So here's chapter 1 officially! I'm using this as my NaNoWriMo this year, and I've been good about staying on track so far so hopefully that continues...
I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading!
On Fridays after school, Katsuki was required to go to therapy. He used to go three times a week then it was two then they tried to get him to attend group sessions which caused him to relapse back to three sessions a week. Finally, he worked his way down to once a week, every Friday.
He doesn't know quite how he feels about that concept of progress anymore. There is the obvious benefit that he is no longer required to discuss emotions he hardly understands and articulate thoughts that don't ever fit within the words that fall from his tongue as often as before; however, Katsuki had a difficult relationship with progress.
In the before progress had always been the purpose behind everything he had done. He was meant to be the best, greater than everyone in everything, and progress meant that he was on his way to accomplishing that. He would be remembered if he progressed far enough, and he always believed that if people remembered him, knew who he was instinctively, dreamed of being just like him, then Katsuki fulfilled his most sincere wish.
But that was before. He still believed in progress, but now progressing held a bitter despair that before had sweetened his tongue. It was as though his taste buds had finally acclimated to the artificial honey of progress that now he could finally taste the true rancid quality that had always lingered beneath the ideal he once thought so satisfying.
Progress meant leaving the past behind in a way that Katsuki didn't think he could handle. If he forgot the past then not only would the bliss of ignorant childhood be gone, but there was also the very real possibility that he would forget all his previous mistakes. Progress meant moving past and over and beyond but that didn't mean he wouldn't relapse. World history was cyclical enough, so why should Katsuki himself be any different?
Still every single fucking time he went to his therapy sessions, Dr. Hiruluk would tell him what wonderful progress he was making and how if he kept going like this then things would maybe get easier. Katsuki didn't want easier when he had done nothing to deserve it.
But his sessions were required, and when he didn't show up, his dad would look at him with those sad eyes that seemed to drown Katsuki with their disappointment. His independence would get constricted, and their house would become even colder, every movement more agitated and angry until Katsuki redeemed himself by going to his next session.
When Katsuki shows up to this time it is with the same resignation that has brought him here for the past month rather than any true belief that he can heal and grow and lacking any real desire to do so as well.
He never showed up right on time; any moment spent in the waiting room, lingering in the possibility of being seen or being overcome by desires to just bolt before he can be called, would be a moment too long.
Dr. Hiruluk was accustomed to it at this point; he was accustomed to a lot of Katsuki's bullshit by now. And if Katsuki knew anything about himself for absolute certain, it was that he had a lot of varied bullshit dragging along behind and within him. Thoughts, feelings, histories, too much that shouldn't be as it was.
Katsuki walked directly into the room when he got there without bothering to knock or wait for any confirmation that he should enter now. If he did, he probably wouldn't be able to really convince himself to enter even after so many sessions under his belt.
"Ah, Katsuki-kun, there you are," Dr. Hiruluk looked up from the papers he had been scanning, they were probably whatever complaints and reports he had received about Katsuki over the past week. His parents and teachers were always sending the quack all sorts of things that Katsuki didn't think were all that very accurate.
Katsuki dropped his backpack on the floor by the wall before taking his seat, slinging his legs over one arm of the chair so that he was draped perpendicularly across the cushion (Hiruluk had made the mistake of telling Katsuki to make himself comfortable one too many times until Katsuki finally decided to take him up on that offer).
"So how was your week?" It always started off this way.
"Fine." Katsuki was always tense at the beginning of the sessions, having retreated back into his head throughout the week.
"Oh come now, there must have been something more to it! Did you learn anything interesting at school? Or maybe you did something fun last weekend?" Hiruluk was always far too chipper for his own good.
"They just talk about the same shit over and over at school. I did nothing last weekend; that was fun." He wasn't about to offer anything outside of what was asked; the doctor had to work for his answers, poking and prying through the layers of Katsuki's facades and deflections to reach something that more closely resembled the truth.
"Well how about for this weekend? Anything special planned?"
"Nope." Katsuki popped the p and grinned sardonically which just ended up looking like he was baring his teeth at the blank white expanse of ceiling.
