Archive of Our Own

Kaminari Denki has made a lot of regrettable decisions over the course of one evening. The first was drinking with Kirishima “I wouldn’t know my limits if they spat in my face and called me a whore” Eijirou. 

They start out with the intention of playing a casual drinking game—watching Mulan and drinking a shot of soju every time someone says the words honour, man, or crossdresser. Kirishima has bottles of strawberry soju hoarded in his closet, which is dangerous because it tastes like candy, goes down like water, and has the both of them sloshed in under twenty minutes. 

When the movie ends, they’re both full of restless energy and the night is still young. Denki expresses this to Kirishima, who agrees.

“We should go out,” Kirishima suggests. “I’m starving.”

There are two empty pizza boxes on the floor. Denki wisely does not point this out, because he too could go for a little treat.

“I could fuck up a box of fried chicken right now,” Denki says.

Ten minutes later finds them stumbling down the boardwalk, in the vague direction of what Kirishima swears is a 24-hour bar with the best fried chicken available at a quarter past one in the morning.

“Truth or dare,” Denki says.

“Truth,” Kirishima says.

“Do you have a crush on Bakugou?”

Kirishima side-eyes him. “Are you twelve years old.”

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game!”

“Fine. Yes.” Kirishima stares ahead, valiantly refusing to look at Denki and, in the process, tripping over an uneven sidewalk. “Truth or dare,” he mumbles into the concrete.

“Dare,” Denki cackles.

“I dare you to go jump in the river.”

“I was gonna do that anyway,” Denki yells back, already sprinting towards it.

Which brings him to now.

Kirishima keeps smirking at him.

“I hope you die,” Denki says, shivering.

“Cold?”

“I’ve actually never been warmer.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Right?”

They walk in silence for a bit. 

Here is a secret. Denki is very, very cold because he forgot to take off his clothes before cannonballing into the river and now everything down to his limited-edition Ingenium-print socks is soaked through with frigid river water.

He has to get Kirishima back for this. His first question wasn’t even that bad! Kirishima’s the one who chose to crush on the most unsuitable love interest on God’s green earth. Denki didn’t force him to do any of that, and he’s being unfairly punished.

“How far is your bar anyway, man? We’ve been walking for forever.”

“I think we’re almost there,” Kirishima says, in the tone of someone who thinks no such thing but was too drunk to bring his phone and, subsequently, any form of navigation.

Denki doesn’t even care about fried chicken at this point, he just needs someplace warm. Most of the shops on the street are closed, but there’s a little neon sign in the window. Denki squints.

Chronic Ink.

The warm lighting from inside lights up the whole street. It’s probably warmer than a beach in July inside there. 

They can’t just loiter inside, though. They need an actual reason to be inside, long enough for Denki to come back from the brink of hypothermia. That’s okay. He can figure this out.

“Truth or dare,” he says.

Kirishima, unwilling to experience a repeat of last time, says, “Dare.”

“I dare you to call Bakugou and confess to him,” Denki says, knowing full well that even Kirishima with a blood-alcohol percentage well over 0.05% will do no such thing, due in no small part to the fact that if Bakugou Katsuki is woken up by a slurred love confession from a sloshed Kirishima at one a.m., he’ll probably hunt them both down just to murder them in a fiery blaze of glory.

“I’m not doing that,” Kirishima says, looking a little sick.

“Fine,” Denki says gleefully. It’s all coming together. “Then I dare you to get a tramp stamp.”

“You thought of that way too fast,” Kirishima accuses. “Where would I even—”

The sign in the tattoo parlour’s window blinks menacingly. 

“I mean, unless you wanna call him,” Denki offers benevolently, holding out his phone. “Better hurry if you do, my phone’s at 2%.” 

Kirishima looks down at his phone like Denki’s just handed him the big red button to the nuclear bombs and told him that it’s set off by proximity to gay ass losers.

“I sincerely hope that you reincarnate as a goldfish in the next life so I can buy you from Petsmart and flush you down my fucking toilet,” he says, dragging Denki towards the tattoo parlour.

Denki was right. It is very, very warm inside the tattoo parlour.

Watching Kirishima sullenly tell his artist what it is he wants is a nice bonus too.

“Are you guys sure?” The artist looks between the two of them. They probably look a little strange. Denki’s still dripping water onto the floor.

