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The room is filled with irritating noise.
It’s the first day of moving into the dorms, and his only solace is that he doesn’t have to live in the same house as his parents anymore. Otherwise, he could find no other positives to this. When the other classmates bring up the idea of a room decoration competition, he leaves the common room, retreating to the solace of his own company. He falls asleep fast, despite the annoying sounds of his classmates’ shenanigans through the walls.
Bakugo doesn’t care about anybody.
-
The room is filled with annoying chaos.
Mina is fighting to get her phone back from Kaminari, who playfully swats back and gives her little strikes of electricity to get her off. This, in turn, is somehow tickling her. She falls into fits of laughter and has to fight to keep from kicking Kouda behind her.
Satou comes in with a cake a moment later, offering slices to his classmates one at a time. Bakugo notices him look warily in his direction, and then slowly approach with a slice, as though he were confronting a cornered animal. “Don’t even think about it.”
Satou recovers fast. Bakugo can tell he was expecting the response anyway. “Right. Nevermind.” He says cooly, turning away.
Bakugo isn’t really sure why he turned down the treat. He just knows that he can’t accept something like that from a classmate. They might consider it a peace offering, and he is not making peace with a bunch of extras. He’d crawl over all of them to make it to the top, stomping them out one by one.
When he sees a few of their pitiful stares, he groans in annoyance and leaves the common room.
Bakugo doesn’t care about anybody.
-
The room is filled with the aura of panic.
They’re all sprawled out in different places all over the common room, fretting over homework and studying. Laying on the floor, the couch, the tables, anywhere they could get comfy to focus. Finals were upon them, but Bakugo didn’t feel afraid. In fact, the presence of their fear only feeds his annoyance. If they just focused, they’d be fine. Why were they all worrying?
Worry only meant they were unprepared. Weak. They could do it if they just tried.
Kirishima asks him to help him study and Bakugo can’t help but feel angry. What part of “Just study” couldn’t he get?
Bakugo doesn’t care about anybody.
-
The room is filled with the sound of scuffling.
It’s the end of their first year. Many of them are packing to go with their families for a short while between semesters. The option to stay in the dorms had been proposed, and Bakugo took it, deciding he’d rather the ghost town of the empty building than the shouts of his mother.
It’s not just most of them, he notices after watching them gather their belongings. It’s all of his classmates who are leaving.
Good. He could finally get some peace.
Kirishima is the last to leave, bidding him farewell with a wave and a grin. Bakugo returns the wave half heartedly, but doesn’t change his expression.
Bakugo doesn’t care about anybody.
-
The room is silent.
The first day is heaven. He basks in the stillness, enjoying the giant common room to himself. The TV is his now. No one is fighting over the remote.
The room is silent.
The second day he feels irritation.
The room is silent.
“Oi Kirishima, I’m out of tooth paste...”
He stops at Kirishima’s door, realizing his error. Anger floods through him at his lack of awareness. He huffs out in annoyance, and then decides to just go in and see if he had any toothpaste left behind.
He finds some, and then makes a mental note to buy Kirishima another tube some point later.
The room is silent.
The fifth day, he sneaks out to the training fields. No one’s there. He lets loose with explosions left and right, shouting at the top of his lungs to release pent up tension. It feels great.
He’s itching to spar with someone, but no one is around.
He scoffs.
The seventh day, Bakugo finds himself soaked with discomfort. He paces the halls with no aim. Catches himself when he begins to talk to himself. His anger bubbles. He can’t sleep. He paces, and paces, and paces. He’s so, incredibly, undeniably bored .
On the last day of their break, he has a nightmare involving chains and cuffs, of hands reaching out to him from the dark, of the battlefield surrounded by an endless number of villains all converging on them, of an enemy displaying an aura of death and destruction with All Might dead at his feet. He looks up into the sky to look for his escape route, for Kirishima, Deku, any of them, but no one is there.
The guy with all the hands presses all five fingers onto his throat and Bakugo wails, panic clawing out of his throat, throwing explosions left and right, but it doesn’t knock his attacker away. He’s trapped, his skin deteriorating and crumbling and pulling him to the brink of death where he stands at the foot of a tall cliff, while strong and evil hands push him over the edge of oblivion.
He wakes up when he accidentally sets off an explosion from his sweat-soaked skin, and he pants, trying to find his breath. He chokes on air, leaning over to bury his face in the blankets and attempt to breathe evenly. Everything trembles violently.
He finally pulls himself into a sitting position. Rubbing at his face to dry the involuntary tears, he feels nothing but anger.
