It had been a hell of a day.
Patrol gone overtime. Eight back-to-back villain attacks. Reporters in his face. One idiot fan who tried getting a hair sample.
By the time Ground Zero stomped into the elevator of his apartment building, his shoulders ached and his temper was simmering on low boil. All he wanted was food, a shower, and for the universe to stop breathing in his direction.
He leaned back against the wall, scowling at nothing — because normally by now there was something to scowl at. Namely: her.
His neighbor.
He’d never seen her. Not once. But somehow she still pissed him off.
Her packages were always stacked next to his door. Her mail always mixed into his. She took the good parking spot. Her friends were loud sometimes on weekends. She had plants outside her door that he tripped over one time and swore vengeance ever since.
Did he know what she looked like? No. Did that matter? Absolutely not.
He hated her. On principle.
But when the elevator stopped on the lobby floor and he spotted you — struggling through the doors, balancing a grocery bag and your keys, hair slightly messy from the wind, soft sweater falling off one shoulder, looking like pure trouble and sunshine in human form — he forgot how to breathe for a second.
She was gorgeous.
Like, stupid-pretty. Pretty enough his brain forgot how to be angry for .3 seconds.
He blinked once. Twice. “…the hell—”
You looked up, offering a polite smile. “Oh—hi! Sorry, am I in the way?”
Bakugo coughed, suddenly very aware his hair was still smoking from a blast earlier. “No. You’re— uh. You’re good.”
You glanced at him, offering a sheepish smile as a tomato rolled out of your bag and onto the floor, laughing awkwardly as you crouched to grab it. “Sorry. Long day.”
Bakugo blinked. Once. Twice. Like someone just slapped him across the soul.
“That so?” he muttered, staring way too hard. “Could let me carry that. You look like you’re about to face-plant.”
Your eyes widened — surprised but amused. “Was that… an offer or an insult?”
“Both.”
You laughed — laughed — and it hit him like a grenade to the chest.
He snatched the bag from your hand before you could protest. “Give it. You’ll take a year getting through the door like that.”
“Thanks. I live on the thirty sixth-“
“Really?,” he finished. “‘Me too.”
You blinked at him. “…Oh. You live on thirty six too?”
And of course as fate had it, after you two had spent about two minutes in the elevator, just talking as it carried you up,
You unlocked the apartment door — the one across from his — humming under your breath.
It hits him like a grenade.
Wait.
No way.
“You live there?” he demanded, pointing like you’d committed a felony.
You laughed, a warm breathy sound that punched him in the ego. “Yeah. Just moved in a few months ago. Why?”
Bakugo stared. Internal screaming. External scowl.
“…No reason,” he grumbled before his mouth betrayed him: “So you single or what?”
You choked. “Excuse me?”
He scrubs a hand on the back of his neck, suddenly way too warm. “Tch— I mean— whatever. I’m just bein’ neighborly.”
“You ask all your neighbors that?” you tease, leaning in the doorway.
He smirks, cocky coming back like muscle memory. “Nah. Just the pretty ones.”
Your cheeks flushed slightly, “Oh! Thank you-”
“That doesn’t hide the fact that you are annoying though”
Your eye twitched, “I’m sorry?”
His brain said: kill me. His mouth said: “Yeah, well, hard to miss when you play that damn bubblegum music all night.”
“It was ONE playlist!”
“IT WAS FIVE HOURS!”
Silence.
Then you giggle. And somehow, it doesn’t annoy him.