Work Text:
“Damn, that’s fucking spicy,” Bakugo says, breathing heavily. He sniffs a couple of times, then uses his napkin to wipe his nose and forehead. “Fuck!”
Todoroki glances over, smiling softly at the sight of Bakugo’s red cheeks. “Yes, it’s quite spicy,” he agrees, and he presses his lips together, humming quietly while savoring the tingling sensation dancing across his mouth. They were at a Sichuan restaurant and had shared a fish soup with pickled vegetables and a Chongqing chicken dish—classics, Bakugo had insisted, and placed the order without asking—and both dishes contained generous quantities of Sichuan peppercorn, which left a curious numbing effect that made him feel like his mouth was not quite his own.
As he reaches over to refill his bowl of fish soup, Todoroki realizes that the prickling has spread to his shoulders. “Bakugo. My shoulders feel numb.” He cocks his head to the side and carefully considers his body. “Wow, my chest feels like it’s on fire. It’s really spicy.”
“Weakling,” Bakugo scoffs. He suddenly stops, then narrows his eyes and points his chopsticks at Todoroki’s plate. “Wait a minute, Half ’n Half, why’s your plate so fucking clean?”
Todoroki’s plate is covered with a thin layer of oil, a few stray grains of rice, and some pepper stems. He glances over and sees Bakugo’s plate littered with peppercorns, dried chilies, and fresh bird’s eye chilis, and coated with a thick layer of red oil. “I ate it all?” he asks.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re not supposed to eat that shit, they’re just there for flavor!”
“But… they taste good?”
“First of all, no. Second of all, how are you not dead?”
Todoroki lets out a breathy laugh. “I thought your spice tolerance was supposed to be number one?” Without breaking eye contact, he eats six peppercorns at once, and his eyes begin to water immediately but he regrets nothing after seeing Bakugo’s reaction.
Bakugo’s look of horror—eyes wide, mouth agape, chopsticks still in the air—transforms into anger as he recognizes the challenge, and he grabs a bird’s eye chili from the soup. “I’ll show you number one spice tolerance,” he mutters and bites into the pepper. The burn hits the back of his tongue and spreads to his throat, angry and hot and sharp. He snatches his bowl and begins shoveling rice into his mouth between coughs.
Shit. Was he— Could he really— Was Todoroki’s spice tolerance better than his?
“Don’t think this means anything, dumbass!” Bakugo shouts, jabbing his chopsticks violently at Todoroki. “I haven’t had spicy food in ages, I’m off my game today! I’ll show you next time!”
Later, sitting in his room at night, Bakugo would never admit it, but his chest felt like it was burning and the numbing filled his entire body.
~~~
The next time Bakugo challenges him, it’s two weeks later with Camie and Inasa. Camie had demanded that the “squad,” as she dubbed their group, hang out again, since they haven’t seen each other in weeks. When Todoroki steps into the lounge to remind Bakugo of lunch with the “squad,” Kaminari and Mina attack Bakugo, attempting to tackle him from across the room.
“Are you trying to replace us, you traitor?” Kaminari wails. “After all the Bakusquad has done for you!” adds Mina.
“Shut up! No one’s replacing anyone, you’re all equally pains in my ass!” Bakugo snaps, easily dodging their combined assault and grabbing his bag. “And you shut up too, Icyhot! Don’t call us that, that’s fucking disgusting.”
“Oh, okay,” Todoroki deadpans, following Bakugo outside. “I thought that’s what friends did, though.”
“Your conceptions of friendship are still as shitty as ever, I see,” Bakugo scoffs. Starting up mindless conversation about the latest class assignment, they walk to the station.
“Hey, asshole!” Camie waves her arms wildly when she sees them approaching. “I missed you Bakugo,” she singsongs, reaching for a hug while patting Todoroki’s head. “You too, pretty boy.”
“Don’t touch me,” Bakugo snaps, but he still lets her hug him.
“Bakugo! Todoroki!” Inasa bellows while crushing Todoroki in his arm and lifting him easily off the floor. “It is good to see you again!” Todoroki dangles limply, face blank, but Bakugo can recognize his expression softening at his friend’s embrace.
Inasa wants hot udon while Todoroki wants cold soba, Camie can’t care either way, and Bakugo wants them to shut up, so he suggests a new Chinese restaurant that opened recently. The restaurant specializes in guo qiao mi xian, a soup noodle dish, but they also have various cold and stir-fried noodle dishes. And, Bakugo thinks smugly, they had a dish that online reviews called “deathly spicy.”
