Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Midoriya Izuku died in middle school on a rainy Thursday afternoon after climbing onto the roof of Aldera and stepping cleanly over the edge. And nobody had blamed Bakugo Katsuki. Not really. Some students remembered the swan dive comment. Some teachers knew Bakugo had bullied him for years. But Katsuki was smart, talented, confident. And Midoriya had always been seen as strange anyway – too emotional, too obsessive, too weak, too attached.

Adults shook their heads and called it tragic.

Classmates posted crying messages online for a week before moving on with their lives.

And then worse, Midoriya returned three nights after his funeral, standing silently in Katsuki’s bedroom wearing the same middle school uniform he died in. His body still carried damage from the fall; fractures beneath pale skin, bruising around his throat and jaw, fingers bent slightly wrong. He had simply appeared in his room like nothing and informed him with awful calm that his quirk manifested after death.

A tether type manifestation.

A haunting.

He existed now solely for the person responsible for his death. Nobody else could see him. But Bakugo could.

That was the beginning of it. At first Katsuki thought it was punishment. Then he thought it was insanity. Then eventually he realised it was much worse than either of those things. Because Midoriya was still Midoriya – emotionally frozen at fourteen years old, clinging desperately to the scraps of affection Bakugo had accidentally fed him over years of cruelty. Still hopelessly obsessed, still wanting praise from the person who destroyed him.

Bakugo learnt quickly that hurting him accomplished nothing. Explosions ripped flesh from bone only for the body to drag itself back together moments later with wet cracking sounds and slow regeneration that made Katsuki physically sick to watch. And Midoriya, despite acting soft and needy and desperate for affection, had become something deeply wrong after death.

He followed Katsuki everywhere. He climbed into Bakugo’s bed at night and curled against him with icy limbs while whispering apologies into the dark for being annoying. He cried whenever Katsuki ignored him for too long. He panicked whenever Bakugo shouted. Sometimes he laughed at things that were not funny and continued laughing long after he should have stopped.

The worst part was that nobody noticed. Nobody saw the green haired corpse standing beside Bakugo’s desk at school staring at him with huge adoring eyes. Nobody noticed Katsuki flinching whenever cold fingers brushed the back of his neck unexpectedly. Nobody understood why he became angrier after Midoriya’s death instead of calmer. Because nobody else had to live with him.

UA started six months later, and Midoriya came too. The first morning of class 1A smelled like fresh paint, concrete dust, sweat, and industrial cleaner sharp enough to sting the inside of Bakugo’s nose. Students filed through the hallways buzzing with nervous excitement, all of them carrying that same hopeful energy first year students always had. Bakugo hated all of them instantly, but not nearly as much as he hated the thing walking beside him.

“Kacchan,”

Midoriya whispered brightly, matching his pace exactly,

“your uniform looks really nice.”

Nobody reacted. A group of support course students passed directly through Izuku in the hallway without noticing the dead boy standing there.

“Kacchan?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Midoriya flinched immediately, and his smile vanished.

“Sorry.”

Ever since the haunting began, crowds made things worse because Midoriya became clingier around other people, almost jealous, staring whenever Katsuki spoke to somebody else for too long. It was suffocating. By the time Bakugo entered classroom 1A his nerves already felt sandpaper raw.

Midoriya had seated himself at the desk behind Bakugo’s assigned seat. Like he belonged there. Like he was supposed to be part of the class. His dead fingers traced lightly across the tabletop while he looked around the room with naked fascination shining in his eyes.

“UA,”

He murmured softly.

“You really made it.”

Something twisted in Katsuki’s stomach. Because Midoriya should have been here. That thought had become impossible to escape lately. Every time Bakugo watched people discussing hero rankings or combat techniques or internships, he could feel Deku standing nearby listening with this painful eager attentiveness. Absorbing everything exactly the way he used to obsess over heroes in middle school.

Except now he was dead.

And still here anyway.

Nobody noticed the dead boy leaning over Bakugo’s desk from behind, resting his chin on Katsuki’s shoulder with damp curls brushing his cheek while he smiled at the rest of class 1A. Bakugo sat rigid through Aizawa’s introduction while Midoriya hovered against his shoulder like something sewn directly into his shadow.

The dead never breathed properly. Katsuki had noticed that early on. Izuku still mimicked breathing sometimes out of habit, chest rising and falling softly beneath fabric, but every now and then he forgot. The stillness that followed became unbearable – minutes stretching by with no movement at all except the slow blinking of huge green eyes fixed entirely on Bakugo’s face.

The red-haired guy – sharp teeth, broad shoulders, loud voice – approached Bakugo’s desk almost immediately with an easy grin stretched across his face.

“You seriously okay, man? You look like you saw a ghost.”

Midoriya froze. Then, horrifyingly, he smiled.

“Kacchan,”

He said softly, delighted,

“he accidentally got it right.”

Bakugo ignored him violently.

“I’m fine.”

Red-hair laughed.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Damn, you’re intense.”

Midoriya leant closer over Katsuki’s shoulder, openly studying the other boy’s face with unsettling focus.

“He looks nice. Kind.”

Midoriya always noticed kindness immediately. Like an animal starving badly enough to smell food from miles away.

The blonde idiot with the black lightning streak in his hair wandered over next, hands shoved into his pockets lazily.

“Maybe he’s nervous,”

He joked.

“First day and all.”

Bakugou scoffed automatically.

“Like hell I’d be nervous.”

“Sure, man.”

The electricity guy laughed. Midoriya stared at him too now. Before Katsuki could answer, Midoriya suddenly moved. One second he stood behind Bakugo’s chair; the next he crouched beside it with his chin resting against the desk, peering upward at Katsuki with huge eager eyes.

“You should make friends,”

Bakugo felt genuine panic stab through him, and he glared at Izuku hard. Midoriya flinched hard enough his shoulders curled inward. The reaction remained horrifying every single time. Death had not removed any of the old instincts from him. Bakugo could still watch every cruel reflex he had carved into Midoriya during childhood playing automatically across the dead boy’s face. The immediate shrinking posture, the anxious apologetic smile.

Bakugo stood abruptly.

“Move.”

Several classmates jumped out of his path automatically as he shoved toward the locker rooms. The pink girl near the centre rows muttered,

“Wow,”

beneath her breath. Behind him, he could hear the electricity guy whispering,

“What’s his damage?”

Midoriya followed silently. The hallway outside felt colder than before, fluorescent lighting buzzing overhead while distant voices echoed through concrete corridors. Bakugo barely made it around the corner before Midoriya grabbed the sleeve of his blazer suddenly.

“Kacchan.”

Bakugo yanked his arm back instantly.

“Don’t fucking touch me in public.”

Midoriya recoiled like he’d been struck. The bruising around his throat darkened beneath the lights.

“Right,”

He said quietly.

“Sorry.”

Bakugo kept walking. He could still feel phantom pressure where dead fingers had touched him.

“You scared me,”

Izuku admitted after several seconds, and Bakugo laughed.

“You’re scared of me?”

“Yes.”

The answer came immediately. Honest. Midoriya looked down at the floor as they walked, damp curls hanging partly over his eyes.

“I don’t want you mad at me. I’m sorry.”

Something twisted unpleasantly inside Katsuki’s ribs. Because that was the real horror underneath all of this. Not the haunting, not the corpse standing beside him. It was the devotion. The disgusting unwavering attachment that remained intact even after death itself. Izuku had followed him into the grave and somehow still came back loving him.

Chapter Text

The dormitories became unbearable during winter. Everything about the building trapped heat too well – the humming radiators buried behind walls, the thick insulated windows, the stale warmth of teenagers packed together beneath one roof. Dead flesh did not regulate temperature properly. Bakugo had figured that out months ago.

In summer, Izuku became clammy and damp, skin perpetually cool no matter how high the heat climbed outside. But winter made him worse. Colder. Stiffer. Sometimes Katsuki woke in the middle of the night to the sound of joints cracking softly because Midoriya had curled too tightly against him in his sleep like his body had partially locked up.

Tonight was one of those nights. The common room downstairs still echoed faintly with laughter and distant shouting from where Kaminari and Kirishima were losing some stupid video game tournament against Mina and Sero. Bakugo had escaped nearly an hour ago under the excuse of studying because his patience had already been flayed from an entire evening spent pretending not to notice the corpse seated silently beside.

Izuku had been particularly clingy lately. Midoriya’s moods shifted unpredictably after death, swinging between desperate affection and weird quietness without warning. Tonight he had attached himself to Katsuki so thoroughly it felt suffocating. Now he sat cross legged on Bakugo’s bed watching him with huge unblinking eyes while Katsuki changed clothes.

“You’re staring again,”

Bakugo muttered. Midoriya smiled instantly.

“Sorry.”

He didn’t stop. The room smelled faintly like nitroglycerin sweat and burnt fabric from training earlier that afternoon, underneath the colder scent that permanently clung to Izuku now – rainwater soaked into old clothing, blood, rust. Bakugo yanked a shirt over his head aggressively.

“You’re creepy.”

Another smile. Softer this time.

“I know.”

There was no defensiveness in it anymore. That was new. Weeks ago Midoriya used to apologise constantly for every unsettling thing he did, panic flooding his face whenever Bakugo snapped at him, but somewhere along the line he had started accepting certain truths about himself with this terrifying calmness. Like he understood exactly what he had become. Midoriya had moved closer, enough that his knees brushed against Katsuki’s thigh where he stood beside the bed.

“You were smiling downstairs,”

Izuku said quietly. Bakugo scowled.

“So?”

“I like seeing that.”

His voice carried that same reverent softness he always used whenever speaking about things he loved too much. Heroes. All Might. Bakugo. The thought made irritation crawl hot beneath Katsuki’s skin. He shoved past him toward the desk.

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not trying to.”

But he always was. Not deliberately, maybe. That somehow made it worse. Midoriya’s obsession had never evolved beyond the emotional intensity of a lonely fourteen year old boy whose entire world narrowed instinctively around one person. Except now it had death and isolation festering inside it too, twisting something already unhealthy into something grotesque and consuming.

Bakugo had friends now. Real ones. Somehow. Kirishima dragged him into conversations whether he liked it or not. Kaminari had stopped being scared of him months ago and now bothered him almost constantly. Even stupid Round Face occasionally sat beside him during study sessions without acting nervous anymore.

And Midoriya hated all of it, though not too openly. Eyes lingering too long whenever someone touched Bakugo casually during conversations. Fingers curling tightly into his sleeves whenever Katsuki returned to the dorm late after spending time downstairs. Small things.

“Kacchan?”

“What.”

“Do you think your friends like me?”

Bakugo froze. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. Midoriya sat curled loosely atop the blankets with his hands folded in his lap, expression careful and hopeful in a way that immediately made something unpleasant twist beneath Bakugo’s ribs. Because Izuku was serious. Actually serious.

“You’re fucking dead,”

Bakugo said flatly.

“I know.”

“They can’t see you.”

“I know.”

“Then why the hell would you ask that?”

Midoriya lowered his gaze, and his fingers twisted together anxiously.

“I sit with all of you downstairs a lot.”

A pause.

“Kirishima’s nice.”

Bakugo let out a sharp laugh despite himself.

“Shitty Hair would absolutely hate you.”

“Oh,”

Izuku said quietly. Guilt flashed immediate through Katsuki’s stomach, enough to make him angry.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That face.”

Midoriya looked confused. Then sadder somehow when he realised.

“Sorry.”

Bakugo scrubbed aggressively at his face. Fucking hell. Outside the room, somebody sprinted through the hallway yelling while Kaminari shouted after them. Pipes rattled somewhere overhead. The normal sounds of teenage life. And inside the bedroom sat a dead boy trying to ask whether people would have liked him if he’d lived long enough to meet them. Bakugo suddenly felt exhausted.

“Would they like me if they knew me?”

Bakugo stared at the desk for a long moment. Kirishima would have liked him immediately. That was just who he was. Mina probably would have dragged Midoriya into conversations until he loosened up. Even stupid extras like Kaminari had enough decency to be kind to nervous people. Deku would have fit into Class 1A horribly well.

“Yeah,”

He muttered eventually. Bakugo glanced back, and Izuku stared at him with wide eyes. Just looking at him with this fragile stunned expression like someone had cracked his ribs open and exposed something desperately soft underneath.

“You mean that?”

He whispered. Bakugo immediately regretted answering.

“Tch.”

“Kacchan.”

“Don’t make a big fucking deal out of it.”

But Midoriya already was. Bakugo could see it happening in real time – the way his entire face brightened with painful hopefulness, the way his posture straightened unconsciously. Then Izuku smiled, small and crooked. Terrifyingly sincere. And before Bakugo could react, Midoriya slid off the bed and crossed the room in two quick steps to bury his face against Katsuki’s shoulder. Cold arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

“Kacchan,”

He whispered shakily,

“I love you so much.”

Bakugo stopped breathing for a second. His lungs simply forgot how to work beneath the sudden crushing weight of cold arms wrapping around his waist. Midoriya never understood moderation in anything emotional. Affection from him always arrived with the same overwhelming intensity as a flood; desperate, clinging, impossible to ignore once it touched you.

“Get off.”

Midoriya flinched hard enough his grip loosened automatically. That reflex would probably never disappear. Even dead. Bakugo hated that he noticed it now. Once upon a time Midoriya’s feelings had been background noise – annoying, pathetic, easy to ignore – and now they filled entire rooms. Izuku pulled back slightly, curls brushing against Katsuki’s jaw.

“Sorry,”

He murmured. But he still didn’t let go completely. Bakugo could feel him hesitating, waiting, like a dog expecting to be kicked.

“Jesus Christ,”

Bakugo muttered roughly.

“You’re clingy tonight.”

Midoriya smiled weakly against his shoulder.

“I know.”

The dorm lights outside flickered faintly beneath the crack of the bedroom door while footsteps thundered through the hallway upstairs. Someone laughed loudly enough that the sound vibrated through the walls. Normal life. Normal stupid teenage life continuing all around them while Bakugo stood trapped in the middle of his room being held by a dead boy nobody else remembered anymore.

Sometimes Class 1A discussed middle schools or childhood friends during conversations downstairs, and every single time Bakugo felt icy dread crawl up his spine waiting for somebody to mention Aldera or ask whether he had known the quirkless kid who killed himself there last year. But nobody ever did. Because Izuku had not mattered enough while alive to leave much behind after death.

Bakugo groaned and shoved at his forehead roughly. Midoriya finally loosened his grip enough to stumble backward a step, though his hands remained hooked loosely into the fabric of Katsuki’s shirt like he physically could not stand without touching him somehow.

Death changed small things unpredictably. Sometimes Midoriya’s pupils stayed too large in dim lighting. Sometimes his body temperature dropped low enough for frost to gather faintly along window glass wherever he leant there too long. Sometimes his injuries became more visible for no reason, bruising darkening beneath pale skin until he resembled a fresh corpse again.

Right now the impact damage around his throat looked awful. Bakugo stared at it for far too long.

“Kacchan?”

“Nothing.”

But Izuku tilted his head anyway.

“You’re looking at me weird.”

Bakugo clicked his tongue sharply and turned back toward the desk.

“Shut up.”

Bakugo barely had time to react before cold hands slid carefully over his shoulders from behind. Midoriya rested his chin atop Katsuki’s head.

“You’ve been nicer lately,”

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

“No, I fucking haven’t.”

Midoriya hummed softly.

“You don’t explode me as much anymore.”

Bakugo felt heat crawl violently up the back of his neck.

“That’s because it doesn’t do anything.”

“That’s not true.”

His voice remained gentle. Matter-of-fact.

“It hurts.”

Bakugo’s jaw tightened. Midoriya rarely mentioned pain directly. Usually he accepted damage with that same awful gratefulness he used to accept bullying. As attention, as acknowledgment, as proof Bakugo still saw him. Tonight something sounded different. Quieter.

Bakugo glanced upward slightly. Midoriya looked exhausted. Not physically. There were no dark circles beneath his eyes because dead bodies didn’t deteriorate like that. But emotionally exhausted, expression softer and more fragile than usual.

“You okay?”

Bakugo asked before thinking. Midoriya stared at him, and Bakugo immediately regretted everything. Izuku’s face changed instantly. Hope cracked open across it with such devastating speed it physically hurt to watch, his entire expression brightening like someone starving being handed food.

Every scrap of concern became precious to Midoriya because he had spent most of his life starved for kindness from the person he loved most. And now there was nobody else left for him to want things from. Izuku bent lower suddenly until his forehead rested lightly against Bakugo’s hair.

“Yes. I’m happy here,”

He admitted softly.

“Even when you’re mean to me.”

Bakugo closed his eyes briefly.

“You need serious fucking therapy.”

Midoriya laughed. The sound startled Bakugo enough he looked up immediately. Izuku’s laughter had changed after death.

It still sounded like him, still soft and breathless and awkwardly bright, but now there was something hollow to it.

“I know,”

Midoriya whispered through another small laugh.

“But I can’t really go anywhere anymore.”

Bakugo suddenly became aware again of the hands on his shoulders. The weight behind him. The fact Midoriya had nowhere else in existence to be except beside him. Forever. The thought made panic crawl slowly beneath his skin like insects.

Chapter Text

Bakugo woke up choking on the sensation of weight crushing his lungs. For one blind disoriented second instinct took over completely and his palms detonated against the mattress with violent sparks, adrenaline ripping him upright before consciousness fully caught up. Waking to something pinning him down in the dark triggered immediate animal panic.

“Kacchan.”

Midoriya sat astride his waist in the darkness, green curls hanging damply around his face in tangled shadows. Moonlight leaking through the dorm window caught against the bruising around his throat, turning the old impact damage nearly black.

“Get the fuck off of me!”

Izuku flinched violently like the words physically struck him, but he didn’t move immediately. It was moments like this – rare but growing more frequent lately – where something in Deku’s behaviour lagged strangely behind normal human reactions. Where he stared too long or smiled at the wrong time or forgot basic boundaries entirely because death had slowly worn pieces away from him.

“You were twitching,”

Midoriya said softly. Bakugo shoved him hard enough to send him sliding backwards off the bed.

“You fucking psycho–”

Midoriya hit the floor awkwardly, and bones cracked audibly somewhere in his shoulder from the impact. He barely reacted. Instead he sat there staring upward from the darkness beside the bed with this wounded confused expression that immediately made Bakugo feel sick with anger. Because Midoriya still looked at him like he was the one being unreasonable.

“I was trying to wake you up gently,”

Izuku whispered.

“You were sitting on me!”

“You have nightmares when I touch your neck.”

The statement landed with horrible casualness. Bakugo froze halfway through standing.

“You scream more when your throat gets covered,”

He explained quietly.

“So I tried not to. I was trying not to hurt you.”

Outside, winter rain tapped weakly against glass. Bakugo suddenly became very aware of his own breathing. Because Midoriya said things like that sometimes; deeply observant things, intimate things, spoken with the absentminded certainty of someone who spent every waking second studying him. And every single time it reminded Katsuki how trapped he really was.

Izuku knew everything about him now. Every habit. Every weakness. Every fear. Months and months of haunting had stripped privacy out of Bakugo’s life until there was almost nothing left untouched. Midoriya slowly climbed back onto the mattress. Carefully this time. Like approaching a frightened animal.

“Kacchan,”

He said softly,

“can I ask you something?”

Bakugo rubbed aggressively at his face.

“What.”

A pause.

“What did I look like?”

Bakugo’s stomach dropped instantly. Midoriya sat cross legged near the end of the bed watching him with huge dark eyes, expression strangely calm despite the question. He had never asked before. Not once. The entire subject of the suicide existed between them, always present, but Izuku almost never spoke directly about the actual death itself. Bakugo swallowed hard.

“The fuck kinda question is that?”

“When you found me.”

Midoriya’s voice remained soft.

“I want to know.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do.”

Bakugo looked away immediately. Rain continued tapping against the windows in thin rhythms. He remembered that day too clearly. The memory lived inside him with awful sharpness, preserved perfectly by shock. The rooftop door slamming open, empty rain soaked concrete, students screaming somewhere below.

“Kacchan?”

“You were dead.”

The words came out rougher than intended. Izuku waited quietly. Bakugo hated that too. The patience. The way Midoriya could sit silently for hours now if he thought Katsuki might eventually give him attention.

“There was blood everywhere,”

Bakugo muttered finally. Midoriya’s expression flickered with curiosity.

“You hit the railing on the way down first.”

Bakugo stared at the wall while speaking because looking directly at him suddenly felt impossible.

“That fucked your arm up.”

Izuku slowly glanced toward his own wrist – the joint there still bent slightly wrong.

“Oh,”

He whispered. Bakugo could smell rain again suddenly. Not real rain, memory. Cold pavement soaked black beneath storm clouds while teachers screamed into phones nearby and students cried hysterically.

“You…”

Katsuki stopped. Midoriya watched him carefully.

“What?”

Bakugo laughed once under his breath, though it was completely humourless.

“You looked small.”

That seemed to surprise Izuku more than anything else.

“Small?”

“You were all folded up weird. Like a broken action figure.”

Midoriya lowered his gaze into his lap.

“I didn’t die straight away, did I?”

Bakugo’s head snapped toward him instantly.

“What?”

“The news said immediate death.”

Midoriya’s fingers twisted together tightly.

“But sometimes I remember hurting.”

Bakugo felt genuine horror crawl slowly up his spine. Because he remembered that too. Jesus Christ. He remembered kneeling beside the body before teachers dragged him away. He remembered shattered bones visible beneath torn skin. He remembered blood leaking steadily between cracks in the pavement. And he remembered–

“You moved,”

Bakugo said quietly before he could stop himself.

“You weren’t supposed to, but you fucking moved.”

The memory surged back vividly. Rain pouring down hard, Bakugo shoving through screaming students toward the crowd gathered around the pavement below the building. Green hair soaked dark with blood. One arm twisted backwards unnaturally. Midoriya’s chest crushed inward. And then tiny movement. A wet choking inhale.

Bakugo had stared down at him in absolute frozen disbelief while blood dripped weakly from Izuku’s mouth. Those huge green eyes had opened for a second and locked directly onto him. Midoriya had whispered something then, and Bakugo never knew whether he imagined it afterward. Because the voice had been so wet and ruined and faint beneath the rain. But he remembered it anyway.

‘Kacchan.’

“What happened after?”

Bakugo felt nauseous.

“You died.”

“No, after.”

A long silence stretched. Then Bakugo answered anyway.

“Your eyes stayed open.”

Midoriya stared at him.

“You kept staring at me even after you stopped breathing.”

Midoriya looked down slowly at his own hands. Then, after a long moment;

“Were you scared?”

Bakugo opened his mouth automatically to say no. The lie sat there briefly. Worthless.

“… Yeah,”

He admitted eventually. Midoriya looked up immediately, not smiling. Just looking at him with this terrible aching softness that made him seem alive again for one unbearable moment.

“I’m sorry, Kacchan.”

Something inside Bakugo snapped. The apology hit him harder than the memory had. Midoriya sounded genuine, concerned for him. As though the worst part of throwing himself off a building had been frightening Katsuki afterward.

Bakugo shoved himself violently away before he fully realised he was moving. His breathing turned ragged instantly, too fast, too shallow, adrenaline flooding through him with nauseating speed. The room suddenly felt far too small, the air too hot despite winter bleeding against the windows outside.

“Don’t.”

Midoriya startled hard.

“Kacchan–”

“I said don’t.”

His hands were shaking. Bakugo clenched them immediately. The motion only made it worse because now all he could think about was blood on his palms, thick rainwater running through the cracks between his fingers while teachers screamed somewhere behind him and Midoriya’s body.

Bakugo pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes aggressively. The memory refused to stop. Usually he kept it buried well enough to function. Training helped. Noise helped. Anger helped most of all. But once the memory surfaced properly it spread everywhere inside his head like fire catching dry wood.

He could hear the sound again. The breathing afterward. That horrible wet inhale dragging through crushed lungs while Midoriya stared directly at him from the pavement. Bakugo felt suddenly, overwhelmingly sick.

“Kacchan?”

Midoriya’s voice had gone smaller now. Cautious. Bakugo looked up sharply. Izuku still sat on the bed exactly where he had been moments ago, shoulders curled inward instinctively beneath Katsuki’s tone, eyes uncertain in the darkness. And all Bakugo could see for a split second was the body. Broken limbs. Split skull. His stomach lurched violently.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

Midoriya blinked.

“Like what?”

“Like–”

Bakugo cut himself off with a harsh sound somewhere between a laugh and a choke. His chest hurt. Every breath felt wrong. Midoriya slowly slid off the bed.

“Kacchan, you should sit down.”

That did it. Anger detonated instantly, hot enough to burn through the panic for a second.

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

Midoriya recoiled, and Bakugo kept going anyway.

“You think you get to act worried about me after that?”

Katsuki snapped, voice rising harsher with every word.

“You jumped, asshole.”

Izuku froze completely.

“You fucking jumped,”

Bakugo repeated. The memories were still hitting him, overlapping and ugly. Rain. Sirens. Open eyes staring upward through blood. Tiny twitching movement from a body that should already have been dead. Bakugo wanted it gone. Wanted him gone.

“You don’t get to ask me what it looked like,”

He snarled.

“You don’t get to fucking apologise like I’m the one who got hurt.”

Midoriya looked wounded in this awful way that immediately made Bakugo feel even angrier.

“I didn’t mean–”

“You made me see that!”

The words cracked out louder than intended. Bakugo’s pulse hammered painfully against his throat.

“Oh,”

Izuku whispered, then wrapped his arms tightly around himself, fingers digging into the sleeves of his shirt.

“You hate me for it,”

He said softly. Bakugo scoffed automatically.

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“But you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“You looked scared when you woke up.”

“Because you were fucking sitting on me!”

Midoriya flinched again. Bakugo saw it happen and instantly hated himself for noticing. God. He was so tired. The room had gone quiet except for the rattling radiator and the distant sound of wind outside the dormitory windows. Izuku still had not looked back up.

“You were the first thing I saw,”

He murmured eventually, and Bakugo stiffened.

“What?”

“When I opened my eyes after I hit the ground.”

Midoriya spoke softly, almost absently.

“There was so much blood in my mouth. I couldn’t breathe properly. But you were there.”

Bakugo’s chest tightened.

“I remember thinking you looked angry.”

The memory hit him so hard he physically stepped backward. Rain pouring down in sheets. Teachers. Bakugo kneeling beside the body in total frozen disbelief while Midoriya drowned slowly in his own blood beneath him. Angry. Had he looked angry? Maybe. He honestly could not remember.

