Good Magic, Good Friends, And Good Food
Oneshot written for @lockandk3yfiction. Happy birthday, my friend!! I hope you have a fantastic one!!
Pairing: Uraraka x Kirishima x Bakugou
Rating: K
Word Count: 1507
Summary: Uraraka receives a surprise visitor in her magic item shop, with a surprise gift in tow.
...
Ochako Uraraka looked up at the sound of wind chimes, a spell she had set up in lieu of an actual bell to announce the arrival of new customers. To her surprise, a very familiar red-haired man stood in her doorway instead, sporting his usual smile and an unusually large package in his arms.
“Welcome!” she greeted him in her customer service voice, utterly failing to modulate it into a normal human volume. She grimaced as the grin on the interloper’s face grew in response. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Force of habit. And you surprised me. What brings you all the way to my shop, Eijirou?” The last part came out a tad more sarcastic than she had intended. In her defense, Eijirou Kirishima only worked a couple of blocks away from her. Though what, precisely, his line of work was still remained a mystery to her.
The man, a longtime friend and former classmate of hers, let out a lighthearted laugh. “Special delivery for the shopkeeper who works too much.” He hefted his burden a little higher. “Figured you wouldn’t have taken a break for lunch yet.”
He was right, which was slightly embarrassing. She had been working a lot more hours than usual lately, but her shop was finally starting to develop a good customer base! Magic item shops weren’t exactly as rare as they had been in the dark ages, but with the popularization of magic with common humans and the recent birthrate uptick in the witch population, there was a lot more competition than there used to be. Making her own shop stand out, along with warding all the more dangerous items against unwary and unmagical, meant that Ochako had been scraping by with only a couple of hours of sleep here and there. Employees might have helped – if she’d had any, that is. But she’d already taken out a loan to start the place up, and she wanted to keep her overhead as low as possible (so to speak – a lot of the products were on floating shelves she’d crafted and bespelled herself). Therefore, everything had to be done herself, which was finally starting to pay off! With a little more hard work, she could start sending money home for her parents. But just how had Eijirou known that? Ochako didn’t recall having told anyone about her schedule lately. Visits from her old classmates and friends were few and far between. Eijirou himself had only stopped by twice so far since she’d opened, nearly 6 months ago.
Before she could pose the question to him, her traitorous stomach let out a loud grumble. Ochako wanted to sink beneath the counter and hide.
“Ha!” Ochako hadn’t thought it possible, but Eijirou’s already sunny expression brightened even further with delight. “So my intel was right! Luckily for you, I come with nourishments.”
Who? Who had snitched? Who was to blame for this embarrassment?
Eijirou plopped the wrapped package onto her potion-mixing countertop, which was relatively clear of objects for once. “Do you have any stools? Or cups…? Oh, beakers!” Grabbing a couple of clean ones, he set them next to the food and started to unwrap the large lunch.
“You… you didn’t have to bring me food!” Ochako protested weakly. Oh gods, stars, and magic… whatever Eijirou had brought with him smelled divine.
As another growl rumbled from her midsection, Eijirou commented, “Clearly I did. Though I won’t claim full credit for the idea.”
Trying not to outright salivate as Eijirou continued to reveal more and more dishes, Ochako swallowed hard. “Did you make this yourself?”
Eijirou laughed at the notion. “No way.” Then he cleared his throat and frowned in a very familiar way (albeit a bit exaggerated). “‘Dark magic is banned, you know.’” His face relaxed. “Or so Katsuki said the last time I tried to cook. He also said something about how creating dark matter should be left to the scientists.”
Ochako choked with the force of her laughter at the mental image of whatever horrifying creation Eijirou had conjured into being, and his long-time friend’s utter disgust with it. She could perfectly see the other man’s expression in her head. “How is he doing, by the way? You two are housemates, right?” The two had been close in their days at the magic academy, if she recalled correctly. She had kind of run in a different circle than them, but she’d had her fair share of encounters with the very loud, very crass Katsuki Bakugou. One duel in particular came to mind, from their first year, where she’d had to scramble to avoid getting blown up.
