Chapter Text
“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.” ― George Orwell, 1984
It’s a little poetic, a little ironic, but mostly anticlimactic and quite predictable, how everything comes to its head with an explosion.
Almost four months after the ‘childhood room incident’, as Bakugou has taken to calling it in his head with no small amount of derision, there’s a major skirmish at the Nebuta Matsuri summer festival in Aomori. Thousands of people from all over Japan gathered in one place, of course villains wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to make a statement and wreak havoc while they were at it. With Aomori being far away as it was to Tokyo, many heroes in the capital had not been called in to supervise the event. It was also supposed to be a reasonable strategy to keep a good number of pro heroes in the capital in case villains used the Nebuta Matsuri as a diversion to carry out their actual attack on Tokyo. But when the situation got out of hand, and it appeared that heroes were losing the fight, the Department of Hero Agencies issued an urgent request for help from all available heroes who could make the trip to Aomori in time to turn the tide and force the villains into retreat.
Bakugou and Todoroki decide that it will be faster to fly the Agency’s private jet instead of relying on their quirks (it still takes them a whole fucking hour, damnit, but at least they’re not about to drop off their feet when they land, and they could take a few of their sidekicks with them). Kirishima texts him that he was in Akita with two of his sidekicks when he received the request, and the three are already on a charter flight to the scene of the action. Bakugou texts him that he should wait for them to get there. Kirishima texts back, ‘ They need me.’ And that’s that.
The whole flight to Aomori is tense, with Bakugou flipping his Zippo open and shut in agitation, and Todoroki getting updates of the ongoing attack on his phone and informing Bakugou about it -- ‘Number of civilian casualties reported at 36 so far. At least 150 injured, including 10 pro heroes. 16 Nomu sighted at the scene, at least 8 of them high-end. No sign of the leader of the League of Villains or any other notable villains yet (here he gives Bakugou a pointed look, which the blond completely ignores).
Bakugou’s fingers are itching to text Tomura and ask him what the hell his plan is. But that would be a pathetic show of weakness and incompetence on his part, and Tomura doesn’t owe him anything. Their agreement was that the villains’ boss would only tip Bakugou off prior to an attack that would involve Kirishima, and for quite a while, ever since Bakugou stopped thinking of their relationship as a contract, Tomura has been doing that more as a favor, a token of his affections for Bakugou, rather than a debt, or terms of an agreement. The fact that all the pro heroes at the Nebuta festival were such losers that they couldn’t repel a villains’ attack without getting help from other heroes that were decidedly supposed not to get involved is not Tomura’s fault. But damn it, now Kirishima is on his way to the scene of the attack, and he’s gonna get there much sooner than Bakugou, and the blond curses himself for having relied so much on Tomura’s intel that now he is feeling completely blindsided, like a fucking rookie. And anxious. Bakugou Katsuki doesn’t get anxious. Fuck .
They finally touch down on a clearing a few kilometers off the site with the most Nomu sightings, and in no time the two of them are right in the middle of fire and chaos. By far, this is the most massive villain-coordinated attack Bakugou has seen. He can see now why villains have managed to advance so far despite the fact that heroes had been prepared for the attack. There are just too many of them, and too few heroes to make much difference. Bakugou had no idea Tomura had this many foot soldiers to spare, and he’s quite impressed at the progress the older man has made in the face of so many unfavorable conditions thrown his way. This many quirk-holders choosing to be on the side of villainy, the opposition , also means that the hero industry has utterly failed to keep them on its own side. Of course, Bakugou has never had any illusions about the efficiency of the hero industry to keep the population on the line.
The first thing Bakugou does, before engaging in battle, is to locate Kirishima. He sends a signal on his cell phone to the redhead and waits for a response with bated breath. Todoroki has ran off to the far end of the street, where a rather large number of villains are terrorizing civilians who are trying to take shelter in nearby buildings. After a few minutes of tense, agonizing waiting, there’s a familiar ping! on his phone. Kirishima has sent him his coordinates. A large-scale commercial complex about 3 kilometers off the street he’s standing on. Thanks to his quirk, Bakugou is inside the building in less than two minutes. He fights his way through the hordes of weakass villains up to the fourth floor, and easily spots the brilliant red of Kirishima’s hair at the far end of the corridor. He’s trying to hold his ground against a chainsaw Nomu and two other villains at the same time, but he doesn’t look too good. His defense has too many holes in it, his attacks are quick but sloppy, too many wasted moves that will soon tire him out. Bakugou spots blood on him, too, which means the redhead’s hardening quirk is not in its optimal condition to protect his skin from getting ripped off. He has to make it to Kirishima’s side quickly, before the villains wise up to his mistakes and take advantage of his weak spots.
And that’s when the explosion happens.
