Chapter Text
Katsuki’s phone is ringing.
He rolls onto his side, forehead tacky with sweat because he hadn’t bothered to change into more reasonable clothes before burying himself beneath his blankets, and stares blankly at his screen. He’s still groggy with sleep, so it takes a few moments for the caller ID to fully process, but he snaps to attention as soon as he reads the scrolling words, instantly awake.
“Shit,” he mutters. He grabs his phone with clumsy fingers and connects the call, tentatively speaking into the microphone, “Hello?”
“Katsuki.”
Katsuki sits up fully, joints creaking in protest. He feels like he’s lived a thousand lifetimes, each worse than the last. “Do you need something?”
“I just wanted to check up on you,” his father says. His voice sounds so intimidating right now, even though he’s speaking in his normal, gently-inflected tone, the kind that made strangers trust him and fashion tycoons jump up to shake his hand. Katsuki has been listening to him speak since he was born, so he doesn’t know why the sound of it makes him so terrified right now - he can’t help but feel like something is about to go wrong. “How are you feeling, Katsuki?”
Katsuki contemplates his response for several long, silent moments, then says, “I’m fine.”
“Glad to hear it.” His father sounds distracted, like he can’t stop thinking about all the better ways he could be wasting his time. “Did you figure things out with your friends?”
“Yeah.” Katsuki absent-mindedly wipes his free hand on his blanket, palms sweaty and gross, and makes a mental note to wash his sheets later. He’s cried into his pillow enough times within the past day that some undiscovered kind of bacteria is probably forming on it. “They weren’t really upset with me, I guess.” He stops, braces himself to say the words out loud. “They were just playing a prank on me.”
“Oh,” his father says. “That’s a good thing, right?”
Katsuki stares at the wall. His heart is a steady ache in his chest, arms stinging with the phantom weight of his hands burning holes through his skin. He wonders if it’s possible to die from feeling nothing at all, if this horrible numbness will make his body shut down and his lungs cease to function. He almost wants that to happen.
His father prompts, “Katsuki?”
Katsuki takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know,” he says, and the words come out no louder than a whisper. “I don’t know why they thought…”
He doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t know what he was about to say, but it would undoubtedly be some stupid, self-pitying thing that would leave his father disappointed and his mother disgusted at the wreck that she raised.
“If it was just a prank, that means they were never really mad at you,” his father says. He sounds so infuriatingly patient, like he’s explaining something to a stupid but well-loved child. “That’s what you were worried about, right? That they were mad at you?”
“Mhm.” Katsuki wants to pull the blankets over his head and disappear into his sheets. He shouldn’t have picked up the call. His father is probably doing this out of some kind of obligation, and Katsuki is doing nothing but keeping him from being productive and happy, and he’s sure that his father must hate him for it. He hates himself, hates how quickly his mind jumps to the worst-case scenario. “I thought I did something wrong, but I didn’t.”
He’s not sure why that doesn’t make him feel better.
Katsuki continues, “They just thought that it would be… funny. They thought it’d be funny to act like that, and say all those things, and…”
Maybe it was funny.
Maybe he’s just being dramatic, blowing things out of proportion like he always does.
Katsuki feels hot tears prick at his eyes. He blinks them away, embarrassed even though he knows his father can’t see him, and says, “Whatever.” His voice shakes slightly. “I don’t really care.”
“... Alright.” His father hedges around the word, drags it into long syllables. He sounds like he doesn’t even want to be having this conversation, and Katsuki feels rotten to the core. “Well, I was just checking up on you, making sure that you weren’t hurt -”
“What?” Katsuki straightens up, startled. “Why would I be hurt?”
His father sighs, annoyance obvious even though they’re not face-to-face, and then quietly admits, “I received a call from your teacher.” He sounds like he’s choosing his words very carefully, like he knows that one wrong move would be enough to set Katsuki off. He’s just that fragile. “He told me that you were having some lapses of judgement and losing control of your Quirk, so I was concerned.”
“He said that?” Katsuki feels vaguely ill. “Those exact words?”
“Don’t be upset,” his father says, instead of answering the question. “He was worried about you. I could hear it in his voice.”
Katsuki mutters, “If he really wanted to help, he would’ve kept his mouth shut.”
He knows that he’s not being reasonable. Aizawa-sensei was still a teacher, no matter how powerful or self-sufficient, and there were undoubtedly things that he had to report. He just can’t stand the thought of Aizawa-sensei saying those specific words to his father. He can imagine how tense that conversation was, how awkward and embarrassing - his father, tripping over himself to say that Katsuki would never do those things, and Aizawa-sensei having to explain that he witnessed them with his own eyes.
