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“Dammit,” Shinsou hisses as he lands on his back.
“What’s the matter, Mind Freak? You’re not usually this easy of a win,” Bakugou says, looming over him. Shinsou can’t quite make out his face against the glaring sunlight, but he can practically feel the boy’s sneer. “Not that you’re much of a challenge on a good day.”
Before Shinsou can retaliate, Bakugou yanks him by his capture weapon, nearly strangling him in the process, and delivers a resounding punch to his gut. He follows with another flip, tossing Shinsou over his shoulder as if he weighed little more than a sack of laundry. The ground rushes up to meet him once again. His entire back feels like a bruise. Shinsou holds up a hand, conceding the match.
XXX
After class, Shinsou sits on a bench in the locker room. He presses his fingers to his temples, hoping the pressure would stop the brewing migraine. Shinsou has no idea what brought this on. As much as he hated to admit it, Bakugou was right: he isn’t at his best. But try as he might, he couldn’t point to a reason.
His head spirals into a renewed wave of dizziness. Maybe he’d been overusing his quirk. That often served him with some nasty headaches. His temples throb.
“Hey, you good?” comes a voice. Shinsou is too preoccupied to discern who it belongs to. He feels his face start to heat up. The lockers come rushing out at him. Two seconds later, he blacks out.
When he wakes up, he feels something cold and wet draped against his forehead. He runs his palms along the ground beneath him, tracing the edges of linoleum tiles. Still in the locker room.
“You’re awake.”
Shinsou bolts upright, the wet rag on his forehead falling into his lap. “What are you doing here?” he rasps, trying to focus on the figure sitting on the bench.
“Checking up on your dumb ass,” Bakugou replies, crossing his arms and glaring down at Shinsou. “Mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”
Shinsou returns his scowl with a look of scathing indifference. “Obviously, I fainted.”
Bakugou’s scowl deepens. “No, I’m talking about whatever the fuck your whole problem is. I know this isn’t the first time you ate shit in the locker room. Shitty Hair told me he found you passed the fuck out just last week. Not to mention all your other dumb habits. Like drinking six shots of espresso at a time or going to bed at the crack of dawn. Why the fuck are you such an idiot? It’s annoying as hell.”
Shinsou looks at the other boy blankly for a moment, then gives a short, hollow laugh. He rises shakily to his feet, using the lockers to brace himself as he makes his way past the spikey boy. Bakugou sticks out a foot, blocking his exit. Shinsou stares at him, tracing the heat of an anger deeper than he’d ever seen on the explosive teen’s face.
“If you want to become a hero so bad, you better start fucking acting like it!” Bakugou snarls.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Bakugou is silent for a while, as if at war with himself over whether to grant him an answer. “How about we make a deal?” he says finally. “You shut up and listen to me.”
“That’s not a deal, Pop Rocks. That’s a command. I’m the one with the command-based quirk. Where are you going with this and what do I get out of it?”
“You get a better fucking life is what you get!!”
Shinsou rolls his eyes. “What kind of promise is that?”
“I could always just kick your ass again.”
Shinsou pauses, weighing his options. Considering the state he’s in, he probably isn’t getting out of here until he humors the angry boy. Or resorts to his quirk, which as far as he’s concerned is never an option for something like this. “Fine,” he sighs. “What exactly is this deal?”
“I’m gonna help you sort your shit out for a few weeks, and in exchange, I won’t kick your--”
“You won’t kick my ass,” Shinsou finishes. “Yeah, I got that. And how long am I gonna have to put up with this?”
“Until you beat me in training,” Bakugou says, holding out a hand. “Shake on it.”
“Whatever,” Shinsou says, taking the other boy’s hand and shaking as firmly as he could manage, looking Bakugou straight in the eye. Shinsou has no intention of following through, but if he wants to get out of this locker room alive, he doesn’t have a choice.
XXX
Surprisingly, a week rolls by without a word out of the short fuse. But just as Shinsou starts to wonder if Bakugou will make good on his promise at all, it happens.
It’s nearing 8 PM on a Tuesday night. The class has an English exam the next day, and Shinsou hasn’t studied at all, which is no surprise. He’s a chronic crammer. It wasn’t like he did it on purpose: he just hates studying. Strange as it is to admit, he never feels like he does a good enough job of it. Logically, he knows it’s irrational. He rarely struggled in school, and his grades were decent enough, but despite it all, he always had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t doing it right, that he’d fail no matter what he did. To avoid that creeping fear, he pushed studying to the last possible second.
Which, for that English exam, is tonight. No way out but to pull another all-nighter.
Shinsou is in the dorm kitchen, brewing a pot of coffee. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches movement. Turning, he sees it’s Bakugou. Shinsou gives him a nod, but the spiky blonde blows right past him, heading straight for Shinsou’s mug. Bakugou swipes it from his hand and tosses it in the trash with a clatter, coffee and all.
“The hell?” Shinsou exclaims.