The floor quakes violently under his feet, shattered glass, wood and metal flying all around him, raining down on his head like deadly confetti. He dodges swiftly under a collapsing pillar that would have bludgeoned him to death, but then becomes distracted by what’s going on with Kirishima’s fight against the villains. That brief moment of distraction turns out to be a huge mistake, as the whole ceiling collapses on his head, and while he’s quick enough to avoid the worst of it by blasting the debris away from his body, he still ends up with his legs trapped under a hugeass mess of metal and concrete.
The piercing pain knocks the wind out of him, and he viciously hopes that he didn’t break a bone. He tries to focus his eyes on Kirishima instead, but his vision is blurry through the sheen of tears covering the surface of his eyes and the thick clouds of powdered cement in the air that haven’t settled yet, and he fails to spot him anywhere. The shock to his system has slowed down his reaction time, and he has a hard time getting his hands to work and explode the debris off his legs.
“Fucking useless shit, come on!”
“Katsuki!”
Bakugou’s head snaps sharply toward the distressed voice, eyes widening slightly at the man running toward him. The fact that none of the most notable villains had participated in the Aomori attack meant that this was a diversion after all, with Tomura, Dabi, Toga and the rest of the villains’ elite group planning a more devastating attack on Tokyo. But Tomura is here, now kneeling beside him, hands frantically grabbing at the debris and turning them into dust.
A faint, familiar cry somewhere at the end of the corridor finally snaps Bakugou out of his stupor.
“No!” He shouts at Tomura and grabs his thin wrists in both of his hands. “Save him! Save him!”
With his wrists still trapped in Katsuki’s strong, bruising hold, Tomura turns around to look at the direction the blond is pointing him to, and he’s not surprised to see that him is no other than Red Riot, the man Katsuki would go to hell and back to protect. The man that started this thing between them. The man that means the world to the man that means the world to him.
He turns his gaze back at Katsuki’s face, and the blond gives a short nod and releases his wrists. I trust you with his life, those intense red eyes are telling him, and Tomura has an epiphany, in the nanosecond it takes him to nod back and take off toward the redhead, that he would do anything to preserve that trust. Even to the extent of openly going against his own people to rescue Katsuki’s.
He only hesitates for a few seconds - the two villains, whose names he doesn’t know, give him huge, triumphant grins when they notice him - but then the Nomu goes for a deadly blow, which would have cut right through the redhead’s arm, and Tomura doesn’t hesitate anymore. He reaches with both hands to grab the Nomu’s head and crush his skull into fine bone powder. The redhead takes advantage of the momentary shock and knocks out one of the villains with a powerful kick to his head. Tomura crushes the skull of the remaining one in mere seconds, marveling at how strong his Decay quirk has grown over time. Then the redhead collapses to the floor, blood dripping down his jaw and shallow breaths wheezing past through his cracked lips.
He has a nasty cut on his shoulder, deep and bleeding profusely. Tomura never does anything by half, and he didn’t just kill one of his precious Nomu just for the redhead to bleed out in front of him. Without giving it much thought, Tomura rips off the sleeve of his hoodie and takes extra care with his fingers to wrap the piece of cloth firmly around the other man’s wound.
The redhead’s breathing is labored and his eyes are resting heavily on him, calculating but not quite distrustful. He doesn’t look as shocked as Tomura thought he should, but then again, maybe it’s the exhaustion and the blood loss that are delaying his reactions.
“Why?” He asks with difficulty, wincing and biting his lip to stifle a groan.
Tomura gives him a fleeting glance, before looking down at his wrapped-up shoulder. It’s a neat, tight wrap, if he says so himself, and it’s his first, too, so he feels proud of what he managed to accomplish with the fingers that were made to destroy, not to fix.
“You’re important to someone who’s important to me.”
He doesn’t know if Katsuki has told his friends about him. He rarely talks about his other life, never tells him anything about his interactions with fellow pro heroes, perhaps weary that Tomura would use the information to have the edge over them during battle.
The redhead gives him a pointed look. “Katsuki?”
So, he knows. Tomura doesn’t know how to feel about it. “He always wants you safe.”
“And him? You’re taking care of him?”
The redhead continues to surprise him, and Tomura begins to understand why he’s so important to Katsuki. He doesn’t judge Katsuki; doesn’t shun the ugly side of him. He has accepted him the way he is, embraced him wholly, with all his soft and barbed edges poking through the skin, and he still loves him for it. Tomura doesn’t see the point in lying to the man who is capable of that kind of love. “With my life.”
It is at that moment that Katsuki joins them, while limping on a bloody leg, and Tomura scoots over to let him collapse heavily by the redhead’s side.
Bakugou inspects the bandaged wound closely, noticing that the fabric belongs to Tomura’s favorite black hoodie, which used to belong to Bakugou almost a lifetime ago before the blond gave it to him when the villains’ boss voiced an interest in it. Something twists in his chest, like a rusty knife hacking its way into his heart, at seeing Tomura’s pale, scarred arm poking through the ripped-off sleeve.
