Chapter Text
“Midnight's Unified Alternative Correctional Facility for Troubled Boys.”
“Kind of a mouthful, I know.”
Kirishima turns from the sign—clutching his duffel bag tight to his chest like it'll somehow protect him—eyes finding the man waiting at the gate. He looks... like he's been through a lot. Kirishima's never been the best at descriptions, but he kind of looks like a skeleton that purchased skin at the dollar store. It hangs loosely beneath his dark eyes. Nerves flutter in Kirishima's stomach, and he turns back to look at the car that had dropped him off, like maybe he has the option of getting back into it.
He doesn't. It starts up with a rumble and flips a U-ey, crunching across the gravel as it pulls out of the gravel lot. Kirishima bites down on his lip as he watches it go, his last connection to the outside world. He's not going to see his friends, his mom, his house, his dog, his bed...
There's nothing out here for miles and miles—just rolling hills and trees, valleys and rivers. Kirishima had been sitting in that car for far too long out of the city, just watching the land roll by, scanning the lines in perfectly placed crops, stretching out into the distance. Watching the last house disappear and then staring out at nothingness for the next two hours. Trying to get back to the city without a car would take weeks.
Besides. It's not like he's going to run away or something. This isn't Holes.
The place is nestled right at the bottom of a really tall hill. The sun is setting over the whole place, washing it in a picturesque soft orange glow. There's a huge farmhouse with a big wrap-around deck and lots of windows placed right in the middle depression of the valley. Off to the right of that, several rows of even, uniform buildings painted a dull yellow, like a mouth full of teeth that hasn't seen a toothbrush in a while. Off past those, fields stretch off into the visible distance, vines on trellises and trees heavy with fruits and studded mounds on the ground. Kirishima thinks he might be able to see people moving among the plants, but they're too far away to really tell what they're doing. And the other side, cows and goats and sheep dotting the grasses, fenced into their own, wide areas.
The sign in front of Kirishima is a little faded, tucked down at the base of a huge tree with swooping branches, and as Kirishima cranes his neck to look up at it, he notices that there are strings of fairy lights among the limbs that have long since drooped from their places, bulbs broken or faded from their original color.
The whole place is actually... kind of beautiful. The farmhouse is this lovely white with blue trim, though it looks rather worn, like maybe it's been standing there since before Kirishima even became a concept. Like maybe kids like him had been coming here for all those years, had been...
Well, maybe not kids like him. Kirishima really shouldn't even be here. But kids similar to him, in age and stature.
“Kirishima Eijirou, right? Come with me now, there's a lot to see before it gets dark,” the man says, and Kirishima turns his eyes back to him. He's wearing a suit that's definitely not made for him, or maybe it had been made for a different version of this dude, one that had a bit more muscles mass. His eyes look like hollowed out sockets, endless pits of despair and emptiness and fear and... Kirishima shivers. “There's no reason to be nervous,” the man continues, and he gives a warm, genuine smile that actually helps a little bit. “I know that places like this don't get the best rep, but you won't hate it here.”
You won't hate it here doesn't really instill a lot of confidence, but it's better than welcome to hell so he swallows his nerves and nods, deciding he shouldn't argue. He probably will hate it here, but he was expecting that. He just has to keep his head down and get through this. He won't make any friends, won't talk to people or anything.
Don't really want to make friends with a bunch of criminal children, after all.
“Welcome to Midnight's Unified Alternative Correctional Facility for Troubled Boys,” the man says, pushing the low gate out of the way with a horrible squeal that sounds like the hinges being tortured. “Though that name's a bit wrong—outdated, I guess—I don't think anyone is 'troubled' here. We just haven't gotten around to the paperwork to change the name. Also, the sign would need to be changed.”
That seems like a stupid reason not to change the name, but Kirishima doesn't argue, biting down on the inside of his lip as they start down the dirt road. It's not wide enough for a car, but there are some thin tire tracks, like maybe those of a golf cart. He can't help but picture some crazy lady with a whip or something—maybe a riding crop—driving it around and hitting them as they're working.
The man doesn't seem to notice Kirishima's internal spiral into fears that are probably just products of his over-active imagination. He just keeps walking down the dirt path, the buildings growing closer. “You can call me Toshinori, or Toshi, if you prefer. I'm co-senior owner of muac.”
