Chapter Text
╔═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╗
Are we still friends?
Can we be friends?
Are we still friends?
I've got to Know
See each other
Shake your hand, say hi
Long ago, long ago, long ago
ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?, by Tyler, the Creator
╚═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╝
“ Shinso, wait!” Kaminari called, a tired, desperate hint in his tone. “ C’mon, please, dude!”
Hitoshi kept on walking. The cold started to bite at his arms but he didn’t let it slow him, continuing to stride down the dirt path purposefully.
Kaminari clicked his tongue and groaned behind him. “ Shinso! Hey, just– stop for a second!” A hand landed on Hitoshi’s shoulder and he paused slowly, glaring at the dirt.
But we’re both fucking shitbags, and there’s a reason people fucking hate us.
“ Why did you bring it up? Why did you say it?” he asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Kaminari slowly took his hand off of his shoulder, letting it swing to a stop beside him.
The blonde sighed. Hitoshi didn’t look at him. The trees in the park swayed, and he wondered that if trees really did have some form of consciousness, what they’d think of him with their decades old wisdom. Probably nothing great.
Kaminari turned his face away. “ It just slipped. They said it, then, well, would you believe it if I said that I forgot he was there? That I forgot it was a secret? Not very believable, I guess, but I… I didn’t mean to. I promise.”
Hitoshi sighed and looked up at the bleak sky. “ Yeah. I know.” He’d thought that the weather hadn’t fit the initial mood of the hangout, especially with how good it sounded; they’d just have a day where they could relax. As friends . Hitoshi had thought that the weather really should have been sunny, to align with the mood.
He guessed he should have known.
“ We, um,” Kaminari said awkwardly, “ I-I came to say that we should probably go back? I mean, we can’t leave them alone, can we? Plus, there’s still the blanket back there. I’m sure Kirishima, Midoriya and Bakugou have cooled off by now. Then we can talk about this whole mess… together.”
Hitoshi glanced up. Kaminari’s gaze was trained on the trees in front of them, though, before the blonde pursed his lips and looked back at the hill, where their picnic had been.
Then he slowly frowned, stance stiffening, so Hitoshi looked back too.
Kirishima and Midoriya walked towards them, with no Bakugou in tow.
Kaminari didn’t wait for Hitoshi and immediately power-walked towards the two, leaving Hitoshi to follow after a stunned beat.
“ What– Why are you guys here?” Kaminari asked as soon as they were close enough. Kirishima looked up in mild surprise, but Hitoshi could see the hurt and fading anger in his eyes when he looked away. Kaminari frowned deeper, tilting his head to look behind them before focusing back on the pair. “ And where’s Bakugou?”
Kirishima shook his head, looking away. “ I– He’s probably still over there. I don’t know, I just– We left, I didn’t see.”
Kaminari looked from him, to Midoriya, to Hitoshi and back, before shouldering past them and storming up the hill; ignoring how his feet slid and lost grip easily against the damp earth. Hitoshi clicked his tongue and followed closely after. He didn’t check to see if they were following, but by Kirishima’s sigh and the pairs of footsteps behind him, he had a pretty good guess that they were behind him.
At least I fucking acknowledge what’s right in front of me.
Hitoshi shook his head and looked up at Kaminari’s small grunt of surprise. He blinked.
Turned out, Bakugou hadn’t ‘cooled off’.
Bakugou wasn’t there.
Kaminari sucked air through his teeth and cursed. When he started to pace, Hitoshi frowned and grabbed his arm.
“ Oi. Sparks,” Hitoshi said sharply. “ What the fuck’s going on? Why–”
“ Oh no,” Kirishima muttered from behind them, looking around as well. “ Shoot, shoot, shoot, I completely–”
“ Kiri!”
“ I was hurt and I wanted to get out of here, okay?” Kirishima defended, shooting a scowl towards Kaminari. “ That wasn’t the first thing on my mind, and though I admit that it really should have been, that ‘conversation’ didn’t let me think very clearly at the moment.”
