Chapter Text
Even though Katsuki gets up early enough for there to not be anybody else awake when he goes downstairs, his bad luck holds out, and he runs right into one of his classmates as soon as he gets off the elevator. He almost collides with them before his instincts kick in and he quickly side-steps, already halfway through an insult, “Watch where you’re fuckin’ —”
“Oh!” Yaoyorozu’s familiar face swims into view. “Good morning, Bakugou!”
Katsuki gives her a once-over — his classmate is dressed as impeccably as always, as if it’s not four in the fucking morning — and then rolls his eyes. “What the hell are you doing up this early, huh?”
Yaoyorozu smiles at him. “I was having trouble sleeping, so I came down here to have some tea. Would you like some?”
She’s never even so much as raised her voice at Katsuki, but he still finds himself scanning her expression, analyzing her posture, clothing, the glint in her eyes. Has she always spoken so politely, or is she mocking him? How long will it take for her to admit that this interaction was pre-planned, that she’s just assessing whether or not he’s still emotionally fragile, that she was put up to this by classmates that mean so much more to her than Katsuki ever will? And how will he react? How is he allowed to react? What will happen if he says the wrong thing, which is the only thing that he ever seems to do?
“Fuck off,” Katsuki says, turning away. “I’m going on a run.”
That wasn’t the right response to give. He knows that as soon as the words leave his mouth, the sharpness of them cutting into his tongue on the way out and making his entire body feel like a ticking time bomb.
Counting down the seconds until he inevitably explodes.
Three, two, one, and then it’ll be, Look at Katsuki, he’s causing trouble again, isn’t he just so pathetic? Useless? Volatile, fragile, look at him, just look —
He needs to get out of here.
“Oh, alright!” Yaoyorozu just keeps smiling at him. “Have fun, then! I’ll see you in class?”
Katsuki’s knees feel weak, legs unsteady beneath him as he bolts out of the common room, slamming the door behind himself. He’s hyper-aware of every sensation, from the rustle of wind through his hair to the scrape of his shoes against the front steps, and he’s breathing so hard that it’s making him sick, body locked up, each inhale trapped tightly in his chest.
Horrible.
He’s so fucked-up and horrible and incompetent. He can’t even have a normal human interaction without ruining it. What’s wrong with him? Is he just wired wrong, incomplete?
Why is it so hard for him to just exist?
His head is spinning again. That familiar dizzying rush, all-consuming, inescapable — the crawl of anxiety combined with the voice telling him to get away right now. Getting louder and louder until he can’t hear himself think. Screaming. His heart is beating so fast that it feels more like a seizure than a pulse.
He digs through his pockets with trembling hands and shoves his earbuds in with more force than necessary, stabbing his finger against his phone screen until music starts blaring through his skull. The playlist is one that Jirou made for him a while ago, some stupid mix of songs that aren’t attention-worthy enough to take up much head space. Just background noise. He can feel that insidious whisper starting to creep back in already, slinking up his spine and hooking its claws into his brain, speaking in a language that only he can understand. More images than words, small details: the flash of Kirishima’s smile, the cold, unfamiliar gleam in Sero’s eyes. He shakes his head — hard — and picks up a light jog, following the path away from the dormitory.
Running away seems to be the only thing he’s still good at.
What a fucking coward.
The good thing about running is that it makes it impossible to think about anything other than just putting one foot in front of the other. Katsuki isn’t the best at it — not compared to other people in his class, like short, compact Jirou — but he doesn’t have to be, so it usually doesn’t sting too much to let his classmates take the spotlight. He’s good at moving, spiralling through the air, which was a much more efficient method of travelling than scurrying along the undergrowth like some kind of prey animal.
Still, he usually gets further than this.
Halfway through his normal route, something shuts down, and then his body collapses in the grass beside the sidewalk before higher thought has a chance to kick in. His face is hot and sweaty and there’s hair sticking to it, clinging at his temples. He can feel the morning dew soaking into his clothes. He stares up at the still-dark sky as some unknown song screams deafeningly loud in his ears.
Time passes, or maybe it doesn’t. He just knows that he lurches upright when he catches a shadow darkening the sidewalk in his peripheral vision, head snapping toward the approaching figure. His heart starts beating impossibly faster.
Aizawa-sensei taps at his own ear, then raises his eyebrows expectantly.
With great reluctance, Katsuki pauses his music and waits to be scolded or pitied or whatever it is that his teacher has planned for him today.