“He’s just gonna make me come back in the morning if I don’t,” Kirishima groans, flopping into the chair. “Let’s just get it over with.”

The artist shrugs. “Alright, man. We do removals too, if you end up needing that.”

“I feel like that goes against the code of Truth or Dare,” Denki interjects.

Kirishima peels one eye open to glare at him balefully. “Kaminari,” he says, as the needle enters his skin, “the only code you should be worrying about right now is the one that stops me from killing you in cold blood.”

A few months later, Eijirou is woken up by a very violent, aggressive-sounding knock from his front door.

He stumbles out of bed, blearily feeling his way through his apartment until he reaches the front entrance and, after fumbling with the lock, manages to swing the door open.

“How long does it take you to answer your fucking door?” Bakugou demands. “I called you, I texted, I’ve been standing here knocking like a jackass for five minutes—”

“It’s my day off, man,” Eijirou protests. “What am I supposed to do, not sleep in?”

“It’s eight in the morning, that’s way past—”

“It’s only eight in the—” Eijirou pinches the bridge of his nose. Breathes in and out, purposefully loud, so as to piss off Bakugou but mostly to make him realize that sleeping in five on a Saturday isn’t against the Geneva Convention. “Is something wrong?”

Bakugou shoulders past him and knocks the door shut behind them. Eijirou’s a little too slow in stepping back to make room and he ends up shoved up close to Bakugou by virtue of the tiny entryway, close enough to smell his shampoo.

“Have you not seen this?” Bakugou snaps. “This is why you need to wake up early, dumbass, everyone’s talking about it, Endeavour and Fatgum called us in ‘cause they want some kind of joint-agency meeting—”

“I need you to slow down,” Eijirou says, rubbing his eyes. “Listen, I’m gonna make some coffee—actually, no, you woke me up, so you’re gonna make me some coffee while you explain everything.”

“You spoiled fucking brat,” Bakugou grumbles, stomping over to the kitchen. “Google our fucking names. Actually—no, don’t do that, you probably got an email about it—”

“My phone’s all the way in my bedroom,” Eijirou whines.

“You’re pathetic,” Bakugou says, tossing over his.

Eijirou unlocks it and searches up red ri—and he’s not even finished before the search fills in the rest of the query.

A little numb, he clicks enter.

Headline after headline glares up at him. Red Riot and Ground Zero Sex Tape Leaked. And this is just from a Google search, it doesn’t even account for the shitstorm that’s hit Twitter.

“Hey, Bakugou,” he says, after a moment.

Bakugou grunts.

“I’m just a little confused, here.”

“You and me both.”

“I mean, I haven’t watched anything yet, but we haven’t—I mean I don’t think—I mean, you’re a great-looking guy, but I think I would remember—”

“Kirishima,” Bakugou says, sounding exhausted. “Are you asking me if we have had sex.”

Eijirou flushes. “I’m not going crazy, right?”

It’s Bakugou’s turn to inhale and exhale, like a tall, blond, and furious yogi. “No,” he says, at last. “We’re not going crazy. It’s not us.”

“But everyone thinks it's us,” Eijirou says, tossing Bakugou’s phone on the counter. He needs it away from him. He needs to pretend it doesn’t exist. “How do they even—I mean, does it look like...?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Bakugou says, handing him a mug filled to the brim. “I thought you were gonna do something stupid. And you weren’t answering, so—”

“Oh,” Eijirou says, finally understanding. “Aw, you were worried about me?”

Bakugou glares at him. It’s about as intimidating as a baby panda tumbling out of a tree.

Eijirou hides his smile in his mug. It’s perfect, made exactly the way he likes it. 

“Give me like, twenty minutes and we can go,” he says. “Can you—”

“Yeah, I got it,” Bakugou says, plucking the mug from his hands and pouring the coffee into a thermos. “Go get ready, you fucking need it.”

Eijirou gasps. “Hey, you can’t really think that if you were willing to have sex with me in front of a camera!”

“I’m going to live stream me disposing of your dead body,” Bakugou seethes.

“I can feel you staring at my ass!” Eijirou calls over his shoulder.

In response, Bakugou slams something down in the kitchen—it sounds like a metal pan, which means that, despite everything, he’s still making Eijirou breakfast. 

If Eijirou thought reading the headline was bad, sitting in a room with his boss, Bakugou’s boss, and not one, not two, but ten PR and HR representatives is borderline mortifying.

