May I present for your reading pleasure…

BODY SHOP AU

Featuring:
Welder! Bakugou
Mechanic! Kaminari
Painter! Ashido
AND MORE!
and, of course, a Very Manly Carpenter at a nearby construction site…now who could THAT be?

Rating: T-M, mostly language (it’s Bakugou, so…)

Quirkless AU, characters in mid 20s, mutual pining, blue collar fluff (happy ending)

Special thanks to @Trenchcoatkitt2 for both the write-what-you-know AU concept and… planting the stick-shift thirst seeds

OK HERE WE GO

Bakugou Katsuki leaned back against his tool cart, taking a moment to appreciate his workmanship.

Perfectly measured, perfectly spaced tack welds held the rear body panel exactly where it was supposed to be, and just the right amount of weld-through primer brushed over each spot, it was ready to begin.

Too bad his unassailable craftsmanship was wasted on this piece of shit Prius.

Earlier that morning, Deku had come running up the stairs, green hair flying all over the place like a bunch of levitating lettuce, bringing him the third customer request that day already – or was it the fourth?

“What now?” Bakugou growled at the bubbly receptionist.

“Um… well, the customer said the radiator’s been leaking ever since the accident, and he wants to make /sure/ we fix it, like it’s not a gush or anything but it’s been dripping a little bit, and he wants us to promise the antifreeze is—”

“No fuckin’ way that’s related,” Bakugou cut him off.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” said Bakugou. “I gotta get this panel on before lunch. Aizawa can explain it to the customer.”

“Aizawa’s been on hold with Lexus for an hour and a half trying to get them to clarify something about one of the sectioning procedures he pulled yesterday that the adjuster is trying to get out of paying for.

This customer has already called three times /today/, can you just explain it to me so I can tell him what the deal is when he calls again in half an hour, if he hasn’t already left me another message?”

Bakugou sighed, setting down his clamp and popping the hood. “Radiator. Way up front. Damage: rear ended. Front-end frame specs: zero variation. Zero other front end damage. Radiator leak’s got nothing to do with the accident.”

Deku was scribbling all this rapidly in a notepad, but dashed off when he heard the phone ring. “Thanks Kacchan!” he yelled on his way down the stairs.

Bakugou slammed the hood of the Prius and went back to work.

He’d been placidly sitting backwards on the rolling chair, finalizing the fit of the panel, when Kaminari had breezed by his stall and pulled out one of his earbuds.

“Hoi! I almost had it, what the hell!”

“You ready for lunch?” Kaminari asked, ignoring his friend’s bad temper.

“No. Gotta get this ready to weld first,” said Bakugou, clamping the panel back where he’d had it. “Need to tack it and prime it so the primer can dry during lunch.”

“I’ll go pick up lunch for us then,” said Kaminari. “Hurry up.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bakugou put on his welding helmet and lowered the shield. “It’d better not be cheeseburgers again!” he shouted as Kaminari flashed him a peace sign and left the premises.

It was cheeseburgers again.

“What did I JUST SAY?” Bakugou asked, eyeing the McDonald’s bag as he unzipped his coveralls and hung them from the rack by the break room door.

“No idea, didn’t hear a thing,” Kaminari feigned innocence with a shrug and a wink.

Bakugou shook his head, unwrapped his cheeseburger, and grabbed the bottle of sriracha sauce (“Bakugou’s - EAT AND DIE” scrawled on the label in thick black sharpie).

“You about done with the engine-out on that Merc?” he asked after a bite of his upgraded burger. “I’ll be done with the Prius by tomorrow.”

“Won’t be for a while,” said Kaminari. “Have you seen the wire harness in that thing? Software only had half an hour for R&I. It’s gonna take three. Still waiting on the supplement to be approved.”

“Aizawa’ll get you your three and you know it. Just do it. I don’t want to be twiddling my thumbs all day tomorrow.” Bakugou took an unnecessarily aggressive bite of burger.

“No way,” said Kaminari. “You might be so bold, but I am NOT. I can’t afford to just do shit I’m not getting paid the flag hours for.”