When he goes into the common room like he normally would after a nightmare, none of his classmates are holding late night study sessions or movies to give the room more life. He sits on the couch alone, afraid, and denying every ounce of fear in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t realize the moment of relief he feels when a stray thought passes by, telling him “they’ll be back tomorrow”.
“I don’t care.” He promptly tells the voice out loud, hearing his words bounce off of the abandoned hallways.
Bakugo doesn’t care about...
-
The room is filled with voices.
It’s midday when the first few students start showing up. Most of them avoid his gaze, carrying their things back up to their rooms while carrying idle chit-chat between each other about their vacations. When Kirishima pops in, instead of welcoming him back, Bakugo throws a tube of toothpaste at him and tells him he took the other. Kirishima lets out a hearty laugh at this, saying “Good to see you too, bro.”
Bakugo doesn’t care about...
-
The room is filled with the sound of life.
They’re trying to tickle each other. Dodging, jumping, leaping through the common room and trying not to destroy anything. Even Todoroki was caught in the mess of tickle tag. Was he even ticklish? Bakugo briefly wondered this, and found himself distracted when Deku managed to leap over Iida and tickle Mina, who involuntarily let out a string of acid and flung it at Bakugo. It lands on his skin and he hisses in alarm and annoyance, getting to his feet with a startled curse.
As soon as the rest of the room realizes what happened, they all fall dead silent. Mina looks terrified.
“If you want to be a hero, you can’t throw temper tantrums every time someone mildly inconveniences you,” Mr. Aizawa had told him once. “And if you can’t stop, there’ll be punishments. You’re too old for this, and so am I.”
Bakugo releases a tense exhale, trying for once to listen to him. “Watch what you’re doing.” He snaps, fighting to maintain calm.
Perhaps he was too docile. The entire class looked as though they’d been slapped in the face, as though he had defied each and every one of their expectations.
There’s a silence that falls, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable.
Kaminari must have a death wish, for he’s the first to speak.
“Hey, I wonder if Bakugo is ticklish!” He suggests, wiggling his eyebrows. Figures they’d try to take advantage of his lack of hostility. Bakugo promptly tells him some choice words to get him to back off, but the damage had already been done.
Kaminari launches himself at him, grinning ear to ear, sliding his hands under Bakugo’s armpits. The reaction is knee-jerk, and to cover up the laughter that burst out of his lungs, he releases an angry wail and swats at him.
He has to use every ounce of willpower not to explode Kaminari to bits right then and there. Swinging around to a different position, Bakugo restrains his arms to keep him from moving.
“Bakugo’s totally ticklish!” Mina cries out with a burst of joyous laughter.
“ No I’m not !” Bakugo denies angrily, baring his teeth at them.
“Get him!” Kirishima leads the assault, throwing himself over the couch to put Bakugo into a headlock.
“No- STOP !” He calls out, trying to fight back, but several them converge all at once, and he’s seized up with fits of laughter, tears in his eyes. He faintly throws punches and kicks, managing to land a few in, but Kirishima’s headlock is holding him in place.
He can’t see through the water in his eyes, and he feels anger bubble despite the laughter involuntarily erupting from his throat.
When Bakugo finally gets them to stop long enough for him to speak, he barks out, “YOU’RE ALL DEAD!” and causes an array of explosions in his palms.
“Guys, run ! I’ll hold him!” Kirishima yells, tightening his choke hold. The others scramble to make a break for it, but apparently Kirishima was far more sadistic than Bakugo thought, because he releases him almost at once with an evil smirk on his face.
“GET BACK HERE!” Bakugo screeches, leaping over the table to go after Kaminari, listening to him scream in terror.
Their excessive tickling, Bakugo thinks to himself later in his room, has obviously thrown his balance off, because he has to pry the smile off of his face when he reflects on it.
Bakugo doesn’t...
-
The room is filled with ill snores.
Asui Tsuyu is the only one in the common room, her cheek pressed into the table top. Bakugo remembers conversations from earlier in the day informing others that she felt very sick. Bakugo hesitates- he was going to study out here, but he didn’t want to wake her up and return her to the awareness of illness. That would be cruel.
Instead, he grabs the blanket from off the couch and haphazardly tosses it over her shoulders before leaving the room to study elsewhere.
Bakugo doesn’t...
-
The room is filled with scuffling as the kids move out for break at the end of their second year. Bakugo packs up to leave this time, knowing he would go crazy if he had to wander these empty hallways again.