“Are you certain it’s not you two?” One of the representatives asks.

Bakugou sends him a look so venomous Eijirou’s surprised the man’s heart doesn’t just stop on the spot.

“Isn’t there a way of proving we’re telling the truth?” He tries. “I mean—we’ve got nothing to hide, isn’t there some sort of—you know, lie detector, or quirk that could fix this?”

“A machine would just make people think the whole thing was doctored,” another representative says, her voice wavering. Bakugou needs to stop looking at people like he wants to gauge their eyes out with a tiny metal spoon. “The influence of a quirk would be—unpredictable, and would put you both in a vulnerable position.”

Eijirou frowns.

“She’s saying they can ask us about the tape and we’ll say the truth,” Bakugou explains quietly, leaning close so only Eijirou can hear. “But they can ask us about anything, and we wouldn’t be able to get around it.”

“Thanks,” Eijirou murmurs, and Bakugou nods.

“We’ll have to prove it’s not them, then,” Fat Gum says. “If we can trace back to when the video was made—or even a clue in the video itself that disproves the theory—”

“We’ll get on that, right away!”

“You can send it to us, too,” Eijirou says. Bakugou whirls around to glare at him, and he shrugs. “No one knows us better than us, right? We should be able to find something that’s not right.”

“Fine,” Bakugou acquiesces. “Send it.”

The meeting devolves, then, into strategy talk, public perception, and approval ratings. Eijirou and Bakugou mostly just sit there nodding to prove they’re paying attention to the various representatives.

“Ah, one more thing.” One of the HR representatives from Endeavour’s firm raises her hand. “Since you’re both here, we should get this done as well.” She slides two folders across the table, one to Bakugou and one to Eijirou. “We should’ve gotten this done a while ago, but everyone was busy, and—well, it’s fine, we’ll do it now. This is the paperwork required to declare your relationship to the agency.”

Bakugou’s face is blanker than printer paper.

“Um,” Eijirou says. “We’re, uh, we’re not… together?”

The representatives cease all typing, talking, and paper shuffling. When Eijirou turns to the side, even Endeavour and Fat Gum are staring at him like he’s the one that’s said something weird.

“You’re not?” Fat Gum asks.

Eijirou looks down at the paperwork. Back up at his mentor, who’s known him and everything to do with his life since he was fifteen. “Did you think we were? Did—did everyone think we were?”

The room is conspicuously silent. Endeavour’s flames burn low like the man is embarrassed.

“Well,” Bakugou says, after a long, awkward pause. “I hope it’s clear, finally, that when we said there’s no way it’s the two of us, it’s because there is no two of us.” He pushes back his chair and storms out of the room.

Eijirou takes a minute to disassociate and pretend he is not experiencing the most vicious heartbreak of his life. After 0.2 seconds of intense grief, he snaps back to reality with the sparkling clean grin that landed him three separate toothpaste commercials.

“Good talk, team!” He says brightly. “Keep us updated!”

They have to walk out through the back entrance of the agency to avoid the paparazzi. Endeavour has them both sent back home in separate cars, but Eijirou thinks about going home to his empty apartment and watching the tape all by himself and it seems…unappealing. Scary, for some reason.

Before he can talk himself out of it, he’s dialling Bakugou.

“Do you—do you wanna come over? I don’t—it’s dumb, I get it, but I don’t—” He’s stuttering. It sounds stupid. There’s really no proper way to say the idea of watching someone’s pretend sex tape of us without you makes me so fucking uncomfortable that I need you there to steady me.

Watching something like that with anyone, let alone the other lookalike in the tape, should be a million times more terrifying than braving it alone.

“I already told my driver to head to your place instead,” Bakugou says. “Do you have anything in your fridge aside from raw meat, or do I have to tell him to stop for takeout.”

Eijirou grins, relieved. “Takeout would be great.”

“I cannot fucking stand you,” Bakugou says and hangs up.

Contrary to popular belief, Eijirou isn’t a completely inept host so he picks up some alcohol before heading home. They can’t be drunk while watching it, since they are trying to pick out tiny, insignificant details to help their case, but he would prefer to be blackout after the fact. Forgetting the whole thing would be nice.

The cashier looks a little scared at the amount of alcohol he piles onto the counter, but he has a pro-hero paycheck and a friend with a liver forged in the flames of hell, so it’s necessary.

