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Uraraka pulled out an earphone out of her ear after hearing the same song on repeat for counteless times. She had lost interest in the beats and couldn’t focus on the lyrics. It was hard to focus on anything in general as her body didn’t give her a chance, demanding all her attention for what had been a worrying amount of time.
“Just a little longer.” She told herself as she sat against the large mirrors covering a wall in the gym.
“Just a little longer and you’ll be done for today.” Uraraka told herself again after noticing the serious lack of energy to lift herself off the ground. She thought to herself over and over again that she was going to get on her feet but her body refused. She refused to acknowledge the aching that dominated her stubborn piece of mind.
It felt like she had taken three steps back. As if she had been completely overestimating how much progress she had made during these past few weeks. After all the challenging exercises, intense training and strict diets she put herself through she was sure her body would be used to it by now, but for some reason it begged to differ.
“Oi Uraraka, are you going on a break already?” Bakugou mocked as he finished the last set of his warm up routine. He stretched his whole body, arms trying to reach the ceiling before walking over to the glass mirrors.
“We’ve only just started!” He teased her.
His mocking gave her body that extra push to get off the ground, although she immediately felt lightheaded after standing grounded. At least it felt like she regained some control over her body. With a sardonic look on his face he watched her try to stand tall opposite him.
“I have been working out for forty minutes before you got here I’ll have you know!” She tried to argue him. Even though she knew damn well that Bakugou was aware of that and only said that to get some sort of reaction out of her. She couldn’t help but defend herself, especially since she genuinely had been doing well, until this point.
Uraraka had thought of listing the things she had done already, telling him that she got all of that done whilst he had to do some chores around the dorm and change. But right as she wanted to, a wave of nausea hit her. She had pulled an obvious face as Bakugou frowned at her.
She raised a hand and put her other hand on her chest, finding it harder with each second to keep her meals down. She hadn’t even used her quirk for combat yet that day, and still she felt sick.
“Fuck, what’s up with you?” Bakugou scanned her.
“I’m fine, really!” Those three words were enough for her to have to swallow down.
Uraraka wasn’t fine. It was only at this point she wanted to admit that she had fallen ill. Quickly she covered her mouth and breathed slowly in and out through her nose.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to spew Round-Face.” Bakugou carefully said.
Before she could even attempt to answer him, she felt her meals rushing to her mouth. As fast as the nausea hit her she stumbled to the exit of the training room, barely able to keep herself up right.
“What the hell?!” Bakugou yelled after her.
Uraraka waved him away as he wanted to come after her. The last thing she wanted was for him to have sick all over him and to have it clean it up all by himself. In a hurry she snatched her bag off the ground and exited the gym. Knowing she wasn’t going to make it any further she barged into the changing room and walked in to first bathroom she encountered. Barely hanging over the toilet bowl, she vomited. More than just two meals seem to come out. Thinking it was never going to end she started crying. Her stomach tried to force out air as her stomach was eventually empty.
She sobbed and tried to breathe through her nose again, which was considerably harder than earlier as the sour smell was far from tolerable. After a few deep breaths, Uraraka had calmed down. She didn’t remember vomiting being so exhausting.
If only she had felt better, she would have taken a quick nap and continue her session. She couldn’t help but feel bad for Bakugou who had taken time out of his schedule to train with her. He could always ask someone else, even though he had many requirements for a training partner. She was surprised she was able to meet them and that he was able to ask her to be his training partner as Bakugou was known for having to use all his might when it came to asking for assistance or favors. As disappointed as Uraraka was in herself she knew that she belonged in bed as she started to see two toilet bowls.
Uraraka groaned as she flushed and exited the bathroom. At the sink she washed her mouth and looked at herself in the mirror. As Bakugou would say “she looked like utter shit”. With her palms she wiped remaining tears off her face and picked up her bag. Slowly she opened the door and peeked through the crack, hoping that she wouldn’t have to face anyone and bother explain what was going on. Uraraka had secretly expected Bakugou to be standing behind the door but after thinking twice about it, he didn’t know how to handle these sort of situations.
