x.
Tsukiko kept her eyes open, both in hopes of catching sight of Takashi and for fear of falling asleep.
Her brother had been gone since the end of the school day, having disappeared out the class in a pink-faced giddiness to fetch his skateboard. Though she hadn't asked, Tsukiko knew where he'd gone – all week, he'd mumbled about the plans he'd made with Shinsou-kun. To study after school together even though Takashi hated studying with other people. Then to show each other skateboard and bike tricks like two much younger boys flaunting new gadgets on the playground.
Naturally, nobody else seemed to know about it and Tsukiko had been asked multiple times that evening where her other-half was. She'd only shrugged. She'd giggled and said he was probably off in the library looking up animal facts and war strategies, or having a long-distance call with his harem of French girlfriends (this story she saved particularly for Mineta, who'd exclaimed something awful that made even Tsukiko's cheeks bubble into colour) or performing a sacrifice to the Twin Gods, Okikust and Ishakat (no one noticed the peculiarity of the names) in preparation for the Sports Festival.
It was by no sense of sense that Tsukiko made up these tales on Takashi's behalf. It was only an itch, a little niggle in her chest and brain, by which she knew he would have wanted her to.
And of course, everyone gawked at the stories. Everyone laughed curiously, albeit some of them with a shuddering tinge of awkwardness. And eventually, Tsukiko could only assume that they'd all assumed that she didn't know where her brother was – because they left the matter alone. They allowed it to go unnoticed how very weird and how very naked Tsukiko felt without Takashi next to her. Especially at a time like this.
Most of Class A had gathered around the dorm's living area in a bustling mood – a simmering anticipation like toy-soldiers readying themselves for toy-battle – and were chattering spryly about the next day's Sports Festival. About what sort of challenges could be expected this year and about hypothetical strategies for hypothetical scenarios. There were a lot of creative suppositions, and through thin grins and gasps of swelling anxiety Tsukiko couldn't help but wonder if she should have been making action plans too.
But that was Takashi's department, action plans and the like. After all, he was the practical one. The heroic one. And Tsukiko was too tired, too preoccupied with the struggle of swallowing against yawns and not closing her eyes to think up anything so energetic, let alone to actually add anything so energetic to the conversation. On top of which, her brain was already horridly fogged from a nauseating bout of nerves.
"But if we do have to do a cavalry battle again this year," Kaminari was saying, all abuzz, "We should all make a team-play against the other classes like they did at the Licensing–"
"Nah man, that wouldn't be fair!" Kirishima declared. He'd squashed himself in between Mina and Tsukiko, all hard muscle and enthusiasm, and though Mina didn't say anything aloud Tsukiko could tell she was absolutely loving every moment.
Kaminari pulled a face. "It's totally fair! It's called pack-hunting!"
Tsukiko's lips pulled in a tight, uncomfortable amusement. Takashi would probably have had something to say about that – about pack-hunting, and how Kaminari's 'suggestion' wasn't pack-hunting at all but bullying in a festive context. In hopeless hope, Tsukiko looked for the umpteenth time to the entrance hall in search of her brother. He'd slink along close to the wall, perhaps using his skateboard as a shield against unwanted attention. Then he'd pull a dumb face at her before disappearing into the elevator a free man.
Alas ~ there was no Takashi.
But there was Bakugo.
Bakugo as he trudged grumpily out from the direction of the kitchen, glass of water in hand. Bakugo with blue slippers on his feet like oversized, puffy blueberries. He paid no attention to the group as they debated, only staring ahead with a stupid look of determination – however, perhaps feeling Tsukiko's gaze in his general direction, he was quick in turning his attention towards her in an explosive glare. Saying nothing as he paused in his drag, and seeming to square her off with that crinkled expression of his.
Tsukiko, for no reason whatsoever other than a preemptive defensiveness, narrowed her eyes at him. He narrowed his eyes even more at her. She narrowed her eyes even more at him, and was half-tempted to stick her tongue out. Had it just been the two of them, she probably would have.
"Yo! Bakubro!" Kirishima grinned, and squashed himself up more closely to Mina to open a sliver of space in the couch. "Come tell Kaminari-kun his strategy's not manly."
Eyes flickering towards the now-vacant place next to Tsukiko – making her stomach somersault; he wouldn't dare – Bakugo answered in a snippy quickness, "I'm going to bed."
It didn't seem to come as a surprise to anyone. Except perhaps for Tsukiko, who felt her face drop into something more wide and hanging.
"But it's only seven thirty," Kirishima said in a cooing tease.