He’s only just taking off his jacket when Bakugou knocks on the door. Silently, methodically, he undoes his laces and lines his boots up beside Eijirou’s.

And then they just stare at each other for a second.

“I got pizza,” Bakugou says, holding up the boxes.

“I got liquor,” Eijirou says, smiling winningly. 

Bakugou snorts. “We’re gonna need it.”

They bump shoulders trying to get out of the entryway. Neither one of them wants to be the first to walk into the living room—but it has to be done, and it’s Eijirou’s house, so he takes the initiative.

“Should I...” He winces. “Should I hook up my laptop up to the big screen?”

“It’ll be easier to. Notice. Things.” Bakugou looks a little constipated.

“Yeah,” Eijirou says faintly, and goes about doing so. It’s a reasonable thing to do. This is a work event. 

“You want water?”

“With ice, please,” Eijirou says, messing around with the mouse until his laptop screen is reflected on the TV. 

The file is his most recent email.

Bakugou returns with two glasses.

There’s nothing else they can do to procrastinate. Maybe it’ll be like a Band-Aid. Really, it’s good that Bakugou’s here, for accountability if nothing else. Eijirou doesn’t know if he could have worked up the mental fortitude necessary to watch what’s supposed to be his own sex tape.

He needs to press play. It’s one button. There’s no thumbnail, just a black screen.

Bakugou sucks in the air between his teeth and shoves Eijirou over gently—and presses play.

The tape opens with two men—the two of them—actors, doppelgangers—two men in the bed of a hotel room. The walls are a monotone green, the sheets are pulled tight over the corners of the bed frame. 

The pizza smells delicious. Eijirou isn’t hungry.

They’re just kissing. 

It makes sense, why people think it’s them. The one that looks like Bakugou has his blond hair, his sharp jaw—and when the other man, the one that looks like Eijirou pulls off his straining T-shirt, Eijirou sees that he has the same broad shoulders.

“And if we tell them it’s not me because I wouldn’t be this fucking vanilla,” Bakugou mumbles.

Eijirou chokes on air. “If we don’t find anything else that’s gonna have to be it.”

It’s not the worst defence. Sure, it relies on the stereotypes of Bakugou’s personality, but he is kind of a dick, and he does get bored with anything that doesn’t require 110% of his focus, so it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Fake-Eijirou shoves at Fake-Bakugou’s head and Fake-Bakugou laughs before kissing his way down his partner’s chest, before undoing his jeans with his teeth—

“Well, there we go,” Eijirou says lightly. “You can’t do that.”

“The hell I can’t,” Bakugou says. “And our argument isn’t gonna be that it’s not me because I’m bad at sex.”

“That’s not being good or bad at sex,” Eijirou argues. “That’s just being a freak.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t know how to do it,” Bakugou says. “Get good.”

“That’s not—” Eijirou squawks in outrage. “Hey, no, my dick is definitely bigger than that!”

“Oh, great,” Bakugou says. “You can just send in a side-by-side picture and the public will be reassured that their favourite hero is just too hung to be making sex tapes.”

“It’s inaccurate,” Eijirou says sullenly. Fake-Bakugou doesn’t seem to care, with how enthusiastically he’s bobbing his head. 

Fake-Eijirou tosses his head back, and his back arches—and Fake-Bakugou slides off his dick with a slick sound that Eijirou’s going to need mental bleach to remove from his mind.

Bakugou takes a long, long sip from his glass of water.

“That’s just rude,” Eijirou says. “At least they got that right.”

“It’s not rude, it’s just gonna make the real thing better.”

“There is no real thing, this is a fake tape—”

“It’s about the storyline!”

“Oh, my bad, I didn’t know you were an expert on the world of amateur porn—”

“Kirishima, I’m going to ram this remote up your fucking ass.”

“Hey, look, on-screen you really is ramming his remote up on-screen me’s a—”

Bakugou, seemingly having had enough, turns to tackle Eijirou into the couch cushions, bludgeoning him with a throw pillow.

They get preoccupied with beating the shit out of each other for a few minutes, and by the time Eijirou resurfaces from the confines of Bakugou’s fury, Fake-Bakugou-And-Eijirou have switched to a new position.