“Muac?” Kirishima asks, still holding his bag to his chest like a security blanket, forearms wrapped around it in a bear hug.
“Ah, he speaks! Yes, it's a little easier to say than Midnight's Unified– well, you know. It doesn't sound the prettiest, sure, but we don't really mind here.”
It kind of sounds the opposite of pretty, like a cow stopping mid low to cough—moo-awk—but Kirishima puts that on the list of things that he's not going to argue with. He's a little worried about the length of that list so early on.
“You'll see. And you'll probably stop wearing your hair up like that, too. We get a little dirty here—you'll be working, I'm sure you know that by now—and that'll get old after a while, I think.”
Kirishima nods, frowning down at the dirt passing below his feet. He doesn't know how much this is going to actually change him. He certainly doesn't want it to change him at all. But that doesn't really matter, it's not like he can get out of it now. He's here, and there's nothing he can do about it except move forward. He can make it through this. He can. It won't be the best time of his life, but he'll make it through. He'll be fine.
They're just getting down to the farmhouse as there's a loud clanging of a bell somewhere that makes Kirishima jump. It sounds like maybe it's coming from behind the farmhouse, and Kirishima creases his eyebrows, looking over Toshinori. He doesn't even seem phased, turning his head to look out at the fields, and as Kirishima follows his gaze, he can see people coming down out of the crops, carrying bags, or baskets, or tools. They don't look like prisoners, no, most of them are just wearing vaguely dirty work clothes, chatting with each other. Some of them laugh and shove each other back and forth. Kirishima is still a little too far away to be able to tell the vibes of it, but still, just seeing the mirth makes a tiny portion of the knot of anxiety in Kirishima's stomach loosen slightly.
“Dinner,” Toshinori says absently, nodding up at the people—the kids—coming down from the fields. “Are you hungry? I can show you the bunkhouses later.”
“Not really,” Kirishima mumbles. He doesn't know what to expect here, he isn't sure he wants to go straight to dinner with all of these other kids. It might be better to see the bunkhouse when nobody else is there. Maybe he can look at the room he's being put in and determine from just the atmosphere if somebody is going to shank him in his sleep. Maybe he can search and confiscate all of their shivs. He's assuming they'll have them. It is a camp full of convicted kids, after all.
“Relax,” his mom had said when Kirishima had to sit down outside of the courthouse, feeling a little dizzy with the gravity of the situation. “It's not like you'll be with murderers or anything. It says here you only qualify if you're convicted of a misdemeanor.”
“They're still convicts,” Kirishima had mumbled back, squeezing his eyes shut. Christ, his head was spinning. “Criminals.”
“So are you, now,” his mom had responded quietly.
“Alright, sure thing, kid,” Toshinori says, pulling Kirishima from his thoughts. “Come on, you're in house five.”
Kirishima follows him, trying not to send nervous glances back at the kids coming down the little incline up to the fields. There are more smiles than he had expected, more joking around. He's not close enough to hear any of it, but he can still see it happening. He's not sure if it's the kind of joking that you see the bullies in the halls at school doing, or if it's like, friendly.
The bunkhouses are the little yellow buildings lined up next to each other in uniform little rows, and Toshinori pushes open the first one in the second line. There's a small little common area, a couple couches and a table with a handful of chairs. They're mismatched and beat up, rough around the edges, but not gross or anything. To his left there's a hallway, door-less doorways lining either side.
As they head down the hall, Kirishima peeks into a room or two, noting that there's a curtain to pull across the doorway on each one, but nothing that would really close or lock. It looks like there are two beds in each room and a dresser, a sink, maybe a mirror...
His nose slams right into Toshinori's bony shoulder as he stops with no warning, and the man makes a distressed noise, reaching slightly too-big hands out to stop him from falling over.
Kirishima flinches a little and leans away—the man stops immediately, backing up a step. “Ah. Sorry, my boy. You must have been a little distracted.”
“Um, yeah,” he mumbles, rubbing his nose with the hand that's not holding his bag. It's not bleeding, thank god. He decides not to tell the man he was worrying about where they could be hiding shivs. “Is this my room?”
