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The first time Bakugou Katsuki runs into Chiyo’s infirmary, he’s in the midst of what seems to be quite the anxiety attack.
He’s hunched over as he stumbles in, one hand fisting at his chest tightly as the other crackles at his side. The boy’s face is reddened, breaths coming out in short, sharp bursts as he sways where he stands. It’s obvious that he isn’t quite sure where he is right now, having fumbled into the nearest available empty room.
“Oh, dear,” Chiyo sighs, slowly moving from her desk in the corner to guide him to a seat. He bats her hand away roughly but collapses into the plastic chair anyway, free hand raising to bury itself in his unruly hair and grip it harshly as he curls into himself.
“You need to breathe, sweetheart,” she murmurs, bending down to his eye-level despite her creaking joints. “Follow my lead, please. Breathe in with me. Yes, just like that.”
It takes another few minutes for the child to listen to her, grip loosening slightly in his uniform shirt as he straightens. His eyes are still screwed shut, though, and his breathing is still uneven.
“That’s it, you’re doing wonderfully,” Chiyo coos softly. “Can you name five things you can see right now for me?”
The boy huffs out a sharp breath, lip curling as he cracks open a crimson eye to squint at her.
“Fuck off, old lady,” he rasps, making Chiyo frown and smack the back of his head lightly. She ignores the resulting growl in favour of checking his heart rate and eyes.
The stubborn boy tries to push her away, but his arms are still shaky and weak.
“What’s your name, dear?” she asks finally. The student grumbles colorfully under his breath before finally muttering out a reluctant and wispy, “Bakugou.”
Ah. This was the student who’d been kidnapped last summer, the poor thing. No wonder he looked familiar. Chiyo remembers very clearly the ruckus that event had caused, and also vaguely recalls wondering if the boy had ever been given assistance in coping with the trauma that would inevitably follow.
She thinks she can safely assume now that the answer to that is a resounding no.
“Do you know what triggered this, Bakugou-kun?” Chiyo asks gently.
“Fuck off,” he spits.
She watches him sternly, and after a few moments of stubborn silence he seems to crack under the look.
“Too many fuckin’ people in the cafeteria,” he relents finally, glaring holes into the vinyl floor.
She frowns sympathetically, patting his hand.
“So it was too crowded,” she clarifies, earning a jerky nod. “Do you have a history of claustrophobia?”
Bakugou huffs again, expression cinching.
“I just don’t like bein’ fuckin’ touched,” he grits out.
Chiyo nods again, heart panging at the twisted look of frustration and embarrassment on the child’s face.
“We don’t have to talk about it any further if you don’t wish to, dear,” she says kindly. “I just hope you know that this is nothing to be ashamed of. You would be hard-pressed to find a hero that doesn’t accumulate trauma over their career.”
The blonde scoffs and pulls his hand away from under hers.
“Fucking whatever,” he says finally.
“Please do feel free to stay here for as long as you wish,” she offers as she turns back to her desk. He glares at her, as if offended by the very notion, but doesn’t move from his seat nonetheless.
He sits curled into himself like that for the larger part of lunch, watching her tidy her workspace silently. He’s a rare sight in her infirmary, which is something that Chiyo is thankful for. The boy seems to have a better grasp on his health than his classmates, never pushing past his limits or neglecting his body the way that overzealous hero students tend to do.
“Excuse me for a moment, dear, I’ll just need to go and collect some papers from the reception,” she explains as she shuffles out of the infirmary. He responds with a noncommittal grunt, watching her leave with those piercing red eyes.
She’s at the reception office for less than ten minutes. But when she returns, it’s to the sight of Bakugou hunched over a second-year student and very grumpily wrapping bandages around the bemused girl’s forearm. Chiyo pauses in the doorway and watches, observing the gentleness and practiced ease with which the boy wraps her wound despite his rough demeanour. The opened petroleum jelly container and used wipes on the desk don’t escape the old woman’s notice.
She hums to herself thoughtfully but enters nonetheless, the creak of the door startling the two teenagers.
Bakugou backs away from the injured girl immediately at the sight, but Chiyo simply settles into her chair and waves him forward again with a kind smile.
“Please, continue. You’re almost finished, and you’re doing fine on your own.”