Fake-Eijirou is riding Fake-Bakugou, his head thrown back in ecstasy. He’s completely naked, and his bare back is to the camera—

“It’s not me,” Eijirou says, jumping up. “Bakugou, look, it’s not me, it can’t be! He doesn’t have my tattoo!”

Bakugou goes ominously silent. The only noise in the apartment is the rhythmic thwap of Fake-Eijirou’s thighs slamming down on Fake-Bakugou’s hips. This is a little off-putting, so Eijirou pauses the tape. Bakugou watches him do this, eyes narrowed. After a moment, he says very slowly, “Since when do you have a tattoo?”

Eijirou pauses.

For a moment, he’d been so caught up in the euphoria of proving themselves innocent, that he’d forgotten he lived in a world with Kaminari Denki and his stupid fucking ideas.

“Would it be enough if I just told you I have one?”

“Absolutely not,” Bakugou says. “And I don’t know about Fat Gum, but Endeavour’s not just gonna take your word for it.”

Right. Because Eijirou’s proof is something that needs to be shared with everyone.

“Maybe we need another defence,” he says weakly. “His voice is a little high to be mine, don’t you think?”

Bakugou just crosses his arms.

“Maybe they’ll fuck up, call each other by their real names—” But if it was that simple, they wouldn’t be in this situation. Eijirou sighs, defeated. “It’s Kaminari’s fault, okay? I need to make that very clear. He dared me to get it and I couldn’t say no.”

“He dared you to get something permanently drawn on your skin and you couldn’t say no,” Bakugou repeats slowly.

“You weren’t there!” Eijirou defends. “We were drunk—” And my only other option was telling you I’m in love with you. “We were drunk.”

“I’m sure you were.”

Eijirou scowls. “You’re being a little judgy for someone who let Ashido shave All Might’s ass on the back of your head on her birthday.”

“Hair grows back,” Bakugou says, his face turning red. “And she put something in my drink. This is not the same thing.”

“She didn’t drug you —”

“Show me your fucking tattoo.”

“The pizza’s getting cold—”

“Eijirou.”

The sound of his given name from Bakugou’s mouth will never fail to knock Eijirou on his ass. Bakugou knows this, because he’s a piece of shit, so he only really uses it when he’s serious.

“You’re not allowed to laugh at me,” Eijirou orders. He turns around so he doesn’t have to watch Bakugou’s expression as he yanks off his shirt and unzips his jeans, just enough for them to slip down below his hips.

Bakugou doesn’t say anything.

“Bakugou?” 

Eijirou zips his jeans back up, turns around, and—oh.

Bakugou looks hungry. 

His eyes are dark, and there’s a twitch in his jaw, and when Eijirou tries to step back, Bakugou slides a hand into the back pocket of his jeans and yanks him closer, until they’re pressed against each other, so close that it feels like Eijirou has two hearts, his own, beating on his left, and Bakugou’s pulse, echoing on his right.

“How long,” Bakugou says quietly. His voice sounds like tires over gravel, and his breath is warm over Eijirou’s neck.

Kaminari hadn’t known. Eijirou had told the tattoo artist what he wanted and Kaminari hadn’t realized, and it had been fine because Eijirou never really planned on anyone else seeing it—but Bakugou clocked it. And now he knows everything.

“Couple months,” Eijirou mumbles. Bakugou’s skin is so close to his teeth. The neck of his shirt is wide enough that Eijirou can see the bold definition of his trapezius muscle—and he wants to sink his teeth in. Wants to taste.

Bakugou’s thumb digs into the small of his back and Eijirou—whines, tries to press himself closer—and Bakugou just laughs at him, keeps doing it, his thumb digging in hard enough to hurt.

“You mad ‘cause I didn’t tell you?” Eijirou asks, breath hitching.

“Like you wouldn’t fucking believe,” Bakugou says. And then he drops to his knees and unfastens Eijirou’s jeans with his fucking teeth.

“That’s unfair,” Eijirou protests, as Bakugou drags the zipper down. “You just wanted to do that to show you could—”

“Turn around,” Bakugou says, manhandling him so he’s bent over the arm of the couch. 

There’s a window on the far wall—and they’re high enough that no one can see them but it still makes Eijirou’s heart rate kick into overdrive, to be bent over with his legs spread, to have Bakugou’s big hands bruising his skin—and for all of that to be in front of a window, where he can see cars and pedestrians below.

