “God. You’re such a mom.”
“I’m sure yours could use a break. It must be an exhausting job.” Best Jeanist steps away from the chair that Bakugo sits in, and heads toward the door.
“Real funny.” Bakugo sits back in his chair once more, and sweeps a look over his work. He glances in Jeanist’s direction, just long enough to see him reaching for the door handle. “...Who was it?”
Best Jeanist pauses, and looks over his shoulder. “The young man with Fat Gum’s agency. Red Riot, I believe his name is."
Bakugo meets Jeanist’s eyes for a moment, then breaks the gaze, and lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Is that good?”
“Better than the alternative,” Bakugo groans, and runs a hand through his hair to ease it back into his natural, unruly spikes.
“He’ll be coming back after you.”
The casual nature of Jeanist’s response immediately sets Bakugo’s nerves alight. “What?”
“Your friend,” Jeanist offers politely. “Kirishima Eijiro. He insisted that he’d be back to meet you after work, and asked when you’d be leaving.” He catches a flash of panicked fury in Bakugo’s eyes and holds a hand out, gesturing as he speaks. “I told him you were off at six today. That gives you an hour’s head start.”
Bakugo’s anger deflates almost immediately in the face of Best Jeanist’s obvious favor. He slumps in his chair, lets his head fall back such that he looks toward the ceiling, and covers his face with both hands.
“You can thank me later,” Jeanist supplies helpfully, his tone playful yet again. He says nothing further, and simply leaves the room, clicking the door shut behind himself.
Bakugo slides his hands slowly down his face, and then lets them drop to hang at his sides. He keeps his head tipped back to stare blankly up at the tiles of the ceiling. “...Yeah. Thanks. Asshole.”
At 5PM, Bakugo is trotting down the stairwell, and making his way home. He takes an unusual route on purpose, going out the back door instead of the front, and walking nearly a mile to go to a different station. He catches a slightly later train, and ends up at home around the time that Best Jeanist had told Kirishima he was going to be off of work.
He whips up a new batch of rice while he goes about cleaning his small kitchen, and by the time it’s ready, he’s all but lost his appetite. His stomach aches with a mix of indignance and stress, and even looking at the pot of fluffy white rice makes him nauseous. He glances to the clock on the far wall of the living room, sees that it’s just barely 6:45PM, and groans.
Too early to sleep.
He opts instead to go down to the gym for an evening round of exercise. A gym bag with a towel, a bottle of water, and a pair of wireless earphones is all he brings aside from his keys and his phone. Once he gets settled into an impromptu routine, he finds it hard to stop himself. He lets out all of his frustration and stress in the form of physical exercise, doing double-sets to tire himself out quicker. The burn feels good, and the thumping rhythm in his ears takes his mind off of anything but the here-and-now.
He wraps up later than expected, and trudges back up to his apartment by 9:45. His shower is short, his small meal is shorter, and despite the fact that he has thoroughly tuckered himself out in the gym, he’s certain he’s never been more awake in his life.
As he plops down into bed, his attention shifts to his phone, which lies innocently on his bedside table. He eyes it with unnecessary caution as he reaches up to grab it, and with great hesitation, holds the button down to wake it back up. The device is instantly flooded with notifications of texts, missed calls, and other various social media alerts. He clicks through them quickly, making no effort to read or process them, but simply to get the notifications to disappear. He catches a red number 5 next to Kirishima’s name in his call registry, rolls his eyes, and swipes to delete the notification altogether. He sets his alarm, tosses his phone onto the table once more, and settles in bed.
He lies awake for what feels like hours. His hands ache for action, something to distract his restless mind from his boredom.
Phone?
The idea of a bright screen in the darkness makes him squint in distaste.
Nah.
From there, his mind begins to wander. Resting in the drawer in his nightstand, just below his despicable phone, is a—
Good fuckin’ god.
The thought immediately brings a hot blush to his cheeks, and an unwelcome shiver along his inner thighs. He reaches up to slap a hand over his face, and groans out loud.
No. I have work tomorrow. I’m not dealing with this right now.
Renewed embarrassment at simply owning the thing makes his stomach roll, and prompts him to huff in frustration. He rolls over to lie on his front in a feeble attempt to smother the embers of his libido. Sleep does not come easily, but eventually, it does come.