Uraraka had been sick during one of their training sessions before and they ended up both throwing up, crying and questioning why they were stuck in the most disgusting cycle imaginable. Comforting people wasn’t his forte either as he preferred to keep his distance from the person whose upset and yell words of encouragement, in his own Bakugou-way, from miles away.
“Get over it!” He yelled when she sobbed when she broke her foot.
At that point they didn’t actually know her foot was broken though.
“Don’t be a bitch about it! You’re stronger than that!” He told her when she almost had a panic attack after not being able to catch her breath after sparring.
It was sort of sweet still.
But Bakugou was nowhere to be found so Uraraka started to carry herself up the stairs and to her room. Being on the fourth floor had never been such a pain as it was then. Climbing eight flight of stairs seemed to take a lifetime and tired her out beyond belief, which she doubted was even possible.
When she reached her room she basically fell in to it. It was as if her body could finally completely give out. She called herself crazy for even thinking once that she could continue training that day. With her last and last strength she took off her workout top and zipped the bag open, taking out a black tank top. She threw it over her head and pulled it down. Two tired eyes blinked at the top that stretched down to graze the top of her knees. Uraraka lifted her arms and noticed the top being at least a good two sizes bigger. She took the neck of the top and lifted it to her nose. She detected the scent of the same washing detergent they all used in the dorm but it definitely smelled different opposed to her own tops.
Suddenly she jerked up and lifted a side of the sports bag. Her button. Her pink button wasn’t on her bag anymore. It must’ve detached as she had been rushing out of the gym.
Uraraka rummaged through the training bag.
Or it couldn’t have been her bag in the first place, she realized as she found basketball shorts twice her size and a hairbrush that had sand blond hairs stuck in it.
She fell backwards on her bed. This was the sole reason she had attached a button to her bag, to not get hers and Bakugou’s bag confused, that happened to look the exact same. Uraraka pouted at the bag, and hopelessly looked at the door.
There was no way she could make it out of her room without falling to the floor. All she could do was hope that Bakugou would notice soon enough and come to her room to switch bags. Maybe sending him a message would be a good idea…
Yes. Sending him a message to his phone that was in his bag.
“Great.” She grumbled.
And it was not like she could message anyone either as her phone was also in her bag.
Uraraka had never felt more pity for herself as she did in that moment. It didn’t take much time for her to run out of options and settling for sitting tight and hope. She tucked herself in and nuzzled in her covers. Lazily she turned her head and eyed at the strap of the black top.
She didn’t know if Bakugou would mind that she wore his top. Would he even notice anything different when she gives it back in the first place?
Her face became even more flushed when thinking about possible ways he could react.
She couldn’t imagine him being angry about it.
The thought of him getting flustered and cursing as he couldn’t find the right words to react to finding out made her smile. Uraraka covered her head with covers out of embarrassment. How she hated when she thought about things like that.
Thinking about him was inconvenient to say the least. Whenever she gave Bakugou more than a couple of seconds of thought she couldn’t finish her meals, she stayed awake for too long, she could barely stay grounded, literally. Once she had floated up to the ceiling in class when she was daydreaming. That really was a hard one to explain to friends.
It was hard to put a finger on the cobbled together thoughts. She couldn’t decide if they had any meaning or if she didn’t want to give them meaning. Thinking about the possible meanings she could link to her thoughts she was leaning towards the latter.
The air under the covers became hotter the more Uraraka thought about the matter. She stuck her head above the covers, felt her forehead and noticed she was seriously burning up. Aware of that she noticed she had been sweating as if she had run for miles.
She would’ve loved nothing more than gulping down three glasses of water and falling asleep straight after but neither of those things were possible. She looked around and glared at the air conditioning that she couldn’t turn on because the remote was out of her reach. Uraraka turned to her side and in a pitiful attempt reached for the remote on her desk. She hung her head in shame after spending a good amount of time grabbing the air.
