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Nights off were few and far between. Even with the decrease in crime since their Yuuei days and the years after, evenings were spent patrolling, filing reports, fighting villains. Every once in a while, though, Bakugou and Kirishima would leave their hero costumes at home or at their agencies and steal away some time for themselves. They'd spent the morning working, but it had been mostly paperwork and Bakugou could only defend his so-called excessive use of force so many times before he snapped. So he texted Kirishima, who was even less adept at dealing with the legal documentation of the job than he was, dumped what little was left of the tedious work on his sidekicks, and made his way to their usual meetup.
The cafe was cozy and quiet and run by a retired hero. Kirishima had discovered it when the pair had been searching for places they could go in public without immediately being swarmed with fans or media. Kirishima never seemed to mind the attention, but Bakugou always preferred to just be able to have a cup of coffee with his boyfriend without cameras speculating on their relationship. And Bakugou only liked the press when it was showing him doing something badass. A coffee date wasn't.
Having arrived first, Bakugou nodded to the barista, peeled off his jacket, and settled into their usual booth back against the far wall. He recognized a few other regulars, all involved in the hero business in one way or another, but it wasn't busy. It never was, which suited Bakugou perfectly. Less distractions. Less to keep track of. As he waited, he kept an eye on the news. He had alerts set up and his sidekicks would contact him if anything major happened, of course. But he was still somewhat in work mode; unlike Kirishima, Bakugou always had a difficult time shutting off. He remained in that strange limbo until Kirishima arrived.
Kirishima grinned at him from the door, but stopped by the barista first. He ordered and chatted with her as he waited for the drinks and snacks. Bakugou watched. No matter how many years they'd been together, he never got tired of watching Kirishima, the way he threw himself into his smiles with the same reckless abandon as he threw himself into battle; the way he walked, near to bouncing, light despite his muscle, comfortable in his skin, hardened or not; the way he expressed with his entire body, open and emotive regardless of whether it was anger or sadness, or, Bakugou's favourite, laughter.
With a wave to the barista, Kirishima carried over their drinks- black coffee for Bakugou, some whipped cream covered monstrosity for himself- and set them along with their plate of snacks on the table. Without sitting down, he placed his hands, warm from the hot drinks, on either side of Bakugou's face, leaned in, and greeted him with a gentle kiss. Bakugou could feel him smiling through the kiss and couldn't help but smile in response. “Hey there,” he murmured.
“Hey babe,” Kirishima said once he'd pulled away, voice soft. He pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the other side of the booth before scooting in next to Bakugou. “Too much paperwork, huh?”
“I blow shit up,” Bakugou grumbled. “Of course there's gonna be some collateral damage.”
“Did you even get started on the report for that hideout we busted up yesterday?”
“Nooope.” Bakugou smirked and took a sip of his coffee. “Leaving that mess to the sidekicks.”
“Oh, you're cruel,” Kirishima teased. “They're gonna be working on that for hours.”
“They knew what they were in for when they signed on.”
“I should poach 'em,” Kirishima mused. “Offer them a better way of life and all.”
“What, did you finish the damn thing already?” Pointedly not looking at him, Kirishima busied himself with licking the cream from his straw. Bakugou snorted. “Didn't think so.”
“Hey,” Kirishima said brightly, instead, not even attempting to disguise the change in subject, “date night tonight?”
“Unless you want to go back to work,” Bakugou said with a raised eyebrow. He doubted it. Not when work, as it seemed to be tonight, was fighting papers rather than villains. And not when they were sore and tired from yesterday's fight. And definitely not when they hadn't gotten an evening together in what felt like ages. “I'll do dinner. Been too busy to cook lately.” They both knew it wasn't the cooking Bakugou missed. He just liked making food for Kirishima. It was an easy way to make him happy.