“You really shouldn’t set the volume that high,” Aizawa-sensei says. “I could hear that all the way from over here.”
Katsuki feels that familiar twinge of deep-set irritation. He scrubs at his face and tries not to think about how stupid he must look right now: disheveled, grass stains on his clothes. Falling apart. Worse than that, falling apart in a way that’s obvious to everybody around him. He averts his gaze and asks, “What do you want?”
His teacher sighs.
Katsuki resists the urge to lay back down and curl up in the grass until he sinks into the ground. The shame that had been simmering low in his chest threatens to boil over, rising at the back of his throat like bile.
Quietly, Aizawa-sensei asks, “I’m assuming that you haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”
“I’m not hungry,” Katsuki mutters. He wishes that he could snap at Aizawa-sensei, tell him to stop always assuming the worst, but that wouldn’t do him any good, since his teacher’s assumptions are usually always correct. Katsuki has become so fucking predictable. He hates it. “Can I have one fucking day without you trying to fatten me up?”
Is he imagining the way that Aizawa-sensei’s eyes narrow, the slight deepening of his ever-present scowl? He flinches as the man crosses his arms. His nervous system is constantly primed for an attack.
Aizawa-sensei’s expression softens by an almost imperceptible degree. “You’re lucky that you didn’t pass out. What were you thinking, running around this early? You didn’t even bring a water bottle.” His eyes dart down to Katsuki’s hands like he’s confirming the fact, but they linger for a little too long, and Katsuki knows that the hero is just looking at the bandage.
“Dead weight,” Katsuki counters. His voice comes out weaker than he wants it to. “Would’ve fucked up my balance.”
There’s a five-second pause that feels like an hour, and then Aizawa-sensei says, in an infuriatingly gentle tone, “Let’s go back to the dorms. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“I don’t need —”
“You’re shaking again,” Aizawa-sensei interrupts.
Like always, Katsuki looks at his hand to fact-check, and — like always — he realizes that his teacher is right. He shoves both hands deep into the pockets of his gym shorts and snaps, “Stop fucking inspecting me, Sensei. I’m fine. Go bother someone who actually needs your help.”
But, really — the worst part is that Katsuki is pretty sure that he does need his teacher’s help. Some kind of help, at least. Something. He doesn’t know what for, or what the hell is wrong with him, but he needs an experienced adult to crack his head open and root around until they find the problem. And there has to be a problem. Not some nameless, shapeless thing — an actual problem, something that can be inspected, dissected, and then solved. He doesn’t know how to say any of that without sounding like a pathetic waste of space, though. Doesn’t know how to exist in any way that doesn’t lead to more conflict. More proof that he shouldn’t be here at all.
He wants a doctor to look at him and say, Oh, you’ve been poisoned. You have brain damage. You’re somehow allergic to the entire world and the well-documented reaction to that is feeling like you’re a failure all the time. Maybe he ate something he shouldn’t have. Or got hit with some kind of undocumented Quirk.
Some part of this has to be physical.
It can’t all be in his head.
After several long moments of silence, Aizawa-sensei gives another one of those near-inaudible sighs and reaches down to take Katsuki’s wrist. He pulls Katsuki onto the sidewalk and says, “Come on, kid. One thing at a time.”
“Sensei,” Katsuki says, the word jostled out of him. His voice comes out suddenly high-pitched, frantic, “There’s something wrong with —”
He cuts himself off. Breathing hard.
His entire body feels like it’s caught in fight-or-flight, an increasing tension that pulls tighter with every thud of his heart against his ribs. Like the aftermath of a brawl. But there aren’t any bloody noses, broken bones, black eyes. Just him, falling apart at the seams.
Pathetic.
The tea is lukewarm, too sweet. Katsuki doesn’t have the heart to say that to Yaoyorozu, not when she’s sitting across from him, watching him drink it with the expectant gaze of a preschooler waiting to be told that their stupid crayon drawing is so good that it belongs in a museum. Maybe his tastebuds are just miscalibrated. Or something like that.
He sets the teacup down on the wafer-thin china plate.
Yaoyorozu ducks her head into his line of sight and asks, “What do you think? Did I steep it for too long?”
“Tastes fine,” Katsuki mutters.
When he returned to the dorms — or rather, when Aizawa-sensei finally succeeded in dragging him to them — he’d been hoping that the common room would be empty, but he should’ve known that Yaoyorozu was still hanging around. At least it’s still early enough for none of their classmates to be down here.