To which Bakugo grunted. "You're only a seven thirty."
"That doesn't even make sense!"
Tsukiko, up straight now and considering Bakugo seriously, did not shrink from him as he pulled his face at her in that dumb snarling expression. His declaration – 'I'm going to bed' – and the certainty with which he said it all seemed too good to be true. "What are you staring at, Shitty Poodle?"
For the time being, Tsukiko deliberately ignored the way the nickname screeched through her skull. "Are you really going to sleep now?" she questioned, not intending for it to sound so skeptical. "I mean, like, you can actually do that? Go to bed at this time?"
Bakugo raised his eyebrows as though Tsukiko were accusing him of something dastardly. But then his expression softened. "I can do whatever the hell I want."
The truth of it dawned upon Tsukiko like a glorious revelation – the relief of freedom, the ecstasy of sleepy-fantasies indulged. The mattress called! The pillow beckoned! If Bakugo could go to bed at this hour, so could she. Nothing held her back as she'd originally thought. Tsukiko bounced up from the couch with such surprising vigour it made Aoyama yelp, and she cast a wristed wave about the room as though she were a princess departing for sea.
For the moment, Tsukiko felt more awake than she had all evening: awake with the bright, warm promise of going to sleep. "Then I'm going to bed too!" she smiled. "Goodnight everybody! Good luck for tomorrow! Sleep tight! Goodnight!"
Tsukiko didn't wait for questions. She skipped around the couch with a chorus of very confused goodnights echoing behind her, and past Bakugo who also stared as though she'd just done something outrageous. She waited eagerly at the elevator, spirits lifted in anticipation and with nothing to bring her down – not even Bakugo when he joined her in bristling silence at the elevator door. Tapping his blueberry-feet, clutching his glass of water much too tightly.
Their lift took an age to get down from the fourth floor – but no matter! Bakugo turned to look at Tsukiko funnily; she could just about feel his eyes narrow over her head – but it was fine! It would only be a little while that they'd be stuck together.
Ting! The doors opened. Ting! The doors closed.
And with a sinking horror, a terrible sense of demise, Tsukiko realised with Bakugo standing next to her that he smelled really good. Good enough that she couldn't help herself, though she tried hard to restrain herself. But being weak, she sniffed. And finding herself traitorous in her new bout of enthusiasm, concealed as the two of them were in the elevator's tight space, she leaned ever so slightly towards Bakugo and sniffed a subtle, gentle sniff.
He shot her a look. "The fuck you doing?"
"Are you wearing cologne?"
"Huh?"
"Something cinnamony."
"It's just the way I smell, you moron."
"You put on a cinnamon-flavoured aftershave or man-ish perfume or something," Tsukiko scowled, though she spoke more to herself than to Bakugo. "There's no way you smell so good just on your own."
She didn't quite realise she'd said it until it had come out. Bakugo made a noise between a gasp and groan, and for a stifled few seconds the two of them blinked at each other. The elevator was one floor away from their own. The heat which reared itself in Tsukiko's face was treachorous. It wasn't a big deal; technically, she hadn't really just complimented Bakugo. Technically. But he smirked at her, and it was infuriating, and Tsukiko – though technically not – had unwittingly given the dick way more ammunition than he needed.
"I didn't mean that," she pouted somberly. "I think cinnamon is gross."
"Your face is gross."
Technically, he hadn't really just insulted her. Technically. But with her heart suddenly stopping in shame – so this was what it was to be called ugly! – Tsukiko bit her lip and looked away into the reflective sheen of the elevator doors.
Ting! They opened. Ting! They closed again.
Tsukiko spun away with unnecessary quickness and began a fuming, tight-chested trudge towards her bedroom. The high of realising she could go to bed whenever she wanted had withered fast. Her unfazed disregard for what Bakugo thought of her had been but fleeting. Why did she care? Or rather, in more words, why did it bother her so that he scowled at her and called her names and went out of his way to insult her? He did it to everybody. Nobody else seemed to care. So why did she always end up feeling like such… poop? Especially now, of all times, when she was already sick upon a foul concoction of anxiety's many different flavours.
Head down, arms swinging exaggeratedly at her sides, Tsukiko considered these things. But a hand – a hot, harsh, damp hand – around her wrist jolted her back to the corridor's nighttime dimness.
"Hey. Shitty Poodle."
She shouldn't have turned around. She shouldn't have been curious.
Bakugo poked her forehead. He poked her forehead and his finger lingered there, pressing harder than was needed. He smirked wider than he had in the elevator, and spoke in a quiet grumble which reminded Tsukiko quite terribly of an impending thunderstorm, "I am going to annihilate you tomorrow at the Sports Festival. You and your clone."
