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"Why the hell are you awake?" (Y/N) jumps a bit, whipping around to stare at the boy behind her in the kitchen. She glances over at the clock on the built-in microwave. 5:07 am.
"Why are you?" she asks back. Bakugo cocks an eyebrow before stepping around her to get a glass.
"I like waking up early to have the house to myself." She nods her head, the light from the fridge almost blinding her at this hour.
"Oh. Sorry to ruin your alone time," she mumbles. He glances over at her but shrugs.
"It's not that deep," he grumbles out. "It's mostly to get away from my parents." He closes the fridge, casting them both into the darkess again as he takes a sip of his water. "So why the hell are you awake?" She chuckles a little, mad he didn't forget his question.
"Why do you wanna know?" she laughs out gently.
"Well, now, 'cause I'm pissed you won't answer. I don't like people who keep secrets." She shrugs her shoulders.
"This'll make you mad then," she jokes again. "It's a thing with my quirk." She could see him drop his head back as he huffed.
"Everything with you is about your quirk," he grumbles.
"It controls my life."
"Yeah? What is it?" She didn't know how to tell him that she could see his grin in the little moonlight coming through the window. It was playful, but it wasn't aggressive like his expressions usually were. It was kind of cute.
"Well, you know, secrets," she laughs. He grovels out something but she heard his chuckle underneath it. "It controls my diet, it controls my sleep, it unintentionally controls my body. I come from a long line of quirks that fuck up your life and it seems like I got half of them at once." He nods.
"Yeah," he hums. "I'm one of those kinda like that. My mom's quirk is just secreting glycerin and my dad's is the small explosion in his hands. I'm the perfect love child. So much that I'm still not fully convinced they actually just met and got married on their own." (Y/N) hums.
"Like, you think they might've been a quirk marriage?" she asks to clarify. He nods. "Yeah. Shoto-chan is a child of a quirk marriage. Tears apart the whole family."
"Who?" he grumbles.
"Oh, Todoroki. I've known him for years." Bakugo sneers a lip at the mention of the boy. They had developed quite the rivalry and all he could see was their parallels to pro-heroes in their life, with Todoroki being the son of the now number-one hero Endeavor.
"I figured something like that. You got the same split-dye." He watches her reach up and begin brushing her fingers through the left side of her hair.
"Yeah. It's, well," she laughs again, cutting herself off and draping a hand over her eyes. "You're gonna be pissed, but it's also a thing with my quirk."
"My gods!" he groans. There was a hint of playfulness in his exasperation. A very tiny hint, but one that seemed to bounce off the walls of the empty kitchen and made (Y/N) smile.
"Right?" she huffs with fake exasperation. "Tell me about it."
Their silence continued, conversation dying immediately. She didn't know if he knew that she could see him, staring at her in the dark as he drank his water. There was something expectant in his eyes but she didn't know what or if it was even real. His angry, unemotional cover was so attached to him it was nearly sewn on.
"Can I be honest with you, Bakugo?" she mumbles, glancing away from him. He hums—well, grunts—at her sudden statement.
"Just call me Katsuki while you're here. Shit's gonna get confusing." She lets out a breath with a click of her tongue. "But sure, whatever you want."
"I just feel like you deserve an explanation," she says timidly. Her eyes traced the peaks between the blinds as she stared at the shadowed tiles. "That man back there, he's..." She pulls her mouth back, a small gesture to silence herself before deciding to continue. "All for One, he's my great-grandfather."
"Yeah, I know," Bakugo grumbles. Her eyes go wide, but he continued casually, playing his cup in the sink. "You told me while we were there. You forget that already?"
"W-What?" she whispers. He turns back towards her with his arms crossed. "No, I didn't remember saying that."
"You mentioned it like 3 times," he laughs.
"Well, I get a little delusional when I pass out like that," she murmurs as she looks towards the dining room again. "I didn't recall. What else did I tell you?"
"That you had his quirk and uh," he grimaces a little, lips sneering in the moonlight. "That you were gonna eat him?" Then he hums, that flittering playful tone tipping back onto his tongue. "And that you wouldn't let me down."
