Chapter Text
“I think it’s an allergic reaction or something,” Eijirou says. “It’s like, hey, is this going to—are you listening, man?”
Amajiki looks grimly at him before turning back to the spread in front of them. “If I’m allergic to any of this, I might die.”
“Oh,” Eijirou says. “You’ll be okay?” In hindsight, it’s maybe not the best idea to talk about his weird Bakugou allergy while Amajiki’s eating strange new animal bits. They’re currently sitting in the UA cafeteria with a meal helpfully provided by the school. There’s some stuff Eijirou didn’t even know you could get in Japan. UA money’s crazy.
They’re starting easy. At least, Eijirou thought it’d be easy. Amajiki’s poking gingerly at the bag of surume Eijirou’s mom sent him last week. “Dude,” he says. “You literally eat takoyaki like every day.”
Amajiki glares at the rows of dried squid in front of him. “The octopus is inside the batter. You don’t see the tentacles.”
Eijirou stares at Amajiki. He’s literally seen the guy choke down scorpions in the Fat Gum Agency breakroom, then chase it down with a shot of room-temp black coffee. It was kinda disgusting? But also awesome.
Then again, Amajiki always ate everything very fast. In hindsight, suspiciously so.
“Amajiki, are you—” Eijirou says very carefully, “are you a picky eater?”
Amajiki stares dejectedly down at his plate. “No,” he replies, but like he kinda wishes he could be. Like if it’d been left up to him, he’d just be eating plain rice and tonkatsu every day.
“Huh,” Eijirou says.
Amajiki visibly restrains a shudder as he nudges a bit of squid away from him.
Eijirou’s starting to see why the guy asked him to come to this little food training session. Amajiki had mumbled something about Mirio being busy with Eri, and Hado being away on a mission with Ryukyu. Eijirou’s now getting the sense that Amajiki doesn’t like being stuck trying new foods by himself.
“Why don’t we, uhh.” Eijirou picks up a pair of meat scissors and cuts the surume into strips until it’s impossible to tell that they used to be squid.
The green color on Amajiki’s face recedes a little. He still looks like he’d rather bite off his own hand than have anything to do with this, but he manages to pick up a strip of dried squid and stick it in his mouth. He chews, his brow furrowed with concentration.
Eventually, two triangular fins push out from his cheeks.
“Hey!” Eijirou says, watching them flap uncertainly. “You’ve got, uhh, fins.”
Amajiki reaches up and touches his face. The fins wiggle against his fingers. Then he grimaces. “Not just fins.”
“Oh, like,” Eijirou thinks about squid things. He doesn’t see any tentacles, so it’s probably not that. He doesn’t actually know that many squid facts. “Camouflage?”
Amajiki shakes his head. He looks grimly down at his lower body. “Ink.”
Eijirou envisions a squid in his head. And squid anatomy. And where the ink comes out from. “Oh.”
Amajiki shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
“Why don’t we try the next one?” Eijirou hurriedly adds.
It doesn’t get much better from there.
The roasted grasshoppers (not bad, salty, crunchy) don’t do anything for Amajiki’s jumping ability. He does pop out thin wings that vibrate and chirp when he rubs them against his legs. Nothing apparently seems to happen when Amajiki eats the starfish (briny, kinda bitter), and neither of them actually wants to chop off a finger to see if he got limb regeneration.
The jellyfish salad is the most successful. Eijirou feels a sharp sting when he touches Amajiki’s arm, but Amajiki also gets really close to puking. He doesn’t think Amajiki would be able to bring himself to eat it in the future. It’s a shame. Eijirou likes it. The jellyfish is refreshingly cool and chewy, and it’d been seasoned with sesame oil and ginger.
By the end of the meal, Amajiki is completely draped over the table, looking thoroughly defeated. The uni had really disagreed with him.
“Hey, man,” Eijirou says and pats him on the shoulder. “You worked hard.”
“Ugh,” Amajiki groans. “I wish I had a strong stomach like you.”