"Another weekend of nothing then?" Katsuki didn't even bother to respond to that.
The doctor sighed. "What about the people at school? Have you given any thought to what I recommended last time about connecting with someone new?"
"Yeah, I've thought about it."
"And?"
"And I think it's a shitty idea."
"And why do you say that?"
Katsuki just glared at the ceiling, his insides fuming. This was another reason why he hated these sessions, his emotions and nerves were always provoked in ways that they never were in the real world. Katsuki could feel bits of his other self coming through in his annoyance, and while part of him loved being allowed to just feel again for once, the other part was terrified of what he'd do when feeling.
"Well what's stopping you from connecting with someone right now do you think?"
"I don't want to." 'Stop asking.'
"And why is that?"
"Because I just don't want to." 'Stop asking.'
"Katsuki," the doctor sighed, staring over his reading glasses to look the boy in the eye.
Katsuki sighed himself and grimaced.
"Do you wanna try that answer again?"
The next huff of air deflated Katsuki entirely, his body molding into the chair even further. "I don't like talking to other people. They either know what happened and are scared of me- which they should be goddammit- or they don't fucking know which is even worse. No one knows the whole thing, and I'm not gonna tell 'em, but if they don't know then I can't be around them. I don't trust- I just well- I don't trust them."
"That's not it though is it?"
Katsuki squirmed, rolling his shoulders around, trying to gain some semblance of comfort and control within this situation. "It's enough."
"So if someone did know the whole thing then you could befriend them?"
"Well, no, or I guess, maybe, but really…" It wasn't worth it to lie, not even to himself in this case. "No. I couldn't do it even then."
"So then what's the real issue here?"
"I'm not good at making friends."
"Katsuki." Hiruluk didn't believe that for a second, and Katsuki hadn't expected him to. Katsuki was very good at dancing around his issues; however, once cornered, he became desperate, and his desperation hindered any attempt to continue his facades.
They waited in silence as Katsuki worried his lip, biting at it to the point where he was nearly piercing the flesh.
"I guess…" he trailed off, thoughts moving too quickly to word fully. He wasn't sure he wanted them outside his mind, exposed to reality as they would become should he vocalize them.
"Take your time."
"I'm myself. I can't change that. But I want to. Because I don't trust me. Even if someone else did. I wouldn't. I can't." If he said it in small phrases, took breaks in between, then maybe he could wring it from his mind. "And if someone else became… friends… w-with me. They can't. I won't let them. Because it wouldn't be good for them. There's no way that would end good for them."
"Why?"
"Because… Because!"
"..."
"Because I don't trust me! I'd hurt them. Do something terrible that I'd regret, but it wouldn't matter. I'll still have done it, and everything we did before wouldn't fucking matter because I did that. I hurt them. You can't take that away…" Katsuki's voice cracked, emotion clenching his throat.
"Katsuki-kun, you've come so far since we started."
'Don't tell me that.'
"You can open up to me, so why not someone new? Find the right person. They'll understand if you just try your best. If they don't then at least you know you tried. And when they do understand- because someone will- they could help you more than I ever could. They'll help you more than you could ever do by yourself. So why not let yourself try?"
'Stop asking.'
Katsuki was tensed within his chair again, his armor and castle walls once more carefully constructed to protect him from the sting of the world. He curled his hands into fists, grinding his teeth, furrowing his eyebrows, every muscle taught with inner turmoil.
"What's so wrong with taking a chance?"
'Stop asking.'
"Why not at least try once?"
'Stop asking.'
"What do you have to lose?"
"All my memories!"
Dr. Hiruluk was clearly slightly taken aback by the sudden explosion of temper. Katsuki wasn't known for these sorts of dramatic outbursts in the office. If he was having an episode, it usually meant he had fallen into a darker place in his mind, shutting down rather than blowing up.
"And what do you mean by that?"
But Katsuki just shook his head vehemently. He was tight lipped after that, refusing to say anything else on the matter. He spoke in single words the rest of the session if he even answered at all until Dr. Hiruluk finally called the session to a close early once it became increasingly more apparent that Katsuki wouldn't open up again.
