Bakugou slides into a seat at the counter, waving over the bartender to ask for a beer on tap. He's not really planning on getting shitfaced tonight or anything, especially with Kirishima out of town for the night.

"Oi, Bakugou! You made it!" Bakugou feels an arm wrap slump over onto his shoulders and looks to his side only to get a mouthful of blond hair in his face.

"Fuck off, Kaminari," he answers in a monotone. He doesn't particularly mean it, but it wouldn't be a lie to say that Kaminari is still annoying as fuck.

"Aw, you don't mean that," Kaminari says, but he pulls his arm off to lean against the counter anyways. "If you meant it you wouldn't have used my name."

Bakugou rolls his eyes but doesn't really protest. It's true, honestly. The three years at UA, and then the many months afterwards in the world of real pro heroes had mellowed Bakugou out to some extent. It probably helped that it was no longer considered professional or efficient to shout childish nicknames during battle, but his former classmates liked to credit themselves for this shift.

"No Kirishima today? I'm kind of surprised you came out tonight without him around to drag you out," Kaminari continues, raising an eyebrow.

Bakugou also still hates these social gatherings they put on regularly, but he comes out anyway. Kaminari's right, honestly, in that it usually is Kirishima that pulls him out but Bakugou's learned that, as much as they are a hassle they can also be useful. He uses these opportunities to catch up on the hero villain gossip, finding out who's teaming up with who and which companies are targeting which villains. (And maybe, if pressed, he might admit that it's nice to see everybody's faces once in a while. But he would have to be very hard pressed to admit to that.)

"You make it sound like I'm some kind of dog on that shitty haired idiot's leash," Bakugou snorts. He sips at his beer, frowning mostly out of habit rather than at the taste.

"Uhh," Kaminari says, eyes going as wide as Bakugou's narrow. "I never said that! If anybody said that, it was definitely Sero," he says, pointing over to the Soy Sauce fucker in the corner, unsuccessfully attempting to dance with Raccoon Eyes.

Bakugou growls, but decides it's not worth pursuing and sullenly sips at his drink instead. (It did help a little to think back to that one article that had been published about Sero with the quote "also known among other pro heroes as 'Soy Sauce Face.'")

"You're still on thin ice, Pikachu," he settles instead.

"Right, right," Kaminari answers, waving him off. "By the way, do you know if Kirishima is free next Thursday? I wanted to meet with him to get his opinion on something," he asks.

Bakugou squints at Kaminari before muttering, "Fucking ask him yourself, idiot. He has a phone, doesn't he?"

Kaminari shrugs, "Yeah but you know how he is, awful at texting at shit."

"No he's not?" Bakugou says. As a matter of fact, Kirishima seems to never stop texting him, always spamming his phone full of pictures of cool rocks he's found on patrol or random cat memes that probably deserve places in history books because of how old they are. "Whatever. Next Thursday?"

Kaminari nods, looking up at him eagerly.

Bakugou scrunches his nose before shaking his head, "Nah. Kirishima's busy on Thursdays."

"Ugh," Kaminari sighs, flopping down so his face is squished into the counter. "But why? Can't he cancel?"

Bakugou laughs, "You look really ugly right now." Ignoring Kaminari's (ugly) glare, he continues, "No fucking way is that asshole cancelling. We haven't missed sleepover night in years."

Kaminari sits up at that. "We? Sleepover night?"

Shit. "The fuck is it to you? Friends can't have sleepovers or something?" Bakugou hisses. Maybe coming out here tonight was a bad idea.

Kaminari is already waving Ashido and Sero over to them, though, and Bakugou just sighs and prepares himself for a full on interrogation.

"Please," Kaminari says, folding his hands in front of him as if he's some fucking detective in an interrogation room or something. "Repeat what you just said for us all."

"What's going on?" Sero tries to ask, but is quickly shushed by Kaminari.

"Fuck off," Bakugou tries. It doesn't really work as they stare him down once again. Maybe if they used this kind of coordination when capturing villains, they'd be able to get a little higher on the Japan Hero Billboard. "Fucking fine. Thursdays are sleepover nights with Kirishima," Bakugou rushes out. He juts his chin out, too, as if to say that there's nothing for him to be ashamed of. And really, there isn't.

"Sleep… over…?" Ashido repeats, looking dumbfounded.

"Yes? You idiots fucking deaf or something?"

