#beach au...oh the beach au.... so many rewrites bc i finally DID it....

[shigaraxi]

Suns Out | Shigabaku | T 

Chapter 2 of Tuesday Rates! The obligatory Beach Episode ft. Bad Lifeguards and Bad Drown Victim etiquette. Read it Here or under readmore

Tomura really didn’t want to be here.

“Don’t be a party pooper,” Toga says, rubbing sunscreen along her upper arm. “It’ll be fun.”

Dabi agrees between inflating puffs of the large beach ball. “What kind of friends-” puff “-would we be-” puff “-if we just let you rot-” puff, Tomura’s eyebrow twitches “-in your room again all summer?” Happy with the size, Dabi caps the beach ball. 

“You guys aren’t my—hey!” Dabi snickers, catching the ball after bouncing it off Tomura’s head.

“Sure man, whatever you say.”

They are at the beach and Tomura really really doesn’t want to be here. Or outside, in general. Especially not with people. Oh how he ached to be back in his air conditioned room with his blacked out curtains and computer. No, instead here he is with sweat prickling and sand sticking to his skin, sitting on a hot beach towel under this oppressing sun. Tomura glares at the wide-brimmed sun hat at his feet that Toga had given him like it personally dishonored him. Those heathens didn’t even let him have his console either.

A sunscreen bottle is tossed to him which he responds with tossing it right back harder. 

Toga catches it and shrugs, bagging the bottle in Dabi’s tote. “It’s not our fault if you get burnt!”

“Hm!”

At least they had a beach umbrella. Tomura plans on not moving from this spot.

.

Huh. It’s hard to think but there’s someone...talking? He can’t hear what they’re saying, sounding too distant and muffled to make out the words from the garble. The voice begins getting desperate, pitch heightening as it continues babbling. Tomura feels really tired. Maybe he’ll try to understand later...when the pull of his lids don’t feel so heavy—

“—LIVE GODDAMN IT!”

Tomura shoots up because what the fuck, was he just slapped?! His cheeks are stinging, he's doubling over, mouth full of salt water and seaweed. Through his hacking, he vaguely hears a Kacchan… from a very dismayed voice, followed by a hysterical laugh from whoever this Kacchan is. 

“There’s no such thing as going overboard, Deku, he’s alive, ain’t he?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But, what? I just saved his life, I’m a goddamn hero.” What the fuck. Tomura wipes his mouth. The two look at him. The blonde, Kacchan, is the one to say, “I’m your goddamn hero.”

The green haired, Deku, one jabs Kacchan in the ribs. “Please ignore him! How are you feeling? Any chest pains, tingly sensations?” He doesn’t wait for Tomura to respond, instead turning to Kacchan to say, “Go get him a towel! He must be freezing.”

Kacchan huffs and stands, leaving to presumably get a towel (Tomura could hear mild curses from under his breath as he stalks away) while Deku turns back to him. “Don’t mind him, he’s just a bit crabby, is all. He means well. I’m Midoriya and that was Bakugou, by the way, we’re the lifeguards on duty,” he says with a mild laugh. “You almost drowned on us!”

Midoriya had an arm around him, Tomura belately realizes as he rambles on some more, probably to keep him sitting steady. When he tries to lean away, Midoriya removes his arm, apologizing, “Sorry, sorry, shock can be unpredictable. Are you feeling any better?”

Now that he mentions it, Tomura thinks, wetting his lips, his throat feels like absolute sandpaper and he still feels somewhat faint. Not that he would admit it, but it's the thought that counts. Plus, even if he wanted to respond Well, yeah, I feel like shit, a towel is thrown over his head. “Oi, he probably drank half the ocean. Let the guy rest,” says Bakugou. Tomura snorts quietly, pulling the towel around his shoulders. “I couldn’t find any extra towels so I gave you mine, you better give it back.”

“I nearly drowned,” Tomura replies, voice croaky and just barely audible, as he takes the water bottle Bakugou offers him. He twists it open, dripping as much sarcasm as he can into his words, “and you care about this? Some lifeguard you are.”  He takes a sip from the bottle. God does his throat hurt.

The way Bakugou’s face scrunches in irritation almost made Tomura laugh but instead, he hides his smile behind another sip. “Listen asshole, I can put you back in the ocean and laugh as your pasty ass tries to save itself. You should be fucking thankful.” 

Before Tomura would retort, a couple voices call out for him. Dabi and Toga. They must’ve been playing one rigorous game of volleyball because they’re covered in sand and sweat.

“We were wondering where you went,” Toga says, putting the volleyball under her arm. “We thought you ran away!” 

Tomura scoffs but Toga quickly ignores him, opting to look at the other two with him, particularly at Midoriya. She steps over Tomura’s legs, looking gleeful, to get closer. “Oh, hello! Are you guys lifeguards? What happens to our poor little Tomura-chan?”

“Toga,” the ‘poor little’ Tomura warns. Dabi laughs and helps him to his feet.

Toga continues to ignore him. Midoriya gives a nervous smile as he makes a pointed effort to look at anywhere but at Toga as she skitters closer and closer. “Uh, we-er, he saw your friend struggling to swim and pulled him to shore.” At the he, Midoriya had made a half effort wave to Bakugou’s general direction, who huffs, not paying them a dime of attention. “If it weren’t for Kacchan, he could’ve been a goner!” 

Toga nods, not listening one bit. It’s Dabi who snorts at the story and upends Tomura’s head. “Nice going, idiot. Have you thanked him yet?”