Yaoyorozu’s face shifts seamlessly into a smile. “I’m always open to constructive criticism —”
“I said that it’s fine,” Katsuki snaps, lifting his head to glare at her. “What are you, deaf? Didn’t you hear me the first time?”
He’s never been able to figure out what reaction he prefers after an outburst. He’s usually met with one of two options — fear or anger — but Yaoyorozu doesn’t grant him the familiarity of either of those, just raises her eyebrows slightly in a picture-perfect expression of concern and asks, “Bakugou, are you feeling alright?”
“Oh, fuck this.” Katsuki stands up so quickly that he almost loses his balance. “Fuck you. I’m leaving.”
“Aizawa-sensei asked —”
Katsuki glares at her again, sharper — more venomous — than before. His heart feels like it’s caught in his throat as he spits out, “I don’t give a fuck about what that bastard said. He keeps fucking — babying me, like I’m a little kid or something, and — are you in on it? Did he put you up to this?”
He can see it all so clearly in his mind’s eye: Aizawa-sensei pulling Yaoyorozu to the side, asking her to be Katsuki’s friend because he’s wholly incapable of making them on his own. His fists are clenched so tightly that he can feel his nails biting into his palms.
Yaoyorozu seems genuinely confused, but she must be faking that, too. Just like she’s pretending that being around Katsuki isn’t making her well-bred sensibilities break out in hives. “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”
Katsuki bares his teeth. Like an animal.
“Bakugou,” Yaoyorozu sighs. “What, exactly, are you upset about?”
She’s trying to get into his head, Katsuki knows it. She’s trying to find something to relay back to their classmates and then everything will be worse, their voices sharper, insults more pointed, because they’ll know how to hurt him in even better ways than before. He could just give it to them. The information. He could tell them that his mother hates him and that he thinks the most terrifying way to die would be slow suffocation and that he slept with a nightlight all the way up until he was ten years old, because that’s all he’s good for, the self-destruction, entertainment. Nobody has to force any of these things out of him.
He is made of things to hate.
There’s not a single good trait in his body.
He feels hot and cold at the same time, caught between two extremes so violent and all-consuming that it cancels itself out, circles around to him just being numb. He collapses back onto the couch and drops his head into his hands, taking harsh, ragged breaths.
The distant murmur of a steady voice, filtered through the ringing in his ears:
“Bakugou — deep breaths — everything is okay —”
“Wanna go to sleep,” Katsuki says, in a small voice that comes dangerously close to sounding like a whimper.
He has never been this exhausted in his life. He keeps thinking that, and then the goalposts get moved, or something else happens, and then he’s even more tired. His head hurts. He wants to throw up and go to bed and die, all at the same time. Everything at once. No time to think about what comes next.
“Bakugou.” A hand comes down on his shoulder, the impact hard enough to grind his thoughts to a halt. “Time to calm down. Here, drink this.”
His own hand is pried open, the crinkle of a plastic water bottle pressed against his palm.
When Katsuki doesn’t respond, Aizawa-sensei shakes him. His voice is low and urgent as he says, “Listen to me, Bakugou. Stop thinking about whatever it is you’re spiralling about and just listen. Okay?”
It takes another almost painful squeeze on his shoulder to force him into action.
He takes a sip of the water, then immediately starts coughing — why can’t you even do that right? — and the only good thing about that is how alert it forces him to be. Or maybe it’s a bad thing, because he doesn’t even want to be here. The only thing that Katsuki wants to do is curl up and die. Maybe he can slip between the couch cushions like loose change if he stays still for long enough.
There’s the sharp snap of fingers in front of his face. He flinches back, eyes wide, as Aizawa-sensei says, “Nope. Keep listening to me.”
“Leave me alone,” Katsuki rasps out, batting his teacher’s hand away. He takes another sip of the water and somehow manages to do that correctly this time, at least. “Fuck. Don’t you have anywhere better to be?”
As he asks the question, Katsuki realizes where he is. He glances around the common room, expecting the worst — maybe a gawking crowd of his classmates — but the place is so empty that his breaths sound unnaturally loud in the silence. He has to make a conscious effort to quiet them. His eyes are stinging with the familiar onset of tears, the aftermath of his latest breakdown, and he blinks rapidly to force them back.