When it’s his turn to order, Bakugo looks directly at Torodoki and orders the xiao guo mi xian, requesting the nuclear spice option. Todoroki stares right back and orders the same. Inasa orders the guo qiao mi xian, and Camie opts for a mild dan dan mian.
The food arrives quickly, in colorful porcelain bowls. Inasa’s soup bowl is enormous and fills the air with steam, and it is accompanied with a vast array of small dishes with raw meats and vegetables to be dumped into the broth. Camie’s noodles are covered with a layer of minced pork and glistening brown sauce, topped with a layer of scallions and peanuts. Todoroki and Bakugo’s bowls are piled high with bright red chilies, crushed peppers, peanuts, pickled string beans, and the whole bowl seems to be radiating a fiery aura.
Camie sneezes and waves her hand in front of her face. “Damn, I can feel the spicy from here!” She takes her phone out and snaps a picture of her bowl, then points it at the two UA kids. “Let me take a picture of you two before you get completely destroyed.”
“I don’t understand why you all can’t appreciate the greatness that is soup noodles!” Somehow, even when speaking at a normal volume, Inasa still sounds like he’s shouting. He slurps loudly, then yelps and lets the noodles fall out of his mouth back into the soup. “Hot!”
“Of course it’s hot, the soup has to cook all the toppings, dumbass!” Bakugo inhales, and he already feels his nose twitching at the spicy fragrance. He mixes the sauce into the noodles grinning maniacally at the sight of vivid chili oil coating the thick round noodles.
Todoroki watches him carefully and matches his mixing speed. It’s fun, watching Bakugo’s intensity. It’s fun, matching it. When both are finished mixing, they raise their chopsticks to mouth, lock eyes, and simultaneously place the noodles into their mouth.
Todoroki widens his eyes, and he feels sweat prickle at his nose and temples. The flavor is incredible, spicy and savory and salty and sour, complex layers mixing in his mouth. He slurps the noodles, and his lips burn at the layer of chili oil. He chews and swallows, slowly. “Wow,” he wheezes. “This is really good. The texture of the noodles is good.”
Bakugo, after eating the noodles, feels the spice strike the back of his throat sharply, and he almost has a coughing fit. He squints his eyes in pain and shovels the remaining length of the noodles into his mouth rapidly and clamps his mouth shut, cheeks bulging and screaming in pain. Show no pain, he repeats as a mantra. I will not lose to this shitty Halfie. Slowly, with effort, he chews his way through the noodles, occasionally crunching the fermented string beans mixed in.
“Yeah,” he manages chokes out. “Don’t you have anything else to say but good?” He wipes his mouth, as an excuse to catch his breath. “It’s… (huff) amazing (huff).”
“Incredible!” Inasa declares. “A fiery clash of passion! A battle of two men! A truly soulful performance!”
“Shut up,” Bakugo says. Todoroki simply stares blankly at him.
“I don’t know why boys have to turn everything into a competition. Just, like, eat your food, you don’t have destroy your stomach lining in the process.” Camie smirks at their pained expressions. “Jeez, there is so much testosterone in the air right now,” she mocks, waving her hand at her face.
Todoroki swallows a pepper wrong and chokes, coughing frantically. In his panic, he ices over his tongue. Numbness spreads quickly through his mouth and he relaxes. “Ah.”
“Did you just— did you fucking freeze your mouth?”
“Aren’t you the one who told me to fight you with my full power?” Mouth now soothed, Todoroki continues eating calmly.
“That’s not what I meant! You’re even half-assing this, you cheating asshole!”
“I don’t think we ever established rules. As Camie said, why must you make everything a competition?”
Bakugo growls, clutching his chopsticks tightly. “You shut the fuck off and stop quoting Illusion Girl before I shove my chopsticks down your throat. I fucking won this round, got it?”
“I don’t think so, but okay.”
Camie takes a selfie when they finish the meal, and it’s truly awful. Inasa’s face is red and sweaty from his soup, and his smile is terrifyingly wide. Todoroki and Bakugo look like they’ve been through a battle, drenched in sweat, panting heavily and wincing in pain, faces blistering red and bloated. Camie, the sole survivor, is winking and making a finger heart, makeup flawless as usual.
