Chapter Text
It never occured to Bakugou to worry about Kaminari… until he saw them .
Kaminari’s penchant for brightly colored bracelets that line his wrists and forearms just seemed like another symptom of his bright personality. Too bright … if you asked Bakugou. But his opinion of Kaminari was permanently molded into a solid Before and After. Before he’d presumed the boy was naive and dumb, all of his bright smiles and mischief stemming from some sort of boundless fountain of energy within. After… he knew better.
Nobody had ever thought twice about the fact they’d never seen Kaminari without his bracelets… until someone did. Bakugou saw .
It was just another day after hero training, Bakugou was changing back into his clothes after taking a shower, blond hair already sticking up as it slowly dried. As he pulled his tanktop over his head, he heard footsteps and startled, head whipping around to see who was still in the locker room. Normally, the other boys hurried through a quick shower and hustled to get back to class.
Kaminari came around the corner with a towel wrapped around himself. One hand running through his wet hair, and then he paused in his tracks, meeting Bakugou’s gaze. They blinked at each other. “Oh… hey, Bakugou. I thought everyone else would’ve been ready faster than me?”
As the red eyed boy slowly came back from the fear pounding in his veins, he remembered… Round Face had puked on Kaminari during training after overusing her quirk. Right. “Ponytail’s dumb gel didn’t want to come out of my hair.” He snapped, but his eyes were pulled to the bare arms of his classmate. The lines that marred his skin. Some fresher than others.
Kaminari laughed and then curled his arms over his chest to hold the towel in place as he laughed. “Oh yeah… that was pretty clever of her though!” Nobody had expected her to come up with fire retardant gel that would stop Bakugou and Todoroki from using their quirks.
Bakugou grunted. “Whatever… hurry up, Dunce Face. We have to get back to class.” What was Kaminari doing to his arms? And why?
“Alright.” Kaminari hustled to his locker and hurried to get changed, taking the time to pull all his bracelets back on. While he was busy, Bakugou observed him out of the corner of his eye, mind spinning with questions he wasn’t ready to start asking. He would have to watch his friend a little more closely moving forward. Just to be sure.
It started with Bakugou watching him… constantly. Kaminari couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on him whenever he turned his back to the other blond. The discomfort was so visceral, because he couldn’t figure out what he’d done to earn the ire of the explosive boy, that he found himself getting louder and dumber around his friends.
“Hey Mina! What did the baby computer call its father?”
“What?” The pinkette’s brow furrowed in confusion at his sudden question.
“Data!”
A chorus of groans rose from the table of teenagers. “Denki, that was terrible!” The complaint of the ravenette didn’t distract Kaminari from the awareness of Bakugou staring at him in his periphery.
“Is something on my face?” He asked Bakugou, chuckling nervously.
“No.” Bakugou grunted, and then turned his gaze down to his food.
Weird .
“Have you ever seen Kaminari without his shitty bracelets on?”
Kirishima’s head jerked up at the sound of Bakugou’s voice surprisingly close to his head. “What?”
Bakugou was leaning over the back of the couch where Kirishima was playing video games alone, their heads close enough together that Bakugou could speak in a strangely hushed tone… for Bakugou. He glared at Kirishima for answering him too loudly before repeating himself. “I said… have you ever seen Kaminari without his fucking bracelets on, Shitty Hair?”
“No?” The redhead peered confusedly at his friend, ignoring the sound of his character dying horribly. “Is that why you’ve been acting funny around Kaminari lately?” Yes, Kirishima was perceptive enough to notice that Bakugou had been weirdly attentive to Kaminari recently… without any apparent cause. But nobody was getting hurt, so he’d decided to say nothing about it.
“I fucking saw his arms.” The blond muttered, even quieter than he’d been speaking before. “He’s…” His gaze darted around to be sure nobody was nearby… the room was deserted aside from the two of them and Todoroki who was napping on a distant couch. “He’s fucking… he’s hurting him-fucking-self, Kirishima.”
Two things occurred to Kirishima simultaneously: first, Bakugou had been using Kaminari’s name instead of his weird nickname… and second, Bakugou was so serious about this he had just used his name. He blinked at Bakugou, processing these realizations and the revelation that Bakugou had just handed to him. “Kaminari…” Slowly, he rolled his friend’s name off his tongue as he tried to piece together what to say about this. “He always seems so happy? Are you sure?”
Bakugou’s brow furrowed more than it already did naturally and his lips pressed tightly together for a long moment before he responded in a hushed tone. “I’m fucking sure … some of them looked recent.”
