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Eri is being quiet.
It’s something of a superfluous observation in itself, according to Hizashi: Eri is quiet, water is wet, Shouta is sleepy. What’s new?
But Shouta’s always been bad with words. He says Eri is being quiet and he means Eri is not talking and her eyes are swollen. He knows the kid is regularly quiet to a fault, he’s her damn caretaker. But Eri is the shy kind of quiet. The kind to say she’s fine with orange juice despite eyeing the apple-adorned carton on the counter with longing eyes, for fear of overstepping. The kind to sit patiently with her feet swinging off the edge of the desk as Shouta grades papers into the late hours of the night, savouring the moment with a patience too developed for her size. She’s not the kind of quiet that refuses to eat or drink anything at all, or the kind to drag her feet when she walks. Especially not the kind to go the whole day without sparing so much as a slight smile for Shouta.
The words don’t come, though, so instead, he says Eri is being quiet.
Hizashi, in turn, claps him on the back and tells him to lighten up.
The rest of the faculty seem largely unphased, too. Midoriya grins like usual, ruffling the little girl’s hair when they enter and completely missing the imperceptible wince of her frame under his touch. Midnight coos over her, oblivious to the way Eri’s eyes stay glued sullenly to the vinyl floor of the classroom.
Shouta can’t help but steal glances at her furtively, trying and failing miserably to pinpoint the problem. He’s asked her a dozen times in the last hour alone if she’s alright, and with each new occasion Eri grows increasingly glum, clipped affirmations turning to one-word responses, and then into grunts.
Just as he’s kneeling down to ask her another time, Bakugou strides into the classroom. A man on a mission as always, the student doesn’t spare the duo a second glance as he breezes to his desk. But at Shouta’s repeated question, Eri grunts once more, this time with a look so surly it would be classified as a glare on anyone else, and Bakugou—Bakugou pauses. Just a brief thing, a twist of his neck to eye the girl cursorily. He blinks, something like amusement flickering over his expression, before it’s schooled into a scowl again, but it doesn’t matter because he’s the first one to notice.
“Fuck’s up with this one?” he asks roughly, jerking his chin towards Eri. Shouta sighs, shooting him an exasperated look at the cursing, and Eri glares at the ground harder.
“I think she might be having a bad day,” he says, because it’s the best he can offer and he’s hoping that’s all it is. He doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself if he’s missed something bigger; he’s trained in fighting—killing, even—but child-rearing eludes him, and Eri deserves better than to be suffering from something beyond her caretaker’s limited comprehension.
Bakugou clicks his tongue, staring contemplatively at the pair for a moment before dropping his bag to the floor by his desk unceremoniously and stomping over. He crouches down in front of Eri, shoulder-to-shoulder with Shouta.
“You look pissed,” he observes crudely. “Fuckin’ join the club, kid.”
Then, with all the grace of a brick wall, he reaches out and pries her jaw open. Eri squawks, eyes widening and arms flailing, but Bakugou tugs her closer regardless, firm grip deceptively careful.
He tilts her face from one side to the other, and Eri lets herself be manoeuvred around like a ragdoll. After a few seconds, he clicks his tongue again.
“This shit givin’ you trouble?” he demands, tapping her cheek with the index finger of the hand splayed across her jaw. Eri blinks at him with a glassy gaze, and he stares at her for a long moment before his eyes widen with understanding and he withdraws his hand quickly.
“Shit,” he grunts. “It’s hurtin’, huh?”
The girl whines once, lips trembling where they’re pressed together, and Bakugou huffs.
“Thought so,” he mutters. “Shouldn’ta grabbed you like that.”
He pats her head once, his own form of apology, and reaches up again with a much slower hand.
“This side?” he asks, carefully pointing to her left cheek. She shakes her head once, and when he moves his hand to the other side the shake turns to a small nod.
“Mind lettin’ me take another look?”
Eri opens her mouth obediently, eyes wet and forlorn like a rumpled kitten from the animal welfare ads they play on the television.
Shouta watches as Bakugou inspects something inside her mouth for a long moment, before making an irked noise. He draws his head back to give Shouta an unamused look.
“No fuckin’ wonder. Her gums’re all inflamed near the back. You taken her to the dentist lately?”
Shouta opens his mouth, and then closes it again.
The unspoken no has Bakugou’s stare turning judgmental, and Shouta absolutely does not wilt under it, because he is a grown man.
“I’ll get someone to cover class for the day,” he murmurs, not meeting his student’s gaze as he rises to his feet and reaches for his phone to book an appointment.