Warningly, his father says, “Katsuki.”
“I’m sorry,” Katsuki says, feeling absolutely miserable. He’s too tired to even cry, even though he knows that tears would probably make his father be kinder to him. He’s such a manipulative asshole, always trying to find ways to make things better for himself even when he’s well-aware that he deserves to be punished. “I told him not to call you.”
“Well, you’re lucky that he didn’t call your mother,” his father says, and Katsuki feels a jolt of panic at that thought.
He’s not scared of his mother.
He’s just wary of her, of her reactions and emotions and everything she does. He thinks that maybe they’re too much alike, like her anger has been passed down to him like some kind of fucked-up inheritence, getting stronger over the years until even a simple conversation ended in bruises and tears.
He doesn’t know what would’ve happened if his teacher called her instead. He thinks that she would’ve marched up to campus himself and berated him in front of his entire class, and then she would rip into them, too, just to make things worse. Katsuki would be left humiliated and unable to show his face for days, and if his friends weren’t angry now, they definitely would be once his mother was through with them. He knows this like he knows the constant spiral of his thoughts. His mother would probably think of that as love - and maybe it is love, and he’s just too much of a little bitch to see it - but all that Katsuki can think about is how embarrassing it would be.
But he almost wants it to happen, just to have some kind of proof that somebody actually cares.
His father asks, “Katsuki, are you there?” and Katsuki realizes that he’s been quiet for a moment too long. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out, and the silence drags on for several more seconds before his father prompts, “Katsuki?”
“I’m here,” Katsuki finally manages to croak. “I - I don’t…”
“I’m happy that you got everything figured out,” his father says. “Talk to your teacher about taking a break, alright? I’m sure he’d be happy to give you some time off from your responsibilities to get your bearings. Heroes are always supposed to be in top shape, but you’re still in training, so it’s fine if you need to relax a little bit.”
Katsuki’s head spins. He hates talking to his father about anything more significant than the weather. He hates how fast the conversation switched topics, leaving him dizzy and disoriented, incapable of maintaining his footing under the barrage of words being thrown at him. He feels sick to his stomach as he says, “I’m fine. I don’t need a break or anything, I just need to get some rest, and then things will go back to normal.”
“Have you been eating?” his father asks. “I know how you get when you’re upset.”
Katsuki feels his face flush hot with shame. “I haven’t been hungry,” he whispers, and hunches his shoulders forward when his father gives a knowing hum. “I’m being serious. I’m really not hungry.” His lips are cracked and dry, his body weak. “I feel like I’m gonna vomit if I even think about food.”
He’s so truly upset about this, and he doesn’t even know why.
“You’re just like your mother,” his father says, not unkindly. “Try to eat something, Katsuki. Don’t you like to cook?”
“I like baking more.”
“Those are basically the same thing.”
“No, they’re not.” Katsuki smothers the flicker of irritation that flares to life in his chest. “They’re completely different things, Dad. I’ve told you this.”
“Don’t get caught up on the little details,” his father scolds, but he sounds almost amused. Katsuki feels guilty for getting frustrated at him. “Just go do something that makes you happy, and I’ll be happy as well.”
This sounds exactly like any number of the motivational speeches he’s given Katsuki over the years. He probably changes the words a little bit and uses them to pump up his fashionista underlings at work, and the worst part is that it most likely works on them, but Katsuki has never been so easily swayed. He wishes that he could be brain-dead and completely stupid, but he’s not, and he knows when his father is pulling things out of his ass.
“You don’t have to keep talking to me,” Katsuki mutters, wounded. “If you wanna hang up, I’m not gonna stop you. I didn’t need you to check up on me in the first place.”
He’s telling the truth. He wishes that this stupid phone call never happened.
His father sighs, “Katsuki, it’s my job to be worried about you.”
“If I wanted your help, I would’ve called you,” Katsuki says, suddenly in a very bitter mood. He did call his father when all of this first started, and nothing good came from it, and now it feels like the man is trying to patch up all those hairline fractures he left behind. “I’m sure you’re busy with something, Dad. Thanks for checking up on me, but I’m completely fine.”
Now, that part is a lie. He feels like he’s breaking down a little more with each moment he has to spend on this horrible phone call, mind racing as it tries to piece together all the terrible things his teacher must’ve said about him.
He almost wants to ask, but the only thing that would accomplish is showing how scared he is.