Being ill is stupidly boring. She would never take the time for granted where she still lived with her parents. When she had a fever they would take time off work, which happened once every blue moon, and would stay by her side for as long as she wanted. Her mother would stroke her cheeks and her dad would show her pages of a big travel book, containing pictures of beautiful islands and landscapes. She would point at them and chirp that she was going to take her parents there when she became a hero.
Now she was alone, and had been for some time, but that didn’t mean times like these got less boring. Uraraka would’ve killed to text Ashido, Jirou or any other girl to let them know she was stuck in bed with a fever and needed some company. They could’ve cuddled up with her and continued their Sailor Moon marathon until she fell asleep.
Uraraka punched the bag. “Stupid bag.”
As her fist made contact with the bag she heard a strange noise coming from it. She pushed aside the black basketball shorts and found a black notebook at the bottom of Bakugou’s bag. Uraraka looked around as if someone could see her and then picked out the notebook. She turned on her back and inspected it. It wasn’t like any other notebook Bakugou used for class, she thought as she could vividly remember them being sprawled out on his desk when he tutored her.
Her eyes widened. It was his diary.
“There’s only appointments in here anyways.” She tried to justify her behavior. She opened the diary on a random page and looked through a week in January.
Sure she knew Bakugou was busy, but she didn’t know he was that busy.
After taking a second look she realized this wasn’t his school diary, but his workout diary. Despite it being that, it was too packed. Neatly organized, but still a way too intense training schedule. For every day he would write a detailed workout schedule and notes such as “meal prep!!!” and even added a doodle where he had space left.
Uraraka turned a few pages and came across a note section. His workout diary also seemed to be his food diary. On these pages he continued to be neat as he thoughtfully wrote out his diet on the yellow pages. She scanned through them and pulled all kinds of faces as she saw what he ate to stay fit.
After reading a few pages she reached out to her coffee table and managed to graze a pen. She gravitated that towards her before she could even feel a hint of sickness and let it fall on her lap. Uraraka rapidly turned to recent days and noticed that his diet had pretty much stayed the same for a couple of months, his workout routine on the other hand had become even more intense as the Sport Festival was approaching. She picked up the pen, clicked it open and repeatedly tapped it on her lip.
“How is this guy not exhausted every day?” She mumbled to herself as she flipped through the pages, reaching the future. Pink ink crossed his blue ink.
“Even after the Sport Festival he won’t take a break.” She continued altering his routine.
“He needs to take more care of himself.” She sighed as she could say the same thing to herself since she denied, practically refused, to being ill.
Uraraka searched for more of Bakugou’s meal plan notes. This guy ate stupidly healthy, it was almost annoying. Though it looked quite similar to her own food diary, he surely lacked the cheat days she had at the end of every week. When she really thought about it, she hadn’t seen Bakugou eat anything sweet ever since they lived under the same roof.
“How the hell is he still standing?” She questioned.
So she continued to alter his future schedules until she reached the present. Her eye fell on her name written in red.
“Training with Uraraka” it read, followed with a lot of exclamation marks, something he enjoyed adding after almost everything he wrote down. She noticed the days he trained with her were completely cleared out, leaving room for a silly doodle of her face.
Was her face really that round? She touched her glowing cheeks.
The drawing wasn’t awful. It was quite cute to tell the truth. He didn’t forget to color her pink cheeks red and he made her eyes very large, and added lots of lashes to them.
That was what stood out to him when he looked at her, she couldn’t help but think.
Instantly she felt her body temperature spiking.
Uraraka went backwards in the diary and looked out for her name, that now stood out as she went through it carefully. He drew her face every time they scheduled to train together, without fail. Going back further she noticed scratched out points on Fridays. When looking closely she could barely make out that the crossed out notes were workout sets. Then her eye fell on a crossed out note, written in red.
“See old man and hag. Rest!!!”
A note she’d seen that had been pushed to the Sundays.
Bakugou was prepared to put aside training on his own, which she knew he enjoyed a lot as well, and seeing his parents earlier on in the week so he could train with her.