“You do that,” Bakugou affirms flatly, and something deep inside Shouta’s chest shrivels up into a wisp under the scrutiny.
They head off with little fanfare, and the last thing Shouta hears as the door slides shut behind them is Midoriya’s impassioned reminiscing about his own first toothache when he’d been Eri’s age.
Following the dentist’s instructions, Eri is back to her chattery self by the end of the week, and Bakugou has taken it upon himself to inspect her teeth routinely. Shouta lets him.
He chalks the Toothache Incident up to dumb luck, or just Bakugou’s freaky-borderline-inhuman observational skills, but then the dorm games happen.
Shouta’s kids are in the habit of having a game night in the dorms every Saturday night. He only knows because he’s been called in one time too many to deal with whatever appliance or piece of furniture has been broken in the racket. He’d been reluctant, at first, when Eri had first been rescued and the kids asked him if she could join game nights. Eventually, he allowed it, if only because her presence would at least ensure that the games were kept somewhat appropriate and safe. And it did—for the most part. That is, until he gets the call from Kaminari at two in the morning.
This in itself sets off warning bells in Shouta’s brain, if only because it’s usually Iida or Yaoyorozu tasked with calling to inform him of any damage caused. Kaminari, among others, is more the type to try to conceal said damage to evade yet another detention. This alarm is worsened only by the low wheezing which crackles across the line when Shouta answers the call.
“Sensei,” Kaminari cries, stress making his voice crack. “Eri’s missing.”
Shouta makes it to the dorms in under two minutes and is greeted by pandemonium. Students scatter everywhere, some crouching to inspect various crevices and others shouting from room to room.
Ashido is the one to explain how they had decided on playing a dorm-wide game of hide and seek, only for their glee to quickly turn to confusion when Eri, who had been ecstatic at the prospect of the game, remained impossible to find long after all of the other students had been discovered.
“You didn’t consider,” Shouta mutters lowly, trying desperately not to take out his frustration at the situation on his kids who’d just been trying to play a children’s game, “that a child who was held captive and tortured by villains her entire life would likely be very good at hiding?”
His attempts fail if Ashido’s miserable slump is anything to go by.
“I’m so sorry, sensei, she was just so excited …”
He sighs, running a hand through his unruly hair where it’s fallen from its bun.
“It’s not your fault,” he amends flatly. “You were trying to make her happy. Just be conscious in the future. Right now, Eri just being well-hidden in the dorms is a best-case scenario, even if it is the most likely one, so focus on staying alert until we find her.”
Ashido’s eyes widen visibly at this, as if she’s only just considered that Eri may not even be hiding in the dorms anymore at all. It’s moments like these that Shouta is hit with the depth of the kids’ innocence.
“You think someone’s taken her?” she asks quietly.
“No.” He sighs again, reaching out to rest his palm on pink curls, right between her two horns. “I’m almost certain she’s just hidden herself away a little too well. But don’t rule anything out just yet.”
She nods once and promptly sets off again to help with the search, shoulders stiff with determination. At the centre of the common area, Jirou is crouched with her jacks plugged into the carpet and is listening so intently that she doesn’t appear to notice when Shouji almost trips over her.
Amongst all the panic, Bakugou shuffles in, wearing a rumpled t-shirt and sweatpants.
“The fuck,” he grumbles, squinting around himself blearily. As he nears, Shouta can see the creases of his cheek where his pillow has left an imprint.
“How the hell,” Sero wheezes, stopping to eye him incredulously, “have you slept through the past hour?!”
Bakugou sniffs.
“Popped like six melatonin pills and took my hearing aids out,” he mutters, in a rare display of sleep-induced candour.
Shouta is distantly glad he’s grown comfortable enough to take his hearing aids out while sleeping, especially considering the state he’d been in when they’d first arrived at the dorms, but—
“You took six melatonin pills?” he interjects sharply.
“Or eight. Can’t remember,” Bakugou grunts, before tilting his head sleepily and appearing to realise exactly who he’s speaking to. “Shit—sensei?! Fuck. I meant two. What the hell are you doing here?”
Shouta purses his lips tightly, gifting the boy with a weary look.
“Eri’s lost,” Sero informs his friend primly. “We really appreciate you sleeping through our search. Really helpful.”
“I always sleep through your stupid little sleepovers,” Bakugou sniffs, but he already looks more awake at the words. “How the fuck’d you manage to lose a whole kid?”
“We were playing hide and seek and—”
“Ugh.”
