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Hitoshi lets out a huge sigh when he finally closes the apartment door behind himself. His entire body is one big bruise, the cut on his upper back is burning so badly tears prick at his eyes and his shirt sticks uncomfortably to his skin because of all the blood.
It's safe to say that today has been an utter shitshow and Hitoshi really only wants to fall face-first into bed and sleep until he no longer hurts. Which could take a day or seven.
"The fuck happened to you?" Bakugo's voice rings out, startling Hitoshi and pulling on his wound.
He wasn't prepared for it, so a pained noise leaves his mouth and immediately, Bakugo's eyes narrow.
"You're hurt."
It's not even a question and Hitoshi's skin prickles almost uncomfortably under Bakugo's intense stare.
"Tired," is what finally makes it out of Hitoshi's mouth when Bakugo just continues to stare at him and it earns him an eyeroll before his gaze catches on something and Hitoshi watches almost in slow-motion how Bakugo's face turns white.
"You're bleeding," he says, with much more urgency than before but Hitoshi only slowly blinks at him.
"That's usually what happens when you're hurt," he gives back and it feels as if he's swaying on his feet in the same beat as his body throbs with pain.
"What the hell is wrong with you, eyebags," Bakugo hisses though he clearly doesn't expect an answer because he's already reaching for Hitoshi. "Come on, bathroom."
It's a demand and Hitoshi is too tired to argue with Bakugo today, so he simply allows him to lead the way to the bathroom.
"Can you get your shirt off?" Bakugo asks, all business all of a sudden as he scrubs his hands in the sink.
"Nope." Hitoshi makes sure to pop the p to be as obnoxious as possible and it earns him a glare, though it doesn't get him out of Bakugo's care, because he doesn't send him back to his room like Hitoshi had hoped for.
Instead he gets the first aid kit and takes out the scissors.
"I hope you don't like that shirt," he says with a smile that implies that he hopes Hitoshi loves this shirt.
"Ehm," Hitoshi intelligently gives back, trying to look down at himself to see what shirt he's even wearing, but the cut across his shoulders hurts so bad, his entire vision goes black for a moment.
"Jesus Christ, what is going on with you," Bakugo breathes out, gently lowering Hitoshi down on the toilet and he didn't even notice him move.
"Hurt," is all Hitoshi gets out between blinding bursts of pain and Bakugo scoffs.
"And you're here why, then?" he mutters but he clearly doesn't expect an answer and simply starts to cut away at Hitoshi's shirt.
Hitoshi isn't self-conscious, not really, and especially not with how much attention the pain everywhere demands, but there's still the fleeting thought that he must look like a mess, compared to Bakugo.
Bakugo has his own scars, of course, but none as messy or as big as Hitoshi's, whose scars are scattered all over his body in a non-sensical pattern, uneven white lines that bi-sect almost every inch of his skin.
"Holy shit," Bakugo breathes out as he takes in the mess that is Hitoshi's body before he visibly snaps himself out of it and discards the now truly ruined shirt on the floor. "Can you get back up? You need to turn around."
"Sure," Hitoshi says with more confidence than he actually feels and he really didn't need to know that flying through two houses could make his entire body hurt like this.
He gets up on unsteady feet, and he's pretty sure that he wouldn't have made it without Bakugo's help, but he manages to turn around and straddle the toilet, his back to Bakugo.
It's the perfect position to lean his forehead against the wall and when he closes his eyes he could almost fall asleep like that.
Until Bakugo's whistle cuts through the room.
"That's going to be one hell of a scar," Bakugo says and Hitoshi fights the instinctive reflex to crane his head to look over his shoulder.
He doesn't need to see; he feels it just fine. The cut goes almost from shoulder blade to shoulder blade and given the weapon he was cut with, it's not a clean wound.
"No shit," Hitoshi tiredly says. "Just—make the bleeding stop," he goes on, feeling the blood slowly seep down his back and Bakugo huffs.
"Easier said than done, zombie. How do you expect me to dress something like this? I don't have a suture kit here."
"Slap some butterfly bandages over it. I don't care."
Hitoshi doesn't mention that he would have gone straight to bed, wound care be damned, so whatever Bakugo is going to do will already be loads better than what Hitoshi would have done but going by the icy silence his words are met with, Bakugo understood him just fine.
"Well, surprisingly I do," Bakugo mutters and he sounds as put out about that as Hitoshi would have expected.
"'s not like you can change it," Hitoshi slurs out, his eyes falling shut every other second and each time it takes him longer to open them again.
"Why not go to the hospital? You know they could patch you up. Make it so it doesn't look like the rest of it."
"And why would I care?" Hitoshi tiredly says. "Everything else is already fucked. One more horrific scar doesn't matter."
"Well, maybe it should," Bakugo mutters. "You never got treatment for any of the others?"
"Foster father didn't want people to stick their noses in where they don't belong. CPS sure didn't care. Aizawa tried but by then most of the damage was already done," Hitosi gives back and makes the almost fatal mistake to shrug.
