Work Text:
Hold on, hold onto me
‘Cause I’m a little unsteady
~
The problem with knowing warmth was that eventually, the world went cold again.
It’s always worse, when it has to go back. Like jumping into cold water: easy if you’re used to it, but a fucking nightmare if you were toasty just before. Going back to the sharpness he’d grown up with after knowing so much softness was as jarring as jumping into the freezing sea, and this time he wasn’t used to trying to keep monstrous waves at bay.
(It was winter break, and his parents had brought him home. Which he should’ve been happy about. Was happy about.)
(It was just different, that’s all.)
He’d convinced himself it was better here. Familiar roughness soothing, his mother’s jagged edges predictable and expected. He didn’t have to second guess kindness for ulterior motives here, because everything his parents did always made complete sense – his mother acted to make him better, his father acted to keep the peace. There were no traps, no holes to dig himself into.
His mother voiced her displeasure freely, and his father was rarely displeased. There was no disappointing anyone here by accident, either – the moment he screwed up he was told about it, loudly, and informed exactly how it should be fixed. He could tell when an argument was about to start, when was a good time to ask his parents for something, when to keep quiet and out of the way.
Because home was the same, always the same, and he knew how to live with it.
(He’d long become accustomed to the brashness of his mother’s love, the all-consuming nature of it. You’d break under it if you weren’t careful, but Bakugou was well practiced in meeting it’s hurricane-like fury with equally destructive power. He knows what this is, how to deal with it.)
(He still misses conversations that didn’t make his head hurt.)
~
The nightmares were getting worse.
The handsy bastard was one of the most frequent unwelcome guests, almost always with four fingers around his throat or his wrists, or standing behind that blonde girl who held knives to his throat just to see the terror in his eyes. He saw blue flames licking the edges of his vision as he struggled against blackened, dead skin, and marbles rolling slowly across wooden planks.
But sometimes that sludge villain made it in there too, and sometimes he thought those were worse.
(The image of Deku, running forward when not even the pros would, burned in his mind. But rarely did his dreams get it right, and more often than not those ended with the crowd whispering about his failings, and Deku deciding he just simply wasn’t worth the effort.)
On those nights he woke up alone, too cold and too sweaty all at once even as any lingering parts of the dream crumbled away, leaving him blind with panic and not altogether sure who’d taken all his air away. It took him hours to come back to himself, normally, and another few hours until he felt put together enough to leave the stuffy confines of his room. Everything felt off at home, and he knew it couldn’t help that the window was in the wrong place and his bed had the headboard facing away from the door, opposite to his room in the dorms. It couldn’t help that the panic he felt at not knowing where he was as he shifted between dream and reality was only increased by the unfamiliarity of a place he’d once called familiar, once called home.
(He’d taken to sleeping the other way around to have full view of anyone who entered. He had begun locking his windows, too, checking them every evening and sometimes even in the early hours of the morning when he was awake and petrified and needed the security, but he had to undo them before his mother woke up.)
(Bakugou didn’t feel like explaining why he’d started bolting them. Not when he slept on the second floor.)
Moments where he was awake weren’t all that much better, but it was easier to forget how close to breaking he could get when all he had to do was curse until someone left him alone. The house was quiet, too quiet even with his and his mother’s lung power combined, even with his small, controlled explosions going off every few minutes, even with the TV and the kettle and his music turned up to the highest volume. It felt too empty here, too cold and desolate and like living in a ghost town when his parents went off to work. He missed overhearing bad jokes and laughter and the constant sound of living people, teenagers, warmth.
But it was fine. He’d barely been here a week and it was fine, he could deal with the anxiety. It wasn’t even really anxiety. He was stressing over nothing, it was fine.
He did not miss those extras.
~
The thing is, fire on fire usually burnt more than it warmed.
The love he got here was blazing, but always too cold. He told himself he didn’t care, he’d lived off it for years and had been fine. But then he remembered calloused fingers on his hands, in his hair, reigniting feeling in his skin after years of blocking that shit out, ignoring the need to be touched.
The ache in his chest he’d been keeping at bay in the dorms returned with a vengeance he couldn’t control, thoughts spiralling further and further into a pit he wasn’t sure he could climb back out of. He felt empty, fragile, craving the soft touches and lopsided grins he’d grown accustomed to at the dorms. He wanted to cry, mourn the loss of his sense of safety, grieve for all the moments he was never going to fully enjoy because his brain wouldn’t fucking let him.
(He felt robbed.)
(The villains didn’t care.)
And he couldn’t fucking cry about it without someone storming in here and demanding to know why he was being such a fucking baby at ass o’clock, so he kept quiet. Held it in until dawn when he could acceptably take a shower.
(He wished the water would burn enough to make his skin feel warm again. It had worked a few days ago, made him feel whole and enveloped in warmth for a while, but now his chest and shoulders were starting to look red and raw and he didn’t feel any closer to melting the frost under his skin.)
~
heyy Bakubro :D
(sent yesterday, 07.42)
He still hadn’t answered.
He felt like maybe he should, but he wasn’t sure what to say. Hi? Hello? Fuck off? And even if he did, what then? The more days that passed the less he felt like he could stomach a conversation with anyone, let alone Kirishima.
(Kirishima, who knew him. Knew his highs and his lows and the way he liked his coffee. Kirishima who he’d have to lie to if he was going to get through a conversation with because i’m fucking drowning wasn’t an acceptable response to ‘how are you?’. Could he stomach pretending to one more person? The one person who he normally didn’t have to pretend around?)
(This was so fucking stupid. He was supposed to be able to deal with one fortnight at home without missing physical affection, without growing paranoid and desperate for a sign he wasn’t a fuck up.)
Bakugou turned off his phone, threw it across the room for it to land on the bed, not for the first time that week. He turned back to the worksheets on his desk, things he’d set himself to ensure he stayed ahead next semester.
His pen clicked on. Skin still buzzing, nerves still frazzled.
He ignored it and began to work.