𝓢 𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒏𝒆

Eight years out of UA and somehow you're still around. Still in the group chat. Still showing up to Kirishima's birthday parties and Sero's terrible karaoke nights. Still completely unaware that Katsuki Bakugo — the number five hero, walking explosion, a man who has never once backed down from anything in his life — has been quietly losing his mind over you since roughly your second year of school.

Everyone else figured it out years ago. Kirishima figured it out first, mostly because Bakugo made the mistake of getting drunk at his own agency's holiday party and saying your name four times in one sentence. Mina figured it out next. Even Todoroki figured it out, which says a lot, because Todoroki barely notices when buildings are on fire.

You did not figure it out. You are, according to every single person in that group chat, the last person on earth who has no idea.

So one night Bakugo sat down with a receipt from a ramen place and a pen that was almost out of ink and wrote himself a list. Not because he needed help — he would tell you he did not need help — but because eight years of doing nothing had clearly not worked and something had to change.

Here's what he came up with.

Rule #1: Don't call her pretty. That's weak. She'll see right through it.

You've been called pretty before. Plenty of times. It rolls off you like water because it means nothing coming from strangers. So the first time Bakugo actually looks at you — really looks, across a table at a group dinner while everyone else is arguing about something stupid — he doesn't say pretty. He says your hair looks stupid pushed back like that and it takes you a full three seconds to realize that's the nicest thing he's said to anyone all night.Kirishima kicks him under the table. Bakugo kicks back harder.

Rule #2: Don't let her see you get soft. Save that for when nobody's watching

You broke your wrist on a mission six months ago and Bakugo showed up at the hospital before your own agency finished the paperwork. He didn't say much. He sat in the corner with his arms crossed and glared at every nurse who walked past like they'd personally wronged him. You thanked him for coming. He said he was in the area. He was not in the area. He is never in your area.

Rule #3: If she teases you don't react. Reacting means she wins.

You have exactly one move against Bakugo and it works every time. You call him Kacchan in that flat unbothered voice of yours, the one that makes it sound like an insult and a joke at once, and he goes red before he can stop it. He tells you to shut up. You don't. He never actually wants you to.

Rule #4: Don't stare. Staring is for losers who can't say what they mean.

He stares anyway. Across bars. Across meeting rooms when your agencies do joint operations. Across the space between his couch and yours when the whole group crashes at his place after a night out and you fall asleep first, curled up small and unbothered like the world isn't currently on fire somewhere. He tells himself he's just checking you're breathing. He checks for a very long time.

Rule #5: If she steals your jacket let her keep it. Don't be a bitch about it.

It was cold outside a bar in October and you didn't bring one. He took his off without being asked and put it around your shoulders before you could even shiver a second time. You tried to give it back at the end of the night. He told you to keep it, said something about not needing two jackets anyway, which made no sense, and walked off before you could argue. You still have it. He knows you still have it. Neither of you has ever mentioned it again.

Rule #6: Don't get jealous. Jealous is for weak men.

A guy from a rival agency spent an entire mixer talking to you last spring and Bakugo spent that same mixer setting three separate small fires with his quirk completely by accident, according to him. Kirishima said it wasn't an accident. Bakugo told Kirishima to shut the hell up in front of everyone, which everyone agreed was extremely on brand and extremely obvious.

Rule #7: If she's tired let her sleep on your shoulder. Don't make it weird.

You fell asleep on the train back from a joint mission once, head tipping slowly toward his shoulder like gravity had made a decision without asking you. He went completely still. Didn't move for forty minutes. Told everyone later he just didn't want to wake you up. That was true. It was also not the whole truth.

Rule #8: Compete with her. Don't let her win just because you like her. That's pathetic.

You beat him at darts once, at a bar, fair and square, and he demanded a rematch on the spot. You beat him again. He demanded a third round. By the fourth round he wasn't even trying to win anymore, just trying to make you laugh at his increasingly unhinged trash talk, and you were laughing too hard to notice you'd stopped keeping score.

Rule #9: Play it cool when she touches you. Don't be obvious.

You have a habit of grabbing his arm when you laugh too hard at something, quick and unthinking, gone in half a second. It means nothing to you. It means everything to him. He has thought about that half-second more times than he'd ever admit under torture.

Rule #10: If she's cold under the table don't offer your legs. That's insane. Nobody does that.

He does it anyway. It's a slow dinner, everyone's talking over each other, and your foot brushes his under the table by accident. You don't move it. Neither does he. What starts as an accident turns into something else entirely — your foot pressed lightly against his shin, his ankle hooked loosely around yours, both of you carrying on two separate conversations with the rest of the table like nothing is happening below it. He nearly chokes on his drink when your foot slides slow up his calf, just once, just to see what he'll do.