Eijirou laughs. “Not really. I feel sick to my stomach all the time.”
“You did just fine.”
Well, none of it was that bad really. The UA kitchen staff had gone out of their way to prepare and season everything to make it pretty tasty. The only thing that Eijirou felt kinda iffy about was the starfish, but that was until he realized you’re not supposed to eat the outer shell.
“It’s not always when I sit down to eat,” Eijirou says. “It’s like, I go around sometimes, and I feel my stomach churning. My throat gets tight. I get like, I dunno, heartburn. I’ve got allergies or something.”
“I don’t think that’s allergies.” Amajiki’s slowly sinking deeper into his seat. Then he presses his face into the surface of the table.
“I think it’s a type of deodorant or something. Maybe shampoo? I only get it sometimes.” Eijirou tries to not think too hard about it. Which is kinda tricky because he’s actively talking about it. “Around certain people, I guess.”
“Not allergies,” Amajiki mumbles into the table.
“It could be though,” Eijirou says.
~*~
It’s not Bakugou’s crotch actually. Well, it is a little bit. It’s just that Eijirou’s brain has not stopped buzzing, and all it’s feeding him is thoughts about Bakugou. And not even like, useful thoughts. Just stuff about his elbows or something.
Or his upper traps, but that’s an actually useful thought. Bakugou’s traps are jacked. Eijirou’s kinda super jealous of them? He does tons of shoulder shrugs, but he’s never even gotten close to what Bakugou’s got. Then again, it’s not as essential for him as it is for Bakugou. The guy throws himself around with explosions. He has to build his traps like a maniac or he’s gonna end up wrecking his neck.
Those are the useful upper trap thoughts.
The not useful thoughts are the ones about how Bakugou’s dumb muscle tanks sit on his traps, and also how sometimes Eijirou can see sweat beaded on top of them. And also on Bakugou’s neck. And on his everything else. Because the dude’s Quirk is literally being sweaty. It’s the most obvious thing ever. It’s so stupid that Eijirou keeps noticing it and thinking about it. He doesn’t know when his entire existence got so stupid.
Once, Eijirou’s on the lower floor of the school gym, working on his delts, and he hears the distant boom of a heavily loaded bar slamming into a weightlifting platform upstairs. It’s the kind of noise you only hear when someone’s doing cleans.
And Eijirou literally stops in the middle of his set and looks up. Because that’s Bakugou. He knows Bakugou’s routine, and this is about the time he’d be working on cleans.
It’s a good full-body exercise. Builds explosive power.
And all he can think about is what it must look like. Bakugou driving up in one forceful motion to bring the bar up. He’d swing his hips forward for momentum, then he’d drop back down into a squat, so he can get under the bar and rest it on the fronts of his shoulders. His fingers would curl around the bar. His face would be completely locked down, everything funneling into concentrating on getting the movements right. Intensity.
That’s literally it. Eijirou just sits there for a while with the image of Bakugou doing one exercise out of his entire routine playing over and over in his head. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it until Kendo from Class 1B calls from her bench, “Hey, Kirishima! You alright?”
He’s not alright. He’s losing track of his sets. He stopped midway through a rep and held the dumbbell suspended in the air like an idiot until Kendo got worried enough to check on him. Because something’s wrong with his head.
~*~
Ashido waves at Eijirou from the batting cages. A coach on the sidelines shouts a warning at her just before the pitching machine chucks a baseball at her. Ashido swings. Her bat cracks into the ball, sending it sailing into the netting. The coach shakes his head incredulously and mutters something to the team captain.
A couple of upperclassmen have been trying to convince Ashido to join the team. She’s been cheerfully dodging them all semester, but eventually one of the Gen Ed students managed to bribe her with a pair of acid pink platform Crocs. She’d agreed to go out to one of the after-school practices, and Eijirou had somehow gotten looped into coming along as moral support.
So Eijirou’s sitting in the bleachers, watching people run around, throw balls, and hit balls. To be honest, he doesn’t know that much about baseball. It seems fun.