"Oh," she breathes. He cocks an eyebrow as he leaned against the fridge before turning around and walking into the living room behind him. She silently follows, not really thinking about it as her feet slid across the floor. "Then why did you ask me what my quirk is?"
"'Cause it doesn't make sense," he answers. He fell onto the azure loveseat, sitting sideways but still not looking at her.
"What doesn't make sense?"
"All your extra bullshit," he says as he waves his hand in her direction. "All for One is a simple guy. He touches you with his palm, he can take or give quirks. Easy. So either you're a liar and hiding much more than you lead on or your quirk is a lot different than his. I don't like liars, either. But I don't know why you'd lie about having half-n-half's split-dye or filing your teeth to look like Shitty Hair and say it's your quirk." She frowns as she sits down on the couch, making them finally face each other. His phone was on, lighting up his face and red eyes that seemed to blaze like real fires in the dark.
"Oh."
"Do you know any other letters?" he mocks with a chuckle. She scoffs as she leans back into the cushions.
"My quirk is quite a bit different than his; it's a lot more complicated. But the core concept is the same. Don't like that you know that, though." Now it was his turn to grumble out his distain at her mistrust.
"I've got no one to tell. Doesn't mean shit to me."
"No, it doesn't. That's the problem. It's easier for you to spout the truth than lie if you were pressed on it, and you will be. You don't like liars and you don't like secrets. So it makes me uncomfortable." He shrugs.
"I won't talk about it, that make you feel better?"
"If you're not lying to me."
"I told you I hate liars." That made her smile a little bit as her head leaned back. There was nothing to stare at except the darkness so deep it looked like was swirling. She swore she could see the atoms that made up the air. She shivered at the sight, closing her eyes, but it didn't help. She turns on her phone to see something bright.
"I hope you can see why I'd rather people not know I'm essentially a carbon-copy of the world's greatest supervillain," she says lightly. Bakugo nods.
"Yeah. Wouldn't want to be there," he huffs. "I don't like thinking about how I'd totally lose to you, though," he grumbles out. She smiles a little. That made her more confident in him.
"All the more reason to push yourself, yeah? I could get you back to that camp, just the two of us and the Pussycats. You know, with my connections and all. If that hot-water trick helped at all, it's not a bad idea to continue that." He looks up at her but then shrugs.
"I don't know if it helped or not, I haven't really tested it. Plus, I don't think we should bother them at the moment. They've dealt with a lot." She couldn't help gazing at him softly as her phone timed out and turned off.
"You're a lot more considerate than you lead on, Katsuki," she hums. He looks up, seemingly a bit surprised. She didn't know which of the many things had made him look that way or if it was a combination of all them, but she didn't mind. She kind of liked it. "It's a nice side of you, you should show it more often." She could see him chuckle with a sneer out of habit rather than emotion as he gave a half-hearted chuckle.
"Right, as if."
She looks up as a knock comes from the door.
"Who's there?" she asks, standing up to go open it. It slid open before she could to reveal Bakugo standing there.
"I'm about to load up a new game, but it needs two players. Wanna play?" He raises his hand to display a game controller.
"Oh, yeah, sure," (Y/N) says, smiling a little as she steps towards him. She takes the controller from him and follows him back to his room.
The walls were bright yellow with a striped pattern similar to All Might's old uniform covering one wall. Most of the wall opposite his door was open windows. A small bed was shoved into the back right corner with two bean bag chairs beside it, one black and one orange, and they both faced a gaming set-up on the left wall. Alongside that was a small shelf with hero memorabilia, most of it being All Might. In the front right corner, at the end of his bed, was a fire red drum set that seemed to be collecting dust.
"You play?" she questions, sitting in the black bean bag that he had left open for her. Bakugo looks over at the corner before shrugging.
"I used to when I was younger but I've got a lot going on these days that I don't really bother with it." (Y/N) nods, bringing her attention back to the TV screen.
"There are fewer skulls than I imagined there would be," she laughs as she clicks on her controller and loads in as Player 2. Bakugo shrugs.
"I just like the shirts."