"Katsuki-kun," the doctor stopped him as he was picking up his backpack. "I do still want you to think about talking to someone new even if it's not someone at school or even someone you would call a friend. Talk to someone. It could even be reconnecting to someone. Just talk, okay?"
Katsuki nodded once before bolting out the door.
He kept running even after he has left the building. It was a long a time before he stopped. Even when he did, his mind was still running miles ahead.
The same hurried mentality followed him through the weekend as he tries to escape everything that he never can. He didn't even know what he was running from anymore; he hasn't known for a while.
He keeps running still.
When Katsuki went to school on Monday, there was an energy trapped in his body that he had not felt in months. He was a closely wound spring, potential energy confined too closely together, waiting to be released, to trigger something else.
He fidgeted throughout the entire morning, and unlike every other time when he hadn't heard a word the teachers have said, this time it was because he had run away in his mind rather than sunk deep within it. It was thrilling in a way, this feeling of being able to do something, but in another matter of thinking, it was suffocating.
He wanted to do something, but he felt chained down, confined to his sack of skin. There was an innate compulsiveness to this energy that made him feel just as much a slave to this new surge of thought as he was dragged down by the weightiness of his melancholic sense of normality. It was intrusive and persistent in a way that pervaded his thoughts as much as his body.
Katsuki was asked several times to sit still; he heard every command; he could not listen to any of them.
By the time lunch rolled around, it was all he could do not to dash out the door and through the hallways until he could reach the fresh air. Sometime along the way to then, the energy had reached a point where it made him feel not just confined within his body but the room around him. It was a slowly consuming wave of claustrophobia that Katsuki could never say he had ever felt an inkling of in his life up until now.
He did not flee the school however (God only knew how his teachers and parents would have reacted to that new compulsion) but instead exercised every fiber of his self-control and patience to wait his turn to be served lunch within the classroom.
It looked like it was Snail Eyes and Office Supplies turn to pass out the lunches.
Snail Eyes was obnoxious and always acted like it was Halloween every goddamn day by pulling his eyes out of their sockets and let them droop and swing and… It was just disgusting. (He was also a fucking cheater, but he was so stupid, he hadn't yet realized that he was placed purposefully next to the only people that got worse scores on exams than him. When he didn't get better grades he assumed it was because of the questions he had tried to answer himself.)
Office Supplies wasn't all that bad though. She was quiet, the typical shy nerdy girl, but rather passionate about dogs. She sat in front of Katsuki this year, but they had never really interacted outside of passing papers in their row.
"Thank you," Katsuki said hurriedly without really thinking about it as she handed him the tray of food, a small quirk of his lips tempting them into what was the closest Katsuki got to a soft smile in recent months.
The noise surrounding them stopped immediately, all movements and previous conversations ceasing as the hush swiftly travelled through the room.
Katsuki looked up, sensing the strange tension in the room, wondering over the girl's shadow that still lingered over him. Her eyes were still on him, and their gazes met, hers slightly glazed over behind glasses, seemingly startled beyond belief. Katsuki's brows scrunched in confusion.
'What the hell was- Oh! Oh. Oh…' Katsuki's eyes widened in realization before he ducked his head back down, falling back into himself.
He could not accurately say when the last time he had willingly spoken out in class was, let alone the last time he had spoken without prompting to someone that wasn't directly in charge of him. No one else in class seemed to be able to remember either. And even if they did remember the last time he spoke, it was never something as considerate as a thank you. God, he really was just the fucking worst wasn't he? He was a fool to think, to hope that they'd ever-
"You're welcome Bakugou-kun."
Katsuki peeked back up through his bangs. She was smiling at him before she turned to get another tray to bring to a classmate. The noise returned to the classroom, and that was that. He still ate his lunch in silence.
Now that he had successfully interacted with a peer, Katsuki felt even more rejuvenated as though he could finally actually do something, talk to someone without completely screwing it up. He doodled the entire afternoon to the extent that even in his math problems, the numbers had lives of their own. There were stories on his paper that probably didn't make sense but might have once been so when in his mind.
