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It had been a couple of days since Bakugo had hung out with his squad of idiots. That wasn’t abnormal in itself; what was abnormal was that he couldn’t recall being invited to do anything with them for the past two days. But school was pretty busy, and he had seen them studying with Ponytail about an hour before, so it was probably just that his idiots were trying to get good grades.
Besides, the lack of hangouts didn’t bother Katsuki. He had better things to do. His idiots really needed the help, and Ponytail was saving him a lot of time by doing it. That meant he could just sit and read a book if he wanted to (something not many people knew he enjoyed).
The next time he went down to the commons, he found his idiots playing video games. Well, Elbows, Dumb Hair, and Raccoon Eyes were. Dunce Face and Ears were cuddled up on the couch, watching something on the girl’s phone. It was cute disgusting.
Bakugo simply rolled his eyes as he headed into the kitchen for some food.
Four days now. His idiots were probably busy preparing for the test they had coming up. They desperately needed the study time, and Ponytail’s tutoring was saving him a lot of trouble.
After the test was a break week. If Katsuki knew his friends idiots, they would force him to go to a park or a restaurant with them at least one of the days of break.
Surprisingly, the invite never came. They often invited him through text, but there wasn’t a single notification on his phone. Whatever. Maybe they were all busy with their families. He wasn’t worried.
But when school started up again, the idiots were talking about how they went to the amusement park. Dumb Hair and Raccoon Eyes were bragging how they’ve now been on every ride in the park, and had shown Elbows, Ears, and Dunce Face the best rides.
Katsuki slightly clenched his fists. It was fine. Who wanted to go to an amusement park anyway? It wasn’t like he loved rollercoasters and fried food. He didn’t like beating all the carnival-like games they had at their local park. He didn’t grow up going to said park and loved the place. No, not at all.
He chose to eat lunch outside under a tree instead of eating with the idiots. He aggressively chewed the spicy Mapu Tofu he brought for lunch. He wasn’t angry. Nope. If his idiots wanted to do things without him, that was fine. He wasn’t insulted by the lack of invites. No, siree.
12 days. It had been 12 days since he’d been invited to hang out with his idiots. They still talked to him at school, and he sometimes still went to lunch with them, but nothing after school. No texts. They always texted invites when they had the group chat, which Dunce Face had found a way to destroy.
He briefly wondered if the idiots had remade the group chat but had left him out of it. He ignored their texts half the time anyway. What was the point of having him there?
“Maybe we should go to the amusement park again,” Denki suggested.
“You want to go back after the rides made you lose your takoyaki?” Jiro asked.
“Maybe I should take Dramamine. That’s the one that prevents motion-sickness, right?” Denki replied.
“Yes, but it’ll also make you extremely drowsy,” Kyoka responded.
Denki thought for a moment. “Worth it!” He decided.
“Maybe we should see if Bakubro will come with us this time,” Kirishima joined.
“He hasn’t hung out with us in twelve days,” Mina complained. “Do you think he’s mad at us?”
“It’s pretty normal for him to ignore the group chat, but this has gone on longer than usual,” Jiro nodded. “I don’t know what we would have done for him to give us the silent treatment, though.”
2 weeks. 2 weeks without invitations from his idiots. He was fine. It didn’t bother him. He didn’t care. If those idiots didn’t want to be his friends anymore, fine. He was fine. Definitely not bothered, or hurt, or sad. Definitely not.
“Kacchan?” Deku’s annoying voice broke through his thoughts. Katsuki was currently in the kitchen, drowning his food with more hot sauce than he’d intended.
“What do you want, you **** nerd?” Bakugo asked.
“You’ve been pouring hot sauce in one spot for like five minutes,” Deku stated. “Are you okay?”
“Of f*****g course, I’m okay! Why wouldn’t I be?” Bakugo snapped.
“You look kind of sad.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Is something bothering you?”
“No.”
“I’ve known you long enough to know that was a lie.”
“Shut up.”
“You can always talk to me if you want, or maybe you should talk to your friends. You seem less likely to blow them up.”
“I’m not talking to them about s*** when they’re the problem…” Bakugo hadn’t even meant to say that out loud.
“Oh, are you having some trouble with your friends?”