Even so, being at home is still just as lonely.
Bakugo doesnt...
-
The room is filled with the sounds of screaming.
They’re having a movie night to celebrate the beginning of their third year, and for once, Bakugo was given the chance to pick the theme. He never joined them for their movie nights, and wasn’t entirely sure why they chose him, but he said he wanted to watch a horror movie before he could stop himself, and now he’s stuck watching a mediocre scary movie with the entirety of his class sprawled out across the couches.
Most of the class is trembling and screaming at every little thing. Bakugo presses his face into his palm and huffs with annoyance. As if they hadn’t seen worse in the real world. He had wanted a movie much scarier than this, but the class had outvoted them on that particular detail.
He’s tempted to leave, but for some reason, he can’t find it in himself to move.
After a particularly bad jumpscare, Hagakure and Mina release panicked screeches and end up clutching onto his shirt out of fear, dumping the popcorn all over the floor. He blinks in astonishment, jumping a bit himself at the sudden closeness of the girls, but either they don’t seem to have noticed, or he was actually being used as protection and comfort against the horrors they were seeing.
For some reason unbeknownst to him, he doesn’t shoo them away.
-
The room is filled with the smell of sweets.
Satou is baking again for everybody, walking into the common room with a huge and delicious-looking cake. He glances up at Bakugo after a few moments of passing slices out, looking conflicted.
After a moment, Bakugo releases an exhale of annoyance, getting up to snatch a plate of cake out of Satou’s hand. He retreats with it, ignoring the astonished grin on the other.
The cake was incredible.
-
The room is filled with laughter and joy.
They’re playing a Mario Kart Tournament in the common room, setting up an official bracket system.
When Bakugo enters, it’s Deku that greets him. His face has a dark smile plastered on it. “I bet I can beat you.”
Bakugo’s face turns sinister. “You’re going to eat those words, Deku.”
Deku wins the bracket.
Bakugo doesn’t break the controller in anger, but he does threaten him with a rematch for another day. Midoriya laughs, accepting it.
The next time they play, Bakugo wins, letting out a howl of laughter throughout the dorm that feels contagious.
Bakugo doesn’t remember his chest ever feeling this light.
-
The room is filled with tension.
When Bakugo walks into the room, he has to duck to avoid a nerf bullet sailing towards him. He looks up with a grimace at Uraraka, who had been the one too trigger happy to see who she was shooting.
“Whose side are you on?” Iida peeks up over the couch with a gun in hand.
“Side?” Bakugo asks, narrowing his eyes.
“Team Salty or Team Sweet?”
“Uhh...” Bakugo flails his arms in a shrug. Weren’t they too old for nerf wars?
“Here, you’re on Team Sweet now.” Deku pokes his head up from behind the couch and tosses a nerf gun into Bakugo’s hands. He fumbles to catch it “Team Salty all have bandanas on their heads to tell us apart.”
Bakugo grinds his teeth, narrowing his eyes. “And what makes you think I want to play?”
“Incoming!” Uraraka cries out, and the three of them duck as an array of nerf bullets blast into the room. Bakugo leaps for cover out of sheer instinct, landing on the ground beside Izuku, holding the nerf gun firm in his hand.
When the bullets pause, he raises himself up from behind the couch and shoots at the floating bandana, shirt, and shorts of Hagakure, who lets out a faint wail as though she’d actually been shot, collapsing to the ground.
“Nice shot!” Iida says.
“What’s the objective of this stupid game?” He grumbles to Deku, who looks way too delighted.
“Capture the flag.” Deku responds with a grin. “No quirks allowed.”
Bakugo huffs. “Fine.”
They make a break for the courtyard, where Deku said their flag was. They crouch behind bushes and underbrush, peering onto the battlefield where several bandana clad classmates patrol and guard. Todoroki is closest. Bakugo leaps out of the brush and puts Todoroki into a headlock, pressing the nerf gun against his back and firing twice.
Todoroki lets out a noise of surprise, and Bakugo drags him into the bush with the others.
He does this in one graceful swoop, without any of the others noticing their missing teammate.
“Hey Todoroki.” Deku smiles at him.
“Does this mean... I’m dead?” Todoroki asks vacantly. “Do I lay down?”
“Uhh, just stay in the bush, you don’t have to lay down.” Midoriya assures him, glancing up at Iida and Uraraka.
“We should go in guns blazing.” Bakugo blurts out, looking at the field.
Midoriya gives him a look. “Well, yeah, I was going to suggest that.”
