Work Text:
The building came down in pieces, starting at the bottom and then a chunk from the middle, and a chunk from the top, and then some more from the middle.
Aizawa watched as civilians started running from the building, as hero students helped them get away from it faster and relocate to a safe place. He watched as Bakugou narrowed his eyes and went right into the building. He watched Bakugou come back out a minute later with a woman in his arms who he gave to Todoroki before blasting himself up to a part of the building where there was a huge hole.
Where, upon closer look, there was a kid pinned under a support beam. The kid looked maybe eight, and was screaming, but it was so loud and the kid was so quiet, that it was a miracle Bakugou was able to hear him. Bakugou landed next to the kid and covered the kid's face with his elbow while blasting the beam so that it would break into two, and before it fell again, he pulled the kid off. The kid screamed and grabbed him, and, in surprise, Bakugou’s quirk blasted again, but this time directly on his other arm.
He didn’t scream. Instead he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists a little before having the kid get on his back and get them both back to the ground and then walking him towards the recovery zone before Aizawa could even focus on what was happening.
"Bakugou." Aizawa was on him within seconds, scanning the arm, the arm, and shoulder, the raw furious red of it. "Sit down. Let Recovery Girl—"
"I'm fine." He set the kid down with the paramedics, snapped something short at them about the leg being maybe fractured, not just bruised, and was already turning back toward the wreckage before Aizawa's hand landed on his good shoulder.
"That's not fine, that's a third—"
"There's still two people in there." Bakugou didn't look at him. His eyes were on the building, on the smoke, on the math he was already running about how much of it he had left to give before the structure finished deciding it was done standing. "I said I'm fine."
Aizawa let him go. He always let him go, in the moment, because pulling a hero off a live rescue over a burn that wasn't actively killing him was its own kind of malpractice, and because some old, tired part of him understood that Bakugou would rather take the arm off entirely than be the reason someone else didn't make it out. He watched him disappear back into the smoke, and told himself, the way he always told himself, that they'd deal with it properly once the site was clear.
By the time the site was checked and completely clear, it was almost midnight. Aizawa watches as his students sign off and get onto the bus all sleepy and worn out. He watched as Bakugou signed his condition report with just one word. Opened the page to see the word Minor. Aizawa watched him get onto the bus, covering up all of the burns he definitely earned, as he checked on all of his friends and made sure none of them were injured. He watched as Bakugou bandaged Kirishima's arm with bandages that Aizawa had no clue where they came from.
After they arrived at the dorms, Aizawa herded all of the obviously injured students to Recovery Girl. He tried to find Bakugou and quietly ask him to come, but he had disappeared the moment they stepped off the bus. Aizawa sighed, but promised himself he would check on Bakugou before bed.
After dropping off all the kids in Recovery Girls office, Aizawa went up to the dorms and walked to Bakugou’s room. He stood in front of the door, hesitating for a few seconds, before finally knocking. When there was no response, Aizawa knocked again, before finally creaking the door open a little.
Aizawa peeked through the door to see Bakugou sitting on the edge of his bed with his shirt off, and a kit open. Upon closer inspection, Aizawa noticed that it was a burn kit and Bakugou was applying a cooling gel over his burns.
“‘Zawa?” Bakugou said, clearly exhausted.
“Bakugou. Can I come in?” Aizawa asked, standing in the doorframe until Bakugou nodded. He came closer and noticed that the burns, the ones that were definitely 3rd degree burns, that were pink all over with dark red splotches splashing against Bakugou’s skin had been replaced. Instead, it looked almost like Bakugo had just been sunburned, his skin a little pinker than normal.
“How?” Aizawa questioned. He knew that those burns should have taken weeks to heal, and would need a specialist to look at and take care of. Even with Recovery Girl’s help, the burns probably would have still been a little darker than what it was now.
Bakugou didn’t respond, clearly trying to find a good response for the question. Instead, he continued to work the gel into his skin, until he finally put it down and picked up the next gel, this one being a darker color and thicker. Aizawa looked at the bed and noticed that there was an entire routine on the bed. Multiple different types of gels, numbing sprays, gauzes, bandaids, lots of different kinds of fluids like electrolytes and protein shakes.