Midoriya finally looked up again. There were tears in his eyes now. They slid down his face, too slow and slightly red.

“But you came to look at me anyway.”

He whispered. Bakugo felt something cold crawl underneath his skin. Izuku sounded happy about it.

Chapter Text

Bakugo woke slowly to the sound of rain hitting the dorm windows. For several seconds he stayed motionless beneath the blankets, still trapped halfway inside unconsciousness while exhaustion dragged heavily through him. Then he became aware of the body beside him. Cold. Not touching him this time. Just there.

Bakugo opened his eyes. Grey dawn light spilled dimly through the room, colourless and miserable against concrete walls, illuminating Midoriya curled on his side beside him atop the mattress. Asleep. Or pretending to sleep. Bakugo still wasn’t fully sure whether Izuku technically needed it anymore.

Sometimes he closed his eyes for hours without moving at all, body so completely still it resembled a corpse laid carefully in bed. Other times Bakugo woke in the middle of the night to find Midoriya already staring at him silently from inches away. This morning, though, he looked asleep. His face had softened in unconsciousness.

When Midoriya slept he almost resembled the person he would have become if none of this had happened – just another exhausted UA student tangled in blankets after training, curls messy against the pillow, mouth slightly parted beneath the faint rise and fall of breathing. Almost.

Then Bakugo’s eyes drifted downward and stopped. Thin pale wrists lay exposed against the blankets between them, covered in old scars. Just layers and layers of healed damage crossing over each other in faded white lines and deeper pink ridges running from wrist to forearm in ugly overlapping patterns that grew denser closer to the veins.

Bakugo stared. He already knew they were there. Of course he did. Back in middle school Midoriya almost always wore long sleeves even during summer, tugging constantly at cuffs whenever fabric shifted too high. Bakugo had noticed eventually because Bakugo noticed everything about him back then in the vicious obsessive way bullies learned their victims piece by piece.

He remembered the exact day he found out. Middle school bathroom. Sleeves rolled halfway up while he washed blood from his hands beneath the sink. Bakugo had laughed. The memory slammed into him with nauseating clarity. Deku jerking in panic when he realised someone entered behind him, those huge terrified eyes, thin red cuts still healing across trembling wrists.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’

Bakugo remembered saying. Midoriya had yanked his sleeves down so fast he nearly tore the fabric. Bakugo remembered cornering him afterward with the others, sneering while the extras laughed behind him.

‘What, were you trying to cut your own quirk in?’

‘Maybe next time go deeper.’

God. Bakugo shut his eyes briefly. The rain kept tapping softly against the windows. Beside him, Midoriya shifted faintly in his sleep. One hand curled loosely near his face beneath green curls while the scars remained exposed pale. Bakugo stared harder despite himself. There were so many, more than he remembered.

Some were thin enough to vanish unless light caught them properly, but others looked vicious even healed – jagged lines carved deep into fragile skin with enough force to leave permanent texture beneath the surface.

And Bakugo knew exactly why they existed. Middle school had eaten Midoriya alive piece by piece while Katsuki stood at the centre of it. He remembered how eager the other kids used to be once they realised tormenting Midoriya made Bakugo laugh. And through all of it Midoriya still looked at him with those awful devoted eyes like he genuinely believed Katsuki hung the stars above the city.

Beside him, Izuku made a soft sound in his sleep. Bakugo watched uneasily while Izuku shifted restlessly beneath the blankets.

“Kacchan…”

The whisper barely reached audible volume. Bakugo’s chest tightened sharply. Midoriya sounded younger when he slept; the voice of the lonely quirkless middle schooler he had been before death froze him permanently in place. Izuku curled tighter instinctively, scars disappearing partly beneath the sleeves slipping back down his arms.

“…don’t…”

Bakugo frowned despite himself. Midoriya rarely slept deeply enough to dream. Usually when he rested he simply became still, corpse still, expression blank and distant like somebody paused between frames of movement. This looked different. Disturbed. Fear. Bakugo recognised fear on Midoriya instantly after all these years. Then Izuku flinched violently in his sleep.

“Oi.”

Midoriya jerked awake immediately. Green eyes snapped open wide with panic while his entire body tensed hard enough the mattress creaked beneath him, and for one horrible disorienting second he looked genuinely terrified.

“Kacchan?”

Bakugo clicked his tongue.

“You were twitching.”

Midoriya blinked dazedly up at him, then smiled automatically. That stupid soft reflexive smile.

“Sorry.”

Bakugo’s gaze dropped again before he could stop himself. To the scars. Midoriya noticed, and his entire body went still. Then Izuku slowly pulled his sleeves back down over his wrists. The movement looked instinctive, ashamed.

“Don’t,”

Bakugo muttered.

“What?”

Bakugo scowled harder.

“Stop acting weird about it.”

Izuku stared at him silently. Then, carefully;

“You used to make fun of them. I thought you hated looking at them.”

Bakugo remembered standing over him in middle school hallways sneering while Midoriya curled his sleeves tighter around himself trying desperately to hide shaking hands. ‘Maybe next time go deeper.’ The memory made him feel vaguely sick.

“I was a dickhead,”

Bakugo muttered. Midoriya went completely silent, staring at him with that same expression he always got whenever Katsuki accidentally showed him any kind of softness – stunned and hopeful.

“You didn’t mean that,”

Midoriya whispered.

“The fuck I didn’t.”

“But you don’t usually say stuff like that.”

“Yeah, well.”

“I like it anyway.”

Only Midoriya could say something that deeply fucked up in a voice that soft. The same tone he had whenever Bakugo accidentally acknowledged him positively for more than three seconds. Like being insulted less violently than usual counted as affection. Months ago he might have snapped, might have told Midoriya how insane that sounded, but they had circled this same conversation too many times now. Bakugo swung his legs over the side of the bed roughly.

“Whatever.”

Bakugo stood and dragged a hand through his hair aggressively before grabbing fresh clothes from the chair beside his desk. Behind him, Midoriya watched quietly.

“Kacchan.”

“What.”

“Are you still upset?”

Bakugo glanced over his shoulder sharply. Izuku sat cross legged beneath tangled blankets, hair messy from sleep while dark bruising around his throat peeked faintly above the collar of his shirt. In the weak grey morning light he looked more fragile somehow.

“No.”

Midoriya visibly relaxed. The relief happened instantly, shoulders loosening while his expression softened with almost painful openness, and Bakugo had to look away from him. God. He grabbed his shirt harder than necessary and yanked it over his head.

By the time they reached the common room downstairs the dormitory had mostly woken up properly. Too many teenagers crammed into one building every morning created this thick atmosphere of overlapping scents and noise that Bakugo usually tolerated only because yelling at everyone helped relieve stress. Today it immediately made his headache worse.

Kaminari sat sprawled across one couch in wrinkled sweatpants arguing loudly with Mina over something on his phone while Sero laughed beside them. Kirishima stood near the kitchen counter halfway through making coffee, broad shoulders still damp from a shower. Midoriya followed close enough behind Bakugo that cold fingertips occasionally brushed the back of his wrist. Kirishima looked up first.

“Yo!”

He called immediately.

“You look like hell.”

Bakugo scowled.

“Fuck you.”

“There he is,”

Kaminari laughed from the couch.

“Morning sunshine.”

Bakugo moved toward the kitchen. The floorboards creaked faintly beneath his steps while conversation buzzed warmly around him from all sides, ordinary and alive in ways Midoriya could never manage anymore. Izuku hovered nearby silently watching everyone. Lingering at the edges of conversations he could never join. Kirishima handed Bakugo a mug as he approached.

“Coffee.”

Bakugo took it with a grunt. Midoriya leant curiously over his shoulder to look inside the cup. Kaminari wandered into the kitchen next, still yawning dramatically.

“Man, I’m dead.”

Midoriya visibly flinched. Bakugo noticed instantly, and so did Izuku apparently, because his expression smoothed over too quickly afterward into another small smile.

“He says that a lot,”

Midoriya murmured quietly. Kaminari stretched lazily against the counter beside Bakugo, completely unaware of the corpse standing inches away from him.

“You’re weirdly quiet today,”

He told Katsuki. Midoriya stared openly at Kaminari’s face for several seconds before whispering;

“He’s pretty.”

Bakugo nearly choked on his coffee, and Kaminari blinked.

“What’s up with you, man?”

“Nothing!”

Bakugo coughed roughly into his sleeve while Midoriya looked startled beside him. Kaminari stared, then grinned slowly.

“Oh my God.”

Bakugo felt immediate dread. Kaminari’s favourite morning pastime was pissing Katsuki off with dumb shit.

“You totally have a crush on somebody.”

The common room erupted instantly. Mina shrieked from the couch loud enough to rattle windows.

“No way!”

Kirishima laughed behind them. Bakugo’s eye twitched violently.

“Shut the fuck up.”

The room became louder.

“WHO IS IT?”

Mina yelled immediately.

“Nobody!”

“Oh my God, he’s blushing,”

Kaminari cackled. Bakugo could physically feel heat crawling up his neck now. Midoriya stared at him with huge fascinated eyes.

“You are blushing.”

“I’m gonna put you all in the ground if I hear one more word!”

Kirishima laughed harder while Bakugo slammed his coffee mug onto the counter hard enough liquid splashed over the rim. Midoriya moved closer beside him. Cold fingers hooked lightly into the sleeve of Bakugo’s hoodie.

“You practically inhaled your drink, bro,”

Sero snorted from the couch. Jirou looked up from where she sat sprawled sideways in an armchair scrolling through her phone. Then one eyebrow slowly lifted.

“Oh my God,”

She deadpanned. Bakugo immediately felt dread crawl up his spine.

“No.”

“You literally almost died the second Kaminari walked over.”

Kaminari blinked. Then stared at Bakugo. Then pointed dramatically at himself.

“WAIT.”

“No.”

“Oh my God,”

Mina gasped from the sofa loud enough to shake the room.

“Katsuki has a crush on Denki?!”

“Why the hell would I like that extra?!”

Kaminari doubled over laughing instantly while Kirishima nearly dropped his coffee mug beside the kitchen island.

“That actually explains so much,”

Sero wheezed.

“What does it explain?!”

Bakugo snapped.

“The aggression,”

Mina answered immediately.

“Classic playground flirting.”

“I’ll kill you!”

Kaminari leant against the counter beside him, grinning hard.

“Wow, I’m honestly flattered.”

Bakugo physically recoiled.

“Get the fuck away from me.”

That only made everyone laugh harder. Jirou pointed lazily from her chair without even looking up from her phone.

“See? Defensive.”

“You idiots are all brain damaged.”

Midoriya tilted his head slightly while observing Kaminari. Then his gaze shifted back toward Bakugo, and something unreadable crossed his face briefly. Kirishima laughed again.

“Man, I knew something was up.”

“There’s nothing up!”

“Bro, you practically spat coffee all over yourself.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did,”

Jirou said flatly, suppressing a laugh. Midoriya moved silently around behind Bakugo while everyone argued louder. Bakugo could feel him there without looking, coldness trailing just behind him like a shadow.

“Bakugo gets embarrassed really easily lately,”

Mina announced dramatically. Bakugo whirled toward her.

“I will blast you through that fucking wall.”

“You’re proving my point!”

Kaminari laughed hard enough to wheeze beside him, and Midoriya smiled faintly at the sound. Not the bright obsessive smile Bakugo usually got from him. This one looked smaller. Almost thoughtful. Then Izuku glanced toward Kaminari again, and Bakugo saw the exact moment he recognised something. His expression changed subtly, eyes lowering slightly.

The realisation made Bakugo’s stomach drop. Midoriya rarely got openly jealous. Not externally, anyway. Usually he just became quieter afterward, clinging more insistently once they were alone again. But now he stood near the kitchen counter watching Kaminari laugh with Bakugo while something wounded showed briefly behind his eyes.

“Katsuki,”

Kirishima called, still grinning,

“if you confess to him I wanna be there.”

Bakugo grabbed the nearest dish towel and hurled it directly at his face.

“Eat shit.”

Chapter Text

The teasing lasted far too long. By the time breakfast properly started the entire common room had accepted Kaminari harassment as the morning’s primary entertainment. Which meant every few minutes somebody made another joke at Bakugo’s expense while he contemplated actual homicide over burnt toast and bitter coffee. Kaminari, unfortunately, encouraged all of it.

“You know,”

He said cheerfully while leaning across the kitchen island toward Jirou,

“I always wondered why Bakugo yelled at me specifically more than everyone else.”

“Because your face is annoying,”

Bakugo snapped.

“Wow,”

Kaminari grinned.

“That sounded really emotional.”

Sero nearly choked laughing. Midoriya sat silently atop the kitchen counter beside the fruit bowl watching the conversation unfold with his knees drawn loosely against his chest, expression completely unreadable now. Though the jealousy from earlier had not disappeared, it lingered strangely around him like cold air before rain.

Momo stood at the stove nearby heating water in an electric kettle. Todoroki silently cut fruit beside her, looking slightly tense. Steam curled softly upward beneath the warm kitchen lights, fogging the lower corners of nearby windows where winter rain still streaked endlessly outside. Everything felt normal. Ordinary.

And because Bakugo had spent months balancing horror carefully beneath the surface of daily life, he noticed immediately when Midoriya moved. Bakugo saw him slide silently off the counter from the corner of his eye and step toward Yaoyorozu’s mug just as the kettle clicked off. His stomach dropped instantly.

Momo poured the boiling water carefully into a ceramic mug while speaking to Todoroki about class schedules, steam rolling thickly upward around her hands. Then Midoriya reached out and shoved the cup. It happened fast. Too fast.

The mug tipped violently sideways off the counter edge, flipping once in midair before scalding water poured directly across Kaminari’s chest and arm. Denki yelped. The mug shattered against the floor. Everyone jumped violently at once; Jirou shot upright from the couch while Kirishima swore loudly nearby, and Kaminari staggered backward clutching himself as steaming water soaked through the front of his shirt.

“Shit shit shit—”

Mina grabbed paper towels instinctively while Momo looked horrified.

“I’m so sorry!”

Bakugo stood frozen. Midoriya remained beside the counter staring silently at Kaminari, who hissed through his teeth while tugging frantically at the soaked fabric sticking against reddening skin.

“Get your shirt off.”

Todoroki said immediately. Momo already looked close to panicking.

“I didn’t even touch it properly, I swear–!”

“It’s fine,”

Kaminari winced.

“Ow, okay maybe not fine–”

Bakugo couldn’t stop staring at Midoriya, who looked back at him calmly, then glanced down toward Kaminari’s reddening arm. The skin already looked angry and blistered in places. Boiling water.

“You okay, man?”

Kirishima asked while helping Kaminari pull the soaked shirt over his head.

“Yeah,”

Kaminari laughed weakly through obvious pain.

“I think my nipples are gone though.”

Jirou snorted despite herself. Cold fingers brushed lightly against Bakugo’s wrist beneath the kitchen counter. Possessive. Bakugo jerked slightly, and Kirishima glanced toward him.

“You good?”

“Fine.”

Kirishima frowned faintly but looked away again as Recovery Girl’s name got brought up. Momo still looked horrified.

“I genuinely don’t understand what happened.”

Midoriya tilted his head slightly beside the counter, then looked directly at Bakugo again. The message sat there plainly between them. Mine. Bakugo felt genuine fear crawl slowly up his spine. Not because Kaminari had been badly hurt – though the burns looked painful as hell – but because this was new. Midoriya had never hurt somebody else before. Kaminari hissed again while examining the reddening skin spreading across his chest.

“Man, this sucks.”

Midoriya stepped silently closer behind Bakugo.

“I didn’t like them joking about you liking him.”

Bakugo’s blood ran cold, though he stared straight ahead and didn’t react. Couldn’t. The others still moved around the kitchen cleaning broken ceramic and fussing over Kaminari while Midoriya stood inches behind Katsuki speaking softly like this was normal conversation. Like he had not just poured boiling water onto someone out of jealousy.

“You could’ve hurt him,”

He whispered barely under his breath. Izuku looked genuinely confused.

“He’ll heal.”

The simplicity of the answer made something sick twist in Bakugo’s chest. Because Midoriya believed that. Truly. Pain meant less to him now because he existed beyond it. Injuries became temporary inconveniences when your own corpse still walked around after shattered bones and exploded organs.

“You’re angry.”

Izuku commented. Bakugo grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter hard enough his palm hurt.

“Yes,”

He said quietly. Midoriya looked down. For the first time since the mug tipped over, he seemed uncertain. Bakugo waited until the kitchen settled before leaving. It was infuriating to stand there pretending nothing was wrong while everyone fussed over Kaminari’s burns and Momo apologised repeatedly and Kirishima cracked jokes to lighten the mood. All while Midoriya hovered silently at Bakugo’s shoulder with that same calm expression like he hadn’t deliberately thrown boiling water onto someone moments earlier.

Bakugo felt sick. Actually sick. Kaminari laughed and joked and called himself an idiot while red blistering skin crawled across his chest, completely unaware a dead boy had hurt him out of jealousy. By the time Katsuki reached the dorm staircase his pulse was hammering hard enough to hurt again. Midoriya followed close behind silently.

The hallways upstairs felt quieter now, most students still downstairs eating breakfast or getting ready for class, leaving only the distant murmur of voices drifting faintly upward through vents and pipes. Bakugo shoved his bedroom door open hard enough it slammed against the wall. The second it shut behind them he rounded on Midoriya.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Midoriya stopped several feet away, and his expression shifted immediately.

“He’s fine.”

“He’s not fucking fine!”

Midoriya visibly flinched, but then his expression tightened too.

“He’ll heal.”

Bakugo stared at him in disbelief.

“That’s not the point!”

Izuku looked genuinely frustrated now, brows pulling together while cold air seemed to settle faintly around him. Midoriya stepped closer.

“He kept talking about you liking him.”

“So?!”

“You were blushing.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to fucking attack people!”

Midoriya’s jaw tightened slightly.

“He was making fun of you.”

Bakugo laughed coldly.

“Oh my God.”

Something ugly crawled slowly beneath his skin now. Fear mixed with anger. Because Midoriya sounded sincere, actually sincere. Like he genuinely believed protecting Bakugo justified what he’d done.

“You don’t get to decide that shit! You can’t just hurt people because you’re jealous!”

At the word jealous, Midoriya went very still, and the room suddenly felt colder. Bakugo suddenly remembered very vividly that Midoriya was dead. Not metaphorically. Actually dead. Something wearing the shape of the boy Katsuki used to know.

“You’re fucking crazy.”

Midoriya stared at him, and for a second his face went completely blank. No hurt. No sadness. Nothing. Then he moved fast. Bakugo barely had time to react before Midoriya slammed into him hard enough to drive him backwards across the room. The desk clipped Katsuki painfully in the hip before both of them crashed violently onto the floor, Bakugo swearing loudly as his shoulder struck carpet.

“What the–?!”

Midoriya pinned him instantly. Cold hands locked around Bakugo’s wrists and forced them against the floor above his head with terrifying strength. Bakugo’s eyes widened. Izuku sat astride his waist breathing hard now, green curls hanging messily around his face.

“You think I’m crazy?”

Midoriya asked quietly. Bakugo twisted violently beneath him.

“What the fuck, get OFF–”

Midoriya shoved his wrists harder against the floor, and Bakugo hissed sharply. Dead bodies should not have been this strong. But Midoriya never got tired anymore. Never hesitated from pain. Never loosened his grip because muscles burned or joints ached.

“Kacchan,”

Izuku said softly,

“what are you gonna do about it?”

The words froze Bakugo instantly. Midoriya tilted his head slightly while staring down at him, expression eerily composed despite the way his fingers dug bruisingly into Katsuki’s wrists.

“What are you gonna do?”

He repeated. For the first time in a while genuine fear surged violently through him. Real fear. Not fear of being hurt. Fear of this. Of this thing that Midoriya had become. Bakugo shoved upward hard, and Midoriya barely moved.

“You can’t stop me.”

Izuku whispered. Bakugo’s heart slammed against his ribs while Midoriya leant slightly closer above him, dead cold knees trapping Katsuki’s hips against the carpet.

“You can yell at me. You can hit me. But you can’t make me leave.”

Midoriya studied his face carefully.

“You’re scared of me again.”

Bakugo immediately exploded upward in fury.

“Shut the fuck up!”

One hand ripped free long enough for Bakugo to slam his palm directly into Midoriya’s jaw with enough force to snap his head sideways. The crack echoed sharply through the room. Midoriya didn’t even blink. His head stayed turned awkwardly for a second before slowly correcting itself with a cracking sound from his neck. Then he looked back down at Bakugo.

“Kacchan,”

He whispered. Bakugo felt sick. Actually fucking sick.

“Get off me.”

Bakugo said, close to pleading. Midoriya stared down at him silently. Then, slowly, his grip loosened.

Chapter Text

The pressure around Bakugo’s wrists loosened slowly. Midoriya’s expression had gone soft again in that horrible abrupt way it sometimes did, rage or jealousy collapsing inward so quickly it almost looked unreal.

“Kacchan,”

Bakugo yanked one hand free immediately and shoved hard against Midoriya’s chest.

“Get the fuck–”

Izuku moved suddenly forward. Bakugo barely had time to register motion before Midoriya seized the front of his shirt and slammed him violently backward into the wall beside the desk. The impact knocked air from his lungs.

“What the FUCK–”

“I’m sorry.”

The words came instantly. Frantic. Midoriya’s hands shook violently where they gripped Katsuki’s shirt, pinning him hard against concrete while panic flooded openly across his face now.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–”

Bakugo stared at him in disbelief. Midoriya looked terrified. Bakugo shoved hard against his shoulders, though he didn’t budge.

“You just attacked me!”

“I know!”

His eyes were wet now, pupils blown large with fear while his grip trembled harder against Bakugo’s chest.

“I know, I know, I know– I didn’t mean to do that, Kacchan, please don’t be angry–”

“You slammed me into a fucking wall!”

Midoriya flinched.

“Don’t yell at me.”

The sentence came out small. Frightened. Izuku’s breathing had turned messy now, body trembling visibly while his expression cracked wider and wider apart emotionally right in front of him.

“You were scared, I didn’t want you scared.”

“Well maybe don’t ACT LIKE A FUCKING LUNATIC THEN.”

Midoriya made a soft broken sound in his throat.

“You hate me,”

“No I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I said I don’t!”

“You hit me.”

Bakugo let out a stunned laugh.

“Oh, fuck OFF with that–”

Midoriya lowered his head abruptly against Katsuki’s shoulder, and the movement startled him enough he stopped struggling for a second. Hair brushed against his jaw while Izuku’s grip shifted from restraining into clutching desperately.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I hurt him. I’m sorry I scared you. I’m sorry I got jealous. I’m sorry.”

Bakugo stood frozen against the wall while Midoriya slowly unraveled against him.

“I didn’t want you to hate me, I didn’t mean it like that.”

His hands had stopped pinning Bakugo now. They just clung.

“Kacchan, please forgive me.”

He remembered middle school arguments where Midoriya reacted like this anytime Bakugo’s anger crossed some invisible line – frantic apologies spilling out. Except now there was something deeply wrong woven through it. Midoriya’s grip tightened suddenly.

“What if you stop loving me?”

Bakugo’s stomach dropped.

“I don’t–”

“You do.”

The certainty in his voice felt terrifying. Midoriya pulled back just enough to look at him.

“You do love me,”

Izuku whispered urgently, like he needed Bakugo to believe it too.

“You let me stay here. You sleep next to me. You talk to me.”

Bakugo couldn’t answer. Because some horrible part of him understood exactly why Midoriya saw those things as love. His standards for affection had always been catastrophic.

“You can’t hate me. Please.”

Bakugo stared at him for a long moment.

“Get off me first.”

“Oh.”

His hands loosened abruptly. He stepped backward so quickly he nearly stumbled over the edge of the rug, panic and shame flooding visibly across his face all over again. Bakugo pushed himself off the wall hard, rubbing the back of his head irritably where it had struck concrete. Midoriya looked devastated watching him do it.

“I hurt you.”

“No shit.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

Bakugo laughed sharply through his nose.

“You keep saying that.”

Midoriya stood near the bed now twisting his hands together anxiously while Bakugo tried to regulate his breathing without making it obvious. For the first time in a while, Bakugo actually looked at him. Not in the habitual way he had grown used to over months of haunting, where Midoriya existed constantly at the edge of his awareness like background noise stitched permanently into reality.

Really looked. Izuku stood half hidden in the weak grey morning light spilling through the windows. Bruising bloomed dark beneath skin around his throat. His curls stuck messily around his face from sleep and fighting and panic. And suddenly something felt off. Bakugo frowned slightly.

“Kacchan?”

Bakugo didn’t answer. Because–

No.

That wasn’t right.

His eyes narrowed slowly, and Midoriya shifted uneasily beneath the scrutiny.

“What?”

Bakugo stared harder. It was subtle. So subtle he almost missed it completely. But Midoriya looked older. Not enough that anybody unfamiliar with him would notice immediately, but Bakugo knew him too well. Had spent too many years memorising every irritating detail of his face without realising it.

The shape of his jaw looked sharper now than middle school. His shoulders broader. His hands larger. Even his voice had deepened slightly over the past months into something rougher than the soft nervous stammer Bakugo remembered.

“…Deku.”

Midoriya blinked.

“What?”

“How old are you?”

Izuku looked confused instantly.

“The same age as you?”

“No.”

Bakugo stepped closer slowly.

“No, you can’t be.”

Midoriya stared at him. Bakugo grabbed his wrist suddenly before Izuku could pull away.

“What the fuck?”

“Kacchan?”

“You got taller.”

Silence. Midoriya blinked rapidly, then laughed weakly.

“What?”

“You got taller.”

The words came harsher this time. More accusing. Bakugo’s grip tightened unconsciously around his wrist while Midoriya stared at him with widening eyes.

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

Izuku looked genuinely startled now. Bakugo’s brain raced violently. Midoriya was supposed to be frozen; that was part of it, his personality stayed trapped at fourteen, his emotions trapped there too, preserved exactly as they’d been before death tore everything apart. Right? But now that he looked properly, God. The differences were everywhere. Small changes accumulated quietly over time until suddenly they became impossible to ignore.

“Kacchan, what are you talking about?”

Bakugo released his wrist abruptly and stepped back.

“Your quirk, do you still age?”

“I…”

Izuku looked truly uncertain about himself. His eyes dropped slowly toward his own hands.

“I don’t know.”

Bakugo felt sick again.

“You don’t know?”