Bakugou doesn’t answer. Mission accomplished, he slouches away in silence, hands in his pockets, heading back to his room. It is around his bedtime. Maybe that’s why he’s being such a spectacular grouch, Shinsou thinks with a smirk. Boom Baby’s getting tired. He shrugs and pours himself another mug, padding out of the kitchen and into a night’s worth of cramming.
XXX
The next day has Shinsou stressed. Despite his best efforts, he’d fallen asleep before he’d finished going through his notes. This isn’t unusual. After weeks of all-nighters, he’s used to it, and his backup plan is to skip lunch and cram.
It isn’t like he has an eating disorder. At least, not anymore. It was something he’d struggled with in the past, but he’d gotten over it. It was for pretty stupid reasons too - it wasn’t like Shinsou had a problem with how he looked - it had more to do with the control element. But that’s not what this is now. This is just a necessity. Shinsou heads to an empty classroom and spends the time pouring over the last of his notes.
He meets up with Midoriya and Iida later, after the exam, following them to the locker room to get suited up for practical training. He waves away the pricks of fatigue. He’ll deal with that later. For now, he needs to power through.
A loud bang makes the three of them jump. Quickly scanning the room for the source of the noise, Shinsou zeros in on his own locker. The door hangs slightly ajar, with a thin wisp of smoke trailing out. He narrows his eyes, walking over.
“Shinsou, wait!” Midoriya says, grabbing his shoulder. “You don’t know what that was. For all we know there could be another one.”
Shinsou slides out of the other boy’s grip and rolls his eyes. “No, I’m pretty sure I know what caused it.”
Peering into his smoking locker, he finds a small boxed lunch, along with the remains of a makeshift explosive device rigged to detonate a vial of a particular student’s nitroglycerin sweat. Picking up the package, Shinsou finds a note. ‘You forgot your lunch, you fucking purple smurf. - B.’
Midoriya strains to get a glimpse of the package over Shinsou’s shoulder. “What’s that, Shinsou? Did someone leave you a letter bomb or something?”
Iida rushes over. “Yes, please let us know if we should alert the teachers. This is unacceptable behavior for a UA student. Not to mention the damage to school property.”
Shinsou groans. “No, it’s not that. It’s fine. I’m fine. Just go put on your uniforms and forget about it.”
His friends exchange worried glances, but don’t press him any further. Shinsou is grateful. Glancing at the package in his hands, Shinsou knows he’s going to have to approach this problem directly.
XXX
But not yet. He still has three more exams to get through this week, and that means studying. Nonstop. He can worry about confronting Bakugou once his grades come in.
He spends the night at his dorm room desk, planning on knocking out a study guide for the next day’s physics exam. Before he realizes it, however, he’s waking from an impromptu nap to a loud banging sound coming from his door. Shinsou groans, berating himself for falling asleep on his notes again.
“I know you’re in there, Control Freak,” comes a snarl. “And I know you’re still awake.”
On the contrary, Shinsou thinks bitterly, flopping his head back onto his arms.
The banging continues. Shinsou thanks his past self for deciding to lock the door. No way does he want that gremlin getting in.
“It’s almost two in the morning! Go to sleep, you fucking dumbass!!” Bakugou shouts through the door.
“Why don’t you follow your own advice?” Uraraka yells from somewhere down the hall.
“Mind your own damn business, Round Face!” Bakugou retorts. With a growl of frustration, Bakugou resorts to his quirk, blowing Shinsou’s door clear off its hinges and storming into the room. “Thought so,” Bakugou grumbles when he sees Shinsou hunched over his desk.
Before Shinsou can protest, Bakugou drags him out of his chair and hurls him bodily into his bed with a thump. Not wasting a moment, Bakugou yanks out the comforter and throws it over him. “Go. To. SLEEP!” Bakugou snarls.
He strides out of the room, leaving Shinsou to peek over the edge of his comforter at the string of confused faces that had gathered in the hall to watch the whole exchange. Shinsou feels his cheeks redden. This will definitely require some sort of explanation, or he’s never going to live it down.
Thankfully, the discount grenade has enough courtesy to prop the busted door back into place as he leaves, casting Shinsou’s room back into blessed darkness. Regardless, he needed to have a talk with Bakugou about this stupid deal.
XXX
The next day hits Shinsou like a tower of jenga blocks. Each thing that goes wrong yanks out another brick until he feels like he’s going to topple over.
For one, he gets his grades back on his exams. They aren’t pretty. For two, he spends his lunch period alone in an empty classroom, hiding from the concerned looks of his friends. He can answer their questions later, but for now, he needs space. And for three, in the afternoon, he suffers a string of defeats in practical training, this time against Kirishima. The well-meaning redhead tries to offer him pointers, but Shinsou just bats them away, insisting on continuing the match till he’s hanging onto consciousness by threads.
As soon as he gets back to the dorms, he locks himself in his room behind his newly replaced door, trying to study. But all he can manage is stare blankly at the covers of his textbooks. He can’t quite muster up the strength or resolve to reach over and open them.