“Yes, actually,” he says, stepping back and opening his hand to the room. It's simple, standard, the exact same as the others that they've passed. It looks a little like what Kirishima thinks college dorm rooms are supposed to look like. Both beds are turned down, there's no sign that anybody has been in this one; the others looked lived in—a box on the dresser, a lamp left on, clothes tossed out on an unmade bed, socks hanging out of a drawer—but this one looks untouched.
Feeling like he should know better than to hope and doing so anyways, Kirishima turns to look up at Toshinori. God, he's tall. Kirishima has to crane his neck to look up at him. “Am I alone in here?” Maybe they have an odd amount of people. Maybe they can't fill the entire bunkhouse. Maybe–
“No,” Toshinori says, crushing the hope like a butterfly that hadn't flown away from a young child fast enough. “You just can't really tell he's here. Go ahead and put your bag on the bed on the right, and I'll show you to the mess hall.”
Kirishima lets out the breath that's been trapped in his chest as he lets his bag fall to the stiff cotton sheets of the bed. A simple, military-issued cot, one pillow, metal frame. There's one lamp in the room, reachable from both beds, on top of the dresser. The mirror in this room appears to be missing the glass, and Kirishima forcibly tells himself not to worry about where it went.
The other bed looks perfectly made, looks like it hasn't been touched in days. Is his bunkmate a neat-freak, or maybe just doesn't have a lot of stuff? Now that Kirishima's inside, he can see there's a book tucked half under his pillow, a pair of shoes under the bed. The guy does live there, though maybe he's just a simple, quiet person. Likes to sit on the stiff bed and read, doesn't want to leave stuff lying around. Kirishima could handle that.
Though, he has to admit, in a place like this, it's less than likely.
“Don't worry,” Toshinori says once more, probably sensing Kirishima's anxiety, the uneasiness that's set itself into his bone marrow. “It'll feel like home soon enough. Let's get going, okay?”
Putting the snarky comeback into a box in the back of his mind, Kirishima nods and follows the man towards the mess hall.
He's not hungry enough to eat anything, but Toshinori makes him take a piece of bread anyways, insisting that he's going to be hungry before breakfast in the morning. The butt of the loaf crumbles in his fingers slowly as he turns it over and over in his hands, heading back towards his bunkhouse alone. Despite having told him that he was going to be shown the barn and the 'warehouse' and the main house, Toshinori had needed to go. As soon as Kirishima had confirmed that he could make it back to his bunkhouse by himself, the man had disappeared. The other guys are filtering back as well, laughing with each other, joking.
Kirishima's only walking companion is his anxiety. He ignores the feeling of tears prickling at the backs of his eyes. He misses his mom.
The mess hall had been large, round, and loud—likely over a hundred guys in there, all hooting and hollering, throwing shit at each other and laughing. Kirishima's never been to a prison, but the atmosphere felt somehow lighter than he might imagine the mess hall at one would be.
But that's why he picked this, right? Instead of juvenile hall. This was supposed to be better—more 'enriching.' This helps you become a better person, according to the pamphlet he had been given when the judge had slammed her gavel down on the sound block. What better way to change convicted children than to make them work on a farm?
Bunkhouse five is already bustling when Kirishima shuffles through the door, several guys lounging around in the front room, laughing and talking. There certainly is more mirth here than Kirishima was expecting. Do they not have to work that hard? Are they not tired? Is this not going to be hours and hours of long, grueling work, like he had expected it to be?
“Yo!” somebody shouts, and Kirishima starts a little, blinking and scanning the room to try to figure out who had said it. “New guy! I thought Aizawa was kidding when he said we'd have fresh meat. What's up, man?”
He finds him—a blond guy leaning over the back of one of the couches, lopsided grin on his face. He's got a faded pikachu shirt on, stained with questionable dark marks, and though it looks a lot like the stain the Kirishima had gotten on his favorite hoodie when he spilled spaghetti sauce on it, the environment and the anxiety that's been spiraling in his stomach immediately starts screaming blood! Run away!
“Um, hi,” Kirishima answers, wincing a little as the bread crunches beneath his fingers. He hadn't meant to squeeze it.
“Come sit down! Here, newbie gets the spot next to me.”