“Yeah, none of us can,” said Bakugou, “but Aizawa will get you your time. You know it.”

“I’ve got other shit to do, the wire harness can wait,” said Kaminari. “Maybe that Tesla bumper bracket’ll come in tomorrow.”

Bakugou scoffed at the idea. The Tesla bumper bracket - on back order from the manufacturer for six months and counting - had become something of a perpetual inside joke among the techs and estimators alike.

Yaoyorozu, the parts manager, had made more phone calls than a telemarketer trying to get a reliable ETA, and everyone in the shop knew it had all but given her a stress ulcer.

The team had been placing bets on what would be available first, the Tesla bumper bracket or the interior door trim panel for the 1975 Jeep that had all but gone out of existence.

The Jeep trim had shown up two months ago, which meant Bakugou had lost $50 and had to take a photoshoot in the figure skating gear provided by Deku’s husband Shouto.

Bakugou had worn the /hell/ out of that leotard, but that was beside the point.

“Aizawa’s probably gonna /retire/ before that Tesla bracket comes in,” said Bakugou. “Maybe it’s time for a new bet.”

Kaminari nearly choked on his soda. “What, you wanna wear a tutu this time?”

Bakugou shrugged, enjoying watching his friend squirm. “What if I do?” he asked, putting on his best poker face.

Kaminari licked the salt off his fingers. “Then I’ll print the pictures on a giant canvas and hold it up in front of that carpenter you’re crushing on.”

“Shut up.” Bakugou tried and failed to maintain his deadpan expression, smiling in spite of himself as he imagined it.

He crumpled up his food wrappers, tossed them into the garbage can, and stood up. “Speaking of which. Time for a walk.”

“You mean stalk.”

“I am NOT stalking him. I’ve been walking this route after my lunch break every day for four years. It’s not my fault he’s THERE now.”

“Whatever,” said Kaminari. “You’re blushing.”

“Fuck off,” said Bakugou on his way out the door.

“Love you too!” Kaminari shouted after him.

Bakugou always enjoyed his afternoon walk. Rain, sun, snow, it didn’t matter. The fresh air in his lungs and energizing bloodflow in his limbs cleared his head, burned off the morning stress, and left him in a clean headspace to finish his day’s work.

But ever since the new building had started going up on the corner two blocks from the end of his route, the walks had become a whole new delight.

Bakugou slowed his pace a bit as he approached the construction site, peeking through the chain link fence to see if—

Ah! There he was. Hammering at a wall stud, half-ponytail spilling out from beneath the hard hat, and wearing the /hell/ outta those Carhartt cargo pants was Red.

At least, that’s was Bakugou’s code name for the burly young carpenter, after the bold shade of his distinctive hair. Strands of it bounced off his shoulders as he hammered at the nail, and Bakugou watched, admiring the muscles definitely /not/ imagining squeezing them.

Nothing was ever going to happen. Every day, Red was flanked by a round-faced girl in a pink hard hat. Round Face, despite her minute figure, could lift almost anything it seemed. Once he’d even seen her lift Red himself to help him reach a point on the wall.

Impressive, to be sure, but probably against workplace safety regulations, Bakugou thought. At least that’s why he told himself it pissed him off.

Yes, Red and Round seemed awfully cozy, they always did. So Bakugou watched for a few minutes as he did every day, then walked back to the shop to clock back in for the afternoon.

He always smiled a little more in the afternoons.

With the Prius reassembled and sent to detail, and the Lexus still on insurance hold, Bakugou wasn’t sure he’d have much to do unless the infamous Tesla bracket made an entrance.

He was about to resort to organizing his drawer of spare fasteners when Aizawa came up the stairs, keys in hand.

“Got a tow-in for you,” the surly estimator announced. “Customer-pay. We’ve got auth to start tear-down right away.”

Bakugou set down the tray of grommets and reached for the keys.

“ETA?”

“Now,” said Aizawa. “Red Land Cruiser, it’ll be coming to Bay 3 any minute.”

