Chapter Twelve: Can You Hear My Heartbeat Fucking Kicking?
(Bakugo)
Hands in his pockets, Bakugo trailed after All Might as they left provisional license training. Bakugo didn't really go for shit like that—the kids and the making connections and the feelings. But part of him thought that maybe...maybe it hadn't been a complete waste of his time. Those kids, they'd been fucking vicious, and yeah people looked down on them because they were young, but what if the League of Villains got to them? What if the League didn't look down on them? What if they offered to remove the shackles of heroism like they'd tried to do for him?
What if the hero system was unwittingly breeding the next generation of villains?
But he and Todoroki and the Bald Guy and the Glamour Girl had come up with a pretty damn good solution. And part of Bakugo—the same part that inherently understood why those kids were violent and hateful—hoped that the things he'd told the ring leader stuck.
"If all you ever do is look down on people, you won't be able to recognize your own weaknesses."
It was true. He'd learned it the hard way. He'd looked down on the fucking nerd and then Deku had become All Might's successor. He hadn't trusted Uraraka during their exam and she was probably the only reason they didn't outright flunk on the spot. With both of them, Bakugo had been so busy singing his own praises that he hadn't noticed someone else gaining ground, and instead of learning from either of them, he tried to push them back beneath him.
And Bakugo was losing to both of them because of it. Not that he'd ever admit it.
Todoroki trailed behind them.
Bakugo didn't look back for anyone, but All Might did, and it was when the former Number One hero turned and looked beyond Bakugo to study the Half-and-Half bastard behind him that Bakugo glanced back too.
His head was down, stupid shitty hair falling into his face. Bakugo had heard the talk with Endeavor after the lesson. He knew Todoroki was probably stuck on complicated family shit.
It had been crass and thoughtless, what Bakugo had said during the lesson. (But when was he not crass and thoughtless?)
"Sometimes you need violence to put them in their place!" he spat at the Glamour Girl. But Todoroki had chimed in, unhelpfully, with a "That's where you're wrong, Bakugo."
The words came out before he stopped to think: "That's how I was raised, you know!"
But it wasn't, not really. Sure he and his mother threatened to kill each other about a hundred times a minute, but she would never go so far as to maim him. And yelling those words right in Todoroki's scarred face...well. Bakugo never claimed to be anything other than a humongous asshole.
"Young men," All Might began, looking back and forth between the two of them. "For what reason do you suppose we are equipped with Quirks?"
Bakugo stopped walking, and Todoroki caught up to stand beside him.
"To beat villains," said Bakugo. It was the answer he'd given all his life, but it felt sort of hollow now, looking at the withering form of the greatest victor, standing Quirkless before him.
"But why do you suppose you have an explosion Quirk? And Young Todoroki, why were you gifted with fire and ice?"
"Because my dad made sure that he had a kid with the strongest Quirk he could come up with," Todoroki said, the edge in his voice old and sharp and biting.
"But why you? Why do you suppose it was you and not one of your siblings that was granted this exact power?"
"Because I'm the only one that didn't want it."
All Might simply nodded and turned to Bakugo. "And you?"
He didn't really have an answer. His Quirk was strong and flashy, and it matched his personality, but the Hands Guy with the League thought that Explosion was better suited to a villain, and Bakugo wondered, sometimes, if maybe he'd been right. What if he'd missed something? What if his dream to be a hero was just a misguided desire to be the strongest?
When he didn't answer, All Might said, "Young Todoroki, I think that perhaps you were granted with this dichotomy of power because you are the only one who can bring the two together. You have a great desire to be nothing like your father, and perhaps you are meant to use his power in a way that shows him how best to do it. It is because you do not want such power that you are the best person to have it."
Out of the corner of his eye, Bakugo saw Todoroki's face shift just slightly.
"And Young Bakugo," All Might said, turning to him. Bakugo almost flinched under his caring gaze. "You have a Quirk that would be disastrous in the wrong hands. You have been trusted with something great because you are worthy of great trust. I have seen you use your Quirk with more skill, thought, and versatility than any other student in the hero course, and perhaps many pro heroes out on the streets. You want to take something that is made for breaking and use it to save, and that is why you are so deserving of it."
In spite of (or perhaps because of) everything, Bakugo's eyes burned.