The silence persists for several more long, torturous minutes, and then Aizawa-sensei says, “If you’re calm enough, I want to get you to Recovery Girl before class starts.”
Katsuki is smart enough to read between the lines:
Get your shit together before somebody else sees you like this.
“Right — right, yeah,” Katsuki says. He feels paper-thin, fragile. “What — um. What time is it…?”
Aizawa-sensei checks his phone. “Almost five in the morning. We should get going if you want to have enough time to eat.”
“But I don’t want —”
“Correction.” Aizawa-sensei stands up and gestures for Katsuki to do the same, hand moving in a sharp motion that brokers no room for argument. “I should’ve phrased that better. We’re going to Recovery Girl, and then you’re going to eat. The food is already waiting.”
He seems to have realized that the only way to get anything done is to not give Katsuki a choice in the matter. He’ll probably resort to dragging Katsuki around again if he doesn’t get a response quickly enough, so Katsuki stands up, glaring in a weak attempt to show how much he loathes this entire situation.
As it is, Aizawa-sensei plants a hand firmly on Katsuki’s back to steer him out of the common room, as if he’s already anticipating an escape attempt.
Katsuki tries to jerk away. “I don’t need a fucking babysitter —”
“Bakugou.”
He goes quiet and allows himself to be led away.
—
After everything that happened, it feels strange to be sitting at the same desk as always. Humbling, almost. The world ended and he’s still being assigned homework.
From the front of the room, Yamada-sensei drones on, “And if you could take out your notebooks…”
Katsuki moves automatically, reaching down to unzip his backpack, eyes focused on the task at hand — all the way up until he locks gazes with Jirou, at least. Which is the one thing he’d been trying not to do. His stomach gives an uncomfortable twist at the look on her face, and he thinks for one horrifying second that he’s going to throw up the breakfast that Aizawa-sensei intimidated him into eating, but he clamps down on the nausea and glares at her instead. He slams the notebook onto his desk with a little too much force and pointedly ignores her for the rest of the period, knowing that a single glance in her direction would draw the attention of both her and everybody else in the row, which is unfortunately populated with people that he’d be fine with not talking to ever again.
By the time that lunch rolls around, the tension in the air is so thick that it feels like a physical weight. Katsuki tries to slip out the door and is interrupted by somebody grabbing his wrist, and he knows who it is before he even turns around.
He snatches his hand away.
“Fuck off, Shitty-Hair.”
Kirishima doesn’t listen. He barely even hesitates before he decides somewhere in his thick-skulled head that it’d be a good idea to follow Katsuki out into the hallway, rambling on in a sickeningly earnest voice, “Look, Bakugou — I was just wondering —”
Katsuki stops short and snaps a glare over his shoulder.
His classmate flinches just once, then goes still. He remains stunned into silence for a few precious seconds before continuing, “Dude, I’m really sorry. About everything. Is there any way to make it up to you?”
There’s something caustic in Katsuki’s own voice as he asks, “Wow. How many times did you practice that?”
“Bakugou, can you please just listen —”
He cuts off with another flinch, a backwards stumble that isn’t fast enough to stop Katsuki from grabbing him by the collar and hauling him close. The fabric feels thin in his hands, curled tight in his fist like this. He snarls his next words into Kirishima’s face, “Stay the fuck away from me, asshole. Or I’ll make you regret it.”
A stupid, petty threat that he hasn’t used since middle school.
It still works well enough on Kirishima. His eyes widen, flashing bright with hurt, and he takes a short, sharp breath before visibility gritting his teeth like he’s bracing for a blow. He glances down at Katsuki’s other hand, a movement so telegraphed and unmistakably nervous that it makes Katsuki feel disgusted, with no hint of the fond exasperation that he would’ve felt before the fallout.
There’s the sound of running footsteps, and then another familiar voice shouts out, “Hey, Bakugou! Stop it!”
“Fuck you, too,” Katsuki snaps, shoving Kirishima away so hard that it makes him stumble again. Kaminari reaches out to steady him, then scowls at Katsuki as if he’s intimidating at all. “Take your stupid group somewhere else and leave me out of it. I don’t need you. I don’t need any of you.”
He’s telling the truth. He doesn’t need them. He was better at the start of the year, on his own, and then they had to come and wrangle him into their pre-existing group as if there was even a chance that he’d ever really fit in.
Just — a fucking pity project. Just that. He was never anything else.
They never really wanted him there.