The pain that erupts over his upper back takes his breath away and then also takes his vision when everything goes dark.
Hitoshi doesn't fight to wake up anymore.
~*~*~
When he does wake up, he's face down on his bed, one hand dangling over the edge and his entire body feeling stiff as fuck.
It's only when he tries to move and the pain gets so much worse that he remembers what happened.
He allows himself a moment of celebration for not being dead before he pushes himself up. Hitoshi's back doesn't thank him for it, not at all, but he does marginally feel better upright than face-down, so he counts it as a win.
Hitoshi is just about to force himself to his feet when the door to his room opens and Bakugo steps in. He freezes in the doorway, clearly not expecting Hitoshi to be up and the face he makes is almost comical.
"Why are you up? We pumped you full of pain meds, you should still be out like a light."
"You build up an immunity after too many years of too many meds," Hitoshi easily gives back and remembers not to shrug. "What happened?"
"You're so fucked up, troll doll," Bakugo says with a sigh but something about his voice is off. Before Hitoshi can figure it out though, he goes on. "You passed out on me in the bathroom a day ago, still bleeding as if you wanted to re-paint the bathroom."
"You patched me up then?" Hitoshi asks and carefully raises a hand to feel over his shoulder.
He doesn't get very far before Bakugo slaps his hand down again.
"Don't ruin our hard work, for fuck's sake," he grumbles out and Hitoshi frowns.
"Our?" he repeats and Bakugo sighs.
"I called Sparky. He's the best at suturing I know, so I had him bring his kit and do the honours on you. If you let me clean it regularly, it should heal up much nicer than the rest of you."
"You—want to clean it," Hitoshi repeats, because this is not how this goes.
He evades any form of medical treatment and somehow manages it himself. That's how Hitoshi likes it, that's what he's used to and Bakugo's words are throwing him off something bad.
"What? You want to do it yourself? You can't even reach it."
"I—have experience," Hitoshi mutters, by which he mainly means that he usually pours some disinfectant over his back and then hopes for the best.
"Clearly," Bakugo says, dry as the desert, and crosses his arms in front of his chest. "But I'm taking over now. You're not going to have a huge ass scar under my watch. I'm your number one wound expert here and you'll let me do my fucking job."
Hitoshi stares at Bakugo for a good long while, but Bakugo is clearly made out of different stuff because he doesn't even so much as flinch.
"Fine," Hitoshi finally relents and Bakugo beams at him as if he's won a prize.
"Wonderful. Get the fuck back down then," he immediately orders Hitoshi, who groans and lets himself slump back into bed.
It wasn't the smartest move because his back hurts but it hardly matters when he can lay down.
"We didn't dress it because we didn't expect you to move much, so I'll have to get some bandages later, but for now, just. Don't move."
He doesn't say sorry when he pours burning disinfectant over the wound and he doesn't say sorry when he cleans it back up and he doesn't say sorry when his prodding and probing brings out every other ache Hitoshi has.
"I'm really feeling the love," Hitoshi grumbles as Bakugo slathers some salve over the wound and Bakugo snorts out something that could be considered a laugh. Hitoshi waits a moment to see if he does have anything to say but when Bakugo stays quiet, Hitoshi peers at him over his shoulder.
"I didn't know you cared," Hitoshi finally says because for all that they are co-inhabiting this apartment they are hardly friends.
Or so Hitoshi thought. He could have been wrong. He has been wrong about things like that before so it wouldn't be a complete surprise.
"Don't make it out to be more than it really is," Bakugo grumbles but his hands stay soft and despite everything, the care he displays is genuine. Until he starts to prod at one of the bigger scars on Hitoshi's lower back. "Anyone ever help you with those?"
"Do they look like it?"
"Not the healing process but—now. You know there's all kinds of treatment for scars nowadays, right?"
"So what you want me to undergo treatment for every fucking scar I have? Have you looked at me?"
"Gods, you're such a fuckface," Bakugo grumbles out and then pierces him with a glare so fierce Hitoshi freezes on instinct. "If you move an inch before I'm back I'll make sure to give you a scar to remember," he then threatens and doesn't even wait for an answer before he leaves.
Hitoshi—for all that these days villains who have heard his names cower before him—doesn't dare to move a single muscle, so he's still staring off at the approximate place Bakugo was in before he moved when he comes back.
"How obedient," Bakugo almost mockingly says and then brandishes a jar of cream at him. "This is specifically made for scar tissue. I'm guessing most of yours hurt?"
All of them do; they ache as if it's their sole purpose in his life and it's especially bad during cold weather.
Hitoshi simply nods.
"We're gonna change that. I use this cream for my own scars and I can promise you that's the good shit."
He doesn't even wait for Hitoshi's consent before he scoops out a generous amount of the cream and slathers it over his back, where he immediately starts to massage it in.
Hitoshi can't say much about the effect of the cream but just Bakugo's strong and yet strangely careful hands on his back are doing wonders for him and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to not do something embarrassing like moan.
