Chapter Text
Bang!
Katsuki made his entrance to the room known to all, with his foot against the hard wood so that his boot made a crash that echoed throughout the cramped space. This was not the time or place for such noises, which got him some stares, though no one had the resolve to shoo the teenager from this room. In fact, they seemed fearful of the blond, and not because of his hard glare, but because of what they they surrounded.
Katsuki stomped over, and most of the men and women parted, save for one shorter lady, short enough that her presence didn't impede vision at all. There, between them all was a bed, and on it was another teenager and one of Katsuki's classmates.
Not just a friend. It was more than that. As much as Katsuki would never use such a term and threatened anyone who teased them about it, this man was his boyfriend.
And this was one of the rares times he didn't see a smile on Eijiro's face.
A silent look was exchanged between them, like so many before, except this time it was filled with many other emotions. There was a distinct dread in the air, not just from them, but from all of the doctors present. That overly crisp smell of sanitized hospital lingered in everyone's nostrils, and the room was home to a constant and steady beep of machinery rigged up to the youth on the bed.
“I'm sorry, young Bakugo,” came the older lady who had remained at Eijiro's bedside. The school nurse, Recovery Girl, who had brought him from her own office to a better equipped hospital for treatment. While she was on duty to handle any incidents that arose during their training session earlier, she could not handle this alone. “There's not much we can---”
“What do you mean you're sorry?!?” Katsuki exclaimed in his usual fashion, as he loomed over Pro Hero healer. Already he had been set off by how long it had been without news. Hours had passed before he managed to get the permission to come, and the sheer fact that this was something Recovery Girl couldn't handle herself had worried everyone from the start. “You can fucking fix this!”
“I'm afraid...”
“I'm fucking afraid for you if you don't do something.”
“Young man, I'll have you know...”
“Hey. Enough,” Eijiro interrupted the two of them. The blond already had a hand raised that was sparking, and even the usually timid Recovery Girl seemed at wits end with his attitude. Both stopped immediately to pay Eijiro attention as he spoke. “Lemme speak to him. You won't get through to him like that, haha...”
“What's that supposed to mean, shit-for-brains?!”
Despite the additional outburst from Katsuki, Recovery Girl simply nodded in understand and prompty waved her hands to dismiss the other doctors before she followed them out of the room, to give the two teenagers a moment alone. Katsuki watched them leave one-by-one, before the door closed in a much more gentle fashion than he opened. Slowly his head turned back to the bed, where his eyes followed a moment later.
“I'm glad you came,” Eijiro smiled for the first time since Katsuki entered the room, to show off the razor sharp teeth that filled his mouth.
“Don't you dare fucking talk like that.”
“Ah! Oh, it's not like that... Well, it is... Kinda...” Eijiro turned his head away as he spoke, where he bit his bottom lip for a moment. His words were slow, as he thought hard about what to say, and they lacked the luster that he usually blurted them out with. “Maybe I shouldn't have had her leave, she could explain it better.”
“Shit-for-brains.”
“Right, uh. What happened back there. I locked up, literally. My body wouldn't move.”
“I was at training too, idiot. I saw that. Why the fuck did it happen?”
Eijiro blushed a bit, as he lifted one arm up to rub at his other, which happened a lot slower than intended. What was a regular action was a long, drawn out process, that made him wince in pain and brought fear to Katsuki's face, an emotion he normally would hate to show. This time, he couldn't hide it. As he saw the pain in Eijiro's face, watched the stiff and abnormal movements of his arm, and felt the dread that lingered in the room he couldn't keep his normal facade up.
“It's my Quirk, uh, it's... Acting up all over my body. In my muscles and joints. They said it's become a self-destructive Quirk, or something like that,” Eijiro did his best to explain the situation he found himself in. The doctors had to repeat most of it a few times, given the shock and he mentally kicked himself for his lack of a grasp on it still. “And I can't revert it. What I harden is... Staying that way. And they can't figure out any way to fix it. Even things I haven't consciously hardened are slowly growing stiff. I... I'm...”
“Don't you fucking dare,” growled Katsuki, who now had to fight some tears that welled up in his eyes.
“I'm... I'm dying, Katsuki.”