“... I am busy,” his father admits, somewhat reluctantly. “I should get back to work, but… I’m still worried about you, Katsuki. You’ll go to your teacher if anything happens, right?”
“Right,” Katsuki says, already knowing that he won’t.
His father sounds like he knows that as well, even as he says, “Good.”
Katsuki allows a faint smile to tug at his lips. It’s far from being genuine, but it’s better than the dull mask of exhaustion he’s been lugging around for the past several hours, even if his father isn’t aware of that. “I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too.”
Katsuki hangs up the phone, lays down, and goes back to sleep.
When Katsuki wakes up again, it’s to the sound of somebody knocking on his door.
He glances at the alarm clock on his nightstand - it’s early into the afternoon - and then heaves a sigh, wondering if he would be able to get away with just ignoring the person trying to bother him. He’s in a bad mood, and he’s still tired, and there’s nothing he wants more than to simply rot away and cease to exist.
A familiar voice calls out, “Bakugou?”
Shit.
Katsuki groans and hauls himself out of bed, staggering across the room. He yanks his door open and asks, “What?”
Kirishima blinks back at him, like he wasn’t expecting to be acknowledged.
“I just wanted to check up on you,” he says, voice softer than Katsuki has ever heard it.
Katsuki says, “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Kirishima tries for a smile, and the attempt falls flat. “I wanted to see if you were okay. I mean, you rushed off earlier, so I was worried, and…”
He trails off.
“Thanks,” Katsuki repeats, not knowing what else he’s supposed to say. “I’m fine.”
Kirishima shifts on his feet, hands clasped awkwardly in front of him. He gnaws at his bottom lip with those trademark sharp teeth, opens his mouth like he wants to speak, then closes it, then opens it again and says, “I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”
“You already said that,” Katsuki points out. He has to stop himself from slamming the door in his classmate’s face. “I’m pretty sure you mean it, but I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
He doesn’t want to talk to anybody ever again.
“Bakugou -”
“I’m tired, Kirishima,” Katsuki says. “I’m really, really tired. I want to go to sleep.”
He’s being harsh, but it’s necessary. He knows that Kirishima doesn’t really want to be here, so he’s providing an easy way out.
This conversation is so awkward, their personalities so horribly meshed together. He and Kirishima were never meant to get along - Katsuki doesn’t know why he didn’t notice that before now. Kirishima is sociable and good-natured, always taking the first step, and Katsuki is nothing but a loner at heart despite his every attempt to pretend otherwise.
They simply don’t match.
This isn’t going to work, no matter how desperately Katsuki wants it to.
He doesn’t fit in with any of his classmates, much less the ones that he calls his friends. He was just so starved for a place to belong that he brute-forced his way in and refused to leave, and that’s what all this must be: an intervention, meant to show him how much nobody wanted him here. They call it a joke because it’s kinder that way, but he sees right through it, knowing gaze piercing through every layer of bullshit and faux-kindness. He’s too aware of all his flaws to not be able to read the room, and the truth is that he has long-since overstayed his welcome.
He should’ve cut this off a long time ago so that his classmates weren’t forced to take such drastic measures, but he’s greedy and selfish and that’s all he’ll ever be. He never learns, no matter how many times the lesson is beaten into him: he doesn’t belong with normal people. He might as well be an alien from outer space. That’s what he feels like, sometimes, like all words and actions are lost to the dead-set track of his mind, like he’ll freak out if things don’t go exactly his way, and he hates it.
He can’t remember a time in which he wasn’t aware of how fucking weird he was compared to his peers.
Kirishima reaches out to do something - maybe put a hand on his shoulder or pull him into a hug - and Katsuki flinches away before he can stop himself, teeth bared. He doesn’t know what provokes the reaction, but can’t help the sudden burst of fear that kicks up in his chest, distorting his classmate’s expression until Katsuki is sure that a fight is about to break out, nerves shot and body wired to attack. He’s been in too many fights to not know how to look for them, and he thought that he was getting better, thought that he was changing, but, no. He’s like a bad dog, nothing but a fucking animal: always falling back onto old habits.
“Oh,” Kirishima says, hand hovering mid-air before he drops it back to his side. He looks pained, but maybe that’s disgust - maybe Katsuki is just reading his expression wrong, like he always does. “Sorry.”
Katsuki snaps, “Stop fucking saying that.”
“Right,” Kirishima says, and that sounds like an apology by itself, Katsuki’s temper flaring for just a moment before exhaustion weighs him back down. “I’ll just - um, I think I should let you get some rest.”