Kirishima turned his face slowly away from Bakugou, pressing one hand to his face as he tried to process this news. Kaminari was hurting himself. Bright, mischievous, good Kaminari was hurting himself. It didn’t make sense. But it did. All the brightly colored bracelets, the way he smiled and laughed and dodged serious questions about his life… Kaminari was hurting. “What are we going to do?” He asked Bakugou, worry settling into his bones with a deep ache. His friend was in pain.
Bakugou sighed and leaned onto the couch heavily. “I don’t know, Shitty Hair.”
A silence fell over the pair as they both contemplated how best to help their friend without upsetting him further.
Then… it was Kirishima. Asking him to hang out later in the evenings to study or play video games. Inviting him to train in the gym with him and Bakugou. Waking him up in the mornings with texts full of memes and bad jokes.
“Hey Kaminari! Bakugou offered to tutor me in math! Do you want to come?” Kirishima had poked his head into Kaminari’s room without knocking, his mouth pulled into a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. Red eyes flickered around Denki’s room like he was looking for something before looking Denki up and down like he was scared Denki might disappear if he didn’t check on him.
“Uh… sure.” He wasn’t that good at math, so tutoring might help him. But why was he suddenly being invited into Bakugou and Kirishima only activities? Why was Kirishima suddenly spending extra time with him that he would normally spend alone? “Let me get my notebook.” Getting up, he shuffled to his desk and fished out his notebook and pencil.
When he got to Bakugou’s room with Kirishima, Bakugou glanced up, looked him up and down and said. “Hey.” No… Why is Dunce Face here ? Or why didn’t you ask before bringing the other idiot, Shitty Hair ?
Kirishima sat down with Bakugou like nothing was different, and Kaminari joined them, his brain still spinning with confusion that Bakugou was no longer calling him Dunce Face. “So… I don’t understand this part here.” The redhead started right away, thrusting a page of his notes to the center of the table where they could all see it. Kaminari didn’t understand that problem very well either.
Bakugou sighed softly and then started explaining it in a cool tone of voice that left Kaminari wondering what sort of weird bodysnatcher had taken over the other blond.
Kirishima hadn’t meant to tell Mina and Sero… but it slipped out.
Mina sprawled on top of Kirishima and Sero on the couch, both boys holding their game controllers up a little higher than normal so their elbows wouldn’t bump her as they played. “I’m bored…” She bemoaned dramatically, one hand waving in a way that nearly knocked the controller out of Sero’s hands.
“Watch it, Mina.” Sero warned before his character knocked Kirishima’s out of the arena.
Tapping frantically to try to catch his character before they fell to their death, Kirishima let out a triumphant whoop as he caught himself on the ledge. Then, he saw a familiar blond head slink behind the TV towards the elevator and he forgot about the game. “Hey Kaminari! Do you want to play with us?”
Kaminari’s head jerked up and he glanced over at the trio on the couch. “Uh… no thanks.” He slipped away before Kirishima could prod him, which left the redhead to gnaw on his lower lip with worry.
Tipping Mina sideways off his lap, Kirishima fished out his phone and tapped out a text to Bakugou. Which made Mina protest loudly at being unseated. “Hey! What was that for?!”
“Sorry… I just have to tell Bakugou to check on Kaminari.” He muttered absently as his fingers flew over his phone.
“Uh… why?” Sero’s brow was furrowed at the idea that Kaminari needed someone to look after him. Sure, he couldn’t cook for shit and he had some really dumb ideas, but he’d just looked tired to Sero.
“We don’t want him to hurt himself anymore… oh… shit.” Kirishima realized what he’d said just as he hit send on his text. “Don’t tell Kaminari I told you.”
Mina sat up sharply. “Kaminari is hurting himself?”
Sero’s brow furrowed further, worry and confusion intermingling on his face. “But he’s always so…”
“Well… yeah. But Bakugou saw his arms… under the bracelets… he said… it was pretty bad.” Kirishima rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “So we’ve been trying to keep him from being alone too much, you know?”
Mina rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “That explains why Bakugou has been so attentive to Kaminari lately. I thought he was just being strange.” Sero made a noise of agreement.
The redhead sighed. “Yeah… I didn’t really know anything was wrong until Bakugou told me.”
“He’s just good at hiding it.” Sero soothed, recollecting himself enough to assuage the fears of his friends. “But now we know, so we can try to help him.”
“Yeah!” Mina perked up slightly at that. “We’re his friends! He trust us… so we’re the best people to help him!”
Kirishima nodded. “I guess I should have told you both sooner… but I think Bakugou didn’t want everyone to dogpile Kaminari and make him feel worse.” His phone buzzed and he glanced at the text from Bakugou. “With all of us working together… he’ll be okay.” Or at least, he hoped so.