"But," Sero pipes up, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "Don't you guys live together? Haven't you guys been rooming together for two years now, five if you count UA?"

"Yeah?" Bakugou challenges. "We had sleepovers at UA, too."

"Sleepovers…" Kaminari says and it makes Bakugou explode.

"Say the word sleepovers one more fucking time and I will rip your face off, duncehead." His palms crackle softly to emphasize his point. "Anyway. We have separate rooms, duh."

"Does that… Is that supposed to explain something to us?" Sero asks.

Bakugou raises his eyebrow, wondering what exactly is not getting through these idiots' skulls. "Yeah? Sleepover nights are when we sleep over in each others' rooms after we eat dinner. And like, do shit together, like watch a movie or something."

Ashido's look of confusion changes to one of horror. "Oh my god. Oh my god, are you trying to tell us that you two have been Netflix and chilling for three years in the same building as us while we were at UA?"

Separately, those words make sense to Bakugou. Together, they do not. "Uh, I guess? The fuck?"

"Damn," Sero says, recovering pretty quickly. "I was wondering when you guys were going to get together, I just didn't realize it already happened! Congrats, dude, why didn't you tell us?"

"What?" Bakugou sputters, regretting his decision to take another sip of his drink just then. "We're not fucking together, Soy Sauce."

Kaminari looks at him skeptically. "Okay, then during these sleepovers, does Kirishima sleep on the floor or in your bed?"

Bakugou squints his eyes, feeling like this is definitely a trap. "In my bed. Why the fuck would he come all the way into my room just to sleep on the floor." There's definitely something off about the sentence that just came out of his mouth, but Bakugou isn't quite able to wrap his head around it just yet. "Wait."

Kaminari dozes over him anyway. "Okay. Next question, if you were to go on a date with somebody, what's something you might do together?"

That's kind of a hard question for Bakugou, considering he actually hasn't ever been on a date before. He blames being too busy with hero work, though. "I dunno. Like, dinner?"

"Anything else?"

"What more do you want? A fucking movie?"

Three pairs of eyes blink at him expectantly.

"What." A pause. "Oh. Oh shit, oh fuck, wait, wait."

"What I want to know," Ashido speaks up, grinning mischievously, "Is who's big spoon and who's little spoon."

"Kirishima's big spoon, obviously. Have you seen his arms?" The words come out before Bakugou can stop them, and that's when he realizes that he really, really did fuck up this time. "I mean. Fuck." There's no explaining himself out of this one.

–

It's Thursday night and they've just finished putting away the dishes after dinner (spicy curry, courtesy of Bakugou). As Bakugou settles back into Kirishima's arm on their usual position on their bed, he hesitates to press play on the movie they've picked (some old Crimson Riot documentary, courtesy of Kirishima's Netflix subscription).

"Oi, Kirishima," Bakugou asks, staring straight ahead at the wall across from them. "Are we friends?"

Kirishima shifts in his seat, turning to face Bakugou's profile as he laughs, "Well I sure hope so."

"Okay, but do you have like, these sleepover things with any of your other friends?" Bakugou asks. It feels so fucking stupid to say it out loud. "Fucking. Yeah."

"Uh, no," Kirishima answers, tilting his head to one side. "Do you?"

"Fucking 'course not, dumbass." They fall into silence then as Bakugou fiddles his thumb and Kirishima patiently waits for him to say whatever he's trying to say. "Then like. Are we friends? And not like how I asked it before, I mean like are we just friends?"

Kirishima's eyes widen a little bit before he lets out a little laugh, leaning his face closer into Bakugou's space. "We don't have to be if you don't want to be."

Bakugou finally looks over at him then, taking in the way Kirishima's face looks with his hair down, lit up softly by the dim glow of his computer in front of them. "I don't," he whispers and presses forward.

–

The next day on patrol, Uraraka grins at him, taking in the bruises on his neck and wrist and shoulders.

"So," she says slowly and Bakugou is already bristling. "How was sleepover night?"

"I'm going to fucking kill Kaminari that gossiping fucking piece of shit dirt rag."

"What movie did you watch?" Uraraka continues, skipping in circles around him as he halfheartedly swings a fist at her. She definitely has a phone in her hand that's recording him, and is probably going to send it into the class A groupchat, the fucker.

Bakugou honestly can't remember. Whatever, they have next Thursday to make up for it anyways.