“I never thought about it.”

“How the fuck do you not think about that?”

Midoriya still looked unsettled too, though not frightened in the same way Bakugo was. His expression had shifted inward now, eyes distant in that particular way they always used to when he got trapped inside his own thoughts. Bakugo recognised it instantly, and the realisation hit oddly hard. Because Midoriya had not looked like this in a long time.

After death, his mind tended to revolve obsessively around Bakugo and little else. The old muttering nervous genius from middle school only surfaced occasionally now beneath the rot and fixation. But suddenly Izuku blinked rapidly, brows knitting together while he absently pushed messy curls back from his face.

“… That doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“My body.”

Midoriya started pacing abruptly beside the bed. His hands moved while he talked now too, twitching gestures cutting through the air exactly the way they used to during hero analyses in middle school.

“If I’m biologically dead then physical maturation shouldn’t continue normally because cellular regeneration would technically be impossible without functioning metabolism, except–”

He stopped suddenly.

“No, wait.”

Bakugo stared. Midoriya barely noticed him anymore, his eyes had gone wide with thought now.

“The quirk probably compensates somehow. It’d have to. Otherwise decomposition would’ve started immediately after death and my body wouldn’t still be structurally intact.”

Bakugo felt his stomach twist at the word decomposition.

“Maybe it’s rebuilding me based on perception instead of biology.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

Midoriya looked at him suddenly. Bright eyed. Actually looking vaguely alive for the first time in months. This was him. Not the corpse. Not the haunting thing sleeping in his bed and clinging desperately to his sleeves. This was the real Izuku Midoriya underneath it all – frantic and intelligent and obsessively analytical, thoughts moving too quickly for his mouth to keep up.

“If my existence depends on you perceiving me, then your subconscious expectations might influence how my body manifests.”

Bakugo blinked.

“… What?”

“You expect me to age with you.”

“I absolutely fucking don’t.”

“But you see me every day,”

Midoriya continued, ignoring him completely now.

“You remember what I looked like at fourteen, but you also know what people your age look like, so maybe your brain started unconsciously updating my appearance over time to match your expectations of how I should’ve grown up.”

Midoriya looked increasingly fascinated by his own theory.

“That would explain why I didn’t notice immediately, changes would happen gradually enough to feel natural from your perspective.”

Bakugo suddenly became very aware of how fast his heart was beating.

“Actually, no, wait – if perception affects manifestation then emotional attachment probably matters too.”

Izuku’s eyes widened further.

“What now?”

Midoriya stopped moving, then looked directly at him.

“If my quirk specifically manifested me for the person responsible for my death…”

Bakugo’s stomach dropped.

“… then maybe I’m shaped by what you wanted me to become. Am I even real?”

Rain whispered faintly against the windows. Bakugo felt cold all over suddenly. Midoriya stared at him with huge horrified eyes now, clearly realising the implications in real time. Something about this conversation had started feeling dangerously intimate in ways he could not explain. Midoriya swallowed hard.

“Maybe that’s why I can touch things more now.”

Bakugo frowned sharply despite himself.

“I couldn’t at first, remember? When I first appeared after the funeral I could barely interact physically with anything except you, but now I can move objects, open doors, sit on furniture–”

“The tea cup.”

Midoriya froze.

“You touched the tea cup.”

Izuku’s expression crumpled slightly.

“I– Kacchan.”

“What.”

“My quirk’s evolving.”

Bakugo stared at him. Midoriya looked back up slowly, eyes wide with genuine realisation.

“I died before it fully developed.”

His voice had gone quiet now. Awed.

“Most quirks keep changing through adolescence, right? So am I even dead? How is my quirk still developing if I’m not alive?”

Chapter Text

Bakugo didn’t sleep properly the night after that conversation. Not that he slept properly anymore in general, but this was worse. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Midoriya pacing across the bedroom floor with feverish excitement lighting up his face for the first time in months, muttering theories about his own corpse like a scientist dissecting himself alive on a laboratory table.

The dormitory settled eventually into late night silence around them. Bakugo lay stiff beneath his blankets staring upward into darkness while Midoriya rested beside the wall near him, knees curled loosely against his chest. Neither of them spoke much after the quirk discussion. Midoriya kept drifting into thought instead, muttering occasionally under his breath while tracing absent patterns into the blanket with pale fingers.

Hours later, sometime near dawn, Katsuki finally drifted into shallow exhausted sleep and dreamed immediately. Rain. It poured hard enough to blur the city into grey smears beneath storm clouds while students screamed somewhere far away. Bakugo stood frozen on the pavement staring downward at Midoriya’s body. Only this time it looked wrong. Older.

Izuku lay twisted across concrete with blood spilling beneath him while his bones cracked audibly beneath skin, body jerking and reshaping itself grotesquely in real time like wet clay being crushed and rebuilt by invisible hands. Then the corpse looked up and smiled.

‘Kacchan,’

It said softly through a mouth full of blood,

‘I’m getting older.’

Bakugo woke choking. His entire body jerked violently upright, breath ripping from his throat while adrenaline slammed through his system hard enough to make his vision blur. Cold hands caught his shoulders instantly.

“Kacchan.”

Bakugo recoiled on instinct. Midoriya knelt beside the bed staring at him with wide worried eyes.

“You were yelling.”

Bakugo shoved him away hard enough to nearly send him backwards onto the floor.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

Midoriya froze immediately, and hurt flashed openly across his face. Bakugo pressed shaking hands against his own mouth, trying desperately to regulate his breathing while nausea twisted through his stomach.

“Kacchan?”

Izuku whispered carefully. Midoriya still knelt beside the bed exactly where he’d been pushed, shoulders tense now. And suddenly Bakugo noticed it again. The aging. God. It looked even more obvious in lower light somehow. Midoriya’s face had lost some of its childish softness over time. His limbs looked longer. Leaner. Even his posture carried traces of older awkwardness now instead of pure adolescent gangliness.

Bakugo hated the uncertainty on his face. Midoriya had always known things. Even when nervous. Even when insecure. His brain moved fast enough to analyse problems before most people noticed them. Now he looked lost. And somehow that made everything worse.

“I don’t want you scared of me,”

Midoriya whispered. Bakugo laughed under his breath.

“That ship sailed ages ago.”

Izuku flinched, then looked down into his lap quietly. Then suddenly said;

“Can I try something?”

Bakugo frowned immediately.

“That sentence has never led anywhere good.”

But Izuku ignored him, eyes distant with thought again now.

“If perception affects manifestation… then maybe intentional perception does too.”

Bakugo’s pulse ticked upward immediately.

“What are you talking about?”

Midoriya crawled closer to the bed slowly.

“Kacchan, look at me.”

Bakugo immediately scowled.

“The fuck are you planning?”

“Nothing bad,”

Midoriya said quickly. Which, honestly, meant absolutely nothing anymore. Bakugo should’ve refused. Instead he stared. Midoriya inhaled slowly out of habit more than necessity, then his expression shifted into concentration so intense it almost looked painful. Bakugo felt immediate unease crawl beneath his skin.

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to see if I can control it.”

“The fuck does that mean.”

“If my body changes based on perception, then conscious self perception might influence it too.”

Bakugo blinked.

“You’re trying to change how you look?”

“Maybe.”

Nothing happened at first. Then the room temperature dropped. The air always changed around Midoriya when his quirk acted strangely. Cold spread outward from him slowly, unnatural and grave like, carrying that faint scent Bakugo never fully acknowledged because thinking about it too hard made him feel ill. Rainwater.

“Kacchan,”

He whispered suddenly. For one horrible second Izuku looked younger again; rounder cheeks, smaller frame, oversized middle school uniform hanging awkwardly from narrow shoulders. Then older again. The shift happened too quickly to fully process, features subtly reshaping and correcting themselves like reality struggling to decide which version belonged there. Bakugo recoiled instinctively.

“What the fuck?”

“Kacchan, did you see that?”

Bakugo stared at him. Every instinct screamed at him to get away.

“You need to stop doing weird shit with your quirk.”

“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“I don’t care!”

Bakugo shoved himself upright fully now, blankets tangling around his legs while adrenaline buzzed painfully through his body again.

“You can’t just experiment on yourself!”

Midoriya looked up sharply.

“Why not?”

The question stunned him silent. Izuku blinked, then tilted his head slightly.

“Kacchan, I’m already dead.”

Bakugo stared at him in disbelief. The terrifying part was that Midoriya genuinely didn’t understand why this upset him. Didn’t understand why watching a dead body fluctuate between ages like broken film frames might horrify somebody.

“You’re not supposed to exist,”

Bakugo snapped finally.

“You died. You hit the fucking pavement and died and now you’re here and nobody else can see you and your body keeps changing and your quirk’s getting stronger and I don’t know what the fuck’s happening anymore!”

Midoriya stared at him. Then slowly lowered his eyes.

“Oh. I’m sorry,”

Midoriya whispered. Bakugo hated how quickly guilt followed after every sharp thing he said now. It crawled under his skin almost instantly these days, sour and hot and impossible to ignore. No matter how frightening Midoriya became sometimes, part of Bakugo’s brain still remembered exactly what his body looked like broken open on concrete. Izuku blinked, then frowned faintly at the floor.

“Kacchan.”

“What?”

“When I died…”

Izuku hesitated carefully.

“I wasn’t like this.”

Bakugo stiffened slightly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Midoriya drew his knees closer unconsciously.

“I mean–”

He looked embarrassed suddenly.

“I loved you, obviously.”

Bakugo immediately scowled.

“But not… this badly.”

The room remained cold and quiet around them.

“When I jumped…”

His voice faltered slightly around the word.

“I wanted you to feel guilty.”

Bakugo’s stomach twisted hard. Midoriya continued anyway.

“I wanted you to see what you did to me. I wanted you to hurt, but I wasn’t obsessed with you.”

Bakugo felt unease crawl slowly upward through his spine.

“I still wanted your attention, and I still loved you. But it wasn’t…”

He swallowed.

“It wasn’t like this.”

Midoriya looked up slowly, green eyes wide with nervous thought.

“What if my quirk amplified your perception of me?”

Bakugo frowned sharply.

“The hell does that mean?”

He knew what that meant.

“You always saw me as obsessed with you.”

The sentence sat weirdly. Because, well, Bakugo had. Midoriya trailing after him everywhere, watching him constantly, smiling whenever Katsuki acknowledged him even cruelly. But now that Izuku said it aloud–

“You thought everyone worshipped you. And maybe I did a little, but not enough for this.”

Bakugo’s jaw tightened.

“No.”

“What if–”

“No.”

Midoriya flinched slightly at the sharpness. But he still kept talking.

“You felt responsible, so maybe my quirk tied me to that feeling somehow. Maybe that’s why I can’t leave you alone.”

Bakugo stared at him. Actually stared. Because suddenly Midoriya looked frightened too. Not of Bakugo. Of the possibility he might not even fully be himself anymore.

“You’re saying this is my fault.”

“No!”

Midoriya answered immediately.

“Not consciously, I just mean maybe quirks are psychological and mine manifested weirdly after trauma and–”

“So now I made you obsessed with me too?”

“Kacchan–”

Bakugo stood abruptly.

“Are you fucking serious right now?”

Midoriya recoiled slightly.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes you did.”

Bakugo’s chest had started tightening again. Anger came easier than fear. Simpler.

“You think I wanted this?”

“No!”

“You think I wanted some clingy fucking ghost following me around twenty four seven?”

Midoriya visibly shrank inward.

“I said that’s not what I meant.”

“Then explain it better!”

Bakugo’s voice cracked loudly through the room. Midoriya went silent immediately, but Bakugo couldn’t stop now. Because something about the idea made rage flood hot and unbearable through him. The possibility that Midoriya’s obsession wasn’t fully real. That maybe Bakugo himself had somehow shaped it. Twisted it. Created this horrifying desperate thing through guilt and memory and perception. It made him feel sick.

“You’re basically saying I fucked you up so bad you came back loving me wrong.”

Midoriya stared at him with wide hurt eyes.

“Maybe.”

Bakugo snapped. Explosion cracked violently through the room before he fully realised he’d triggered it, sparks bursting from his palm into the wall beside the desk with enough force to blacken it instantly. Midoriya flinched hard.

“That’s bullshit!”

“Kacchan–”

“YOU think this is easy for me?!”

Another burst of sparks snapped angrily across his fingertips.

“You died! I watched you fucking die and now you’re telling me maybe I built this version of you because I felt guilty?!”

Midoriya looked devastated.

“I’m sorry–”

The room shook faintly with another crackle of nitroglycerin sweat igniting against Bakugo’s palm.

“I never saw you as being in love with me. I saw you as a desperate, weird little freak who wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. Got it, Deku?”

“Kacchan,”

He whispered, and tears finally spilled. Bakugo’s pulse stumbled violently.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake–”

Midoriya folded inward suddenly, hands flying hard over his mouth like he was trying physically to hold something inside himself while panic overtook him.

“I thought you loved me.”

The words came muffled through shaking fingers. Bakugo felt genuine fear spark inside him again.

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did!”

Izuku’s voice cracked sharply. Tears streamed openly down his face now while his breathing dissolved into ugly broken gasps that sounded disturbingly human compared to the corpse like stillness he usually carried.

“You let me stay with you,”

Midoriya choked out.

“You let me sleep beside you and touch you and–and you talk to me–”

“Because I’m scared of you!”

The second the words escaped, Bakugo regretted them. Midoriya made this awful wounded noise deep in his throat. Like something dying. Tears dripped from his chin onto trembling hands while his chest hitched despite the fact he technically did not need oxygen.

“I didn’t know, I didn’t know you still hated me that much.”

Bakugo dragged a hand aggressively down his face.

“Jesus Christ.”

Midoriya suddenly stood up, and the room temperature dropped violently with it.

“Kacchan, I’m sorry.”

His voice had shifted again. Frantic. Bakugo’s stomach sank immediately.

“I’m sorry I kept touching you, I’m sorry I followed you around, I’m sorry I thought you loved me–”

“Deku.”

“I didn’t mean to make you scared of me!”

Cold spread sharply through the room now.

“I know I’m disgusting,”

He choked.

“I know something’s wrong with me, I know I’m not normal anymore but I thought–”

“Shut up.”

“– I thought maybe if you still let me stay then–”

“I said shut up!”

Midoriya flinched violently, then covered his face harder with both hands like he physically could not bear being looked at anymore. Bakugo stared at him, and suddenly saw it. Not the ghost. Not the obsession. Not the terrifying thing his quirk had become. Just Izuku. A boy who had died convinced nobody would ever love him properly. Bakugo’s chest hurt.

“Kacchan,”

He choked out miserably,

“please don’t hate me.”

Chapter Text

Bakugo had always hated the way Midoriya looked at people. Not just him. Everyone. Like every tiny thing they said deserved careful attention and analysis and concern, like human beings were puzzles worth solving instead of obstacles meant to be crushed through and left behind. Even as kids it had been unsettling.

Bakugo remembered scraped knees on playground asphalt, remembered some extra from another class crying over something stupid while Midoriya knelt beside them fussing anxiously despite having absolutely no reason to care. He remembered Izuku chasing after hurt birds, helping old women carry groceries, crying over heroes on television hard enough to get hiccups afterward.

Bakugo used to think it was pathetic. Weak. Too soft. Now he was frozen in his dorm room listening to Midoriya sob and realised with slow dawning horror that maybe he had mistaken kindness for obsession his entire life.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry–”

Bakugo felt sick. Because the more he thought about it, the worse it became. Had Midoriya really been that obsessed with him in middle school? Or had Bakugo simply interpreted everything that way because he couldn’t stand being watched so closely by someone he considered weak?

Izuku followed him around because they grew up together. Because Bakugo was talented and Midoriya admired strength the same way he admired heroes. Normal things. Maybe even the fucking notebook muttering had been normal too. Midoriya analysed everybody. Bakugo just happened to be the person he looked at most because Katsuki had always burned brighter than everyone else around him.

And Bakugo had treated that attention like contamination. He remembered snarling at Midoriya for waiting after school so they could walk home together. Remembered mocking him for asking questions about quirks. Remembered shoving him away over and over while Izuku kept trying stubbornly to stay kind anyway. Maybe he really hadn’t been clingy. Maybe Bakugo just hated being cared about by someone weaker than him.

Midoriya made another horrible choking sound against his hands.

“I didn’t know,”

He whispered again. Bakugo looked at him, and suddenly the entire situation shifted horribly inside his head. Because if Midoriya’s quirk truly responded to Bakugo’s perception, if guilt and memory and expectation shaped him, then maybe this thing sitting shattered on the floor wasn’t entirely who Izuku had been when he died.

Maybe Bakugo had done this. Feeding the haunting version of Midoriya every awful assumption he ever held about him. Obsessive. Clingy. Needy. Pathetic. Desperate. Maybe the quirk took those perceptions and wrapped them around Midoriya’s corpse until they became inseparable from the real person underneath.

Underneath all the obsession and instability, Midoriya still sounded exactly like himself sometimes. The muttering analysis earlier. The frantic apologies now. Those things belonged to Izuku. Bakugo had just buried them beneath fear for so long he stopped noticing. Midoriya’s voice cracked weakly from behind his hands.

“Please don’t hate me.”

Something inside Bakugo snapped. Not angrily, it just broke. Before thinking properly, before his brain could catch up enough to stop him, Bakugo crossed the room and dropped hard onto the floor beside Midoriya. Then wrapped both arms around him – the movement shocked both of them.

Midoriya jerked violently in pure confusion as Bakugo pulled him against his chest, one arm locking around his shoulders while the other gripped shakily against the back of his shirt. Bakugo’s own pulse hammered in his ears. What the fuck was he doing? Midoriya made a tiny stunned noise.

“Kacchan?”

Bakugo buried his face roughly against green curls before he could think too hard about that either. Cold. God, he was cold. Like holding somebody dragged from winter water.

“Shut up,”

Bakugo muttered hoarsely. Izuku collapsed against Bakugo all at once, hands grabbing desperately at the back of Katsuki’s shirt while his entire body shook violently inside the circle of Bakugo’s arms. The room remained freezing around them, but inside Bakugo’s arms Midoriya felt terrifyingly real. Not ghostly. Just a crying teenager unraveling from years of grief and loneliness and death.

“I’m sorry,”

Izuku sobbed into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry I made you scared of me, I didn’t mean to, I thought–”

“I know.”

The words escaped before Bakugo fully meant them. Midoriya jerked slightly at the answer. Bakugo swallowed hard. He knew Midoriya never meant harm even when his behaviour became frightening. He knew the obsession came from love twisted into something unhealthy by death and isolation and Bakugo himself.

“You don’t hate me?”

Izuku whispered shakily. Bakugo closed his eyes. No easy answer came. Hate had never really been the right word for whatever existed between them, even back in middle school.

“No.”

Chapter Text

The classroom buzzed with restless noise. Kaminari had somehow convinced Mina that Sero could not physically survive eating only instant ramen for three consecutive days. Which had immediately escalated into an argument loud enough for Iida to start chopping the air with his arms about nutritional responsibility while Sato looked personally offended on behalf of cooking itself. Bakugo ignored all of it.

He sat near the back of the classroom with his chin propped against one hand and stared blankly toward the front while winter sunlight dragged weak pale bars across the floor. Midoriya lingered by the windows, not close. He usually hovered around him constantly these days; behind his chair or sitting directly beside him or draping himself irritatingly across furniture nearby like some dead clingy cat desperate for attention.

Now, he stayed several metres away, perched quietly on the windowsill beside Todoroki’s desk. Watching him. Todoroki sat perfectly straight at his desk with one hand resting against his cheek while he reread notes from earlier lessons, expression blank in that unnerving way he always looked.

Mina climbed halfway onto Kaminari’s desk dramatically insisting instant noodles counted as vegetables if they were chicken flavour. Kirishima laughed hard enough to nearly choke, and Yaoyorozu looked genuinely distressed by the nutritional discussion happening in front of her. Midoriya barely reacted – his attention remained fixed entirely on Todoroki.

Izuku stopped beside him and simply looked down for several long seconds. Bakugo hated the expression on his face immediately. That soft aching concern; the same look Midoriya used to wear after finding injured animals behind the middle school gym, the same look he used to aim at Bakugo after particularly vicious fights. Like hurting people physically pained him to witness.

“He’s lonely.”

Midoriya whispered. Todoroki continued writing, unaware, and Midoriya looked genuinely upset by being unable to help him. Not fixated. Not obsessive. Just sad. Aizawa finally unzipped himself from his sleeping bag with visible exhaustion.

“Lunch.”

The room exploded instantly into motion. Chairs scraped loudly against floors while conversations overlapped into chaotic noise. Kaminari launched himself toward the door yelling about cafeteria curry while Kirishima shouted after Bakugo to hurry the hell up already.

Bakugo stood, and Midoriya stepped away from Todoroki’s desk and followed several feet behind him toward the hallway. Students flooded past toward stairwells and cafeterias and vending machines, somebody from another class sprinted past yelling about meat buns, and Iida shouted at them for running indoors. Bakugo shoved both hands into his pockets and kept walking.

“Kacchan.”

Bakugo kept walking, and Izuku hurried after him.

“Kacchan.”

Midoriya paused.

“He reminds me of you.”

Bakugo stopped walking immediately, and students swerved around him irritably.

“In middle school, you used to look like that sometimes. Even though you weren’t alone.”

People moved around them in loud rushing waves while Midoriya stood still in the middle of it all. Bakugo looked away first, and suddenly memories surfaced unwanted – middle school classrooms, sweaty palms, explosions crackling while teachers praised him endlessly and classmates crowded too close expecting greatness.

“You’re talking shit,”

Bakugo muttered. Midoriya’s eyes softened painfully.

“No.”

Bakugo started walking again harder this time.

“Nobody sits near him unless they have to. Everybody thinks he’s intimidating so they leave him alone. What if he wants someone to notice?”

Midoriya understood loneliness better than anyone Bakugo had ever known. Even before dying. Especially after. Bakugo kept moving through hallways while Midoriya followed near his shoulder now, quiet but persistent.

“He looked at you during training yesterday like he wanted to ask something. And I think you understand what it feels like to be angry all the time.”

Bakugo paused, and Izuku looked nervous now but kept speaking anyway.

“You know what it’s like when people expect things from you constantly. And when you can’t talk about something because you think it’ll make you weak.”

The hallway noise seemed to fade around them.

“Kacchan, I think he needs help.”

Bakugo looked away sharply toward the cafeteria doors ahead. Not his problem. Shouldn’t be his problem.

“Why the hell do you care so much?”

Bakugo whispered, quiet enough that no one would think he was crazy for speaking to thin air. Midoriya went silent briefly, then smiled sadly.

“Because nobody talked to me.”

The cafeteria was louder than it had any right to be, trays clattered, chairs scraped. Bakugo spotted his group; Kirishima was waving him over like an idiot, Denki already mid sentence about something probably stupid, Sero leaning back in his chair, Mina animatedly stabbing at her food. Bakugo walked straight to them, and Midoriya followed, invisible to everyone else.

“Hey!”

Kirishima called, grinning wide.

“Took you long enough, man, we saved you a seat.”

Bakugo dropped his tray down with more force than necessary, and Denki blinked.

“Bro, why do you look like that?”

“Shut up.”

Sero snorted.

“So normal then.”

Bakugo sat, and Izuku hovered behind him, watching the table like he always did when Bakugo joined others. Then, quietly, he looked past them. To the table near the far end of the cafeteria where Todoroki sat alone. Back straight. Eyes distant. Like he was physically present but mentally somewhere further away from everyone else. Bakugo exhaled sharply through his nose.

Katsuki stood, and all of them turned slightly. Denki blinked.

“Where are you going–?”

Kirishima leant back slightly.

“Dude?”

Bakugo walked straight across the cafeteria – he didn’t so much as glance at Todoroki until he was already standing at his table. Todoroki looked up slowly.

“Bakugo.”

Bakugo scowled.

“Move.”

Silence. A few nearby students glanced over. Todoroki didn’t react immediately. Just studied him for a second like he was calculating whether this was an actual threat or just Bakugo being Bakugo.

“…Why?”

Bakugo clicked his tongue.

“Just sit somewhere else.”

Todoroki blinked.

“That’s not an explanation.”

“It’s a command.”

A pause.

“I’m fine here.”

Bakugo’s eye twitched. Todoroki looked down at his tray again, and Katsuki exhaled sharply through his nose, irritation rising. Then, over his shoulder–

“Oi, extras.”

The nearby students flinched slightly. Bakugo jerked his head toward Kirishima’s table.

“Move.”

Kirishima blinked.

“Huh?”

“Seat swap. Now.”

“Bro, why are you–”

“MOVE.”

Something in Bakugo’s tone cut through the noise. Kirishima hesitated for half a second, then shrugged.

“Alright, alright–c’mon guys.”

Mina looked confused but followed anyway. Sero stood with a lazy stretch. Denki complained the entire time. They relocated right to the opposite side of Todoroki’s table, leaving a space open. Bakugo grabbed the last chair, dragged it and dropped it directly beside Todoroki’s. Metal legs screeched slightly against the floor, then he sat. Todoroki looked between them slowly.

“Why are you sitting here?”

Bakugo cracked his neck.

“Because I said so.”

That didn’t help. Todoroki’s gaze shifted toward the now full space around him.

“You moved everyone.”

“Yeah. Don’t overthink it. Shut up and eat.”

The table settled into noise the way fires settled into embers, still alive, still flickering, but no longer sharp enough to burn the air. Kaminari leant forward with his elbows on the table.

“Okay, real talk, Todoroki, do you ever get tired of the temperature changes? Like, surely it gives you whiplash or something?”

Todoroki paused with his chopsticks mid air.

“I don’t notice.”

Denki immediately made a face.

“That is not normal.”

Mina pointed her fork at him.

“That is so not normal.”

Sero snorted.

“Dude lives like a final boss NPC.”

Todoroki blinked slowly at that.

“What’s an NPC?”

Kaminari groaned, leaning over.

“Oh my god, he’s even worse than I thought.”

Bakugo clicked his tongue, already regretting everything. Kirishima grinned.

“Hey, but seriously, man – you’re always by yourself. Doesn’t that get lonely?”

Todoroki’s expression shifted slightly, just enough to notice if you were actually looking.

“It’s quieter.”

He said finally, and Mina tilted her head.

“That didn’t even answer the question.”

“It did for him,”

Sero said lazily, chewing. Kirishima frowned.

“No, I kinda get it. Some people like quiet, right?”

Denki nodded.