Several hours later, he’s still staring, now at his phone. He’s abandoned all hopes of studying, draped across his bed and feeling practically braindead, scrolling through stupid social media posts like it’s a lifeline. Part of him knows it very well could be. If anything, it’s a way to drown out the negative thoughts, the ones dwelling on how horribly the day had gone. He feels trapped, like a crushing weight is pressing in on him from all sides. Stuck in a time loop, repeating the same flick of his thumb over and over till he’s numb. The only sensation he can make sense of is the slight prick at the corners of his eyes, threatening tears that never come. He wants to cry. It might bring him some sort of release. But he can’t. In a day - no, a week - full of failures, he can’t even manage that.
Midway through a post, Shinsou hears a knock. Without even waiting for a response, the spiky haired grenade himself barges in.
Shinsou keeps his eyes fixed on his phone. “Leave.”
“Make me.”
After a pause, Shinsou glances up to find Bakugou still there, arms crossed in surprise. He must’ve expected Shinsou to use his quirk on him. In all honesty, Shinsou isn’t sure himself why he didn’t, especially when Bakugou provided such an easy opening.
When Shinsou doesn’t say anything, Bakugou takes a seat at the foot of the bed, arms still crossed, eyes fixed on the other side of the room. Shinsou sits up to make room for him. Neither one of them says anything for a while, just sitting there in the darkness together, bathed in the eerie blue light emanating from Shinsou’s phone screen.
Eventually, Shinsou can’t take it anymore. “You know, you may think you’re helping me, but you’re really not.”
Bakugou keeps his eyes trained on the other side of the room.
Shinsou clenches his teeth. “This whole deal thing, making me lunch, forcing me to go to bed on time, getting rid of my coffee like some kind of deranged helicopter parent, it’s not helping me.”
The silence persists.
Shinsou takes a deep breath, willing himself not to completely lose it in front of this asshole. “Here’s the thing. Even when you’re trying to help me learn from my mistakes, to me, it just sounds like another condemnation. Every time you thought you were helping me out, all I heard was ‘You failed again.’ If I were better, maybe I could schedule my time, block things out into neat little boxes and have time for everything, and as an added bonus, I could be healthy too.
“But I’m not. I can’t. I’m not some natural talent like you who can breeze by and ace practical training and get straight A’s and still get enough sleep besides. I had to work constantly to get into the hero course, against all odds, and I need to work constantly to keep up with those who were lucky enough to be born with perfect quirks.”
Despite his best efforts, Shinsou can feel the tears at the corners of his eyes start to snake their way out. He does his best to hide them with a scowl. “And when someone like you reaches down and tries to lend me a hand, it just feels like a slap in the face. The best thing you can do for me is just leave me alone. I’ll figure it out myself.”
Bakugou grunts.“Yeah, I’ve heard all that before.”
Shinsou looks at him.
“It’s what I used to tell myself. I did a lot of stupid shit when I was younger. The same shit you do. Studying all night to ace the test. Working out at the gym every spare chance I got. I felt like I had this image to live up to, this image that everyone around me had built up in their minds, and if I didn’t, some asshole would come up to me one day and call bullshit.
“But I took it too far. Got landed in the hospital. If I’m not careful, my quirk makes me susceptible to extremely low blood pressure, even heart failure. For a while they weren’t sure I’d make it.”
He looks up, looking directly at Shinsou for the first time since coming into his room. “Don’t be an idiot like I was, okay?”
Shinsou stares at him, shocked. He doesn’t know if he’s more surprised by the sheer number of words Bakugou just threw at him or by the fact that he called himself an idiot. Either way, the edges of his cheeks feel slightly wet: the tears found their way out after all.
“O...kay,” Shinsou says quietly, biting his lip to stop it from shaking.
Bakugou huffs, as if to clear away the wisp of vulnerability he’d exposed. “Good. Now get some damn sleep.” He rises, turning when he reaches the door, the light from the hall outlining his silhouette. “And for the record, you deserve to be here as much as any of us, Shinsou.”
“I didn’t say-”
“You did. You didn’t hear it, but you did.”
Shinsou clamps his mouth shut, his lips easing themselves into a faint smile. “Thanks, Bakugou.”
Bakugou grunts and closes the door, casting Shinsou into darkness once again. The screen on his phone lights up from where he left it on his nightstand. Shinsou turns it off and flips it over. With a sigh, he slides under the covers and props up a pillow. Might as well give it a shot. For the first time in a while, it doesn’t take long for his breathing to slow and his consciousness to wane. Within moments, he’s asleep.
XXX
“Shit,” Bakugou snarls as he lands on his back.
It’s been a few days since Bakugou dropped by his dorm room, and by some miracle, Shinsou had actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep every night since. Not to mention, this was the first time he’d ever managed to throw the explosive boy in a close combat match. He walks over to where he’d tossed him, leaning over and extending a hand to help him up. Bakugou glares and bats the hand away.
“Looks like you’re finally getting the message, dumbass,” Bakugou growls.
Shinsou gives him a sly grin. “Guess so, Pop Rocks.