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Denki is loud. His presence is one that demands attention, exuberant and wily and sweet.
His voice often carries through the halls; his laughter the first thing anyone hears as they make their way to the common room in the morning.
They all like to pretend his noise is a bit too much. Exasperated sighs and fond eye rolls and gentle taps on the back of the head. But Denki is loud, and that loudness has become a staple in the lives of 2-A.
Which is why, when he enters Katsuki’s room without knocking, his silence is so unnerving.
Katsuki swivels in his chair as the latch clicks open, hackles raised and mouth open to begin shouting his usual tirade about goddamn manners. He’s promptly shut up by Denki’s empty eyes.
They don’t meet Katsuki’s, glued instead to the floor. Denki’s wearing a loose hoodie—Katsuki recognizes it as Ei’s—with the hood pulled over his head, a pair of sweatpants, and fuzzy socks. His skin is splotchy and red. He doesn’t speak.
He pads across Katsuki’s floor, drops to his knees, and lets his head fall into Katsuki’s lap.
Katsuki stiffens.
“The hell are you doing, Dunce Face?” He growls.
And for a moment, Denki doesn’t say anything. His face is obscured by his hoodie, only the tip of his nose and some flyaway strands of hair peeking out. He sniffs softly, shuffling a bit closer.
“Can I hang out in here for a bit? …I won’t bother you.”
…And fuck. Katsuki’s not a softie, okay? He’s not, but Denki’s being so quiet and there’s this disgusting, heavy feeling twisting itself up inside of Katsuki’s chest, so he grunts.
“Whatever. Just fuckin’- not on my lap, I’m studying.”
Denki sniffs again. And then he’s nodding, slowly pushing himself back to his feet. Katsuki thinks, for a moment, that his friend’s knees seem to buckle. But then Denki’s turning away to make himself comfortable on the tiny little loveseat in the corner, and Katsuki shrugs it off.
Whatever it is, it’s not his problem.
Denki can sit there for however long he wants, moping about whatever it is that’s bothering him, but Katsuki is not getting involved. It’s not his problem.
…
The silence is strange.
Only the muted whirring of the building’s air conditioning and the scratching of Katsuki’s pencil across his notebook can be heard; the occasional rustle of Denki shifting on the sofa or a sniff.
This morning, Denki came bounding down the stairs and draped himself over Katsuki’s back, hollering his misery at their incoming exam and laughing when Katsuki snapped at him to get off.
Maybe he failed it?
Except, Denki fails all the time, and it’s never enough to shut him up. Even if the noise he’s making is miserable, annoying, messy crying. Even if he’s just yelling dramatically into a pillow.
And he wasn’t acting like this at dinner, so—
Katsuki scowls, shaking his head as he realizes he’s just read an entire page of the textbook without comprehending a word.
Stupid Denki.
He scans the page, searching for the last phrase he can recognize, and Katsuki carries on.
It’s none of his business. He doesn’t care.
“Have you ever had sex, Ka- Bakugou?” Denki asks, his voice strained.
Katsuki swirls around in his chair, “hah?”
Denki’s curled up in the corner of the loveseat, head bowed, staring at his hands and picking at his thumbnails.
“Sex,” he repeats, “have you done it before?”
He doesn’t actually think about it before snapping, “of course I have! What, you think I’m some kinda prude? Psh.”
There’s a soft snort from Denki, but he’s still looking down, and that terrible feeling in Katsuki’s chest isn’t going away.
“Was it- um- did you… like it?”
Katsuki scoffs.
“Hell yeah, I did,” he lies. He’s not sure why he’s lying.
“That’s good,” Denki replies, even quieter now.
He drops his knees, fiddling with the fabric of his sweats, and finally looks up at Katsuki. Their eyes meet. Denki grimaces anxiously, and Katsuki glances down for a moment, and he swears he sees bruises on Denki’s neck, but then his friend is looking down again and Katsuki is left blinking at the top of his head.
“Sorry,” Denki croaks. He clears his throat, “I said I wouldn’t bother you.”
And normally, Katsuki might say something scathing or bitter, but his mouth feels like it’s been clamped shut. So he just grunts instead, and turns back around.
Except.
Except, now he really can’t focus.
Now, Katsuki’s mind is running in circles, looping the moment Denki looked at him over and over again. He tries to examine it. Tries to be sure.
Maybe it was just a hickey.
Maybe it was a birth mark Katsuki’s never noticed before.
Maybe it was just from training
Maybe it was nothing.
Katsuki turns around.
“Show me your neck, Sparky,” he demands.
Automatically, Denki’s hand raises, coming to brush the skin of his throat. He looks up, just a bit, barely enough for Katsuki to see his eyes.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbles.
Katsuki wants to argue. He wants to scream, or walk up to Denki and wrench his hand away from his neck, rip his hood off to confirm what he saw. Denki’s lying; Katsuki knows it.
But he’s never seen Denki like this before, and Katsuki’s throat feels like it’s all full of cotton while something ugly and terrifying squirms in his guts, so he stands up and closes his books. He kicks his chair back into place before ripping off his tank top and tossing it in the general vicinity of his laundry basket.
“I’m goin’ to bed,” he snaps, “so. Done hanging out now?”
Denki’s head whips up, eyes wide, and Katsuki watches as his composure hangs on by a thread.
“Can- could- the, I- can I stay? O-on the couch, I, the couch, please?”
He’s barely breathing. Katsuki flounders, confusion only piling higher—and fuck, okay, maybe he’s worried—as he watches Denki’s shoulders rise and fall sharply.
“Fuck- fine,” he says, “but you’ve been acting like a fucking freak this whole time and it’s giving me the creeps, Sparky, so you need to tell me what’s going on.”
Denki goes quiet again.
His eyes flutter about the room, his hands tugging restlessly at his sweats, teeth worrying his lower lip. Denki shrugs.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. His eyes land on Katsuki, wide and confused and wet, “I don’t know. I feel sick.”
Katsuki’s heart falls from between his ribs, landing atop his intestines and sinking.
There are definitely bruises on Denki’s neck. A line of them, dark and purple and shaped like fingertips. And Denki’s averting his eyes again, sucking in shallow breaths, a panic creeping in that Katsuki knows he needs to nip in the bud.
“Okay,” he says, “fuck, okay Sparky. Denki. Come on, let’s go to bed.”
Denki’s nodding rapidly, knuckles white and chin quivering. He doesn’t look Katsuki in the eye when he accepts the hand held out to help him up.
Katsuki shuts off the light, plunging them into a darkness that only seems to exaggerate Denki’s desperate silence. He herds Denki into bed and folds them both under the covers, face to face.
Katsuki tucks Denki under his arm and rests his chin on top of his head. He’s not a fucking softie, and this is not his problem, but Katsuki lies with Denki in his arms, fingers drifting up and down his back, and there’s a lump in his throat.
Denki’s making these awful squeaking sounds. Wet sniffs and quiet, painful gasps; hands curled tightly against his chest, and he’s shaking in Katsuki’s arms.
He’s trying so hard to be quiet.
It’s terrible. Katsuki hates it. He pulls Denki closer, one hand squeezing his waist and the other coming to rest on the back of his covered head.
“We’ll take care of it, Sparky,” he promises. “I’ll fix it.”
And Katsuki isn’t sure he knows what he means. How he could ever fix this. This isn’t a problem he can beat into submission.
But Denki shudders and hiccups, and then a loud, painful sob erupts from his chest, and Katsuki closes his stinging eyes.
He thinks, when morning comes, he might burn the whole world down.