The boy gives her a suspicious look but edges forward again, slowly picking up the bandages to roll them tighter where they’d started to unravel when he dropped them. He works quietly, brow furrowed in concentration as he clips off the edge of the bandage securely and brushes all the used wipes and plastic wrappers in the waste bin. The girl thanks him cheerfully, looking confused but grateful nonetheless, and heads out of the infirmary with a bow. Chiyo and Bakugou are left in silence, and the elderly woman watches as the student meticulously wipes down the desktop with an antibacterial wipe, before pushing to his feet to wash his hands in the sink.
“Are you after my job, Bakugou-kun?” Chiyo asks teasingly, making the boy splutter.
“I—I wasn’t trying to—ugh! She was bleeding all over the fuckin’ floor, and I didn’t know when the fuck you’d get back!” he snaps back defensively. True to his word, there are a few droplets of drying blood on the vinyl that he proceeds to kneel down and clean carefully, too. She accepts the answer easily, leaning back in her seat.
“You’re very thorough in your cleaning,” she observes curiously. He lifts his head to give her an incredulous look, as if questioning her entire existence.
“What, did you want me to leave fucking blood on the floor? It’s basic fucking hygiene, old hag.”
She chuckles, continuing to watch the way Bakugou’s brow furrows deeply as he dedicates his full attention to the cleaning task at hand. He’s not wrong, of course, but it’s still somewhat disconcerting to see a teenage boy be so aware of such things. Most high schoolers she’s dealt with in her long career have been less than concerned about maintaining workplace hygiene, especially boys of his demeanor. His treatment of the girl’s injury had been textbook execution, clean and efficient. Honestly, Chiyo isn’t sure she could have done it better herself.
“Hm,” she sighs. “Well, you handled her injury wonderfully.”
He gives her a skeptical look as he brushes off his pants after dropping the paper towels in the bin.
“She had a fucking cut and I put a bandage on it,” he deadpans, obviously less than willing to just take the compliment.
Chiyo simply nods placatingly, and pushes from her seat to carry the paperwork to her desk.
“It wouldn’t kill you to accept praise for your skill, dear,” she mutters with a fond smile nonetheless, and he huffs, muttering something quite rude under his breath that she pretends not to hear.
Minutes later, the lunch bell is ringing and Bakugou is shuffling out of the infirmary without so much as a goodbye. Chiyo chuckles to herself as she files the documents away.
What an interesting afternoon, she muses.
-
The second time Bakugou Katsuki finds himself in Chiyo’s office, it’s when she catches sight of him loitering around the corridors of the school during lunchtime. A third-year class has just returned from a training trip and she’s found herself with around ten young adults in various states of injury sitting in her infirmary.
She catches movement in the corner of her eye, and looks up just in time to see Bakugou pass the open door, hands shoved roughly in his pockets and back slouching. She pauses, considering the room full of students before shaking her head faintly and pushing past the group to peek her head out of the door.
“Bakugou, dear!” she calls, making the other turn around to blink at her with his perpetually irritated scowl.
“What, woman?” he drawls, eyes narrowed, and she beckons him over cheerfully.
“If you’re not doing anything, come down and help a poor old lady do her job, won’t you?”
He scowls, grumbling something about child labour, but follows her into the infirmary nonetheless.
The third-year students look a little intimidated at his arrival, obviously recognising him, but don’t protest when he shuffles towards them and wordlessly inspects their injuries.
He turns to her after a moment’s silence.
“These are all just minor burns,” he says slightly irritably. “Why can’t you just do your fuckin’... pedo kiss thing?”
Chiyo gives him a slightly miffed look.
“I’m not going to risk draining them of any energy on a school day,” she says sternly, refusing to acknowledge the other part of his comment. “All they need is some bandaging and they can be on their way.”
The blonde boy gives her a vaguely skeptical look and she turns away to busy herself with unrolling some gauze.
“Well,” she says slowly, with her back turned to him, “I guess if you’re unable to handle it you can leave.”
Predictably, Chiyo receives a barrage of curses and a few small explosions in response. When she turns back around to peer at him moments later, however, he’s silently and furiously running cold compress cloths through water.
But despite the ire that’s displayed clearly on his face, he’s still deceptively gentle when he presses the compress to the nearest girl’s burned arm.
The latter looks slightly taken aback at his careful actions, but her shoulders relax slightly with a look of wonder when she realises she’s not at risk of imminent harm.
Chiyo smiles to herself fondly as the boy does his rounds, meticulously laying cold compress cloths against all of the students’ burns with stern orders to not move.
It’s almost comical, watching how all the senior students bow under this first-year boy’s gaze, meekly accepting his berations like cowed puppies being scolded by their mother.
The sight is so fascinating that Chiyo lets Bakugou finish treating the entire group by himself.