~~~
Bakugo sits in his room, tapping his foot restlessly. It’s a Sunday afternoon and he’s doing homework, but he can’t sit still. There’s an anxiousness twisting his stomach, and he can’f focus on his work at all.
“Shit,” he says aloud. He leans back and stares up at his ceiling. “Shit,” again.
Since when did Todoroki like spicy food? Spicy food was Bakugo’s territory. At this point, it was basically part of his personality. That peppermint dumbass was basically stealing identity! That dirty, cheating, half ’n half bastard…
At the same time, Bakugo feels a rush of excitement. He likes competing, and he likes winning. No one else has as good of a spice tolerance, so he always tackled spice challenges on his own. It was meaningless mocking Kirishima and the other extras when they could barely handle wasabi. Only Todoroki could give him an exhilarating victory. And Bakugo would definitely, indisputably, be the victor. He would be number one, in this and in all things.
Bakugo checks the clock and sighs. He isn’t getting any work done anyway, might as well take a break and make dinner. Besides, this would be a good opportunity to train.
Heading to the kitchen, Bakugo passes through the lounge, and Kaminari waves at him from the couch, sitting next to Ojiro and Shinsou. “Hey Bakubro! What’s got your panties in a twist? Your face looks seriously constipated right now.”
Bakugo continues past the couch, ignoring Kaminari, who does not get the message. “Hey, you want to feel this? This is some seriously good stress relief, 10/10 would recommend.” He holds up Ojiro’s tail, which he had been stroking earlier.
Ojiro visibly tenses, and his tail shivers. “I—ah—Please be gentle, Bakugo!”
“Relax, furry, I’m not touching you.” Shinsou snickers at the name and Ojiro elbows him, hard.
Once he gets to the kitchen, Bakugo relaxes, his anxiousness temporarily forgotten when he’s in his element. Deciding to make a Korean tofu stew, he defrosts some shrimp, starts up rice, and chops his ingredients quickly. The aroma of garlic and pepper fills the kitchen quickly when he starts up the stove, and Bakugo sneezes from the spicy air.
Almost done, he tries a spoonful. It’s good, as usual. But… it’s not quite spicy enough. He takes out his bag of red chili flakes and looks at it, considering. He throws in a spoonful, then looks at the bag again. Eh, what the hell. He throws in another heaping spoonful and stirs the pot. Perfect.
After adding garnishes and preparing a plate, he sits at the table and rubs his hands together. It was time to begin his practice. With one bite, however, he realizes his utter, fatal mistake. That last spoonful was… perhaps too much. He feels prickles over his skin, and his stomach begins to churn. His mouth is in pain and his eyes water, and he can’t feel anything but agony. Tapping his feet and breathing out from his wide open mouth futilely, he tries desperately to endure the heat. Sweaty, dizzy, out of his mind, he suddenly has the curious sensation that he is looking back at himself from across the table. He head feel light and he can’t quite control his limbs, floating in a dizzying space outside his own body.
He blinks, and the moment ends. He’s sitting back in the table, and the pain is definitely still there. There’s no way he can finish this stew, he realizes. There’s absolutely no way. Bakugo hates running from challenges and he hates throwing out food but there was really, truly no way. Then, a wicket grin spreads across his face.
“Hey, Dunce Face! Want dinner?”
~~~
Somehow, eating out with Todoroki becomes routine. Every weekend, without fail, they meet on Saturday, tackling the next spicy challenge they saw online. Eventually, they get tired of destroying their stomach linings and their wallets, so they switch it up, getting other food or dessert, or just cooking in the dorm. Despite his new spice endurance, Todoroki was still a cold soba fanatic, so they’ve eaten that countless times too. Sometimes they study together, or go to the gym, or simply sit in each other’s room.
How they got to this point, Bakugo had no idea. This is dangerous, he thinks. Too dangerous.
He thinks it’s dangerous when Kirishima asks him to tutor him on Saturday but he automatically declines, saying he has other plans. And again, the next week, and again, the week after that. Somehow, without communicating, Todoroki and he had turned their hangouts into a regular, immovable commitment.
He realizes it’s dangerous when he sees Todoroki get spicy ramen in the dining hall and let his nerd friends try some, and his stomach clenches with unexpected anger. It’s not as if he had exclusive claim over Todoroki and spicy food, but he still didn’t like seeing Todoroki share their thing with his other friends. It’s… odd.