Had Uraraka known she would’ve moved things around in her own schedule. She asked for them to train on Friday’s and Bakugou was fine with it, he went it so easily she thought he was completely free on Fridays as well.
Uraraka flipped through the notebook, to see that it wasn’t some hallucination caused by her fever.
But it wasn’t. Bakugou really made an effort to make time for her.
“Ochako, are you in there?!” Hagakure slammed the door open. “Hello?” She sang as she walked over to her bed.
Uraraka squealed and put the diary under her back, then she flipped on to her stomach and pushed the diary under her pillow.
“Sorry did I scare you?” Hagakure pushed the training bag aside and kneeled down next to her bed.
“N-n-no!” Uraraka spoke in her pillow.
Hagakure leaned in closer to her face. “What are you doing in bed? Shouldn’t you be training with Bakugou?”
“I was supposed to.” She sighed. “But I ended up feeling ill and catching a fever before we started training.”
She felt Hagakure pat the back of her head. “Oh! How long was that ago? How are you feeling now? Do you have a stomach ache? Head ache? Dizziness? Are you dizzy Ochako?!”
Uraraka grunted as she sat up, she tried to smile endearingly at Hagakure.
“Oh look! You’ve already lost weight, that shirt looks enormous on you! You should definitely eat a lot when you get better. I can make you something for when you get better? What do you like?”
Uraraka couldn’t help but laugh at her worried friend. “You don’t have to worry so much Tooru. There’s no need for all of that, besides, I’ve only had the fever for a couple of hours, I can’t have lost weight already.”
Hagakure’s pulled at the band of the top. “But it looks really big o-“
“I accidentally bought the wrong size.” Uraraka cut her off. “It’ll shrink in the washing don’t worry about it!” She rattled.
Hagakure wrapped her arms around her waist and pulled her in. “Stop telling me not to worry about things. It’s you we’re talking about. So, have you been pushing yourself too much lately? Is that why you’re ill?”
Now that her friend asked about it, Uraraka had time to properly think about why she had fallen ill in the first place.
“Well, I had a headache since this morning. I haven’t really been sleeping that well.” She thought out loud, Hagakure nodded with her, trying to think as well.
“And even though I barely used my quirk I felt incredibly sick. I didn’t eat too much of my breakfast because I had a weird feeling in my stomach. I did eat a lot a lunch which made up for it. Maybe too much. But I drank lot’s of water, to keep it all down and to do something about the headache.” She continued as she pulled at her bangs.
“I felt slightly better after that so I thought to go all out at the gym, clear my mind.”
“Clear your mind?”
Uraraka nodded.
“Of?”
“Oh, what’s always on my mind.” Uraraka twisted the hair around her finger and looked up at the ceiling.
“What’s always on your mind Ochako?”
“Well, you know…”
Crap.
It was Bakugou. Bakugou made her lose sleep. He made her lose her appetite. He was who she wanted to clear her mind from. She got ill because of him.
“Stuff.” Uraraka finished her sentence and she couldn’t help but grin.
Hagakure stayed silent for a while, when Uraraka didn’t elaborate she decided to not ask any further questions.
“Want me to stay with you for a while?”
Uraraka hummed and laid back down on her pillow and scooted towards the wall, making room for Hagakure to lay her head down. Together the girls enjoyed each other’s company in silence. Every once in a while Hagakure would touch Uraraka’s forehead to check her temperature or play with the ends of her hair. The silence felt pleasant as opposed to the silence she had to endure when she was alone.
“I think your fever is going down.” Her friend whispered.
Uraraka simply hummed again, she had noticed that she wasn’t sweating as much as before and had gotten quite sleepy because of that and the gentle gestures of Hagakure.
Slowly she batted her lashes as the drowsiness took her over.
“Tooru.” She asked, her voice as light as feathers.
“You’re sleepy aren’t you?”
“Hm.” Uraraka bat her lashes for the last time. “Can you ask Bakugou to come up here?”
The dents and creases in her pillow disappeared as Hagakure stood up.
“Do you like him?”
“I accidentally took his bag.”
“I think you like him.”