Tsukiko sucked in an outraged breath. "Get your finger off my forehead."
"What you going to do about it?" Bakugo didn't move. Instead, he dotted his finger against her skin as though there was a button to be pushed. "Punch me?"
"And get your blood on my knuckles?" Tsukiko spat. "It wouldn't be worth my effort."
She smacked his hand away from her wrist and forehead with a deft, hard thwack and stormed off. Somehow feeling violated. The small circle of his fingertip still burning a hole in the skin beneath her bangs. But it didn't feel like enough. To just leave Bakugo there in the stewing satisfaction of watching her leave in a rage just didn't feel good enough. So at the end of the corridor, twirling on her toes so that her ponytails circled her face, she offered Bakugo – who hadn't moved – one last look as harsh as she could muster though she half-wanted to cry. And then she stuck her tongue out at him.
Two things had surprised Katsuki that evening. First of all, Tsukiko's excitement to go to bed: how wide and sparkling she'd smiled when telling everyone goodnight, as though it were the grandest fucking thing. Second to that, how venomously she'd spoken about getting Katsuki's blood on her knuckles. That she could say something so especially vicious without cringing meant she wasn't the delicate flower Katsuki had thought – though he consoled himself with the reminder that she could have been all talk.
She was all talk.
But she was also cute.
No, she wasn't. What the fuck? She was an annoying little bitch, is what she was.
An annoying little bitch who'd kept Katsuki awake for hours now without even knowing it. He'd hauled his phone of from the side table several times throughout the night with an irritated determination to message her. To say something biting. Was she awake? Or had she actually truly gone to bed? Katsuki never did message her, of course, and only ended up scrolling through the negligible dribble of their previous conversations.
Bakugo Katsuki: Hey Shitty Poodle. What was our maths homework?
Shitty Poodle: Pages 37 to 40 I think
Bakugo Katsuki: Thanks.
Shitty Poodle: :)
A smiley face, staring out from the phone screen emotionless and self-important, had seemed like such a small victory when it had first been sent. Now though, as Katsuki glared at it, it contorted itself into something dismissive. Something spiteful in its plainness, reminding Katsuki that he supposedly wasn't worth its effort.
If he continued to toss and turn like this over something so stupid as an emoji, he'd pay for it at the Sports Festival in the morning. Not that anyone would be able to get the upper hand on him even if he did happen to be sleep-deprived; however, resolved as he was not to have his first place handed to him again by indifferent half-assers like Deku or Half-&-Half, Katsuki wanted to be fresh. Katsuki wanted to be in top shape and to reap the rewards of his sleep schedule (he didn't care how French Fry Aoyama insisted on referring to it as his beauty sleep).
But if Katsuki kept stewing over fucking Shitty Poodle like this – not that he wanted to, she just happened to be so in-his-face she was hard not to think about – there'd be none of it.
With a huff, he flung himself from the bed. Feet bare on the floor. Shirt off because it was too hot to sleep with it on. It was around midnight now, and everyone would at least have been in their rooms if not tightly in bed, so Katsuki didn't bother covering his top half before leaving into the hallway.
Like a memory box, the elevator's reflective light reminded Katsuki of how Tsukiko had said he smelled good. And of how, underneath her glimmering persona, there'd been a thrown undercurrent which made her seem restless. Nervous. Something like a skittish sakura blossom in the wind.
Katsuki clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He left the elevator into the ground floor with a vexed, frustrated sigh.
And to his disgust, someone else was in the kitchen.
The lights weren't on, but the dull bulb from the open fridge illuminated everything in ghostly glows: the counters bathed in mothy blue-white, the kettle and microwave ominous mounds of shadow. Katsuki couldn't see who rummaged through the fridge and made such a racket with its contents, but standing in the doorway he was able to glance over a pair of boney feet. A stretch of smooth, bandy legs – some delicate balance between being muscular and being skinny – whose connected hips were concealed behind the fridge door. Flexing toes. A quiet hum.
It was her.
Katsuki stood there for a long time, staring and unsure of himself. He held his breath as though not to make a sound, and grew ever more infuriated the longer she, Tsukiko, stood with the fridge door open. Struggling to make up her mind on a midnight snack, perhaps. Wasting electricity, though Katsuki didn't exactly give a shit about the school's bills.
"Hey. Hey, you," he said, instinctually whispering as he at last ventured to come close. "What are you–"
Horrifyingly, she was downing the milk straight from the bottle. And not for a second did she even seem to consider stopping. Making a shocked sort of noise, Katsuki ripped the bottle from Tsukiko's grasp.