“Not exactly the highest honor, Denks,” another guy snarks from where he's slouched across one of the armchairs, legs hanging over one of the armrests. He's got dark, straight hair, falling over his forehead and brushing the back of his neck. The blond guy shoots a rubber band at him.
Kirishima hesitantly does as he's told anyways, trying to smile back as the first guy—Denks?—grins at him. There are five guys all hanging around, not including Kirishima himself. Which one of them is his roommate? Is it this friendly guy, bouncy and excited, like maybe he's been allowed a little bit too much caffeine, or he's trying to cosplay the pikachu on his shirt? The relaxed guy in the armchair, now digging for the rubber band that had been shot at him? Maybe one of the three guys playing a card game of war—the hulk of a guy with silvery grey hair who looks like he's not entirely sure how war works, the tiny little freckled guy, who is too involved in the game to even look up, or maybe the bored-looking guy with a wicked burn scar over one of his eyes, who appears to be winning?
“What's your name?” the guy next to him asks, leaning back on the armrest and tossing his legs across Kirishima's lap. He retracts in on himself a little bit, fighting the urge to wrinkle his nose at the way his socks smell. They have little whales on them.
“Kirishima Eijirou,” he mumbles, not pushing the legs off. Is this a power play? Is this guy—this guy in a pikachu shirt—the leader here? Is Kirishima going to have to work his way up a food chain, worried about being stabbed in the back, worried about getting shitty jobs, worried about–
“Denki, stop being a dickhead,” the dark-haired guy says, punctuating it with a perfectly executed rubber-band shot that takes Denks right in the cheek. He gasps, holding his face, calling foul. “Sorry about him. I'm Sero Hanta, and ADHD pikachu over there is Kaminari Denki.”
Kirishima nods, hesitantly nudging the feet off his lap. Kaminari doesn't seem offended, just swings his legs back down and pulls another rubber band from his pocket, taking aim at Sero. “What are you in for?” he asks as he closes one eye to aim better, and Kirishima's throat tightens a little bit.
“Oh, um. Stealing,” he manages. It's technically true. It's what he was convicted of.
“No way!” Kaminari grins, distracted from his shot. It goes wide, and hits the freckled guy in the arm. He doesn't even turn from where he's having a heated discussion with the guy with the scar. “Twinsies! Me too. Shoplifting, actually. One too many shirts from Hot Topic, I think.”
“Oh,” Kirishima mumbles, frowning, the knot of anxiety loosening just a bit more. He looks up at Sero, wondering. The guy grins lazily.
“Me?” he asks. “Drug possession. Pro tip—don't forget to take your weed out of your bag before you go to Six Flags.”
Kirishima can't help but snort at this, and Sero chuckles. He points over at the card gang, who still haven't really looked up from their game, shooting quips back and forth. “Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu is the monster on the couch, here for multiple counts of indecent exposure.”
“Did you know that pissing in a yard is illegal even if it's your own yard?” Tetsutetsu chimes in, though Kirishima had been sure he wasn't paying attention. He tosses a card to the table and whoops as the other two guys groan.
“And then Midoriya and Todoroki,” Kaminari says, gesturing at the other two, who have gotten into a war and are sufficiently distracted. “Both convicted together, trespassing and defacing private property, though I think they got caught before Todoroki could finish spray painting the—ah, what did they call it?”
“Phallus,” the one with the scar says, deadpan.
Kaminari grins. “Phallus. Turns out even your own dad will call the police on you if he's as big of a dick as the one you painted on his wall.”
Nodding slowly, Kirishima looks down at the bread in his hands, beginning to pick at it. He's starting to feel hungry, but he's not positive if it's because it's growing late or because the balloon of anxiety in his stomach is slowly deflating. Learning about how not dangerous these guys are is poking little holes in the balloon, letting out the air that had been filling it. Maybe... maybe this won't be so bad.
Then the door slams open behind him.
Kirishima nearly jumps out of his skin, spinning over his shoulder to see if something terrible is happening. There's a guy coming through the door—blond, but ash-blond, not like the bright yellow blond of Kaminari's hair—with angry, glaring eyes that scan over the room, completely ignoring Kirishima. He moves with a predator's step, tense, lithe, like he's ready to pounce at any moment. He stalks through the room, flipping Kaminari the bird as he tries to call out a greeting.