“Yeah but there’s quiet and then there’s ‘emotionally locked in a basement’ quiet.”

Todoroki stared at his food again, not reacting outwardly, but his fingers paused slightly around the chopsticks. Across the table, Mina softened a bit.

“Hey, it’s okay though. You don’t have to force yourself into like… being super loud or anything.”

Todoroki looked up at her.

“I’m not forcing anything.”

“Good,”

She said immediately.

“Because you’d be terrible at it.”

That got a few laughs around the table. Even Todoroki’s eyes flickered faintly, as if he didn’t quite understand the joke but recognised it wasn’t hostile. Denki leant back.

“Still, man, you should hang with us more. It’s like… illegal to be this serious all the time.”

Todoroki blinked.

“It’s illegal?”

Bakugo exhaled sharply through his nose, looking away toward his tray. He could feel it shifting. Todoroki wasn’t retreating as much, wasn’t shutting down completely. The conversation kept dragging him in whether he meant to be part of it or not. Mina suddenly leaned forward again, eyes bright.

“Okay, question, what’s your favourite food?”

Todoroki paused.

“I don’t have one.”

The table collectively groaned.

“That’s not allowed,”

Denki said immediately.

“That’s like saying you don’t have a personality trait.”

“I do,”

Todoroki said calmly.

“Name one.”

Sero challenged, and Todoroki considered.

“… I train.”

“That doesn’t count!”

Mina said instantly. Bakugo scoffed under his breath.

“Idiot.”

Todoroki glanced briefly in his direction, though Bakugo didn’t look back. Then Kirishima softened slightly again, tone shifting.

“Okay, but like… if you had to pick something you actually enjoy, even a little, what would it be?”

Todoroki looked down at his tray. Then quietly;

“Cold soba.”

Denki blinked.

“That’s it? That’s depressing, dude.”

Sero shook his head.

“That’s like emotional minimalism.”

Kirishima smiled a little anyway.

“Hey, it’s something though.”

Bakugo took a bite of his own food, expression still irritated, but less sharp than before. The noise around the table continued; Denki complaining, Mina laughing, Sero making dry remarks, Kirishima trying to keep it all balanced like some overenthusiastic referee. Todoroki stayed in it. And somewhere just behind Bakugo’s shoulder, unseen and unheard, Midoriya watched quietly without speaking.

Chapter Text

Somehow, Todoroki had become part of the group in some dramatic moment where everybody collectively decided to drag him into friendship through sheer emotional force. He started sitting with them at lunch, then training with them outside classes, then existing beside them comfortably enough that Kaminari began throwing himself across Todoroki’s shoulders randomly. Now he sat cross legged on Kirishima’s bedroom floor holding a paper cup full of cheap alcohol while Mina shouted at Denki for nearly knocking over a lamp.

“You can’t lean back that far!”

“I absolutely can,”

Kaminari slurred confidently from where he lay half sideways against Sero’s legs.

“I’m experiencing enhanced balance right now.”

“You are literally horizontal.”

Kirishima’s room smelled like sweat and laundry detergent and whatever shitty artificial flavouring they’d mixed into the drinks. Music played low from somebody’s speaker near the desk, bass vibrating softly through the floorboards while rain battered against the windows outside.

Sero leaned back against Kirishima’s bed scrolling lazily through songs on his phone. Jirou sat beside Mina looking deeply unimpressed with everybody. Todoroki occupied the edge of the rug with perfect posture despite the fact they were at a casual dorm hangout.

Midoriya sat silently atop Kirishima’s bed watching all of them. His eyes followed the group constantly with this soft aching fascination like he was observing a life he should have had. Maybe he was. Kirishima clapped suddenly.

“Alright,”

He announced loudly,

“we need a game before Kaminari becomes fully nonfunctional.”

“I’m already nonfunctional,”

Denki informed him seriously. Mina gasped dramatically.

“Wait wait wait – spin the bottle.”

Jirou rolled her eyes.

“We’re not fourteen.”

“That’s what makes it funny,”

Mina argued. Kaminari immediately sat upright too fast and nearly headbutted Todoroki.

“I support this idea spiritually.”

Bakugo grimaced instantly.

“No.”

“Oh come on,”

Kirishima laughed, and Bakugo looked ready to kill somebody. Midoriya watched him with open amusement now from the bed. That annoyed Bakugo too. Todoroki raised one hand slightly.

“What are the rules?”

Everyone turned toward him. Mina stared, then slowly smiled the smile of somebody about to create problems intentionally.

“Oh no.”

“What?”

Todoroki asked, genuinely confused.

“You don’t know spin the bottle?”

“No.”

Denki immediately lost his mind laughing, and Sero buried his face briefly in his hands. Mina scooted forward excitedly.

“Okay, so, basically everyone sits in a circle and you spin a bottle and whoever it lands on you have to kiss.”

Todoroki blinked once.

“Why?”

Kirishima snorted loudly into his drink.

“That’s actually a really fair question.”

“Because it’s fun,”

Mina insisted.

“Also, important clarification – it only has to be a little kiss if you want. Nobody’s forcing weird tongue stuff.”

Bakugo groaned quietly into his palm. Kirishima grabbed an empty bottle from beside the desk.

“Alright, we’re doing this!”

Bakugo scowled harder.

“The fuck we are.”

Mina pointed at him.

“No backing out now.”

“I never agreed!”

“That sounds like fear,”

Sero said lazily.

“Sounds like self preservation,”

Jirou corrected. Kirishima placed the bottle carefully in the middle of the circle.

“Okay, who goes first?”

Mina immediately pointed at Bakugo.

“Absolutely him.”

“The fuck did I do?”

“You look angriest about it.”

“Because this is dumb!”

“That means nothing,”

Sero said.

“You think breathing is dumb.”

Bakugo looked ready to commit homicide. Midoriya actually laughed softly from the bed, and the sound hit Bakugo harder than expected.

“Absolutely not,”

Bakugo said immediately, and Kirishima grinned.

“C’mon, man.”

“No.”

“You’re literally the funniest possible option.”

Bakugo glared at all of them from his place against the wall, one knee drawn up loosely while the others sat scattered around the floor in varying states of intoxication and poor judgement. The room glowed warm and dim beneath fairy lights Mina had apparently forced Kirishima to keep hanging year round because they ‘improved the vibes’.

“You scared?”

Mina asked sweetly, and Bakugo looked at her like he was considering murder.

“I’m not putting my mouth on any of you extras.”

Denki immediately pointed at him from where he sprawled half across the rug.

“That sounds super repressed.”

“You’re high.”

“And enlightened.”

Jirou snorted into her drink. Kirishima laughed loudly before pointing the bottle toward himself.

“Fine then, I’ll go first.”

Sero immediately leant forward.

“Bold.”

“Manly.”

Kirishima corrected. Then he spun the bottle, and glass rattled loudly across the wooden floorboards while everybody leant inward instinctively watching it turn. Bakugo already looked irritated enough to explode, and then the bottle slowed and stopped directly on him. The room detonated instantly; Mina screamed, Denki physically collapsed sideways laughing, Sero slapped the floor hard enough to choke, even Jirou looked genuinely delighted by the outcome.

“You have got to be fucking kidding.”

Bakugo said, clearly seething. Kirishima let out another laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Damn.”

Bakugo pointed aggressively.

“No.”

“Are you scared?”

“I said I’m not kissing any of you idiots.”

Kirishima shifted awkwardly. To his credit, he didn’t immediately lunge across the floor like Kaminari clearly wished he would for entertainment purposes. Instead he looked at Bakugo properly first.

“You wanna skip?”

He asked simply. The room quieted slightly after that. Bakugo blinked once, like he genuinely hadn’t expected the question. Kirishima shrugged loosely.

“I mean, seriously. Don’t care either way.”

Bakugo stared at him, then clicked his tongue hard.

“Tch.”

Which, unfortunately, everyone there understood fluently. Mina gasped dramatically.

“HE SAID YES.”

“I DIDN’T SAY SHIT!”

“You clicked affirmatively.”

“That’s not a fucking thing.”

Kirishima laughed again, softer this time, then shifted closer across the floor. Bakugo stayed still through obvious force of will alone. The room carried this strange charged energy now beneath all the laughter, everybody suddenly hyperaware of what was happening despite how stupid the game itself was. Kirishima stopped directly in front of Bakugo, close enough their knees nearly touched.

“You sure?”

Bakugo scowled immediately.

“Hurry up.”

Kirishima grinned, then reached up and grabbed lightly at the side of Bakugo’s jaw before kissing him. And immediately it was far more than necessary. Not obscene or aggressive. But definitely not the quick stupid peck he had originally imagined.

Bakugo made a startled sound against his mouth instantly, shoulders jerking slightly in genuine surprise while Kirishima kissed him properly – warm and solid and embarrassingly confident for somebody playing a drunken party game on a dorm room floor.

The room burst into noise around them. Denki screamed, Mina physically toppled sideways into Jirou shrieking, Sero started slamming both hands against the carpet while laughing. Bakugo shoved Kirishima backward hard by the shoulder the second the kiss broke.

“The fuck was that?!”

His face looked murderous. And red. Very red. Kirishima looked equally flushed now, laughing breathlessly while holding both hands up defensively.

“Okay, wow.”

“That was NOT a little kiss!”

“You said hurry up!”

“That didn’t mean consume my fucking face!”

Kaminari could barely breathe anymore.

“BRO.”

Jirou wiped tears from beneath one eye, giggling hard.

“Holy shit.”

Even Todoroki looked mildly stunned.

“That seemed excessive.”

“It WAS excessive,”

Bakugo snapped immediately. Mina eventually recovered enough to breathe again, barely.

“Oh my God,”

She wheezed, clutching her stomach from where she’d collapsed halfway against Jirou.

“I’m gonna kill all of you.”

“You looked into it for a second!”

Kaminari shouted immediately. And Bakugo lunged halfway upright.

“DIE.”

Denki cackled so hard he nearly slid backward into the desk. Kirishima was still laughing too, red faced and sheepish now as the confidence from earlier finally caught up with him.

“Alright, alright, maybe I got carried away.”

“Maybe?”

Sero echoed. Todoroki tilted his head slightly, completely serious.

“Is that not how the game works?”

The room lost it again. Even Bakugo let out one short involuntary snicker before immediately looking furious about it afterward. Midoriya was still watching. Bakugo kept catching glimpses of him between people moving and shifting around the room – pale hands folded loosely in his lap, green eyes fixed mostly on Bakugo and Kirishima now with that same unreadable expression. Not jealous exactly. But thoughtful.

“Next,”

Mina demanded dramatically, snatching the bottle before anybody could recover fully. She handed it to Kaminari, who spun it aggressively. Glass scraped loudly across the wooden floor while everyone leant inward again instinctively. It spun. Slowed. Stopped on Jirou, who groaned immediately into both hands.

“No.”

Kaminari looked equally horrified despite being visibly high and slightly drunk at the same time. Bakugo remembered vaguely hearing him mention weed helped stop his quirk from overfiring. Something about slowing his brain down enough the electricity stopped hurting. Right now it mostly seemed to make him stupid. More stupid.

“Wait, no, hold on.”

Denki protested, and Kirishima grinned.

“Okay, this one’s kinda cute though.”

“It’s not cute,”

Jirou snapped immediately, though her face had already gone pink. Kaminari sat frozen beside the edge of the rug looking like somebody had informed him the government was about to execute him publicly. Jirou pointed accusingly at Mina.

“This is your fault somehow.”

“I accept no responsibility except emotional encouragement.”

“Okay, but like,”

Kaminari started weakly,

“we don’t have to make it weird.”

“You are already making it weird,”

Jirou informed him flatly.

“That’s because everyone’s looking!”

“Yeah,”

Sero said.

“That’s generally how this game works.”

Denki groaned loudly, and Jirou looked equally uncomfortable now despite trying significantly harder not to show it. Bakugo watched the whole thing with open irritation. Kirishima nudged Kaminari’s shoulder lightly.

“C’mon, man.”

Denki looked like he wanted to evaporate. Then, after another second of visible suffering, he shifted awkwardly closer toward Jirou. She immediately pointed a finger at him.

“Do not make this dramatic.”

“I’m literally incapable of being normal right now.”

“That’s not new.”

Mina made a strangled delighted noise into her drink. Jirou sighed heavily, then grabbed the front of Kaminari’s shirt herself and kissed him before he could panic harder. Quick. Clumsy. Still enough to shut the room up briefly afterward. Kaminari froze completely, fully. Eyes wide, brain visibly disconnected from the rest of his body. Then Jirou pulled away and immediately covered her face with one hand.

“There, done.”

Kaminari still hadn’t moved, and Sero leant sideways slightly to look at him better.

“You alive?”

Denki blinked slowly, then pointed shakily at Jirou without taking his eyes off her.

“I think my soul just ascended.”

Jirou made a horrified sound, and the room exploded again. Mina physically rolled onto the carpet screaming with laughter while Kirishima nearly knocked over his drink. Even Todoroki looked visibly confused by the intensity of Kaminari’s reaction. Bakugo buried his face briefly in one hand.

After Kaminari finished having what appeared to be a near religious experience over a two second kiss, the game descended rapidly into complete chaos. Mina spun next, and the bottle landed on Sero. Then Mina kissed Sero hard enough to make him choke on his own laugh halfway through it. Not weird, just aggressively Mina. Fast and confident and entirely committed to the bit. When she pulled away, Sero blinked twice.

“… I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“Thank you,”

Mina replied proudly. Kirishima nearly cried laughing. Midoriya sat on the bed watching all of it with fascination, eyes moving constantly between faces and reactions and body language like he was analysing something complicated. Bakugo kept noticing him smile. Like he enjoyed seeing people happy even while existing outside it all.

Kirishima ended up kissing Sero. It was sloppy and brief and mostly ruined by Kaminari yelling commentary the entire time from the floor. Then Todoroki landed on Mina, and the room went silent immediately. Because everybody suddenly realised Todoroki had absolutely no idea how to kiss someone. The man sat there perfectly still holding the bottle while Mina stared at him with dawning understanding.

“Oh no,”

She whispered, and Todoroki blinked.

“What?”

“You’ve never done this before.”

“Correct.”

Denki physically folded in half laughing, and Todoroki looked genuinely puzzled by the reaction. Mina immediately softened.

“Okay wait no, that’s actually kinda cute.”

Midoriya buried his face briefly in his hands from the bed like he physically couldn’t handle the secondhand embarrassment already radiating through the room. Eventually Mina kissed him first, gentle and quick, and Todoroki stayed so rigid during it he looked like somebody being assessed medically. When it ended, he frowned slightly.

“I may have done that wrong.”

The room lost their minds again. Bakugo actually snorted into his drink this time, and Todoroki immediately looked toward him.

“You’re laughing.”

Bakugo scowled instantly.

“Shut up.”

The spins continued; Jirou kissed Mina while both of them laughed halfway through it, Kaminari somehow ended up kissing Kirishima despite not even spinning the bottle. Then Bakugo reluctantly spun the bottle, and it stopped directly on Todoroki.

“No.”

Bakugo said sharply, and Mina collapsed sideways laughing already.

“This is EVERYTHING to me.”

Todoroki looked surprisingly calm about it.

“I suppose this was inevitable.”

“That is NOT the sentence you should say before kissing someone,”

Jirou informed him immediately. Bakugo looked murderously angry. Kirishima rubbed at his face trying not to laugh again.

“You can skip if you want.”

Bakugo opened his mouth instantly, then Todoroki spoke first.

“I don’t mind.”

“The hell do you mean you don’t mind?!”

Bakugo snapped.

“You seem hygienic.”

Kaminari made a noise like he was dying, and Bakugo dragged one hand hard down his face.

“Fine, whatever.”

Mina immediately slammed both fists against the floor in victory. Todoroki shifted slightly closer, still weirdly composed, and Katsuki looked like he regretted every life decision leading to this point. Then Todoroki leant forward and kissed Bakugo, and immediately it was terrible. Not unpleasant exactly, just stiff, awkward. Like Todoroki approached kissing the same way he approached combat training – technically focused but emotionally disconnected from his own body.

Bakugo tolerated it for approximately two seconds before visibly getting irritated, then grabbed Todoroki by the jaw and took over completely before he could think about it. In all honesty, his drive to be better had taken over in the moment. Unlike Todoroki, Bakugo kissed like a challenge. Sharp and rough and startlingly intense for someone who spent most of his life pretending emotional vulnerability was a terminal illness.

Todoroki made a small surprised sound against his mouth, and Bakugo deepened the kiss immediately afterward out of what looked almost entirely like spite. And when Bakugo finally pulled away breathing slightly harder than before, the first thing he noticed was Izuku’s face. Not angry. Not devastated. Just heartbroken.

Chapter Text

The room still roared around him. Mina was halfway through threatening to frame the moment and hang it on the dorm wall. Kirishima looked like he physically could not stop laughing. Sero had collapsed fully onto the carpet clutching his stomach while Kaminari kept yelling variations of ‘WHAT WAS THAT’ every few seconds like his brain couldn’t move on. Todoroki, meanwhile, sat completely still. Blinking slowly like Bakugo had just punched him psychologically.

“… Oh,”

He said after a long pause. Bakugo ignored all of them – because Midoriya looked wrecked. Not dramatic or crying, somehow worse. Izuku still sat on the bed exactly where he’d been the whole night, pale hands twisted tightly together in his lap while he stared at Bakugo with this awful hollow expression. Bakugo felt guilt slam into his ribs hard, and his pulse kicked unevenly.

Midoriya looked away first, then lowered his head slightly and smiled. A tiny one. Forced. Bakugo’s stomach turned violently. Without thinking, he leant across the floor and snatched the nearest drink straight out of Kaminari’s hand. Denki yelped.

“HEY–”

Bakugo downed half of it immediately, then nearly choked.

“What the FUCK?”

The alcohol burned like liquid antiseptic all the way down his throat, sharp enough to make his eyes water instantly. He coughed once harshly into his wrist while the room burst into fresh laughter around him. Kaminari looked deeply offended.

“Bro, that was my emotional support vodka!”

“That’s not a fucking mixed drink,”

Bakugo snapped hoarsely.

“That’s paint thinner!”

Denki pointed at him lazily.

“That’s because you’re a lightweight.”

Bakugo stared at the cup, then at Kaminari. Then back at the cup.

“…How much vodka is in this?”

Kaminari looked thoughtful.

“Mostly vodka.”

“Mostly?”

“There’s a little lemonade.”

“WHERE?”

Jirou groaned loudly from across the rug.

“It’s medicinal,”

Denki argued immediately.

“For what, organ failure?”

Bakugo scowled harder. Kaminari shrugged loosely, still visibly a little too relaxed and glassy eyed. Mina suddenly pointed dramatically across the circle.

“WAIT.”

Everyone looked at her as she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Bakugo.

“You drank because you were stressed.”

Bakugo stared back flatly.

“No I didn’t.”

“You totally did,”

Sero laughed.

“Dude got emotionally overwhelmed.”

“I’ll emotionally overwhelm your funeral.”

Todoroki, still oddly thoughtful after the kiss, tilted his head slightly toward Bakugo.

“You seem agitated.”

Bakugo looked at him like he wanted him dead.

“No shit.”

Todoroki considered this carefully.

“Was I truly that bad at kissing?”

The room burst into laughter again. Kaminari nearly spilled somebody else’s drink onto himself laughing while Mina physically screamed into a pillow. Bakugo groaned hard and dragged both hands down his face, then finished the rest of the drink out of pure spite. Halfway through, he realised that was a terrible idea.

The vodka burned viciously down his throat, harsh enough to make his chest feel hot underneath his shirt while warmth spread outward through his limbs. By the time the cup emptied, his head already felt heavier, thoughts loosening slightly. He crushed the paper cup in one hand, then threw it directly at Kaminari’s face.

“Ow. Assault.”

“You drink like an alcoholic divorcee,”

Bakugo snapped. Kaminari pointed at him triumphantly.

“See? You get me.”

“I absolutely do not.”

“You just raw dogged straight vodka.”

“… I thought it had lemonade?”

Mina nearly fell backwards off the rug laughing while Kirishima wheezed into both hands. Even Todoroki looked visibly more relaxed now, shoulders looser beneath his shirt while the alcohol softened the rigid edge of his posture slightly.

Midoriya still sat quietly on the bed, watching Bakugo. Always watching him. But now there was distance in it again. Bakugo hated how aware he’d become of every tiny emotional shift in Midoriya’s expression lately. He grabbed another drink off the floor before thinking too hard about it, and Jirou immediately narrowed her eyes.

“Hold on,”

She said slowly.

“Bakugo never drinks this much, if at all. Are you good, dude?”

“I’m not drinking that much.”

“You’re literally opening another one.”

Bakugo glared at her over the rim of the drink and took a long swallow anyway. This one tasted slightly less like chemical warfare. Sero leant back against the bed with a grin.

“Nah, let him. Drunk Bakugo sounds hilarious.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“You are absolutely getting there,”

Mina informed him. Bakugo scoffed, then realised the room had actually started tilting very slightly. He took another drink, and Midoriya frowned from the bed.

“Kacchan.”

Bakugo ignored him automatically. Kirishima nudged his shoulder lightly.

“You good, man?”

“Fine.”

“Your face is bright red.”

Bakugo laughed under his breath, and everyone paused. Not because the laugh itself was unusual anymore. Because it sounded loose, unrestrained. Katsuki rarely laughed without sounding like he was challenging someone to a fight. Kaminari pointed dramatically.

“HE’S DRUNK.”

“I’m going to beat you to death with your own spine.”

Todoroki watched Bakugo with quiet fascination now.

“You’re louder after you drink.”

Bakugo turned slowly toward him.

“The fuck does that mean.”

“I didn’t think you could get any louder.”

Bakugo stared at Todoroki in genuine disbelief, then pointed vaguely at him with the drink.

“You’re weird.”

“I’ve been told.”

Midoriya smiled faintly at that from the bed, and Bakugo drank more. Jirou noticed it immediately.

“Okay, maybe slow down.”

“I’m fine.”

“You say that like every guy before vomiting in a sink.”

“I’m not gonna vomit.”

“Your organs are probably terrified.”

Denki nodded solemnly.

“His liver’s fighting for its life right now.”

Bakugo threw a bag of snacks at him and missed completely. Everyone screamed laughing.

“Oh my God,”

Mina wheezed.

“His coordination’s gone.”

“It’s not! Shut up, extra!”

“You missed him by like three feet.”

Midoriya actually laughed properly this time, genuine enough his shoulders shook slightly. Bakugo looked toward him immediately, and Izuku startled faintly at being noticed. Then smiled again before he could stop himself. And suddenly Bakugo wanted another drink just to stop whatever the fuck that feeling was underneath his ribs.

By the time midnight dragged itself bleeding across the clock on Kirishima’s desk, Bakugo had become catastrophically drunk. He drank like he approached most things in life – aggressively, competitively, and with absolutely no regard for consequences once his pride got involved. The problem was that he almost never drank.

Because alcohol was stupid. Expensive poison voluntarily swallowed by idiots who wanted liver damage and poor judgement packaged together in colourful cans. That had always been his opinion. Unfortunately, this meant his tolerance was effectively nonexistent.

So now he sat slumped sideways against Kirishima’s bed with his legs stretched across the carpet and his face burning hot while the entire room tilted gently every time he moved his head too quickly.

“Okay,”

Jirou had said carefully while watching Bakugo attempt to argue with a packet of snacks that wouldn’t open properly,

“he is destroyed.”

“I’m not destroyed,”

Bakugo had snapped immediately before dropping the snack onto the floor entirely. Kaminari pointed at him triumphantly from his own nest of blankets.

“That’s exactly what destroyed people say.”

At some point Mina ended up half laying across the rug talking loudly about celebrity crushes while Sero contributed increasingly terrible opinions purely to annoy her. Kirishima had laughed so hard at something Todoroki said that he actually slid sideways off his chair. Todoroki himself somehow remained bizarrely functional despite drinking almost as much as everyone else.

Bakugo suspected it was because nothing short of chemical warfare could alter Todoroki’s emotional state significantly. Eventually, people started leaving in slow waves of exhaustion. Jirou practically dragged Kaminari upright, and Sero stumbled after them laughing under his breath while Mina announced dramatically that she required “three business days of recovery” before disappearing into the hallway.

Todoroki paused near the doorway, then looked back toward Kirishima.

“Thank you for inviting me.”

Kirishima grinned tiredly from where he sat on the bed.

“Anytime, man.”

Todoroki nodded, then his eyes shifted briefly toward Bakugo slumped half sideways on the carpet.

“You should drink water.”

Bakugo flipped him off weakly without opening his eyes fully.

“That means he likes you,”

Kirishima informed Todoroki solemnly.

“… I see.”

Then Todoroki left too. The room finally fell quieter afterward. Music played low and muffled from the forgotten speaker near the desk. Empty bottles and crushed snack packets littered the floor around blankets twisted into nests from where everyone had sprawled earlier. Bakugo remained where he was, and Kirishima looked down at him from the bed.

“You alive?”

“Tch.”

“So no.”

Bakugo made a vague irritated noise into the carpet. His thoughts had gone slow and heavy now, dragged underwater by vodka and exhaustion and emotions he did not remotely want to examine. Kirishima laughed quietly under his breath.

“You’re staying here tonight, man.”

Bakugo cracked one eye open slightly.

“The fuck I am.”

“You can barely sit upright.”

“I can absolutely sit upright.”

He attempted to prove this, and got halfway upright, before he immediately tipped sideways into the bedframe hard enough to rattle it. Kirishima laughed as Bakugo scowled furiously from the floor.

“Shut up.”

“No way,”

Kirishima wheezed.

“You’re actually drunk.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Tomorrow maybe.”

Bakugo closed his eyes again. His body felt hot and heavy and strangely numb, thoughts blurring together useless every time he tried focusing properly. Midoriya looked beneath weak fairy lights. Dead. Beautiful in that awful ruined way ghosts sometimes were. Bakugo stared at him heavily through alcohol blurred vision, and Midoriya looked nervous immediately after being caught.

“…You should sleep,”

He whispered, and Bakugo squinted at him. Then, because his brain had stopped filtering anything properly hours ago, he muttered thickly;

“Y’look sad.”

Midoriya froze. Above him, Kirishima shifted on the mattress with a tired groan.

“… Dude.”

Bakugo grunted vaguely in response.

“You still alive down there?”

“M’fine.”

“You sound like you’re dying.”

