Bakugo never liked silence. It pressed on him, like a hand around his throat.

That’s why you had unsettled him most, back when the League had him chained up. You didn’t talk, didn’t posture like the rest of those psychos.

Shigaraki’s decay, Dabi’s flames, Toga’s bloodlust—he could catalogue those threats. But you? You just leaned against walls, tracking every twitch of his muscles, every shift in his breathing.

And that made you dangerous.

He’d shoved the thought away after Kamino, buried it under training and noise and the constant suffocating press of dorm life.

But every now and then, he swore he caught glimpses. On crowded streets, at the edge of neon lights. That same still figure, too quiet.

It pissed him off. Probably just his brain messing with him. Trauma crap. Except... when he walked alone at night, when sleep wouldn’t come no matter how many times he tried... He saw you again. A shadow slipping into an alley.

So one night after curfew, he followed. Out past the gates, into the city, where the streetlights thinned.

There you were. Leaning against a damp brick wall like you’d been waiting for him. Eyes catching his in the dark, steady. Not surprised. Not hostile. Just… watching.

Bakugo’s fists itched. He wanted to demand answers, to snarl something that would tear open the quiet you wrapped around yourself. But the words stuck.

Because under the silence, under the mask of calm, he remembered how you’d looked at him in the League’s hideout.

He swallowed, the night air sharp in his lungs. “Tch. The hell are you doing here?”