“I'm gonna be in the showers,” he grunts, voice grating, like he spends a lot of time yelling, or maybe he gargles with sand in the mornings. “If anybody else even steps a foot in there I will remove it from your leg and shove it so far up your ass you'll taste the dirt under your toenails on the back of your tongue.”
And with that lovely image, he disappears down the hall, leaving a freezing trail of contempt in his wake.
That is the kind of guy that Kirishima had thought this place would be full of. That is the kind of guy that Kirishima is terrified of. Somebody who seems like a criminal.
The other guys don't really respond—the angry guy hadn't left them much option to, what with the quick departure. Kirishima doesn't get a change to ask about it, the card game suddenly grows heated at a three way war, and Kaminari and Sero both turn to see what's going to happen, drawn in by the intrigue of a nine-year-old's game. The moment passes, pushed to the back of Kirishima's mind as he continues to nibble on his bread, listening to these guys laugh and joke with each other.
He probably don't even need to worry about it.
He definitely needs to worry about it.
It's late when Kirishima gets to bed, quietly slipping under the covers and leaving his bag still packed, not wanting to disturb the sleeping mass in the other bed. It's too dark to see who it is, to determine which of the guys was his bunkmate. It wasn't any of the other five from the common room, but that still leaves three other options. Each of the other guys had walked through at some point, offering at least a wave of greeting, sometimes a smile. Kirishima had determined that he'd probably be fine. One out of nine is a pretty low chance.
But he's too tired to worry about it much, too worn out from a day of worrying and travel to ruminate on it. As soon as his head hits the pillow, he's out like a light.
And then he's jolting awake to a loud bell clanging somewhere outside, sending him scrambling out of bed. He's late for school. He's gotta get dressed, gotta shower, gotta get breakfast... gotta...
The guy eyes him—expression somehow angry and neutral at the same time—as he laces up his boots. Kirishima feels himself pale a little, blinking sleep out of his eyes. Mr. Shove-A-Foot-Up-Your-Ass is Kirishima's roommate?
“Gonna sit there and stare at me like a dumbass?” the guy snaps, and Kirishima flinches slightly, eyes wide. “Get up, idiot,” he continues, standing and shrugging on a jacket somehow both arms at the same time. “If you don't eat fast enough, I'm not going to wait for you to start chores, you'll just have to catch up. Also, you snore like a fucking chainsaw.” As if that's somehow Kirishima's fault.
With this he turns and stalks from the room, and though there's no door to slam, Kirishima nearly hears the way he throws the curtain out of the way and disappears into the hall. He watches after him for a moment, stomach churning.
Should he check for shivs?
But then Kaminari is passing by, offering a grin and advice that Kirishima should hurry up or he'll miss all of the good toppings for oatmeal, and it sends Kirishima hastening for his bag, pulling on pants and boots so he can hurry after them. Sero waves him into the group from the night before as they start down the hill towards the mess hall, which is connected to the back of the farmhouse. As Kirishima jogs to catch up, his eyes find his bunkmate, way down the path already, disappearing through the doors into the building. He walks alone.
Sero and Kaminari wrestle him into the spot between them for breakfast, which is not gruel like he had been expecting, but instead warm oatmeal, blueberries and cinnamon on top. Also a tall cup of join in a plastic cup that has crude doodles on it. (Most of the cups have doodles on them, mostly things that you see teenage boys scribble on bathroom stall walls. Inappropriate phrases and fields of poorly drawn penises with the occasional incredibly detailed one. Kirishima wonders where they got Sharpies to draw them.) The kind of juice inside is indecipherable—maybe some kind of fruit medley. It's only a little gross, but that's mostly because Kirishima doesn't really like juice. It's like, ten times the quality of what he had been expecting.
“How was your first night?” Sero asks, jostling him sideways into Kaminari with a bony shoulder. He reminds Kirishima of all of those skater guys that would lounge on the steps outside the field at his school and attempt tricks off the rails when the security guys weren't looking. “Get any sleep?”
“Yeah, I slept like a rock,” Kirishima mumbles, taking a hesitant bite of his oatmeal. It's actually really good. “Travel wears me out.”
