Work Text:
Let me sleep
I am tired of my grief
And I would like you
To love me, to love me, to love me
~
Bakugou came back from winter break looking… off.
Tired, mostly, but it wasn’t just that. He was wound up so tight Kirishima feared he might snap the moment someone spoke to him, like a rope frayed bare and poised to break. Dark rings under his eyes said he hadn’t slept much at all in the past week, and his posture was stiff, stiffer than normal.
And his eyes… his eyes were red and unfocused and had a distant look about them that said Bakugou wasn’t entirely there.
(It worried Kirishima. It worried him because Bakugou hadn’t looked this bad since the week after Kamino, and taking 3 steps back after all their steps forward seemed like the worst possible thing right now.)
(He’d go check on him later. Bring him dinner because he doesn’t come down to eat when he’s like this. Bakugou won’t ask but Kirishima will give him a long hug without him having to, and hopefully, it’d all be fine.)
“Hey Kirishima, wanna play Pokémon?”
“I’m coming! Just a sec,” he called out to Kaminari.
(Maybe he could convince Bakugou to come play as well later. He’d managed it, once, on a day the self-proclaimed Bakusquad now referred to as the Miracle Incident. Bakugou beat them all, obviously, but it was still fun.)
(The smile on his face had been better than any victory.)
~
Coming back was too much.
Like putting your hands under warm water once they’d lost all their feeling: burning, painful in a way that made you want to pull away but you knew you had to endure or you’d never warm up again. He’d been expecting relief, or at the very least to be happy to be back, and… he was. Kind of. But the common room full of excited extras talking about their holidays was not something he thought he could deal with right now.
Somehow he ended up in his room, some amount of time later, and didn’t think too hard about how he’d gotten there.
(He’d been having moments where he’d felt not-quite-there, where the world slipped away and he wasn’t entirely sure what had happened while he was away. Some part of him vaguely remembered climbing the stairs, remembered avoiding eye contact with Kaminari and Deku and someone else that had looked at him. But had someone talked to him on his way up? Had he responded? He wasn’t sure he could answer for certain.)
He’d found an old pair of noise-cancelling headphones back home and brought them back to school, ones he was pretty sure some elementary school teacher had issued to him not that long after his quirk manifested. He hadn’t used them in years, and he wasn’t entirely sure if they fit, but he supposed the privacy of his dorm was as good a place as any to try.
(It was weird, thinking back to a time where he would wear those willingly without paranoid panic overtaking him, but he tried not to dwell on thoughts like that. What really mattered was that they still fit, and the door was directly in his sight, and not being able to hear the excited ruckus downstairs was simultaneously unsettling and a huge fucking relief he wasn’t sure he could’ve explained to anyone else.)
Some part of him felt like he should be crying, or screaming, or… something. Something other than just sitting here, tired out of his mind and staring at the door as if villains were about to burst in right now and take him again. As if him being vigilant would make any difference when they had fucking teleportation.
His thoughts returned to winter break, too, and to seeing his parents. Of the difference between the place he’d once called home and the life he’d built here, now, surrounded by loud extras who seemed to like him just for existing. It was strange, and sometimes their willingness to just accept him as he was felt more like a huge prank he wasn’t in on than anything else, but more and more the way things were at his house just felt stranger.
(He was starting to realise normal kids got hugged by their parents instead of told to suck shit up, got comfort when he would receive a life lesson in tough luck. The world isn’t fair, Kat, he remembered her telling him, a long time ago. And then many times after that. Don’t be a crybaby about it, yeah?)
(It wasn’t a secret his mother wasn’t a soft person.)
Ever since he’d gone home for winter break he’d been shoving down thoughts that said I want to be held after bad nightmares or just a shittier than usual day, suffocating the need to be wanted the way his friends made him feel wanted, loved the way he’d only just learnt was possible. A traitorous part of him begged for the kind of gentleness he knew he’d never find here, the kind that there was no point in asking for because he would never fucking get it.
(Kirishima would’ve given it. Kirishima would’ve given it willingly, but he knew Mitsuki was different. Things didn’t work the same with her.)
So he really hadn’t meant to actually ask. It had been on his mind ever since he went home, showing up when he was alone and staring at his ceiling with the same desperation for affection that had been drowning him not that long ago at school. He hadn’t meant to ask but he did, and it went about as well as expected.
“Why didn’t you ever hug me like those fucking extras’ parents?”