He can’t think of any reason why they would.
And now he’s giving them what they’ve all been waiting for, even if none of them were aware of it: a reason to hate him. He needs to be despised so that they never repeat the mistake of trying to fucking… tame him, or whatever it is that they’d been attempting to do.
The scrape of his foot sliding back in an involuntary retreat is deafeningly loud. His shoulders curl forward for just a second before he forces them straight. The next words to leave his mouth are quiet and hoarse:
“I hate you.”
Katsuki’s voice is trembling.
He’s sure that everyone can hear it.
Ashido has joined Kirishima and Kaminari at some point — probably drawn in by the sound of shouting, gossip magnet that she is — and she’s staring at Katsuki with what looks like wide-eyed dismay. “W-What?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Katsuki says, and feels a sick satisfaction at the way she goes still under the weight of his full attention. “Hell, why are you even talking to me? Don’t you know that I’ll shut up if you just ignore me?”
“That’s not fair,” Kaminari says. His voice is weak, almost whiny. He and Ashido are both hiding slightly behind Kirishima, as if the general consensus is that Katsuki might lunge forward at any time. “You’re not being fair.”
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut the fuck up. Like, do you ever have anything useful to say?”
“C’mon,” Kirishima says. Always the mediator. He even puts his hands up like he’s placating an actual threat — some drugged junkie on the verge of attacking. “Bakugou, really? Come on.”
He can’t seem to think of anything else to say. At a loss for words.
Katsuki never has that problem. He’s always been good in situations like this — no time to think, just pure provocation. He has a hair-trigger temper that’s been getting him in trouble before he even learned how to write his own name. “Come on? Who the fuck are you telling to come on, Kirishima? Do you wanna fight?”
Kirishima blinks at him. He seems to realize that he’s holding his hands up and quickly drops them, a grin stretching across his face like it’s been startled onto there. “What? No!”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?” Katsuki takes a deliberate step forward, both painfully aware of his own actions and floating outside of his body at the same time. He can see Kirishima tense with the effort of not backing away. “Huh? If you’re not looking for a fight, why are you being so fucking annoying?”
It’s at times like these that he realizes that he never really changed at all.
His mouth is moving. He must be saying something, but he can’t hear himself, can only feel the shape of the words as they take form at the back of his throat — sharp, angular, impossible to say without bleeding. He only snaps back into his own head when Kirishima’s hands come down on his shoulders, hardening in a vice grip that he can’t escape. He realizes that he’s gasping for air. On the verge of tears. Suffocating.
Kirishima is speaking.
“I’m sorry.” His gaze is intense enough that Katsuki can’t look away, even though he wants to. He feels like he’s being scalded. “Bakugou, I’m sorry. We all are. Can you please just —”
Katsuki squeezes his eyes shut. “Shut up. I hate you.”
He has never wanted a physical fight more than he does right now. No words, just yelling and clawing and blood smeared across the hallway floor — a familiar sight, one that he can trace like a red string of fate through past classrooms, playgrounds, the more violent arguments with his mother that happened when he was still thrashing around with the pure rage that all little kids seemed to possess. Or maybe it was just him, the odd one out. The bad kid that all parents told their children to stay away from. As if whatever was wrong with him, the absence of something vital, was contagious. All the accolades and recognitions in the world couldn’t change the innate fact that he was just put together in the worst way possible.
“Hey, kiddos! What’s going on here?”
A loud voice cuts right through whatever Kirishima had been saying.
Katsuki cracks his eyes open in time to see that bright grin snap into place on Kirishima’s face — people-pleasing, dazzling. His nervous tone immediately undercuts the confidence that he undoubtedly wants to project, “Ah — nothing! We’re just having a talk!”
“Is that so?” Yamada-sensei is getting closer. Katsuki knows that it’s him because nobody else can sound so obnoxiously cheerful in the middle of a schoolday, and the sharp thuds of his boots are as distinctive as the stripes on a tiger. “Well, what were you guys talking about, hm? From where I was standing, it looked like it was getting a little intense!”
Why does he say everything in such an enthusiastic tone? Doesn’t he know that he’s not fooling anybody?
Kirishima’s grip loosens. Katsuki takes the opportunity to shoulder his way out of it, scowling so deeply that it makes his jaw ache. He smooths the wrinkles out of his shirt and snaps, “I was just leaving.”
“Bakugou!” Yamada-sensei says, as if just noticing him for the first time. “I was actually hoping to have a talk with you!”