From the front, the Land Cruiser looked flawless. It was current generation, not a swirl in the paint, oversized alloy wheels without a trace of curb damage, windows tinted just enough to be tasteful but not obnoxious.

A quick lap around the vehicle revealed the damage, and Bakugou couldn’t help but cringe at the wreckage. It was the dreaded rear corner hit, and it had demolished the right quarter panel and a lot more.

“This is a customer pay?” he asked. “For this much damage? Did you write the estimate yet?”

Aizawa shook his head. “It’s a company paying for damage to one of their employees’ personal vehicles,” he said. “They know it’s gonna be expensive. Tear it down and write it up for pre-loss. I want a prelim by noon.”

Bakugou nodded, examining the twisted and shredded metal. “The fuck hit this thing, a tank?”

Aizawa shrugged. “They just said it was a company vehicle. You good?”

“Yeah.”

Bakugou shoved open the bay door and quickly swept out his stall in preparation for the new car.

Once the tow truck driver had unloaded it and Bakugou got to get up close and personal with it, he both liked the car more and felt more sorry for it.

The thing had a /killer/ suspension, monster springs clearly meant for off-roading, a limited slip differential, and beefy tires that were downright /sexy/.

Unfortunately, it had taken a hell of a hit. He documented the destruction thoroughly, pausing after each note he jotted down. Once he’d cataloged every trim piece and outer panel that needed repair or replacement, he peeled back the outer quarter panel, and—fuck.

The wheelhouse was wasted. A closer look in the wheelwell told him that probably wasn’t the end of it, either. He spent the next forty-five minutes taking a full inventory of the damage.

Replace liftgate, inner and outer quarter, repair rear door, blend roof... blend left quarter, R&I suspension... it was going to be a pretty penny.

Bakugou surveyed the interior as well. Supposedly the vehicle had been unoccupied, but they’d have to test the rear seatbelts anyway.

The car smelled nice, too. It wasn’t an artificial new car smell, more like it spent a lot of time outdoors with the windows open in the sun.

There wasn’t much in the way of personal effects inside. The floormats were stock all-weather, no seat covers. The rear seats were folded down, leaving a massive amount of cargo area in the back, but it was empty.

Good. Bakugou hated having to store boxes of customers’ stupid cluttered shit with parts during repairs.

Up front, there was a full-sized paper road atlas of Japan in the seat, one of those little solar powered dancing figures on the dash, and— ooh.

OOH.

It was a /stick/.

Bakugou raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly, his respect for whoever owned this thing rising a couple notches.

Yeah. Nice car. Really nice car.

A customer pay job to boot, that meant now damn insurance delays. This job might actually be FUN.

Before heading to lunch, Bakugou gave his write-up to Aizawa - or at least left it on his desk; the estimator was in the lobby explaining to an uppity BMW owner that no, they couldn’t “just buff out” a 30-cm gash in the fender.

“NEEDS MEASURE” he wrote in all caps in a post-it note that he slapped on the top of the paper, then slid it on top of Aizawa’s keyboard to make sure he’d see it.

Kaminari was elbow-deep in the spaghetti-like wire harness of the Mercedes that he’d finally gotten a green light on, and Ashido and Sero were frantically prepping an Acura SUV for paint, so Bakugou took lunch by himself.

That was fine, he didn’t mind the solitude. It gave him some extra time to mentally plan out the repair ahead of him, strategizing where best to begin, how much time to budget for sublets like glass removal. By the time he left for his walk, he was in a great mood.

He expected the walk to expand on that good mood, but for once it did the opposite.

It was all good until he got to the construction site. Instead of being a bright spot in the middle of his day, what he saw only dragged his mood down.

Red was /deep/ in conversation with Round, looking entirely too close and not working on the job at all. Whatever they were talking about, it looked intense and...personal.

Bakugou felt his cheeks flush, his certainly that the two were an item intensifying.

Stupid girl, distracting him on the job like that.

Bitch.

He knew it was irrational, he knew it didn’t /matter/, but seeing Red so intimately conversing with someone else out him in a foul temper.