He opens his mouth to say something, or to make a choked sound instead while trying to say it, but a ping! on his phone saves him from making a complete fool out of himself in front of Kirishima. He had sent Todoroki his coordinates while stuck under the debris, and now the other man has sent him a text, ‘attack repelled. paramedics otw. hang on.’
He looks up from the phone at Tomura with an urgent look in his eyes.
“Go!” He shouts and Tomura swiftly gets to his feet and leaves the building before the paramedics arrive to take care of Kiri.
Bakugou follows Kirishima on the stretcher all the way out of the building on his limping leg, and tells him he’ll come visit him soon as he’s loaded into an ambulance. Kirishima gives him a knowing smile and tells him, ‘go do your thing, Katsuki. And tell him, for whatever it’s worth, you two have my blessing.’
He finds Tomura, shoulders hunched and hood covering his face, sitting on a bench in the deserted promenade of Aoiumi Park, overlooking the bay bridge. He joins him on the bench, and for a while, neither of them says anything; just looking ahead as the blood red sun sinks slowly into the bay, with slightly noisy breaths in the otherwise quietness of their surroundings, and skins sticky with sweat in the hot, humid air. The ache in Bakugou’s leg is distracting. He probably should have had it checked. But that can wait. For now, there is a more pressing matter he needs to address. He turns his head away from the tranquil scenery of the bay to look at Tomura instead.
“Why are you here?”
Tomura gives him a half-smile, barely visible under the hood. “Where else should I be?”
“Back at Tokyo? Carrying out a bigass attack? Taking over the city hall or something?”
It takes Tomura a few seconds too long to answer, “There is no attack.”
“What?” Bakugou says, failing to mask his shock.
Tomura shrugs. “I called it off when I heard you were heading to Aomori.”
Bakugou’s scowl deepens over suspicious eyes. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“It wouldn’t have been fun without you there.”
It’s not that, though, is it? It’s not about the fun. It hasn’t been about the fun for such a longass time Bakugou doesn’t remember when it had been. Tomura would have won the fight in Tokyo, and they both know it. He didn’t want the win. Because it had stopped being about the win a long time ago, too. It’s something else. Something Bakugou has been trying to ignore in the hope that it would go away. But it hasn’t. If anything, it became even more tangible, more present, more persistent. He hasn’t been able to ignore it for almost four months, ever since the ‘childhood room incident’. He doesn’t think he can stand this fucking buzz in his head anymore. He wants to scream it out, if only for the noise to quiet down. And the words are there, have been there from the start, but he has been fucking scared to grab them and throw them at Tomura's unsuspecting, but no, his expecting face.
He gets to his feet and walks up to the railing, turning his back to the sunset over the bay bridge.
“Do you still wish to know what my truth was?”
Tomura pushes the hood back from his face and stands up, closing the distance between them. “Tell me.” There is a breathless quality to his voice that makes Bakugou’s heart pound loudly in his ears.
He takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “I was trying to learn if I was capable of falling in love.”
Love. What a scary word. What a strange notion. What a terribly all-consuming feeling.
“Are you?”
“Turns out I am.”
“And where did you find that truth of yours?”
Bakugou pauses. Suddenly, it becomes a little harder to breathe. He looks conflicted. Slightly pained and pale and panicked.
It feels like his chest has hollowed out, heart and lungs shriveling out of existence. Why can’t he fucking breathe?
“It’s fear,” he swallows hard, voice strained and words scratching the walls of his throat like vultures trying to claw their way out of his skin. “It’s fear, isn’t it?”
And he sounds somewhat desperate, somewhat panicked, somewhat hopeful. Carmine eyes large, and yearning and imploring, pleading with Tomura to tell him the truth is what he is wishing it to be.
Tomura reaches out slowly, slow enough to give Katsuki a chance to back away if he wishes to, but he doesn’t move an inch, rooted to the spot like a beautiful still life painting against the backdrop of a red sky and golden ocean, and Tomura’s fingers graze the softness of his damp skin, and he grabs Katsuki’s hand with four of his fingers, and the blond lets him. Finally. Heart beating maddeningly in his chest like it is about to go flying.
“It is.” And there is no need for it, “Because I love you, too.”
And then something happens. Something tremendously important. Something magnificent. Historic. Utterly breathtaking in its unparalleled beauty. And Tomura is the cause of and the sole witness to it. The corners of the blond’s lips move upward at the same time, and the expression in his carmine eyes is soft and tender and infinite, like a blooming rose, or glowing embers under a pile of powdery ashes, and in the gentle purple highlights of dusk streaked through the younger man’s ash blonde hair and in the quietness of the world around them broken only by the sound of gentle waves, faraway sirens and nearby cicadas, Tomura is suddenly struck with the realization that he is seeing Bakugou Katsuki’s smile for the very first time.
And he leans forward to capture the entire softness and beauty of the smile with his mouth in their first kiss.
And Katsuki’s smile grows wider against the urgent touch of their lips.