Chapter Text
1A and 1B are in the habit of monopolizing the rare quiet evenings any number of them share off to throw parties like they can pretend they are still in college. Friday night finds a good number at one such party, with Katsuki sitting on the couch of the relatively quiet living room, covered in female classmates. One of the weirdest developments of these shindigs, Bakugou had long since been adopted by the girls as some kind of big scary gay guard. No one's quite sure how it happened, exactly, but every gathering these days results in at least one moment such as this:
Jirou is asleep on his shoulder. Mina is laying half over his lap. Momo's head is perched on his knee, his hand resting carefully on her spiky hair. Silently, Sero and Kaminari encroach on the quiet moment, creeping in with a permanent marker in hand.
One scarlet eye cracks open a hair.
They stop dead.
He does not move.
They do not breathe.
“If you touch one hair on any of their heads, I will burn through this alcohol faster than an ethanol engine and personally light you on fire.” Katsuki is an artist; delivers his promise with the impact of a shouted death threat despite his voice coming out a barely audible whisper.
“Dude he isn’t kidding.” Kirishima chimes in from the doorway, full volume and gaining his own sliver of glare for his troubles. Big hands come up in automatic surrender as his best friend retreats back into the hall, far too accustomed to the surprising chivalrous streak at Bakugou’s core and knowing full well that his best friend status will not grant him immunity to any resultant wrath if he mannages to disturb one of his sleeping damsels.
“Yeah, haven’t you seen Monoma’s eyebrows?” Cammie asks, traipsing in the moment the doorway clears. A bit unsteady on her feet, she wobbles past the frozen duo and beelines for the couch, draping herself unceremoniously over Bakugou’s shoulders. Kaminari feels the righteously indignant rush of jealously that always comes with witnessing Bakugou’s unfair ability to pick up chicks (dude’s gayer than all hell, he knows this, but it does nothing to extinguish the instinctive reaction that this is just not fair)…
Cammie’s looking at them over her shoulder, arms wrapped around Bakugou’s mountainous shoulders and the fact that he allows it will never stop being uncomfortable, like watching someone poke a tiger with a stick and expecting each poke to be the one that tips the beast over the scales of patience and triggers a mauling… but it never comes. Not in the magic bubble of Katsuki-zen that only emerges at parties, when his female friends are toasted and in need of a rock. She’s still staring with an expectant eyebrow, and Kaminari yanks himself back to the real world with an audible snap. “No, I haven’t seen Monoma.” Kaminari grouses.
“Go find him. You can ask him why I had to teach him how to paint them on…” Cammie waggles her eyebrows as if to emphasize the point, snuggling up opposite Jiro and getting comfortable, and Katsuki allows it like he always does.
The man’s eyes are closed once more, apparently content that his threat will be enough to deter them.
Denki feels that magic combination of adrenaline, stupidity and alcohol mixing in his system and giving him the push he needs to bypass his survival instincts. With a manic grin, he creeps past the horrified face best bud and apparently no longer partner in crime, dodges Sero's panicked, grasping hands, and goes in for the kill…
Denki gets the marker uncapped and poised within an inch of Cammie’s face before all hell breaks loose.
***
Katsuki appears at the beer pong table ten minutes later, stone-cold sober.
Kirishima’s taken a bit aback, “Dude, you were like… at least two sheets to the wind last time I saw you…?” draws the last bit out into an uncertain question.
“Denki decided to fuck around and find out.” Katsuki grumbles, eyeing the board and their competition, assuming his best friend will join his team on automatic. Which he will, of course, that’s a given.
“Of course, he did,” said best friend heaves a dramatic sigh and seeks out Kaminari with his eyes even as he plucks a plastic ball from the little water cup, Katsuki already preparing for his first shot. Contact: slight wisp of definitely-not-cigarette smoke on the balcony. Steaming lump of human writhing around on the concrete in abject misery. Still alive, then. Dumbass. Kirishima rolls his eyes and goes back to the game with a gusto, the strange little ritual of “guard dog Katsuki” just another point in favor of his friends’ manliness, so far as Kirishima is concerned.