The problem with baseball though is the fact that it’s on the baseball field. And the problem with the baseball field is that the track’s right next to it. And Bakugou just so happens to be next to the fence between the track and the baseball field.
He’s doing dumbbell calf raises. Likely to test how his ankle’s doing. Even though Recovery Girl’s Quirk heals perfectly, Eijirou always feels a little iffy about that part of his body after. It’s the memory of the injury, maybe. It’s hard to feel that he’s back to one hundred percent immediately. Bakugou’s the same way.
Eijirou’s not really sure why he decided to do it there because they usually work out in the quad if they’re outside. The baseball field and the track are pretty far away from the student dorms, so Bakugou must’ve gone out of his way to be here.
Eijirou waves when he sees him finish his set. Bakugou doesn’t wave back, but he jerks his chin up in a half-nod. Eijirou shifts in his seat. He wants to hop down from his spot on the bleachers and walk over, but he promised Ashido he’d stay. He’s supposed to get her out of practice if she signals him to.
Ashido looks like she’s having a good time. She’s moving from the batting cages to the plate. The pitcher standing on the mound looks very serious. She’s holding a baseball in one of her six hands, and she’s staring Ashido down with all eight of her eyes. Ashido flashes a peace sign at her. The pitcher doesn’t blink.
After Ashido is ready, the pitcher winds up and flings the ball at her. Another swing and a crack. Ashido’s grinning broadly as she lets the bat fall from her hands. The ball flies into a high arc above them before landing neatly in the glove of one of the players in the farther portions of the field. Ashido slumps. The pitcher sends her a brief nod and a two-handed thumbs up. Eijirou wonders if it would’ve been a six-handed thumbs up if Ashido hit a homerun.
They do that a couple more times before the coach starts gathering all the players up. He points around the perimeter of the baseball field. It kinda looks like he’s about to start them on running laps for conditioning.
That’s when Ashido turns back to Eijirou and jerks her hands towards her neck in a really weird but obvious gesture. So obvious that the rest of the team starts staring at her. Eijirou jumps down from the bleachers and jogs over.
“Hey, uhh, coach,” Eijirou says, and slows to a stop when everyone turns to look at him instead. He realizes then that he doesn’t actually know how he’s supposed to get Ashido out of practice. “Ashido can’t stay. She’s got, um.” He really sucks at this, holy shit. “It’s her cat. Ashido’s cat is pregnant? Well, it was, and it’s uhh, giving birth now? Ashido’s cat. So she’s gotta go. Make sure her cat’s okay.”
Ashido widens her eyes into a You’re So Goddamn Bad At This look before turning to the coach with a smile pasted over her face. “My cat’s on blood thinners.”
The coach looks at at Eijirou’s crappy lying face, then at Ashido’s brazen lying face. He sighs and waves them off.
Ashido pivots smoothly on her heel, hooks her arm around Eijirou’s arm, then proceeds to drag him off the baseball field. “How are you this freaking bad at lying?” she hisses into his ear.
“I don’t do it very often!” Eijirou hisses back. “You should’ve asked Kaminari. He lies all the time.”
“That’s why I didn’t. He looks super unreliable.” Ashido jostles him. “You look loads more trustworthy.”
Eijirou jostles her back. “Yeah, because I don’t lie about stuff.”
Ashido scoffs. They pass by the dugout, and Ashido bends down to scoop up her bat. “C’mon, I gotta return this to the equipment locker.”
They’re almost free and clear of the baseball field, but that means they’re at the fence next to the track. Where Bakugou is. He doesn’t notice them. His earbuds are in, and he’s focusing on stretching out.
“Oh, hey,” Ashido says. “You’ve got a bet going, right?”
Eijirou watches Bakugou’s calf muscles go taut then lax as he works through his isometric pulses. “It’s a training exercise.”
“Same difference.” Ashido sends him a look. “You’ve really never gotten hit in the balls before?”
