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This is it. The last lick, the final stroke. Bakugou Katsuki’s finally reached his breaking point. He had no other choice, nothing and no where and no one to fall back on. He had to take action, right here and now. Legal action. And as the self- appointed judge and jury, Bakugou, of sound mind and sounder taste, would ensure that the likes of one [1] Todoroki Shouto, effective immediately, would have his Date Night Card forcedly and irrevocably revoked for all time.
Bakugou ground down on his molars, blunt nails digging into the meat of his palms with the force it was taking not to turn on his heel and leave Todoroki in the fucking dust, feelings be damned. There was no way, no way he was about to spend one of the rare nights they had off together in some pitiful mall arcade.
At the start of their relationship it was easy to blame Todoroki's juvenile choice in date ideas to the traumatic lack of a childhood. And maybe it was, who knows, Bakugou was no psychologist, but eight years post locker room confession seemed like a fair enough time frame to wean him off these painfully lame rendezvous.
And it's not like Bakugou ever pulled his punches, even when it came to dating. Oh no - let it be known that Bakugou Katsuki courts by the fucking book. In his own sort of vaguely outright aggressive kinda way, he's the romance holding his relationshit together. He's got this down to a science, he's done his homework. Aced the test, graduated with a Master’s in Wooing, specializing in the hard sought and harder won field of Clueless Bastards. Dinner by candlelight, movie theaters, walks through the park, the wholeass shabang - yeah, all that lovey dovey bull.
Okay, sure, most people's candlelit dinners don't start with impromptu visits from the local fire department and end with a strongly worded email from their landlord (who, in their defense, really should have thought harder about renting to two Pro Heroes with a history of destruction). Not to mention Bakugou's watched more of the back of his eyelids than whatever insipid movie was playing at their local theatre. And, honestly, whoever thought up putting fountains in public parks was clearly testing the limit of human nature not to show off their superior balance.
(Bakugou must've been having a bad equilibrium day, that last loss still smarted.)
Point is, he’s shown Todoroki the light countless times, and this is the best he can show for it?
It's a cryin’ shame. A travesty of epic proportions.
Todoroki's so lucky he's got the ass he does, or Bakugou would have fucked out of here at first sight of a group of preteens trying to outsuck each other in a game of DDR.
(He’ll be giving that game a wide berth.)
So here he was, gagging on his own affection as he convinces himself to stay put with all the might he's cultivated over his lifetime thus far. It’s a real testament to his will power - no amount of school or bloodshed or work as one of the top Pro Heroes in Japan could have ever prepared him for the strength it would take to endure Todoroki’s lameass dates, all in the name of love.
(Let it never be said that Bakugou wasn't romantic as fuck, so jot that down.)
“Are ya shittin’ me right now?” Bakugou tries, already feeling a headache pulse at the back of his skull to the cacophony of thirty- ish different theme musics looping at once. Gameplay gunfire, pings, shatters, tire screeches and garbled dialogue all harassing his eardrums at once. It made the deafening boom of his explosions sound like sweet music.
“Nope,” Todoroki has the audacity to pop the p, staring up at the convulsing neon stretched across the arcade entrance like it was Christmas day, “I’ve never been to an arcade before.”
Ah, there it is. Aforementioned traumatic lack of a childhood coming back around to make Bakugou suffer in the present.
But still, something needs to be said.
“I can kick your ass in Mario Kart from our damn couch, and I don’t have to wear pants while doing it.”
“Whoever wins the most tickets picks where we go to eat afterwards.” Todoroki effortlessly deflects, in the one and only brilliant move Bakugou’d ever admit he possessed. It was flawless, really, and Bakugou wonders when it was he started letting Todoroki get away with goading him into these situations without fear of consequence.
Regardless, Bakugou’s responding eye roll almost makes it the full rotation before a sudden thought seizes it in its tracks somewhere around the arch of his brow. He blinks, and considers Todoroki in front of him for a beat.
Then, “Anywhere, huh?” He muses, scratching at his chin. Expression carefully blank. Giving nothing away.
“Anywhere.” Todoroki confirmed thoughtlessly.
Ignorance must be bliss, but Bakugou Katsuki wouldn’t fucking know.
“Gold Tiger Hot House. Y’know, the one around the corner from the bank?”
On the Richter Scale of Spicy Tolerance, they couldn't be any more opposite. Todoroki’s nose starts leaking at the sight of cheap supermarket hot sauce for fuck’s sake, whereas Bakugou can, has, will and enjoys eating food so ridiculously spicy it not only clears his sinuses, but the nasal cavities of all his fucking ancestors.
The mildest item on Gold Tiger Hot House’s menu very literally makes grown men cry.
Todoroki makes a face.
Bakugou knows regret when he sees it, but he’s not about to let even the love and pain of his life back down on a challenge he himself wrought. Besides, if he had to agonize through one more convenience store noodle cup this week just because Todoroki has the palette of a five- year- old, he fears his insides were going to untie his belly button and abort ship right onto the floor.