“You got this for me,” Bakugou says, in a tone that demands it. Like he’s speaking it into existence, like it’s a declaration, some kind of gospel. The ink on Eijirou’s skin, its permanence in his life—the thin black outline of a crown, nestled in the small of his back.

“Yes,” Eijirou gasps. 

“Say it.”

“I got it for you,” Eijirou says, chest heaving. “Of course I got it for you, who else—” 

Bakugou rakes his teeth across the skin, nipping and biting and sucking until the whole of Eijirou’s lower back feels like a landmine of electrified nerves. 

And then Bakugou’s mouth dips lower, and the only thing Eijirou can do is sob.

Eijirou and Bakugou sit at the conference table with Endeavour, Fat Gum, and the gaggle of representatives.

Everyone seems to be having some difficulty looking at them. It is very quiet in the conference room.

Eijirou is suddenly, violently reminded that everyone in this room has spent at least forty-five minutes of their life watching (and potentially re-watching) a sex tape featuring two men that share a striking resemblance to him and Bakugou. 

Fat Gum clears his throat. “Did anyone come up with something?”

One by one, the representatives shake their heads. Some of them look a little shell-shocked. Eijirou wonders how bad the tape got. They never really got around to watching the rest of it.

“What about you two?” Endeavour asks, turning to face them, before immediately averting his eyes.

Bakugou has made it very clear that no one else is allowed to see the tattoo. He’s very territorial about it. The knowledge that Kaminari knows what and where it is had him furious, even after Eijirou reminded him that Kaminari was drunk out of his fucking mind and probably thinks Eijirou has a whole portrait of Crimson Riot above his ass.

The entirety of Japan is very much a no-go.

“We have… something,” Eijirou says, after a minute of Bakugou glaring at the back wall. “Um. I have. A tattoo. That the actor doesn’t have. So.”

“Oh, good!” Fat Gum exclaims, with the tone of someone who very much still thought the sex tape was really of him and Bakugou and is now reconciling with the notion that there are people out there pretending to be his mentee in the throes of passion.

“The thing is,” Eijirou says, “the tattoo’s kind of, uh… personal. So I don’t really want to share it with everyone.”

It’s possible everyone would have fought them on this yesterday. Now, in the aftermath of what was possibly the world’s worst movie night, the reps all but give them the go-ahead to handle the media storm however they want.

“We’re gonna do an interview,” Bakugou says, his tone brokering no argument. “Someone who isn’t gonna fucking interrupt us. Set the record straight and just forget the whole thing.”

“Also,” Eijirou says, flushing, “we actually do need those declaration of relationship papers.”

“Of course you do,” Endeavour grumbles. He then pauses, eyes widening a little, and Eijirou can quite literally see him reviewing the events that might have led to Eijirou and Bakugou getting together after over a decade of repressing their emotions. “Please get out.”

Eijirou’s already dragging Bakugou out of his chair. “Gladly!”

The reps point them toward an interviewer named Kobayashi Akiko. She’s a younger host, and her audience tends to be a more progressive demographic that probably won’t beat them down into the ground before they can clear their names. She has the added benefit of having a sister in U.A. who was in the class above them—Kobayashi Aia, one of the business students. This means she’ll be more likely to see them as people, rather than infallible heroes fallen victim to perverted behaviour.

There is very minimal coaching before the interview. As the band plays their opening, Eijirou mostly just hopes that this doesn’t tank his career.

“Red Riot and Ground Zero!” Kobayashi greets. “Thanks so much for being here and welcome to the show!”

“It’s our pleasure,” Eijirou says, grinning. 

Bakugou just nods. He’s a lot more comfortable on Mic’s show, but that would also require talking about their fraudulent sex life with their high school teacher, which tops the list of things Eijirou would rather kill himself than do.

“I think we can just cut to the chase here,” Kobayashi says, once the audience settles. “There’s been a video circulating of the two of you that suggests… a certain relationship.”

“It’s full of shit,” Bakugou says bluntly.

The audience laughs.

Kobayashi smirks, leaning forward. “Can you elaborate?”

“Well, yesterday, we had a meeting with our bosses and a bunch of representatives,” Eijirou says. “And it was all of us in a room trying to figure out how to prove to everyone that it wasn’t us and that we had no idea about any of it.”