“No,” Eijirou says. Then he clocks the evil glint in Ashido’s eye. “No.”
Ashido winds up and swings. There’s a hollow metallic gong as the bat clangs against Eijirou’s hardened dick.
Eijirou glares at her. “Seriously?” He glances over to where the baseball team is running. Luckily, it seems like the coach wasn’t looking in their direction when Ashido decided to misuse school equipment on Eijirou’s groin.
“Huh,” Ashido says. She holds the bat up.
There’s a noticeable dent in the aluminum. If he kinda squints at it, the dent’s vaguely in the shape of his penis.
Ashido looks at the bat, then at Eijirou’s crotch. “Congratulations?”
“Please stop talking.”
It’s at that point that Bakugou decides to notice they’re standing there because Eijirou’s life sucks.
Bakugou pops out an earbud and says, “Did you just go at Kirishima with a baseball bat.”
He hasn’t actually stopped stretching. He’s deep into a cossack squat. Eijirou can’t quite stop himself from looking at his quads. Because Bakugou’s quads are huge.
Ashido lets the bat swing lightly next to her. “Yep. I want in on the bet.”
“It’s training,” Bakugou says, frowning.
“Whatever.”
Bakugou’s frown deepens into a scowl at Ashido’s blatant disregard for the sanctity of nut-kicking training exercises. “You can’t use a bat. And it has to go both ways.”
Ashido snorts. “I don’t have balls to kick.”
“Okay,” Eijirou cuts in, because he really doesn’t like where this conversation’s going. “I’m hard vetoing making this Kick Kirishima In The Balls thing open invitation.”
“So only Bakugou’s allowed to get you in the nads?” Ashido says, elbowing him.
“Apparently,” Eijirou mutters.
Bakugou jerks his head at the dent in Ashido’s bat. “That disqualified you.” Which means Bakugou actually looked at Eijirou’s dick imprint in the aluminum. He wants to die.
Ashido scowls. “That doesn’t count! I didn’t know the rules!”
Bakugou crosses his arms. “Would knowing the rules actually stop you?”
“Yes,” Ashido says with her brazen lying face on.
Bakugou shakes his head and goes back to focusing on his stretches. “Yeah, see, that’s what I fucking mean.” He pops his earbud back in, signaling loud and clear that he’s done with the conversation. Even standing on the other side of the fence, Eijirou can hear Bakugou’s loud, reportedly awful music.
Ashido turns to Eijirou. “This is why I asked you to come to practice,” she says. “Even when I’m telling the truth, I seem shady.”
“Okay, but you weren’t telling the truth,” Eijirou says.
“That’s not the point!”
Eijirou thinks that kinda is the point, but it also doesn’t matter because right at that very moment, Bakugou decides to sink into a frog stretch in front of them. Eijirou focuses very hard on Ashido’s faux outraged face. Her horns quiver a little when she’s worked up.
“You know I’d follow the rules, right?” Ashido says, waggling her eyebrows at him. “C’mon, you could totally talk Bakugou into letting me in on the bet.”
“No freaking way. Why would I want to have two people 24/7 trying to destroy my balls?”
Ashido’s hand lands on his shoulder. “No, you don’t see the vision.” She shakes her head sagely. “It wouldn’t be two people trying to destroy you. It’s a prime opportunity for a two-on-one battle against Bakugou that ends with you getting one in on Bakugou’s balls for the team.”
“But I don’t want to have anything to do with Bakugou’s balls,” Eijirou says and kinda hates that that’s not entirely the truth.
Ashido cocks her head at him. “Then why’d you agree to the bet in the first place?”
“I never agreed to it! I’m literally just acting in self-defense!”
“And he would reject a perfectly willing participant,” Ashido mutters darkly.
“You’re too willing.”
“Look, just,” Ashido seizes Eijirou by the shoulders and manhandles him into facing Bakugou’s direction, “—talk to him. I can at least help run interference for you until I get a window of opportunity.”
“That’s not going to work,” Eijirou protests, looking over his shoulder at Ashido.