He knows it’s dangerous when he watches Todoroki eat, eyes clothes and face completely relaxed, making soft noises of satisfaction. He stares, in these brief moments, knowing that Todoroki is so absorbed in his food that he won’t notice.
“So, how does one win?” Todoroki asks one Saturday, head hovering over a bowl of ramen, reading his next bite.
“Hah?”
“You said you wanted an indisputable victory. So how do we even know who’s won?”
“Why are you even asking that now? You’re asking this a few months too late!”
“Do you even have an answer?” Todoroki says, amused, twirling his noodles into his chopsticks.
“Of course I do! I’ve won already! I won the day your dumb ass used your quirk to try to beat me. That just proves that you’re weak and you have no pride.”
“Then why do you keep challenging me if you’ve already won?”
“It’s to make a point! To show you that you’re as weak as ever. Don’t think I haven’t seen you using your ice when you think I’m not looking.”
“But considering the number of hours you’ve been stuck on the toilet in the past month,” Todoroki mused, tilting his head, “I would say that I’m number one.”
“As if you haven’t done the same,” Bakugo scoffs. “Sero complained about the smell for days. What’d you even do that he could smell from the hall? Did you accidentally light it on fire when it came out?” A pause. “Oh shit, did you actually—“
“No,” Todoroki says sharply, while Bakugo snorted into his bowl.
“Oh my fucking god, Halfie, that’s rich. Holy shit! That’s some really holy shit,” Bakugo wheezes between laughs, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Don’t assume things, Bakugo. I never confirmed that statement.” Todoroki’s ears flush red, as he attempts to recompose his neutral expression.
“Yeah yeah, if you say so. Now shut up and stop talking about shit while we’re eating, and give me a piece of your meat.” Todoroki offers him a piece of chashu, and Bakugo bites it off the outstretched chopsticks aggressively while transferring a piece of his own meat to Todoroki’s bowl. “Try this, it’s fucking fantastic.”
“Anyway,” Todoroki continues, “Now that we established that I’ve clearly won, I just want to thank you for spending all this time with me. I enjoyed it.” He smiles softly, looking directly at Bakugo.
Bakugo stares back but then leans back in his chair and looks off to the side. “Tch. I don’t know how you can say that cheesy shit with a straight face. You’re so freaking weird,” he mumbles, then shovels food into his mouth to avoid talking.
“I truly mean it. You’re a good friend. I think that, with all this time together, we’re ready to move onto the next stage in our friendship.”
Bakugo’s head whips back to face him, and his eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open, but he can’t do anything but stare, frozen in place.
As if he hadn’t noticed Bakugo’s shocked reaction, Todoroki proceeds. “Yes, I think as friends, we can start spending time together outside of our regularly scheduled Saturdays and hang out during the week too.”
At that, Bakugo regains control and snaps his mouth shut. “Okay, first of all, you absolute fool, we’re not friends. Second of all, your understanding of friendship is complete nonsense. The fuck you mean by stages of friendship and scheduled hangout time? You think this is a dating sim where you just give me gifts to unlock new levels?”
For a brief moment, Todoroki looks worried, and he bites his lip before speaking again. “Does that mean you don’t want to?”
Bakugo drags his hand through his hair and groans. “No,” he says, after a beat.
“No… what?”
“Ugh, this is embarrassing. Look here, fuckface. There’s a movie I’ve been meaning to watch. Come to my room on Wednesday after dinner. You have no say in what movie it is.” He stabs his chopsticks into his bowl aggressively and slurps loudly, droplets of broth flicking into the air.
Todoroki chuckles, and Bakugo slurps more gently to take in the soft breathiness of this rare sound.
Bakugo squints his eyes at him. “By the way, how’d you even become such a spice freak anyway? Last I remember, you couldn’t handle black pepper without crying like a baby.”
“I worked hard,” says Todoroki flatly.
“What does that even mean?”
“I just got tired of you calling me weak all the time, so I just ate a lot of spicy food.” He shrugs. “Also, Wednesday works. I’ll come to your room.”
“Fuck you.”
And when they walk home after their meal, they both feel a warmth in their chest that spreads up into their face and down to their stomach, that turns their cheeks pink and their ears hot, that fills their limbs with a heavy, lazy contentment, and it has nothing to do the spice that they ate.