"What happened with all these scars anyway?" Bakugo asks after a few minutes and it's something Hitoshi would rather not talk about, but with everything Bakugo is doing for him, he thinks the guy kind of deserves an answer.
"Foster father's quirk. Came in real handy for misbehaving brats, which I was like the poster child for," Hitoshi shortly says and hopes Bakugo doesn't question him further, but for once it seems the gods are listening to Hitoshi because Bakugo only hums.
They don't speak again until Bakugo takes his hands off Hitoshi's back. Before Hitoshi can lament the loss, Bakugo lightly taps his thigh.
"Got some on your legs, too?"
"I'm a goddamn artwork all over," Hitoshi gives back, which briefly makes Bakugo snort before he says "Off with your pants then," and gets right on with it.
Hitoshi can probably count himself lucky that he's allowed to keep his underwear, though his ire is quickly snuffed out when Bakugo's fingers expertly dig into his skin.
"Up, your chest and arms are next," Bakugo finally says, jolting Hitoshi out of his meditative state and it takes him horrifyingly long to get back into a seating position.
He really feels like a huge goddamn bruise all over.
"You just want to grope me," Hitoshi says belatedly but he thinks he can be forgiven with his general state of being at the moment.
"Got other prospects for that," is Bakugo's amused reply and then he goes to town on Hitoshi's chest and arms.
He moves his arms however he wants to get better access, but throughout it all, he doesn't pull on the new stitches on Hitoshi's back even once and Hitoshi is kind of taken completely aback by his care.
Which is what he blames his next words on.
"Thanks for this. That's really nice of you."
"Yeah, whatever, troll doll," Bakugo mutters and then declares him done, not even ten minutes after it all started.
The guy sure is efficient.
"And now your wonder cream will heal me?" Hitoshi can't help but to ask, because it's unfathomable to him how one use is going to lessen any of his aches but Bakugo gives him a look as if he considers him the height of stupidity, which is probably accurate.
"We'll have to do that daily."
"Oh. Ehm. Sure. You can just write down that name for me and I'll get some." Probably. Depending on how expensive it is because for all the bullshit his agency puts him through the pay is less than stellar.
"Don't be an idiot now," Bakugo says as he busies himself with some bandages that apparently still have to go around Hitoshi's chest. "This works best if it's massaged in by someone else and I'm a certified pro at this point."
"I couldn't possibly—"
"Plus we both know I make enough money to buy so much of this stuff I could bury you in it and then do it three times over," Bakugo goes on and okay, fair, maybe Hitoshi possibly could.
"Fine," he relents and Bakugo gives him a smile that seems more like he's baring his teeth at him.
"Thought so," he says, smug as anything and then leaves Hitoshi to his own devices.
And for all that Bakugo has never gone back on his word, Hitoshi still doesn't expect this to happen again. Until it does. Until Bakugo bullies him into bed once a day to slather his entire body with his miracle cream for ten minutes a day and Hitoshi is honestly surprised to find that Bakugo very clearly plans for this.
He times it so that they don't miss a single day; Hitoshi has no clue how Bakugo got his hands on his schedule but it's clear he did and all of a sudden, sharing some living space becomes actual living together, because both of them are home at the same time.
It becomes joined breakfast and dinners and movie nights and late night talks and suddenly what was an apartment feels more like a home than anything else and on top of all that, the stupid cream works.
Hitoshi's scars barely ache anymore and he can move much more freely and going by the smug grin Bakugo gives him every now and then, he definitely knows. It doesn't help that his newest scar at his upper back is one of the smoothest ones he has and Hitoshi would honestly be more upset about it, if things weren't so great at the moment.
Great enough, that he has to completely forget himself and blurt out the most random shit imaginable, while he's being worked to putty under Bakugo's hands.
"You know, a life-time supply of this would make a great wedding gift," Hitoshi slurs out, completely at ease and so it takes him a moment to realise that he actually said that out loud.
Bakugo doesn't stop his movements though and simply huffs out a laugh.
"Could have it earlier, if you'd just asked me out on a date," he says, his voice forcefully even and it only takes Hitoshi a second to realise that yes, he'd actually like that.
All the time they've spent together over the last few weeks have shown him that he'd like that very much indeed.
"Sure. Coffee?"
"I pick the place and the time, because your taste is shit and you can't keep track of my clearly structured schedule to save your stupid life," Bakugo shoots back and it's not different from their normal banter at all.
"Excuse you, my taste is fine, I just asked you out after all."
There's a considering hum from Bakugo.
"Okay, fair. Fine then."
It shouldn't make Hitoshi so goddamn smug, but it does and he can practically hear Bakugo's eyeroll because he clearly knows it, too.
"Glad to be doing business with you," Hitoshi says, just to be an ass and Bakugo clicks his tongue.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, just shut your stupid mouth," he says and shoves Hitoshi's face into the pillow.
It's just like every other day, really, and Hitoshi thinks that he maybe likes that best of all.