She grabs the back of his head and points him at Bakugou. “Eyes on the prize, buddy.”
“I—” And then all thought flies out of Eijirou’s head.
Bakugou’s doing isometric pulses for the frog stretch. It’s a perfectly normal, reasonable thing to do. The guy does a ton of hip mobility stuff because his combat style’s pretty leg oriented. And Bakugou has a whole thing about the relative ineffectiveness of static stretches compared with the more dynamic isometric contraction variations. So yeah, no big deal.
Except Bakugou is lying stomach down in the grass, his hands braced in front of him, his legs spread, his pelvis pressing close to the ground. His hips pulse back and forward.
For a long moment, Eijirou looks. He can’t freaking stop himself.
This stretch hurts. He’s tried it before, and he couldn’t get much lower than table-top position height. By the time he finished, his entire body was shaking.
Bakugou’s hip flexors and groin muscles are much more flexible, but this is tough even for him. Eijirou can see the way he holds his core tight, how tension runs through his entire posterior chain. His shoulders are flushed a little red from exertion and the afternoon heat. His tanktop hangs away from his body. Eijirou can see the ridge of his collarbone, and the dip where his deltoids meet his pectorals.
Bakugou pushes back into the stretch a little deeper than before and breathes out a quiet groan.
Eijirou promptly turns on his heel and power walks away.
“Hey!” Ashido yells behind him.
“You can convince him yourself!” Eijirou shouts back.
Ashido makes an aggravated noise. He can hear her running after him. Eijirou picks up the pace into a full sprint. It’s not enough to stop Ashido from catching up because Eijirou’s cardio still sucks. He looks back just in time to see her getting ready to launch herself at him. He braces, feels Ashido’s weight hit his back, then he drops low, curling his right shoulder down and in. Ashido’s momentum takes her over him. She hits the ground in a roll in front of him.
Ashido comes to a stop, leaving her sprawled on her back. “What the hell!” She kicks her feet against the ground.
Eijirou braces his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “I told you,” he pants out. “It’s not gonna work.”
“You didn’t even try!” Ashido rocks up into a sitting position. She glares at Eijirou. “You just looked at him, and then you—” she trails off.
Eijirou realizes too late that he has no idea what expression is on his face right now. He’d been too caught up on fleeing the scene to notice the heat flushing his cheeks all the way down to his neck. Even his ears feel warm. And it can’t all be blamed on the sun.
Eijirou hurriedly pastes a frown on his face, but the damage is already done.
Ashido stares at him. “Wait, really?”
“No,” Eijirou says.
“Oh my god, you really do suck at lying.” Ashido pushes to her feet. “Also, seriously, really? I love the guy, but his personality objectively blows.”
“We’re not talking about this.” Eijirou has another go at power walking away.
Ashido fists her hand into the back of his shirt and reels him back in. “No, no. We’re talking about this right now. Bakugou’s on a one-man campaign to destroy your testicles, and that doesn’t even—” she blinks. “Only Bakugou’s allowed to kick you in the nuts, huh?”
He eyes her warily. “I don’t like any of the conclusions you seem to be drawing.”
“They’re getting drawn whether you like it or not.”
Eijirou resigns himself to having the worst conversation possible. “Look,” he says. “It’s not like I have any control over any of this. And,” he waves his hands at her, “—have you seen his traps?”
“Bakugou’s actually going to demolish your ballsack, and not even in a fun way, while you’re getting all hot and bothered over his, whatever, his traps. Also, for real? Not his biceps?”
Eijirou blinks. “Why would I care about his biceps?”
“Why would you care about his traps? Biceps do the whole,” Ashido flexes her arms into a strong man pose and scrunches her face. “Y’know?”
Eijirou stares blankly at her. “Arms are a small muscle group though? Most of your power comes from your core and your legs.” He pauses. “His quads.”