Bakugo frowned at the carpet. Kirishima sighed dramatically before sitting upright, red hair flattened messily on one side. Even exhausted, he still carried that same ridiculous warmth around him constantly, like his entire existence operated half a degree brighter than everybody else’s. He leant over the edge of the mattress looking down at Bakugo.

“Seriously, man. C’mon.”

Bakugo shut his eyes harder.

“Don’ wanna move.”

Kirishima let out a sleepy laugh at that.

“Oh my God, you’re absolutely plastered.”

Bakugo considered arguing and forgot what the argument was halfway through. Kirishima shook his head fondly before climbing carefully off the bed.

“You know,”

He muttered while stretching,

“for somebody who acts like drinking’s for idiots, you are REALLY bad at handling alcohol.”

Bakugo scowled weakly from the floor.

“Shut up.”

“Nope.”

Then strong hands hooked beneath Bakugo’s arms before he fully realised what was happening. Bakugo jerked immediately.

“Relax,”

Kirishima laughed.

“I’m not dropping you.”

“I can get up myself.”

“Sure you can.”

Despite the teasing, Kirishima’s grip stayed careful. He hauled Bakugo upright with surprising ease before wrapping one arm securely around his back to stop him immediately falling sideways again. Which absolutely would have happened.

“Hate this,”

Katsuki muttered.

“I know.”

Kirishima sounded weirdly gentle about it. Not mocking, just understanding. Bakugo’s head spun harder once he stood properly, stomach lurching unpleasantly while the room swayed around him in blurred warm colours. Kirishima clicked his tongue.

“Yeah, okay, you are NOT making it back to your dorm tonight.”

Bakugo made another irritated noise while Kirishima guided him toward the bed. Across the room, Midoriya sat silently atop the desk now, watching everything with wide eyes. Bakugo deliberately did not look at him again. Kirishima shoved blankets aside with one hand before pushing Bakugo down onto the mattress. The second his body hit something soft, exhaustion slammed through him brutally.

Bakugo tried sitting back up out of spite alone, and Kirishima pushed him gently back down by the shoulder.

“Nah,”

He laughed softly.

“Sleep.”

Bakugo scowled but didn’t fight properly this time. Kirishima pulled the blanket properly over him afterward, movements clumsy from his own exhaustion but still careful enough that something tight and unpleasant twisted briefly in Bakugo’s chest. Because nobody had really taken care of him like this before. Not casually. Kirishima flopped back down beside him afterward with a heavy sigh.

“You’re lucky you’re my friend,”

He muttered. Bakugo snorted weakly.

“That’s debatable.”

Kirishima laughed quietly into the dark. Then after a second;

“You know you don’t always gotta act like everything’s a fight, right?”

Bakugo stared up at the ceiling silently, and Kirishima rolled slightly onto one side facing him.

“I mean it, you can just let people help you sometimes.”

Bakugo swallowed. His throat felt strangely tight suddenly. Probably the vodka. Definitely the vodka.

“Whatever.”

Kirishima smiled tiredly at the response anyway. Then reached over blindly to shove a bottle of water into Bakugo’s chest.

“Drink this.”

Bakugo groaned.

“Bossy bastard.”

Despite himself, Bakugo drank, and Kirishima looked deeply satisfied afterward.

“See? Growth.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Eventually Kirishima settled properly beside him, breathing evening out gradually beneath the dim glow of lights while rain continued muttering outside the windows. Bakugo stayed awake longer, staring upward. Aware of Midoriya sitting silently across the room watching him through the dark.

Chapter Text

Kirishima didn’t fall asleep immediately. He pretended to. Mostly because Bakugo clearly wanted the conversation dead and buried beneath concrete before it got anywhere near feelings again, and Kirishima had known him long enough now to understand the difference between pushing him a little and pushing him too far.

So he stayed still beside him beneath the dim amber glow of fairy lights, one arm tucked beneath his head, listening carefully as Bakugo’s breathing slowly changed beside him. Kirishima cracked one eye open slightly. Bakugo lay sprawled half on his stomach beside him, ash blonde hair messy against the pillow, face softened by exhaustion and vodka and unconsciousness.

It still threw Kirishima off sometimes; how different Bakugo looked when he stopped fighting the world for five minutes. Usually Katsuki existed like a lit fuse. All sharp edges and instinctive aggression and this constant tense pressure beneath his skin like he was perpetually bracing for impact.

Now, asleep and drunk enough to stop guarding himself properly, he just looked tired. Human in a way he clearly hated people noticing. Kirishima stared quietly. Fondly, maybe. Somewhere along the line Bakugo had become important to him despite being an aggressive nightmare roughly seventy percent of the time.

The idiot worked himself into the ground constantly. Snapped at people whenever they got too close to anything real. Acted like vulnerability was a terminal disease. And still, somehow, Kirishima had watched him slowly start letting them in anyway. Tiny pieces at a time – a laugh here, staying after class there, actually sitting with them during lunch instead of eating alone like a feral animal prepared to bite anyone approaching too quickly.

Beside him, Bakugo shifted slightly in his sleep. Bakugo rolled onto his side toward him with an irritated sleepy frown pulling briefly at his mouth. Then, before Kirishima fully processed what was happening, Bakugo threw one arm heavily across his waist, and Kirishima froze. Bakugo made a low annoyed sound into the pillow like even unconscious he was pissed off about existence. Kirishima stared down at the arm around him in genuine disbelief.

“… No way,”

He whispered silently to himself. Bakugo, apparently deciding that wasn’t enough, shifted again until his forehead nearly bumped against Kirishima’s shoulder. Awake Bakugo would rather chew through concrete than initiate physical affection voluntarily. The man barely tolerated hugs unless emotionally ambushed. And now here he was half curled against Kirishima in his sleep like an oversized hostile cat.

Kirishima bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to stop himself laughing out loud. Holy shit. If anybody else saw this, Bakugo would commit actual murder. Bakugo breathed steadily against his shoulder, completely unaware of himself for once in his goddamn life. Kirishima smiled helplessly into the dark.

“You’re such a disaster, man.”

He muttered. Kirishima stayed awake far longer than he meant to. Mostly because every time he started drifting properly toward sleep, Bakugo shifted slightly beside him and his brain immediately short circuited again over the fact that Katsuki Bakugo – human hand grenade, angry nightmare – was currently asleep with one arm wrapped around him.

Rain softened outside eventually, fading into quiet dripping sounds from the gutters while the dorm building settled deeper into nighttime silence. Somewhere far down the corridor a door slammed briefly before everything went still again. Kirishima looked down at him again.

His face was pressed halfway into the pillow now, brows faintly furrowed even asleep like his body didn’t know how to fully relax anymore. Blonde lashes cast soft shadows across his cheeks beneath the fairy lights. His hair smelled faintly smoky from nitroglycerin and sweat and whatever shampoo he used.

Kirishima’s chest tightened weirdly again. Because Bakugo trusted almost nobody, and even then it came out through insults and yelling and aggressive loyalty instead of anything easy or soft. But trust was still there underneath all of it. Kirishima knew that. He’d earned it slowly over months of stubborn persistence and refusing to get scared off every time Bakugo barked at him.

Beside him, Bakugo suddenly stirred, and Kirishima froze automatically. Bakugo made a low rough noise in the back of his throat before blinking one eye open slightly. Still drunk. His gaze unfocused completely for a second before landing blearily on Kirishima’s face.

“…Kiri,”

He mumbled. Kirishima stared. Not because Bakugo didn’t call him that often, but because he sounded so soft saying it now. Voice ruined by exhaustion and alcohol.

Bakugo squinted at him harder like trying to process why Kirishima existed directly in front of him. Then his expression scrunched irritably.

“T’fuck y’lookin at.”

Kirishima nearly laughed out loud in relief. There he was.

“Nothing, man,”

He whispered, and Bakugo grunted suspiciously. For one terrifying second Kirishima thought he might actually wake up fully and realise the position they were in. Instead Bakugo just frowned harder, muttered something incomprehensible into the pillow, then shoved weakly at Kirishima’s shoulder.

“Warm.”

“… Thanks?”

“Tch.”

Then, with all the grace of a collapsing building, Bakugo rolled away from him again. The arm disappeared from around Kirishima’s waist as Bakugo dragged most of the blanket with him aggressively before settling onto his side facing away. Within maybe thirty seconds his breathing evened out again completely. Dead asleep.

Kirishima stared at the back of his head for a long moment afterward. Then laughed quietly. Bakugo was ridiculous. Genuinely. The guy spent every waking moment trying to act invincible and terrifying and untouchable, then got drunk once and immediately turned into the clingiest unconscious person Kirishima had ever met.

It was kinda endearing. Kirishima rubbed tiredly at his face before finally settling properly back into the mattress. Still smiling faintly. Bakugo trusted him enough to let his guard down completely even by accident. And maybe it was stupid, but Kirishima thought that was kind of manly.

Chapter Text

Bakugo woke up feeling like somebody had filled his skull with cement. The weak grey light bleeding through the curtains stabbed straight through his eyelids, his head pounding thick behind his eyes while his mouth tasted like poor life choices.

“…Fuck,”

He muttered into the pillow. Even his voice sounded hungover. Slowly, he forced one eye open. His room. The familiar ceiling stared back at him through the dull haze in his vision – cracked paint near the corner above his desk, the faint glow of his digital clock, discarded clothes half thrown toward the laundry basket.

He definitely did not remember getting back here. The last thing he remembered clearly was Kirishima’s room spinning sideways beneath warm fairy lights while he practically blacked out face first into the mattress. Oh God. Bakugo made a low sound of genuine suffering into the pillow.

He was never drinking again.

His phone buzzed somewhere beneath the blanket near his hip. Bakugo dragged it out with the enthusiasm of a dying man.

11:07 AM.

His stomach dropped instantly. Class had started hours ago. Bakugo sat upright too quickly and immediately regretted it as pain detonated through his skull hard enough to blur his vision.

“Shit–”

His phone buzzed again. Kirishima. Bakugo squinted blearily at the screen.

EIJIROU;
‘told aizawa u were sick
dont come to class hungover u’ll look haunted’

Bakugo stared at the message, then slowly dropped back against the pillow as relief hit him hard. Kirishima had covered for him. Of course he had, the idiot was stupidly reliable like that. Another notification sat beneath it, and Bakugo physically recoiled.

UNKNOWN NUMBER;
‘Bakugo, I hope you are recovering well. Please ensure you remain hydrated. I have taken notes from this morning’s lessons and can provide photocopies later.

– Tenya Iida.’

Bakugo grimaced at the screen in genuine horror. How the fuck did four eyes get his number? He vaguely remembered Kirishima making some class group chat weeks ago. Apparently that had been a tactical mistake. Bakugo dropped the phone onto his chest with a groan and rubbed both hands hard down his face.

Everything hurt. Especially his pride.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, then looked up and froze. Midoriya stood beside the desk, completely still. Green eyes fixed entirely on Bakugo with a weird expression sitting heavy behind them. The room suddenly felt colder.

“… What,”

He muttered hoarsely. Midoriya didn’t answer immediately, just kept staring. Then finally, softly;

“You laughed with him,”

Bakugo clicked his tongue and shoved himself more upright against the headboard despite the fact his skull felt like it was splitting apart.

“Yeah. And?”

“You let him carry you.”

“So?”

Midoriya’s fingers twitched slightly at his sides.

“He touched you a lot.”

Bakugo frowned harder. Jealousy showed awfully and childishly transparent in the way only Midoriya could manage, emotions always spilling visibly across his face no matter how hard he tried containing them. Bakugo’s stomach tightened. Izuku took one slow step closer toward the bed.

“Do you like him?”

Bakugo scoffed harshly despite the pounding in his head.

“Don’t start this shit.”

“Kacchan.”

“No.”

Midoriya’s jaw tightened slightly.

“You smiled at him.”

Bakugo let out a cold laugh.

“Jesus Christ, you sound fucking insane.”

Something flickered sharply across Midoriya’s face at that. Hurt. Then anger immediately swallowing it whole.

“You kissed him.”

Bakugo’s patience snapped.

“Yeah? It was a fucking game.”

Every nerve in his body already felt scraped raw from the hangover and now Midoriya stood over him with that awful obsessive intensity in his eyes again, staring at him like Bakugo had personally betrayed him by existing around other people.

“I don’t fucking belong to you,”

“I know that.”

Bakugo knew immediately something bad was about to happen. He sat up straighter automatically, way too late. Midoriya moved suddenly, fast enough that Bakugo barely processed it before icy fingers closed hard around his wrist. Bakugo hissed violently through his teeth as pressure crushed down directly over old scars across his arm, Midoriya’s grip impossibly strong despite how thin he looked.

“What the fuck–”

Izuku shoved him backward hard. Bakugo slammed against the headboard with enough force to rattle it loudly against the wall. His hangover flattened reflexes lagged badly. Midoriya climbed onto the bed immediately afterward and pinned him there by the shoulders.

“Do you like him?”

Midoriya repeated. Bakugo shoved hard against his chest. It did absolutely nothing.

“You psycho – get the fuck off me.”

Midoriya flinched slightly, then tightened his grip harder. Bakugo swore sharply as pain shot through his shoulders.

“He takes care of you,”

Izuku whispered. The jealousy in his voice sounded broken. Bakugo glared straight up at him through pounding adrenaline and hangover nausea.

“You need serious fucking help.”

Midoriya’s expression cracked instantly. For one split second he looked devastated, then angry again.

“I died for you.”

Guilt surged up so hard it nearly drowned the anger for a second. Then Midoriya’s grip bruised harder against his shoulders.

“Your death wasn’t some fucking gift to me!”

Midoriya recoiled slightly like he’d been hit. Bakugo shoved upward hard enough to finally force some space between them.

“You think haunting me forever means I owe you something?”

He snarled.

“You think I’m supposed to stop talking to everybody else because you killed yourself?!”

Midoriya’s face crumpled immediately.

Bakugo barely noticed.

“You don’t get to hurt me because you’re jealous, you don’t get to fucking own me.”

Midoriya went very still above him for a moment, not because he had run out of words, but because he seemed to be listening to something only he could hear. And when he spoke again his voice came out quieter, thinner, almost gentle in a way that made it worse rather than better.

“I remember all of it, Kacchan. I remember the way the wind sounded like it was screaming even before I hit anything. I remember hoping you were still at school.”

Bakugo jerked beneath him immediately.

“Shut up.”

Midoriya didn’t.

“I remember my shoe coming off first,”

Izuku continued, voice trembling slightly now, but still steady in that awful way,

“like my body started losing pieces of itself before I even understood I had started falling. And I remember the roof edge getting smaller and smaller so fast it stopped looking real. It looked like someone had cut the world away from me and I was just dropping through the gap.”

Bakugo made a sound, sharp, trying to sit up, trying to shove him off again, but Midoriya’s hands tightened enough to keep him pinned.

“And then the impact didn’t feel like what people think it feels like, it wasn’t instant. It was like my body tried to decide what to break first and lost the argument, so everything just… went at once. My knees folded, and I heard something in my leg crack so loudly it sounded like it came from outside me, and my spine–”

“Stop!”

Bakugo yelled, voice hoarse now, cracking under strain as his hands clawed uselessly at Midoriya’s wrists. Midoriya flinched, but only slightly, like the sound passed through him rather than stopping him.

“And my face hit last, I remember the taste of blood. Filling my mouth so fast I couldn’t even swallow it properly, it just poured out around my teeth and down my throat while I was still trying to breathe. I couldn’t tell which direction was up anymore because everything was spinning.”

Bakugo’s breathing had gone shallow, panicked. Midoriya leant closer anyway.

“I remember laying there and feeling my fingers move when I didn’t tell them to,”

Izuku whispered,

“like my nerves were still firing even though nothing was attached correctly anymore, and I remember trying to reach for my phone. I remember hoping, really hoping, that if I died fast enough maybe you would finally be happy.”

Bakugo let out a broken, strangled sound, something between a sob and a yell, and he finally managed to shove hard enough to get one shoulder free, but Midoriya followed immediately, still talking, still pressing.

“And then it got quieter,”

Izuku said, voice shaking more now,

“not peaceful, just quieter, like the world was turning its volume down on me specifically. And the last thing I saw clearly was you looking down at me, and I couldn’t tell if you were angry or scared, I couldn’t tell anything anymore.”

“Stop,”

Bakugo begged now, not yelling anymore, voice breaking completely, pleading in a way that felt physically painful to hear,

“Stop, stop, stop, I get it, I get it, I get it–”

Midoriya finally went quiet. His breathing was uneven, shaking, and for a second it looked like he might collapse forward onto Bakugo entirely, like all of that weight he’d been carrying in words had finally started leaking out of him at once.

Bakugo lay there underneath him, shaking, face twisted, eyes wide in a way he would have killed anyone for witnessing. And Midoriya just stared at him, trembling, still too close, still not letting go, like neither of them knew anymore how to stop holding on without falling apart completely.

Then, Izuku kept going anyway.

“In middle school, I didn’t just go home and crying and try to get through it. I started changing how I moved through everything. I stopped looking people in the eye. I stopped speaking unless I had to. I stopped sitting near people because every time I did I was terrified.”

Bakugo’s throat tightened.

“And when people laughed, it wasn’t just words anymore. It became–”

he hesitated, searching for something accurate, something that fit,

“–it became physical. Like I could feel it on my skin. Like I was already… damaged.”

Bakugo shifted slightly underneath him.

“I didn’t do that,”

He muttered. Midoriya’s eyes flicked down instantly.

“You did.”

“No.”

“You did,”

Izuku repeated, a little sharper now, but not angry in the usual sense, more like desperate to be understood,

“you were the centre of it. You were the reason it was safe for everyone else to do it. If you did it, it was normal. It was allowed.”

Bakugo’s hands curled into fists against the bed sheets.

“That’s not how it works.”

“It was how it worked for me,”

Midoriya said immediately.

“I stopped sleeping properly. I’d lie there and replay everything people said during the day. Every joke. Every nickname. Every time someone shoved me in a hallway and didn’t even look back. Every time someone beat the shit out of me. Every time someone touched me. It started stacking up in my head until I couldn’t tell what was happening now and what had already happened.”

Midoriya looked at him.

“And you were always there in it. I don’t mean physically. You were the shape of it. The scale of it. If you could do it, then everyone else could justify it too. You were proof.”

Bakugo’s voice came out rough.

“Stop talking.”

“You don’t understand,”

Izuku continued, voice breaking slightly,

“it wasn’t just that people hurt me, it was that I started expecting it everywhere. In classrooms. In hallways. In silence. I started flinching when people walked too close because I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and I kept thinking it would stop once I got stronger or smarter or useful enough. I did anything I could to be useful. I stood by and let people do whatever they wanted to me. I didn’t care if it was physical, verbal, sexual. I just wanted to be useful.”

Bakugo’s jaw clenched. He felt sick.

“And then I started thinking about what I actually was to everyone, and I couldn’t find anything that didn’t hurt to look at.”

Bakugo shook his head.

“No.”

Midoriya’s eyes snapped up again.

“Yes,”

He insisted, more urgently now,

“and when I was on that roof, I wasn’t thinking about revenge, I wasn’t thinking about making you feel anything, I just wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to stop.”

Bakugo’s hands started shaking under him.

“And when I saw you after, I didn’t feel relieved or peaceful or anything like that. I just thought maybe now I’d finally exist properly in your head. Not as a joke. Not as background noise. Real.”

Bakugo’s face twisted.

“Why are you telling me this?”

He choked out.

“You owe me.”

Izuku said softly.

“I didn’t make you jump, I didn’t push you off that roof, I didn’t–”

“You did,”

Izuku said instantly. Simple. Absolute. Bakugo stared at him; he looked genuinely afraid – not of Midoriya’s strength, not of being pinned, but of the certainty in his voice. Midoriya’s hands tightened slightly again.

“You don’t get to rewrite it, you don’t get to make it smaller just because you can’t look at it.”

Bakugo’s voice dropped, hoarse.

“Get off me.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya went very still again after that. Bakugo could feel it in the way his hands hovered slightly above Bakugo’s shoulders without pressing down properly anymore, like he wasn’t sure whether he was still pinning him or just holding on at this point.

“Get off,”

Bakugo said again, but it came out weaker this time, less command, more strained insistence.

“I don’t want you to leave me.”

Midoriya’s said as his eyes lifted properly now, and there was something unhinged behind them, something slipping out of alignment.

“You act like I’m not part of your life anymore. Like I was just something that happened and ended. But I didn’t end. I’m still here.”

Bakugo swallowed hard.

“You’re not–“

He started, though he couldn’t even finish it properly. Midoriya leant closer, and Bakugo flinched instinctively. That small reaction seemed to do something to Izuku’s expression; fragility snapping into intensity.

“I love you,”

Midoriya said suddenly, and his hands tightened again, but not in aggression this time – more like desperation.

“Stop,”

Bakugo said immediately, voice hoarse.

“I don’t want anyone else, I don’t want them touching you, I don’t want them taking pieces of you that I should have had, I don’t want–”

“Shut up!”

Katsuki snapped, suddenly loud again, panic rising sharp through his chest. Bakugo’s hands finally shoved properly at his chest again, more forceful this time, anger and fear tangled together.

“What is wrong with you, do hear yourself right now?!”

Midoriya’s eyes widened slightly.

“I just–”

“You’re not thinking straight,”

Bakugo cut in harshly,

“you’re not–this isn’t you talking properly, you’re spiralling, you’re–”

Midoriya’s expression twisted as he stared at him, then laughed. The slap came out of nowhere. Just sudden contact; sharp enough that Bakugo’s head snapped slightly to the side, the sound cutting through the room. Bakugo didn’t move for a full second.

His cheek stung immediately, heat blooming under the skin, the world tilting slightly as his brain had to register what had just happened. Midoriya’s hand hovered where it had struck him, fingers trembling. Bakugo slowly turned his head back very slowly.

“What the fuck?”

He said quietly. Midoriya’s expression broke instantly.

“I–”

Bakugo sat up so fast it made the room blur. Anger detonated properly now, absolute and terrifying in its simplicity.

“You just hit me, what the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Midoriya recoiled immediately, palms lifting like he’d realised too late what he’d done.

“I didn’t mean– I wasn’t– I just–”

Bakugo shoved him hard. Midoriya stumbled backward off the bed entirely, catching himself on the floor with one hand, eyes wide now. Bakugo swung his legs off the mattress, standing unsteadily.

“Stop putting your hands on me,”

Bakugo snapped, pointing down at him,

“Touching me, grabbing me, hurting me.”

“I wasn’t trying to fix–”

“Shut up!”

Bakugo shouted again, louder than before, voice cracking with exhaustion and anger and an unnamed emotion underneath it that he didn’t want to identify. Midoriya flinched, then went still again. Bakugo stared at him; chest heaving, room spinning slightly.

Midoriya moved suddenly. He surged forward and grabbed Bakugo by the front of his shirt, fingers twisting hard into the fabric as he yanked him closer in a way that was more desperate than controlled, more panicked than purposeful. Bakugo reacted instantly.

Midoriya was all frantic movement and sharp elbows and dead weight – lunging forward hard enough to slam Bakugo backwards into the wall beside the bed with a crack that rattled the dorm shelving. Bakugo swore violently.

“GET THE FUCK OFF–”

Midoriya grabbed fistfuls of his shirt with both hands. Not desperate in the pathetic clingy way Bakugo had gotten used to over the months. This was almost animal. His fingers twisted hard in the fabric while his forehead nearly collided with Bakugo’s jaw from how close he forced himself, breath ragged and damp close to Bakugo’s mouth.

“You don’t mean that,”

Midoriya said, voice shaking badly.

“You don’t– Kacchan, you don’t mean that, you don’t, you don’t–”

Bakugo shoved him hard in the chest. Midoriya stumbled back half a step before surging forward again even harder than before. Katsuki slammed his forearm across Midoriya’s throat, pinning him against the wall. Izuku made a noise that should have been a choke, but wasn’t quite right anymore – too hollow, too wet.

And then he smiled. That expression always made something cold crawl down Katsuki’s spine. It never looked human anymore when Midoriya got like this, too emotional, too overwhelmed. Then Midoriya grabbed Bakugo’s wrist with both hands and bit him hard. Bakugo shouted.

“FUCK–”

Pain exploded through his arm sharp enough to make his fingers jerk loose instinctively and Midoriya immediately tore himself free, teeth ripping across skin. Blood welled almost instantly, and Bakugo saw it smear across Midoriya’s mouth. For one horrible second Midoriya just stared at it. Then his breathing hitched.

“Kacchan–”

Bakugo punched him. His fist cracked across Midoriya’s cheek hard, and Midoriya staggered into the desk, knocking over notebooks with a clatter. Before Bakugo could even catch his breath Midoriya threw himself forward again with a sound that barely resembled speech anymore.

Bakugo caught him around the shoulders and they crashed together into the side of the bed hard enough for the mattress frame to screech across the floorboards. Everything after that became messy. Just fury and panic and too much history packed into a tiny dorm room. His nails scraped down Bakugo’s neck, his knee slammed into Bakugo’s thigh.

Bakugo grabbed him by the wrists and shoved him backwards, but Midoriya twisted beneath the grip as he slammed forward again and they hit the floor. Midoriya landed half on top of him immediately, grabbing at his face, his shirt, anywhere he could touch.

“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, why do you keep acting like I’m trying to hurt you?”

“Because you ARE hurting me!”

“You were there, you were always there, everything was always you, Kacchan, and now you’re all I have left and you keep trying to leave me–”

Bakugo shoved him off hard enough that Midoriya hit the wardrobe doors with a deafening bang.

“Shut up!”

Midoriya stared at him from the floor, hair a mess, blood smeared at the corner of his mouth from biting Bakugo, eyes huge and frantic and wet.

“Kacchan,”

He said quietly, and Bakugo backed away from him immediately.

“No.”

“Kacchan–”

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

Midoriya’s expression twisted. Fear. Pure fear.

Not of being hurt.

Of being abandoned.

And that somehow was worse.

Chapter Text

Midoriya stayed where he was for a few seconds after Bakugo shoved him away, crouched awkwardly against the wardrobe doors with one knee bent beneath him and his hands hanging uselessly in his lap. The silence between them developed into something unbearable, something rotting and humid enough to choke on.

All Katsuki could hear was Midoriya breathing. Bakugo hated that sound more than anything; dead people were not supposed to breathe. Dead people were not supposed to look at him with wide shaking eyes and say his name like it still meant salvation.

“Kacchan,”

Bakugo wiped violently at the blood running down his wrist where the bite marks still throbbed vicious beneath the skin, and when he looked down the crescent impressions of teeth were already darkening purple.