“Hey, nice!” Kaminari says, chuckling. “The first night is usually the worst. You'll be exhausted tonight—gotta get used to the work.”
“Is it really hard?” Kirishima asks nervously, his next bite hovering, hesitating, halfway to his lips. “Like, the labor?” He's a strong guy, but he hasn't ever had a job before, and most of his strength comes from climbing trees and riding his bike.
“Eh, you get used to it,” Tetsutetsu waves a hand dismissively, the other one holding his bowl up so he could drink his oatmeal like a beverage. A thick, gooey and warm beverage. Bleh. “After a couple days.”
Nodding, Kirishima goes back to his meal. A couple days isn't so bad, but he still finds himself worrying about the day ahead of him. What kind of labor is it even going to be? Tending fields? What does that even mean? Cleaning equipment? And is it going to be with this group of guys, joking around and laughing the whole time? Kirishima could probably get used to that, couldn't he? He wasn't going to make friends or anything, but he could–
“Ah, but you know, Bakugou's buddies usually do less, huh,” Sero says, frowning.
“Oh right,” Kaminari raises his head, oatmeal forgotten for the moment. He had been shoveling it into his mouth like a starved man. Kirishima forgets about his own meal, too. “I forgot what room you were in.”
“What?” Kirishima asks, eyebrows creasing. Was this about his bunkmate? “Who's Bakugou?”
Kaminari only scans for a short moment before finding the guy who had snapped at them the night before, and then at Kirishima this morning. His roommate. He's obviously eating alone. There's a small bubble of space around him, a few tables away. Kaminari points with his spoon—it drips oatmeal to the table, but nobody seems to care. “Bakugou Katsuki. He's your roommate, so he'll be your partner for chores and work details.”
Ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach, Kirishima stares at the back of the blonds head. He's going to be stuck with him even outside of the bunkhouse? “What did you mean when you said his buddies do less?”
“Well, he's kind of... he's uh... kind of a...” Sero trails off, pursing his lips, like he's looking for the right word.
“A hardass?” Kaminari suggests.
“Big ol' asshole,” Tetsutetsu offers.
“Bastard,” Todoroki says from across from them. Kirishima hadn't even known he was paying attention.
“Guess those work,” Sero chuckles. “But he's mostly stubborn—that's the word I was looking for—so he likes to do most of the work for his pairing anyways. Doesn't trust others to do it right, or something like that.”
Kirishima continues to stare at the back of his head as the blond turns to the side and sneezes, and then sweeps a glare across the room. His burning hot stare catches Kirishima's for a moment, and Kirishima finds himself holding it, unable to look away, despite the way his cheeks heat. Bakugou's eyes are a piercing red.
He eventually wrinkles his nose and turns back to his breakfast, and Kirishima frowns. He had kind of assumed that being partnered with an asshole meant he'd have to do more work. Would that be so bad—to have someone you're forced to do stuff with that insists on doing most of the work? He could just sit around and do nothing. Then again, he'd probably feel pretty shitty just sitting there and not helping, even if his partner is an asshole.
“What's he in here for?” Kirishima finds himself asking, still watching the guy, even after being caught staring. Is it because he doesn't care what some criminal kid thinks of him?
“I heard he beat some guy up within an inch of his life,” Todoroki hums, and Kirishima turns wide eyes back to the table. “Because the guy was going after his girl.”
“Nah, we disproved that. He doesn't like girls,” Sero says offhandedly.
Todoroki shrugs, and Tetsutetsu lifts his chin a little bit. “I heard he was taking a drunk girl home, to, you know...”
“I just said he doesn't like girls, bro,” Sero says, and Tetsutetsu throws his hands up into the air.
“I heard he killed somebody,” Kaminari hisses conspiratorially.
“That's a felony, idiot,” Tetsutetsu says, and Kaminari flips him off.
Kirishima flicks his eyes back to the blond as the others dissolve into an argument, noting that Bakugou had pulled his shoulders up towards his ears. Hunched over his breakfast, like some kind of gremlin. Or maybe like someone who doesn't want to hear what people are saying about him. He might be close enough to hear them talking, if he were paying attention. Maybe they shouldn't be talking so loud.
“So what you guys are saying,” Kirishima finally interrupts them, cutting off Kaminari saying something about broken bones, “Is that nobody actually knows what he did.”
