Chapter Text
It all started in the spring, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Your first days in UA were impressionable to say the least, euphoria and teen spirit vividly coloring the hallways and rooms where you first got around to knowing your fellow hero-hopeful classmates. You look back at these times fondly, for it was in those curious and almost awkward slots of your adolescence that you'd discovered something, or rather some people , who would eventually come to change your life as you knew it, for better and for worse.
Kirishima Eijirou.
It didn’t take you long to realize that the friendly redhead with the kind, ridged-toothed grin held in his calloused hands, a special effect to you that made you go undeniably weak in the knees whenever he hovered close enough and you dared not flinch away. Once subject to that gorgeous glint in his eyes so ruby and bright, you couldn’t stop yourself from shying away, even when all you really wanted was to dive deep and far into those swirling pools of crimson. You feared drowning to a point of no return, after all. Not that you had it in you to pull the stops, really.
You’d heard all your life that when you encounter your soulmate, you’ll simply know by heart that it’s them, which sounded outrageous at first. Maybe it was all those romantic films your girl friends forced on you as a preteen at get-togethers that convinced you it would take a cheesy, out of the box circumstance for you to realize you were in love; something crazy along the lines of a near-death experience and your soulmate coming to your rescue (which was fairly probable, considering you had always planned on taking on the dangerous profession of a hero, after all).
But no, in actuality, all it took was him giving you his name and a reserved albeit warm shake of his hand. Everything that came after only served to fan the ever-growing fire, tendrils licking dangerously at the confines of your wax heart that never ceased to melt away. You hit it off really well with him, playing off of each other smoothly in idle conversations squeezed between classes. He’d pad his way over to you often and it would absolutely make your days, even if the driving factor behind it was a certain foul-mouthed blonde who also happened to be your designated seatmate.
Bakugou Katsuki was initially a freak of nature. You could never wrap your head around how a person could physically contain so much spite and anger within them at all times, much less how he could possibly be best friends with a happy pill like Kirishima. After prolonged exposure that couldn't be helped since the guy was your soulmate's ride or die, you eventually came around to realizing that his psychopathic tendencies weren't all there was to his personality. Erratic as he was, even he had layers to his being, you learned.
“Done being all mopey yet?” A brash grunt emerging from the doorway behind you interrupts your thoughts. You furrow your brows disdainfully.
Now this, was the asshole layer.
“Nope, still feeling very mopey,” you reply sarcastically. “In fact, I feel like carrying this over for a few more hours or so.. Please refrain from interacting with me and feel free to exit through the front door.”
“Fuck you,” Bakugou hisses, but you hear his voice and footsteps growing closer instead. It was always like this with him, he’d catch you at your worst and make you feel like shit for feeling like shit. However, as much as you’d hate to admit it, his presence at such times always did more good than harm. He was a jerk, but he wasn’t just a jerk.
Bakugou squats down beside you on the bathroom tiles, giving your body, hunched over the toilet bowl, multiple glance overs.
“Like what you see?” You chuckle humorlessly, wiping away dried drool from a corner of your mouth with the sleeve of your hoodie. It was old and the Crimson Riot print on it had all but faded away, but it was your favorite one since it was originally Kirishima’s. He’d lent it to you once upon a time during a class trip to the mountains when you forgot to pack your jacket with you. You also wound up ‘forgetting’ to return it, and it genuinely slipped his mind as well before turning up in conversation years later with him insisting with easy laughter that you threw the goddamn thing away, since it was a ratty old thing.
Little did he know how you carefully treasured that ratty old thing, wearing it exclusively when the searing pain in your gut flared, pushing forth a stream of petals past your esophagus, only for them to rain down your lips and into your toilet bowl. It doesn’t smell of him anymore, and maybe that’s why it does nothing to quell the sick feeling.
Coming down your last wave of nausea, you finally flush the amalgam of reds, whites, and pinks down.
“You look like shit. The worst kind.”
Bakugou never sugarcoated anything. It didn’t matter that you were in the middle of an episode, that you already knew full well how horrid you looked, pale and gaunt in a preloved hoodie with hair falling down in matted clumps because of all the cold sweat.
“I know,” you barely have the energy to retort with much gusto, struggling to push yourself off the ground. The blonde wordlessly loops a sturdy arm around your torso, having you lean against him for support as you groggily lifted yourself up onto your own two feet. It used to be weird when he produced little acts of kindness like this for you, but lately he’s been doing it so much that you no longer think twice of it.
“Thanks.”
He doesn’t answer as the both of you trudge towards the living room. He plops you down carefully on the sofa, and you feel the cushion dipping with his added weight as he settles into the seat beside you. The air is still, tension thick enough to slice with a butter knife wedging itself between you and the uncharacteristically quiet blonde. Several beats of silence pass.