That’s not going to fix anything.
Katsuki is tired, but he craves more than sleep. He wants to disappear completely, wants to sink into oblivion and forget what it felt like to feel anything at all. He would say that he wants to die, but that word was so violent, even for him. No, he just wants to close his eyes and never wake up, unburdened from this horrible body that did nothing but fail and this equally terrible mind that skewed his perspective and left him feeling like he was walking through a house made of mirrors.
But he doesn’t say any of that.
He doesn’t think that anything would change if he did. He’s sure that giving a voice to all these twisted thoughts would just make things even worse.
“I’ll be down to make dinner,” he says instead, feeling a little weak in the knees, like he’s going to collapse at any second. He looks at Kirishima and sees something warped and distorted, wonders if anything will ever be normal again. “See you around, Kirishima.”
“Bakugou -”
Katsuki starts to close his door. “Goodbye.”
“Bakugou!” Kirishima repeats, and catches his hand between the door and the frame before it can close completely. His hardened skin chips at the wood. “Look, man, we’re worried about you.”
… Katsuki doesn’t really care.
He’s sure that those words should spur up some kind of emotion - happiness or anger or resentment - but he just feels numb, like that one time he got caught outside in the freezing cold. He thinks that there might be snow clinging to his eyelashes, frost billowing from his mouth, his internal temperature dropping lower and lower and warmed only by the constant, destructive heat of his hands. He wants to burn himself so that he can feel something again, but he’s not allowed to do that anymore - he knows, now, that he’ll be found out and scolded. His teacher will call his father again, and then…
Katsuki doesn’t know what would happen.
Nothing good, surely.
Kirishima stares at him through the hairline crack in the door like he’s waiting for a response, but Katsuki has nothing to give.
The only thing he can manage is a quiet, “Leave me alone, Kirishima.”
“It was a really stupid joke,” Kirishima says, almost pleading. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve told them to cut it out -”
“But you didn’t,” Katsuki interrupts. He can’t stop the words from leaving his mouth: they pour from his lips like bile. “You didn’t stop them, and you even fucking laughed when they said all that shit, and it wasn’t funny. It probably seemed funny to them - and it was clearly funny to you, at some point - but it sure as hell wasn’t funny to me.” He feels sick, pushing hard against the door and wearing the wood down even further when Kirishima refuses to move his hand. “Fuck, leave me alone. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than hang around me.”
“I’m sorry -”
“Stop saying that!” Katsuki feels like he’s going insane, blinking back furious tears. “I’m not even mad at you, alright? It was just a stupid fucking joke!”
Kirishima isn’t even trying to open the door. He’s just standing there, being an annoying pain in the ass, as immovable as a mountain, and Katsuki can’t fucking stare it. The next words his classmate says are drowned out by the buzzing in ears, pulse racing faster and faster until he snaps completely.
“Leave me alone!” Katsuki yells, too loud, and Kirishima yanks his hand away like he’s been shocked. Katsuki slams the door shut and listens to the way it creaks on its hinges, and he can’t stop the tears that spill from his eyes. He scrubs at them with the heel of his hand, disgusted by his own weakness, sniffling like the stupid crybaby he is as he listens to the sound of Kirishima’s footsteps fading away.
Good.
Katsuki deserves to be alone.
He’s not a social creature, no matter how many times he’s tried to force himself out of his shell. This is what he was made for: solitude, complete silence, surrounded by nothing but the miasma of his thoughts.
Katsuki staggers back to bed on wobbly legs and collapses face-down on his pillow. His outburst is already over, emotions simmering back down until he feels nothing but that hollow ache that has taken over his body ever since this stupid prank started. He doesn’t feel anything at all, and that’s somehow worse than being overwhelmed: there’s nothing. There’s just nothing. He’s not even angry, couldn’t force a snarl to his lips even if he tried, and all his energy is completely gone. He didn’t have much to spare in the first place, and now…
Fuck, he ruins everything.
Katsuki is tired, but he doesn’t fall back asleep. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling until his eyes burn, blinks, then does it again. His phone doesn’t ring, nobody knocks on his door, and he’s completely alone.
He doesn’t know why that doesn’t make him feel better.
The only thing he knows with any certainty at all is that this is never going to end. He’s going to grow and change and he’ll always feel like this, because this isn’t something that started with a stupid joke - no, this emptiness has always been a part of him, just waiting for the right moment to rear its ugly head.
He thinks, horribly, that he would be better off dead than living like this.