He made a point of saying it as gruffly as possible, because he didn’t think he could handle her hearing the loaded vulnerability of the question. Maybe he did too good of a job pretending he didn’t care, because she just laughed.
“Careful there, you’ll start sounding like the Midoriyas.”
Oh yeah. He’d kind of forgotten that was the sort of thing his mother called him out on.
“I am not Deku,” he growled.
“And don’t I know it,” she said, with more edge to it than mirth. “He was always so sweet, and you’re… you. Tough as nails but about as cuddly as a bomb. Can’t imagine what you’d do if I had tried to do that emotional shit with you when you were small.” Suspicion was slowly creeping into her features, amusement dying down a little. “Why? Did you want that or something?”
Okay, nope. Backpedal the fuck out of this.
“Are you crazy? I don’t want fucking cuddles.”
It took a second but she laughed again, a jarring sound that made him think she was making fun of him until a calloused hand found its way into his hair, ruffling the spikes roughly. “Yeah, that sounds more like you,” she said, giving him a small shove forward towards the half-unloaded dishwasher. “Go finish that, if you’re done being sappy. Dinner’s almost done.”
So yeah, his mother wasn’t soft. Screamed back when he did and laughed when he didn’t, and it wasn’t perfect but it was familiar, it made sense. He knew her deal without having to think too hard, because she didn’t get all patient and hold her tongue like it seemed most people did when he hurt their fucking feelings. She just called him a brat, threw him a dishcloth and told him to work off his pissy attitude, and sometimes she yelled and it made sense because at least with her he knew exactly what she wanted from him. There were predictable patterns to the way she acted and it calmed the part of him that had been on edge ever since his friends had started to give a shit, because he never had to second guess her motives.
(The part of him that kind of liked the softness reminded him of the bone-deep ache he’d been ignoring since break started, of how much he missed the weight of Kirishima around him. But he’d long told that part to shut up, or he never would’ve survived those two weeks.)
Being back at school just made all these long-held convictions feel… off. Insufficient. Like a poor excuse for something he shouldn’t be excusing. Was the way he grew up really that different from everyone else’s?
It had never felt that wrong. He got presents at Christmas and his birthdays and his parents told him they were proud of him. His mother said it fiercely, with a blazing conviction he wasn’t sure he deserved sometimes. And his father said it quietly, with a smile or small nod or in the way he helped him hang his awards on the wall. He knew they did their best, and that they loved him in their own way, and he felt ungrateful for not feeling like it was enough.
But he was beginning to wonder how different he might’ve turned out if he’d had someone warmer to model himself after, instead of the burning-one-minute freezing-the-next that seemed to come with spending time around his mother. The antithesis of Deku’s, absolutely everything about her screamed sharp edges and a harshness just as brash as his own. He had no doubt his own tendency to shout before he listened was something he got from her, as well as the impulse to dismiss before he took a fucking second to think.
Maybe, if Auntie Inko had raised him, he wouldn’t have grown up to be such a dick.
(He shouldn’t be wishing for that. Shouldn’t be jealous of Deku, fucking Deku, for all the things that were handed to him that Bakugou felt he’d had to fight tooth and nail to earn. Like friends, for example. And unconditional support.)
(It wasn’t fair because he’d gotten so many other things and he was so fucking lucky, and yet. And yet.)
(He was so tired.)
~
“Where’s Bakugou?” Kaminari asked, having just lost the round of uno the Bakusquad had started playing not that long ago. Pokémon had gotten boring after the first hour or so and so Sero had suggested they go play a card game, which he was now absolutely destroying them all in.
“I haven’t seen him,” Mina said, before slamming down a +4 card. “Eat shit, Sero!”
Sero grimaced, before picking up his cards.
“Kacchan isn’t back from break yet?” Midoriya said, stopping on his way out of the kitchen, frowning. He was holding a steaming bowl of whatever food whoever was on cooking duty had made. “He should be back already.”
“He is,” Kirishima said, putting a card down without looking at any of them. “He came in earlier.”
Midoriya nodded knowingly, lips pressed tightly together before he walked away, but no one on the Bakusquad was ready to let it rest.
“Really?” Kaminari said, eyebrows pulling together in confusion. “But I didn’t even hear him, and I’ve been here almost all day.”
“Yeah, that is kind of weird of him. Usually he at least makes a point of avoiding us.”