His solo lunch break had been brief, so he had enough time to double back and take the long way back to the shop, cranking up the pace and blowing off a little steam as he stomped down the street.

/ / / /

Top of thread: https://twitter.com/vintagevivi/status/1332790443415769088

/ / / /

At least the nice car was waiting for him back at the shop. Kaminari was finally done with the Mercedes wire harness and had stopped to take a look at the Land Cruiser on his way to lunch.

“Did I hear Aizawa say this is customer pay?” he asked, shaking his head at the shredded quarter panel.

“Uh huh. Some company.”

“Oh, okay,” said Kaminari, his voice muffled and echoing off the inner wheelhouse as he took a look. “Did you get the control arm? Big ol’ buckle.”

Bakugou’s mood pivoted back to cranky. How the fuck had he missed that? He stepped in next to Kaminari. “Move,” he said, grabbing a flashlight off his cart and shining it towards the suspension. Sure enough, the control arm was bent. “Well fuck.”

Kaminari dazzled a cheesy grin. “Hand it over.”

“It’s at home. Come over after work,” said Bakugou.

“You’d better not lock me out,” said Kaminari. “I’ve been trying for /two months/ to catch something you missed just so I can get my hands on that Switch.”

“Bring your own memory card. Save over my Dark Souls files and you’re dead.”

“Yeah yeah, I’ve got one, relax,” Kaminari laughed. “Alright I’m starved. Good luck with that Land Cruiser.”

At 7 o’clock sharp, Kaminari knocked on Bakugou’s door, flaunting the memory card as soon as it was open.

“One week,” said Bakugou, holding the Switch just out of reach. “Not a minute longer. That was the deal.”

“I know, I know—”

“And if you so much as /scratch/ it—”

“Then I have to buy you a new one, you told me already.” Kaminari snatched at the Switch, which Bakugou finally relinquished.

“Don’t make me regret this,” said Bakugou on his way back to the kitchen.

“What’s for dinner?” Kaminari asked, ignoring the threat.

“An actual meal,” said Bakugou. “Ever had one?”

“Three times a day. Sometimes four.”

“I mean /real food/, something that doesn’t show up in a foil wrapper or a styrofoam box.”

Kaminari shrugged, gently flipping out the stand on the Switch and inserting his memory card. “Whatever you’re making, it smells good,” he said, oblivious to Bakugou’s critical gaze as he snapped the stand back into place.

“Of course it smells good. Haven’t you ever had okonomiyaki?”

“Nope,” said Kaminari, booting up the Switch and plunking his feet on Bakugou’s coffee table, which earned him another piercing glare.

“You’re kidding. And get your filthy feet off my table.”

“You do it all the time,” Kaminari protested.

“It’s my table. Feet down.” Bakugou crossed over from the kitchen and shoved Kaminari’s legs so his feet slid off the table.

“Fine, fine,” said Kaminari, kicking playfully at Bakugou’s arm. “When do we eat?”

“Five minutes.”

Soon the food was served, and Kaminari reluctantly set down the game to eat. Bakugou snorted at the screen.

“Animal Crossing, seriously?”

“Hell yeah, Animal Crossing,” said Kaminari. “I see you recognize it.”

“Tch, yeah, idiots like you won’t shut up about it,” said Bakugou, cheeks flushed.

“Surrrrrre, idiots like me,” Kaminari laughed. “You’ve played it and you liked it.”

Bakugou stuffed an unnecessarily generous bite into his mouth and ignored the accusation. They ate in silence for several minutes, until Kaminari lost his patience with it and gave Bakugou an inquisitive look.

“You’re cranky tonight,” he said, taking in Bakugou’s crossed arms and brooding expression. “I mean... crankier than usual. Are you that mad about lending me your Switch?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Kaminari continued. “I promise I’ll take good care of it.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Just play your stupid Animal Crossing,” Bakugou snapped. He wasn’t looking at Kaminari, but out the window as if expecting someone to walk by.

“Okay...”

“It’s not the damn Switch, okay?” Bakugou huffed and picked up the empty plates with a clatter, then dumped them in the sink and started washing them.