Katsuki scoffs and slips past him, muttering under his breath, “Yeah, right. Keep dreaming.”
There’s the sound of a conversation happening behind his back, then the fading thuds of retreating footsteps. Katsuki allows himself a second to hope that everybody — Kirishima, Ashido, Kaminari, and, most importantly: Yamada-sensei — have decided that it’d be best to just leave him alone, but the entire world hates him and wants him to die, so his teacher’s voice rings out again a moment later, “Hey! Just a few minutes, yeah?”
“Fuck off.”
An audible sigh, and then Yamada-sensei says, “Bakugou. Come here, please.”
The please sounds like it was tacked on as an afterthought.
Is he getting irritated? He must be, Katsuki tends to have that effect on the people in charge of him. What will happen when he loses his temper? Morbidly curious, Katsuki glances over his shoulder and asks, “The hell are you gonna do if I don’t?”
And he’s not imagining it, the slight clenching of Yamada-sensei’s jaw, the way his hands start to curl into fists before flattening back out. Anxiety prickles down Katsuki’s spine. He looks at his teacher’s face, trying to read his expression, but the hero’s mouth is frozen in a smile and his eyes are hidden behind the colored, reflective lenses of his glasses.
Katsuki is hit with the sudden urge to bolt.
“Look, Bakugou…” Yamada-sensei’s tone is gentler, like he’s trying to talk somebody down from the ledge of a building. “I just want to have a talk about your behavior in class.”
The preemptive shame hits Katsuki like a punch to the throat. His mind instantly kicks into gear, rerunning every minute of the class through the sieve of his recollection, sifting for whatever it is that he did wrong. Maybe he spoke too loudly — even though he barely spoke at all — or stared out of the window for a few seconds too long, or maybe Yamada-sensei called on him to answer a question and he was too zoned-out to hear it, maybe his teacher misinterpreted that as disrespect, maybe Katsuki is going to have to list out every flaw, incorrect shift of movement, failed social cue —
Maybe it's none of that, and he really does just want to talk.
But that wouldn't make any sense, because people only seek Katsuki out when they're looking for a fight.
Yamada-sensei cuts his arms in an X-ing motion. His grin is so wide that it looks like a mask, strung up to the edges of his face. “Nothing bad! I should’ve led with that!”
“Why would it be anything bad?” Katsuki scoffs. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
His teacher keeps smiling at him. “Right. Right, of course!”
“You don’t sound very… convinced.”
“Ha-ha!” Yamada-sensei says. He actually enunciates the syllables, and Katsuki is amused by it for just a few seconds before he realizes that’s exactly what his teacher wants. “I just noticed that you looked a little —” he taps his chin as if searching for just the right word, then continues brightly “— despondent today! I was wondering if there’s anything that I could do to help?”
There’s a sinking feeling in Katsuki’s stomach. He turns sharply on his heel and snaps, “Go bother somebody else.”
“Ah, Bakugou —”
“Wait.” Katsuki can’t stop himself from spinning around again, storming head-on toward what will undoubtedly be another mistake that he’ll be forced to relive in his mind over and over while trying to go to sleep. “Did Aizawa-sensei put you up to this?”
Yamada-sensei tilts his head, like viewing Katsuki from a slightly different angle will make him easier to handle. “I’m sorry — what?”
Each breath feels like something alive and thrashing, forced into Katsuki’s lungs. He’s choking up again. Vision whiting out at the edges. “What, is he trying to get me to talk about my feelings? Huh? All that bleeding heart bullshit?”
“No —?” Yamada-sensei watches him approach. “Look, kid — let’s take a breather. What are you talking about?”
Playing dumb. Acting like Aizawa-sensei didn’t sit him down and say, That stupid brat is causing trouble again. Keep an eye on him, make sure that he doesn’t do anything stupid. And don’t worry about him knowing that I told you this, he’s a fucking idiot and he won’t even suspect that this conversation happened. Katsuki can hear all of it so clearly that it’s like the hero is standing right beside him, hissing the words into his ear. His legs feel weak. The world suddenly knocked off its axis. Unbalanced.
Yamada-sensei puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “Woah. What’s going through that head of yours, kiddo? Whatever it is, I promise that it’s probably not as serious as you’re making it out to be.”