It was one thing to admire All Might from afar. To watch him kicking villain ass on tv. It was another thing entirely to speak to him, to know him, especially now that Bakugo knew the truth behind his power. All Might was almost something too uniquely good to ever aspire to—he didn't just want to take down villains or save those in need. He wanted to save everyone. He wanted to save them from everything, even from themselves.
And it wasn't so hard to see why he'd chosen sappy, doe-eyed Deku as his successor.
Bakugo wanted to tell him to fuck off and mind his own damn business. He didn't need saving. He didn't need encouragement or affirmation. But it was All Might, and well...maybe a bit of affirmation wasn't the worst thing.
Even if Bakugo was the reason All Might only had words for weapons now.
"What's it got to do with shit?" Bakugo grumbled, his voice more petulant than he intended. Force of habit.
"Because 'why' is often the most important question a hero can ask. More than 'how can I do this' you should wonder 'why am I able to do this, and why do I choose to do this?' Once you know why, everything else will come easier. You both struggle with your own 'why,' and I believe that is at the heart of your failure at the provisional license exam."
He paused for a moment, looking back and forth between Bakugo and Todoroki, and Bakugo found himself clenching his teeth, unable to meet All Might's eyes.
"Young Todoroki, you believe your greatest motivation is being different from your father, being something other than what he wants you to be. And Bakugo, my boy, you believe victory above all else to be your driving force. Both of these ideas are shallow, and not the things that will make you great heroes. There is more to both of you, and I suggest you take some time to look within and figure out what truly drives you."
He turned then and started walking once more toward the station, and Bakugo shoved his hands deeper in his pockets as he followed, Todoroki a silent shadow beside him.
Bakugo had never bothered too much with wondering why he wanted to be a hero. He'd always been good at everything, naturally talented and smart and things just came easy to him. When his Quirk manifested, it was really fucking strong, and Bakugo had known that he was meant to be great. He was meant to be a hero. To be the number one. He was the best, and so he should always win, just like All Might.
But had he only admired All Might for the fact that he never lost? That there was no hero that could hold a candle to him and no villain could stand against him? If Bakugo aspired only to be the best, why hadn't he wanted to be the villain that could beat even All Might?
What if, deep down, that was what he wanted? What if that was why he tried to never think too deeply about his motivation.
As they boarded the train, hoods up and heads down to keep from being recognized, Bakugo pulled his hands from his pockets and noticed that were bleeding. When Recovery Girl healed him from that fuck up during remedial lessons, she must've unintentionally healed some of the calluses that had built up on his palms, and now his skin was raw and weak.
Fucking perfect.
He clenched his fists and shoved them back into his pockets before All Might or Todoroki could notice, but they both seemed to be caught up in their own shit and weren't paying attention anyway.
Bakugo wouldn't lie. This hero thing was hard. Much harder than he ever anticipated growing up. It all looked so easy on tv, taking down villains, saving the day—he'd never really considered that it was more than a fight of the body. Being a hero was also a fight of the mind. You had to want it and know why you wanted it. You had to keep reminding yourself and reevaluating your motivation.
It wasn't easy when you weren't sure of your motivation to begin with.
He felt eyes on him, and Bakugo scanned the train. Someone he didn't recognize, a girl maybe a year or two younger than him, was watching him from under her own hooded jacket. She was small and thin, with limp black hair and patchwork clothes, more urchin than anything, but her eyes were studious and...familiar somehow, even if he didn't recognize her face.
A memory, then, of an event and all the dreams that followed, clawed into his mind: "What say you join us?"
Those eyes. They were yellow.
He wouldn't start a fight here on the train, but the girl just kept watching him, and grinned with small sharp teeth like she could read his thoughts. But she wasn't the blonde girl with the pigtails from the League of Villains, even though the eyes were the same.
She blinked, and suddenly her eyes were brown, a warm honey color that made Bakugo wonder if he'd imagined the whole thing.
She got off at the next stop, and Bakugo would've followed her if All Might hadn't been with him. One thought stuck in his mind with an aching sort of clarity: the League of Villains wasn't finished with him yet.
Bakugo growled low in his throat.
Bring it on.
(Kirishima)
Bakugo was in a foul mood.
So, nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but this was one of the rare ones where he was scary quiet instead of loud and belligerent. Even Kaminari's teasing wasn't causing him to snap.
Something was wrong.