“Did that trigger it?” He cocks his jaw towards a sleek, white envelope bordered with motifs of elegant gold spirals sitting unopened on your coffee table. A sheer glimpse of it is enough to make your stomach churn with the threat of another slew of flowers. And so you’ve left it untouched ever since it came in the mail this morning. The classic letters embellished onto the high-quality paper betrayed its contents enough, anyway.
“Oh what, the wedding invitation of my soulmate and his long-time girlfriend?” You pause, sighing dramatically. “Probably, I guess?”
Your bouts of retching have been severe enough as is, but this news hitting you out of nowhere is really kicking things into high gear for you. It isn’t like you didn’t see it coming; Kirishima had always gotten along stupid well with Ashido, and they had history. You knew they went way back, having attended the same middle school, hailing from the same background. It was only natural for them to get married after years of blissfully dating.
Back then, you were too absorbed viewing the world in rose-colored glasses to pick up on the subtle signs that the spiky haired boy looked at Ashido differently than he did his other friends. Other girls. You had been so sure that the world had set you up for an eventual happy ever after, the way you’d seen so many others procure theirs. That was why the soulmate system existed, after all? To enact fairness and ensure that everyone had someone to come home to by the end of the day– to belong to.
Oh, but how naive you were to believe the universe would be so kind.
You were so oblivious to the truth that it came as a complete surprise when you ran into Ashido and Kirishima kissing at the back gardens of campus shortly after your graduation ceremony ended. They were still in their regalia, utterly frazzled when you caught them, faces rosy and contorted with embarrassment as they begged you to not leak a word of it because they didn’t want to be outed so early into their relationship.
At first it felt like the air around you solidified and you struggled to barely breathe. Then you somehow managed to compel yourself to apologize profusely and excused yourself quickly with some offhand bullshit, claiming that you were looking for Kaminari so he could charge your phone, and none of the pair seemed to have the mind to question it. It was obvious to you that they couldn't have cared less what you were doing loitering around, that all they'd wanted was for you, a disturbance, to scram. It hurt even more, considering the only reason you headed there in the first place was to summon Kirishima and finally let out all the affections you'd kept under wraps for the entirety of your high school years.
Walking away, your heart felt surreally empty, like a single star burning within had died out and left you with nothing but a gaping chasm. A void slowly but surely made a home out of you, gorging on the wasted love spilling and slipping through your fingers.
That was when it first happened. You threw up your first bouquet in a secluded outdoor area of campus, the disorientation catching you so off-guard you didn’t even have the chance to retreat to a nearby restroom. You’d heard of it before. The disease that affected those unfortunate enough to bear unrequited feelings for their soulmates. A shameful ailment that only the mismatched would ever find themselves entangled in.
Hanahaki . You’d only ever encountered it in sob stories you'd shrug off, having the gall to believe you were above that small, miserable percentage.
Devastation began shaping off into crystalline rivulets that endlessly streamed down your cheeks. Your parents were probably searching for you, eager to share what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life, but all you desired in that moment was to hide away and disappear. Bakugou Katsuki stumbling upon you was a slap to the face in that regard, a cherry on top of the shame sundae.
Fate couldn’t even relinquish your privacy, and boy was it fucking embarrassing having the resident misfit hone in on you like a deer in headlights. A snotty deer, with eyelids swollen beyond recognition. Even he couldn’t help but question the sight in front of him.
“(L/n)?” He asked incredulously, scarlet orbs widening a fraction as you cowered away.
“Holy fuck, you’re crying? That’s embarrassing,” he blurted without much thought. His words stung, but they lacked the conscious malice that they usually carried.
“D-Don’t tell anyone,” you hiccuped softly before averting your gaze, shielding your face with your arm as you broke for it, trotting away from him. Your words sounded somewhere between an order and a plea, and if it weren’t for the pure heartbreak laced in your tone, he probably would’ve blasted you to high hell for it.
Bakugou had always been indifferent to you. He didn’t dislike nor particularly enjoyed your company but he did notice and interact with you more so than others, since you tended to linger around him when Kirishima was by his side and that in itself was almost a given. The both of you got along fairly well, as smoothly as a friendship with someone like him could go, but neither of you ever really made efforts to trespass beyond that realm.
Frankly, he was still mostly volatile and that didn’t leave room for pretty much anyone to approach him on a deeper level, save for Kirishima, the shitty hair bastard took both his verbal and physical hits better than the average person. There really never was an opportunity for the two of you to especially bond either, and that took into consideration the occasional group study sessions that would take place interchangeably at your house, his, or whoever else was joining in (usually, Kirishima was one of them). Nonetheless, seeing you that day, looking absolutely broken, left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.
Once Kirishima and Ashido made it known in the UA alumni group chat that they were a couple a few months following that incident, bashfully mentioning how they were grateful to you for not spreading rumors after having caught them red handed, it clicked like a sliding puzzle in Bakugou’s head. Why you’d never drifted too far away from Kirishima and him, why you’d shed such ugly tears on that fateful day, why he’d caught sight of a random scatter of flower petals off to the side in a stray bush.
