Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Katsuki knows that something is wrong as soon as he walks into the common room.

His friends are gathered together by the couch, giggling amongst themselves for no apparent reason. None of them look up when Katsuki says his usual, “Good morning,” a habit formed by weeks of living in a confined space with his classmates. The lack of response isn’t enough to do anything but annoy him, but what really stops him in his tracks is the silence that falls as soon as he takes a step towards his friends.

It’s as if a switch has been flipped - the laughter stops, and he finds himself pinned under the weight of several unfamiliarly cold stares.

“Do you need something, Bakugou?” Kaminari asks.

Katsuki blinks. He opens his mouth to speak, then falters, stunned into silence by the sight of a scowl on his friend’s usually smiling face. Finally, he manages to find his voice. “Is something wrong?”

“Nah, not really.” This time, it’s Ashido who speaks. She smiles at him, but it’s nothing like the bright, sharp-toothed grins that he’s used to from her - this is cold, almost perfunctory, the polite smile you’d give to an annoying stranger that refused to leave you alone. “I mean, everything was fine until you showed up, but that’s not a big deal. You can stay down here if you want.”

Her words are accompanied by a brief bout of giggles from the rest of their friends, but the sound of his classmates’ amusement doesn’t make Katsuki feel as warm as it usually does. Mostly because he’s pretty sure that they’re laughing at him - that he’s being made fun of.

“... Alright,” Katsuki says. He knows that he should feel angry, but instead there’s a sickness building at his core, a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach. His mouth is dry, and he feels as if he has taken a blow to the head: his entire world has been knocked off-kilter. “If any of you guys are hungry, I can make breakfast…?”

He doesn’t know why it comes out sounding like a question, shaky and unsure. 

“No, that’s alright,” Sero pipes up. He’s sprawled out on the couch, long limbs askew on the cushions like his only goal is to take up as much space as he can. He almost reminds Katsuki of a spider, voice sickly sweet as he says, “We were actually planning on going out to eat. Right, guys?”

“Yep!” Kaminari grins. “Kirishima found a pretty good place!”

Katsuki glances over at Kirishima, who hasn’t said a single word since Katsuki arrived. He searches his friend’s face for any kind of answer to the odd behavior, but Kirishima refuses to meet his gaze. 

Katsuki swallows, mouth dry. “What’s the name?” he asks, tearing his eyes away from Kirishima to refocus on Kaminari. “I probably know where it is.”

Kaminari’s smile turns the tiniest bit smug. “Don’t bother,” he says. He shakes his phone slightly, screen lit up bright for just a second before dimming once more. “I’ve got directions.”

Frustration flares to life in Katsuki’s chest, his famously short temper coming into play. “You don’t need directions if I know where it is.” 

Kaminari laughs. “Well, it’s not like you’re coming with us, Bakugou!”

And he says it so matter-of-factly, like it’s common sense - Katsuki instantly deflates, anger draining out of him like air from a leaky balloon. “Oh,” he says. “I thought…”

Ashido blinks at him, wide-eyed and innocent. “You thought what?”

“Nothing.” Katsuki’s response is too fast, throat tight as he curls his hands into fists at his sides. “Nothing. It’s fine.”

“Ah…” Sero sits up, smile stretched wide across his face. Katsuki tenses even further at the sight of it - he’s picked up on the situation enough to know that nothing kind is about to come out of his classmate’s mouth. “I mean, if you’re so desperate for somebody to hang out with, I guess you could come with us.”

Before Katsuki can answer, Kaminari groans. “No way!” he says. “All he’d do is complain the whole time, you know how he is!”

“That’s easy to deal with,” Ashido scoffs. She leans against the arm of the couch, idly checking her nails. They glitter in the overhead lights, and so do her eyes as they dart over to Katsuki, flicking up and down in a bland once-over. “He’ll shut up if you ignore him. Everybody knows that.”

Everything is happening too quickly for Katsuki to process. He thought he knew his place among his classmates - thought that his friends wanted him around - but it’s quickly becoming clear that he was wrong. The dynamics seem to have shifted without him even knowing, and he feels as if he has been slapped across the face - the aftermath of a hard blow, first a cold sting and then nothing but flaring heat, blazing hot on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. 

“I -” Katsuki blinks, disoriented. “I’m fine. I don’t need…”

He trails off, taking a step back.

Sero’s grin reaches his eyes, making them sparkle with amusement. “See you later, Bakugou.”

“Right.” Katsuki feels very small under the combined weight of his classmates’ gazes. He doesn’t remember ever feeling like this around them - even when they first met, they were friendly. He has never really had any doubts about his standing with them… until now, at least. “If you need anything -”

Kaminari cuts him off. “You’ll be the last person we call, trust me.”

And that makes everybody laugh - even Kirishima chuckles a bit, smothering the noise behind a closed fist. Katsuki’s eyes snap to him, and he sounds almost desperate as he asks, “Kirishima?”

Finally, Kirishima looks at him. “What?” 

Katsuki stares at him, searching for some kind of answer as to what the fuck was going on. But Kirishima’s expression is unreadable, holding none of the kindness that Katsuki has long-since become accustomed to. 