“Don’t fucking touch me.” Katsuki tries to yank away, but his teacher’s grip just tightens like he has — correctly, and that’s the worst part — predicted that Katsuki will bolt as soon as he’s released. “Stop it! Let go of me! Fuck —”
“Lunch is about to end.” Yamada-sensei’s voice comes out in a low hiss of frustration, the sound of it cutting like a knife. “I just want to talk to you, Bakugou. That’s all.”
Katsuki opens his mouth. He’s not sure what it is that he wants to do — maybe scream or curse or some horrible combination of the two — but nothing comes out, and his jaws snap shut again with a click that echoes through his skull. He’s breathing hard. Taking shaky gasps of air. He feels like everything in him is dialed up to the max, crackling like a live wire, flashing worst-case scenarios and that Machiavellian voice at the back of his head, Get out. Get out. Get out, in equal measure. A feedback loop that he can’t stop.
He can smell something burning.
There’s only a split-second of silence after that realization before Katsuki’s body is being moved, his feet stumbling through the nearest doorway as Yamada-sensei hauls him into an empty classroom. Mostly empty, anyway — some loner must be eating their lunch in the corner, because Yamada-sensei barks a short, “Out, now!” that sends them scurrying.
The door slams shut, a hollow thud that sounds like a cage being locked.
“Bakugou,” Yamada-sensei says, whispering again. “I need you to calm down, okay?”
What’s that saying?
In one ear, out the other.
Katsuki can’t focus on anything.
There’s a sudden, crushing grip on one of his wrists. His head snaps up, and he finds Yamada-sensei staring down at him. The hero’s features are blurry in a way that doesn’t make sense until Katsuki realizes that, at some point, he started crying.
“That’s enough, Bakugou.” Yamada-sensei speaks in the hard voice of a dog owner telling their pet to drop a weird piece of food. “You’re burning yourself.”
Not again. What will his mother think?
He’s dimly aware of the pain: the sharp, familiar ache radiating up his arm, either dulled by his senses or by the fact that Yamada-sensei probably saw it coming and intervene before it got worse, which seems like the most likely scenario, since Katsuki is so fucking predictable. He glances down at himself, trying to assess the damage. He’s crying so hard that he can’t even think straight, and it’s making him dizzy, nauseous, as if too much blood has been taken during a routine draw. His mouth is impossibly dry.
Yamada-sensei’s grip gentles on his wrist. “Hey. I’m sorry, kiddo. I shouldn’t have pushed for a conversation. Do you want me to take you to Recovery Girl?”
“You’re gonna do it anyway,” Katsuki points out, weak and sniveling.
His teacher looks disturbed.
That’s the only label that Katsuki can assign to the expression that Yamada-sensei is wearing right now. Shaken. Almost distraught. Like he really believes that this is his fault, as if this isn’t all just a result of Katsuki’s lack of self-control. He should know that. He’s the one who wanted to talk about feelings and all that other bullshit.
“Just — fuck off,” Katsuki says, scrambling for the last remaining scraps of composure. “Get away from me. I don’t need a kissy on my boo-boo from that stupid old hag in the nurses’ office.”
She’s probably tired of seeing him, anyway. He has no doubts that she’s only a couple visits away from reporting him to the authorities and having him straightjacketed for the rest of his natural lifespan. Is that something she can do? Probably. If there are any limits to her authority, Katsuki sure as hell doesn’t know what they are.
Plus, it’d be embarrassing. Having to slink back into her office for the umpteenth time.
His life feels like one long, never-ending humiliation ritual.
Yamada-sensei says, “I’ll take care of it, then. But I do want you to go have a talk with our guidance counselor.”
“Hound Dog?” Katsuki asks, incredulous. “That mutt would bite my head off.”
His teacher hesitates like he’s deciding whether or not it’d be worth the effort to scold Katsuki for his phrasing, and then he obviously decides that it wouldn’t be. That phrase again: in one ear, out the other. Katsuki is a stupid, belligerent asshole and he doesn’t listen to anybody. He’s sure that’s what Yamada-sensei is thinking right now.
Yamada-sensei says, “You need to talk to someone.”
“You don’t need to keep trying to outsource the labor,” Katsuki responds, tugging against his teacher’s grip until it loosens and he’s able to pull his arm free. He rubs at his wrist. “Aizawa-sensei didn’t make me talk to a shrink. But I’m sure he already told you that, huh?”
“Where are you getting this idea that we talk about you behind your back?”