They played the game for a few hours. They'd only paused a couple of times for bathroom breaks and for Bakugo's mom to announce that she was going to the store to ask if the two wanted or needed anything. (Y/N) felt too awkward to ask her to buy anything.
They'd been pretty quiet. So much so, it was almost getting on (Y/N)'s nerves. She'd ask him a question about what he was doing on the game and he'd just grumble or shrug. What the hell did that mean?
But that also led way to a symbiotic relationship she couldn't explain. She began to get it. She didn't know if he meant to have a pattern to his murmurs, but he did. By the end of the first chapter in something that was going to be monsterous, she was kind of starting to understand his thought process.
"I don't think it's all that important to finish the whole thing," she says, left hand waving about as she trailed him down the stairs. Her right slid down the railing warm from his hand in front of hers as he continued to ignore her. "It's not a big deal. We could always play it again." He shrugs.
"I just want to."
"Ugh!" she groans as she hits the landing. "You are a perfectionist." His mom chuckles at the two as they wander into the kitchen. (Y/N) automatically approached her and began unloading the grocery bags with a smile. Bakugo gave her a strange look as he followed.
"Glad to see you're finally getting along, Katsuki," his mom laughs. She excuses herself to go help her husband bring in the groceries since the two teens couldn't step outside. (Y/N) continues pulling the items from the bags as Bakugo puts them in their intended places.
"This stuff is so weird," she laughs to herself, staring at a cereal box she held in her outstretched arms.
"It's cereal," Bakugo deadpans from behind her. She chuckles a little as she sets it down and moves on.
"Yeah, I know," she huffs playfully. "I don't eat cereal."
"You don't eat anything," he counters. "I think I've seen an all-meat kebab and fifteen sticks of beef jerky." She pinches her lips. It wasn't beef. But of course, she didn't say that. Bakugo was lining up to be her only friend right now and she didn't need to scare him off, too. "Hello? Earth to (Y/N)." She blinks before looking over her shoulder.
"Hm?"
"Never mind." She frowns but doesn't pester. If he was so willing to drop it, it was probably for the best. He asked all the right questions and she was getting tired of dodging them.
She sat at the table for their dinner again. This time, Bakugo's mom had insisted that she make (Y/N) food. She'd tried to fight but the woman was as pushy and stubborn as her son. Know where he got it from, she grumbled internally.
It was a beautiful curry udon dinner. They spoke their thanks before the family dove into their meals. They ate fast and didn't talk. Their silent stares were almost worse. They just watched her, watching for her to bring the fluffy noodles to her mouth and eat. She stared down at them, stomach churning at the thought. She could already feel the vomit in her mouth as her throat seemed to tighten at the thought.
How could she explain it to them? Embarrassment clashed with her sickness as her eyes flickered between the overwhelmingly good-smelling dish and their expectant eyes. Know where he got that from, too. She couldn't tell if she was going to puke from her anxiety or the food or both.
Slowly, she looks down at the bowl again. Her anxiety was winning. The chopsticks did not do her any favors in hiding her light tremor as she reached into the bowl, mumbling a thanks to Bakugo's mom for the meal before she began to eat.
She raced upstairs as soon as dinner was concluded, trying to be subtle. To his parents, the performance was fine, but to Bakugo, who'd seen her calm and collected but never had seen this, it did nothing. He trailed upstairs slowly, fainting hearing the door to the guest room press shut too hard and too fast for normal. He swore he could hear her panting.
"C'mon," he grumbles to himself, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it. He felt bad for his mom. That was such a rude and dramatic reaction to some udon noodles. He scoffs to himself as he lays down at his desk.
A vile wretching sound came from the bathroom shared by their two rooms. The toilet was against his wall as she threw up in it. It made him a little less angry, but made him feel sick to hear her literally puking a wall over. Then there was a loud crash and thunk. He jumps up, slapping open the bathroom door as he announced his entrance.
(Y/N) was laid on the floor, the metal stand that held the toilet paper tipped over on the floor. Vomit dribbled out of her mouth and a piece of her unwrapped jerky was in her hand. He lightly moves her with his foot, trying to wake her.
"What the fuck?"