“You need to stop fucking talking,”

He muttered hoarsely. Midoriya swallowed.

“You hate me.”

“I do right now.”

The words came out instantly. Sharp. Midoriya laughed again suddenly, and it sounded awful.

“Well,”

He whispered, staring down at the floorboards,

“that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Bakugo’s chest tightened.

“Don’t start again.”

“But it does. You hated me before too. Even before the roof. You were just better at pretending it wasn’t real.”

Bakugo shoved a shaking hand through his hair.

“I said shut up.”

He kept talking. Because he always did once he started spiralling like this, words pouring out compulsively, reopening wounds just to prove they were still bleeding.

“You told me everybody would be better off if I took a swan dive off the roof, and I know you were angry, and I know you didn’t mean it literally, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards because you were you. When you said things they mattered to me more than anything else anybody said.”

“I said stop talking about it!”

“But it’s true! You want me to stop saying it because you know it’s true!”

Bakugo grabbed him by the shirt front and slammed him back against the wood hard.

“You think I don’t KNOW that?!”

He shouted directly into Midoriya’s face, who looked stunned for a second. Bakugo’s hands were shaking now. His pulse hammered behind his ribs while memories clawed their way upward whether he wanted them or not.

He remembered Izuku’s school shoes lying ten feet away from the body. Remembered staring at the ruined remains of his childhood friend and thinking with absolute horror; I did this.

Bakugo’s legs suddenly gave out. He hit the floor hard on his knees beside the bed, and a choked gasp dragged violently out of his chest before he pressed both hands over his face like he was physically trying to hold himself together. Then, slowly, he started crying softly, desperately trying to restrain it, and Midoriya made a small devastated noise. It was embarrassing, humiliating even. Bakugo hated crying.

“Kacchan–”

“Don’t,”

Bakugo choked out immediately, voice shredded apart by another sob.

“Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t talk to me.”

Bakugo’s sobbing quietened into something rougher after a while, though quiet was the wrong word for it because nothing about Katsuki falling apart had ever been gentle. Every breath still dragged raggedly through his chest like barbed wire, every inhale hitching violently halfway down his throat as though his lungs themselves were fighting against the act of continuing.

He stayed folded forward on the floor beside the bed with his face hidden behind trembling hands, shoulders jerking intermittently. Midoriya stood a few feet away, silent. Bakugo could feel him there even without looking. Like a pressure headache. Like standing too close to the edge of a building.

Then floorboards creaked softly.

“Don’t,”

Katsuki rasped without lifting his head.

“Kacchan.”

“I said don’t fucking touch me.”

Bakugo sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, then suddenly both of Midoriya’s hands grabbed his face. His fingers dug painfully into Bakugo’s jaw, forcing his head upward with desperate strength until Bakugo had no choice but to look at him. Midoriya was kneeling directly in front of him.

Too close. Always too fucking close.

His curls were hanging messily across his forehead, bruising darkening against his neck, and there was still dried blood at the corner of his mouth from the bite. Bakugo’s stomach twisted nauseously.

“You want me to stop talking about it?”

Bakugo tried to wrench backwards immediately.

“Get your fucking hands off–”

Midoriya squeezed harder.

“Then stop being romantic with other people.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Bakugo stared at him for a long second before a disbelieving laugh forced its way out of his chest.

“You’re actually fucking insane.”

Midoriya’s expression twitched painfully.

“I’m trying,”

He whispered.

“I’m trying so hard not to say things that upset you but then you go around looking at Kirishima like that and kissing Todoroki and letting people touch you and I can’t stand it, Kacchan, I can’t–”

Bakugo shoved at his wrists angrily.

“You don’t get to tell me what I can do!”

Midoriya’s grip tightened instead of loosening.

“Yes I do! You’re all I have, you’re literally all I have left, Kacchan, and every time somebody touches you I feel sick, I feel sick because they get to have parts of you that I don’t and they don’t even know what you’re like, they don’t know you the way I do–”

“Because they’re normal!”

The words exploded out of Bakugo before he could stop them. Humiliation sat openly on Izuku’s face; as though Bakugo had skinned him open and exposed all the ugliest parts underneath.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Midoriya asked softly.

“I know I’m wrong, I know this whole thing is wrong. I know normal people don’t get jealous because their dead middle school crush kissed someone during spin the bottle.”

Midoriya’s fingers trembled slightly against his jaw. He looked genuinely heartbroken.

“You trust him more than me.”

Bakugo’s temper flared instantly again, defensive and vicious because the alternative was acknowledging the truth hidden inside the accusation.

“You’re terrifying sometimes! What the fuck do you expect?!”

Midoriya flinched like he’d been hit, but he did not let go.

“You think I want to be like this?”

Bakugo opened his mouth and nothing came out. The answer was obvious suddenly. No. Midoriya did not want this either. Did not want to be trapped in this grotesque half life orbiting the boy who helped destroy him. Did not want to feel his own mind rotting apart every time Bakugo walked away from him. Midoriya’s thumbs dragged shakily beneath Bakugo’s eyes, smearing away tears.

The gesture felt horribly intimate after everything else.

“I’ll stop talking about the roof, I’ll stop bringing up the body. I’ll stop saying it was your fault.”

Bakugo stared at him warily. Midoriya’s eyes searched his face desperately.

“But please stop making me feel replaceable.”

Beneath the manipulation – and there was manipulation in it, Midoriya twisting guilt and grief together until Bakugo could barely breathe beneath the weight of them – there was also something pathetically sincere. Midoriya was terrified, terrified in the way abandoned animals were terrified. Violent because they expected to be left behind again. Bakugo hated how much he understood that feeling.

“You can’t own me,”

He muttered finally, and Midoriya’s face twisted.

“I know.”

But his grip on Bakugo’s face never loosened.

Chapter Text

Bakugo eventually shoved Midoriya’s hands off his face harder than necessary. His skin still felt cold where Midoriya had been touching him, fingerprints lingering against his jaw. He pushed himself upright with obvious effort, knees aching from hitting the floor earlier.

The dorm room looked wrecked; blankets half dragged off the bed, desk chair overturned, loose papers scattered everywhere. The sight made something inside him twist unpleasantly because it looked exactly like what this whole thing had become over the years; cramped and impossible to explain to anyone else without sounding completely insane.

He needed out of the room. Needed noise. Needed literally anything except Midoriya looking at him like that.

“I’m going downstairs,”

He said roughly, and Midoriya started standing up immediately. Bakugo pointed at him hard enough to stop him halfway.

“No.”

Midoriya froze.

“Stay here.”

Bakugo saw instantly the way Midoriya’s expression shifted – fear, eyes widening slightly like Bakugo had just threatened to disappear forever instead of walk downstairs for food.

“Kacchan–”

“Just for a minute,”

Bakugo snapped immediately.

“Christ, you’re acting like I’m dying.”

Midoriya stared at him. The irony of that sentence was not lost on either of them.

“Stay here, I mean it.”

Midoriya hesitated, then finally nodded reluctantly. Bakugo didn’t wait long enough to see if he would actually listen. He grabbed the first clean hoodie he could find out his wardrobe and yanked it over his head before leaving the room hard enough for the door to slam behind him.

He started downstairs. Voices drifted upward from the common room almost immediately, and by the time Bakugo reached the bottom few steps he could already smell food and cheap microwave noodles and Kaminari’s stupidly strong deodorant.

The common room was crowded. Shoes kicked off near the sofas, bags dumped carelessly everywhere, Mina sprawled dramatically across one couch while Kaminari sat upside down in an armchair beside her. Jirou glanced up first, then smirked immediately.

“Look who finally crawled out of the grave.”

Bakugo flipped her off automatically while moving toward the kitchen.

“Eat shit.”

Bakugo yanked open the fridge aggressively.

“Oh my God,”

Mina said delightedly, sitting upright now.

“Kirishima literally carried you upstairs like a tragic Victorian wife.”

Bakugo nearly slammed the fridge door off its hinges. Across the room Kaminari made exaggerated grabbing motions with his arms.

“‘Eijirouuuu,’”

He whined theatrically.

“DIE.”

Everyone burst into laughter. Even Todoroki looked faintly amused from where he sat reading on the far sofa. Normally Bakugo would have yelled louder, maybe thrown something. But the noise slid over him today, dulled slightly beneath the pounding ache in his skull and the emotional exhaustion dragging at every limb. He focused instead on pulling leftovers from the fridge with stiff movements.

Then he noticed Kirishima wasn’t laughing. He looked up. Kirishima stood near the kitchen entrance holding two sports drinks, broad shoulders tense beneath a loose black shirt, red eyes fixed on Bakugo with an expression that immediately made Bakugo’s stomach tighten. Concern.

Kirishima’s gaze flicked across Bakugo’s face, lingering slightly beneath his eyes. Bakugo realised too late what he was seeing. Fuck. Kirishima knew he’d been crying. Bakugo’s entire body stiffened instantly.

“What?”

He asked sharply, and Kirishima hesitated. The others were still talking over each other too loudly to notice the shift yet.

“You okay?”

Bakugo scoffed immediately.

“Obviously.”

It came out too defensive.

“You look rough,”

He said carefully.

“I’m hungover, dumbass.”

“Yeah,”

Kirishima said, but he kept staring. Suddenly Bakugo became horribly aware of everything at once – the swelling around his eyes from crying, the bite mark still throbbing beneath his sleeve, the marks across his skin. Bakugo looked away first.

“Tch.”

Kirishima stepped closer anyway, not crowding him. That was the thing Bakugo hated most about him sometimes – how naturally he adjusted himself around other people’s damage without making it obvious.

“You sure?”

Bakugo opened his mouth to snap at him, then stopped. Because for one awful split second he imagined telling him. There’s a dead boy upstairs who loves me so much it’s rotting both of us. The thought alone made panic crawl instantly up Bakugo’s spine, and he shut it down violently.

“Mind your business,”

He muttered instead. Kirishima studied him for another long second, then finally nodded.

“Alright,”

He said, softly, which somehow felt worse than if he’d kept pushing. Kaminari eventually groaned loudly from the sofa.

“Can we watch something? My brain feels like soup.”

“That’s because you’re stupid,”

Jirou said.

“Rude.”

Mina immediately grabbed the remote.

“Horror movie.”

“No,”

Sero answered instantly.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Todoroki, decide.”

Todoroki looked up from his book with the expression of somebody abruptly awakened from hibernation.

“I don’t care.”

“Great,”

Mina declared.

“Democracy says horror.”

“That isn’t democracy.”

Iida complained from the armchair. They eventually settled on some terrible slasher film Mina insisted was ‘ironically amazing’, and people began dragging blankets and cushions into the common room. Bakugo almost left, but Kirishima dropped onto the sofa beside him before he could move. Close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed.

“You staying?”

Kirishima asked casually. Bakugo grunted.

“Guess so.”

“Cool.”

Simple as that. No pressure. No weird sympathy in his voice. Bakugo hated how much relief that gave him. People kept talking around them while the movie loaded. Kaminari pointed at Bakugo from across the room with a grin.

“If he throws up from the hangover halfway through this, I’m not cleaning it.”

Bakugo immediately lifted one hand without looking away from the television.

“I’ll kill you first.”

“Ooo,”

Mina said dramatically.

“Aggressive today.”

“He’s embarrassed,”

Sero added.

“Shut the hell up.”

Kaminari cackled louder.

“He’s embarrassed because Kirishima tucked him in.”

Bakugo felt heat crawl instantly up his neck. Before he could explode properly, Kirishima spoke.

“Leave him alone, idiots.”

The room quieted slightly. Kirishima shrugged one shoulder, still looking at the screen.

“Like none of you have gotten drunk before.”

“Yeah, but Bakugo getting clingy is rare historical footage,”

Mina said, and Kirishima snorted.

“He wasn’t clingy.”

Bakugo stared sideways at him briefly, but Kirishima didn’t look back. Just kept casually defending him like it was natural. When the movie started, it was predictably awful; bad acting, too much fake blood, every character making catastrophically stupid decisions. Mina and Kaminari screamed dramatically at every jumpscare anyway. Halfway through the film Sero threw popcorn at the television because a character tripped while running from the killer.

“That’s natural selection,”

He announced.

“You would also die first,”

Jirou informed him. Bakugo gradually stopped paying attention to the screen. Not consciously, his body just simply started unwinding little by little beneath the noise of his classmates existing around him. Kaminari laughing too loudly, Mina arguing with the film, Todoroki asking deeply concerningly sincere questions about horror movie logic, Iida complaining every time somebody put shoes on the furniture.

The ordinary stupidity of it all pressed strangely against the horror still lingering inside Bakugo’s head from earlier. And beside him Kirishima remained steady, warm. At some point their shoulders touched properly, and neither moved away. Kirishima had one broad arm resting along the back of the sofa behind Bakugo rather than around him, close enough to feel without becoming restrictive.

The room darkened further as evening settled outside the windows. People gradually sank lower into cushions and blankets, conversations thinning as the film droned on. Kaminari ended up half asleep against Sero’s shoulder. Iida continued pretending he was not emotionally invested in the plot despite repeatedly gasping whenever someone died.

And slowly, without fully meaning to, Bakugo leant slightly sideways. Barely noticeable. Just enough for the side of his arm to press more firmly against Kirishima’s. Kirishima didn’t react, but Bakugo felt him shift a little closer in response. By the final third of the movie their legs were touching too. Bakugo told himself it was because the sofa was crowded, even though half the room had emptied onto the floor already.

The killer on-screen was in the middle of hacking apart another screaming university student when Bakugo suddenly felt fingertips brush the back of his neck. Cold. Dead cold. A thin chill that slid across his skin and immediately sank straight down his spine. Bakugo’s entire body locked.

Midoriya.

Chapter Text

Another touch, lighter this time, trailing just beneath his hairline. Bakugo jerked violently before he could stop himself. The movement was small enough that most of the room probably interpreted it as irritation or discomfort, but adrenaline detonated through his nervous system so fast it nearly made him dizzy.

Beside him Kirishima immediately looked over, and Bakugo kept his eyes locked stubbornly on the television. A few feet away Mina laughed loudly at something happening in the movie, oblivious.

“You alright?”

Kirishima asked quietly. Bakugo realised too late that his breathing had changed into some pathetic rhythm.

“Fine,”

He muttered instantly. Then cold fingers touched his throat properly. Bakugo sucked in a hard breath through his teeth and jerked upright off the sofa so abruptly the blanket tangled around his legs.

Bakugo scrubbed one hand roughly across the back of his neck like he could physically wipe the sensation away. Midoriya stood behind the sofa. Silent. Watching him. The common room light cut across him, making parts of his face look almost translucent against the darkened room, curls messy around bruised features.

“You okay?”

Kirishima repeated, more seriously now. Bakugo forced himself to look away from Midoriya.

“The movie’s shit,”

Bakugo snapped abruptly, and Mina gasped dramatically.

“Excuse you, this is cinema.”

“It’s awful.”

“You’ve watched, like, the whole thing!”

Bakugo ignored her completely while shoving himself fully upright. Kirishima’s eyes tracked him carefully.

“You leaving?”

“Need air.”

The words came out rougher than intended. Bakugo was already moving before anyone could argue, crossing the common room with quick agitated strides while he tried very hard not to acknowledge the fact Midoriya was following directly behind him. The closer he got to the exit the more he could feel that awful pressure at his back.

Bakugo shoved open the dorm doors hard enough for the cold night air to hit him quickly across the face. The rain had finally stopped. Outside, the grounds glistened dark beneath scattered campus lights, every pavement slick with leftover water. Bakugo stepped out onto the path and inhaled deeply.

“You looked comfortable.”

Bakugo closed his eyes immediately. Midoriya’s voice came from directly behind him. Soft. Bakugo kept staring out across the wet campus grounds instead of turning around.

“You weren’t supposed to come downstairs.”

“I know.”

Bakugo exhaled harshly through his nose. Behind him he heard Midoriya step closer across the damp pavement. Bakugo finally turned around sharply. Midoriya stood only a few feet away now beneath the weak glow spilling from the dorm windows, face pale against the darkness around them while damp wind stirred the ends of his curls slightly.

“I wish I’d met him before I died.”

Bakugo frowned, and Midoriya looked down at the wet pavement.

“He would’ve been kind to me.”

Bakugo stared at him for a long moment after that. The night air had turned sharper now that the rain was gone completely, cold wind moving through the campus. It was probably true. Kirishima would have been kind to middle school Midoriya. Would have listened to him ramble. Would have noticed the scars instead of mocking them in front of other kids. Would have defended him instinctively because that was simply the sort of person Kirishima was.

Bakugo could picture it too clearly – skinny nervous Izuku laughing shyly at something stupid Kirishima said, Kirishima clapping him on the shoulder without embarrassment or cruelty attached to the gesture. Midoriya looking at him with that overwhelming grateful intensity he reserved for anyone who showed him basic warmth. The image made something bitter twist inside Bakugo’s chest.

Regret so deep it felt almost carnivorous. Midoriya looked back up at him carefully, clearly trying to judge whether Bakugo was about to explode again. Bakugo rubbed a hand hard across his mouth before speaking.

“Go upstairs.”

Midoriya blinked.

“Kacchan–”

“I mean it. Leave me the fuck alone for ten minutes.”

Bakugo immediately saw the hurt flash across his face, abandonment terror surfacing so fast it almost looked physical, but Bakugo was too exhausted to soften it properly. Too wrung hollow from the day to carefully manage Midoriya’s spirals on top of his own.

“… Okay,”

Midoriya said quietly. Bakugo looked away, and he heard Midoriya hesitate another second before finally stepping backwards. Then again. And suddenly Bakugo was alone – the absence of Midoriya always felt strange after prolonged arguments. His breathing started picking up almost instantly.

Shit.

Bakugo pressed the heels of his palms hard against his eyes.

No.

He inhaled sharply through his nose as his chest tightened harder. His heartbeat was hammering so violently it hurt.

Concrete.

Blood.

Izuku on the pavement.

Kirishima’s hand warm beside his on the sofa.

The corpse.

The corpse.

The corpse–

Bakugo stumbled backwards before forcing himself down hard onto the wet pavement beside the dorm wall. He dug his fingers into his own hair and bent forward sharply, trying to breathe through the crushing pressure building inside his ribs, but each inhale only made the panic worse, lungs refusing to fill properly while nausea twisted sickeningly through his stomach.

Fuck.

The dorm door opened again behind him, and Bakugo jerked instinctively, panic spiking harder. Footsteps approached quickly, then stopped.

“Katsuki?”

Chapter Text

Kirishima.

Of fucking course.

For a second neither of them spoke. Bakugo stayed hunched forward on the pavement breathing in short broken pulls while cold damp air burned his throat. Kirishima must have taken in the situation fast; Bakugo heard it in the way his voice changed immediately after.

“Hey,”

Kirishima said quietly.

“Are you seriously alright?”

Bakugo laughed, a horrible breathless sound.

“Do I fucking look alright?”

Kirishima crouched down beside him slowly.

“You disappeared kinda fast, thought maybe you were gonna puke or something but…”

His sentence trailed off as he properly saw Bakugo’s face. Bakugo knew what he looked like; sweaty despite the cold, eyes red, breathing erratic, barely holding himself together. Kirishima’s expression tightened with immediate concern.

“Oh,”

He said softly. Bakugo wanted to tell him to fuck off. Instead another sharp breath caught in his chest and he curled further inward with a quiet choking noise he could not fully suppress. Kirishima moved closer immediately. Bakugo glared weakly at the wet pavement. Kirishima lowered himself fully to sit beside him on the cold ground.

“It’s fucking stupid,”

Katsuki muttered hoarsely.

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

Kirishima shook his head. Then finally, carefully, he rested an arm lightly against Bakugo’s without forcing anything more. Beside him Kirishima stayed quiet. That was another thing Bakugo hated about him sometimes. He was good at this. Patient. He could feel Kirishima deliberately keeping his posture relaxed beside him, broad shoulder warm against Bakugo’s arm despite the cold outside air. It worked far more than Bakugo wanted it to.

“You wanna go back inside?”

Kirishima asked after a minute, and Bakugo shook his head immediately.

“No.”

The idea of enclosed warmth and lights and people talking right now made nausea crawl up his throat. Kirishima nodded once like that made perfect sense.

“Alright.”

Silence again. Not awkward. Just breathing and distant traffic beyond the UA grounds and the faint rustling of wet trees shifting in the wind. Bakugo pressed both hands harshly over his face. His palms still smelled faintly metallic from the bite wound beneath his sleeve – that nearly sent him spiralling again.

He hated being seen like this. Hated it so much his skin crawled with it. Bakugo had spent years making himself seem tough enough that nobody looked too closely underneath. Anger was easier for people to understand than fear, and arrogance was easier than vulnerability. But Kirishima kept ending up here anyway. Seeing too much. And somehow never looking disgusted by it afterwards.

Bakugo glanced sideways reluctantly. Kirishima was watching the dark campus grounds ahead of them rather than staring directly at him, arms resting loosely over bent knees, red hair slightly damp from leftover mist in the air.

“You don’t gotta hover, y’know,”

Bakugo muttered. Kirishima looked over finally.

“I know.”

“Then why are you?”

Kirishima shrugged one shoulder.

“Because you looked like you needed somebody.”

Bakugo looked away immediately.

“Sounds pathetic.”

Kirishima frowned instantly.

“It’s not pathetic to need help sometimes. It’s manly, dude.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Kirishima went quiet for a second.

“You think I’ve never had panic attacks?”

Bakugo blinked. That dragged his attention back properly.

“What?”

Kirishima rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Not loads or anything. But after middle school? Yeah. Had some bad ones.”

Bakugo stared at him suspiciously. Kirishima noticed immediately and huffed out a faint laugh.

“I’m serious.”

Bakugo frowned harder. For some reason the idea felt strange. Kirishima always seemed so solid, so emotionally straightforward. Like the sort of person who simply absorbed bad things and kept moving anyway. Kirishima caught the look on his face and smiled slightly.

“People can be confident and still get messed up sometimes, man.”

Bakugo looked down at the pavement again as Kirishima shifted slightly beside him.

“You wanna tell me what happened?”

Bakugo’s entire body stiffened immediately. The instinctive panic response hit so fast it was almost physical. He could not tell Kirishima, couldn’t even approach it. Because where would he start? Bakugo felt sick.

“Nothing happened,”

He said flatly, and Kirishima gave him a look that very clearly communicated he did not believe that for even a second. But thankfully he didn’t push. Instead he leant back slightly on his hands and stared up at the cloudy night sky.

“Okay,”

He said simply. Bakugo frowned faintly.

“That’s it?”

“What, you want me to interrogate you?”

“Tch.”

Kirishima smiled a little.

“You’ll talk if you wanna talk.”

Bakugo hated how reasonable that sounded. Another gust of cold wind moved through the courtyard. This time when it hit, Bakugo realised his breathing had mostly steadied. Kirishima noticed too.

“Better?”

Bakugo hesitated, then grunted.

“Yeah.”

Chapter Text

He barely slept. Again. Not because Midoriya caused another scene after he returned upstairs – surprisingly, he had not – but the silence afterwards had somehow been worse. Midoriya curling up against the wall near Bakugo’s bed with his knees drawn tightly to his chest and staying there for hours without speaking. By the time dawn crawled grey and miserable through the dorm windows, Bakugo felt awful.

Training that afternoon took place in one of the urban combat zones, towering concrete structures rising harsh and angular beneath cloudy skies. Katsuki stood near the edge of the training zone rolling tension from one shoulder while cold wind tugged at his uniform sleeves, eyes fixed ahead despite the fact Midoriya hovered somewhere just behind him again today.

Midoriya had barely spoken all morning. No possessive comments. No clinging. Just silence and watching.

“Bakugo. Uraraka.”

Aizawa said. Bakugo looked up sharply, and Ochaco straightened immediately across the staging area. There was a brief visible show of nerves across her face before determination settled over it instead. Bakugo respected that about her, he always had.

Even back during the Sports Festival when everyone else treated her like some fragile support course decoration, she had walked directly into the arena against him with gritted teeth and enough stubbornness to make the crowd shut up eventually. Aizawa gestured lazily toward the combat zone.

“Start when you’re ready.”

Ochaco exhaled once and rolled her shoulders. Bakugo smirked despite himself.

“You better not hold back this time either.”

Ochaco pointed at him immediately. “As if you ever let anybody get away with that.”

Fair. They moved into the training zone. Concrete towers loomed around them while distant observation platforms overlooked the arena from above, classmates gathering along railings to watch. Bakugo cracked one palm against the other. Across from him Ochaco lowered her stance slightly, focused and alert. Then–

“Begin.”

Ochaco moved first. She launched herself sideways through the debris strewn street instead of charging directly, using the environment intelligently exactly the way she always did against stronger opponents.

He blasted forward after her immediately. Explosions cracked violently through the training ground, smoke and sparks tearing outward from his palms while Ochaco darted around broken concrete barriers narrowly avoiding direct hits.

“She’s baiting him again,”

Kirishima said somewhere above from the observation deck. Bakugo heard it faintly through the noise. Ochaco grabbed a chunk of rubble mid run, and the slab lifted weightlessly. Then another. And another. Bakugo barked out a laugh.

“Still using the same tricks, huh?”

The first floating slab hurtled toward him. Bakugo exploded sideways through smoke, blast recoil tearing cracks through the pavement beneath his boots while more concrete chunks rose steadily into the air around Ochaco.

Exactly what she had done at the Sports Festival, except faster now, more refined. UA had sharpened her. Bakugo respected the hell out of that. Another explosion blasted outward from his palm, and Ochaco ducked low beneath it before sprinting directly toward him through the smoke. Bakugo’s grin widened.

She reached for his arm, and Bakugo twisted sharply away–

–and suddenly icy fingers wrapped around his wrist.

Cold.

Dead cold.

Bakugo froze.

Pure instinctive terror detonated through his nervous system so violently his body reacted before thought could catch up. Midoriya. His explosion misfired. Instead of detonating properly, the blast stuttered halfway out of his palm in an ugly fragmented motion that sprayed sparks sideways instead of forward.

Bakugo jerked backwards hard enough to nearly lose footing, and Ochaco stared. The entire observation deck went silent. Bakugo Katsuki did not misfire like that. Ever. Not in combat. Not during controlled exercises. Not during fucking sparring matches. The shock lasted barely a second, then Ochaco recovered instantly and lunged forward again on pure trained instinct.