Katsuki glares up at his teacher. “What, are you saying that you don’t? Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t bitch about how I’m so difficult.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Fuck you,” Katsuki mutters. He looks away, suddenly uncomfortable. “Don’t lie to me. I don’t even care.”
He doesn’t give a shit.
There’s a long, drawn-out pause, and then Yamada-sensei asks, “Wait, you’ve burned yourself before? Here? At school?”
Katsuki makes an affirmative noise.
“And Eraserhead saw it?”
Is this some kind of trap? What is Katsuki supposed to say? What answer does Yamada-sensei even want?
Yamada-sensei seems to take his silence as a response. “He never told me —”
“So you do talk about me behind my back.”
“No — what? No.” Yamada-sensei frowns at him. “Eraserhead should’ve gotten you some help. I don’t know why he didn’t.”
The familiar flare of anger in Katsuki’s chest. “Maybe because I’m not the weak little bitch that you seem to think I am. Trying to coddle me and shit. I don’t see you handling any of the other students with kid gloves.”
“I was just trying to have a conversation with you!”
Right. And then Katsuki ruined it by being just as fragile as everybody has — correctly, again — assumed him to be. “Well, I’m sorry for throwing a tantrum. I’ll do better next time.” He spits the words out. He wants them to hurt, but Yamada-sensei is probably way more emotionally secure than his classmates, so he aims for at least mild annoyance instead. “Is that what you want me to say?”
Yamada-sensei stares down at him for what feels like hours, then takes his phone out of his pocket. He’s typing even before he starts narrating, “I’m asking Eraserhead to come help you.”
“Oh… so you’re tired of me?”
“Bakugou —!” Yamada-sensei gives him a sharp look. “Please. You don’t need to keep trying to provoke me, okay? I’m just trying to help.”
Katsuki slumps against the nearest desk. He inspects the new burn — nothing serious, he doesn’t know why Yamada-sensei made a big deal out of it — and then the forming bruises on his wrist, trying his best to not do all the things that he knows would get a reaction out of his teacher, things like sighing obnoxiously loud or setting off a few sparks or even making a run for the door. He crosses his arms, glaring down at the floor, the slight scuff marks on the tiles from the shoes of whoever this classroom even belongs to.
Aizawa-sensei shows up in the doorway at the same time that the lunch bell rings. He speaks over the wave of rising chatter and moving feet, “Come on. Time to go.”
He doesn’t sound all that worried. Just bored, like he’s picking his kid up from daycare. He even holds out his hand like he’s expecting Katsuki to take it, and the only thing that snaps Katsuki out of his daze is the sound of Yamada-sensei saying, “Eraserhead, we need to have a talk later.”
“Fine,” Aizawa-sensei says. He gestures for Katsuki to hurry up, undoubtedly wanting to beat the rush of students trying to get into the classroom. “Let’s get you down to Recovery Girl.”
This is so… routine.
Katsuki causes trouble, and, like clockwork, somebody arrives to clean up his mess.
The walk down the hall mainly consists of Katsuki trying to keep his head down, but once they make it to the stairs, Aizawa-sensei asks, “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
His tone makes it clear that there’s only one right answer.
“Got into a fight. With Kiri — ah, Shitty-Hair and the others.” Katsuki winces. “Don’t bring it up to them or anything. I was being a jackass.”
“They didn’t start it?”
“No.”
“I could just check the cameras,” Aizawa-sensei says.
Katsuki glances up at him. He feels that same urge to bolt as he did in the hallway, facing off against Kirishima and then Yamada-sensei. Every part of him braced for flight. “Are you going to?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Katsuki imagines his own grainy figure in the surveillance feed. Monochrome Katsuki, one-dimensional. Yelling at his classmates, threatening them, causing a scene. Without context, it looks like it’s all his fault. Having context doesn’t help much, either. When he was younger, the principal loved to pull the footage and point out the tiny black speck of Katsuki on the playground, in the hallway and the cafeteria, just enough detail to show that he threw the first punch, and that meant — without a doubt — that he started the fight. The long, silent car rides home, his mother glancing periodically in the rearview mirror because he was still too young to sit in the front seat. She’d ask, What’s going on, Katsuki? What do we need to change?
But there was never a right answer to give.
Later, it became:
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Patience, running out. He looks at Aizawa-sensei and wonders how long it’ll take for his teacher to get tired of him.
There has to be a limit, and he must be getting close to it.
It’s only a matter of time.