Chapter 2: Friday, Interrupted
Three days. Shinsou had counted every one of them.
He stood across the street from the ramen bar, rain jacket zipped to his chin out of habit, though the sky had dried out since Friday's storm. The place glowed through its windows, warm and amber, lanterns painted on the glass, a line of waiting customers already forming under the awning. Steam ghosted past the kitchen window and dissolved into the night air.
Inside, at the counter, he could see them.
Kirishima sat close, red hair damp from a shower, laughing at something. Bakugou had his sleeves pushed up, chopsticks already in hand, steam curling around his face. Their shoulders nearly touched. There it was again. That easy, sunlit proximity that Shinsou had spent fourteen years telling himself he didn't want and three days knowing he was lying about.
He should have walked home. He'd rehearsed walking home. He'd rehearsed it in the shower, on patrol, at two in the morning staring at his ceiling while his phone stayed silent and Bakugou's silence got louder every day he didn't call.
Instead, Shinsou crossed the street.
The door chimed when he pushed it open. Warm air hit him, broth and pork fat and sesame oil, thick enough to taste. The waiter beamed at him. "Just one?"
"Table for three, actually." His voice came out steadier than he felt. "I see my friends."
He walked to the counter before anyone could react. Kirishima spotted him first, and his grin arrived on schedule, wide and unguarded, because of course it did. Kirishima had never once had a suspicious thought in his life.
"Shinsou! No way!" He waved him over like a rescued puppy. "You said your calendar was tragically clear."
"It was. I've decided to lead a richer life." Shinsou pulled out the stool on Bakugou's other side and sat down. The wood creaked under him. "Life-altering noodles, I hear. I couldn't risk you two dying of revelation without a witness."
Bakugou hadn't said a word. Shinsou felt him looking, that focused pressure he knew from a hundred briefings and a thousand cafeteria tables. He kept his eyes on the menu taped to the counter, on the blocky characters spelling out tonkotsu with black garlic oil, and pretended not to feel it.
"You're back for more bullshit, huh," Bakugou said finally.
"I'm back for noodles. Try to contain yourself."
Kirishima laughed and slapped the counter. "Ha! See, this is great. Bakugou, told you he'd cave eventually. Nobody can resist proper tonkotsu." He leaned past Shinsou to flag the waiter, and his forearm brushed Shinsou's shoulder, casual as breathing. "Three of the special, man. Extra chashu."
"Three," Shinsou echoed. He unzipped his jacket slowly, buying time. Under the counter, out of sight, his hand had closed around the edge of the seat and hadn't let go. "So. How was the hostage thing? Anyone unbreakable?"
"Ah, mostly fine. One guy panicked and I had to walk through a collapsing doorway with him on my back." Kirishima flexed his arm without a trace of modesty. "Good day's work."
"Heroic," Shinsou said. "You seem to have a lot of those. Good days."
The words came out with an edge he hadn't fully planned. Kirishima blinked at him, warmth flickering into confusion, and Shinsou hated himself with a precision that would have impressed a surgeon. He softened it with half a smile, filed it under dry humor, watched Kirishima accept it the way Kirishima accepted everything.
Bakugou didn't accept it. Shinsou could feel him cataloguing it, filing it next to the cracked cup, next to the rain, next to three days of silence.
The ramen arrived in a clatter of ceramic. The broth was rich and pale, marbled with fat, the chashu fanned out like something from a magazine. Kirishima bent over his bowl with religious reverence. Bakugou broke his chopsticks and ate in silence, fast and exact.
"Seriously, this is incredible," Kirishima said, surfacing for air. "See? Life-altering. Told you, Shinsou."
"Mm. It's good." It was good. That was the problem with the whole evening. Everything about it was warm and good and exactly the life Shinsou had been orbiting for a decade and a half, close enough to smell.
Bakugou set his chopsticks down. "Okay. Enough."
"Eh?" Kirishima looked up, cheeks full.
"Not you." Bakugou turned on his stool, and now the full weight of him was aimed at Shinsou like a drawn weapon. "You. Three days of nothing. No texts, no calls, radio silence on patrol comms even when I asked you a direct question. And now you show up, uninvited, and make weird little jabs at Shitty Hair all night." His eyes narrowed. "What the hell is this?"
"It's ramen," Shinsou said. "You're eating it. Look down."
"Don't." Bakugou's voice dropped, low enough that only the two of them caught it over the kitchen noise. "Don't do the thing. You've been doing the thing for fourteen years and I'm done letting you do the thing."
The counter felt narrow as a ledge. Shinsou stared into his broth. The pork fat swirled there, slow and indifferent, and his heartbeat was faster than it had any right to be over soup.
Kirishima looked between them, and for the first time since Shinsou had known him, something in that sunny face actually caught. He set down his chopsticks. He looked at Bakugou's hand on the counter, and then at Shinsou's white knuckles, and Shinsou watched the pieces click together behind those friendly eyes, one by one.
"Wait," Kirishima said. "Wait a second."
"Don't," Shinsou said.
"You." Kirishima's voice went careful, quiet, the tone he used with panicked hostages. "That night at the café. That was about Friday, wasn't it. About this." He gestured, gently, at the space between his own shoulder and Bakugou's. "You weren't tired. You were..." He stopped himself, and his fangs pressed into his lower lip, and Shinsou realized with distant horror that Kirishima was blushing. "Are you here because of me?"
The kitchen clattered on. Somewhere a bell rang, an order up. Shinsou's mouth opened and nothing came out, and for the first time in fourteen years, Bakugou Katsuki and Kirishima Eijirou were both looking at him with exactly the same expression.
Shinsou put his chopsticks down, very carefully, and gave up.
"Yes," he said.