Bakugo saw her coming too late. Her fingertips brushed his arm, and weightlessness slammed through him immediately as the ground vanished beneath his feet. Gasps erupted from the observation platform as Bakugo moved several feet upward before catching himself mid air with a panicked explosion from one palm.

He heard a soft ‘release’, before he dropped fast. The pavement slammed into him shoulder first hard enough to crack concrete beneath the impact while pain burst sharply down his arm, and the observation deck erupted immediately.

“What the hell?!”

Kaminari shouted.

Ochaco backed away instinctively, looking genuinely alarmed now instead of competitive, hands hovering awkwardly at her sides like she did not know whether to continue the match or ask if he was injured. She had clearly expected him to break the fall somehow and not make such a stupid mistake.

For a second he just stayed there on one knee, breathing hard while humiliation and adrenaline and blind panic tore through him all at once, his pulse pounding so violently he could hear it in his ears over the distant noise from the observation deck.

He had messed up.

In front of everyone.

Bakugo could feel the confusion around him. Class 1A had seen him angry before, reckless before, even injured before, but they had almost never seen him fail like that during combat, not in such a sloppy obvious way. The weight of their attention pressed hot and unbearable against the back of his neck.

Bakugo shoved himself upright before anyone could say anything. His palms trembled faintly, and he clenched them into fists immediately. Midoriya stood nearby looking horrified.

“Kacchan–”

Bakugo spat dust from his mouth and started walking. Fast. Aggressive strides across shattered pavement while the remnants of smoke still drifted through the training zone around him.

“Bakugo?” Ochaco called after him.

“Oi!” Kaminari shouted faintly from above.

“Where’s he going?”

“The match isn’t over,” Iida added.

Bakugo kept moving. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to get out of the open before the panic fully caught up to him. Behind him he heard movement overhead. He exited the combat zone through one of the side access corridors leading toward the internal support halls, fluorescent lighting buzzing overhead.

His shoulder hurt, his chest hurt worse, and he could still feel the phantom sensation of cold fingers around his wrist. Midoriya followed several feet behind him now in dead silence, though Bakugo refused to look back. The corridor door swung shut behind him, then swung right back open.

“Bakugo.” Aizawa.

“I’m fine.”

Aizawa fell into step beside him with the exhausted fluidity of someone long accustomed to dealing with unstable teenagers and catastrophic emotional repression.

“You’re injured?”

“No.”

“Sick?”

“No.”

“Then what was that?”

Bakugo glared ahead at the corridor wall.

“Lost focus.”

Aizawa was quiet for a moment. “You’ve been off lately,”

Bakugo scoffed automatically. “You stalking me now?”

“You’ve missed sleep, your grades dipped slightly this month, your reaction timing’s inconsistent during team exercises, and your classmates have expressed concern for you.”

Bakugo grimaced. Traitors.

“I’m not asking for your life story,” He continued. “But if something’s interfering with your combat judgement, I need to know whether it’s manageable.”

Bakugo’s temper flared immediately at the implication. “I said I’m fine.”

“You very obviously aren’t.”

Bakugo stopped walking so abruptly that Aizawa halted unevenly.

“I’m handling it.” He said sharply.

Aizawa studied him long enough to become irritating. Bakugo hated adults who looked too closely at him, most people backed off eventually once he got aggressive enough, and Aizawa rarely did.

“What happened back there?” Aizawa asked again, more quietly.

Bakugo’s stomach twisted. Midoriya stood further down the corridor now, silent and pale, hands clenched anxiously at his sides. Bakugo looked away from him immediately. Nothing he could possibly say would make sense. Nothing that would not end in psychiatric evaluation or suspicion or worse.Bakugo swallowed hard against sudden nausea, and Aizawa’s expression shifted slightly into something more attentive.

“You looked scared,” He said, almost softly.

The observation hit like a knife between the ribs, and Bakugo’s entire body tensed instantly.

“I wasn’t scared.”

“Bakugo.”

“I said I wasn’t! Why the hell would I be?”

Aizawa sighed quietly through his nose, tired. “Alright.”

Bakugo frowned slightly. That was it? No lecture? No invasive questioning? Aizawa rubbed at one eye tiredly.

“You’re a good student, one bad performance doesn’t erase that. But if this becomes a pattern, we’re having a longer conversation.”

Bakugo looked away. Something twisted in his chest again at the simple fact Aizawa still sounded confident in him despite what just happened. Trust always felt vaguely unbearable now. Every time somebody trusted him, some part of Bakugo remembered another boy who once trusted him completely and ended up dead on concrete for it. Aizawa started turning back toward the training grounds, then paused.

“Try sleeping occasionally,” He muttered.

Bakugo let out a rough humourless laugh.

“Yeah, sure.”

Aizawa left. The corridor fell quiet again except for the distant muffled sounds of training resuming somewhere far outside. Bakugo stayed standing there for several long seconds staring at the floor.

“You can’t do that during fights.” His voice came out flat. Exhausted.

Midoriya flinched instantly.

“I know,” He whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya spent the rest of the day trying very carefully not to touch him again. It sounded easy in theory, until he realised how much of his existence had become constructed around proximity, around the small compulsive rituals of orbiting Katsuki closely enough to reassure himself that he was still there. Still corporeal, still capable of being reached if Midoriya stretched out a hand quickly enough before panic convinced him otherwise.

He followed several paces behind instead, not speaking much. Watching. That was what he had always done best anyway. Even before the roof, before blood became the defining architecture of both their lives. Before his own body turned into something anomalous and thinly stitched together by grief and the unbearable centripetal force of loving someone far too much.

Watching Katsuki existed in layers now. There was the obvious version everybody else saw first; the violence of him, the coarse bark of his voice ricocheting through hallways, the perpetual abrasion of his temper. Then there were the smaller things. The things Midoriya noticed because nobody else had spent years calibrating themselves around Katsuki’s moods with almost religious concentration.

He sat through afternoon classes in the empty desk beside Katsuki’s while teachers droned onward, and every now and then Katsuki would glance sideways before catching himself midway through the motion. Midoriya rested his cheek against folded arms across the desk and watched Bakugo pretend not to look tired.

Kirishima kept glancing over from two rows ahead. That had become more frequent recently. Concerned. Midoriya had spent enough years starving for kindness to recognise its shape immediately. He hated it. No, that was a lie. He hated what it did to him. Kirishima was easy to like in the same way warmth was easy to like when you had spent years submerged in cold water. Midoriya understood why Katsuki relaxed around him despite all the aggression and instinctive defensiveness stitched into his personality.

Kirishima never pushed too hard, never mocked weakness, never used vulnerability as leverage.

Midoriya remembered middle school corridors instead. The smell of old sweat trapped inside gym lockers while classmates laughed and Katsuki stood among them. Bright and incandescent and untouchable, every cruel word from him feeling heavier than cruelty from anyone else. Midoriya had loved him already even then, in that ugly earnest childhood way that made humiliation feel almost holy if it came from the right person.

He wondered sometimes whether dying had actually changed him very much at all. Maybe death had simply removed the social barriers preventing him from expressing things openly. An unpleasant thought.

Katsuki left class without waiting for anyone once the final bell rang, shoving books into his bag with abrupt irritated movements before stalking into the corridor while Kaminari yelled something behind him. Midoriya followed.

The dorms smelled faintly of trainers and laundry detergent and overheated radiators, the building carrying that strange communal odour unique to places where teenagers lived in dense proximity. All sweat and soap and exhaustion compacted into carpets and furniture upholstery.

Katsuki disappeared downstairs eventually, and the common room erupted around his arrival almost immediately. Mina laughing too loudly, Kaminari complaining about homework, Sero throwing something. Midoriya remained upstairs. He simply stopped outside Katsuki’s dorm room and then found himself unable to keep walking, so he sat on Katsuki’s bed instead.

There were moments when Midoriya felt horribly dislocated from himself, as though he had become an unfinished sketch, outlines bleeding gradually beyond recognition.

Downstairs somebody shouted. Katsuki’s voice threaded through the noise shortly afterwards, rough and irritated and alive in a way that made something ache beneath Midoriya’s sternum. He could hear them through the floorboards if he stayed still enough.

“–not cheating, you’re just shit at the game–”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“Kirishima, back me up here.”

“Nope. You’re definitely cheating.”

Laughter again.

Midoriya lay backwards across the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Katsuki sounded different with his friends than he had in middle school. Not softer exactly, but less constantly braced for impact. The hostility no longer carried the same serrated edge beneath it. These people understood the grammar of him already, knew how to translate aggression from genuine malice, and Midoriya found himself listening with peculiar aching fascination.

This was what Katsuki looked like loved correctly.

Midoriya rolled onto his side and pressed his face into Katsuki’s pillow. It smelled like smoke residue and detergent and the metallic tang of nitroglycerin sweat. A smell Midoriya associated so deeply with safety that sometimes he thought he could survive indefinitely inside it. Pathetic. Really pathetic.

Downstairs the laughter continued. Katsuki laughed too eventually, brief and reluctant. Midoriya closed his eyes. His chest hurt in that familiar impossible way dead bodies should not ache anymore, and suddenly he remembered sitting alone in his bedroom while his mother cooked dinner downstairs unaware her son was carefully unravelling himself thread by thread in the dark.

People always imagined suicide as one catastrophic moment. For him, it was more so tiny humiliations compacting over years until breathing itself began to feel embarrassing.

The crying started so quietly Midoriya didn’t really notice it at first. A dampness gathering slowly beneath his eyes while he lay curled across Katsuki’s bed, his chest tightening until eventually he realised breathing had become uneven again. He pressed his face harder into the pillow.

Something about hearing him happy scraped against old wounds in a way he couldn’t properly process. It reminded him too vividly of the fact Katsuki had always been capable of warmth. Rough and reluctant and hidden beneath layers of aggression, yes, but real – simply not given to Midoriya. Not now. Not when they were children. Not when Midoriya still had bruises blooming purple black beneath school uniforms every other week from being shoved against walls or kicked onto concrete.

Knees hitting asphalt. Laughter. The sour scent of river water after somebody threw his shoes over the embankment again. Katsuki standing nearby with his hands shoved into his pockets while the rest of the class laughed loudly because nobody wanted to end up beneath that attention themselves. Midoriya remembered going home afterwards with pebbles embedded painfully into torn palms and dirt caked wet beneath his fingernails while his mother asked softly what happened this time.

‘I fell over.’

Always the same answer.

Always smiling while he said it because watching her look guilty hurt worse than the bruises did.

A sob caught unexpectedly in Midoriya’s throat, and he curled tighter instinctively. He had forgotten so much of middle school for a while after dying. Not forgotten exactly, but the memories became abstract during the first months of haunting Katsuki, overwhelmed by newer horrors. By the corpse and the loneliness and the unbearable reality of continuing to exist unseen while the world conducted his funeral without him.

But recently the older memories had begun surfacing again. Maybe because Katsuki himself remembered them better now too. All the tiny cruelties neither of them could pretend had been harmless anymore. Midoriya pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes hard.

He remembered being fourteen and standing in bathroom stalls during lunch while he stared at fresh bruises darkening beneath skin and wondering whether anybody would care very much if he vanished. The answer had seemed obvious then. Not really.

Midoriya remembered one afternoon during middle school when Katsuki had detonated a tiny explosion against his shoulder during class hard enough to leave burns beneath his uniform sleeve. He cried harder. The tears soaked cold into Katsuki’s pillowcase beneath his face while memories kept surfacing with horrible clarity now that he had finally stopped outrunning them.

Being cornered behind the gym building while classmates laughed.

Textbooks knocked from his arms.

Hands grabbing his notebook and tearing pages out because the muttering analysis creeped people out.

Katsuki saying ‘quit following me’ with genuine disgust curling through his voice while Midoriya stood there nodding obediently.

And still he had loved him.

Still.

Even standing on the roof with cold wind tearing through his school uniform.

At least the death had carved itself deep enough into Katsuki’s psyche that forgetting became impossible. Horrible thought. True thought. He began crying hard enough then that his entire chest shook with it, gasping sobs muffled into Katsuki’s pillow while years of humiliation and loneliness and unresolved grief curdled together inside him. He felt almost ripped open by it, some half dead thing curled miserably in the dark clutching evidence that somebody he loved still existed downstairs among the living.

Katsuki walked in mid sentence, clearly still irritated about something downstairs.

“–telling you, if Kaminari touches my food again I’m blowing his hand o–”

He stopped. Midoriya stared at him, and Katsuki stared back. The hallway light behind Katsuki carved harsh gold around his silhouette, catching against the messy spikes of ash blond hair. Midoriya felt that awful familiar constriction inside his chest immediately, the one that always came whenever Katsuki entered a room too suddenly, like his entire body recognised him before thought could catch up.

Katsuki’s expression shifted almost instantly from irritation into visible annoyance.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

Midoriya looked away immediately.

“I’m fine,” he muttered thickly.

“Bullshit.”

Katsuki kicked the door shut behind himself harder than necessary before dropping his bag near the desk with a heavy thud.

“Jesus Christ.”

Midoriya curled slightly inward beneath the embarrassment, fingers twisting tighter in the bedsheets while he tried and failed to regulate his breathing properly again. Katsuki stood there for several long seconds, clearly debating whether or not to leave him alone. Annoyance. Discomfort. Guilt. Concern dragged reluctantly into existence beneath it all. Then, with the air of somebody approaching a feral animal likely to bite, Katsuki moved closer to the bed.

“You’re seriously still crying?” he asked roughly.

Midoriya laughed weakly into his sleeve. “Sorry.”

Katsuki grimaced immediately. “Stop apologising all the damn time.”

There had been a time when Midoriya apologised so constantly it became reflexive, every sentence padded instinctively with sorrysorrysorry before anybody could get angry enough to hurt him properly. Katsuki noticing that now felt bizarrely intimate in a way Midoriya could not fully explain.

Katsuki sat down eventually, on the edge of the mattress near his legs, shoulders tense with obvious discomfort while he stared stubbornly toward the opposite wall. Midoriya watched him carefully through blurred vision. He always watched Katsuki carefully – every tiny movement felt important.

Katsuki exhaled harshly through his nose. “What happened this time?”

Midoriya swallowed. The answer lodged thickly in his throat. I heard you laughing downstairs and remembered being fourteen and wanting to die because you hated me. Difficult to phrase casually.

“Nothing,” he whispered eventually.

Katsuki gave him an immediate irritated look. “Don’t piss me off.”

Midoriya stared down at the blanket twisted around his knees. “I was thinking about middle school.”

Katsuki’s expression changed instantly. Midoriya hated that he could still provoke guilt so easily. No, a lie. Part of him loved it too. Katsuki remembering his suffering felt validating in ways Midoriya could never fully untangle from resentment or affection.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Katsuki muttered eventually.

Midoriya let out an exhausted laugh. “Oh, okay. I’ll just stop remembering then.”

“Tch.”

Neither spoke for a while after that. Midoriya kept staring at him. He could not help it. Even now, swollen eyed and humiliated and emotionally flayed open from crying, his brain continued orbiting Katsuki compulsively. Cataloguing the warmth radiating from his body, the roughness of his voice, the tiny crease between his brows whenever he felt guilty enough to become quiet.

Obsessive did not even begin covering it anymore. Katsuki had become the organising principle of Midoriya’s entire existence. The axis everything else rotated around. Without him, Midoriya suspected he would simply dissipate into something formless and unbearable.

“What?” Katsuki had noticed the staring eventually.

Midoriya looked away slowly. “Nothing.”

“Creepy.”

Then, after another long silence filled only by Midoriya’s uneven breathing, Katsuki did something that made Midoriya’s chest seize. He reached over awkwardly and grabbed the back of Midoriya’s hoodie. Not gently, just enough to tug him sideways slightly until his shoulder knocked against Katsuki’s own. A clumsy approximation of comfort. Midoriya stopped breathing for a second, and Katsuki immediately looked irritated by his reaction.

“Don’t be weird.”

Too late. Far too late. Izuku’s entire body had already fixated helplessly on the contact, warmth through layers of fabric while something desperate inside him unfurled at the simple fact Katsuki was touching him voluntarily. Midoriya shut his eyes hard. He thought, dimly, he that this must be the reason he was still ‘alive’. Simply to feel Bakugos touch.

Chapter Text

Katsuki regretted touching him almost immediately. The second their shoulders met, something shifted visibly inside Izuku, subtle enough that most people would never notice it but impossible for Katsuki to miss after years of being haunted by the bastard. The tension locked through Midoriya’s frame loosened, his breathing steadied, his eyes closed for a moment. Relief. Pure relief.

The dorm was not large to begin with, but moments like this made it feel actively compressed, the air dense and difficult to move through, every object carrying too much history. The desk where Midoriya sometimes sat watching him study. The bed where he occasionally woke to find the ghost asleep beside him. The window through which light leaked across the floor in slabs. Every corner felt inhabited. Not by Midoriya physically, but by consequences.

Midoriya stared at him, and eventually Katsuki snapped. “What?”

Midoriya blinked. “What?”

“You keep staring. It’s pissing me off.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Sorry.”

"Stop saying sorry."

Midoriya laughed weakly, and the sound still carried remnants of crying inside it. Midoriya shifted slightly beside him, and Katsuki immediately became aware of it. The cold of him, the weight of him. Something about it made Katsuki deeply uncomfortable.

Midoriya tilted his head slightly. “Kacchan.”

“Hm.”

“What's wrong?”

Katsuki felt irritation spark immediately. “Nothing.”

Midoriya's eyebrows lifted. It was such an obvious lie that even saying it felt stupid.

“Kacchan.”

“I said nothing.”

“You look weird.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean–“

“I know what you mean.”

Midoriya watched him for another few seconds. “You look guilty.”

Katsuki's jaw clenched. “Stop– stop doing that fucking thing.”

Midoriya frowned. “What thing?”

“Where you keep acting like you know everything. Like you’re better than me.” The words came out harsher than he meant them to.

Midoriya recoiled slightly. “I wasn't–“

“Yeah you were.”

Midoriya stared at him. “I was asking if you were okay.”

“I'm fine.”

“Kacchan.”

“I'm. Fine.”

The irritation started crawling beneath Katsuki's skin now. Not entirely directed at Midoriya, mostly directed at himself. At the fact he'd spent the last few months having constant panic attacks and getting emotionally dissected from every angle imaginable.

Midoriya folded his arms. “You say that every time.”

“Because I am.”

“During training–“

Katsuki stood abruptly. “Jesus Christ.”

Midoriya stopped talking. Katsuki dragged both hands through his hair aggressively. The room felt even smaller standing up. Midoriya watched him from the bed, confused, hurt, concerned. The expression made something twist in Katsuki's chest.

“What the hell do you want from me?” Katsuki demanded.

Midoriya blinked. “What?”

“What do you actually want?” Years of frustration packed into a single sentence.

Midoriya stared.

Katsuki laughed shortly. “You want me guilty? Fine. I'm guilty.”

“Kacchan–“

“You want me miserable? Done.”

“That's not what–“

"You want me to spend the rest of my life feeling like shit about what happened?"

Midoriya flinched.

Katsuki kept going anyway. “I already do.”

Midoriya's expression changed. For a second he looked heartbreakingly young.

“You think that's what I want?” His voice sounded small.

Katsuki didn't answer – he genuinely didn't know anymore.

“Kacchan, you really don't understand me at all sometimes.” Midoriya looked down at his hands. “I don't want you miserable.”

“Could've fooled me.”

“That's not fair.”

Katsuki scoffed.

Midoriya looked up again, hair a mess, face exhausted. “I want you to stay.”

Midoriya stared at him like the answer had always been obvious, and the expression irritated him immediately.

“Don't look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I'm stupid.”

“I wasn't.”

“You were.”

Midoriya rubbed at his eyes, looking bewildered. “I don't want you to leave. What’s wrong with that?”

Katsuki laughed. “What isn't wrong with it?”

The frustration was building again now, crawling steadily higher through his chest. Midoriya stood up from the bed, and immediately the room felt different; more volatile. His shoulders had gone tense, closed off.

Midoriya laughed softly, a horrible sound. “Right.”

Katsuki frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“There you go again.”

Midoriya shook his head. “No.”

“Spit it out.”

“No.” The answer came flat.

Katsuki blinked. Midoriya rarely did that. Usually he argued, explained, pushed, kept going until one of them snapped. This felt different. For a second Katsuki thought he might start another argument, and instead he simply shook his head and then walked toward the door. Midoriya opened it, still saying nothing; no desperate last attempt to keep the conversation going, no guilt trip, no awkward ranting.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Katsuki remained standing in the middle of the room.

“...Huh.”

A strange feeling settled over him. Not relief, he had expected relief. Instead it felt oddly unsettling, wrong in some vague difficult to define way. Midoriya never really walked away first. For years now every argument had ended with him lingering stubbornly nearby even when Katsuki yelled, even when they fought, even when things became ugly. The absence felt disorienting.

Katsuki clicked his tongue. “Whatever.”

The room offered no response. Just quiet.

His eyes felt gritty, heavy. The exhaustion he had been outrunning all day finally beginning to catch him properly. Katsuki stripped off his shirt, tossed it vaguely toward a chair, and collapsed onto the bed without bothering to change further. The mattress dipped beneath him, still faintly cold from where Midoriya had been lying earlier. Katsuki grimaced, and then ignored it. His head hit the pillow, the same pillow Midoriya had been crying into.

Despite everything, despite how exhausted he was, despite how desperately he needed sleep–

The last thing Katsuki thought before finally drifting off was;

Where the hell did he go?

Chapter Text

Somebody was grabbing his shoulder hard enough to jolt his entire body. His eyes snapped open, and adrenaline hit instantly. He was already moving before his brain fully caught up, hand jerking upward instinctively as if preparing an explosion.

“The fuck–“

“Katsuki.” Kirishima.

The voice cut through the fog first, then the face. Katsuki blinked. The room was dark except for a strip of corridor light leaking through the partially open door, turning furniture into jagged silhouettes and throwing pale angles across the floor. For a second he thought he was still dreaming, then he registered Kirishima's expression and sat upright immediately.

“What?”

Kirishima looked shaken. There was blood running down the side of his face, a red line tracked from somewhere near his temple before disappearing beneath his jaw. Fresh, still wet. Katsuki's exhaustion vanished instantly.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

“I don't know.” Kirishima rubbed a hand across his face, and more blood smeared against his fingers. “I woke up like this.”

“What?”

“I woke up and my face was bleeding.”Kirishima swallowed. “I thought maybe somebody got into the dorms.”

Katsuki swung his legs off the bed. “Did you see anything?”

“No.”

“Anybody?”

“No.”

Katsuki stood. His hair was a complete mess, his expression still catching up to being awoke so suddenly. He probably looked ridiculous.

Katsuki folded his arms. “If you're worried, why didn't you go get Aizawa?”

Kirishima hesitated, and Katsuki narrowed his eyes. “What.”

Kirishima looked vaguely embarrassed now. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

Kirishima rubbed the back of his neck. “There was just...”

Another pause. “...you were closer.”

Katsuki stared, and Kirishima avoided eye contact immediately.

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah.” The answer sounded so straightforward that Katsuki almost found it irritating. “...You're strong.”

Katsuki blinked. “Tch. Obviously.”

Then, his voice sharpened immediately. “We check the dorm.”

Kirishima nodded. “Yeah.”

“If somebody got in, I kill the bastard.”

“Right.” Kirishima grimaced. “Hopefully not.”

Normally Midoriya would already be hovering nearby analysing every possible explanation and making things infinitely more complicated. Nothing. Just darkness. Katsuki frowned slightly, then pushed the thought aside as they stepped into the corridor together. The corridor lighting was brighter than his dorm room, enough to expose details that darkness had blurred together before. Katsuki stopped walking.

Kirishima noticed immediately. “What?”

“Hold still.”

Kirishima blinked, though he obeyed as Katsuki stepped closer. The blood had looked superficial at first glance, a messy cut, maybe a scrape against furniture, something explainable. It wasn't. His stomach dropped. Four distinct lines, not perfectly parallel, but close enough; starting near Kirishima's temple and dragging downward across his cheek in uneven red furrows where skin had split beneath pressure. Fingernails. Someone had clawed him, hard.

Kirishima kept talking. “...so, we should probably wake Aizawa immediately, right?”

Katsuki barely heard him. Fingernails. Midoriya crying into his pillow, leaving the room, disappearing somewhere into the dorm. His increasingly unstable emotional state. A cold sensation spread through Katsuki's chest. No. No, maybe not. There were other explanations. Had to be. Except the marks looked horrifyingly familiar.

Kirishima shifted awkwardly. “You alright?”

Katsuki realised he had gone completely still. “Yeah.”

Kirishima frowned. “You sure?”

"Fine." Not convincing.

Kirishima glanced away before rubbing the back of his neck again, blood streaked faintly across his fingers. “I just... I don't know, man.”

His voice sounded embarrassed now, almost guilty. “I didn't wanna go looking around by myself. I figured if it was a villain or something...”

He shrugged. “...you'd be the best person to grab.”

Katsuki stared at him. “What about the teachers?”

“I mean eventually, yeah. But I kinda just reacted.” His expression softened slightly. “Knew you'd come. And we make a great team, dude.”

Katsuki felt vaguely sick. Kirishima was standing here bleeding and scared and looking at him like the solution to a problem, and all Katsuki could think about was Midoriya. His mind was already racing ahead. If Aizawa got involved, if this became an investigation, if the teachers started searching the dorms–

What exactly would happen?

The thought hit him so suddenly he almost physically recoiled from it.

Would they find him? Could they?

Nobody had ever looked properly. Nobody knew Midoriya existed. Nobody even knew there was something to search for.

But what if they did?

What if some quirk detected him?

What if–

Katsuki cut the thought off violently.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

Kirishima was hurt.

Actually hurt.

And Katsuki's first instinct wasn't anger or concern. It was fear for Midoriya. The realisation made guilt crash into him immediately. Because if Midoriya had done this – if he had actually attacked Kirishima – then he deserved consequences. Didn't he? The answer should have been obvious.

“Bakugo?”

“What.”

Kirishima frowned. “You're acting weird.”

Katsuki looked away. His pulse had started speeding up again. He needed to think. Needed five minutes. Needed to find Midoriya. Needed–

Needed something.

Anything.

Kirishima was already pulling out his phone, probably to call somebody. Aizawa. Present Mic. Midnight. All Might. Anyone. Katsuki moved instantly.

“Wait.”

Kirishima paused. “What?”

“Just.” The word came out sharp. “Wait a minute.”