Kirishima tapped the end of his straw onto Bakugou's nose, leaving a drop of cream. He chuckled at Bakugou's scowl, then pushed in and kissed away first the cream, then the grimace, until Bakugou was laughing along with him, a familiar heat in his cheeks. It didn't matter how many times Kirishima was publicly affectionate with him- or privately affectionate, for that matter. All these years and it still made Bakugou blush. Kirishima gave a victorious grin. “Sounds good to me.” He pressed another kiss into Bakugou's lips. Slower. Patient. He pulled away with a quiet smile. “There's something I've been meaning to show you, too. We can go there after.”
Bakugou considered it. Not that there was much to consider. If Kirishima wanted to show him something, then he wanted to see it. But he took a sip of his coffee first. “Not gonna have to dress up, am I?”
Kirishima pouted. “I wouldn't do that to you, would I?”
“Conveniently forgetting about your cousin's shitstorm of a wedding again, huh?”
Kirishima pulled a face. “Don't remind me. If I never see another pickle it'll be too soon.” He shuddered. “I seem to recall you constantly getting hit on.”
“Why the fuck you think I don't want to have to dress up?” Rolling his eyes, he added dryly, “Not that getting hit on by my boyfriend's fucking creepy extended family isn't hot and all.”
“They're not creepy, they're just...”
“They're fucking creepy.”
Kirishima stirred his drink and sucked on the straw. “Yeah,” he admitted, clearly not having come up with a plausible defense. “They kinda are.” One of his self-conscious giggles, rarer these days but no less endearing than they'd been in high school, spilled out. “Once they figured out we were dating they wouldn't let up asking me when we were getting married, you know. Whenever they call they still ask.”
“And? You tell them to mind their own fucking business?”
“Not everyone talks to their relatives like you do, babe.”
“Don't see why not. Works pretty well.”
Kirishima shook his head and lulled into a not uncomfortable silence.
This was far from the first time they'd circled the question. But it was one of those things Bakugou tried not to think about. It wasn't that he didn't love Kirishima. He did. He had difficulty imagining life without him, without waking up next to him every morning, without having him to rely upon in battle, without laughing with him about whatever it was that Kirishima decided to laugh about that day. Sometimes it hurt, an aching in his ribs that wouldn't stop, that wound its way around his lungs and constricted, that made his throat close up and his breathing quick and shallow. Sometimes it was all he could do to cling to the thought of Kirishima to stay afloat. Or, if he was there, cling to Kirishima himself. There was no good reason he hadn't asked, yet.
He watched Kirishima dunk one of the snack cakes he'd bought into his drink and swirl it around in the cream. It had taken a long time for Bakugou to become comfortable with how his goals had changed once he'd come to terms with how he felt about Kirishima. He'd had a single path in mind for so long that adjusting the route even the slightest had been a challenge, and this, Kirishima, was no small change. It had happened incrementally, almost without his noticing; one day he'd woken up and realized that the road had shifted beneath his feet.
Being the number one hero wasn't the most important thing in the world, anymore. Not by a long shot. He wondered just how much of a disappointment he would be to his younger self.
He was happy with his life. But it was so far removed from his old concept of success that reinforcing his current happiness was intimidating all on its own, an internal wall he hadn't yet quite figured out how to scale. He was a better person now than then, of course. Kirishima had helped with that. But knowing that didn't make the concept of changing who he and Kirishima were, what they were, any easier.
He liked who they were. He liked what they were. He didn't want to fuck it up.
“What do you want for dinner?” he asked, gaze on his coffee.
“Steak,” Kirishima answered immediately, brightly, no outward sign of discomfort from their brush with the question they had still yet to ask. “With those tiny potatoes?”
“Wine?”
Kirishima mulled over the question as he sipped at his drink. “A glass wouldn't hurt, right?”
“I don't know, last time a glass turned into you drinking the whole damn bottle.” Bakugou smirked at him.
Kirishima shrugged. “It was good wine.” Then he broke into a wide, toothy smile. “And it got you to dance with me.”