(All those times Bakugou stomped upstairs while mumbling obscenities came to mind, and yeah, moments where he wanted to be left alone were usually a lot more… obvious. Was the quiet more concerning than Kirishima had originally thought?)
“What do you think, Kiri?” Mina asked, looking over the top of her fan of cards.
Kirishima frowned. “Why me?”
“You were the one who saw him, dude. Plus, you’re like… the Bakugou whisperer.”
Sero made a good point. A good first point. But… what?
“Bakugou whisperer?”
“Yeah! Like, you’re the one who usually knows what’s going on with him. When to give him space, when he needs to talk and all that. And you’re the only person he won’t murder for asking if he’s okay,” Kaminari added, before leaning over Sero’s shoulder to take a peak at his cards. “You guys are so screwed.”
“Hey! Don’t give me away,” Sero grumbled, before begrudgingly putting down a +4.
Mina looked incredulous. “Did you really have that the whole time?”
“He’s had everything this whole time,” Kaminari said wisely. “He’s just biding his time, waiting to destroy you.”
It was Kirishima’s turn, but he wasn’t really paying attention. Bakugou’s vacant eyes were the only thing he could think about, and in that moment all he really wanted to do was go upstairs and make sure his best friend was okay.
“I’m gonna go check on Bakugou,” he said, dropping his cards onto the floor face down and standing up. Sero nodded, and Mina wished him good luck.
“Might wanna take him some dinner,” Kaminari called out as he approached the stairs. “He probably hasn’t eaten yet.”
Oh yeah. He’d been meaning to remember to do that, but after getting so caught up in his head…
“Good idea. Thanks!” he called back, and headed into the kitchen to get two bowls of food.
On arriving at the right door he knocked twice and waited, because he knew it would tell Bakugou it was him. Barging into the room was always bad when Bakugou was having one of his rougher days, something Mina and Kaminari had realised the harder way. The reply he got was faint, as if Bakugou wasn’t entirely sure if he’d heard right, but it was a reply all the same, so Kirishima decided to try his luck anyway.
He opened the door with his elbows thanks to the bowls in his hands, and pushed it open the rest of the way with his back. Bakugou was, as he’d expected, curled up on his bed, with headphones hanging around his neck.
“Hey, Bakubro,” he said with a smile Bakugou didn’t return. “Brought you dinner, if you’re up for it.”
At that Bakugou finally seemed to catch himself, realising he hadn’t fully acknowledged Kirishima had come in.
“You didn’t have to,” he muttered, shifting to loosen his arms around himself. “But uh... thanks.”
Bakugou moved a little to make room for him and he took that as an invitation to sit, handing over one of the steaming bowls and settling down with the other. It was pork cutlet, breadcrumbed to perfection, and flavourful in a way only Shouji could get right. And Bakugou, obviously, if he tried, but his tendency to add way too much spice generally put his food second to anything edible.
(The only times he didn’t add murderous levels of pepper flakes in food out of spite was when he was making food to prove a point, which usually resulted in at least two days’ worth of the best food anyone had ever tasted. No one ever complained.)
(Some had even taken to bating him into doing it. Todoroki had been exceptionally successful, even if that had mostly been an accident.)
They ate quietly. Or rather, Kirishima ate and Bakugou picked at his food, expression a little distant. It felt weird, to not have been yelled at yet. Quiet Bakugou was so... passive. Fragile. Everything that King Explosion Murder was not. Bakugou’s rude, noisy way of being had become such a fundamental part of his nature that he didn’t feel like Bakugou without it.
Kirishima shifted closer until he was pressed right up against Bakugou’s side. Bakugou sighed, the tension in his shoulders slowly draining away.
“Are you-”
“Don’t talk,” Bakugou mumbled, eyes downcast. He’d barely eaten anything. “Can we just… sit?”
Kirishima nodded. Bakugou didn’t look up to see it.
“Okay,” he said eventually, quietly. “We can sit.”
Bakugou had long put his still-full bowl aside by the time Kirishima was done, avoiding eye contact by staring at his lap instead. Every time he glanced over it felt like the blond was on the verge of saying something but he never did, didn’t speak at all until Kirishima tried to put his now-empty bowl on the desk.
“Don’t move,” he said, so quietly it was barely audible. “Please.”
Kirishima didn’t know what to say.