Kaminari threw his arms up and turned, resuming to pace.
Hitoshi scowled, looking between them both. “ What wasn’t the first thing on your mind? What’s wrong ? He’s probably just at–” Home.
L-Look, Bakugou– he– we don’t think–.... Ugh! We don’t think that Bakugou’s got a good homelife right now .
“ … For fuck’s sake,” Hitoshi sighed.
Midoriya made a face at the floor, biting his lip. “ Y-Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Hitoshi pinched the bridge of his nose, before marching back to Kaminari, grabbing his arm again. Kaminari stopped and turned to look at him, panicked golden eyes meeting his.
“ Kaminari,” Hitoshi said, “ I think this might just be the right time to tell me exactly what we just fucking did to Bakugou, and what the fuck’s been going on for the past few weeks, because I am tired of this shit show and I’m about to punch something.”
Kaminari swallowed thickly, searching his face for only a moment.
He nodded.
⬽—+—⤘
Shouta was pissed, for lack of a better word.
Hizashi had gone back to his apartment to call Midnight and Cementoss (Shouta could admit that he didn’t exactly trust himself there and it wasn’t like he’d forgiven Midnight for the whole Oboro thing yet), and he’d left Shouta to deal with the rest.
Namely, dealing with the train crash that was his class.
At the very beginning of the year, he’d had hope.
(Well, that was sort of a lie, but he’d grown to have hope and a great deal of respect by the time the USJ had rolled around.)
Class 1-A had been bright, passionate and determined about heroism; not unlike other classes Shouta had taught (and then expelled), but this class actually had the stuff to back it up. Where Hagakure was strong in stealth, she used that to her advantage then tried to improve in fighting quirkless instead of relying solely on her quirk to move around, like other kids her age usually made the mistake of doing. Midoriya had the knowledge and tactics, and although his quirk ability hadn’t been exactly… promising, he trained and improved quickly, taking criticism and advice into account and inputting it effectively. And though, for Sato’s quirk, the most obvious choice for his quirk would be to eat lots of sugar and sweets, he made sure to not only work out more to help level it out, but he also made his own recipes where the sugar was high yet wouldn’t send him into unhealthy habits.
There were countless other ways that his class had proven to him that they were serious about becoming heroes and that they would actually (hopefully) achieve it someday. It was why no one had been expelled yet and no one had quit after getting a taste of Shouta’s teaching style. In fact, most of them had just become even more determined.
But as Hizashi and him had watched the tapes Nedzu had found, organised and sent to him, he saw none of that ‘aspiring hero’ spirit. No.
He saw Mineta throwing small, purple balls over to Bakugou’s desk, snickering secretly when his papers got stuck and their teacher would scold him for tearing his work.
He saw Asui purposefully swipe his books and equipment off of his desk as she passed by, not stopping to clean it up.
He saw Uraraka and Iida cornering him before lunch as he let off small sparks of warning
(or panic)
and accusing him, insulting him, mocking him.
He saw Hagakure’s shoe stick out purposefully in an attempt to trip him (Shouta had seen one of those attempts in real time, and still he had done nothing).
He saw Kouda, Sato and Ojiro look away and continue walking out when Ashido (Ashido!) knocked him back into his desk at the end of a school day with a harsh knock of her hips and arm.
And Shouta saw no heroes.
Not even when Midnight came in, because she was scowling at Bakugou and snapping at him for even a twitch out of place; leaning into his personal space and spitting sharp words.
Not when Cementoss tried to give Bakugou a detention for looking annoyed , something that was entirely normal anyway and shouldn’t have been a problem even if it hadn’t been.
He remembered the tape of All Might’s class, timestamped on the same day – Friday, the eighth – and fury came back full force, now doubled with the proof that the retired hero hadn’t been the only one to treat a student with such blatant disrespect. Of course, he’d known that a few teachers hadn’t been at all pleasant with Bakugou, but to this extent?
(It was his fault.)
