Ch. 41 Boys Night Out

"Ladies, meet my friends!"

Kirishima and Bakugo looked up to see Kaminari coming toward them with three giggling girls in tow. It was obvious from the way they were hanging on him and babbling about heroes that this was a bad idea.

They'd picked a table near the pack, hoping to avoid notice in the crowded bar, but that seemed to be exactly the opposite of what Kaminari had in mind.

"But Chargebolttttttt," one of them said, singing Kaminari's name in what sounded to Bakugo like the most annoying voice ever. "Can't you get me Eraserhead's autograph? ....or number?"

"Forget him," the other one said. "Do you guys know pro hero Mind Fuck?"

"The brainwasher? Oh yeah," the first girl agreed. "He's so hot."

"Or that other one, the blonde guy with the beefy arms who can move through anything."

"He could move through me."

Kirishima and Bakugo exchanged a look as the girls prattled on about which heroes were the hottest and which made the most money. 

Forget Kaminari, if they weren't six drinks in at this point, the two of them would have had the presence of mind to leave immediately. Instead they stayed in their chairs and simply stared.

"Who cares about those heroes when you have three right here!" Kaminari said, his arm going around the waist of one of the girls. She laughed and leaned into him, whispering something in his ear.

"The grumpy cat over there is Bakugo," Kaminari pointed him out for the girls, "and this handsome shark boy is my man Kirishima."

"I'm not a damn – what the hell is this - " Bakugo stopped short as Kaminari practically pushed one of the girls toward him, and she landed in his lap. One of his hands tried to keep his drink from spilling, while the other tried moving her off him. Even so, she wrapped her arms around his neck and anchored herself in place.

"Denki told us that you're a famous hero. What's your hero name?"

Bakugo didn't answer and instead glared over at Kaminari who gave him two thumbs up before his tongue went back down the throat of the girl he was with.

"I'm not here to make new friends," Bakugo told her. "So can you get off me now or..."

"That's okay, I don't want to be just friends either," she smirked as one of her hands started to pet his face.

"All right, time to go. Either get up or I'll move you myself."

"Please do," she said, her eyes lighting up. ""I have a healing quirk," she continued. "You wouldn't need any....healing, would you?"

"For fucks sake," Bakugo muttered. "You sound like my ex."

Kirishima wasn't doing much better. His face looked about as red as his hair as the third girl tried to talk to him, pressing him for answers on just exactly how 'hard' he could get.

Thankfully he was saved by their server bringing them another round of shots.

"No thanks. I'm... uh... I'm going to go find the bathroom," Kirishima muttered. "Sorry, ladies. If you'll excuse me..."

Kirishima managed to get away from the group and headed into the crowd. He cringed when he noticed that the TV's behind the bar were showing that same hero gossip show they'd watched earlier. I'll go to the bar and ask them to change it, he decided.

------

"You know he's going to be pissed if you keep these TVs on the news," you told the other bartender working with you that night.

"I don't have time to care," he said.

He was right. You and the other bartenders had your hands full, literally, as the bar filled up and drink orders came rolling in. It was all you could do to keep your head down and get to work. The crowd of people was thick and the air was hot, sweat already dripping down your forehead even though you'd just started your shift. A server came up to ask for yet another round of shots for her table and you started pouring them right away.

"Besides," the other bartender said, "this isn't real news, it's hero gossip."

"You must be new," you rolled your eyes. "But whatever, it's your funeral, dude."

Toga happened to walk by right then and you called out to her.

"Hey! Where are... the guys?" you asked her. You pretended to ignore the fresh red stains on her shirt.

"In the back."

You knew what that meant. It meant that tonight, like most nights, it was better to keep to yourself, do your job, and hope they didn't ask you to join them back there. At least you could unbutton your shirt a little and not worry about them seeing the marks Shoto had left on your neck. It was too hot in there to have it all buttoned up anyway.

Toga hopped up on a barstool. "Do a shot with me," she said.

What the hell, why not? You poured two, and the two of you clinked glasses before downing them. You completely ignored your customers to pour a second round and repeat the process.

"So how's the happy couple?" Toga asked you.

"Huh?"

She pointed behind you, and you turned around to see photos of you and Shoto, leaving his building, walking down the street, on your failed attempt at getting coffee together this morning. He was holding your hand, but only because he was pulling you away from the photographers, but that wasn't what it looked like.

"Son of a bitch," you said, grabbing the remote and changing the channel.

"They've been playing that clip of you all night on this channel. Is that what you do when you're not here? Hang out with heroes?"

"Kind of? I guess you could say that."

"Were you a hero before you started dating Dabi?" she asked, leaning over the bar, as if you were two girls sharing secrets. You'd talked a couple times, and you found her quirk interesting, but once she started waving a knife around, you tried to find an excuse to do anything else.

"No, I wasn't a hero. And I'm not dating him."

"It's fun playing hero, but I wouldn't want to do it for forever," she said, "although some of them are so cute. Do you think your red and white cutie would let me stab him?"

"What? No."

"That's too bad."

"Hold on. You've turned into heroes before?"

"Oh yeah. All I need to get is one good cut to get enough blood," Toga said, her knife suddenly in her hands. She pretended to slice the air with her blade.

"Which heroes?"

"Oh, I don't know, a bunch of them. If I get a super deep cut, I can even use their quirk."

"I didn't know you could do that," you said.

"Yes, you did."

"No, really, I didn't. And I'm going to need you to put that thing away."

"Heroes are tough," she continued, as if she hadn't heard you, "because you have to get close to them first. So I pretend to be all innocent and cry 'save me! save me!' until one of them gets close enough and then BAM."

You instinctively jumped back as she waved her knife at you.

"Arms are probably the easiest part to slash. They'll put their arms up to defend themselves and then I can start stabbing away. A nice long cut is so pretty, and then they can't use their arm anymore if I cut the muscle."

You watched as her face contorted into perhaps the creepiest smile you'd ever seen. Creepy, yet almost familiar. You started cleaning the shot glasses just to have something else to look at.

"Yeah, I had a friend who..." You thought back to the cut on Bakugo's arm and the sling he'd worn for days as it healed.

"Toga."

"Yes?"

"Do you.... " Even as you tried to form the question, the words felt thick in your mouth, and your fingers clenched around the glass in your hand. "Do you help Dabi...a lot?"

"Yeah, sometimes."

"Did you help him the night the League captured a hero, Red Riot?"

"The super buff guy with the spikey hair? Oh yeah! Shiggy wouldn't let me stab him though, and I was sad."

You could feel your pulse quicken and a dull ache in your head as you put the pieces together.

"And the night Dabi burned my building....did you..."

"Did I turn into that hot hero who makes stuff go boom boom? Hell yeah, I did!"

Oh god...

"That was Dabi's idea, and it was so fun. I told you, you already knew I could use someone else's quirk! You were there!"

Against your better judgment, you reached for Toga's mind. After mere seconds, you almost dropped the glass in your hand.

"Dabi. He... that was you... it wasn't...."

"Where are you going?" Toga called after you as you left the bar. "What about my drink?"

You didn't care. It didn't make up for him not visiting you in the hospital, for not checking on you, for basically being absent from your life entirely for the past few weeks, but all of that was understandable. You'd told him to go away, so he had.

But you'd only said that because you thought that was him that night, you thought it was him who had tried to kill those villains. And now you knew it wasn't.

You shoved past people, taking out your phone as you tried to move through the crowd.

"Hey?"

"I'm on break," you muttered, searching for Bakugo's number in your phone as you walked, still trying to shoulder your way through the mass of bodies in the bar.

"Y/n. Stop. It's me, Kirishima!"