Bakugou’s eyes were slowly becoming wetter, and however much his friend tried to blink them away, they were unmistakably tears. He was no stranger to Bakugou crying — something few could say, probably — but this felt different to the frustrated tears his best friend would shed after a long and rough night. Bakugou would usually at least try to hide those. Would turn away or bury his face in Kirishima’s chest until he could breathe evenly again.
But now? Now Bakugou just looked defeated.
“You’re scaring me, Bakubro,” Kirishima said, not wanting to break the No Talking rule but growing anxious at how little fight Bakugou was putting up for anything. Even that last request had been more of a plea, and Bakugou didn’t do pleas. Not until he was so broken up he didn’t think anyone would listen to what he asked.
Bakugou leaned further into his side, finally, and rested his head on his shoulder.
“‘M tired,” he croaked. “And everything feels like a lot.”
He closed his eyes then, frowning at some thought Kirishima couldn’t access. He looked small like this.
~
If he hadn’t been so utterly exhausted, he probably would’ve moved away a long time ago.
You don’t deserve this, his mind whispered, even as his senses screamed at him to shift a little closer. You shouldn’t need this. It's pathetic.
And some Kirishima-sounding part of him wanted to say yes he did, but he wasn’t so inclined to have this argument in his mind right now. The only thing that was registering was the warmth of Kirishima’s body beside his, and how amazing it felt to exist beside a person quietly.
(Some part of him still felt like any moment someone might walk in and tell him to get off your butt and do something, maybe you’ll be less stroppy if you’re occupied. It didn’t feel right to waste both his and Kirishima’s time on something as stupidly unproductive as feeling like shit, but Kirishima had never minded.)
(If he started now, Bakugou wasn’t sure what he’d do. But his brain was too slow to dwindle on that worry for long.)
“Did something happen?” Kirishima tried after a while, cautious in a way Bakugou found both deeply irritating and was grateful for at the same time. He hated being treated like something that was about to blow but truth be told he was, and the gentleness made some part of him settle. “Did your parents, like… do something? Did they say something?”
He’d told Kirishima, offhandedly, about his mother’s comment on him getting kidnapped. And the one about the sports festival, and his grades right after Kamino. His best friend had taken it all with a quiet thrum of anger Bakugou had never expected to see, and clearly he remembered. Bakugou wished he didn’t, because he was getting the wrong idea.
“They didn’t do anything,” he said. Assured. Kirishima didn’t relax at all. “I just don’t sleep well at home.”
Enough said, really. Kirishima had been there for the worst of his nights, and had probably heard the rest through the wall. Helped him change scorched sheets and blackened clothes when Bakugou wasn’t sure he had the energy to do anything but fall back into restless sleep.
“You should get some sleep now, then,” Kirishima said. “I can, uh…” he started, but stopped. “I don’t have to go, if you don’t want me to.”
(It sounded like the best thing Bakugou had heard in a while.)
~
Like a cat. Bakugou had curled up against him like a cat, and Kirishima wasn’t sure whether to let his heart swell with affection at the sight or hate how vulnerable Bakugou looked, shielding himself from the rest of the world.
“This feels stupid.” He was talking now, at least. And complaining, which was usually a better sign than passive, unreactive Bakugou. “I’m not a kid. I can sleep by myself.”
An out, as always. Bakugou always gave him an out.
“Do you want me to go?”
No reply. Bakugou just curled into himself tighter, shrugging one shoulder with forced indifference.
Please don’t, was the silent, desperate plea. I don’t want to be alone.
Kirishima understood.
He stayed.
“I hate being like this,” Bakugou mumbled after a while, like Kirishima didn’t already know. Like he wasn’t aware of how much it tore his best friend apart to have to ask like this, to not be strong enough to do it on his own. Because being able to rely on other people had never been a good thing for Bakugou. Because other people let him down, and he still wasn’t sure how to trust they wouldn’t think badly of him for being weak.
“You don’t have to feel bad for feeling bad and needing comfort sometimes too. Everyone does. That’s what friends are for.”
Bakugou just huffed. He knew it already, the words making sense in theory, but Kirishima was aware of just how difficult it was for them to sink in. So instead he just moved his hand up to the spikes of blond hair on his lap and began to play with the strands, in the same way that always made Bakugou close his eyes and go all boneless beneath his fingers.
~
Bakugou woke slowly, mind still cloudy with sleep.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept a dreamless sleep, when he’d been able to actually fucking rest without his brain shitting all over it. It felt… weird. Relieving. Discordant with everything he’d been getting used to.