Katsuki knows that he should be angry. He has always been good at that, at solving his problems with violence, with the dull thud of his fists against living flesh, knuckles smeared with blood - but this is different. This is wrong. There’s nothing here for him to fight but his own wounded feelings, and that’s just pathetic.

Katsuki knows that he’s hard to be around sometimes. It makes sense that his friends would want to hang out without him.

But, no matter how logically he tries to frame it, he can’t quite wrap his head around the way that he’s being spoken to. There’s no build-up, no nothing - he was on good terms with all of his friends last night, playing video games with Kaminari and Sero past his usual bedtime, painting Mina’s nails, talking with Kirishima, pinning Jirou’s hair back into new and interesting styles… 

What the fuck could have happened in that short period of time?

Eventually, Katsuki can’t stand it anymore - he looks away from Kirishima, almost dizzy with confusion as he says, “Alright, I’ll get out of your way, then.”

“Great!” Mina beams at him, all sharp teeth. “Are you just gonna go hang out in your room, Bakugou? That’s pretty sad.”

Katsuki grits his teeth. “You obviously don’t want me here,” he points out.

“Well, maybe you should make some friends.”

“I thought -”

Katsuki stops himself.

I thought you guys were my friends, is what he had been about to say, the words bitter on his tongue, but he swallows them down and turns around instead, stalking back towards the elevator - what he said was true, his presence clearly isn’t wanted here, or even necessary. All he’s doing is taking up space.

As he reaches out to press the elevator button, he’s startled back by the sound of the lift hitting the ground floor. The doors slide open, and Jirou steps out, staring at him for a second before saying, “Oh, it’s just you.”

There’s still a clip in her hair from last night.

Katsuki’s hands twitch with the urge to rip it out, but he holds himself back. “Yeah,” he says, voice harsher than he means it to be. “It’s just me.”

“Hm.” Jirou walks towards the rest of their friends, not even giving Katsuki a backwards glance as she says, “Talk to you later, Bakugou,” in a bland tone that makes it clear that she wouldn’t mind if she didn’t have to talk to him ever again.

“Fuck you,” Katsuki responds, the words out before he can stop them. 

He storms into the elevator, jamming his finger against the button that makes the doors close faster, and hides his face against his arm as soon as he’s out of sight. His chest is tight, and his eyes burn - he’s not even hungry anymore, the only ache in his stomach born from the anxiety eating him alive. 

What is happening?

He feels as if he has stepped into some kind of alternate universe - nothing is right, and everything is wrong. His skin prickles, and he can’t breathe properly no matter how hard he tries to force himself to calm down.

This has to be some kind of misunderstanding, he must have done something wrong for his friends to treat him so coldly. That’s the only logical explanation. 

He did something wrong. He needs to find a way to fix it.

Katsuki feels sick.

He stumbles out of the elevator as soon as the doors open to his floor, fumbling the lock of his dorm room open with shaky hands as his breaths rip harsh and ragged from his throat. His vision blurs, and he’s dangerously unsteady on his feet, slamming the door shut behind him and then just standing there, frozen, wondering how he could possibly fix his mistake when he wasn’t even sure what he did wrong in the first place.

Shit. Shit, he needs to be better. He’s supposed to be perfect, he’s not supposed to make mistakes, this is his own fault - he can’t blame his classmates for being cold to him when he’s such a flawed person, an example of everything that a hero isn’t supposed to be. 

He’s too loud, too rough, too much. He’s lucky that he has been tolerated for this long.

He can’t fucking breathe.

Whenever he closes his eyes, whenever he blinks, all he can see is the way that his classmates were looking at him - their coldly amused gazes, their bright, mocking smiles. 

He’s stupid. He’s so fucking stupid for thinking that he was a fixture in their friendship.

Katsuki’s heartbeat is roaring so loud that it’s all that he can hear, pounding in his ears as he struggles for air. His head hurts, his lungs ache. He feels sick, stomach twisting as nausea churns in his gut - he thinks he might be going insane, legs shaking beneath him before giving way to the hard floor below. 

He curls in on himself, trembling like a scared little kid.

When he was in primary school, his friends pulled a plastic bag tight around his head, a stupid childhood prank that lasted only as long as it took for them to realize that he couldn’t breathe. This feels a lot like that, but worse - there is nobody here to help him, and he’s suffocating all alone, unable to think logically as tears press hot behind his eyes.

Fuck, he’s being stupid.

That thought doesn’t help at all. He knows that he’s being stupid, that he’s overreacting, but he can’t stop himself. He has always been an emotional person, ready to snap at a moment’s notice. He hates it, he hates his stupid crybaby tears, and he hates himself - nothing new. 

For as long as he can remember, he has been aware of the fact that there was something wrong with him.

No matter how hard he tries to be normal, he’s missing something crucial, something necessary in order to function like a regular person, to regulate his feelings and learn from his mistakes. He just keeps doing the same things over and over again, he doesn’t change, he doesn’t grow - it’s no wonder that his friends finally grew tired of him. He’s fucked up, he’s ruined. No, he’s not ruined - that implied that he was something good that somehow got tainted. He has never been good. He has never been anything worth keeping.

And there’s nothing he can do to change that.