For @ettomaru For Kacchako Secret Santa.
Coffee Is The Best Shared Together
“I am sorry Ochako,” Izuku said as they drove in deafening silence away from the airport. She had moved to the car without saying a word and had not spoken for a good twenty minutes. It was starting to lightly snow outside and they were caught up in afternoon traffic. Izuku wanted to be quiet but finally he coulnd’t help himself. “I was just so surprised to see Kaachan again.”
“Why did you call him that?”
“Well… It’s a long story.”
He pulled onto the jammed highway. She looked him over. They had been friends for a while. He was great at helping to set up clients for their business. She appreciated him as a friend and confidant. Anytime she thought that maybe she wasn’t that great of an architect, he was there and ready to defend her work. He had been working for the past several months to win a contract for a massive building in downtown.
“How did you even run into him? The airport must have been crazy massive.”
“We met in the airport, we were on the same flight,” she said and he nodded, making a noise.
“Why did you call him that? And why did he get so mad when he saw you?”
“We knew each other when we were kids. We went the same school, we were in the same classes. Kaachan was by far the best at everything. Then when we were in our freshman year of high school, he was in a really bad accident. He was pinned in his car for hours while they tried to get him out. It was on the news and everyone saw it. He spent the next six months constantly in the hospital and getting surgeries on his legs, and he just got more and more angry. He fell behind in school and by the time he was back to his full health, he was one of the bottom students.”
She couldn’t even imagine someone as confident and straight forward as Bakugou to have come out of that without any issues.
“Things got bad at school. He was so behind that he dedicated himself to catching up and surpassing everyone to become valedictorian in our class. He worked hard and I admired that about him. But I made the mistake of telling him that. I wasn’t exactly the most well-liked student and I was pretty quiet. So I was an easy target for bullies. Katuski liked tormenting me because it was easy. But I accidentally said something I shouldn’t have.”
“I told him that I was sorry for what happened to him and if there was anything I could do for him, to let me know.”
“That was a massive blow to his pride. Kaachan doesn’t ask anythingof anyone. He doesn’t like to pitied or looked down on. He was livid. He got so angry that he pushed me, knocked me into a teacher and we were both put in detention because of it. His torment after that was only worse still. But he did what he said he would- he got straight As, got into a good school, and last I had heard, he was a reporter or something.”
“An editor,” she muttered. “That’s why he doesn’t like you?”
“He doesn’t like people looking down on him. To Katsuki, being pitied was worse than being looked down on.”
She could see it. She noticed that he didn’t really like people telling him what to do. She had found herself feeling proud of herself because he thought of her as being worthy of his valuable time. He didn’t seem like the type to just invest his time into just anyone. She felt warmth flowing through her at the thought. She wanted to text Katuski but found that it would be bad right now. If he was angry, she didn’t want to add fuel to that particular fire. So she spent the rest of the car ride home reading as many of his articles as she could find on Ground Zero.
For the third time in the past twenty minutes, there was another door slammed in the small apartment shared by four annoying roommates. The editor currently slamming these doors was muttering angry nothings into the air and throwing things around. After the rather unfortunate run in with Deku (the useless piece of crap that had always been a thorn in Katsuki’s side when they were younger) had ruined an almost perfect day. And if that hadn’t been the worst of it, now he was unable to bring himself to text Ochako and as the hours lingered on, she wasn’t texting him either.
Which made everything even worse.
And now he was ready to set something on fire.
Kirishima had picked him up and had heard nothing but a long string of obsenties from his friend ever since the airport. And no matter what he did, he couldn’t get anything out of Katuski. According to his text messages, he had a pretty fine flight next to a nice person and had been waiting for him at the airport. But when he went to pick him up at the airport, it was nothing but yelling and anger. Which wasn’t exactly unusual for Bakugou, but this level of destruction was something entirely new.
Thankfully, the other writers for Ground Zero had all been called to help in the investigation.
“Something is really wrong with the boss,” Kirishima said, looking at the others. They had all worked together at the publication, each a writer in their own department, and four of them had decided to get cheaper housing near the office to avoid missing anything important going on.