He does absolutely nothing. Which is how you know it worked.

Rule #11: Don't ask about her ex. That's weak and clingy behavior.

He asks anyway, once, badly, wrapped inside a completely unrelated sentence about something else entirely so it wouldn't sound like what it was. You answered honestly and briefly and didn't ask why he wanted to know. He spent the rest of that night in a genuinely foul mood that had nothing to do with the mission report he'd claimed was bothering him.

Rule #12: If she gets sick you're not worried. You're just making sure she doesn't die. There's a difference.

You caught something nasty last winter and didn't tell anyone because you hate being fussed over. Bakugo found out from Kirishima and showed up at your apartment within the hour with a bag of groceries he refused to let you see the receipt for. He made soup badly. He stayed anyway sitting stiffly on your couch like he'd rather be anywhere else until you fell asleep on his shoulder for the second time in your life. He didn't move again. This time you were awake enough at the end to notice and you didn't say anything either.

Rule #13: Don't remember small stuff about her. That's obsessive.

He remembers everything. Your coffee order. The exact way you take your eggs. The name of the street you grew up on mentioned once years ago in passing. He tells himself it's just a good memory. Kirishima tells him that's not what a good memory looks like for anyone else in the friend group.

Rule #14: Don't get quiet around her. Quiet means she'll know something's wrong.

He gets quiet anyway sometimes when it's just the two of you left at the end of a group hangout and everyone else has gone home. You've noticed. You've never asked. You've started noticing you kind of like the quiet too.

Rule #15: If she insults your cooking don't take it personal.

You told him once that his katsudon tasted like it was made out of spite. He told you to make it yourself then. You did. It was worse than his. He has never let you live that down and somehow still makes you a plate every single time you come over unasked like it's not a big deal.

Rule #16: Don't let her see the soft stuff. Like the notebook. She can never see the notebook.

There is in fact a notebook. Bakugo would deny this to his last breath. It is not a diary. It is a training log that occasionally accidentally includes things like *she laughed at something dumb I said today* written in the margins in handwriting too small for anyone to notice. Nobody has ever seen it. It stays that way.

Rule #17: Don't dance with her at Mina's stupid parties. Dancing is for saps.

He dances with you exactly once badly at Mina's birthday both of you a little drunk and laughing about how neither of you knows what you're doing. His hand sits low on your waist the entire song. Yours rests flat against his chest close enough to feel his heart going faster than the song's tempo would explain. Neither of you comments on it. Both of you notice.

Rule #18: If she calls you at 2am for no reason answer immediately. Don't overthink it.

You called once at 2am half-asleep just to complain about a case that was bothering you and needed someone to talk it out with. He picked up on the first ring even though he'd been dead asleep three seconds earlier. Talked you through it for forty minutes in a voice rougher than usual low and half-awake until you finally calmed down enough to sleep. Neither of you brought it up the next day. You both remembered it anyway.

Rule #19: Tell her the truth eventually. Stalling makes you look like a coward.

He almost doesn't. Eight years of almost. Eight years of jackets and soup and 2am phone calls and a notebook nobody's supposed to see all adding up to exactly nothing because Katsuki Bakugo — who has never once in his life backed down from a fight — has apparently decided this is the one fight not worth having.

Kirishima finally sits him down and tells him flatly that watching this has become genuinely embarrassing for everyone involved. That you deserve to actually know. That you're not going to figure it out on your own because you're the single most unbothered person either of them has ever met and unbothered people don't go looking for things they've never been told to look for.

Rule #20: Ask her out. Just say it. Stop being a coward about it

He shows up at your apartment on a random Tuesday with no plan and no speech prepared which is unlike him in every possible way. You open the door in an old shirt and no makeup unbothered as always and ask what's wrong like something must be wrong for him to be standing there.

"Nothing's wrong," he says and immediately looks like he regrets starting that way. "I just — " He stops. Starts again. "You're coming to dinner with me Friday. Not the group. Just you and me."

You blink at him. For the first time in eight years something in your carefully composed face actually slips just a fraction just enough for him to see it happen in real time.

"Is this a date Bakugo?"

"Obviously it's a date," he says too loud the way he gets when he's covering for something. "What else would it be. Are you always this slow or is it just with me?"

You don't answer right away. You just look at him for a long moment the unbothered mask cracking wider by the second and something like a smile starts pulling at the corner of your mouth.

"Friday," you say. "Pick me up at seven. And Katsuki—"

"What."

"Wear the jacket back. I've had it long enough."