“Mind your own d*** business, Deku! I don’t care if the idiots haven’t invited me to anything in two weeks, I’m f*****g fine!” With that, Katsuki stormed out of the kitchen, leaving his hot sauce-drenched food sitting on the table.
“I really think Bakugo must be mad at us for something; he’s never ignored our group chat for so long before,” Mina pouted.
“I’m still confused as to what we did. I can’t recall doing anything bad,” Denki furrowed his brow.
They were headed back to the dorms after they went on a walk just to talk and try to figure things out. They were left even more confused, though. Especially as they entered the dorms to find Midoriya slightly glaring at them.
“Hey, Midobro! What’s up?” Kirishima greeted, a little nervous under the broccoli’s glare.
“Nothing much, what’s up with you?” Man, Midoriya could be unsettling when he wanted to be.
“We just went for a walk and tried to figure out why Bakubro’s been ignoring us,” Denki answered.
“Ignoring you?” Midoriya’s glare turned into confusion. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been ignoring the group chat every time we text to invite him to do something for the past two weeks. He’s never ignored us for this long,” Sero supplied. Midoriya looked even more confused.
“Are you sure Kacchan’s in the group chat?” He suddenly asked.
“Why do you ask?” Denki responded, pulling out his phone.
“Because when I talked to him this morning, he said that you guys haven’t invited him to do anything for two weeks.”
“Crap,” Denki muttered. “You guys were right, I can’t be trusted to make a group chat.”
Kirishima looked over at Kaminari’s phone and saw the list of people in the group chat. Bakugo was not there.
“You seriously forgot to add Bakubro’s number? He’s the namesake of our group!” Mina exclaimed.
“Sorry! I got distracted! See, me and Jiro were going on a movie date, and I kinda rushed through making the chat before we headed out, and well… I must have forgotten Bakugo’s number in the process.” Denki looked down in shame.
“That makes a lot more sense,” Midoriya commented. “I couldn’t think of any reason you’d leave Kacchan out intentionally. You should probably go explain and apologize to him. As much as he tried to pretend to be unbothered, I’m pretty sure this really hurt his feelings.”
“Of course, we’re gonna apologize! Do you know where he is currently?” Kirishima replied.
“I don’t think he’s left his dorm room for the past few hours,” Midoriya answered.
The squad headed up towards Bakugo’s room, guilt seeping in. This whole time, they’d thought Bakugo was ignoring them; Bakugo thought they were leaving him out.
Kirishima knocked on Bakugo’s door and waited for a reply. A gruff, ‘go away’, sounded from the other side.
“Nope, we need to talk to you,” Kirishima stated firmly.
After a minute, the door slowly opened, and Bakugo glared at them. “What do you all want?”
“As I said, we need to talk to you. It’s important,” Kirishima answered.
Bakugo sighed and opened the door wider, allowing the squad to come on. They all sat on the floor, while Katsuki sat on his bed, looking away from all of them.
“We wanted to apologize,” Kirishima started. Katsuki turned to look at him, seemingly a little confused. “You see, Kaminari’s the one who remade the group chat, but he was too distracted by a date with Jiro to realize he hadn’t added your number. So we, uh, kind of thought you had been ignoring the chat, instead of realizing you weren’t in it. We thought we invited you, and you just didn’t want to come to things.”
“I’m really sorry, I don’t know how I forgot to add your number. I guess I was too focused on my movie date with Kyoka that I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I had missed a number. We didn’t realize until like twenty minutes ago when we were talking to Midobro, and I’m really sorry, and I should never be trusted to make a group chat ever again-” Denki rambled.
“Denki, I think he gets it,” Kyoka interrupted. She then turned to Katsuki. “We are all sorry for not realizing sooner.”
Katsuki was strangely quiet. He looked down at his hands, fidgeting with them in his lap. He felt a lump in his throat, and his eyes watered a little.
Kirishima got up and settled next to Bakugo on the bed. “We’re all super, super sorry. We’d never intentionally leave you out.”
A few tears escaped Katsuki’s eyes. “I- f***.” He wiped the tears that threatened to flow.
Kirishima suddenly wrapped him in a hug. Usually, he’d push away, but… this time, he just sank into it. The rest of the squad joined in hugging him.