Luckily, Hizashi should be dealing with them right at that moment; which reminded Shouta of what he needed to do.
He regrettably didn’t have his student’s number, and after seeing how the very students who had come into his office a day or two ago bully a fellow classmate, he wasn’t sure asking them would be a good idea.
(What he wouldn’t admit was that he wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep himself from sounding snappish and cold to them, and he’d already learnt his lesson once with Bakugou. He wasn’t sure if his trust could be brought back. But, his aim was making sure his students trusted him, anyway – not to make them scared or wary of him.)
Yet what he’d just found out, coupled with what the other students had told him and what he’d seen earlier on, did not paint a pretty picture of what Bakugou had been dealing with for the past who knows how long. There was no doubt that his mental health was at least a little damaged after this, being Bakugou ‘Die’ Katsuki or not.
He gripped his phone and hesitated. On one hand, asking the students for Bakugou’s number might arouse worry or panic, and even if it didn’t, it felt wrong to ask them of all people for Bakugou's contact details.
(What Shouta wouldn’t admit was that he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t snap at them, even if they seemed genuinely regretful and concerned.)
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He may as well just get this over with and ask… Midoriya, maybe. Or Kirishima? They would be closest to him, right?
His phone began to buzz and he willed himself not to startle.
2:27 PM Friday, 15th ⬞▭ 84%
Incoming Call – Rat Satan…
Shouta debated on letting it ring out. Chances were that Nezu was just calling about the tapes he’d sent him, which would be a whole heap of encrypted clues or fancy words that Shouta did not want to deal with.
However, if it was something important (Shouta’s mind flicked back to villain attacks and the call he got about Bakugou), he couldn’t afford to miss it. Plus, it wouldn’t be very professional of him.
(Please note that that probably wouldn’t have convinced him alone otherwise.)
Well.
Let’s hope it’s nothing too bad, then.
… I better not have just jinxed myself.
Click .
⬽—+—⤘
His arms were red.
A mess of blisters and burnt skin. They stung, too.
Faintly, Katsuki thought that it wasn’t right; that it wasn’t normal, and the pain was not a good sign. (Not that Katsuki really cared about faint thoughts like that.) All he knew for definite, was that he felt like how he had after the run in with Kaminari in the changing rooms back on Friday - right before the heroics class. Just like before, he was exhausted, and felt like shit. Hooray.
He rested a hand on his right arm tentatively, before pulling back at the spike of pain.
Everything was just a haze around him and he felt like cotton had replaced his brain, but the sting did clear his mind a little.
Katsuki was still sitting against the doorway of his house. It was eerily silent–
His palms crackled against his arms and he grimaced, cautiously lifting them off of the few unburnt parts before they could cause more damage. Which didn’t exactly do much with how his arms looked more like he’d dipped them inside the fucking sun for a good few hours straight, but, well…
Shit. His quirk wasn’t really working with him – he hadn’t noticed his palms were still sparking off, and the damage was evident.
His hands shook, and as another wave of burning pain shot through the tips of his fingers to his shoulders, he figured that it would be best to treat them. It felt like the world was sitting on his shoulders though, and never before had his willpower to do something as simple as standing up been so… weak.
Are you seriously so pathetic that you can’t even stand up?
He sighed. A bone-deep tired, defeated kind of sigh.
Katsuki stood up.
He staggered at almost every step but eventually, he made it up the stairs and into the bathroom, trying his best not to trip or bump into walls and bannisters. His arms stung like hell now that he’d more or less snapped out of whatever haze he was in, and as he avoided looking in the mirror he could see that he hadn’t held back.
His explosions had done most of the damage; probably 2nd degree blisters and scorched skin trailing from his wrists to around his upper arm in large, star-shaped bursts – a few, though, had the shape of his hand.
That wasn’t all. Small cuts ran along his upper arms, from where he’d dug his nails in. Drops of blood from broken skin dripped and he positioned them over the sink as well as he could.
