Work Text:
Tired eyes, maybe you've seen too much
Tired heart, every end has a start
~
Bakugou grew up in a house full of shouting.
His mother loved fiercely, ruthlessly. Wasn’t afraid to call him out on his bullshit, tell him he was being a brat when he threw a tantrum or yell at him when he treated people wrong. And while he always knew she loved him (she did say as much, more often than you’d think) her love was never soft.
I love you, he heard in the way she slapped him on the back and told him she was proud of him. In how she cooked his favourite meals even when she told him he was being whiny, called him out when he screamed right back. Heard I believe in you when she pushed him harder, and when she argued with his father about his dangerous dreams. He has so much potential, he heard her say. If only he’d get that head of his out of his ass and grow the fuck up. He could be all he dreams and more.
But he didn’t get hugged like his friends did, like Deku did from his mum. Didn’t get held when he cried, didn’t have soft words whispered to him when he was scared. The warmth he was offered was always blazing, burning, too much and always not quite enough. He got used to being loved roughly, loudly, and returned that love with the same fury with which it was given.
(Bakugou didn’t know soft love.)
~
He had more admirers than friends, and the older he got, the clearer that became.
People fawned over him. Over his talent, his quirk, his brashness. Always following him around, asking questions, telling him how good he could become one day. People told him he was brilliant, that he was special, and he soaked up their words like a sponge – carried himself like he believed them and let them get to his head, began understanding them to mean you’re better than everyone else, and that’s why we like you.
So he did everything he could to be the best, all the time. He wanted to be invincible like All Might, powerful like All Might, loved like All Might. Wanted to be stronger than his feelings, than his fears. Crying was weak, he’d soon come to realise. All Might didn’t cry.
And if he noticed that the other kids didn’t get as close to him, or never slung their arm around him in greeting, then what of it? He was too good to be treated as their equal. He didn’t need their casual touches or fond smiles.
(There was no way he longed for the contact, for someone to see him and not fear him. That would be weak, and sounded like something Deku would want.)
~
Time passed slowly then all at once, and he didn’t know when it happened but his childhood was gone. No more dragging sticks through the mud and bragging, no more winning easily at games on the playground. There was a cruel enough world out there and he didn’t want to contribute to it, act as the villains he’d seen did.
He kept his head down a little more, worked harder to get what he wanted. Was still himself, in all his loud, explosive glory… but he was more careful about the way he did things. Minded how he spoke, how he cared, even if it seemed he didn’t. Because for the first time he had something real to lose, something he cared about, and he wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers. (Not after USJ, after the kidnapping, after he finally found himself some friends.)
And if his lungs felt all knotted and wrong sometimes, no one needed to know, right? It was weak of him to ache, to need. To feel so fragile, so on edge all the time. There was an itch under his skin and he didn’t know how to scratch it, how to get rid of the agitation that’d settled deep inside his bones. He walked around so close to breaking and he didn’t know why, why him, why now.
How to fix it, make it go away.
~
Bakugou isn’t used to the softness of touches; they feel patronising, like coddling.
He knows Kirishima means well. That the arm around his shoulder isn’t meant to mock him. But it’s the closest anyone’s been to him in months, or years, probably, and there’s no way his friends haven’t noticed. His back burns under the weight of it, and it feels more suffocating than it reasonably should. So he shrugs it away with a snappish comment and walks a little faster, and Kirishima – good, kind Kirishima – doesn’t say a thing about it.
He spends the rest of the day wishing it’d come back. That Kirishima would try again, get closer again, because as much as it hurt he now craves the weight back, the comfort and the warmth and the honest friendship that came with it. But Kirishima is good. He doesn’t overstep boundaries, and Bakugou was clear with how he felt about that arm around his shoulder.
(Except he really wasn’t, he’d just yelled something along the lines of Don’t touch me, Shitty Hair, and Kirishima understood that as I don’t like it, don’t do it again. Like any reasonable person would. He couldn’t know that the feeling was just overwhelming and Bakugou just wasn’t used to it. Used to wanting it.)
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, or felt something other than restless. Angry. There have been days where all he’d felt is tired, too, and those seemed to be getting more common as time passed.
Agitated, irritable, numb. Repeat.
The knot in his chest won’t go. There are moments where he has to make a conscious effort to breathe a full breath, to take in a lungful of air before he can’t. And he thinks Aizawa must’ve noticed because he’s looking more closely than he was, frowning at his leg that won’t stop moving beneath the table and his fist clenched so tightly the knuckles are turning white. The effort it’s taking him to control himself is getting greater and more exhausting, and all he really wants is to blow it all up and sleep forever.
Aizawa calls him back after class that day, once everyone else has gone. The knot tightens but he ignores it, forces his expression into one of casual disinterest. His teacher can’t know.
But what if he could help? If he could put a name to the restlessness and the tightness and the constant exhaustion?