“He doesn't talk about it, no,” Kaminari sighs. “And none of the adults tell people even when you ask. Also, just a heads-up, don't ask Aizawa.” He rubs the back of his head, wincing, as though remembering being smacked there.
Kirishima doesn't even know how Aizawa is yet, but decides now isn't the time to ask as Sero leans in a little slower. “Whatever he did, it was either really bad, or he doesn't care to change his ways,” he shrugs. “He's been here for over a year now.”
“Is that a long time?”
Sero raises an eyebrow. “Usually people are in and out in three to four months. Maybe five. Nobody is here for longer than like, eight. And that's an outlier.”
“He's had quite a few hearings,” Tetsutetsu puts in. “They never clear him to go home.”
“Remember Tenya?” Kaminari says, grinning. “He was only here for like, three weeks. They sent him to a hearing practically immediately.”
“Oh,” Kirishima hums, letting his eyes scan the tenseness of Bakugou's back. Did he really do something that bad? Something that's still in his system, keeps him failing his hearings?
He had been told about the hearings—when they think you're ready, they send you to talk to the “judge” that lives on the property with them, along with all of the adults that watch over them. They talk to you for a while, decide whether or not you've learned your lesson, whether or not you can be sent home. Returned to society. Apparently the adults thought that Bakugou hadn't gotten better, and that he couldn't be sent home.
Tetsutetsu was right, though—it couldn't have been that bad, as he hadn't gotten charged with a felony. Nobody here had more than a misdemeanor or two. And Kirishima doesn't know much about the difference between felonies and misdemeanors, but he does know that he probably shouldn't be as scared as he had been the night before.
It's still more than a little frightening to turn from his table after he's finished eating and come face-to-face with Bakugou, who's downright glaring at him, like he was the one who had taken the last crumbly muffin. “You're my bunkmate,” he announces, as though Kirishima somehow hadn't noticed.
“Oh—uh—yeah!” Kirishima stumbles, trying to keep his voice bright. He awkwardly shuffles his empty bowl to the arm that's holding his cup and holds out his now-free hand. “Bakugou, right? I'm Kirishima Eijirou.”
Bakugou just looks down at the hand and wrinkles his nose, like it's the grossest thing he's ever seen. He doesn't bother to shake it. As his eyes flick back up to Kirishima's, they narrow slightly. “Don't think I'm gonna wait for you just 'cause you're new. Dump your dishes and be outside in three minutes or I'm gonna leave without you.”
Without saying anything else, he spins on his heel and stalks off like Kirishima had insulted his dandelion puff hair, hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders still pushed up.
Static in his head, Kirishima stands there for a moment, staring after him. Surprisingly, the fear that he had arrived in this place with doesn't move to make an appearance. Instead, Kirishima feels something akin to challenge rising in him. Determination.
Bad time for that, he tries to warn himself, but logic flees for the hills as he watches Bakugou kick the door out of his way, scaring a couple guys away from him. This is not the time, nor the place, to decide you gotta do something just because somebody told you that you can't.
That's a relatively new thing for him, honestly. When he was in middle school it was way easier for him to get discouraged, to see himself fail and just sort of want to curl up and forget that he even tried in the first place. But then he had met his friends—or, well, ex-friends, now—and he had dyed his hair, flipped upside down off the couch and spiked it upwards, and told the boy in the mirror that he was a new person. Someone who could be manly, somebody who could be strong, somebody who could befriend anybody.
That hadn't ended up so great last time he had tried it. Led to flashing red and blue lights, a courtroom, a gavel banging against a sounding block. Led to Kirishima right here, in this mess.
Still, he finds himself rising up, rather than shrinking down. Maybe he should have learned his lesson. Maybe he shouldn't be feeling like this.
Or maybe, he just needs to try again.
“So, what's your story?” Kirishima asks brightly as they trek up the hill towards the side of the valley with all of the animals. Kirishima can't see any of them right now.
“That's my fucking business, and not yours,” Bakugou grunts back, continuing to stride forward, eyes straight ahead.
“Okay,” Kirishima says, undeterred. “Where are we going?”
“The barn, obviously.”