Kaminari had hoped that in evading Kirishima he’d be able to get some alone time. After all… Bakugou had yet to invade on his privacy despite the constant staring. He’d just gotten out of his uniform when his door opened without a preceding knock… and really he needed to start locking his door now that he had friends who would just walk in without asking. “I’m really tired, bro… I don’t want…” The words died in his throat when he saw who was standing in his room with a laptop. “Oh. Bakugou… what’s up?”
“We’re watching a movie.” The other blond said without any fanfare, plopping himself on Kaminari’s bed without asking permission.
“Uh.” He started, intelligently, at a loss for what to say to that. “Okay?” Maybe it was a fear of making Bakugou more irritable with him than he already seemed to be lately… or maybe it was because he rarely actually got to hang out alone with the other blond… but he found himself settling down next to Bakugou on his bed. “What’re we watching?”
“The new Pokémon movie… you like that shit right?” Wow, since when did Bakugou pay attention to him enough to know that he liked Pokémon?
“Yeah. I do.” He settled in a little more comfortably as Bakugou pressed play. If he fell asleep during the movie... it wasn’t really his fault. He’d had a hard day and he really was tired. Something about the sound of the movie and the warmth of Bakugou at his side had the stress bleeding out of him until his head found a secure perch on a warm, hard shoulder.
But when he woke up the next morning with a mild crick in his neck, tucked comfortably into his bed with his pillows still smelling faintly of burnt sugar… he could only silently ponder why his heart was racing when he pictured how Bakugou had looked at him with something almost fond behind those red eyes when he’d briefly woken up to the other blond tucking him into bed for the night before he’d fallen back to sleep.
Weird.
Next… it was Mina and Sero. He knew Sero had insomnia, but usually Sero didn’t text people at night because he worried about waking them up. Now, Sero was texting him at night and, if he answered, Sero would text him all night. Mina had already been affectionate, but now she was often hugging him randomly and bringing him stuffed animals or Pokémon cards back from her weekend outings. Occasionally, she even dragged him out with her to the mall to wander around aimlessly.
He was starting to wonder if everyone was passing around some kind of weird disease that made them suddenly want to be around him. But he couldn’t really complain. The sound of his phone vibrating with a new text message at 3 AM when he was crying alone had quickly become comforting. Despite himself, he picked it up to look at the new meme that Sero had sent him. It was just some cat with text on it, but the image had him smiling through the tears and shoving aside the urge to seek out an outlet for his pain in favor of texting a string of laughing emojis back before going to search for a meme to send in return.
When he finally dozed off an hour later with his phone still clutched to his chest, he felt like a small weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
And if Mina dragged him out to get ice cream and play Pokémon GO the next day, he hardly complained. He even let her toy with his app long enough to rename most of his Pokémon after their classmates.
“Bakugou as a shiny Cyndaquil though?!” Kaminari asked between fits of laughter.
“It fits!” Mina insisted with a giggle.
Somehow he found himself nodding sagely in agreement as he struggled to keep a straight face. “I can see the resemblance… spiky… orange and yellow. It’s Bakugou.”
“Exactly!”
If he happened to save the pair of Vulpixes named Todo and Roki and the Bakugou Cyndaquil to his team later that night when he was alone, it wasn’t anyone’s business but his.
Maybe it was poetic justice of sorts that after Bakugou chewed Kirishima out for letting slip to Mina and Sero, and clearly overwhelming Kaminari, that he was the one to let it slip to Deku that something was wrong with Kaminari. He wasn’t sure if the fact that Kaminari seemed more stressed than usual was because of Sero and Mina or something else… but he had noticed that Kaminari was barely eating and seemed lethargic—probably from not eating—and it was bothering him. It was technically Aizawa’s fault that Deku had figured it out… since it wasn’t like Deku and Bakugou ever spent time together by choice, but Aizawa thought it was a good idea to have them spar together during training from time to time. And it was during one of these training sessions that Deku caught him distracted and managed to get in a really solid blow.
“You’re distracted.” Deku had accused while he was hunched over catching his breath.
“Fuck off.” Bakugou growled, cutting a sideways glance to see how Kaminari was doing in his own sparring match.
But Deku was a stubborn shit when he put his mind to it, so he’d kept pushing. “It’s not like you to let something distract you from a fight.”
Maybe it was because he could see Kaminari stumbling to avoid a blow from Frog Face, but what came out of Bakugou’s mouth was “what’s wrong with Kaminari is none of your fucking business.” He realized it a half a beat too late and could see the moment that Deku’s head whipped around to find the electricity user across the training ground. “Shit.”
Deku latched onto that, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What? What’s wrong with Kaminari?”
Bakugou decided his best move was to use the moment of distraction, so he lunged for Deku with his hands popping with fresh explosions to draw the greenette’s attention back to him. Unluckily for him… the temporary distraction wasn’t enough to prevent what would come later.