In any case, the stage is set, its players locked in a heated staring match as Todoroki visibly chews on the terms he’d witlessly set. The stare off is brutal. Or it would be, if Bakugou were a wuss. He's seen the intensity in Todoroki's eyes go full stupid wobble at any and all stray cat that passes within a six- foot radius of him, so he's effectively immune by this point.
“Fine.” Todoroki finally acquiesced when Bakugou didn't budge, voice clipped.
Bakugou’s smile curled up to the gumline, white and wolfish, “Fine.”
Game on, bitch.
The arcade itself looked as though the 80’s had vomited up the interior - the lighting was dim, illuminated mostly by the blinking game screens and vibrantly gaudy console housing. Glow in the dark stars and planets decorated the black carpeting that stretched the length of the business, faded and matted and sticky with years of god only knows what. The whole damn place reeked of stale sweat and old, overworked electric. It stuck to the roof of Bakugou’s mouth as a warm, disgusting copper taste.
All the more reason to trounce this asshole - nothing washes out the flavor of retro unfunsies quite like a bowl chock full’o ghost pepper.
There were a few grouplings of teenagers and their younger cohorts jumping from game to game, likely dumped off by the parents who were shopping elsewhere in the mall. Other than the associate feigning to hold up the claw machine as he dozed, they were the only ones in here over the age of twenty- one.
Oh, this place was ripe for the taking.
They exchanged cash for game coins laid out their plan, autotuned to creating military- esque strategies in their professional lives. The games were organized in neat rows, so it’ll be easy to follow it around from one end of the prize counter, down the two rows in the middle, and then come out on the other end of the counter to cash in their tickets. For single- player games, Bakugou would go first and Todoorki would follow (“Age before beauty?” “Shut the fuck up”), and games that yielded no tickets would get skipped over. Time is of the essence - the less time they spent in here, the more time Bakugou could be spending enjoying a hot bowl of his favorite food, not to mention the dinner entertainment that would be Todoroki looking like a teary- eyed chipmunk as he stuffed bread into his mouth in a vain attempt to ease the burn.
Ha.
Let the games begin.
It wasn’t a friendly competition so much as it was an absolute slaughter.
They didn't have to count the tickets. Really, they didn't - the winner was clear on two fronts: the gargantuan explosion of tickets blockading a good chunk of the prize wall from view, and the leaderboards on the game screens all blinking some variation of LORD EXPLOSION MURDER at the tops.
But because Bakugou was petty like that, they counted the damn tickets. At some point the arcade clerk had visibly started drafting a letter of resignation on his phone.
Six hundred and thirty eight to Todoroki's fat eleven.
And the only reason Todoroki had any at all was because some games gave out pity tickets just for trying. What a sham.
By the time Bakugou had wound his tickets into a neat roll heavy enough to kill a man, Todoroki’s sad string of paper winnings were gone and he was cupping something in his hands. He seemed to be waiting for Bakugou to make a comment, so Bakugou (being Bakugou) did just that.
“The fuck’d you get with your motherlode, an eraser?” Bakugou snorted a laugh, pale brow arched to his hairline.
“Even better.”
Todoroki opens his palms to reveal the ugliest plush keychain Bakugou had ever fucking seen.
“It looks like Pudding, doesn’t it?”
Bakugou squints.
The only likeness to this abomination of art and nature and everything in between to their cat is the fact that it’s white and (supposedly - the jury was still out) a cat.
It dangled by the scruff from a cheap plastic chain, paws terribly glued around a wonky felt heart clearly shaped by someone who failed grade school. The eyes were disturbingly far apart and not even remotely even on its face. One corner of the smile tilted at such an obscene angle it was practically stabbing the poor creature in one beady little eye, making it look depressed and deranged all at once. Nightmare fuel.
God, someone please take this sadsack out back and put it out of its misery. It’s suffering.
“Ch’yeah,” Bakugou grimaced on its behalf, “maybe if Pudding’s entire lineage were blood relatives.”
The laugh that punched out of Todoroki’s chest right then was unfuckingfair.
It came out of no where, like they normally did. His laughs were gorgeously unpredictable, breathy things that pierced right through his defenses before the sound could even bounce off the back of his skull and fully register it for what it was. A weapon of mass destruction. And Bakugou, it's willing victim. For the briefest second, Todoroki's nose wrinkled at the bridge with the force of it, and Bakugou might've expired a little bit right then and there.