Eight years out of UA and somehow you're still around. Still in the group chat. Still showing up to Kirishima's birthday parties and Sero's terrible karaoke nights. Still completely unaware that Katsuki Bakugo — the number five hero, walking explosion, a man who has never once backed down from anything in his life — has been quietly losing his mind over you since roughly your second year of school.

Everyone else figured it out years ago. Kirishima figured it out first, mostly because Bakugo made the mistake of getting drunk at his own agency's holiday party and saying your name four times in one sentence. Mina figured it out next. Even Todoroki figured it out, which says a lot, because Todoroki barely notices when buildings are on fire.

You did not figure it out. You are, according to every single person in that group chat, the last person on earth who has no idea.

So one night Bakugo sat down with a receipt from a ramen place and a pen that was almost out of ink and wrote himself a list. Not because he needed help — he would tell you he did not need help — but because eight years of doing nothing had clearly not worked and something had to change.

Here's what he came up with.

Rule #1: Don't call her pretty. That's weak. She'll see right through it.

You've been called pretty before. Plenty of times. It rolls off you like water because it means nothing coming from strangers. So the first time Bakugo actually looks at you — really looks, across a table at a group dinner while everyone else is arguing about something stupid — he doesn't say pretty. He says your hair looks stupid pushed back like that and it takes you a full three seconds to realize that's the nicest thing he's said to anyone all night.Kirishima kicks him under the table. Bakugo kicks back harder.

Rule #2: Don't let her see you get soft. Save that for when nobody's watching

You broke your wrist on a mission six months ago and Bakugo showed up at the hospital before your own agency finished the paperwork. He didn't say much. He sat in the corner with his arms crossed and glared at every nurse who walked past like they'd personally wronged him. You thanked him for coming. He said he was in the area. He was not in the area. He is never in your area.

Rule #3: If she teases you don't react. Reacting means she wins.

You have exactly one move against Bakugo and it works every time. You call him Kacchan in that flat unbothered voice of yours, the one that makes it sound like an insult and a joke at once, and he goes red before he can stop it. He tells you to shut up. You don't. He never actually wants you to.

Rule #4: Don't stare. Staring is for losers who can't say what they mean.

He stares anyway. Across bars. Across meeting rooms when your agencies do joint operations. Across the space between his couch and yours when the whole group crashes at his place after a night out and you fall asleep first, curled up small and unbothered like the world isn't currently on fire somewhere. He tells himself he's just checking you're breathing. He checks for a very long time.

Rule #5: If she steals your jacket let her keep it. Don't be a bitch about it.

It was cold outside a bar in October and you didn't bring one. He took his off without being asked and put it around your shoulders before you could even shiver a second time. You tried to give it back at the end of the night. He told you to keep it, said something about not needing two jackets anyway, which made no sense, and walked off before you could argue. You still have it. He knows you still have it. Neither of you has ever mentioned it again.

Rule #6: Don't get jealous. Jealous is for weak men.

A guy from a rival agency spent an entire mixer talking to you last spring and Bakugo spent that same mixer setting three separate small fires with his quirk completely by accident, according to him. Kirishima said it wasn't an accident. Bakugo told Kirishima to shut the hell up in front of everyone, which everyone agreed was extremely on brand and extremely obvious.

Rule #7: If she's tired let her sleep on your shoulder. Don't make it weird.

You fell asleep on the train back from a joint mission once, head tipping slowly toward his shoulder like gravity had made a decision without asking you. He went completely still. Didn't move for forty minutes. Told everyone later he just didn't want to wake you up. That was true. It was also not the whole truth.

Rule #8: Compete with her. Don't let her win just because you like her. That's pathetic.

You beat him at darts once, at a bar, fair and square, and he demanded a rematch on the spot. You beat him again. He demanded a third round. By the fourth round he wasn't even trying to win anymore, just trying to make you laugh at his increasingly unhinged trash talk, and you were laughing too hard to notice you'd stopped keeping score.

Rule #9: Play it cool when she touches you. Don't be obvious.

You have a habit of grabbing his arm when you laugh too hard at something, quick and unthinking, gone in half a second. It means nothing to you. It means everything to him. He has thought about that half-second more times than he'd ever admit under torture.

Rule #10: If she's cold under the table don't offer your legs. That's insane. Nobody does that.

He does it anyway. It's a slow dinner, everyone's talking over each other, and your foot brushes his under the table by accident. You don't move it. Neither does he. What starts as an accident turns into something else entirely — your foot pressed lightly against his shin, his ankle hooked loosely around yours, both of you carrying on two separate conversations with the rest of the table like nothing is happening below it. He nearly chokes on his drink when your foot slides slow up his calf, just once, just to see what he'll do.