“Alright, /what/ is it then?” Kaminari pushed. He swung his legs over the couch armrest and hopped up, joining Bakugou in the kitchen and standing with his elbows on the counter and chin in his hands with a grin.

Bakugou glared at him. “Knock it off. You know I’m not a gossip.”

“So you’re saying there’s gossip.” Kaminari’s grin widened, and Bakugou’s glare intensified, along with the color in his cheeks. “Spill it!”

“Fuck off!”

“It must really be good.”

Bakugou pulled out the sprayer handle from the sink, turned around, and blasted Kaminari with it.

“Ahh, what the hell? You better be glad I left your Switch in the living room! It would NOT have counted as me damaging it if YOU got it soaking wet!”

Bakugou narrowed his eyes and sprayed him a second time, then shoved it back into place and turned off the water, pushed past his dripping wet friend, and took a seat on the couch. Kaminari took his place at the sink and wrung out his shirt, shaking his head.

CW / / brief marijuana mention

CW / / marijuana

/
/

“You know what you need, Bakugou?” Kaminari asked as he made his way back to the living room. “You need to get stoned. Like, high as a kite. Just chill out for a night. You know?”

“Not interested,” said Bakugou.

“Fine, suit yourself. But dude. How about lending me some clothes? You got me completely drenched, man!”

“Yeah, alright, but only because I don’t want you sitting on my couch in wet clothes.” Bakugou went down the hall to his room, returning a moment later with a clean t-shirt and sweats.

“Wash these before you give them back,” he instructed. “Unscented laundry detergent only. I don’t want to get them back smelling like orchids or pineapple or whatever.”

“You got it.” Kaminari changed quickly in the bathroom, then plopped back down on the couch and picked up the Switch. “So,” he said once he was comfy. “About that gossip. You were saying?”

“No, I wasn’t. There’s nothing to tell.”

Kaminari set down the switch and looked straight at Bakugou, who was sitting cross-legged on the couch, arms folded tightly across his chest, shoulders tense.

“Bro. I’ve known you way too long to buy that. I know when you just don’t want to talk about something. You can tell me. What’s the deal?”

Almost imperceptibly, Bakugou softened at his friend’s sincerity. It was hard to stay mad at Kaminari, especially when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Laugh and I’ll kill you,” he threatened.

“As usual.”

“I hate seeing Red with Round,” Bakugou confessed.

“Uh… wha?”

Bakugou tsk’d, more at himself than at Kaminari. Of course, he hadn’t shared his code names with anyone. “The carpenter. Red. So cozy with the round-faced girl with the pink hard hat.”

“Oh my god, Bakugou Katsuki, you are /obsessed!/” Kaminari’s words were met with a piercing stare, but he didn’t back down.

“So one of his co-workers is a girl. Big deal. You’re pretty ‘cozy’ with me, what’s to say if this ‘Red’ took an after-lunch walk by the shop every day he wouldn’t come to the same conclusion?”

“Just cuz you’re bi doesn’t mean—”

“Exactly,” Kaminari cut him off. “It doesn’t mean anything! Unless you saw him /kiss/ her, don’t worry about it! She’s probably just like, his work wife or something.”

Bakugou scoffed at the slightly sexist term, but Kaminari had a point. “Yeah. Whatever. It’s late. Go home.”

“It’s 8:30.”

“Yeah. Late.”

“Alright, alright.” Kaminari hopped off the couch and held the Switch close to his chest like a baby. “Thanks for this. I’ll treat it like my own.”

“You’ll treat it better than that,” said Bakugou.

“Hah hah. Goodnight, asshole. I’ll tell Shinsou you said hi.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“Try and stop me,” Kaminari teased. “It was lavender laundry soap you wanted me to use, right?”

“Fuck you.”

“Sweet dreams.”

/ / / pause to appreciate the car. This is the Land Cruiser Bakugou is going to repair. I originally pictured it with black interior but then I found this sexy as hell red quilted leather so that wins for sure. Don’t think the American model comes w/ stick; use your imagination.