“You didn't really give me a choice,” Bakugou snorted. “Fine. A glass.”
They finished the bottle between them and danced in the kitchen.
Bakugou was washing the dishes when Kirishima put on one of his slow, sappy playlists and pulled him from the sink. He took the lead, holding Bakugou close and trading kisses. They started off playful, tipsy, laughing, fitting together with a practiced ease and familiarity, and as the songs went on they poured into each other, warm and full and quiet. That painful tightness choked its way up Bakugou's blood and burned, mixing with the alcohol and forging its way to his eyes. He closed them and rested his chin atop Kirishima's shoulder. Kirishima pressed kisses onto his cheek, murmuring soothing and soft, comfortable with all of Bakugou's various branches of intimacy. Time granted them an understanding of one another that had come in fits, starting with the way they fought and winding to the way they loved. Bakugou listened and held on as Kirishima wove them out of the kitchen into the living room, drifting across the carpet in time with the forgiving pace of the music.
As the playlist repeated, Kirishima lowered Bakugou onto the couch and followed him down with a kiss, tongue teasing against his lips. Bakugou opened his mouth and let him in, fingers threading through Kirishima's long hair and tugging him closer. Kirishima complied, body flush against Bakugou's, humming against Bakugou's tongue. Bakugou pushed back, insistent. They moulded themselves into each other and breathed in the incremental gaps left between. Kirishima shifted his hands up from Bakugou's waist to trace Bakugou's cheeks with his fingers, his jaw with his thumbs, etching the memory of his face into his fingerprints as he'd done a thousand times before. When he moved away, it was to rest his forehead atop Bakugou's, beaming down at him, overtly pleased with himself. Bakugou smiled back, the pressure in his chest gentler now, a warm light diffusing through his veins. He gathered some of that brightness and sculpted it into words. “Love you,” he whispered.
“Love you too, Katsuki,” Kirishima replied, glowing. His hands feathered down Bakugou's arms to the bandages from yesterday's raid where he hadn't managed to dodge. Kirishima pressed kisses onto each and eyed the bruises seeping out from beneath his shirt. “Still pretty beat up, huh.”
Bakugou frowned. “Yeah,” he admitted. Kirishima had seen the bruises as they'd gotten ready for the day, had kissed them before he'd gotten dressed. They were accustomed to seeing residual damage on one another, though Kirishima's was usually more subtle. While Kirishima didn't have any visible reminders today, his morning workout had been much lighter than its usual, his stretching slower, more pronounced, his time in the shower longer. Bakugou could tell from watching Kirishima that he was just as sore and drained as he was. It had been a long time since either had been hospitalized, and they intended to keep it that way, but they had never been ones to not take risks. They were both pro heroes and expert fighters and their skill was better than ever, but that never quite seemed to be enough. Scabs and bruises and bandages were a more or less daily sight. Bakugou didn't mind, really. He and Kirishima always won.
But the injuries got in the way, sometimes. “Guess I'll just have to wait for dessert another night. Can't be helped,” Kirishima murmured with a wry smile. He did a decent job of hiding his disappointment, but Bakugou still had to chuckle. Kirishima treated him with an embarrassed grin in response. “Am I that obvious?”
“Always have been.” Untrue, of course. Kirishima hid his emotions better than anyone Bakugou had ever known. It was just that he chose not to hide certain ones; he buried his sorrow and broadcasted his happiness, his warmth, his love.
“Says the guy that took like an entire year to figure out I wanted to make out with him.”
“I did not,” Bakugou's pride protested. Kirishima snorted and Bakugou grudgingly amended his objection. “Okay. Half a year.”
Kirishima leaned in and kissed his nose, hands drifting down Bakugou's wrists to twine their fingers together. “Liar. You would never have figured it out if I hadn't told you.”
“Bullshit.” Bakugou tilted his chin up to brush his lips against Kirishima's, grinning. “I'm perceptive as fuck.”