The three boys sat in the cafeteria during lunch. Bakugo had missed morning classes for his provisional licence training, but even that didn't usually piss him off this much. Kirishima glanced to where Todoroki sat a few tables down, and he looked a bit more pensive than usual, too. He was outright ignoring whatever conversation Yaoyorozu was having with Iida and Midoriya.
The only other major change in the room was Naegi Nobusuke.
Kirishima, like everyone else, had watched the popstar saunter easily into the cafeteria and guide Uraraka to an out-of-the-way table along the wall. They were just talking, and Uraraka seemed to be in a better mood than when Kirishima had last seen her the night before. She was dating Naegi. He was probably there to help her cope with the loss of Nighteye.
Bakugo snapped his chopsticks in half for the second time in five minutes, and Kirishima was trying to think of how to approach whatever the matter was when Kaminari beat him to it.
"Maybe you should get the support course to make you a steel pair," he teased, picking up a splinter of ruined wood and poking it into Bakugo's cheek. "What's got you this intense, man?"
Bakugo brushed him off and stood, his food mostly untouched on his tray, and stomped out of the cafeteria.
Kirishima and Kaminari exchanged a look, and Kirishima found his eyes drifting back to Uraraka and Naegi. He was laughing at something she said, and her eyes were bright, and Kirishima had a sudden, vivid memory of that moment in the classroom days ago, when Mineta had been trying to show them pictures of Uraraka in her underwear and Bakugo had broken his phone.
He remembered the oddly soft look in Bakugo's eyes as Uraraka walked into the room, and he remembered the challenge with which she met his growl.
He remembered the way Uraraka had kicked his and Mina's butts during the exam. He remembered the way she'd fought Bakugo tooth and nail at the Sports Festival.
"Where do you see fragile?"
And he remembered Uraraka walking out of Ground Beta, Bakugo passed out on her back. He'd had bones poking out where his elbow should have been and his blood ran down the front of Uraraka's uniform as she moved, quick and careful, to tell All Might what had happened. Her eyes—they'd been bright with admiration and dark with worry as she'd described the way Bakugo had put out the fire they'd been tasked with.
The memories crashed together in Kirishima's mind, forming this budding, beautiful something that he was afraid to put into words.
Uraraka smiled at Naegi. Bakugo's back disappeared down the corridor.
"Oh," Kirishima breathed, realization slapping him in the face as if he'd been missing something all along. "Oh crap."
"Huh?" Kaminari asked, oblivious.
He didn't want to put things into words, so he said, "We do not ship Naegaraka."
"Why? You suddenly have a thing for Uraraka?"
Kirishima shot him a look. Kaminari didn't have the lowest grades in the class for nothing.
"No. It's not that. Just...trust me for a bit, yeah?"
"Okay…"
(Uraraka)
Uraraka sat on the floor in Gym Gamma, her back stuck to Kirishima's in multiple places by Mineta's Pop Offs. They'd been partnered for a three-way fight and sticking Kirishima to her back had done nothing but get him out of the way. Uraraka had been quick to make him weightless and use her Gunhead training to take out Mineta.
But they were still stuck together until the effects wore off.
The groups shifted and rotated throughout the lesson, but she and Kirishima had been told to sit out, along with Satou who had had his sugar crash and was snoring on the ground beside her feet.
Uraraka was watching Yaoyorozu vs. Sero vs. Tsuyu, but part of her wished she could see the fight on Kirishima's side—Mina vs. Tokoyami vs. Bakugo.
Because there was a lot to be learned from Bakugo, she told herself.
"Hey, Uraraka," Kirishima said after a while. He shifted, and Uraraka shifted with him. "Have you started that essay for Midnight yet?"
"I wouldn't even know where to start," she said. "I'd be blown to bits before I could ever ask Bakugo about his weaknesses."
But that wasn't true and she knew it.
"I always looked up to All Might the most. And he's out of commission now because of my stupid ass."
For some reason, she wasn't ready to let anyone else in on...whatever weird friendship was blossoming between her and Bakugo. It all felt so fragile, like it would crumble the second someone else caught on.
"Yeah," Kirishima said, and she knew him well enough by now to know he was probably smiling in Mina's direction. "It all just seems too...intimate you know? Too private. Like what if we were just random heroes in the line of duty? Why would we need to know everything about each other?"
Uraraka shrugged, her shoulders pulling Kirishima's up and down as she moved. "But your team, whatever heroes and sidekicks you end up working at an agency with...you'll know them like that, right? I think this is to prepare us to know other heroes on that level. Surely you already know Fat Gum and Amajiki on a more personal level than say Hado and Ryukyu?"