"What the hell!?" still a whisper.
Weirdly though, her eyes were closed, and she swayed dreamily with her fingers tensing in an imaginary hold. Teeny little pajama shorts and a matching top – pink and sending a confused thrill down Katsuki's spine as he considered fleetingly the orange explosions dotted across the material; hair loose in blonde curls down her back. "Ssh… We have to prep…" she murmured.
Stomach knotting and unknotting itself, it took a moment before Katsuki realised she was completely asleep. The white line of milk above her top lip went untouched; her lashes flickered against the pale half-moons beneath her eyes. And in a breathy, quiet sigh, she continued to mumble incoherent nothings, all the while closing and opening her fingers as though in search of the milk. The milk which Katsuki promptly closed and set aside on the counter.
He'd heard you weren't supposed to wake sleep-walkers – weird and kind of creepy as the concept was. In spite of himself though, he pressed his hand into Tsukiko's shoulder and shook gently. "Hey. Shitty Poodle. Can you hear me? Say 'fuck' if you can hear me."
Her eyes fluttered slightly open and then shut again. She lolled her head from one shoulder to the other. "Hmm-mmm…"
"What was that?" he couldn't restrain a smirk through his whisper. "Come on, Tsukiko. Say 'fuck'."
"Mmm… Tomorrow…"
"You'll say it tomorrow?"
"Gotta prep," Tsukiko said dully, and jolted Katsuki into silence when she leaned her forehead onto his naked shoulder. He hadn't realised he'd been close enough for that, nor that she was short enough to simply tilt her head forward into the line of his collar bone. "They're gonna whack us into space and we gotta prep."
"Uh–"
He pressed her away, staring and lamenting the fact that her mussed up poodle-ear curls – so close to his face – smelled like slept-in sheets and something fruity. No. No. It was a sweet smell. An overpowering smell. Katsuki scowled and tried to convince himself that he didn't like it, that he most certainly hadn't just imagined pushing his face into that messed up bedhead and smelling again. His face was hot. His hands were hot, still on the boney curve of Tsukiko's shoulder.
It almost came as a gasp of relief when she turned away to grope about the fridge again. Katsuki, still half in shock and otherwise morbidly entertained, had to grab a bottle of tomato sauce from her one hand and the mayonnaise container from the other.
"Fucking hell, are you snackish or something?" he murmured, pulling Tsukiko away and then closing the fridge. "Geez… Come on…"
Taking her wrist – obviously not burningly aware of how teeny it was – Katsuki led her away from the kitchen back to the elevator. Forgetting for the moment that he himself had been there for another glass of water. Not bothering to turn back by the time he did remember. Ting! The doors opened. Ting! The doors closed.
"Ting ting…" Tsukiko mimicked the sound softly.
"Yeah," Katsuki, not knowing what else to do, agreed. "Ting ting, motherfucker."
"Gotta prep."
"Holy… could you stop?"
Somehow, taking her to her room himself just seemed dodgy. So there Katsuki stood, shirtless and with Tsukiko slung asleep and murmuring against his shoulder, banging his fist against Mina's door impatiently. Although it was also sort of not impatiently. Sort of with a sprinklingof disappointment when a bleary, irritated pink face opened and peered out at him from behind the door.
"Bakugo. What the–"
"Sssh," he hissed, and gestured with his head to the knocked out mess at his side. "Your shitty friend's a sleepwalker."
"Aah!" Raccoon Eyes threw her door open fully, and looking tremendously stupid in her leopard-print pajamas, stared in fascinated horror. "How creepy!" she cried in a whisper. Then she blinked, and pulled her features into a scandalised expression. "But wait – why do you have her?" she questioned incredulous and slow. "And why are you shirtless? Ooh, Bakugo-kun. Don't tell me. Did she sleep walk to your room? No way. No way!"
"Just shut up and take her, you idiot!" Still a whisper, gently tugging Tsukiko away from him and handing her over. It felt as though he was dealing with a corpse. It seemed the strangest thing to be doing at this midnight hour. Tsukiko groaned, and went reluctantly to Mina. What happened next was almost soft enough for both of them to miss it, but they didn't. They caught it loud and clear, and Katsuki had to swallow down hard against a sick thrill at the sugar-spun, sleepy words which slid from between Tsukiko's lips as she slipped from his hold–
She snored lightly, and whispered, "Gotta prep, motherfucker."
A/N: I ship it so hard.
Next chapter - The Sports Festival! :D