“A lot of people were spending valuable time trying to figure out when the video was posted, who posted it, or if there were any identifying things that could separate us from the fakes,” Bakugou says, eyebrows furrowed. “Time they could have spent doing actual good things for the agencies they work for.”

“I mean, we could prove it,” Eijirou says. “I’ve got a tattoo that the guy on the tape doesn’t, so it’s pretty obviously not me.”

“But he shouldn’t have to put himself under scrutiny just to prove something that everyone else should already know,” Bakugou says fiercely. Eijirou knocks their knees together, and Bakugou’s shoulder relaxes against his.

“That’s the biggest thing here,” he says, shrugging. “We’re heroes. We’ve been training for this our whole lives. We’ve been sacrificing our family, safety, and personal lives since we were little kids to achieve this dream and become strong enough to make the world a better place. We wouldn’t mess all that up for something like this, and the public should know that because we’ve both got pretty solid track records.”

“Also, Red’s packing a lot more than the jackass on the tape,” Bakugou says casually. The previously silent crowd erupts in laughter, applause, and whistling. 

Eijirou forgets himself and swivels to glare at him. “We said we weren’t gonna mention that!”

“You were the one who said it was inaccurate,” Bakugou says, leering at him.

“To you,” Eijirou hisses. “That was a private conversation.”

The audience is still laughing. Eijirou hates microphones and all audio technology and the fact that Bakugou’s stupid smug grin makes his hands all sweaty.

“If I might interrupt,” Kobayashi interjects, “we had a little poll with our viewers on Twitter before this, about the number one question they all wanted to ask you. And the biggest thing is that—well, you guys have just always had the kind of bond that seems to almost transcend friendship. That might be part of why it was so easy for people to believe the tape was you, not because they looked like you, but because...well...” She trails off, but the audience is yelling, so it’s clear they agree.

“That part of it’s real,” Bakugou says.

The audience is suddenly very quiet. 

“If you need any more proof, it’s that,” Bakugou continues. He is talking to the whole room. He is only looking at Eijirou. “It’s not a video about two men in love.”

Two men in love.

That’s what they are.

“Also, Zero’s really particular about camera angles,” Eijirou says, elbowing him. “You’ve seen him at award shows, he’s a menace. If it was really us, he would’ve made sure to get my good side.”

“You look like a gorilla no matter what side the camera’s pointing,” Bakugou says, and just like that the atmosphere lightens, and Kobayashi steers them towards easier topics, like their upcoming merch drops and their favourite places to go on lunch break.

Eijirou turns off his phone and tosses it to the side. “Looks like we killed the interview. Should we do more of them?”

“No.”

Eijirou laughs, a little because Bakugou’s hatred of interviews despite him being an attention-seeking son of a bitch is funny, but mostly because he keeps nuzzling Eijirou’s tattoo and the scruff on his chin tickles. “Man, you need to shave.”

“I’m trying to see if Unbreakable protects you from beard burn,” Bakugou says, before dropping a sweet, chaste kiss at the base of Eijirou’s spine, then another further up, then another—until his breath ruffles the baby hairs at Eijirou’s neck, and he’s draped over his back like the world’s most dangerous koala.

“This is for me,” Bakugou says, and he’s not just talking about the tattoo.

Eijirou snorts. The idea that after everything, Bakugou still feels the need to ask—“Course it’s for you,” he says, twisting his head back to press a quick, adoring kiss to Bakugou’s jaw. “Don’t be dumb.”

“You’re the dumb one,” Bakugou mutters, even as one hand comes up to gently massage Eijirou’s scalp. “You chose a slutty tattoo over just calling me.”

“Tell me you wouldn’t have beat the shit out of me for doing it like that.”

Bakugou pauses. “Well, yeah—”

“See!”

“But I would have kissed you after.”

And now it’s Eijirou who has nothing to say, as Bakugou presses him deep into the mattress and kisses him softly, all-consumingly.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was fifteen,” he confesses, eyes crinkling. “I thought you knew. I was so fucking scared, all the time. Every time I made you coffee, or carried your stuff, or—or just looked at you, I was thinking ‘fuck, this is it, he’s gonna figure me out.’”

“I see it now,” Eijirou says earnestly.

Bakugou looks at him fondly. “Yeah, baby,” he says, coming down to kiss him again—and it shows, every time he kisses Eijirou, how long he’s waited, how much he must have wanted it. “I know you do.”