“And he has mine.”
“You like him.”
“Hm.”
Uraraka heard the door opening and closing before drifting off. She thought about him again, but could keep her eyes closed. She floated between being the state of being asleep and the edge of dozing off, which was considerably better than every time she tried to sleep that week.
After finding herself at the edge of falling asleep again, she heard her door fall back in it’s lock. Instantly her heart picked up its pace and she had the desire to peek but her eyes refused to open. Uraraka heard a rather heavy item dropping to the floor and the smothered down noise of familiar curses. The floorboards started creaking, the sound coming closer to her.
She felt him looming over her and huffing out air from his nose.
“Hello?”
His palm touched her shoulder blade and he gently rocked her back and forth.
“Don’t tell me that stupid fucking fever got the better of you.” Bakugou muttered.
His hand slid to her shoulder and he kept rocking her.
“Uraraka.”
When he called out her name, she fully acknowledged his voice and touch. Uraraka softly moaned and turned on her other side. Moving had woken her up a bit and she was able to slightly lift her eyelids. Through her lashes she looked at a Bakugou that had kneeled down and scurried against her coffee table, looking back at her with a straight but flushed face.
“Hi.” Uraraka croaked.
“Hey.”
“I got your bag.” She glanced over to the bag next to her bed.
Bakugou pointed a thumb back at a leg of her desk. “I got yours.”
None of them made any movement to reach for them, both of them not able to look away or move an inch. His straight face gradually turned softer, his brow slightly knitted with worry as her heavy breathing became the only noise to fill the room. A rare expression of his that almost looked strange on his face, but which she deeply appreciated, because she was able to make out how concerned he really was.
Before her vision became blurry, she broke contact with him and pushed the bag towards him, which instantly set him moving. He got her bag and put it down on her legs. The two started to rummage through their contents.
“I’m missing something.” Uraraka said disheartened.
“Damn it.” Bakugou stood up again, walked to her desk and brought back a pink book.
“Why did you have to ask for it now.” He handed it over to Uraraka who looked at him wide, big eyes.
He sat down and practically buried his head in his bag which didn’t contain that many items to be rummaging in twice.
“My diary?” She flipped through her notebook and noticed scribbles of blue ink across the pages.
“Yeah well, it fell out when I picked up your bag. Couldn’t help but to change up your shitty schedules.” Bakugou spoke into the bag.
Uraraka read the added notes and pouted. “They’re not shitty!”
“You could do a lot more Round-Face. I know you can, someone that almost fucking beat me at last years Sport Festival and stupidly enough declared to beat me at this years should be able to handle that.”
She wanted to feel offended but after reading the notes it really wasn’t something she couldn’t handle. If she had to be honest, she had been looking for ways to challenge herself, but hadn’t been able to come up with anything, therefore settling for working out for longer. Not only were Bakugou’s notes actually helpful but also one of the biggest compliments she had received in a long time.
“That reminds me…” Uraraka stuck her hand under her pillow and pulled out Bakugou’s diary.
He raised an eyebrow as he stuck out a hand to take it from her.
Last second she pulled it back. “Hold on.” Her hand searched for the pen in her sheets as she opened the diary. After finding the right page, she clicked the pen open and hovered above the page.
“Might as well.” She thought.
She scribbled something down and clapped the book shut. Bakugou took it from her and, she sank back in her sheets and flipped through the pages of her own diary. Every now and then she glanced at Bakugou that only scoffed every now and then.
“I fucking hate how I kinda agree with this.” He continued to study the added notes and Uraraka giggled.
“I said kinda, don’t get too excited.” Bakugou tried to muffle his chuckle by scoffing again.
“Hey Bakugou.”
“Hm?” He answered.
“How is next week looking for you?”
Bakugou licked his thumb and flipped the pages. Uraraka followed his eyes that glided over each word. Reaching the end of the second page of the week he fixed his eyes on a sentence written in red. He smirked and shook his head as he closed his diary.
“Says here that I’m going out for ice cream with someone next Friday.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It really does.”