I apologise for the late update, my writing game hasn't been on point lately and also been busy with some moving stuff (I'm finally moving out of my shared bedroom with my brother and getting my own bedroom; same house different floor), adding my newly borrowed Netflix account into that mix, writing got much harder than I anticipated.
On with the chapter now...
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Ikuyu was walking down the street, earphones stuffed only in one ear, the 'This is Troy Sivan' play list from Spotify playing on shuffle. He wasn't really paying attention to the lyrics or the song playing or the noise of traffic entering from the other ear, his mind was too occupied with their second meeting at the beach and the UA Sports festival.
A little over two weeks had passed since the incident at the beach and ever since that day things have been really .. different between Ikuyu and Bakugou. Unlike the way he blew up the moment he saw him, Bakugou had now started quietly walking away instead and as for Ikuyu, he would never willing seek out any form of interaction with the explosive male but that didn't mean that he wasn't painfully aware of the fact that he was avoiding him.
Things were relatively quiet between them and Ikuyu wasn't really sure if it was because of that night at the beach or because Bakugou was focused on only and only his training for the sports festival. Neither had he stopped to consider if what he was now feeling was releaf or was he internally missing having Bakugou's attention.
They had gone for two weeks straight without exchanging a single word, until the day of the sports festival when Bakugou had openly threatened or challenged him outside the 1-A waiting room, his exact words being- "Just because you don't want to be a hero doesn't mean that I don't want to fucking crush you. See me in the fights and I'm going to blast you into shreads!". Whatever it was it pushed Ikuyu to actually try to compete. He had initially thought of just get disqualified in the preliminary round without putting much of a fight but what Bakugou said forced him to push his limits, it made him want to actually fight him and show him that even though he didn't want to be a Hero, we wasn't weak by any means.
The fight couldn't really happen though, he finished 38th in the obstacle race, he even forced Shinso to not use mind control and actually form a team and qualified the cavalry battle. He did the best he could but he couldn't get his fight with Bakugou. First round, the fight was over the moment it started, cleanly finished by Iida as he dragged him out of the ring, Bakugou on the other hand won.
The sports festival was three days ago, now all the Hero course students were already on the first day of there internships with the pros, the support courses and business studies course students had workshops and internships of their own. The school wasn't going to continue classes for just one course and all the Heroes had to handle their own interns so the General course were basically on a week long break.
Ikuyu would have happily spent the week casually reading or writing at home but after getting a lecture about responsibility and getting his butt off the couch and being threatened about her making him do all the house chores, he decided to take up a week long part time job at a small cafe that was currently short on workers.
While Ikuyu had his head in the clouds multiple things happened around him that he couldn't notice. A man was walking his dog while also on a phone call on his Bluetooth device, the dog saw a squirrel across the street, it lunged at him setting of a series of effect into motion like a domino. The owner was caught off guard which caused the leash to slip out of his hands. The dog ended up running on the street, the driver in the car coming at him swivelled to avoid hitting the dog but ended up crashing tangently into a speeding motorbike instead, the bike was sent skidding off its course and headed straight into Ikuyu's direction at and alarming speed.
Ikuyu was milliseconds away from disaster when he realised what was happening around him, his eyes grew wide, his heart beat went from 60 to 100 in a matter of seconds, in spite of the speed the bike appeared to be approaching him in slow motion. He felt like his body was lead and he couldn't move at all, in his head he was already saying goodbye to his family.
He squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for the bone crushing impact but it never came. He felt his shirt being yanked followed by the feeling of the rushing wind and the sounds of explosions in close proximity.
The moment his feet came back into contact with the ground heaving crumpled into heap. "Stop walking without your head in the clouds you dumbass!" He heard the unmistakeably voice an explosion quirked boy he knew. He raised his head and opened his eyes to see Bakugou's receading form as he used his explosions to propel himself back to the site of the accident.
He remained on the ground and took some time to calm down before standing up and taking in his surroundings. He found himself in an ally merely a few blocks from the accident site. His heart beat still slightly faster than normal and the lines of "What a heavenly way to die" still playing in his left ear.