His movements are efficient as he smoothly spreads antibiotic ointment over the burned areas and wraps them in gauze bandages.
His clear experience with treating injuries is extremely impressive, if not slightly concerning.
When Bakugou is done, he turns back to Chiyo, only to do a double-take at the sight of her seated comfortably in her chair with a flask of tea.
“What the hell?” he demands, looking slightly flustered at her proud smile. “Did you even do anything that entire time?”
Chiyo hums, taking an unhurried sip of tea.
“I don’t suppose I did,” she says, eyes glinting. “It seems I wasn’t necessary, when you did so magnificently.”
She’s met with chimes of agreement from the third-year students, who seem to have warmed up to Bakugou greatly after his careful treatment of their injuries.
The blonde in question sputters for a few moments, turning a deep red, before he’s storming out of the room without another word.
“Thank you!” the bandaged third-years chorus as the door swings shut behind him.
There’s a muffled, “Fuck you!” in response, making all the older students laugh easily. Even Chiyo has to fight back a smile this time, slowly growing accustomed to Bakugou’s abrasive demeanour.
-
The third time Chiyo finds herself working alongside Bakugou Katsuki, it’s of his own accord. It’s another field trip day, and she’s just received a batch of weary, battered second-year students in varying degrees of injury. She’s already used her quirk on the worser of the lot, letting them rest in the infirmary, but even now there’s still an intimidatingly large number of students with milder wounds that need to be treated.
She’s so focused on her task that she doesn’t hear the door open behind her. The room falls silent, and then Bakugou is standing next to her and washing his hands at the sink.
“Hello, dear,” Chiyo says, in a mixture of thinly-veiled shock and blatant relief at his arrival. Bakugou gives nothing but a grunt in response as he turns to dry his hands and get started on a nearby older boy’s lacerated arm. The students are all still watching him in hushed confusion, and Chiyo ducks her chin and smiles as she wraps a girl’s arm gently.
The two of them work in silence this time, and Chiyo finds herself finished with the task in under half an hour, as opposed to the two hours or more she would have spent had she completed this task alone. Bakugou is limber, his young body able to move faster and more fastidiously than her creaky joints allow her.
When he’s finished, he slips out of the room at the bell silently, ignoring the calls of gratitude from the students behind him.
“He was… nice,” one of the young women says slowly, lightly touching at the bandages that Bakugou had finished wrapping around her calf moments before he left.
She receives a few nods and comments of assent.
“He’s different from what I expected,” another boy says from where he’s sitting on a bed and flexing his arm slowly. Chiyo chuckles, but it’s tinged with bitterness as she imagines what kind of image these students must have of Bakugou when all the world knows of him is the Kamino ward incident and the mess that was the sports festival.
“Off you children go,” she says lightly, chest still weighed down by her musings.
“We’ll have to thank him again.” The first girl sounds vaguely sheepish as the students file out of the infirmary.
“Man, now I feel bad. I think I might have misjudged him,” her male companion groans, making Chiyo grin in the confinement of her now empty office.
It seems that Bakugou doesn’t need any help fixing his reputation, after all.
-
Two months later, Eraserhead is calling Chiyo’s office from Ground Beta.
“Requesting medical assistance, there’s been a small incident during training.”
Chiyo rises from her seat, reaching for her medical kit.
“Any serious injuries?” she asks briskly. There’s a rustle from the other side, and a pause.
“No. From what I can see, just some mild cuts and burns that I don’t want infected. Midoriya has broken his leg… again.”
Chiyo sinks back in her chair slowly, and leans back with a contemplative hum. “Send Yagi’s boy my way, but Katsuki can deal with the rest,” she says bluntly. “Tell him there’s a kit with medical supplies at the west exit door.”
“Kat… suki?” Eraserhead echoes numbly.
There seems to be some type of commotion on the other side, and then Chiyo hears a familiar voice shouting, “Tell that old prune that she oughta start paying me for all the work she gives me! ”
Chiyo chortles fondly.
Katsuki has become somewhat of a regular sighting in her office over the past few weeks, randomly materialising when needed and then slipping away again. He seems to have become slightly more civil with each encounter, too. By now, Chiyo has graduated to using his first name, and in return earned the title of ‘Recovery Girl’ instead of some grossly offensive nickname. That is, when Katsuki’s not angry at her, at least.
“Ever the charmer,” she sighs through her chuckles.
“What the hell,” Eraserhead mutters to himself, barely audible across the line.
She’s still laughing when he hangs up.