“What the hell, I didn’t even get to the—” Sero’s indignant cry is interrupted by the blond rudely turning away and shuffling off towards the corridors. “Dude! ”
Bakugou ignores him, shoving past his classmates without another word. Shouta, upon realising that the boy is actually heading away from his own bedroom, follows him with quiet curiosity.
Bakugou takes a sharp turn into the laundry room, where several washing machines and dryers churn away with a low hum. Shouta watches as Bakugou crouches down, eyeing the room silently, before marching towards one of the dryers which isn’t running, its door slightly ajar. He swings it open on its hinge, and inside is—
“Knew it,” the boy mutters, reaching into the machine to carefully tug out a soundly sleeping Eri.
“Holy shit,” Ashido says, from where she’s passing in the doorway. “You found her—guys, Bakugou found her!”
Moments later, several more children are skidding into the room behind Ashido.
“Wow,” Sero huffs dryly. “Now, if you’d been awake an hour ago this would’ve been a whole lot less stressful.”
“You fuckers are the ones who lost her,” Bakugou barks, pushing the girl’s limp form into Shouta’s arms and rising to his feet. “It’s not my responsibility to fuck up my sleep schedule because you’re all shit fuckin’ babysitters with half a brain between the lot of you.”
He receives a wave of incensed complaints at this, but he’s already tugging his hearing aids back out as he trudges back to his room.
“Always the fuckin’ dryer…” Shouta hears him mutter to himself lowly as he leaves.
Shouta blinks at his receding back, and then down at the dozing girl in his arms.
“Oh, you found her!” Midoriya cries in relief as he and his friends arrive. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of the dryer! It used to be my favourite hiding spot when I was a kid, I used to freak my mom out all the time!”
Huh.
A week from then, it’s an observation. Eri has brought her lunch to Shouta’s afternoon classes because she barely touched it during lunch period. Even now, she’s only picking at her food. This is somewhat routine for her, but it’s of concern now because she skipped breakfast, too, and didn’t finish her dinner last night. Across from her, Midoriya and Uraraka try to get her to eat, waving their pens around enthusiastically and chattering with increasing desperation. Nonetheless, her food remains largely untouched.
Then, Bakugou slides into Hagakure’s vacant seat beside the child, setting his bento down on the desk with a loud thump that makes everyone in his general vicinity startle.
“K—Kacchan!” Midoriya shrieks, flailing.
“Shut up,” Bakugou snaps on instinct. “Don’t talk to me, nerd.”
“But you’re the one sitting with us…”
“Huh?! ”
“Nothing, Kacchan.”
There’s a moment’s silence.
“That looks good,” Uraraka says tentatively, nodding her head at Bakugou’s bento. The blond tilts his head back to appraise her blankly.
“Obviously.”
He digs in without another word, pulling out his phone to scroll idly with his free hand.
Beside him, Eri continues to push around her own food, side-eyeing him unsubtly.
After a minute or two of this, he grunts and turns to face her blankly. She flinches back at the movement, blinking innocently.
“What,” he deadpans.
Eri blinks once more, looking down at his bento curiously before looking up at him again. He raises an eyebrow at her, unmoved. Anyone else in Bakugou’s position would have offered her some of their food or started a conversation right now, and judging by Eri’s awkward squirming, she’s uncomfortable with the aberration.
“Speak up,” he nudges roughly, popping a piece of steamed broccoli into his mouth without looking away from her.
Seemingly emboldened by his intensity, Eri straightens in her seat with an adorable look of conviction.
“What’s that?” she asks carefully, pointing at a corner of his bento.
“‘S shigureni. Just beef with ginger.”
As if to accentuate his words, Bakugou props a scoop of the meat onto a mound of rice and scoops it into his mouth neatly.
Eri watches the movement curiously.
“Um,” Midoriya says, bravely enough that Shouta raises an eyebrow appraisingly from where he’s observing within his sleeping bag. “Kacchan, maybe Eri-chan can try some—”
Shouta sees, a split-second before Bakugou interrupts, the way Eri’s expression shutters instantly, and he knows she’s going to refuse even before Bakugou snaps, “Fuck off, Deku!”
“I’m not hungry,” the girl pipes up quietly, turning her gaze back to her own lunch—which, Shouta thinks grimly, looks very sad next to Bakugou’s colourful bento.
Uraraka frowns at Bakugou, and he glares at her in turn.
“Brat can barely eat her own fuckin’ food,” he snarls. “This shit’s too spicy for her to handle.”