Kirishima blinked. “A minute?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Good question. Excellent question. Katsuki had absolutely no answer he could give aloud.

Kirishima looked increasingly confused. “Bakugo.”

“Just wait.”

Kirishima rubbed his neck again. “Alright, man.”

Then, Katsuki paused. “I gotta tell you something.”

Chapter Text

“I gotta tell you something.”

The words left Katsuki’s mouth before he had fully decided to say them. The second they were out in the corridor between them, hanging there beneath the fluorescent lights, he immediately wished he could drag them back. Kirishima looked up, concern sharpened instantly into attention.

“Okay.”

Katsuki hated that response. No hesitation or mockery, just immediate willingness to listen. The blood running down the side of Kirishima’s face looked darker now beneath the artificial lighting, collecting in the shallow curve of his jaw before disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. Every time Katsuki looked at it another spike of guilt drove itself deeper into his chest.

Katsuki opened his mouth, and nothing came out. How exactly was he supposed to begin? There's a dead boy following me. No. The kid who killed himself in middle school never actually left. Worse. I think he might've clawed your face open because he gets jealous. Absolutely fucking insane.

Kirishima frowned slightly. “Bakugo?”

Katsuki looked away. He became acutely aware of his own heartbeat, hammering hard against his ribs. For years the secret had existed entirely inside his own skull. Contained, controlled. Nobody knew, nobody could know. The idea of saying it aloud felt almost physically impossible, like trying to force his lungs to breathe underwater.

“He's–“ Katsuki stopped.

Kirishima blinked. “He's?”

Katsuki clenched his jaw. Midoriya's face flashed through his mind unexpectedly; middle school, standing there smiling nervously while carrying notebooks against his chest. Alive. Then later, the pavement. Blood. The horrible wet sound of somebody trying and failing to breathe.

Katsuki shut his eyes briefly. “Forget it.”

Kirishima stared. “What?”

“I said forget it.”

“Bakugo.” The concern in his voice deepened immediately. “You're freaking me out, man.”

Katsuki laughed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Kirishima shifted awkwardly. Blood had begun drying around the edges of the scratches now. The dorm remained eerily quiet around them. Most students were asleep. The world reduced to stale corridor air, fluorescent light, and the growing pressure in Katsuki's skull. Kirishima rubbed his neck again, and the movement looked nervous this time.

“You seriously okay?” The question sounded less casual now.

Katsuki glanced at him. At the blood, the worry, the way Kirishima kept trying to figure out what was wrong without pushing hard enough to make things worse. A decent person. Kirishima was a genuinely decent person. And for one irrational second Katsuki imagined telling him everything. Every awful impossible detail – the haunting, the guilt, the years. Midoriya sitting beside his bed, refusing to disappear. He imagined Kirishima listening, trying to understand, trying to help.

It made him realise how badly he wanted someone else to know. Just once. Just for five fucking minutes, to carry part of it. The desire vanished almost immediately beneath panic. No. Absolutely not. He was not that weak – and the risk alone made him feel sick. Kirishima waited another few seconds, and then his expression shifted into worry. Real worry.

“You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.” Kirishima paused. “But something's wrong.”

For a second Katsuki almost snapped at him. Almost told him to mind his own business. Almost retreated into anger because anger was familiar territory. Instead he just felt tired, incredibly tired.

Kirishima exhaled softly. “Look.”

His voice gentled slightly. “If this is about whatever happened in training–”

“It isn't.”

“Then what is it?”

Katsuki had no answer he could give.

Kirishima studied him for a long moment, then finally sighed. “Alright. We'll talk about it later.”

Katsuki blinked. “What?”

“Later.”

“Aren't you supposed to be worried about the psycho who scratched your face open?”

“We can do both.”

Katsuki stared at him. The situation felt almost unbearable. Kirishima was attacked – possibly by the dead boy haunting Katsuki's life – and somehow he was still worried about him. The guilt tasted metallic. Like blood, and Katsuki looked away before Kirishima could see whatever crossed his face.

Kirishima stepped back, enough to give him space without actually leaving. That was another thing about him that irritated Katsuki sometimes; he had an almost infuriating instinct for exactly how much pressure to apply before somebody bolted completely. A talent that made him difficult to shake off once he decided to care about someone.

Katsuki exhaled through his nose and focused on the corridor.

The lights.

The floor.

Reality.

Concrete things.

Things that made sense.

Then cold fingers settled against the sides of his neck, and Katsuki froze. Every muscle in his body locked instantly. His stomach dropped so hard it almost hurt. Midoriya was behind him. He felt his heartbeat immediately hammering against his chest, his breathing going haywire. Everything narrowed into cold fingertips and the sudden rush of adrenaline flooding his bloodstream.

“Bakugo?” Kirishima's voice. Concerned.

Katsuki realised he had gone completely rigid. Shit.

“Nothing.”

Kirishima frowned immediately. “You sure?”

Midoriya's thumbs moved, dragging slowly against the sides of his neck. Katsuki wanted to explode something out of sheer nervous energy. Out of the overwhelming need to do something. Anything. The awareness crawled beneath his skin; the faint smell of rain lingering in green curls, the absence of body heat, the familiarity of him. The whole gesture felt oddly intimate.

“Kacchan.” The voice came from behind him.

Kirishima was definitely noticing something now. His expression had shifted again, concern deepening.

“Bakugo?” This time it was Kirishima speaking.

At first Katsuki thought Midoriya’s hands there were another attempt at comfort. A warped and uncomfortable one. Midoriya had always been strange about physical contact when he became distressed, hovering too close, clinging too tightly, as though closeness itself could solve problems. The fingers remained against his neck, still.

Until the fingers shifted, and then suddenly closed hard with no warning or hesitation. One moment cold hands rested against his throat, the next they were crushing inward. Katsuki's eyes widened as he stopped being able to intake air. His hands flew upwards instinctively, grabbing at wrists nobody else could see. The corridor lurched around him.

“Fuck–“

Midoriya's grip tightened further, and Katsuki felt his airway compress. The awful mechanical reality of choking asserted itself immediately, his body recognising danger before thought could properly form. The world sharpened unnaturally, every fluorescent light overhead suddenly too bright, every heartbeat too loud.

Kirishima stared. For a second he seemed completely unable to process what he was seeing. Because from his perspective, Bakugo had simply started choking. No visible attacker or explanation, just hands clawing desperately at empty air around his own throat. Then Kirishima moved.

“Bakugo!” The panic in his voice cut through everything.

Kirishima’s hand grabbed his shoulder. Katsuki couldn't answer. Midoriya's fingers dug deeper. The pressure wasn't human anymore. Not because it was especially strong, but because it was relentless. No hesitation, no instinctive pullback, there wqs only desperate crushing need. Katsuki tried to breathe, and a horrible rasp escaped instead.

“HELP!” Kirishima.

The shout was loud enough to wake half the dorm. Doors slammed open almost immediately, and the corridor erupted.

“What happened?”

“Bakugo?”

“What's wrong with him?”

People emerged half awake and disoriented, still wearing sleep clothes, staring at the scene unfolding beneath the harsh corridor lights. Kirishima had both hands on Katsuki now – trying to steady him, to understand.

“He just–“ Kirishima looked genuinely terrified. “He just started choking!”

Black spots began appearing across his vision as his hearing distorted. Somebody was already calling a teacher. The corridor had become chaos.

Katsuki's knees buckled, and Kirishima caught him immediately. The world tilted violently sideways as Midoriya's face finally appeared beside him. Green curls, wet eyes, a shattered expression. The same look he'd had earlier while crying into the pillow, only worse. Much worse. The grip loosened far too late. Air rushed painfully back into Katsuki's throat, and his lungs tried desperately to work. The corridor spun, voices became static, light became smear. Kirishima was still talking, still holding him.

The last thing Katsuki saw before unconsciousness swallowed him entirely was Midoriya stumbling backwards through the crowd of people who could not see him, staring at his own hands with an expression of pure horror.

Chapter Text

The first thing Bakugo registered was the light, the kind of merciless fluorescent glare that existed exclusively in medical rooms and hospitals. Places where comfort was considered secondary to practicality. The second thing was the smell; antiseptic, disinfectant, paper. The faint medicinal scent that seemed permanently embedded into Recovery Girl's office no matter the season.

Then came the memory.

The impossible cold pressure around his neck, his lungs spasming uselessly while Kirishima grabbed him and shouted his name. Bakugo lurched upright so hard the bed frame rattled beneath him, and air tore into his lungs. His heart immediately began hammering against his ribs with such force it genuinely hurt.

For one disorienting second he had absolutely no idea where he was, and that uncertainty fed directly into the terror already climbing through his nervous system. Every instinct screaming that something was wrong, that something was behind him, that if he stopped paying attention for even a second those hands would be back around his throat. His own fingers flew to his neck automatically.

“Bakugo.”

Bakugo looked up. Aizawa was sitting in a chair beside the bed, looking exhausted in the particular way only Aizawa ever managed, wrapped in his capture weapon. His hair was a mess, one boot rested loosely against the floor. He looked entirely unimpressed. Which, somehow, helped.

“Easy.”

Bakugo immediately looked away. His breathing was still fucked. Too fast, way too fast. His fingers dug harder into the bedsheets. The room felt distant, unreal. Aizawa watched him for several seconds, observing the way he always did.

“Recovery Girl checked you over.” His voice remained maddeningly calm. “You're fine.”

Bakugo laughed breathlessly. “I don’t feel fucking fine.”

“You’re having a panic attack.” The answer was matter of fact.

Bakugo despised how quickly Aizawa identified it. The embarrassment hit him almost as violently hard as the panic itself. Aizawa sighed, and the sound carried the exhausted patience of somebody who had spent years dealing with stubborn teenagers determined to self destruct. Bakugo glared at him.

“Breathe.”

Katsuki rolled his eyes.

Aizawa did not react. “Slower.”

“Fuck off.”

“Bakugo.” The warning in his voice sharpened fractionally.

The tone of somebody refusing to let a situation escalate. Bakugo hated how effective it was. He dragged a breath into his lungs and held it, and then released it. The next one came slightly easier, then another. Not fixed, not even close, but enough to stop the room spinning quite so fast.

Aizawa nodded. “There.”

“Don't sound so damn proud of yourself.”

“I'm not.” A lie. “Do you remember what happened?”

Bakugo's entire body stiffened, and Aizawa's eyes narrowed slightly.

“Somebody attacked me.” Technically true.

Aizawa remained silent for a moment, considering. “We've gathered that much.”

Bakugo looked away. The ceiling suddenly seemed very interesting.

“Do you remember anything else?”

No.

Yes.

Too much.

Green hair.

Cold hands.

“Not really.” Another lie.

Aizawa knew it.

Bakugo knew he knew it.

Neither acknowledged it.

Aizawa finally exhaled. “You scared your classmates.”

Bakugo grimaced immediately.

Fantastic.

Exactly what he wanted to hear.

“Especially Kirishima.”

Bakugo clenched his jaw, and Aizawa watched him carefully, giving him space to arrive to his own conclusions. Sometimes Bakugo suspected that was Aizawa's most dangerous skill as a teacher – knowing exactly when not to speak. Eventually Aizawa stood, capture weapon shifting softly around his shoulders.

“You don't have to tell me everything right now.”

Bakugo looked up. The statement surprised him.

“Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of patience.”

“Debatable.”

“Hm.” A pause. “But whatever's going on, you're carrying it alone.”

Bakugo's stomach dropped.

Aizawa continued before he could respond. “You've looked exhausted for months.”

The words were gentle. By Aizawa standards, practically affectionate.

“You're a good student, Bakugo. You're strong, capable, stubborn enough to be a pain in my ass most days.”

Bakugo snorted despite himself.

Aizawa ignored it. “But being strong doesn't mean handling everything by yourself.”

Bakugo found himself unable to look away. For one awful moment, Bakugo realised how badly he wanted to believe them. So he did what he always did, he got angry.

“Tch.” He rolled his shoulders stiffly. “I'm not some damn extra that needs babysitting.”

Aizawa looked unimpressed. “Nobody said you were.”

“Sure sounded like it.” Bakugo scowled.

Aizawa remained entirely unmoved. For a few seconds the only sound in the room was the faint hum of fluorescent lights overhead and the distant noise of students moving somewhere beyond the office walls, normal life continuing despite the fact Bakugo felt like somebody had reached inside his chest and filled it with broken glass.

Eventually he spoke again, more brusquely than before. “Whatever. The villain, were they caught?”

The question came out urgent.

Aizawa shook his head. “No.”

Relief flooded his system immediately afterwards, followed by guilt so sharp it made him feel sick. Kirishima was hurt, and Bakugo's first emotional response to hearing the attacker escaped was relief.

Aizawa continued speaking. “We searched the grounds and there were no signs of forced entry.”

Bakugo's pulse began creeping upwards again.

Aizawa watched him. “We found no physical evidence suggesting an intruder was ever present.”

Bakugo swallowed. “The fuck does that mean?”

“It means,” Aizawa said calmly, “that whatever happened may not have required someone physically entering the building.”

Bakugo forced himself to maintain eye contact. To look normal, to act normal. To not immediately start thinking about green hair and cold hands and impossible quirks.

The teacher sounded thoughtful now.

Analytical. “The current theory is that someone used a long range quirk from outside campus.”

Theory. Current theory. Not certainty. Bakugo latched onto the distinction immediately.

Aizawa rubbed at one eye tiredly. “Nobody else was badly injured.”

Bakugo looked up sharply. “Kirishima's okay?”

Aizawa paused. “He'll be fine. He's more worried about you than himself.”

Of course he was. Idiot. Complete idiot.

Bakugo rubbed a hand over his face aggressively. “He's dramatic.”

“No.” Aizawa's answer came immediately. “He's concerned.”

That felt worse. Bakugo stared at the floor as Aizawa stared at Bakugo. Outside, somewhere further down the corridor, a door opened and closed. Meanwhile Bakugo's thoughts had become a tangled mess. They searched the entire premises, and they found nothing.  The relief made him feel disgusting. This should have been simple – someone hurts your friend, and you want them caught, punished, stopped.

Instead, Bakugo found himself sitting there silently thanking God, fate, luck, whatever cruel force governed his life these days, that nobody had discovered the dead boy haunting the dorms.

Chapter Text

Aizawa eventually pushed himself to his feet. The chair legs scraped softly against the floor, and Bakugo looked up. The teacher paused near the door, one hand already resting against the frame. For a second he looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he just sighed.

“Recovery Girl will come check on you in a bit.”

Bakugo grunted. “Great.”

Aizawa ignored the sarcasm. “You should stay here until then.”

“I'm not a child.”

“No.” Aizawa opened the door. “You're considerably more difficult than one.”

Then he left, the door clicking shut behind him. Bakugo stared at the opposite wall. He simply sat there – thinking, trying not to think. His throat still felt hypersensitive. Every swallow reminded him, every breath, every shift of muscle. The memory lingered stubbornly beneath his skin. Cold hands, no air, terror. His eyes drifted toward the door.

Then the handle moved, and Bakugo stiffened immediately. The door opened as Midoriya stepped inside, and everything inside Bakugo's chest dropped – not because he was angry or because he was afraid. Midoriya looked wrecked. Absolutely fucking wrecked. He looked like somebody had taken every fragile thing holding him together and ripped it apart with their bare hands.

For a moment neither spoke. Midoriya stood in the doorway, frozen, as Bakugo remained sitting on the bed, equally frozen. Then Midoriya made a small sound, the sort somebody made when they were trying desperately not to cry, and suddenly he was moving, crossing the room fast with pure desperation.

“Kacchan–“ His voice cracked.

Bakugo felt his stomach twist sickeningly. Midoriya stopped beside the bed.

“Kacchan, I–“ The words collapsed beneath a sob.

Bakugo looked away, painfully uncomfortable. Midoriya crying had always affected him strangely, even before the rooftop. Something about it bypassed irritation entirely and went straight for guilt.

Midoriya wiped aggressively at his face. “I didn't mean to.”

Bakugo closed his eyes briefly and said nothing. Before he fully realised what was happening, Midoriya climbed onto the bed, collapsing forward until he was practically folded against him. A mess of trembling limbs and wet eyes and panic. Bakugo's entire body locked up as every instinct screamed at him to move. To complain or yell or shove him away. Instead he sat there rigidly while Midoriya buried his face against his shoulder. Crying.

It wasn’t like the dramatic emotional spirals he sometimes fell into. There was no anger or obsession or manipulation. It was completely unfiltered grief.  Bakugo stared at the wall, unsure what the hell he was supposed to do. His hands remained awkwardly suspended for several seconds as Midoriya's shoulders shook. Another sob escaped him, then another and another, until eventually the sound became unbearable. He sounded genuinely horrified by what he'd done.

Slowly, awkwardly, Bakugo lifted one arm, then the other, and wrapped them around him. Midoriya practically collapsed as though he'd been held together exclusively by panic and finally lost the energy. His fingers clenched in Bakugo's shirt hard. He grimaced. Uncomfortable. Embarrassed. Feeling wildly out of his depth.

“Kacchan–“ The word dissolved into another sob. “Please. Please. I'm sorry. Please.”

Bakugo stared over Midoriya's shoulder at the wall. Anywhere except the crying wreck clinging to him. His throat tightened.

“Okay.” Bakugo said eventually.

Midoriya froze, a tiny break in the sobbing. “...Okay?”

“Yeah.” He tightened his arms slightly, almost without thinking. “Okay.”

For a second neither moved. Then Midoriya buried his face harder against his shoulder and cried. Not really louder, more so just… deeper. As if something inside his fucked up head had finally broken apart. Bakugo sat there holding him, stiff, awkward, miserable. He felt completely ridiculous. A patient in Recovery Girl's office cradling the dead boy who had nearly strangled him unconscious. The situation was so absurd it should have been funny. Instead it just hurt.

Because Midoriya was trembling, and he sounded terrified. All Bakugo currently remembered was a middle school kid standing on a rooftop, and he remembered every cruel thing he'd ever said. He remembered blood. So much blood. At some point his vision blurred, a strange pressure building behind his eyes. His chest felt tight, wrong, and then something wet slid down his cheek. For a moment he genuinely couldn't process it, and then the realisation hit.

He was crying.

Just silent tears slipping down his face one after another while he sat there holding Midoriya. Bakugo immediately looked horrified at himself, though Midoriya didn't notice. Or maybe he did. Maybe he was simply too out of sorts to mention it. So the two of them remained there beneath the sterile fluorescent lights of Recovery Girl's office. One crying openly, the other pretending very hard he wasn't.

Chapter Text

Recovery Girl eventually declared him functional. The old woman had fussed over his throat, complained about stress, complained about teenagers, complained about Aizawa's influence on teenagers, and finally waved him away with the resigned expression of somebody fully aware her advice would be ignored the moment he stepped outside. Bakugo accepted this with the dignity it deserved, which was none.

Now he was walking towards class with his hands shoved deep into his pockets and a permanent scowl fixed across his face. The corridors were busy, students moving between lessons. Nobody was looking at him strangely or whispering, which meant Aizawa had probably shut down any gossip before it started. Good. The last thing he needed was sympathy.

Beside him, Midoriya walked silently. Bakugo could feel him there without looking. Could always feel him there. Eventually Midoriya's fingers hooked themselves into the sleeve of his blazer tentatively, like he expected to be shaken off. Bakugo glanced sideways, and Midoriya immediately looked away. His shoulders were hunched inward as if he were attempting to occupy less space than usual. Bakugo clicked his tongue, and Midoriya flinched slightly, then looked embarrassed for flinching.

“Stop that.” He muttered, careful to only speak when he was sure there weren’t many students around.

Midoriya blinked. “What?”

“That.”

Excellent communication. Midoriya looked confused, though he refused to elaborate as the conversation died immediately. Midoriya had nearly killed him, and he had forgiven him. Neither of them knew what to do with that. His eyes drifted back towards Midoriya despite himself. Green curls, messy, and soft looking. Stupid. The same curls he'd grabbed during childhood fights. The same curls he'd watched become sticky with blood on a pavement years ago. The same curls that somehow still existed despite everything that should have made them impossible.

His stomach twisted. Bakugo looked away again, then immediately looked back. The habit had become ridiculous. Those eyes were worse. The curls were easy, the eyes weren't. Midoriya had always looked at people like they mattered, even now after death. Even after years of isolation and obsession and grief had changed into something damaged and frightening. There remained a terrible softness buried underneath, a reflexive kindness, a desperate hope.

And those eyes–

Christ.

Bakugo hated those eyes.

Constantly sad.

The sadness of abandoned houses and unanswered messages and hospital waiting rooms. It sat permanently behind his gaze now, a bruise that never faded. Bakugo looked forward again. Class was getting closer, and he could already hear voices beyond the corridor. Kaminari laughing at something, Mina talking too loudly. Normal. Everything was normal. Except it wasn't. Because Midoriya's fingers remained curled around his sleeve. Nobody else could see him.

Existing exclusively in relation to him, the thought should have horrified him. Sometimes it still did – at three in the morning, after nightmares, when guilt crawled out from whatever hole it lived in and reminded him exactly why Midoriya existed in the first place. But there was another feeling too, one he hated even naming.

Affection.

Not simple affection, nothing involving Midoriya was simple. Something born from years of dependency neither of them wanted to acknowledge. The truth was that Midoriya knew everything. He'd seen Bakugo at his absolute worst and remained anyway. Sometimes against his will, sometimes against Bakugo's. But he remained. There was something deeply unsettling about realising the person who knew you best had died years ago.

Bakugo swallowed.

The classroom door appeared ahead. Midoriya's grip tightened slightly around his sleeve, not possessive this time, just there. Bakugo glanced down at it, then at him. Midoriya looked pathetic, haunted, hopelessly attached. The dead boy who existed for nobody else, walking beside Bakugo through UA corridors. Still existing only for him. The thought should have felt like a prison. Instead, nowadays, it felt dangerously close to being something else. Something warmer.

Bakugo hated that realisation. Hated it so much he immediately shoved open the classroom door and walked inside without another thought. Midoriya followed. Of course he did. He always would.

The classroom noise didn’t stop when Bakugo entered, it shifted. Conversations stumbled, a few heads turned, some stopped speaking entirely. The familiar atmosphere of Class A remained intact, but a current of concern had been threaded through it during his absence, and Katsuki felt it immediately. He despised it.

The classroom itself was drenched in afternoon sunlight, the large windows casting broad rectangles of pink-gold across desks and floors, illuminating suspended dust particles that drifted through the air. Kaminari was half hanging out of his chair. Sero had his feet up somewhere he probably shouldn't. Todoroki sat exactly as Todoroki always sat, somehow managing to make perfect posture look vaguely threatening. Aizawa was in his stupid sleeping bag, completely unbothered.

A chair scraped loudly against the floor as Eijirou stood, quickly enough that several other people immediately looked over.

“Bakugo.”

Bakugo resisted the urge to groan. “You look like shit.”

Kirishima approached. The scratches along his face had been cleaned properly now. Four narrow marks dragging from temple to jaw. Bakugo pretended not to notice.

“How's your throat?” Kirishima asked.

The question was straightforward, but there was genuine worry underneath it.

Bakugo clicked his tongue. “Still attached.”

Kaminari immediately pointed. “Good sign.”

“Shut up.”

“I'm just saying.”

“Nobody asked.”

“See?” Kaminari looked delighted. “He's definitely okay.”

Mina folded her arms. “You're lucky, you know.”

Bakugo glanced at her. “How.”

“You got out of training.”

“That's your definition of lucky?”

“Absolutely.” The pink haired girl looked entirely sincere.

A few moments later, he found himself standing beside his desk while people continued talking around him, checking on him in that awkward way teenagers often did. Questions disguised as jokes, concern disguised as teasing. An attempt to make sure somebody was okay without forcing them to admit they weren't. It should have annoyed him more than it did, instead he found himself oddly detached. Existing slightly outside the moment.

Midoriya was still there. Close. Leaning subtly against his shoulder now as though that alone could reassure him that Bakugo was still breathing. Katsuki stared down at his desk. At the scratches carved into its surface from years of frustrated students and idle hands, at sunlight stretching across worn wood. At absolutely anything except the complicated knot of thoughts pulling tighter inside his head.

He kept thinking about what Aizawa had said. ‘You're carrying it alone.’ Because technically that wasn't true. Not entirely. He wasn't alone. There were always green curls in the corner of his vision, always quiet breathing beside his bed. A constant presence so deeply woven into the structure of his life that imagining its absence had become difficult. The haunting should have felt like imprisonment – sometimes it did, sometimes he looked at Midoriya and saw the rooftop. The blood. The corpse. The unbearable weight of guilt made flesh.

But other times–

Other times he looked at him and saw the boy who still followed him through hallways. The boy who knew exactly how he took his coffee. The boy who remembered every victory. Every failure. Every nightmare. The boy who remained even now. A dead thing should not have felt familiar. It certainly should not have felt comforting. Yet Bakugo had spent so many years with Midoriya's presence lingering in every moment that his absence had become more frightening than his existence.

“Bakugo.” Kirishima again, standing closer than before, watching him carefully.

“What.”

“You zoned out.”

“No I didn't.”

“You absolutely did, dude.”

“I was thinking.”

Kaminari immediately leant over. “Dangerous.”

Bakugo seriously considered killing him. The only thing that stopped him was the fact Kaminari looked genuinely pleased to see him. Idiot. Around him the classroom continued filling with noise and movement and life, students settling into seats, conversations overlapping beneath the golden afternoon light, ordinary concerns reclaiming territory from last night's fear.

Through it all, Midoriya remained beside him.

His fingers still tangled in the sleeve of Bakugo's blazer.

Like he was afraid that if he let go, Katsuki might disappear.

Chapter Text

By the time classes ended, Bakugo felt wrung out. His throat still carried the ghost of pressure every time he swallowed, every now and then provoking remembered panic that crawled beneath his skin, but otherwise he was intact. The evening sun hung low over the campus as the students filtered back towards the dorms. Laughter travelled through the cooling air, somebody was arguing about homework. Somebody else was trying to convince Kaminari not to microwave something that definitely shouldn't be microwaved.

Beside him, Midoriya remained attached to his sleeve. Bakugo ignored him, or at least he pretended to. The distinction had become increasingly difficult to identify. As they entered the dorm building, Kirishima appeared from somewhere behind him.

“Hey.”

Bakugo glanced over. The scratches across Kirishima's face looked worse in the warm evening light.

“Me, Kaminari, Mina, Sero, Jirou and Todoroki are hanging out in Todoroki's room later.”