“And smart and strong and handsome too,” Kirishima laughed through another kiss. “And super humble.”
“And lucky.” Bakugou's sharp smile softened. He tightened his grip on Kirishima's hands and kissed Kirishima again, trying his best to convey the tension in his chest, the ache in his bones, the love in Kirishima's mere existence, through touch alone. He breathed the light that Kirishima sparked within him back into Kirishima and it wasn't enough. It never was. It never could be. There was nothing Bakugou would ever think of as enough for Kirishima. “Fuck,” he whispered, taking no small pleasure in the red in Kirishima's cheeks. “Fuck, I'm lucky. Look at you. Look at you.”
The blush spread. Kirishima was gorgeous flustered. But then, he was always gorgeous. Kirishima's grin split open and a joyous laugh rang out. He pressed kisses rapid-fire across Bakugou's face until Bakugou was blushing and embarrassed right a long with him.
With a last exaggerated smooch on Bakugou's laughing mouth, Kirishima hopped off the couch and held out a hand to Bakugou, beaming. “Come on babe. Still gotta show you that thing.”
Bakugou took his hand and followed him out to a part of the city that seemed vaguely familiar, but Bakugou couldn't quite place when he might have been there before. The early autumn air was settling into a chill with the sunset, but the wine and Kirishima's hand kept Bakugou warm, along with the jacket and scarf he'd thrown on for good measure. He didn't do cold so well, much to Kirishima's amusement.
They walked along the street, passing by neon lights and giant billboards. Kirishima pointed out one with a chuckle and Bakugou looked to see Aoyama in his hero costume advertising shampoo with his usual flair and enthusiasm. Seeing their old classmates on television or online or on billboards was nothing new; they were all pretty popular heroes in their own rights. Some just leaned into the publicity more than others. Bakugou couldn't fault them for that, these days. And while he was reluctant to admit it, he enjoyed seeing Kirishima's own advertisements when he did them. There was a magazine with a particular set of photos from a shoot for sportswear Kirishima did a couple of years ago that Bakugou would take to his grave, no matter how embarrassed Kirishima got about it or how much he tried teasing Bakugou for it. Bakugou, meanwhile, more or less avoided the public eye when he wasn't out kicking ass. He'd had enough cameras shoved in his face growing up.
Kirishima tugged on his hand and led Bakugou down side streets and alleyways and by the time they'd reached the waterfront, the sun had fully set and they'd finished sobering up. Bakugou pressed closer to Kirishima, enjoying the time to themselves. Enjoying having Kirishima to himself. Enjoying just being able to spend a night walking with him and holding his hand, tired from the battle the day before but content in each others' presence. Sometimes it was the simple things.
Once they'd wound their way down the waterfront, Kirishima swung in front of Bakugou with a broad grin. “Okay,” he said, taking Bakugou's free hand from his pocket into his own grasp. “Close your eyes.”
Bakugou gave him a skeptical tilt of the head but complied, allowing Kirishima to slowly guide him a while longer. Kirishima could guide him right under the water and he'd allow it. But they were still on land when Kirishima released one of Bakugou's hands and returned to his side. “You can look now,” he whispered, lips pressed against Bakugou's ear.
Opening his eyes, Bakugou saw the side of a building, seemingly new, covered in a vibrant mural. Bright reds and oranges and yellows popped out even in the early night, bold and distinct and unmistakable. Larger than life were Kirishima and him, in battle stances, Kirishima halfway hardened, wearing their hero costumes and deadly smiles, lit from behind by a vivid explosion blasting out from Bakugou's palm. Their hero names were scrawled in booming print beside them. Underneath was a date, a brief dedication, and a list of names.
