Work Text:
Since their work studies had started, Uraraka and Deku had only gotten closer. He and Todoroki were the only ones that knew about her nightmares and the fact that the three of them spent most of their time in Todoroki’s room proved that Deku was probably feeling the same.
It was terrifying to think that this would be the rest of her life.
Every night Uraraka would see the same thing: one of her friends evaporating in front of her eyes with Shigaraki standing behind them and her name being the last thing they screamed.
Deku and Todoroki were the most common victims, then Tsuyu and Mina, but other than them, Bakugou was normally the one that made her wake up screaming. With everyone else, she would just sob until she woke herself up, but with him, Uraraka’s voice would always be raw once she finally escaped.
There was no escaping the nightmares and she needed to sleep in order to train for the next day.
Sleeping in another room didn’t seem to help either. If she fell asleep in Todoroki’s room the dream would just pull her back to the dark void where all she could see were her friends being massacred, one after another.
That’s why she was wandering through the halls of the dorms at 2 am on a random Saturday morning. Too tired to recognize where she was, Uraraka wandered to the kitchen to get a bottle of water to help her aching throat and started toward the elevator to go up to the fifth floor.
She had already texted Deku and he said he was already there waiting for her. Todoroki was still up studying and Uraraka smiled at her phone as she stepped off onto the floor. He apparently had a test on Monday that he was worried about and Deku was trying to help him.
Anything to avoid falling asleep.
It was nice knowing that Uraraka’s friends loved her enough to let her stay with them, but that didn’t stop her from feeling bad about taking some of their alone time. Being the third wheel was something that she was quickly becoming accustomed to. Todoroki said that he didn’t mind, but she knew he would rather spend his time with his boyfriend instead of babysitting her.
Still, she ended up at his door in the middle of the night because she had no other choice.
She knocked on the door before yawning and closing her eyes for a second. Just a moment of silence was enough for her head to lull to one side and her weight to shift.
“Cheeks? What are you doing here?” Bakugou’s gruff voice made her eyes open. What was he doing in Todoroki’s room? Deku didn’t say anything about him being here.
“What am I-?” She looked down the hall and blinked at the sticky notes on Kirishima’s door. “This isn’t Todoroki’s room, is it?”
“Uh, no? This is my room,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
There was too much happening while Uraraka was still half asleep and going for too long without a good night’s sleep, so she did the only thing she thought made sense. She grabbed his short sleeve black shirt and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.
“Woah. What are you doing? Cheeks, what- are you?”
Tears were streaming down her face and it hadn’t hit her until now that every nightmare didn’t end once she woke up, it ended once she had seen her friends alive and well in class. Being here at Bakugou’s door, the dream she had just seen flashed through her mind again and she couldn’t do anything about it.
“I… I had a dream,” she sobbed into his shirt. “You- Shigaraki… I watched him- I woke up screaming.”
She felt Bakugou freeze for a second before wrapping his arms around her and rested his cheek on her forehead. Then, they stood there a minute with tears still falling onto his shirt until Uraraka pulled back.
“Sorry. I guess I haven’t been sleeping very well.”
“I get it,” he said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants.
“Do you have the dreams too?” Uraraka asked and Bakugou stared at her for a heartbeat before nodding.
“I’m always in that damn bar with those freaks surrounding me. They take turns killing me. It’s… awful.”
Uraraka didn’t know how to help him, so she put her hand on his arm and smiled up at him. A silent conversation passed between them that neither of them fully understood, only knowing that they had someone to talk to if they needed to.
“Well, you coming in or not?” he scoffed and moved out of the doorway, pulling away from her touch.
“Okay.”
Uraraka had never been in Bakugou’s room, but there wasn’t anything special about it. It just seemed like a normal teenager’s room, but it was a lot cleaner than she thought with an overflowing closet, probably a curtsy of his parents.
Uraraka yawned and Bakugou sighed.
“Just lay on my bed. Take a nap or something. I’m going to keep studying.”
She didn’t have enough in her to argue, so with her eyes half-closed, she nodded and let Bakugou pull her to his bed. His blankets were soft as he pulled them over her and they smelled like him. A faint smell of sugar floated around the room as she heard him walk to his desk.
“Gimme your phone,” he grumbled. “I’ll charge it.”
She nodded as much as she could and handed it over along with her forgotten water bottle.
If she was anymore awake, Uraraka would have noticed Bakugou looking at a text from Deku before glancing back up at her. She would have seen the soft smile cross his face for a second before plugging her phone in and reaching for his own.
Directly above his room, Deku and Todoroki were cuddling on Todoroki’s bed. Deku had one hand was in his sleeping boyfriend’s hair and the other holding his phone, wondering if he could message Uraraka again when a notification from Bakugou popped up.
- I got her. She’s fine.
With a smile, he shut off his phone and laid down with Todoroki so he could fall asleep too. Deku watched him breathe peacefully for a few minutes and kissed his cheek.
“I love you, Shoto,” he whispered.
He had never said that before, but if he didn’t want his nightmare to come true, he would have to tell him before… something bad happened. He didn’t want to die without Todoroki knowing how he felt.
Deku smiled at him and felt his heart speed when Todoroki’s eyes opened.
“I love you too, Izuku. Now, please sleep. I’ll fight all the nightmares for you.”
Deku chuckled and kissed Todoroki’s forehead. He was probably half asleep and wouldn’t even remember it in the morning. Still, it turned Deku’s cheeks bright pink.
“Okay, Shoto. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he whispered and shut his eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you so much,” Deku said and shut his eyes. Within minutes, he was fast asleep.
That was the first night that neither of them had any nightmares in a long time.
Uraraka nearly sobbed once she woke up, scaring Bakugou awake who had fallen asleep at his computer. He ran over to her and she laughed, saying she didn’t have a dream. “Not a single one!”
Then, she saw him sit up and wince. So, of course, she forced him to lay next to her and sleep for a few more hours. Bakugou was still too tired to argue but made her promise that she wouldn’t leave until he woke up.
“Are you kidding? I’m going back to sleep. I haven’t slept that well in months.”
Deku woke up to find Todoroki smiling at him and pulling him into a hug. He whispered how much he loved Deku into his ears, for no one else to know and Deku cried into his boyfriend’s shirt.
With Deku in his lap, Todoroki kept studying on his bed. One hand on his book and the other playing with dark green hair. Just like Uraraka, Deku had fallen asleep again only minutes after waking up.