Maybe it was compassion that urged him, maybe it was something else. Heck, it was probably just pity. Whatever it was, Bakugou simply couldn’t bear the idea of leaving you alone. That exact day, he pulled a very un-Bakugou move, going out of his way to visit you in your home where you’d been holed up in your room. You hadn't stepped out of your room even once that day, the confusion upon hearing that a certain Bakugou Katsuki paid you a visit being the only reason sufficient to pull you out of hermitting. You'd had an inkling that it was about Kirishima, and boy were you right.
It wouldn’t be him if he couldn’t be mindnumbingly crude about it, and he couldn’t have been any less delicate with the way he launched into a long winded rant over how you were a hopeless loser and utter idiot for pining for someone so unavailable, that you should've just get over it and move on. Thinking back, it should have offended you, how he laid everything out like it was a piece of cake. But at the time, you were simply glad enough you finally had someone to talk to about the cursed feelings plaguing your days.
Why he even cared enough to listen to you pour your heart out was beyond you and himself, to be completely honest. All you knew was that ever since, whenever you required it, his company would always be a phone call away.
Today is no different.
“I’m at my limit,” you confess timidly, voice thin and throat hoarse from all the puking.
Bakugou raises a brow at that. “Well, aren’t you fucking slow in the head? It’s about time you realized. Make it easier on yourself and get that goddamn surgery.”
He isn’t wrong. You’ve been stretching yourself pathetically thin trying to conceal the symptoms from the better part of the world, which included the public eye and all of your friends, especially Kirishima and Ashido. You’d kept up this charade for a little over three years now, your career as a pro-hero making looking unbothered a ridiculously herculean task, especially with the growing severity of your disease.
Granted, it wasn’t that you were at a dead end, for you have always had an alternative at hand; a surgery that would help you recover fully, by way of completely erasing your feelings for Kirishima, along with your capacity to ever love anyone romantically.
You never favored that method, however. No matter how excruciating it got, completely disposing of your love like it was a tumor felt entirely uncalled for, and just plain wrong. It never felt worth it.
Though, the scales in your head began tipping quite a bit once you found out Kirishima was getting hitched. Suddenly, the prospect of becoming a hollow shell perfectly incapable of feeling was that much more enticing. Anything to escape the thorn shackles caging your heart. Why did something so beautiful have to come at such a precious cost?
“For once, I agree with you,” you manage a forlorn smile Bakugou’s way, and despite having waited on the day you finally relented and listened to his advice for once, witnessing you surrender at your wit’s end was unnerving.
“You better not be just saying that.” With a surge of restlessness, he rises out of his seat to fetch you a cool glass of water, which you take gratefully.
Bakugou was no empath, but he wasn’t dull in the head. He had an understanding of how love works despite bearing no experience in the field himself, and he’d have to be an idiot to not see how valuable Kirishima was to you after all you’d sacrificed to merely continue adoring him in secret. It was reckless and stupid as he would put it, and he was vocal in his complaints as he watched you walk into your own traps time after time. Your complacency now was as relieving as it was tragic, akin to watching a shipwrecked sailor finally accept the harsh reality that he was estranged at sea with no means of returning home.
You shake your head, “No, I mean it. I’m exhausted, Bakugou. It’s finally happening. To harbor feelings for Kirishima past this point would just feel so.. wrong. He’s getting married, for fuck’s sake. It’s not like I expected him to never settle, but.. I don’t know, maybe despite everything that’s gone down, deep down I still sincerely expected something to happen between us?”
You can’t bring yourself to face the male opposite you, not after saying something so blatantly ignorant. You expect a firecracker reaction typical of the rambunctious blonde, a pelting with a rain of insults as you feel you so deserve. But nothing of the sort comes your way. He strides over to you and you watch with a curious gaze as he kneels down to meet your eyes, bringing up a lax hand to flick your nose with. Unsuspecting, you rub the affected area indignantly.
“What the fuck?” You blubber, only met with the impatient click of his tongue.
“You’re a fucking idiot."
There it is.
Then with that same offending hand, he moves to ruffle your hair ever so gently.
“You’re just a scrawny little shit, so why are you trying so hard to pretend to be strong? Fuck off with the bullshit. Cry if you fucking want to, dumbass.”
If it weren't for your heart being in complete tatters, you likely would've been able to laugh him off and even tease him for spouting something so backhandedly considerate. But everything was so overwhelming. Your loss, the future, this goddamn disease— His words were all you needed to hear, all it took for the wall to crumble and waterworks to come flowing out uncontrollably. You start shaking with violent sobs, the kind that make you choke up, unable to utter a coherent word.
Bakugou grunts, patting you on the head with a soft look.
"Atta girl."