Just when Bakugou thought he'd recovered well enough to respond, he's struck completely stupid as the smile left in the shivering wake of his catastrophically pretty laugh dealt another chaotic blow. It curved his lips at the edges with such nuanced subtlety that to anyone unlearned in the Art of Todoroki Shouto, it wouldn't look like he was smiling at all. But Bakugou saw it - saw the way it lapped up against the curve of his eyes, creased softly at the edges. A smile that reached in and made the turquoise of his left glitter like scattered sea glass and right reflect a silvery moon. The beauty of his smiles were absolute carnage at close range. They shot through his walls like bullets, ricocheting off his insides to quiver at the bottom of his gut, still warm.
“Does that mean you don't want it?” Todoroki dangled the dumb prize in front of Bakugou's face, which allowed him enough a moment of disgust for the sensible part of his brains to snap back into his skull.
Thank fuck. He was beginning to think he was a goner. Todoroki was supposed to be the victim here, damnit.
Bakugou shook the warm fuzzies off like a wet dog straight outta the rain, snatching the keychain out of Todoroki’s hand and pocketing it with an aggressive flourish. If anyone asked, he'd blame the cruddy lighting for the flush burning at the tips of his ears.
“This doesn't mean shit,” He sniffed. “You don’t get to buy your way out of this, y’know. ”
Todoroki sighs, long- suffering.
“Why can’t you be easy for once?”
“I’ll be easy when I’m dead, sweetheart.” Bakugou barked a laugh, “So put up a fuckin’ fight, will ya? God damn.”
“Okay.”
Okay.
It was easy as that.
Loving this pathetic turd, that is.
“Then let’s go! If we get there early enough we can get fresh edamame.” He paused for effect, lip curling maliciously, “and then I get to watch you gag in public.”
“Wait, what’re you going to get with your tickets?” Todoroki replied easily.
“Wh---” Oh , “I don’t want any of this shit, pick something.”
“I don’t want anything either.”
“You don’t want an ugly cat keychain too?”
“No, that was for you. And it’s not ugly, it’s cute.”
“Just fucking--- look, get the giant bear. I’ll even carry it out for you.”
“I have a bear.”
Bakugou grits his teeth, “Well maybe it needs a friend.”
“It has friends.”
“Are you seri--- I could buy the entire wall thrice over and you don’t want nothin’?”
Unfuckingbelieveable.
The arcade clerk had been looking back and forth between them and visibly made himself dizzy, poor bastard.
“Why don’t you just give them to someone then?”
Of all the dumbass ideas---
“Fuck no, I earned these.”
Todokori leveled him with a stare.
“Fucking--- fine!” Bakugou threw up his hands, then snatched the roll of tickets off the counter with more force than necessary, “only ‘cause I’m getting hungry.”
He whipped around, surveying the arcade. There was a group of teenagers huddled noisily around a racing game, and presumably a little brother bouncing on his feet behind them trying to watch the screen and going completely ignored.
Bakugou’s brow twitched.
“Hey, shortstack,” he ground out, loud enough to startle them into turning around as he stomped over, “here,” he thrust the roll downwards, ignoring the baffled expletives of the older kids.
The little boy gawked, big- eyed and slack- jawed, and it was just then that Bakugou noticed the Ground Zero pin on his shirt.
Kid had excellent taste.
“Don’t spend it all on candy, got it? Shit’s bad for you.” The kid nodded dumbly, awestruck, with fat little fingers clutching white- knuckled onto the roll of tickets that probably weighed half as much as he did.
“You’re sweet, Katsuki.” Todoroki leaned in to press a chaste kiss to his jaw when he returned to the counter.
“Fuck off.” Bakugou enunciated, even as he went seven shades of smitten.
Doing the exact opposite because he’s just a bastard like that, Todoroki reached out to lace their fingers, sweaty palm to sweaty palm. His lips curved gently into another one of those punchgut smiles, a swift K.O. to the feelsies, and Bakugou actually had to honestly truly concentrate on not tripping over his own feet as they walked out.
“While you're at it,” Todoroki segwayed once they'd made it back into the modern era, leaving Street Fighter and sticky floors behind, “can we get ice cream afterwards? My belly hurts just thinking about dinner.”
He couldn’t eat chili without complaining, but dairy was a cure- all?
Baffling.
The guy was a freak of nature.
Without missing a beat, Bakugou clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, “You're weak and natural selection is coming for you.”
“Mhn,” Todoroki hummed noncommittally, “but it's going to have to go through you first.”
He punctuated with a squeeze of his hand, fingers snug and perfect between the rough juts of his knuckles. Bakugou's heart squeezed in tandem, warmth pushing out from the spaces of his ribs until he radiated with a heat no dish at Golden Tiger Hot House could emulate. The kind that similarly snatched words from his tongue, catching his pulse in his throat and pooling salt- slick at his nape. But it lingered long after the burn, born of something he craved much more than just spice.
Bakugou steeled his grip, affection’s heat still a tingling sensation beneath his skin, and grinned.
“Damn right.”
With Todoroki’s hand in his and that ugly keychain in his pocket, he could have walked out of this arcade owing them tickets and still feel like he’d won.