Bakugo Katsuki has a secret girlfriend! ★﹙𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭﹚
The common room of the Heights Alliance dorms was usually a sanctuary of peaceful noise—Kaminari playing video games, Mina complaining about her skincare routine, and Sero attempting to balance a water bottle on his foot.
Today, however, the atmosphere was thick with paranoia.
Kaminari leaned over the back of the used sofa, his eyes narrowed as he stared across the room. Bakugo was sitting at the kitchen island, quietly eating a bowl of spicy curry. He didn’t even blow up the microwave.
It was weird.
"Okay, nobody move," Kaminari whispered, clutching a bag of chips like it was a shield. "Look at him. He’s been eating like that for three days straight. Do you think a villain put a quirk on him? Is he a clone? He’s gotta be a clone."
"He’s not a clone dude," Kirishima muttered, crossing his arms with a deeply furrowed brow. "A clone would still have some fighting spirit. Yesterday, I asked him to spot me in the gym, and you know what he said?"
"What?" Mina breathed, leaning in closer.
"'Take your time, Kirishima, safety first.'"
A collective, horrified gasp echoed through the group.
"He called you by your name, and gave you safety advice?" Sero whispered, looking pale. "He’s been replaced by an alien pod like those movies. We gotta do something. But who’s the one person who always knows what’s going on with Bakugo, no matter how much they try to avoid each other?"
Four pairs of eyes snapped simultaneously toward the common room door, where a green-haired boy was quietly trying to sneak toward the elevators clutching a notebook.
"Midoriya!" Mina sang out, materializing in front of him with a bright smile.
Midoriya jumped three feet into the air. "Mina! Hi! I was just—homework! Dorm room!"
"Midoriya, my dude," Kirishima said, stepping in from the other side with a hand heavy on the green-haired boy's shoulder. "We need to talk about Kacchan."
Izuku immediately started sweating profusely, his hands fluttering nervously. "K-Kacchan? Oh, Kacchan’s fine! Totally fine! Haha! Why wouldn't he be fine?"
"He’s acting super weird man," Sero said, his voice deadly serious. "He didn't yell at me when I tripped and spilled iced tea on his shoes this morning. He just sighed, sighed, Midoriya, and gave me a napkin."
Izuku let out a high-pitched sound and looked away, his eyes darting frantically toward the exit. "Well, you know! People change! Personal growth! High school is a journey of self-reflection! And after what what happened last year—"
"You're lying," Kaminari pointed out, jabbing a finger at him. "Your face is doing that twitchy thing it does when All Might says something cool. Spill it, bro. What does he know? Is he dying? Does he have a secret terminal illness?"
"No! He’s not dying!" Izuku blurted out, waving his hands wildly. "He’s just... you know... occupied! With things! Personal, totally normal human things that do not involve me leaking his personal business because he threatened to blast me into the stratosphere if I said a single word to anyone!"
Mina gasped, her eyes turning into literal sparkling stars. "He’s hiding something! There’s a girl, isn't there?"
Izuku clamped both hands over his mouth, his eyes wide as saucers. The silence that followed was confirmation enough.
"Oh my god," Sero whispered. “The impossible has come.”
—
"Alright, listen up team," Mina whispered fiercely, crouching behind a potted plant in the second-floor hallway. "We track him. We find out who he’s meeting up with, and we force it out of him."
"Is this really necessary?" Kirishima hissed back, though he was currently wearing a ridiculously oversized trench coat and fake Groucho Marx glasses that kept sliding down his nose. "It feels like a major invasion of privacy."
"Kiri, he smiled at a text message yesterday," Kaminari whispered from beneath a cardboard box labeled Totally Normal Furniture. "A smiling Bakugo is a threat to national security. We are doing this for world peace. Maybe he’s under some kinda quirk."
Kirishima grumbled back and was suddenly pushed when Kaminari hid back into his box.
Down the hall, Bakugo’s door clicked open. He stepped out dressed in a surprisingly neat black button-down and dark jeans, checking his phone with a look of mild, sickening fondness before walking down the stairs toward the main entrance.
"He’s moving!" Sero hissed. "Move, move, move!"
The clumsy procession of heroes-in-training crept down the stairs, ducking behind couches, pillars, and in Sero’s case, an unfortunate attempt to blend in with a vending machine.
They followed him all the way off campus, trailing him through the shopping district until he finally stopped outside a quiet, café near the train station. The squad crammed themselves into a narrow alleyway across the street, peering through a gap between a dumpster and a lamppost.
"Okay, who’s he meeting? An old middle school friend? A villain informant?" Kaminari squinted. "Wait. Is that..."
Through the café window, Bakugo walked up to a corner booth. Standing up to greet him was a girl with an easygoing grin, wearing the distinct dark uniform jacket of Shiketsu High School.
"Shiketsu?" Sero whispered, his jaw dropping. "He’s dating a Shiketsu student? Shit that’s like... Romeo and Juliet? The UA-Shiketsu rivalry is legendary!"
Inside the café, Bakugo didn't yell at her. In fact, to the absolute shock of the hidden UA students, he pulled out the chair for her, sat down, and actually—actually—rolled his eyes with a fond little smirk before leaning across the table to say something.
"Look at him," Mina whispered, clutching her chest with dramatic emotion. "He’s acting so normal, like a soft little marshmallow."
"Don't let him hear you say that or he’ll murder us all," Kirishima muttered, still adjusting his ridiculous disguise.
Suddenly, a loud clatter echoed through the alley. Kaminari, trying to get a better angle on the window, had tripped over an empty soda can.
The can bounced noisily across the pavement, right out of the alley and into the open street.
Inside the café, Bakugo’s head snapped toward the window with. His eyes locked instantly onto the gap between the dumpster and the lamppost, where four very guilty, poorly disguised UA students were standing like deer in headlights.
Bakugo’s eye twitched. A tiny spark of orange flame popped against his palm.
"He saw us! Abort mission!" Sero yelled.
"Fuck! Run for your lives!" Kaminari shrieked.
As the Bakusquad scrambled backward down the street in a cloud of panic, Bakugo slammed his hands down on the café table, completely terrifying his girlfriend, and shouted out the window at the top of his lungs:
"I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU IDIOTS DON'T GET OUT OF MY SIGHT, I'LL BLAST YOU ALL TO THE MOON!"
"Well," Mina panted as they sprinted around the corner, laughing uncontrollably. "At least he’s totally back to normal."
—
"What was that about" You asked, sipping on a smoothie.
"It’s nothing. Thought I saw some idiots."