“You’re so goddamn weird,” Ashido tells him. “But then again, for a hot second, I had a thing about Ojiro and his tail.” She looks off into the distance for a moment, probably thinking about how nice Ojiro’s tail is. Then she snaps her focus back to Eijirou. “Anyway, my point is you’re screwed.”
“I know.”
“No, you’re screwed. The way this is going, it’s a matter of when, not if Bakugou blasts your nuts into itty bitty pieces.”
Eijirou groans. “He’ll move on eventually,” he says, his voice sounding extremely dubious even to his own ear.
Ashido snorts. “Yeah, really? Bakugou?” She waves her hands to encompass literally everything they’ve ever seen the guy do. “Bakugou?”
“Thanks, Ashido. That really makes me feel so much better.”
“You’re the one who refuses to let me join in and help.”
Eijirou imagines what Ashido’s idea of helping would be in a life-or-death nut kicking battle. “It’s okay,” he says very quickly. “I’ll figure something out.”
Ashido rolls her eyes. “Fine. Good freaking luck, it’s kill or be killed.”
Eijirou laughs. Then he sees how serious Ashido’s expression is. He stops laughing.
~*~
Bakugou nudges Eijirou’s backpack with his toe and says, “Thought you said you didn’t like Monster.”
Eijirou frowns and clutches the can close to his chest. “It tastes good.”
“And the color doesn’t have anything to do with it, huh?”
Eijirou takes a defensive gulp. “No.”
To be fair, red Monster is very red. The entire can is an eye-searingly bright color that could definitely be described as crimson. Even the flavor is called Ultra Red. But that has nothing to do with anything. Eijirou makes plenty of decisions that have nothing to do with the fact that red is an awesome color.
“The only red on the Red Bull can is in the logo,” Bakugou says, smirking. Eijirou had noticed that too, but he’s not about to admit it.
For a while, they just stand there, Eijirou sipping his energy drink that totally has merits beyond its color, and Bakugou looking smug. Eijirou probably could’ve fought harder on the whole color thing. But to be honest, smug is kind of a good look on Bakugou. He rolls his weight back onto his heels, and his shoulders drop a little. He doesn’t hold his neck as stiff. His canines show a little when he grins like a total bastard. It’s kinda terrible, actually.
Eventually, Bakugou slings his own backpack to the ground next to Eijirou’s stuff, rolls his neck a couple of times, then steps up to the squat rack. Which is where people do squats. Because today is Bakugou’s squat day.
Eijirou closes his eyes and presses the cold can against his forehead. He forgot. Fuck.
When he opens them again, Bakugou’s pushing a plate onto the bar. Eijirou has to think of something fast because he’s actually absolutely screwed.
It’s Bakugou’s squat day, and Bakugou pushes to failure with his squats much more than he does with other exercises. It’s good for him to do that. It improves his top-line power. The problem is that squats can go very wrong very fast. So Eijirou always spots him.
Spotting a squat means that you have to be pretty close to the person you’re spotting. Because you want to be right there to react if something goes wrong. So the spotter stands right behind the squatter, and follows them through the reps, their hands hovered forward under the squatter’s lats to catch them if they can’t finish the rep.
Basically, Eijirou’s crotch is going to be hovering inches from Bakugou’s ass the entire goddamn time. If Bakugou takes a squat deep enough, they might even make contact.
Eijirou cannot let that happen.
Bakugou is just finishing loading up the bar. He glances over to where Eijirou’s standing, then frowns when he realizes that Eijirou is still standing a good distance away.
“What’re you doing,” Bakugou says.
And he still hasn’t figured out what the hell to say. “Um,” Eijirou tries.
Bakugou’s frown deepens. “Get over here.”
“Well, y’see, I uhh, can’t?”
Bakugou looks impatiently at him for a moment, then he crosses his arms. “Okay,” he says. “Why the fuck not.”
You suck at lying , Ashido had told him. So Eijirou should probably tell the truth. “Bad knee day,” Eijirou lies.
“Quit wasting my goddamn time.”
Yep, still can’t lie for shit.