He does absolutely nothing. Which is how you know it worked.

Rule #11: Don't ask about her ex. That's weak and clingy behavior.

He asks anyway, once, badly, wrapped inside a completely unrelated sentence about something else entirely so it wouldn't sound like what it was. You answered honestly and briefly and didn't ask why he wanted to know. He spent the rest of that night in a genuinely foul mood that had nothing to do with the mission report he'd claimed was bothering him.

Rule #12: If she gets sick you're not worried. You're just making sure she doesn't die. There's a difference.

You caught something nasty last winter and didn't tell anyone because you hate being fussed over. Bakugo found out from Kirishima and showed up at your apartment within the hour with a bag of groceries he refused to let you see the receipt for. He made soup badly. He stayed anyway sitting stiffly on your couch like he'd rather be anywhere else until you fell asleep on his shoulder for the second time in your life. He didn't move again. This time you were awake enough at the end to notice and you didn't say anything either.

Rule #13: Don't remember small stuff about her. That's obsessive.

He remembers everything. Your coffee order. The exact way you take your eggs. The name of the street you grew up on mentioned once years ago in passing. He tells himself it's just a good memory. Kirishima tells him that's not what a good memory looks like for anyone else in the friend group.

Rule #14: Don't get quiet around her. Quiet means she'll know something's wrong.

He gets quiet anyway sometimes when it's just the two of you left at the end of a group hangout and everyone else has gone home. You've noticed. You've never asked. You've started noticing you kind of like the quiet too.

Rule #15: If she insults your cooking don't take it personal.

You told him once that his katsudon tasted like it was made out of spite. He told you to make it yourself then. You did. It was worse than his. He has never let you live that down and somehow still makes you a plate every single time you come over unasked like it's not a big deal.

Rule #16: Don't let her see the soft stuff. Like the notebook. She can never see the notebook.

There is in fact a notebook. Bakugo would deny this to his last breath. It is not a diary. It is a training log that occasionally accidentally includes things like *she laughed at something dumb I said today* written in the margins in handwriting too small for anyone to notice. Nobody has ever seen it. It stays that way.

Rule #17: Don't dance with her at Mina's stupid parties. Dancing is for saps.

He dances with you exactly once badly at Mina's birthday both of you a little drunk and laughing about how neither of you knows what you're doing. His hand sits low on your waist the entire song. Yours rests flat against his chest close enough to feel his heart going faster than the song's tempo would explain. Neither of you comments on it. Both of you notice.

Rule #18: If she calls you at 2am for no reason answer immediately. Don't overthink it.

You called once at 2am half-asleep just to complain about a case that was bothering you and needed someone to talk it out with. He picked up on the first ring even though he'd been dead asleep three seconds earlier. Talked you through it for forty minutes in a voice rougher than usual low and half-awake until you finally calmed down enough to sleep. Neither of you brought it up the next day. You both remembered it anyway.

Rule #19: Tell her the truth eventually. Stalling makes you look like a coward.

He almost doesn't. Eight years of almost. Eight years of jackets and soup and 2am phone calls and a notebook nobody's supposed to see all adding up to exactly nothing because Katsuki Bakugo — who has never once in his life backed down from a fight — has apparently decided this is the one fight not worth having.

Kirishima finally sits him down and tells him flatly that watching this has become genuinely embarrassing for everyone involved. That you deserve to actually know. That you're not going to figure it out on your own because you're the single most unbothered person either of them has ever met and unbothered people don't go looking for things they've never been told to look for.

Rule #20: Ask her out. Just say it. Stop being a coward about it

He shows up at your apartment on a random Tuesday with no plan and no speech prepared which is unlike him in every possible way. You open the door in an old shirt and no makeup unbothered as always and ask what's wrong like something must be wrong for him to be standing there.

"Nothing's wrong," he says and immediately looks like he regrets starting that way. "I just — " He stops. Starts again. "You're coming to dinner with me Friday. Not the group. Just you and me."

You blink at him. For the first time in eight years something in your carefully composed face actually slips just a fraction just enough for him to see it happen in real time.

"Is this a date Bakugo?"

"Obviously it's a date," he says too loud the way he gets when he's covering for something. "What else would it be. Are you always this slow or is it just with me?"

You don't answer right away. You just look at him for a long moment the unbothered mask cracking wider by the second and something like a smile starts pulling at the corner of your mouth.

"Friday," you say. "Pick me up at seven. And Katsuki—"

"What."

"Wear the jacket back. I've had it long enough."