At his side, Eri suddenly puffs back up with the self-assured hubris that can only be found in one’s early childhood years (or, if one’s name is Bakugou Katsuki and one is a statistical outlier, long into one’s teenage years too).
“I could handle it,” she says quickly, as if saying it faster will make him believe it.
Bakugou laughs in her face like the brat he is.
“Sure,” he sniffs haughtily, biting into a piece of cucumber.
“I could!” she insists stubbornly.
Bakugou tilts his head at her sceptically, before using a finger to push the bento closer to her.
“Be my fuckin’ guest.”
Eri puffs her cheeks up seriously, before reaching over to scoop a large forkful of beef up.
“Eri, wait—!” Midoriya and Uraraka cry in unison, just as Shouta is urgently rising to stop her, but she’s already shovelled it into her mouth doggedly.
They watch as she chews slowly, Bakugou in interest and Midoriya, Uraraka and Shouta in muted horror. Then, after half a minute of this—
“It wasn’t spicy!” she announces triumphantly, after making a show of swallowing thickly.
“Tch,” Bakugou huffs, as the others deflate. “That’s the easy shit. The egg is where the spice is at.”
With a nod of permission, Eri reaches over to stuff an egg roll into her mouth messily, chewing with a one-minded determination.
“It’s fine!” she cries again.
“I don’t believe you. It was probably a fuckin’ fluke.”
Eri frowns, stabbing another egg roll and biting it viciously.
“I’ssh not shpicy,” she tells Bakugou around the mouthful, and he wordlessly reaches down to lightly push her jaw closed with the back end of his chopsticks.
“Close your mouth when you eat,” he mutters flatly. Eri blushes, before swallowing the egg.
“It’s not spicy,” she says again, quieter this time.
“Huh,” he grunts. “No shit?”
“Mhm!”
Dramatically, in the way he does everything, Bakugou makes a show of sighing loudly and pushing the bento towards her fully.
“Just fuckin’ eat it for me then. I made it too spicy.”
Midoriya and Uraraka gape, jaws hanging open as Eri squints at him apprehensively before dipping her head with a barely-perceptible pleased flush and taking the bento.
“Won’t you be hungry?” she asks worriedly. “Here, take mine!”
Bakugou lets her tilt her sad little lunch towards him, but when she turns back to her new and improved food, he shifts his gaze to Shouta, that painfully familiar air of judgement clouding his expression. Shouta turns in his sleeping bag and pretends to be asleep like any good Pro Hero would in his place.
Later, when the kids are heading out after class and Eri has finished the entire bento dutifully, Midoriya lingers back, eyes glued to Bakugou’s back. Shouta wonders distantly if the boy is a masochist.
“You’re lucky she handled it fine,” the shorter boy is murmuring urgently as he follows the blond out of the room. “That was dangerous, Kacchan.”
“Fuck off, and stop following me.”
“Kacchan, I’m serious! She’s a kid, you could have—”
“It wasn’t spicy.”
“I—What?”
“The food—it wasn’t fucking spicy. I might be a dick but I’m not scum, Deku.”
“Then why… Oh.”
“Ugh. Shut the fuck up.”
“Kacchan…” Shouta can just feel the way Midoriya’s eyes are sparkling with reverence.
“Stop looking at me like that!”
They walk out like that, bickering the whole way.
Two days later, Shouta stands in the doorway of the dorms at eight in the morning and stares down his ward wearily.
“It’s all cleaned?” he asks suspiciously.
“Mm!” Eri nods, hair bouncing with the movement.
“So if I check, that’s okay…?”
At the bob of her head, he twists the doorknob of her bedroom and peers in, pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually tidied up for the most part, bed sheets neatly folded and her small desk clear.
“One of Deku’s friends helped me,” she tells him impatiently. “Can I go with Mirio now?”
Shouta huffs, feeling fondness tickle at his chest at her eagerness.
“He’s not going anywhere,” he reminds the girl dryly. “I’m sure he’d be happy to wait another hour if your room wasn’t clean.”
“But it’s clean now, right?” she asks, stricken.
Shouta chuckles, patting her head once.
“It’s clean,” he affirms, earning a beam.
“Yes!”
Eri is already bounding towards the third-year dorms to meet Mirio when she’s tugged into the air by a passing Bakugou.
“Not so fast,” the boy announces, slinging Eri over his shoulder like a sack of rice.
“Kacchan!” she shrieks indignantly, arms windmilling.
“Move,” Bakugou grunts at Shouta, and the teacher acquiesces to watch him stalk into the bedroom.
