Chapter Text
Sleeping in a new place was always an uncomfortable experience.
After everyone finished cleaning the bunks and the girls split off into their own assigned building, Katsuki drug his nightroll into the furthest corner and laid with his back to the wall, daring anyone to say a word about his choice with a mean spark in his eye. From his position he had a relatively clear view of the door, the two windows, and all fifteen people setting up their own sleeping areas in differing states of dress. Aizawa was already asleep near the door in his notorious yellow sleeping bag.
Katsuki swears the man lives in that thing. It’s a fucking disgrace.
Kirishima crouched a few feet from him, devoid of shirt and shame as he whipped his sleeping bag out with a snap of his arms, pointedly ignoring the glare Katsuki burned into the side of his head. The bag was just as red and obnoxious as the other boy’s hair. Katsuki wondered where the fuck he even found the thing.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting ready to annoy you all night,” he replied with a teasing quirk of his lips at Katsuki’s scowl, “Seriously dude be nice, we all have to share the space.”
Katsuki huffed, curling an arm around his torso as he glared past the other boy, “I know. Everyone’s just… fucking loud.”
Instead of poking fun, or rolling his eyes like Katsuki was expecting, Kirishima plopped down on his rumpled bedding with a carefully blank face, back to the rest of the room as he met the blond’s tired eyes.
“You looked overwhelmed in the bus earlier today. Has it gotten any better?”
“Has what gotten any better, shitty hair.”
Kirishima gestured at Katsuki’s face, “You know… you looked sick. Or something. Like a migraine. Was it your hearing aids?”
“No.”
The knee-jerk denial that anything is wrong tasted sour on Katsuki’s tongue. His headache had eased off a bit, no longer thundering against his skull, instead just a distant ache behind his eyes. The nausea on the other hand…
They hadn’t even started the training. Katsuki wasn’t about to quit .
“I’m fine, I’m not sick.”
“Everyone gets sick sometimes dude, that’s just the way our bodies work.”
“Not mine.”
Kirishima rolled his eyes, smacking a palm against his knee, “Right, well if it gets worse please...take care of yourself. Or tell me.”
It didn’t get worse. But it didn’t get better either.
He lay on his side staring intently at the darkened windows, the door. Couldn’t shake the ball of static growing in his chest, zipping along his limbs until he lay with numb fingers clenched into fists so tight they hurt beneath the thin blanket.
At some point he kicked the damned thing off because he was sweating literal buckets, his neck clammy and his hands dripping nitro onto the bedroll beneath his shivering body.
He swore he could smell the smoke of a forest fire, blazing blue behind heavy eyelids. A tree branch in the moonlit distance the shine of a bone-white blade. The brush of wind against the door an unhinged wheeze from the lungs of a bloodthirsty psychopath, straight jacket dragging along the dirt just beyond.
Shadows pressed against the twin windows like ghoulish figures leaning in, watching, waiting, their faceless gazes wrapping paralyzing chains to Katsuki’s being from the inside out. His throat tightened with terror at the thought of a breath too harsh, a lungful too loud. The moment he made a move they’d slip through the cracks and devour him whole.
He grit his teeth and curled into himself tight as his aching muscles would allow, back pressed solidly to the wall. He couldn’t help but think about how pathetic even that comfort was. An inches-thick cinder block wall would do nothing to stave the dangers in the forest beyond, razor-sharp teeth of shadows ready to pounce, salivating at the prospect of tearing him to shreds.
Frame wracked with shivers and ears rushing with adrenaline, Katsuki forced himself to take first one, then another, deep centering breath. Calm his racing heart before he had a heart attack right here in some dumb forest. Or accidently sparked off and blew the place to smithereens; enough nitroglycerin had soaked into his bedroll to be devastating if his control so much as wavered.
He’d have to wash it tomorrow.
He tore his eyes from the windows and focused in on the lump of shadow next to him. He could barely make out the snarled mess of hair scattered over the pillow, the bulk of strong arms spread-eagle, one of Kirishima’s hands curled loose in sleep inches from Katsuki’s nose.
Katsuki had left his aids in after the first bout of paranoia while getting ready for bed, so he could hear the soft snores slipping between the other boy’s lips. He watched the slow up-down of Kirishima’s chest as he slept unawares of the dangers this forest presented. Even if these did only exist in Katsuki’s mind.
He wondered what it would be like to let him see the shadows. To present the fear trapped deep in Katsuki’s chest like a beast gnashing jagged fangs, ripping at the cage of his ribs with feral urgency.
The beast was eating him alive, had been since last year.
Last year the beast stirred when dry, scarred hands so hot they left blisters on the back of his neck dragged him away from people trying to protect him. People he should have communicated with. Listened to sooner. Trusted easier.
He should have. Logically he knows this.
Logically he knows that being kidnapped by some of the most powerful villains in the world isn’t his fault. Logically he knows the greatest hero of their time didn’t fall because of him. Logically he knows he can trust his classmates- his...his friends , who sacrificed everything to save him when the adults in their lives weren’t doing quite enough in their eyes. Logically, he knows.
But everything else in his body screams otherwise.
And he doesn’t know why. Why it's so hard to trust. To open up and share the strain, the struggle. He’s worked hard to become a better teammate. To work with everyone. To support and expect support without hesitation in the most dire of circumstances.
Is this… does this count as a dire circumstance?
No, fuck that. He scowls into his pillow, ignoring the way his tank top sticks with tacky sweat to his torso as he shifts.
None of this is fucking real.
It's all in my head.
There is no shitty villain to fight.
He only passes out with exhaustion when the birds start singing, a couple hours before the sun starts to rise.