He resolved himself to talking to her at the end of the day, and even if they didn't become friends or hang out after that at least he'd have tried. That was what counted; that was enough. Right?
It was harder to keep his nerve when their final teacher released them at the end of the day, and she began packing her bag in relative earnest (Katsuki did everything more sedately that everyone else though). She looked like she had plans. Maybe he shouldn't… No. He needed to show that he could grow a fucking backbone.
He took a deep breath and looked around. Some people had already left, and those that were left were too engrossed in their own worlds to pay any attention to Katsuki.
He cleared his throat as he stood up behind her. "Eh, erm, h-hello."
She turned to face him, and somehow her questioning gaze pierced his fortified resolve, tempting him to bolt even faster than his own thoughts had before. He should go. He should leave. Now. Before he fucks it up. Before. Before. Before…
"Oh! Hello Bakugou-kun." Her pleasant reply helped to soothe some of those nerves.
He got through the first step; he greeted her. He started it. He had planned so many different responses and answers and questions to move on from this point, but he forgot them all in the heat of the moment. Katsuki stumbled over his thoughts and his words. "I-I'm sorry. I, uh, that is I don't remember your name…?" He trailed off in question.
She looked at least a little bit nervous, but Katsuki couldn't tell for sure nor could he surmise its cause. Regardless, she did answer, "Um, it's Tachibana Nami."
He felt stupid.
"Oh. Right."
He was stupid.
She, Tachibana, fidgeted with the strap of her bag on her shoulder, looking at her hands where they played with the grey fabric then back up at him. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Did you want something?" She ended up asking.
Katsuki's brain was working overtime, but nothing coherent was coming from it. There was a jumble of thoughts and feelings, but he was as overwhelmed by them as he was by the situation itself. His responses got even less comprehensible. "Er," Good start. "I was, well, I was wondering actually if, you know, like, well, just that, I mean I, that is I-"
"Nami!" They both startled and glanced over to the door of their classroom where another two girls wait. One had bright blue hair and her hands on her hips; she was clearly the one who had called, looking impatient even though it had only been a moment since she had spoken. The other has sleek black hair and seemed to just be there for support; she still had a smile on her face.
"Sorry Bakugou-kun," Katsuki looked back at Tachibana, now entirely overwhelmed for a whole new reason. Girls shouting from multiple locations was just… overwhelming. "I've gotta go."
Katsuki couldn't tell if she actually felt remorseful, but he forced himself to still try to say his piece. He hadn't gotten to this point to just give up! "Oh, uh, yeah," he agreed. "But first I wanted to know if sometime you think I could, or we could, or something, or whoever really- do you-"
"Nami! We're gonna be late!" It is the black-haired girl who called this time.
"Come on already!" That was the blue-haired one again. Katsuki was becoming increasingly more nervous. He licked his lips out of anxiety.
"Sorry." Tachibana apologized again, beginning to move past him and towards the door. "I really have to go."
"Wait!" Katsuki called out hurriedly, reaching out a single hand. It caught her wrist as she passed him. It was just a gentle tug; it doesn't even have the power to really stop her. It was half-hearted and could not even have turned her to face him again.
She stopped anyway. She still flinched.
He immediately let go upon seeing her reaction, upon realizing what he had done. He flinched too. 'Shit.'
"I have to go." Tachibana said firmly. She didn't look back at him at all. She rushed to her friends. The black-haired girl held back the blue-haired one; they both glared at him.
Katsuki flinched again.
'Shit. Fuck. No. Nonononono.' He was stupid to have thought she would want to talk to him; he was even more stupid to believe he was capable of talking to someone without fucking it up. He couldn't talk to himself, couldn't think for himself without messing everything up, so why should he be any better at talking to other people?
He was so fucking stupid.
Katsuki stood there, glaring at his hands, quaking with emotions he couldn't process. He didn't know how he felt, didn't know how he should feel. The room was empty except for him, but he could still feel the walls press in around him, confining him, enclosing him.