Bakugou’s frown is steadily turning into an outright scowl. Maybe even a glare. They don’t have that much time in the mornings to work out, and Bakugou’s an absolute stickler for getting through his full routine before classes start. He’s clearly starting to get pissed.
Bakugou steps away from the bar. There’s this thing he does with his shoulders when he’s being menacing. He squares them, then draws them up a little. He drops his chin to stare the other person down. His hands hang loosely by his sides. He widens his stance. He doesn’t look relaxed exactly, but he’s not tense either. It’s like his body is coiled, ready to strike.
It would be a really bad time to think about his dick and Bakugou and also Bakugou’s dick. Which is of course what Eijirou’s brain decides to do. He takes a hurried step back.
“You don’t want to spot me anymore.” Bakugou crosses his arms over his chest, which is pretty damn intimidating. It draws attention to how absolutely jacked his forearms and biceps are, and how much damage they can do to your very breakable nose. Angry is also kind of a good look on him, which Eijirou doesn’t notice. Not at all.
“No, I do,” he says. “Just not uhh, today?”
“And what exactly,” Bakugou says, “is wrong with today.”
Maybe Eijirou should just let the guy kick him in the nuts and have this all be done. But it seems like their dumb training exercise is the last thing on Bakugou’s mind. Eijirou’s weird issues are getting between Bakugou and the integrity of his workout routine. That’s a very dangerous place to be in.
Fuck it.
Eijirou squeezes his eyes shut and very quickly says, “If I spot you today, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get hard.”
He doesn’t get a response.
Eventually, he has to open his eyes to check Bakugou’s reaction.
The guy still looks kinda pissed, but his expression’s more confused-annoyed now than outright angry. His eyes are fixed on Eijirou’s face, then it tracks down to his shoulders and over his torso. Like he’s looking for signs of—oh, like he’s looking for signs of Eijirou’s Quirk activating.
This is the worst. “Not that,” he mumbles. “The other kind of hard.”
Eijirou watches Bakugou’s stare drop down to his crotch. He concentrates on not thinking too much about the fact that Bakugou is paying really close attention to his dick.
Then Bakugou shrugs. “Shit happens.” He turns around and steps back up to the bar.
Which means that if Bakugou hypothetically started his squat sets, and Eijirou hypothetically spotted him, and Eijirou hypothetically got hard during the spot, Bakugou hypothetically wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. Hypothetically, they wouldn’t talk about it. Hypothetically, everything would be okay.
Hypothetically, Bakugou would chalk it all up to Eijirou being kinda hair-trigger today, and not for a second suspect that Eijirou had been thinking about his dick and Bakugou’s dick and also Bakugou for well over a week.
“Look,” Eijirou blurts out. “It’s not, uhh, just that.”
Bakugou faces him again. The irritation had mostly gone away, but it looks like it’s starting to come back around now. “Kirishima, I don’t really want to hear about your weird boners.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Eijirou says, “but you’re gonna have to hear about this one anyway.”
Bakugou raises an eyebrow.
Eijirou takes a deep breath and exhales. He squares his shoulders a little, and says to Bakugou’s slightly annoyed face, “I think I have a weird boner for you. Like, in my chest. A chest boner.”
There’s a very long excruciating silence.
Bakugou nods slowly, a frown wrinkling his brow. “A chest boner.”
“Yeah?” It’s starting to occur to him that this is maybe not the best way to explain what’s happening here. “I’m emotional about your dick, man. And also your traps.”
“So,” Bakugou says, “you have a boner in your chest,” he pauses, “because you’re emotional about my traps.”
Eijirou blows out a breath. “Yeah, pretty much.” He bobs his head a little.
“And that’s why you can’t spot me.”
“It would’ve been ethically wrong for me to spot you without telling you about my, uhh,” Eijirou meets Bakugou’s stare, “chest boner. And my crotch boner.”
Bakugou breathes in. He closes his eyes, then opens them. He breathes out.
“Kirishima.”
“Yeah?”