And then,
What if he thinks you’re weak? Unworthy?
“Are you alright, Bakugou? You seem… tense,” Aizawa starts, bored monotone a little softer. “If there’s something going on, or you want to talk about something, there are always resources available.”
I’m as far from okay as I’ve ever been, he wants to say. But he can’t admit that.
“There’s nothing going on,” he mutters, and can’t hold his teacher’s gaze as he says it. It hurts, but he pushes the words out anyway. “I’m fine.”
Aizawa looks sad when he next looks up, like he knows just how much of a lie those words are. And he seems to want to say something more, tell Bakugou that it’s okay to need help, but Bakugou cuts him off before he can get there.
“If that’s all, can I go?”
And fuck, he knows it was stupid, but he couldn’t risk his teacher asking again. Because Bakugou wouldn’t be able to lie a second time, and he’s scared he’d fall apart right here.
~
They were all in the common room, playing some kind of game.
He and Kaminari were a team and just barely scraping by but it was fun, he didn’t mind if they ended up last. The room was full of laughter, full of a closeness and warmth he’d gone too long without feeling. And the ache wasn’t gone but it was numbed enough that he didn’t think about it, which was about as good as it’d been in a while.
They had to go and win, by some miracle, because the universe fucking hated him.
The room erupted into shouts and cheers, and Kaminari immediately threw himself into Bakugou, squeezing him tight in celebration. He didn’t know if it was the noise or the suddenness of the touch but he could feel the panic rising in his throat, every instinct telling him to scramble away. It hurt on a level he couldn’t explain, felt so deeply and completely wrong.
But at the same time this is what he’d been wanting, the weight of someone around him, and he really didn’t know what to do.
It was only when Kaminari pulled away suddenly that he realised he hadn’t been breathing, and that he was shaking enough to be felt through a hug.
“Sorry, I got carried away…” Kaminari started, and Bakugou wanted to scream at him for moving away. The itch was back, and the ache, and everyone was staring at him-
“Kacchan?” A voice broke through the noise in his head, “Are you okay?”
Fucking Deku. The fucking nerd just had to go and ask something like that in front of everyone, and now there was no doubt everyone could see him. It made it all worse, he thought, having them all know.
I’m weak. I’m weak, I’m weak, I’m-
He wanted to cry. Fuck, he wanted to cry so bad. Get rid of the knot in his chest, the one that kept squeezing his lungs of air. Come clean, stop pretending, no longer feel like he was lying to everyone he knew. Wanted to admit, I’m not okay. Haven’t been okay in so long.
But then everyone would see, and everyone would hate him, and he couldn’t have that.
Bakugou yelled, because yelling was safe. Yelling sent people away without betraying his brokenness, with the impression that he was untouchable as ever.
(Something about that didn’t feel true, but it’s all he knew.)
He told Deku to mind his own fucking buisness and stormed upstairs to his room, where no one else could see him or judge him for his desperate need to be close to someone. And he knew pushing them all away was the worst possible thing he could’ve done at that moment, because fuck it, he just wanted to be held, spoken to softly, loved . His friends could do that for him but no, he had to let his fucking pride get in the way.
When Bakugou shut the door behind him he still couldn’t get himself to cry, however much he needed to, and he hated that more than anything.
~
Kirishima had known something was off with Bakugou for a while. His best friend had been distant, and more irritable than his usual personality allowed for. He’d seen the longing in Bakugou’s expression, the hurt and the need for something, but that idiot didn’t talk to him and now they were here, with half of the class staring at the spot where Bakugou had just stormed out in a shocked kind of silence.
“Sorry,” Kaminari said at last, and everyone turned to look at him. “I forgot he didn’t like hugs.”
“It’s not your fault, Denki!” Mina offered. “You were just excited about the win.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that was on you, Kaminari-kun. Kacchan’s looked off ever since he got back. I didn’t want to say anything in case he was dealing with it on his own, but…”
Midoriya was right. And now Kirishima felt horrible for not pushing harder when he asked Bakugou if he was alright, because he so clearly hadn’t been.
Some friend he was.
“I’m gonna go check on him,” he said decidedly, standing up from his spot on the floor. Bakugou needed a friend, and regardless of whether he wanted it or not, Kirishima was going to be there for him.
He thought he heard someone mutter good luck, but no one outright opposed it.
Bakugou’s door was closed when he got there, unsurprisingly. He didn’t want to try to open it in case it was locked, so he opted for doing something he was yet to do to Bakugou’s room: knock.
“Fuck off, nerd,” he heard Bakugou say from inside, but he didn’t sound angry at all. Just broken.
Kirishima pushed away thoughts of how long Bakugou had been feeling like that and spoke up instead. “It’s me, Bakugou. Can I come in?”
When no answer came, he finally tried the door.
Bakugou was sitting against the wall on his bed, knees drawn tightly up to his chest. He was hugging his knees, staring blankly at the opposite wall, and only looked up when Kirishima shut the door behind him.