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Ikuyu's shift for the day was finally over, he stripped off the apron and the cafe logo tee-shirt which was the uniform here and put on his own shirt, it had cute little pandas crawling out of its pocket. While Izuku preferred funny text t-shirts, he was more of a doodle prints person.
He stuffed the cafe tee inside his bag and dumped the apron into the basket especially placed there for used aprons before opening the door to walk out of the employes only area. He walked out just in time to see Bakugou walk inside and take a seat across the room facing away from him, he was still in his hero costume just without the gauntlets. The view of the employe area was obsecured with a one way see through acrylic mirror so he hadn't seen him yet.
The image of Bakugou rushing off after saving his life returned to his head, as if he hadn't spent the entire day thinking about it anyway. He remembered that he hadn't even thanked him and though Bakugou wouldn't care about it one bit it really bothered him a lot. 'Should I buy him a coffee?' He though but immediately shook his head to push the though away. Every bit of his brain was begging him not to do so, Bakugou most likely wouldn't even accept it anyway but he couldn't think of anything else.
Against his better judgement, Ikuyu found himself walking towards the exploding death trap, the fact that he unknowingly missed interacting with him may have been a sub-concious factor behind this suicide mission. He had no idea what he was going to say or how he was going to say it, what would he do if he refused or how exactly would Bakugou react to his offer, he was pretty sure he was going to be explored out of the glass door.
He stopped two feets away from him and closing his eyes, took deep breath to calm himself before he signed his death warrant, mouthing "You can do it" to himself. He was nervous was an understatement, it was one thing to yell and becker with him or help him silently but it's something entirely different to actually talk to him, he hadn't done that in the past eleven years.
Yamamoto, the guy who's shift ended few hours after his, gave him weird looks from behind the counter for how he was acting. Bakugou took one look at the guy behind the counter and immediately sensed that someone was behind him.
"What the fuck are you doing standing behind me like that you shabby Yak!" Bakugou yelled, Yamamoto flinched and silently thanked God that the cafe was empty.
Ikuyu's eyes immediately flew open and we're wide in horror. Bakugou yelling and baring his teeth at you you wasn't the best thing at this time. He gulped, "I just want to but you coffee." He managed to say in a somewhat stable voice.
Bakugou blinked, slightly taken aback, he clearly wasn't expecting this. "Well I don't need you buying me a damn coffee. If I want one I can buy it myself." He glared at him but you could see the surprise and disbelief lurking there.
"I know you don't, but I want to." Ikuyu looked at him earnestly, still maintaining the same tone for earlier, not sounding too meek or desperate.
"And I don't want anything from you." He wasn't even sure his tone was as harsh as he wanted it to be.
"I think I kinda owe it to you for earlier today, you came here so you definitely wanted something just let me pay for it."
"You don't owe me anything, today settled the score from the beach.", Bakugou tried to focus anywhere but Ikuyu, it was already hard admiting that he had to take help from him, looking directly at him wouldn't have made it any easier.
"If I remember right, we both agreed that nothing happed. You saved my fucking life, just accept it as a thank you from me. Please Bakugou." Ikuyu almost begged. 'Please? So you're down to begging now, desperate much?' Ikuyu thought inside his head, he himself wasn't sure why he was so hell bent on the coffee. He shouldn't be begging him, if he refused he should have walked away, why didn't he? He had no answer to that.
Ikuyu's face current resembled that of a hurt puppy, not like Bakugou hadn't seen this exact same expression before, he had almost the exact same face as Izuku so it shouldn't have mattered, but it did. The tiny almost unnoticeable differences and just knowing the fact that it was Ikuyu made the expression send a strange squeez to his heart.
Bakugou huffed like an angry child, " one latte" He muttered and returned to sitting on his choosen seat.
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1763 words
Initially I had planned to write the UA Sports festival arc in three elaborately planned chapters but then I realised that it wouldn't be very important for the developement of the story and skipped it entirely, compressing all that into approximately 2 paragraphs.
I was also about to continue the chapter with the awkward interactions that would have followed but it turned out to be a lot harder than I had though and after brainstorming for 2 whole days and still not neing able to write that conversation I just ended up finishing it there.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Do vote, comment and share!
Have a nice day/night (depending on what time you're reading this) and please be safe and attentive when walking on the street.
~love, Vianna_spt