His breath hitched in his throat; his mind had wrapped the noose around his neck, choking him with ropes of twisted emotions and warped thoughts. He couldn't breath. Oh God, he couldn't breathe. His hands twitched around his neck, scratching his flesh raw, trying to pry the invisible enemy away from his throat.
He stumbled to his knees; his body couldn't even hold him up anymore. One hand smacked the ground, steadying him, preventing him from falling flat on his face. The other hand moved up from his neck, over his face to clutch at his hair. It pulled and tightened around the blond locks, yanking the strands as though that would lessen the swirling torrent in his head. He stared at the ground in shock, horrified by what he had done, terrified by his reaction to it.
His body shuddered, air finally passing through his throat once more; it came rasping out of his mouth as though rattling with the emotions that had lodged it there.
That single burst of sound opened the floodgates, a torrent of gasps that never quite reached the point of sobs clawed their way out of his throat. They tore gouges in his lungs, ripped gashes through his trachea, pulling his voice box behind them until he no longer made any sound at all. He gasped like a fish, jaw working uselessly to vocalize emotions that couldn't escape.
He crumpled to the ground and allowed himself a single sob.
That single sob dragged itself out until he couldn't hold the others back anymore, and suddenly one became many. They were dry sobs that left him feeling hollow and empty, sucking the life from his body. They weren't satisfying; they weren't beneficial. He was just numb by the end.
He had to leave. Go. Run. Escape.
He frantically pushed himself back to his feet, flung his arms around, fingers searching for his backpack without looking. He grabbed it by a single strap and bolted. He ran from the room, from the school, from the world.
He ran until his eyes finally saw the world again, until he could hear the birds and tasted something outside of the bitter tang of lingering emotions.
Katsuki looked around himself, finally present in the world around him once again. It was familiar in an eery sort of way as though he had taken a wrong turn into one of his nightmares.
He had climbed that tree when he was eight-years-old on a dare (it hadn't actually been one; he just wanted to prove he could do it). And he had pushed… pushed his friend in a trashcan down that hill in the winter when they hadn't wanted to wait for Katsuki's mom to get the sleds. And he had shoved everything from sticks to rocks to leaves to shoes between the grates of that water drain.
Which meant that he had… Katsuki looked up from where he had been inspecting the sidewalk closely for the footprint he had left in the drying cement when he was six. Yep, there were the grey apartments with their red tiled roofs that he knew from his entire childhood. They hadn't changed at all. He didn't know why he had expected them to.
Katsuki felt a pang in his chest and swallowed thickly. He had cried enough for the day. He had to man the fuck up and get over it. It was just a fucking building.
His eyes travelled up to the second floor (up one, over three), immediately finding and lingering on the familiar door. He couldn't see much of anything from here, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to.
Katsuki didn't know how long he stood there just staring at the unchanging door that hadn't changed for the years he had known it (so then why the fuck would it have done so now?). He couldn't help but wonder what it looked like inside that door. Had it changed at all? Of course it had. He would be a fool to think that it was the same as the last time he was there.
When had he last been inside? It didn't really fucking matter now. What he would go inside for wasn't there anymore, so why should he care? …why should he care?
But Katsuki did care. He cared very deeply. Too much at times.
He was shaken from his trance as the door he had been watching so intensely began to open.
'Shit!' He shouldn't be here. She wouldn't want to see him, and even if she did, he didn't want her to see him. She had always accepted him, and he didn't know if he could handle it if she looked at him like he had taken the world away (even if he knew he had). But even more so, he didn't know if he could handle it if she accepted him again all the same.
So for the third time in about just as many days, Katsuki ran.
She wouldn't have been able to see him, wouldn't have recognized him even if she could. He could have hidden until she left. He could have just kept walking past the apartment building. He could have stayed, have talked, have done something. He could have done a lot of things. He always did the wrong one.
Katsuki ran and didn't look back. As weak as he was, he could never stand and face his problems. He couldn't even fucking try to fight back. Even if it had been useless, he could have. People weaker than him had done so, and he had mocked them for it. Funny that he was so much weaker than the people he had taunted. He wasn't even strong enough to fight.
So Katsuki did nothing but run.