He glances it over for a brief moment before beelining towards the closet, and as Eri realises where he’s heading, she begins to flail all over again.
“Wait, wait, nooo—”
Bakugou yanks the closet door open, and a mass of clothes, toys, and other assorted trinkets comes tumbling out in a mess at his feet.
Ah.
Eri wilts, eyes screwing shut when faced with Shouta’s raising eyebrow.
“Who did you say helped you clean?”
“One—One of Deku’s friends?” The girl chews her lip sheepishly.
“Which one?”
“... Kaminari.”
Shouta sighs heavily as his student sets Eri down on the floor again.
“I’m sure Mirio can wait a little longer. Bakugou, would you mind helping Eri actually clean her room?”
He takes the grunt of affirmation at face value and heads out, lips curling upward at Eri’s petulant expression. He wants to be frustrated, but there’s something rewarding about seeing her grow to act like a normal kid as time passes.
With Bakugou’s spartan guidance, Eri’s room is spotless within half an hour, and she’s toddling off to spend the day with Mirio soon after.
She does spend a fair part of the week pouting at Bakugou’s back glumly, but she still dutifully attaches herself to the boy’s side during free period that Friday nonetheless so Shouta’s not too worried.
Eri gets her hands on Bakugou’s Switch one weekend. Shouta’s actually a little concerned at him just handing the girl over what appears to be quite expensive technology, but Bakugou seems unphased, telling her to knock herself out.
She browses through his surprisingly extensive collection of games once he’s headed out to train, before eventually settling on what appears to be a Pokémon game.
Bakugo gave her absolutely no instructions before leaving, so Shouta is the one tasked with sitting by her side and explaining the instructions as he reads them from Google. It’s taken them upward of half an hour and they’re still figuring out how to catch Pokémon.
“Just throw the ball by holding down this—no, the one below it, yes. Hold that down, and now press this button on the right.”
Eri, whose hands are too tiny to hold the device and reach the buttons at the same time, frowns as she twists the entire Switch upside-down to press the buttons.
“Like this?”
“Uh. Yes, but the Pokémon you were trying to catch is gone. Are you sure you don’t want to try another game? Animal Crossing looks nice.”
“No, I like this one,” she insists, already cycling through the character’s shop.
“Aizawa-san, don’t these look like Halloween decorations?” she asks, tilting the screen to show him. “I want to buy one.”
Aizawa blinks apprehensively at the item, titled ‘Sticky Glob’, before peering at the amount of money Bakugou’s character has stockpiled.
“... I’m sure buying one can’t hurt,” he concedes carefully.
Eri cheers, feet kicking as they dangle off the edge of the common room sofa. Shouta glances at his phone, before turning back to her. He’s a seasoned Pro Hero, and here he is, supervising a child while they play Pokém—
“Eri, wait!”
It’s too late. A split second before confirming the purchase, the girl accidentally flicks the right joystick downwards, and the two stare in horror at the 229 Sticky Globs they have just purchased.
Bakugou’s money is gone. All of it. His character is left with ₽112 to their name.
“Oh,” Eri says quietly, eyes wide.
It is at this moment that Bakugou comes trudging into the dorms, sweat gleaming on his skin and clothes damp.
Shouta feels an inexplicable urge to hide Eri from the boy.
“Who died?” Bakugou asks suspiciously, eyeing the unmoving pair.
Shouta opens his mouth to speak.
He closes it again.
Eri bursts into tears.
“I’m so s—sorry, I didn’t mean t—to—!”
“Oi,” Bakugou says, alarmed. “The fuck? Did someone actually die?!”
Shouta wordlessly tugs the Switch out of Eri’s loose grip and turns it to face Bakugou. The blond storms forward, hunching down to squint at the screen.
“Fuck am I lookin’ at?” he demands.
“Your 229 new Sticky Globs,” Shouta tells him helpfully.
“The fuck? So?”
“So you’re broke. Sorry.”
Bakugou blinks at him incredulously, before turning his gaze to Eri, who’s wailing into his pant leg.
“Is that what she’s—I’m fucking sweaty, kid, get off—is that what she’s crying about?”
“Yes.”
“It’s literally an alternate save file, what the fuck? I don’t care.”
Shouta blinks, and Bakugou attempts once more to pry Eri away from where her face is buried in his hip.
“Oi, brat. Jesus christ, you fucking cry a lot. Fucking get her off me, sensei!”
It takes them ten minutes to get Eri to calm down enough to listen.