"You're supposed to be at Recovery Girls," Aizawa spoke, still watching as Bakugou continues to massage it into his skin as if he had done this a hundred times.
Bakugou didn’t react too much to that, instead putting down the gel and picking up his electrolytes and slowly sipping it.
"Already healed enough that it's not worth wasting her energy or time on," Bakugou said, not looking up. "Waste of a Quirk used for something that'll be gone by Thursday."
"Gone by Thursday." Aizawa stepped closer to Bakugou and sat down on the floor, putting a hand on Bakugou’s knee comfortingly "Explain that for me."
Bakugou expression flickered for a few seconds, almost a wince.
“While nitroglycerin can be used for offenses, such as blasting people and myself,” Bakgou started, as if he was reciting something he’d said a hundred times over, “It can also be used for medical reasons, such as healing over scars that wouldn’t fade. I don’t know what exactly it does to my skin, but it heals anything on my skin faster than it should be healed. I remember a while ago, I had gotten a couple of scars that shouldn’t have ever faded, but a week later it was just gone. I still don’t know all the science behind it, and Recovery Girl doesn’t either, she just knows that my skin magically heals and she just stopped asking questions.”
Aizawa was quiet for a second, doing the arithmetic that Bakugou clearly already had memorized. "How long has a while ago been."
Bakugou's hands didn't stop moving. That, more than anything he said next, was the answer.
"Since I started actually going all-out with it. Middle school, some. More after I got here." He taped off the gauze with the same brisk efficiency he did everything, like closing the conversation along with the wound. "You get burned enough times, you learn how to deal with it faster than waiting on someone else to."
“That’s not something you should have learned Bakugou,” Aizawa said, looking horrified. He looked again on the bed to all of the different healing and cooling ointments laid out, and realized that most of them were half empty, and almost certainly used at least fifty times, “This should have been in a file somewhere, or on some sort of medical records.”
“It does come up sometimes,” Bakugou started, “I write down some lame, under five word excuse, and no one questions it when they check and realize that it’s not as bad as they thought. Best Jeanist nearly had a heart attack when a villain with a fire quirk lit a fire on my arm, but calmed down when it healed in two hours.”
Aizawa spared another look at his student's arm, the one that he saw burnt and bright red, now healing over to a sunburnt pink, and looked over the rest of his skin, and saw the clear, clean skin.
"Show me your arms," Aizawa said, with a tone that made it clear that it was not a request.
Bakugou’s mouth tightened, and he looked down, and for a moment, Aizawa thought he’d refuse and kick Aizawa out of his room, to keep the secret forever. But then Bakugou held out his hands, and Aizawa saw how perfect and smooth his arms looked. Looked where there should be stretch marks, or scars, or tiny blemishes, and saw nothing instead. He’d always just assumed that Bakugou was just really careful, and realized that was probably what the rest of the world thought as well. He sat with Bakugou as Bakugou touched every place that he remembered there was a scar, and told Aizawa when he got that scar and how. Aizawa sat with him for almost four hours, until finally, Bakugou couldn’t remember any other scars he had at one point in his life.
“Just about no one knows why I don’t have scars,” Bakugou said, and his voice was a lot softer as he let out a dry, humorless laugh, “Deku knows, but I swore him to silence years ago. None of the idiot squad knows, they never realize why my skin is always so clean. I almost wish they would ask sometime so that I can explain that I'm not as perfect as they believe I am.”
Aizawa stayed silent for a long moment, looking out the window. It was dark and quiet, the only sound being crickets chirping and the occasional breeze of wind that startled the trees to make them sway. He just took in everything he learned about his new problem child. He didn’t realize what Bakugou was feeling until now, but now that he knows, he’s going to make sure that Bakugou will be safe here.
"You're going to start showing me," Aizawa said finally. "Every time. I don't care how unimportant you think it is. Or how small it is, or what it’ll look like in an hour or two."
Bakugou didn’t argue. Instead, he looked almost happier as he looked back down at his arm that was already a lighter shade of pink than it had been when Aizawa walked into the room. He said nothing, but as Aizawa was leaving, he caught a smile from Bakugou’s lips, and knew that was as close to a thanks that he would ever get.