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Bakugou hated regressing. He knew that logically it was a completely harmless thing, hell multiple of his classmates shared the coping mechanism, and he didn’t hold anything against them for it. It was 100% valid, and he would personally beat the shit out of anyone who said otherwise.
But it always felt different when he applied the same logic to himself, it always sounded wrong and twisted in his own head. He was going to be the Number One Hero, he’s supposed to be above these feelings, he quite literally spent his entire childhood trying to be above stupid emotions that didn’t serve any purpose; and yet he still wasn’t truly above it, as he’d come to find out.
“Kat, do you wanna play our world on minecraft?” Kirishima’s cheery voice came through to interrupt Bakugou’s internal thoughts, reminding him of the thick fog that seemed to be covering every bit of his brain, making everything feel fuzzy, like he was viewing everything through tinted glass.
“‘Kay” Bakugou nodded, fiddling with his orange and black switch that he had ordered little explosion joystick covers for to load up his and Kirishima’s shared minecraft world. It was mostly the one they used when one or both of them were feeling as Kirishima had taken to calling it; tiny. As it was just a simple world where they built whatever they felt like.
Hence why there was a huge potion bottle filled with fish that had been built, courtesy of Kirishima.
And the twice as big barn of animals, courtesy of Bakugou
Bakugou was currently building them a crop farm as Kirishima worked on their horses stable.
Everytime he was big again after being tiny for any length of time, he always swore he won’t do it again, and yet each time he found himself in either his or Kirishima’s rooms playing minecraft or other various switch games, or watching movies on one of their laptops while squished into the single bed.
It was comforting, as much as he hated to admit it; he valued Kirishima’s friendship more than he could really grasp. He was his best friend when they were big, and his best friend when they were tiny, and it just felt safe around him. There weren’t the expectations to perform how he normally would when he was around Kirishima in small moments like this.
He was faintly aware of the noise from his classmates around the dorms from the late-night activities of movie nights and studying and cooking going on in the main area. He could hear the footsteps of people walking around.
Usually that sort of sound left him guarded, unable to quite relax while other people were up and walking around. However right now he couldn’t quite find it in himself to focus on the noises, with it just fading to the back of his mind as he was only able to focus on what was happening in his current moment.
It was admittedly a nice change from everything all the time.
“We should ‘ave a movie night ‘gain soon.” Kirishima piped up after a moment, spinning his character around in a circle.
Bakugou got distracted for a moment at the realisation that Kirishima was still starfished across his floor, and not sprawled onto the bed like he usually was, before remembering that he kinda just does this.
They once spent a solid 40 minutes lying upside down on the bed with their heads on the floor, talking about Mister Maker and every single dragon that appeared in How To Train Your Dragon
“What we wanna watch?” Last movie night they watched Big Hero Six. He remembers this clearly because Kirishima cried through every slightly sad scene during it.
He would much rather swallow literal glass than admit that he definitely cried too.
“I dunno, could watch How To Train Your Dragon ‘gain”
Bakugou remembers looping that everytime they were tiny for a good few weeks, it was still easily one of his favourite movies. The whole plot line is just…
good.
It’s fun to watch, and also dragons are just so goddamn
cool
.
“Mkay. We watch that soon.” They both nodded, immediately going back to being hyper focused on the game they were still playing.
“Fuck!” Bakugou yelled after a moment, getting the alert that he had been blown up by a creeper that was behind a tree. Despite that they were playing with keep inventory on, they hadn’t turned off mob griefing; something he was beginning to regret at seeing the blown up area of his giant crop farms.
“No swearin’!!” Kirishima whispered, a shocked element to his tone. Bakugou rolled his eyes, Mina had firmly established rules for Kirishima, and with the other members of their ‘group’. Swearing being one of the things they weren’t allowed to do.
‘They’ being everybody else but Bakugou, so far Deku and Kirishima were the only ones who knew about Bakugou’s…coping skills; and therefore he was allowed to break those rules.
They didn’t technically apply to him after all. His logic was literally flawless.
“Nuh-uh! I don’ gotta follow the rules.”
“Mama gonna put you in timeout for it!” Kirishima responded, poking his tongue out at Bakugou from his place on the floor.
And well, he wasn’t wrong, Bakugou had witnessed at least one member of the Bakusquad, usually Jirou or Kaminari, as the two were quite the troublemakers when tiny as Bakugou had seen from his limited experience; be put into timeout/sent up to their dorm room for breaking the rules.
And also from what Kirishima told him. Bakugou tended to try and remove himself from the room anytime someone was to slip, call it the domino effect or whatever, but he knew it was a short slope downwards at seeing anyone else.
As much as he almost wanted the careful guidance and quiet praise, and the collective movie nights that Kirishima had told him about, he couldn’t allow himself to cross that line, he refused.
He had more pride than that (Something Deku routinely told him he was an idiot for, especially after Deku had shared with the rest of his ‘gang’ about himself).
“‘m too strong for timeout, too pow’ful”
“Shut up no you’re not. Oth’wise I’d be ‘mmune to it too!”
Bakugou just turned away, for once choosing to ignore it instead of yelling back. He was far too focused on trying to rebuild the parts of his farm that had been destroyed, with Kirishima coming over to help replant the carrots that had been uprooted.
“Dumb creeper.” Bakugou huffed, angrily planting his area of the potatoes.
“Super dumb creeper! I beat him up for you!” Kirishima cheered, and Bakugou had no doubt he would attempt it if he could.
“But he already dead, silly.”
“Oh,” Kirishima paused, looking around for a moment, trying to think of how else to defend Bakugou’s honour, “Well I’ll bring him back, an’ then kill’em again!”
Bakugou laughed quietly as Kirishima grinned at him in response, nodding to accept that Kirishima had promised. Prompting his best friend to look more than satisfied.
They lapsed into silence for a moment, aside from the sounds of buttons clicking, before Kirishima gasped suddenly and excitedly snapped his head up to stare at Bakugou, who was only looking mildly startled back.
“Maybe we should try and build a rocket!! And then we could build a super super high platform! It can be the mood!!”
That did sound really fucking cool. He loved rockets, him and Kirishima spent 4 hours watching documentaries about space and rockets the other week, and about the theories behind quirks.
There was only one problem.
“But we can’t actually fly the rocket.”
Kirishima paused, before his face lit up again, and he hurried to sit up from his flopped over position, instead sitting straight up with his legs crossed. Bakugou in turn just shuffled up a bit more, looking a bit more attentive.
Kirishima usually had fun ideas for them to do!
“We build the rocket in the sky!! Near the platform!! And then we build like…fumes stuff! And make it big to put stares in to climb! And then when we reach the rocket, we can…build a bridge, or jump to the planet.”
Bakugou paused for a moment, trying to process the jumble of words that had just been thrown at him, before beginning to look that little bit more excited.
“Ya!! We’re gonna need lotsa wood an’ wool an’ iron.” Bakugou reminded Kiri, who nodded back at him.
“Yeah! We gotta go collect some!! There’s a big woods by our house!”
Bakugou nodded determinedly and excitedly, and they both turned their attention back to the switch, dedicated to building this rocket and moon platform.
It was an extremely important mission obviously.