He knew how hard it could be to get blood stains off of the bathroom floor if he didn’t clean them up quickly, and considering how he should probably stop the bleeding first before trying to clean up said blood, he didn’t want to take the chance – even if being careless felt like all he wanted to do.
Why should he put the effort in, anyway?
Wasn’t like it’d amount to anything, in the end.
At the same time, he was talking about the end ‘end’. Not when his parents come back home to find a damn blood puddle as they try to brush their teeth.
He doubted that this time the outcome would be much different from the last.
His palms crackled fiercer, as if fighting for his attention, and he clenched his teeth, cursing. Get yourself under control, for fuck’s sake.
Unlike typical circumstances in Katsuki’s life, his sheer willpower was not enough anymore, it seemed.
He didn’t feel like trying in the first place, actually.
Something broken rose in Katsuki’s throat and he pushed it down, cursing as he turned the tap on aggressively and water came shooting out. He didn’t bother to turn it down and began to wash the nitroglycerin sweat off of his hands.
It only took a minute or two until Katsuki knew that it was off, could feel the proper, rough texture of his hands, but he continued to rub.
He scrubbed his hands raw until the blood trickling from his arms turned the water a tinted pink and his palms were bright with agitation.
He swallowed, mechanically turning the tap off. He took a deep, shaky breath, and started to wash his arms of blood, before running cold water over the burns for a good few minutes. He barely felt the biting cold.
There weren’t many medical supplies in the cupboard (wasn’t like his mother would buy him any, and he didn’t get cash for random ass things to pay for anything himself either) but he made do with the half a pot of aloe vera and the rolls of bandages. He found about nine painkillers in a lonely packet, to which there were no instructions or information on.
He swallowed down three, then took a fourth after a second of hesitance.
Harmful? Probably. Did he care? Funny question –
no.
As long as he didn’t take, like
eight
in 24 hours, he’d be fine,
frustratingly
.
(Katsuki had stared at them for a few minutes before he forced himself to close the cabinet door. He was too tempted to take them all and see if he’d finally get a peaceful sleep even with them out of sight, though.)
He sighed, staring at his sloppily-applied bandages and frowned.
“ What the fuck is wrong with me?”
His soft whisper was left unanswered by the empty, cold bathroom.
He swallowed. The bandages were sloppy, and he knew that if Recovery Girl saw them, she’d tut and ramble while redoing them.
… You don’t tend to treat bruises yourself, though. Usually, you get someone to help you, y’know?
His heart squeezed. Yeah, buncha good that fucking does me, Shitty Hair.
Everything from the park came rushing back from where he had been trying to lock it up and squish it down, but the memory of him, Kirishima and Kaminari in Kirishima’s bathroom as he tended to Kaminari’s bruises only made it sting more.
He frowned harder at the thought.
Kaminari had the same supplies that Katsuki had given to him – but they were a different brand, meaning he, or his family, bought it. Plus, the dates on the packaging as well as how much had been used pointed to Kaminari having it since well before Katuski had offered his.
Which meant Kaminari didn’t actually need Katsuki to risk leaving the house to give him that shit.
Both he and Kirishima had seen how his mother treated him when they’d arrived at his house before
(probably just trying to use him, back then)
. They’d known that his mother hadn’t wanted him to leave the house and they’d seen how she reacted if he tried otherwise.
They would have known exactly what he was risking.
And maybe he was still too out of it, or the pills really had been too many, or he was being too conspirational or some fucking shit, but he couldn’t stop the scornful, broken scoff that left his throat.
It had been right in front of him. They’d been so obvious, yet he’d ignored it for some stupid ass reason and now, here he was.
He’d said that he’d cut it off before they could, but– but why did it feel like they’d won anyway? He’d yelled at them, insulted them where he knew it would hurt, in an attempt to regain control – do something or other – so why hadn’t it worked?
Why did he feel like– like this?
Why did he care ? Why did it hurt? Why did they do it? Why couldn’t he just take this like a normal person?
It didn’t hurt this badly the first few times.