Tomura scowls and huffs. While that he was a little thankful, he wouldn’t admit it to that asshole of all people. Dabi seems to get that and instead chooses to ruffle his hair with a chuckle. 

Bakugou announces his leave with annoyance.

“I should get going too,” Midoriya said not far after, probably thankful for this out from Toga’s insistent chatter, as he follows after his partner in ocean surveillance. 

Dabi throws his arms over Tomura’s and Toga’s shoulders, saying as simple as possible, as Tomura watches them go, “Welp, at least you didn’t scare them away.”

Tomura eyes the arm around him. “I hate you both.”

Dabi laughs as Toga sighs. “Don’t worry, you’ll see your new boytoy again.” Tomura wasn’t sure who he was referring to, Toga who was looking dreamily after Midoriya or to him. 

Actually, he doesn’t want to know.

After that, Tomura sticks to their designated area for the rest of the day. Lucky for him, Dabi was lenient enough to give him back his PS Vita console because the almost drowning victim deserved at least some slack. The towel was over his head now, covering himself from the setting sun that refused to shine over the beach umbrella (and he wouldn’t be caught dead with that sun hat). He’s tapping the keys harshly, the fighting sounds rolled on the highest setting, and he’s so incredibly close to winning, and—

“Oi.”

His thumb slips on the toggle stick, breaking his ultimate combo, and watches in disbelief as Game Over title sequences flash across his screen. He stares at the syncopated message until the device just falls out of his hands as the little loser jingle rings out on loop. He puts his face in them instead.

“Uh...hey dude.” Oh yes, the reason for his failure. The words chip out from Tomura’s mouth, each stop full of as much barely controlled anger as he can possibly fit.

“What. Do. You. Want.”

Whoever it was standing behind him shifts on their feet, the sand softly crunching beneath. At some point, his console powered itself off and it’s then the person finally states, voice awfully familiar, “I said I wanted my towel back.”

Oh, it’s him. The crappy lifeguard. “Just take it,” Tomura laments into his hands. The towel resting over his head and back is swiped, but instead of the sun heat hitting his pale back, Bakugou’s shadow saves him. “While you’re at it, throw me back into the ocean too. I can’t handle this loss..." 

Bakugou snorts. “Jesus, dude, it’s just a game. Just do it again.” 

“It’s not just a game,” he quickly retorts, raising his face from his hands to shoot a glare over his shoulder. Bakugou has a hand on his hip, towel thrown over his shoulder, as he stands looking unimpressed as Tomura speaks. “It was a speedrun. I was so close to beating my records and then you had to come here and…” scare me is something Tomura would never admit, even if his life depended on it. Except Bakugou is laughing because fuck Tomura. “...ruin it,” he finished, instead, turning back around.

However, Bakugou doesn’t take the hint and doesn’t leave. Tomura thinks he’s never hated a person as much as he does right now. To add salt to the wound, when he tries to further his point of wanting to be left alone by picking up his console, the fucking thing had the audacity to blink the red battery light and power off once again, completely dead. Tomura groans as he drops the thing again.

“There. Now you have my attention because the world is awful and hates me. What do you want?” 

Bakugou laughs at his pain. Jeez. “Deku told me to go see how you’re doing—”

“Fine,” Tomura interrupts.

“—cause he’s scared of your freaky friends.” 

“They’re not my friends,” he replies out of habit, but the corner of his mouth quirks up. Good to know normal people are scared of them, maybe they’d be left alone more. “Don’t you have an ocean to watch?” 

“Shifts over,” Bakugou answers. “I needed my towel back before I left.”

Tomura makes a half hearted wave to the towel in Bakugou’s possession with a ‘now leave me alone’ implied, but just for extra zing, because he feels festive, he says, “There, you have it. Now leave me alone.” and turns back around to slump over his knees to be left alone to his utter and complete misery. 

Except, the cool shadow covering his back doesn’t retreat. Why isn’t it retreating—wait is he still there, he can’t be that stupid— “Actually…” the shadow that will not be named because Tomura no longer cares, “there a bonfire later. You should come.”

His ears are working right, right? Like, he heard what this guy said, right? Not having any post-almost-drowning-delusions right now, right? 

Tomura turns around yet again just so he can witness his own sanity possibly failing him. Bakugou looks at him expectfully, where Tomura can only think Wow, we have the same eye color. “So?” Bakugou asks with a raised brow.

He puts it rather eloquently actually, answering, “Uh.” 

A beat passes.

“Did I break you? Did I just break this nerd?”

If anyone asks, this redness in Tomura’s face is from sunburn and sunburn only. Oh he can already hear Dabi’s snickering and Toga’s gushing as he clears his throat, wetting his lips, looking somewhere decidingly not at this rude lifeguard who he begrudgingly admits saved his life. “Uh,” Tomura says, “are you—? Are you being serious right now?”

“Yes, you loser.” Tomura can already hear the amusement in his voice. He has to be fucking with him.

But…

Well...

“Yes?” He said tersely. Then quickly adds, “if it's not lame or anything, I can… I can go.”

Bakugou snorts but, when Tomura looks at him again, he’s smiling. 

Okay, maybe beach day wasn’t that awful of an idea, afterall. 

--

OMAKE: 

“See,” Dabi said as he pats Tomura’s sweet little sunhat covered head as he pulls the brims down to hide his very ‘sunburnt’ red face. “I know my friends better than they know themselves. You totally had a thing for him.”

“Shut up,” he mutters dejectedly into the straw. 

Dabi only laughs because he knows under that hat, theres a dumb smile plastered on there.