Finding the stools, Eijirou pulled them over to the counter. “Katsuki’s doing fine. He blows up stuff for a living, nothing could make that explosion-spell maniac happier.” He paused, then added, “But don’t tell him I said that, or he’ll try to blow me up again.”
That elicited another giggle-snort from Ochako. “Not that it would do anything.” Eijirou’s earth magic defensive spells were in a caliber of their own, even back in the academy.
“It’s the principle of the matter!” Eijirou insisted. “And besides, I’m still working on the fireproofing spells on the house. I was never any good at those… and neither is Katsuki, for that matter. He’s the walking definition of whatever the opposite of fireproofing is. I’m telling you, some days I swear his sweat is made of nitroglycerin.”
Ochako shrugged. “Sorry, can’t help you there. My specialty has always been anti-gravity spells.” Which was, surprisingly, an earth discipline like Eijirou’s magic, but in a completely different direction.
She sat down on the stool and inhaled the smell wafting up from the food. “Seriously, though, where did you get this from? It looks and smells amazing.”
“It tastes pretty good, too!” Eijirou informed her. “Katsuki made this himself, I’ll have you know.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?” Ochako wasn’t sure she had heard that correctly.
“Katsuki made it. Shocking, I know. But I’m telling you, ever since Katsuki took over the cooking, I haven't even wanted to eat out.”
She squirmed in her seat. “Is… is it okay to share it with me, then…?”
Eijirou regarded her with curiosity. “Course it is. He made if for you, after all.” When she stared back at him in wide-eyed disbelief, he let out a snort. “Do you think he graces me with a lunch this extravagant? No way. This was all for you.”
Her gaze drifted to the food. There really was quite a bit of it, and it was beautifully presented too. “But why? I thought he disliked me, honestly. Why would he do something so nice for me?”
“You thought he disliked you?!” Eijirou responded, shocked. “Really? He likes you a lot. Ever since you gave him a run for his money back in first year, in that one duel.”
A wry smile worked its way onto Ochako’s face. “He certainly didn’t show it. Not back then, anyway.”
Her friend nodded. “True, he was pretty awkward back then. Bad at expressing himself. Didn’t he hate your best friend, too? Midoriya?”
“Yeah. Never could quite figure that relationship out. But you never seemed to have a problem with him, though,” Ochako teased lightly.
“Eh, I’m thick-skinned.” Eijirou’s eyes shone with mischief. “Besides, I always liked that cool, manly aura he gave off.”
Ochako had to credit him that much.
“He has quite the mothering tendency, too. This was all his idea, actually,” Eijirou confessed. “I only found out about it when he shoved me out the door this morning with orders to deliver this to you on my lunch break.”
A smile wormed its way to the surface. “That’s adorable.”
Eijirou nodded. “Isn’t it?”
Although this still left one question.
“Wait,” Ochako said, thinking hard. “If you found out from Katsuki, who did he find out from?”
“Midoriya, I assume,” confided Eijirou. “Via the usual info dump session.”
Yeah, that was one relationship Ochako would never understand. People who said that women’s relationships were complicated had clearly never met those two.
“By the way, I’m supposed to bring you over for dinner if you like the food,” Eijirou stated. “To make sure you’re taking another proper break.”
Ochako blinked rapidly, her eyes feeling a little moist. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Katsuki said that you have a standing invitation to eat with us from now on.” Eijirou smiled kindly at her. “For what it’s worth, I agree. Come over anytime you like.”
She nodded, tentatively. All of this was just… so much. She was genuinely touched by the kindness both Eijirou and Katsuki had displayed to her with all of this. “Thank you. Seriously. For all of this. I…” Honestly, she needed time to process everything first before she even considered taking up the offer. A lot of assumptions she’d made growing up would need to be reexamined, for a start. “I’ll think about it,” she promised.
With a firm nod, Eijirou accepted her answer. “Alright, time to dig in!”
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