He gives him an incredulous glance, looking startled. He agrees with him? Deku jumps to explain himself. “Without the use of quirks, some of us are at a huge disadvantage. Tokoyami, Sero, and Kouda especially, as they all rely on their quirks for long range attacks. If we keep our distance, their shots won’t be as accurate. We’re in a little trouble if we get in the sight of Kirishima, though, because I have no idea how, but he’s scary good at using a nerf gun. I watched him take out Mina, Ojiro, Kaminari, and Satou in three shots.”
“Three?” Iida looked terrified.
“One bounced off Mina and hit Satou. Kirishima claimed it was fair.”
“Okay, so our only opposition is Kirishima.” Bakugo squinted his eyes. Midoriya gives him a surprised expression, as though he hadn’t expected Bakugo to actually listen to and process everything he had said, but the blonde promptly ignores this expression.
“Bakugo, can you take out Kirishima while we go for the flag?”
A part of his pride chips off at this. Why couldn’t he be the one to grab the flag? Instead, he had to play diversion?
No way. That’s enough.
But before he could even open his mouth, Izuku seemed to read his mind. “You’re our best shot with a nerf gun. We can’t win unless Kirishima is taken down.”
We can’t win.
Bakugo bit back his annoyance and grimaced. It takes a few moments of silence before he finally gives in. “Fine. You guys better get that flag.”
That seemed to resolve faster than the three of them thought. They all looked thrilled. “We will.” Midoriya nods once, smiling with determination. “Alright. Go!”
They leap out of the brush. Deku had been right, their shots were sloppy and easy to dodge as Bakugo made a beeline for where Kirishima was. Upon first glance, the red head had rang out a shot and hit Iida square in the chest.
Bakugo raises his gun and fires two shots, which Kirishima dodges immediately. He raises his own gun, and it takes a considerable amount of concentration for Bakugo to jerk his head out of the way in time. The bullet sails past his ear with a high pitched whizz.
They both fire at the same time, running to keep their distance.
“He’s going for the flag!” Sero screams out from the ground, acting as though he were dying.
Bakugo glances over his shoulder to see Midoriya making a grab for the objective. The opposing teammates have all been shot, laying across the courtyard watching in horror. Kirishima raises his gun towards Midoriya, closing one eye to take aim, and then Bakugo throws himself into the line of fire before he has a chance to think.
He feels strange. He raises his gun at the same time of his jump, pulling the trigger on Kirishima at the same time the other does. Together, they both get struck with the other’s bullet, and they collapse to the ground.
Bakugo turns his head to watch as Midoriya and Uraraka make a run for it with the flag in their hands, nearly to their victory.
“I’m surprised you joined us.” Kirishima says as a greeting.
“Didn’t really have a choice.” Bakugo replies, putting bitterness into is voice.
He laughs at this, looking up at the sky. “Yeah you did.”
Yeah, I did.
-
The room is filled with comfortable silence.
Bakugo wanders into the common room after a particularly bad nightmare, covered in sweat, and finds Sero, Kaminari, Mina, and Deku all playing a card game.
He plops himself down onto the couch and says, “Deal me in.”
They don’t even seem surprised to see him. They give him a hand of cards, and he wonders when he began to feel so comfortable around them.
They play, and the involuntary shiver lingering from his nightmare ceases after a while.
-
The room is filled with exhaustion.
The class shuffle in after a particularly heavy training, slumping across the couches as soon as they come in range. Bakugo plops down, trying to catch his breath, and leans his head back as Kaminari flips the television on to something funny.
They’re all too tired to laugh.
Bakugo falls asleep within minutes.
The room is filled with silence.
When he comes to a few hours later, he feels warmth on all sides of him. He had fallen asleep on the couch. Bakugo cranes his neck, confused by the weight holding him down.
On one shoulder, Deku had fallen asleep resting his head there. On the other, Kirishima was propped up against him, fast asleep. Kaminari and Sero had fallen asleep on the floor, propped up by his legs and the couch. Mina had spread herself across the couch, her legs resting in his lap. The rest of his classmates were sprawled out elsewhere in the room.
At first, he felt panicked. But it doesn’t last long. They’re all fast asleep, peace settling over the room. Never before had he been surrounded by an atmosphere so pleasant.
He thinks back to nearly three years ago, when he might have woken them all up and retreated to his room, angry at them.
Now, he can’t help the small smile on his face as he lays his head down on Kirishima’s head and falls back asleep, the presence of his classmates comforting and welcomed.