Blinking tiredness out of his eyes, he tried not to shift as he listened out for what Shitty hair was doing. It sounded like he was on his phone, one hand playing something while the other hand was still in the spiky mess he called hair. The weight was calming, not constricting like hands on him usually are. Sound effects on the game had been turned all the way down until Bakugou had to strain to hear.
(A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips when the little winning music came on and Kirishima laughed quietly at it. The motion shook him ever so slightly, being so close to Kirishima’s chest, and Bakugou thought he wanted to feel that laugh like this forever.)
Slowly, though, he started to realise why he’d woken up in the first place.
It was too fucking cold.
It was too fucking cold because he’d left the fucking window open, and shitty hair had a hoodie on so he was fine but in just a black t-shirt Bakugou was this close to jumping up slamming it closed so hard that it would never open again.
But he also didn’t want to move. Because if he did Kirishima might stop holding him the way he was, and Bakugou wasn’t about to lose whatever thread of sanity he was getting from being able to finally fucking relax. The paranoia and anxiety following him around since Kamino was always abated around Kirishima, something about how consistently safe he was calming his brain enough for him to actually let his guard down a little, and if it took bearing the cool breeze coming into his room to feel like that, then so be it. He wasn’t gonna be a little bitch about it.
(Cool might’ve been sugarcoating it. It was fucking freezing, but whatever. He was nothing if not good at ignoring his own discomfort.)
“You’re awake?” Kirishima said, smiling down at him over the top of his phone. “You were out like a light. For maybe like, two hours? Your food is still here. Cold, probably, but still here.”
Bakugou huffed, curling in a little tighter. Kirishima frowned.
“Bakubro? Are you… are you okay? You’re really shaking.”
(Great. Now he was shivering. And even if he’d tried he couldn’t really stop it, and Kirishima had noticed.)
“Calm your pants,” he said, half into Kirishima’s lap. Really, this did not warrant the amount of worry that was leaking through Kirishima’s tone. “I’m jus’ cold.”
Kirishima’s hand moved out of his hair, and Bakugou couldn’t help the displeased sound he made at the lack of contact.
“You’re cold? Why didn’t you say something?”
None of your fucking business, he wanted to snap, but his brain was too foggy to be angry right now. “Don’t wanna move,” he said instead. Much too honest for his liking normally, but this was shitty hair. He could be honest with shitty hair.
But a second later he realised it turned out to be the absolute wrong thing to say in that moment, because the dumbass started taking off his hoodie, self-sacrificing idiot. “Are you fuckin’ stupid?” Bakugou grumbled. “Now you’re gonna get cold.”
Kirishima had the audacity to smile. “Nah, I’ll be fine. Besides, you’re like a human radiator. I’m actually kinda warm in this.”
Which was a fucking lie and they both knew it, but Bakugou accepted the hoodie anyway. Because maybe he didn’t hate the idea of wearing something of Kirishima’s, of being completely enveloped by something that smells distinctly of body spray and pork cutlet and vanilla extract. It was nothing like the smell of burning sugar that clung to most of Bakugou’s clothes thanks to his quirk, and he decided that maybe he could drown in the warm feeling burning up his chest.
(He did get up and close the window eventually though, because he wasn’t about to sit around while Kirishima froze to death. In the end soft fingers went right back to where they’d been on his scalp and his lap was still there, so it didn’t even matter that he’d had to move.)
(Which really he knew from the start, but wearing the hoodie made him braver, somehow. Fucking stupid as it was, nothing felt as dauntingly cold when he was being swallowed by something brightly coloured and two sizes too big.)
~
When he woke up for real, it was light outside.
He was still in Krishima’s hoodie and a blanket had been thrown over him, and on his bedside table was a note, scrawled in Kirishima’s huge and messy writing, morning bakubro :D
It didn’t really tell him what had happened after he’d fallen asleep again, or whether Kirishima had spent the night or not, but he supposed it didn’t matter.
He felt… warm.
Sunlight was filtering in through the window and casting soft golden light on his entire room, and distantly he remembered a comment Mina had made about aestheticness. (Which he was sure wasn’t a word, but like. He’d stopped getting worked up over grammatical inconsistencies on week three of being friends with Kaminari.)
He took a picture.
(Why not? It would make the idiots smile.)
And then he took another, because the first one just looked off.
(They liked it. Liked it loudly, might he add. Too many extras asked him to show it to them later that day.)
(But it was okay. They cared.)