“Sounds good.” Kirishima hurries to catch up, to fall in step. Bakugou lengthens his stride a bit, pushing ahead again. “And what are we doing today?”
“We're on sheep. Shut the fuck up, 'kay?”
Kirishima jogs to fall in step again, but Bakugou veers away towards the door of the barn. Kirishima just follows right along. “Sorry, man, I just don't really know what's going on, you know? Doing my best to catch up so I can pull my weight.”
Shooting a glare at him, Bakugou shoves the door to the barn open, allowing a wave of animal stink to wash up Kirishima's nose. He winces, but Bakugou doesn't even seem to notice. “The fuck are you in here for anyways, huh? Being too goddamn helpful?”
It's not entirely far off, but Kirishima just shrugs. “That's my business,” he echoes Bakugou from earlier, dodging the question and letting a sly smile tug on the corner of his lips. “Not yours.”
The blond shoots a look at him like he's trying to decide whether he wants to punch Kirishima or laugh, but finally he just rolls his eyes and turns away. Kirishima takes not being hit as a win and follows down the long corridor, his boots squishing in the half-wet dirt. Pens line the sides, and the sound of shuffling animals engulfs them.
Bakugou explains—in as few words as possible—what Kirishima should do, and shoves a clipboard into his hands as he opens up a gate and wades in among the moving mass of sheep. Kirishima doesn't know much about sheep. He watches as Bakugou urges them to siphon through a little gate and out into the fields, calling out numbers to Kirishima for him to check off on the clipboard. The animals are thick and heavy, and they bleat and tilt their heads for Bakugou to check the tag on their ears. All the animals seem to trust Bakugou, at least, and that helps Kirishima feel a little better about working with him.
“When will they need to shaved?” Kirishima asks, gesturing his pen at the rapidly shrinking group of sheep. They spread out on the grass outside to wander and graze.
“Sheared, dumbass. Seven-one-one.”
Kirishima marks off the number on his clipboard, raising his eyebrows. “Okay, when will they need to be sheared?”
Bakugou rolls his eyes like he can't believe Kirishima has the gall to not know about sheep. Though, he doesn't glare at Kirishima again, just leans down to the next sheep. “Four-oh-five. They only get sheared like twice a year.”
“Oh shit,” Kirishima says, pausing where he had been looking for the number. “Really? So rarely?”
“That's more often than some sheep,” Bakugou grunts. “Hey. Pay attention, idiot. Did you get that last one?”
Kirishima scrambles through the papers to mark off the last one and prepare for the next one. Bakugou calls off another number.
“Well, still,” Kirishima says as he fills in the little box. “I thought it'd be more often than that.”
“Figures,” Bakugou grunts, but he doesn't elaborate as he gives another number. Kirishima doesn't push it. He figures he has a while, doesn't he? He's got as long as he's here, if Bakugou is here for so long anyways. He can let it take some time.
That doesn't mean that he stops trying, though.
Instead, honestly, he tries harder. The other guys don't seem to understand, especially as Bakugou rolls his eyes or turns away whenever calls out to him or gives him a greeting. Kirishima doesn't let that deter him. He just keeps trying. Keeps pushing. Keeps smiling.
The days pass slowly but all at once—the work is hard, but not back-breaking. Some days are easier than others. Some days amount to sitting on a gate, watching sheep graze and trying to crack jokes with Bakugou. Some days are crawling through the mud and the rain to try to find the sprinkler that isn't working.
Some days, Bakugou almost laughs at his jokes, but some days he won't even look in Kirishima's direction. It's exhausting sometimes, but in all it's not so bad. It's actually kind of a good distraction. A goal. There aren't any of the red flags that Kirishima should have seen last time—the lies, the hidden intentions. Bakugou makes everything abundantly clear, including how much he wants to make friends. That is to say—not in the slightest.
But Kirishima can handle that. He doesn't even want to be his friend, he just wants to break down that wall that Bakugou had put up. He wants it to be less weird when they're working together, or wants to be able to just have a casual conversation on the walk back to the bunkhouse. Wants to have that walk become less of a stalk and more of a stroll. He has this distinct feeling, based on the way Bakugou is reacting and the way the other guys talk about him, that nobody has ever tried this with Bakugou before. And everybody deserves somebody to try for them.
So Kirishima tries.