“Get the fuck over here.”
Eijirou gets the fuck over there.
He comes to a stop in front of Bakugou who’s still facing him with a partly bewildered, partly aggravated look on his face. Bakugou doesn’t immediately start his squat set. Which is maybe a good sign? Or also maybe a super bad sign.
They’d eaten up a lot of time with the chest boner talk. Bakugou probably won’t be able to get through his full routine today. He probably knows this. Maybe that’s why Bakugou’s not starting his sets right away. Because Eijirou had completely derailed this workout.
Bakugou’s probably at least a little mad that Eijirou kinda sorta messed up his routine.
Eijirou can’t help but think about how fast Bakugou snapped up his knee the first time. If he’d actually followed through, Eijirou’s balls would’ve turned to powder. Shit. He really wants to keep his nutsack intact.
He sees Bakugou’s weight shift to the side a little, almost as if he’s taking the weight off one leg to free it up to kick the shit out of Eijirou’s very destructible balls.
Fuck.
It’s kill or be killed , Ashido said.
Eijirou swings his leg up and makes contact.
The air punches out of Bakugou’s chest. He doubles over before sinking to the ground.
“Oh crap,” Eijirou says and drops to his knees next to Bakugou.
The guy lets out a long groan.
“Dude, I’m so sorry, I thought you were gonna—because I just? And you seemed mad, and I didn’t think that would actually—shit, do you need to go to Recovery Girl?”
“No,” Bakugou grits out. His face is screwed up in pain. “It’ll—” He makes a sort of gurgling noise. “Fuck. Good shot.”
“I thought you’d deflect it. I wouldn’t have if I’d—”
“Kinda distracted,” Bakugou grunts. “Fucking chest boner.”
Fucking chest boner.
Holy shit, Eijirou literally told Bakugou how he felt, and then immediately kicked him in the balls.
“Oh my god,” he says.
“Hrgargh,” Bakugou says.
It takes a couple of minutes of Bakugou contorted into a ball of excruciating nut pain before he’s able to talk in full sentences again.
Bakugou uncurls and leans back against one of the posts for the squat rack. He tilts his head back and looks up at Eijirou hovering uncertainly over him. “Nice one,” he says. “You win.” He knocks his head back against the post and barks out a laugh. “Kicked the shit out of me.”
Eijirou blinks.
Bakugou levers to his feet, then stands there for a moment, shifting his weight minutely. His crotch is probably still a little sore. Eijirou stares at him, then opens his mouth to say, “I didn’t mean—I didn’t tell you that stuff just so I could win the contest.”
“It’s a training exercise.”
“Dude,” Eijirou says. “I’m trying to be serious here. My chest boner is serious business.”
Bakugou raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, serious.”
“Hey—”
“I know,” Bakugou rocks back on his heels. Then he grins a little. “But you gotta admit, that was a helluva play. Seizing the situational advantage.”
Eijirou frowns. “Not on purpose.”
Bakugou nods slowly, his expression thoughtful. “It’s pretty useful,” he says. “You wouldn’t have caught me off guard otherwise.”
“It wasn’t a tactic.”
“But see, I didn’t know about it. And then you told me, let me get distracted, and pressed your advantage. That’s pretty damn tactical.”
“You suck,” Eijirou tells him.
“I’m right,” Bakugou says with a short decisive nod. “And now we’ve leveled the playing field. You wouldn’t be able to pull this off again without the element of surprise.”
“You better freaking not—”
“The training’s still on,” Bakugou declares.
“Chest boner’s gone,” Eijirou tells him, which to his great regret, isn’t actually true.
“Liar,” Bakugou says and grins. “I’m gonna win this time.”
“You’re so—” Eijirou starts to say, then gives up. This is really what he gets for catching weird chest feelings for Bakugou, objectively the worst person on the planet.
Bakugou’s grin broadens. “So you spotting me or what?”
Eijirou groans.
He’s gonna be stuck thinking about Bakugou’s stupid crotch forever.