“So it’s not your game?”
“Yeah. It’s—I have a bunch of game lives saved. I knew you wouldn’t know what you were doing so I left this one open. I don’t use it except to do dumb shit, so I don’t care if you blow all the money in it.”
Eri sniffles quietly, hands twisting in Bakugou’s sweatshirt tightly.
“That’s good foresight,” Shouta observes.
“When I was eight, Deku got his slimy hands on my DS and ended up releasing two of the Pokémon from my main party. One of them was a fuckin’ level 100 Ho-Oh. I’m not falling for that shit again.”
“Oh,” Shouta says, despite not understanding half the words his student is saying. “I’m glad.”
He sits back, information slowly clicking into place in his mind as Bakugou kneels to show Eri how to throw her newly-obtained Sticky Globs at unsuspecting Pokémon.
The penny drops on a Thursday when Bakugou is dragged into Principal Nedzu’s office for breaking another student’s nose during lunch.
“Bakugou,” he begins.
“I’m not fucking apologising, so fuck off,” the blond snaps before he can finish his sentence.
Nedzu grins, and Shouta leans back in his chair to massage his temple firmly. Bakugou is a lot of things, but—Shouta thought they were past this.
Outside the office, Midoriya’s stressed voice can be heard through the door, immediately followed by Iida and Uraraka’s consolations.
“Fine,” Shouta sighs. “Security footage it is.”
He pulls up the camera feed on Nedzu’s computer, staring down Bakugou the entire time the video loads. His student glares back fearlessly, making no attempt to wipe away the blood smudged over the knuckles of the hand he has splayed haphazardly across the desk.
Absolutely shameless.
From the video account, the altercation was quite straightforward.
The student in question, whose nose is currently being treated by Recovery Girl, is a second-year in the Gen-Ed course called Ryuu. He’d been walking to his table in the cafeteria when Midoriya, who’d been seated and chatting with his friends, leaned a little too far back in his seat and accidentally knocked Ryuu’s drink onto his shirt. In true Midoriya fashion, he’d been on his feet and spouting apologies instantly, but Ryuu proceeded to take the half-empty cup and upturn the rest of it onto the boy’s head. Approximately four seconds after this, Bakugou was striding over from his friends’ table on the other side of the cafeteria and punching Ryuu so hard that he was sent sprawling past two rows of tables. He’d been stalking towards the older boy’s prone form, presumably for a second round, when his classmates finally managed to drag him back.
And now…
“What part of that,” Shouta demands flatly, “seemed like a proportionate response to you.”
“He was a dick, so I was a dick back. Seems fuckin’ proportionate to me.”
“You broke his nose, Bakugou.”
Bakugou simply tongues the inside of his cheek sullenly, glaring at the table.
“Bakugou.”
“I dunno what the fuck you want me to say. I’m not apologising. You can try and bring ‘im in to force me, but I can’t guarantee I won’t try to get another hit in if you do.”
There’s silence but for the sound of Nedzu’s tail smacking against the leg of his chair rhythmically, and Shouta’s open palm hitting the desk with a thump.
“Detention. Three weeks. House arrest for a day.”
Bakugou doesn’t protest.
That night, Shouta watches as Bakugou furiously scrubs at the kitchen counter. He’s supposed to be marking papers, but something about the sight is exceedingly distracting.
Beside him, Toshinori glances up, sensing his distraction.
“Bakugou…” Shouta muses at his colleague’s silent look of questioning. “Bakugou is an only child, right?”
Toshinori clicks his pen nib, giving Shouta an odd look.
“Yes, his parents said so during our house visits. Why do you ask?”
Shouta hums.
At the kitchen, Midoriya sidles up to Bakugou’s side to peer over his shoulder tentatively.
“Kacchan, can you make these for me?” he asks, voice carrying lightly across the silent common area. He brandishes a packet of instant ramen in his hand.
Bakugou glances backward to give him an irate glower.
“They’re fuckin’ instant noodles, dumbass, make ‘em yourself!”
Midoriya frowns, tugging on the older boy’s arm stubbornly.
“They taste better when you make them, though,” he insists.
“Piss off!”
“Kacchan, please!”
“I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
But despite his continued grumbling, Shouta doesn’t miss the way he leans over to click the kettle on, and from the looks of Midoriya’s triumphant grin, he doesn’t either.
And this is where it clicks for Shouta.
“Ah,” he murmurs. Then, turning to Toshinori: “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”
By the counter, Bakugou and Midoriya wrestle with each other over the last egg in the fridge.