Examining the text, Bakugou stepped closer, Kirishima moving with him. The dedication described an incident from several months ago, which filtered in from Bakugou's memory as he read. A trio of villains had appeared on the waterfront during the height of summer, when it was at its busiest and packed with families. Kirishima and Bakugou had been nearby at the time and had managed to stop the villains without any fatalities, rescuing several hostages in the process and retrieving victims from a building the villains had collapsed as a show of force before the pair's arrival. Bakugou realized the building on which the mural was painted was that same building, reconstructed; the list of names, the people they'd saved.
He hadn't thought much about the incident. The villains hadn't been all that strong. They'd gotten out of the fight with minimal scrapes, and they'd finished before anyone else got hurt or the press arrived. Quick and clean and easy. Unremarkable.
Not to the people whose names were listed, apparently.
Kirishima squeezed his hand.
Bakugou tore his eyes from the mural to look at Kirishima instead, peaceful and content and beautiful and Bakugou wondered if it were possible to ever be any more in love than he already was.
“Found it while I was patrolling a while ago. What do you think?”
Gesturing at the painting of Kirishima, Bakugou answered, “Fuckers didn't paint you nearly handsome enough.”
That got a laugh. “Same goes for you,” Kirishima retorted, grinning. “Can't blame the artist though, it's hard to capture perfection.” He leaned in and kissed Bakugou's cheek. “I mean, look at you,” he murmured, breath warm against Bakugou's skin.
Despite his creeping blush, Bakugou snorted. “You'd better be talking about yourself.”
“Nonsense.” Kirishima's smile gleamed in the lights of the waterfront. “It's cool, though, isn't it?”
It was. “Yeah,” Bakugou agreed. His gaze drifted over the mural again, over each of the names, over the painted face of the man he loved. It lingered there. It really was a good depiction of Kirishima's likeness, bright and ready for anything and, well, heroic. Bakugou turned again to Kirishima, who he realized had been quietly watching him as he'd inspected the painting. Bakugou reached over and nestled his free hand beneath Kirishima's hair, along the back of his neck, and brought him in for a kiss. Kirishima sighed happily at the touch, responding by wrapping his arm around Bakugou's back.
They stood like that for a time, centering themselves in each other, each sifting through their disparate pieces and nestling in to the homes they'd made for the other. Finding the places they'd built and strengthening them, decorating them with a touch here or a murmur there. Bakugou had once had difficulty building that space within himself for Kirishima- not because he hadn't wanted to, but because he hadn't known how. He'd had to clear away extraneous clutter, push aside things that didn't matter. Making room in himself for Kirishima had always been an exercise in self-improvement. But maintaining that home was easy, now, natural and enjoyable. It grew on its own accord, a garden blooming even if left unattended.
The idea of it ever emptying was terrifying. He wanted to keep that home in himself for Kirishima for the rest of his life.
He wanted Kirishima for the rest of his life.
He pulled away, the question forming in his mind but refusing to verbalize. It caught in his throat and lodged in the space between his ribs and his heart.
Kirishima smiled at him. It was a smile Bakugou loved waking up to, loved making appear, loved receiving. It was a smile he would kill for. It was a smile he would die for.
It was a smile he wanted to see for the rest of his life.
He reached inside himself and tugged on that question, pressure in his chest building as he struggled for the words. Just a few words. Just simple words, pressing against his lungs, making it hard to breathe. But it wasn't just words, really. It was Kirishima.
Kirishima, who he had loved since high school, even before he'd realized it, even before he'd allowed himself to, even before he'd figured out what it meant; who had forgiven him and helped him forgive himself for all his many fuckups; who had never ceased improving, never ceased being warm and bright and kind and strong; who had pushed him past himself, towards something greater, towards the kind of hero people painted murals of; who had deigned to spend his life, so far, for some reason, with Bakugou.
“Eijirou,” he managed, feeling as if he were drowning.
And Kirishima saved him, yet again, with that nervous smile and that delicate voice, turning the question into an offer. “Let's get married.”
“Yeah,” Bakugou whispered though a shaky smile, though the ache in his heart. “Okay.”