“He sent me back my manuscript twice in the span of an hour with nothing but angry red marks all over it,” Sero said, taping back together his latest work that he’d been working on that Bakugou had gotten a hold of and ripped in half. Mina sighed from her spot at the dinning table. They were able to heard Bakugou on the balcony yelling a young writer about his over-use of the Oxford comma.
“Clearly he is really upset about something. He said he got stuck overnight because of the snow, maybe he was mad about that?” she offered.
Everyone had been a bit of a panic when he had texted them saying he was running behind because of a missed flight. With the smaller staff for the holidays, their workload had become even bigger, each writer working on at least three stories a piece and without Katuski’s New Year’s Eve story, they were going to be in big trouble.
“He didn’t seem mad in his text though,” Kirishima said, sighing and looking through his phone.
“Probably just needs to get all of the yelling out,” Kamanari suggested, typing as fast as he could on his laptop with his latest story. Jirou next to him nodded.
“Yeah, maybe you just need to let him be mad. As long as he gets over it soon.”
“Alright, I guess,” Kirishima said with a heavy sigh. He didn’t like it but they were right. Katuski wasn’t usually angry forever… well, angry like this forever. He was just going to have to burn himself out. So the topic changed to the most important topics, who was moving to what department and getting fired in the new year.
After pacing the floor for what seemed like a thousand years, Ochako looked at her phone. It had been now two days since she had seen Bakugou and not once had she been able to bring herself to text him. And what was worse, he wasn’t contacting her. And the longer it went on, the more upset she was getting. She wanted to talk to him very badly. She didn’t like it. Finally she deiced that she was tired of waiting for him to contact her and she was going to text him.
Which was a decision she made about twenty minutes before but had managed to somehow not yet send the text.
She was starting to feel dizzy from all of the walking around and she wondered if she was going to be able to do something soon before she passed out. Apparently she could add walking to her long list of things that made her nauseous.
Finally she sat down on her bed and started to write a text message.
Ochako: Hi, this is Ohcako. We met on the plane. And I was just hoping that you got home okay and that you were feeling okay. I know that you were really mad when you left and I was just-
She backtracked. That was too much. She just needed to keep it simple. It was texting. Easy.
She put the phone against her forehead.
Ochako: Hi, this is Ochako, from the plane. The one who got sick.
She laid down on her bed and stared at her phone. Why was she feeling like a high school girl trying to ask a guy out? She was too hesitant. She doubted that someone as confident and interesting as Bakugou would have such a hard time writing a simple text. AND YET HE HADN’T WRITTEN HER!
She thrashed around on the bed in agony. She wanted to send something. And then a little “ping” went off and she looked at her phone. It was a confirmation that her text had been sent.
Ochako: Hi, this is Ochako, from the plane. The one who got sick wsnriuwqtiguiabn dsm fdjksagnja gangfdngfnmklfadaskma;;dsa;;a,dlsmk.;;.;a
She stared at the screen. For the love of everything that was good in this universe, she did not seriously just button mash when she was thrashing around and sent a completely nonsensical text message? And it was sent. There was no going back. He was never going to-
Her phone started vibrating. She looked down. She was staring at his name on the ringer.
“H-Hello?” she answered hesitantly.
“What the fuck was that? Are you okay?”
“You sent a text that made no sense, so I was wondering if you’d fallen or something,” his angry voice went through the line. But he was more concerned than anything else and she felt her heart clench. He was worried about her?
“I-I’m fine, I just… dropped my phone and it was just temporarily possessed by a demon under my bed, no big deal!” she said pleasantly and hoped that her dumb attempt at humor wouldn’t freak him out.
He was quiet for a long moment and she wondered if maybe he’d hung up.
“Sorry… about the other day…”
She laid down on her bed, staring out of the window looking onto the city.
“I should have texted you,” he muttered.
“I am sorry that you were surprised by Izuku. What’re the odds that the two of you knew each other?” she asked and he didn’t say anything.
“Do you have something nice to wear to a party?”
She sat up, her heart fluttering in her chest.
“Uh… no, but I can get something,” she said quickly.
“I’ll text you the address, I’ll see you at 10 on New Year’s Eve.”
And she smiled, hearing him hanging up without a goodbye. It was the best night of her entire life.
A/N: God only knows how many times I have sent nonsense texts because I was holding my phone open and just doing random stuff. Lol
