@ explosivo

[codominant]

[indeed, that night of rest had been as futile as he expected, spent tossing and turning with a rich foreign flavor on his tongue and the ghost of another against it, of hands that are (always?) too warm and too rough on him, flaxen hair between his fingers; the next day at school means trying to carry on like nothing had happened, but a moment of eye contact that lingers too long between them, too full of things that were left unsaid and questions left unasked, tells him he isn't alone in it]

[still, he says nothing. not for days, not until he finds Bakugou alone one evening in one of UA's many gyms, dressed down and doing what he always does — pushing himself]

[Todoroki lingers, watching the heat flooded on his skin and the sheen of sweat on him, before his feet carry him over, dropping a gym bag on a mat some several steps away]

Bakugou.

[there's a pause, like he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say, before finally — ]

Spar me. Without our quirks.

Comments

[explosivo]

[ he suffers probably a horrible two hours of sleep that night thanks to gay 'fuck i kissed todoroki what does that MEAN' panic and hormonal frustration and honestly, the irritation that todoroki had the last word. he'd been damn tempted to chase todoroki to his room and confront him and--

what, exactly? kiss him again, shove him down, maybe punch him in the irritating pretty face in payback for being... an annoyingly decent kisser? he would be operating on sleep-deprived grudge-bearing gay-panicking logic and even he knows it. the scant few hours of sleep he'd managed to catch is barely any reprieve, he wakes up to his alarm furious and maybe even somehow hoping that it'd been a surreal awful dream but--

he catches todoroki's eye afterwards in class and despite how cool or unaffected todoroki seems, he knows it must have happened.

the even more infuriating fact is that todoroki doesn't even confront him about it, maybe he might as well have pretended it hadn't happened. and that is just about the cherry on this whole shitty cake, that todoroki would practically dare him into making out and then flightily ignore him the next day, or two, or three. bakugou himself has a limited timer, by this point after three or four nights of even more insomnia and intrusive thoughts about grabbing todoroki's face and kissing him breathless and further--it would only be a matter of time before he would break whatever petty stalemate this is supposed to be. he has less patience than todoroki, after all.

luckily todoroki finds him first.

he's booked one of the spare gym rooms for himself, one established with rocky terrain and training dummies he could blast as targets while imagining todoroki's face, because he doesn't have issues at all. for a second he almost thinks he's imagined todoroki's voice but--no, he turns while mid-incinerating a dummy, blackening fabric under his hand as he sees that half-and-half red-white bastard featuring in his nightly fantasies approaching.

the asshole in question he'd wanted to vent on. ]

Oh, it's you.

You wanna get your ass kicked that bad, huh? [ he's itching to oblige. ]

[codominant]

[the exact opposite, Todoroki could sit on these emotions and this situation for years if he wanted to — there are so many angles to work it from, questions to ask himself before he even brings another person into it: what does he mean? for himself, for his future? is there potential there that goes beyond UA? can Bakugou handle him, his life?]

[every "I don't know" simply means don't]

[but he doesn't want to. he doesn't want to be caught in the stagnant waters of what's untested, untried, unexperienced. he doesn't want to have an emotion and analyze it more than he feels it anymore, trapping it down inside of himself and letting it fester until it grew hard and tall into a wall between himself and others. he doesn't want...]

[he doesn't want to not know what he wants anymore — and the boy who always knows what he wants and always goes after it regardless of the consequences is right in front of him]

[Todoroki wasn't lying when he said he finds him so damn charismatic]

I need to work on my hand-to-hand combat, since I rely on my quirk too much. [by way of explanation, sidestepping both the accusation and the threat] You're one of the best in the class at it.

[save maybe Ojiro, but he he doesn't think he needs to explain why he'd seek out Bakugou over him, after what happened a few nights ago. the space between them closes to a few feet, shoes abandoned, one arm grabbing the other and pulling it taut in a stretch as he warms his muscles up, prepares them for the incoming onslaught. Bakugou maybe he better at him in this particular field, but there's no part of him that will go down without a fight, stubborn and competitive in his own measure]

[explosivo]

[ 'can bakugou handle him'... that's a funny one. if he had some mind-reading quirk no doubt he'd be hurling himself at todoroki right now and maybe shaking him by the collar flipping the question, could todoroki handle him? and the answer would be heavily skeptical as far as he's concerned.

happily, he's not a mind reader so that little tangent goes unsaid. todoroki who could contemplate and muse and dwell on shit like this... bakugou calculates, he reaches conclusions with a decisiveness he commits to, whether it might be correct or not.

he acts. ]

Damn right I'm the best at it. [ what, like there's any question? there's a bit of a cocky smirk hearing this acknowledgment straight from todoroki who he still sees as a rival, no question as to why that might be, regardless of how friendly they may or may be he always respects todoroki's abilities. ] And no shit you gotta work on yours. Relying on your quirk too much might as well fuck you over one day.

So. [ brief moment of gloating over with, his grin is sharp again as he shakes out a hand, fires a brief explosion that he extinguishes just as swiftly--hand to hand, sure. ] You sure just want that?

To get a little physical? [ a dare of a question, like his wolf's smile is. ]