“Go away, Shitty Hair,” he muttered, before turning back to the wall. Kirishima didn’t listen. He walked instead over to the bed and sat himself beside Bakugou, close enough that their sides were pressed against each other.
“I just came to make sure you’re okay. Which you’re clearly not. I’m staying, man.”
Bakugou said nothing, and on closer inspection, Kirishima found him holding his breath, muscles tense and rigid. His eyes kept flicking over to where their arms were touching, an unreadable expression crossing his face each time.
Did he… did he not like this? Was his refusal to accept hugs something more than just his stupid pride?
He began moving away, intending to leave about an inch of space between them, but the panicked noise Bakugou produced just then made him stop.
“Don’t move,” he said, so quietly it was barely audible. “Please.”
Kirishima didn’t know what to say.
Bakugou’s eyes were slowly becoming wetter, and however much his friend tried to blink them away, they were unmistakably tears. Now that he thought about it, Kirishima wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Bakugou cry, or even come close to showing this much emotion outside of annoyance. That in itself set off alarms in his head, but that was probably a discussion for another time.
Maybe he doesn’t know that it’s okay. To cry, to feel.
“Crying is manly, you know,” he started, cringing immediately as he thought of what Bakugou might snap at that, but it didn’t seem to go over badly at all. When he chanced another look at Bakugou’s face he was having much less success at keeping himself from crying, fresh tear tracks glistening in the pale light coming through the window. “C’mere.”
~
His brain was exploding with the feeling of Kirishima pressed up against him, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. It was the closest thing he’d had to comfort in so long he didn’t know what to do.
Kirishima tried to move away, probably sensing his tenseness, but he couldn’t let that happen. He needed him to say, to keep pressing against him a little longer. Even if it meant sacrificing his pride. He added please, something he hadn’t said in so long the word felt a little foreign, but Kirishima stayed. Kirishima didn’t call him weak, or pathetic, or unworthy. Kirishima said it was okay to cry.
So Bakugou did.
He didn’t want to, but he also couldn’t stop himself. Kirishima ended up moving his arm so he could bury his face into the red head’s chest, and as soon as his face made contact with the steady warmth enveloping him, there was no way to stop the sobs that escaped him.
Now, Bakugou didn’t cry often. On his list of things he hated, tears came just under the sound of Deku’s voice, and just above that half n’ half bastard’s smirk. He hated how people looked at him when he cried, a mix of surprise and horror and pity, and it made him want to blow their fucking asses a mile high. Hated how weak it made him look, how much it reminded him of how far he still had to come. Before he was as strong as All Might, as invincible.
But sitting there on the bed with Kirishima’s arms around his frame, all he could really think about was how much he’d been needing this. And some part of him hated that too – reminded him how pathetic he must’ve looked – but the overwhelming feeling of being loved overtook that, banished it to the deepest corners of his mind. All he could really feel was relief, finally, at feeling something other than rage, than agitation, than the ache that’d been slowly building in him. Everything he’d been bottling for the last six months bled out of him in minutes. He lost the will to fight it, to kick and scream and insist it was fine, he was fine.
He wasn’t fine.
But maybe in a little while he would be.
Kirishima didn’t say anything for the longest time. Let him take as long as he needed, and didn’t mention it when Bakugou buried himself a little deeper into his shirt. He was patient, and sweet, so goddamn fucking honourable about it all that Bakugou almost wanted to scream all over again, but really he was just grateful because no one else would ever do such a thing for someone like him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner, man,” Kirishima eventually whispered. “I should’ve said something when you kept insisting you were fine.”
And Bakugou would’ve argued with him right then, told the stupid fuckhead that it wasn’t his fault, but Kirishima’s fingers had found their way into his hair and were scratching softly at his scalp, and fuck, he might’ve just forgotten how to breathe.
There are no words to describe how good it feels. How safe it feels. And for once, he doesn’t think about stopping when he shakes a little harder.
~
It’s a sight he never thought he’d witness: Bakugou curled up on his chest, melting against the gentle motion of his fingers on his scalp, barely breathing as the tears kept coming. Kirishima wasn’t complaining, though, if it meant Bakugou would finally stop keeping all this pent up inside him.
He must’ve been hurting so much. So much.
Finally, finally, he felt Bakugou’s breathing even out against him, but he still didn’t move. If anything, he seemed to hold on a little tighter, as if scared Kirishima was going to let him go. Nothing could’ve prepared him for the feeling of watching such a loud, confident person look so small, but Kirishima thought maybe he understood Bakugou a little better after it all.
“You can just ask, next time,” he said, and he meant it. “For this. Or a hug. Or anything, really. You don’t have to destroy yourself before you get some love.”
And the tiny, unintelligible noise Bakugou made told him it’d be a long time before he believed it, but Kirishima would keep trying.