"True. But it seems weird to have to ask, you know?"
Uraraka was quiet for a moment, thinking about how Bakugo had already opened up to her, even just a bit. "Maybe...maybe we're not really supposed to ask. I mean, just from working with Bakugo for the exam and then for the remedial lessons we've had so far, I've learned a lot about him."
"Like what?"
"Like the fact that he's a really creative fighter. He can come up with something to turn anything in his favor. And that even though he's all rough and tough on the outside he's not really so bad once you stop being afraid of him. It's like he's just waiting for people to come along who aren't afraid, and those are the people that he's willing to be more himself with. And he's...he's actually pretty cool, which I'm sure you already know. He'll do anything to win or solve the problem at hand, and he's smart and strong, and even though he can be a cocky jerk you get the feeling that he's only looking down on you because he knows you can do better and—"
And she was rambling.
"What I mean," she said, drowning out Kirishima's soft laugh, "is that I've learned enough by working with him to have a decent idea of what to write. And I know he's not the type to spill that kind of information for an assignment so it would be silly to ask outright."
Her face was warm and she wasn't really sure why,
"But what if..." Kirishima began, the tone in his voice something she couldn't quite place. "What if we're supposed to be okay with asking and answering? What if the point of the whole thing is to not be afraid of just talking to each other?"
—
And that was how Uraraka ended up outside Bakugo's door roughly two hours later.
It was surprisingly daunting, the smooth plane of metal that blocked off a space distinctly for Bakugo and no one else. It was daunting, even though she knew how to break it down if she really needed to. Even though some deep part of her was utterly unafraid of the boy who would give his all to defeat her, who'd tear her down to build her up and force her to have faith in herself.
She knocked once, hesitantly, and then twice more with increasing confidence.
"The fuck do you want?" The voice from behind the door was slightly muffled.
Uraraka, hand on the knob, said, "I'm coming in!" With Bakugo, it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
She pushed through the door and stood in the threshold, taking in the room with quick, observant eyes.
It was simply decorated, with a plain black comforter over the bed and a desk and organized bookshelf in the corner. A small tv was on, resting on a low table with a single All Might figurine laying beside it, as if Bakugo couldn't decide whether he wanted it there or not. As if he was trying a little too hard not to care.
A circular rug, black with an orange border, took up most of the floor, and it was on this that Bakugo sat, wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants. A first aid kit was open on the floor beside him, a jar of salve and bandages sprawled out across the rug. He was wrapping the bandages around one of him palms, and they were already stained faintly with blood.
There was a jagged scar in the crook of his elbow from the incident with the fire, but even that was not greatest among the angry lines that marred his torso.
"What do you want?" he growled. But he didn't try to hide the blood that soaked through the bandages. He didn't bother to turn away or cover up his naked upper half. Because Bakugo...well Bakugo never hid from anything.
And Uraraka wouldn't hide from him.
She stepped into the room, allowing the door to swing shut behind her, and took a spot across from him on the floor. She knew better than to ask about his hands, and chose to look at the tv instead as she spoke.
"I was thinking we needed to work on that essay for Midnight."
He was watching a special on the League of Villains. Sketches of Dabi and Shigaraki blared on the screen as two people spoke about their abilities.
"Tch," said Bakugo. He hadn't kicked her out yet though, so that was a good sign. "And you're in my room because?"
Her eyes flicked back to him, all hard muscle and deep lines and angry eyes, but something else too. Some fear, perhaps, of letting her see too much, some desire to hide that was utterly foreign to him.
Uraraka glanced around the room again, and the whole thing seemed to be designed to reveal nothing, to keep everyone at arm's length. Slowly, she reached out to the All Might figurine and stood him up right.
"Midnight wanted us to interview each other, to talk about our strengths and weaknesses."
"I know what the assignment is, shitwit. Why are you here now?"
Uraraka chewed on her bottom lip and turned back to the tv.
"Little is known about Shigaraki Tomura," the voiceover said. "Heroes have been able to determine that he grew up with a powerfully destructive Quirk and a desire to be strong enough to make something of himself. As a child, he was rude and standoffish. He had no friends to speak of, and spent the majority of his childhood pushing others away. His elementary school teachers expressed their concern, but weren't taken seriously until his father, Shimura, was found dead by disintegration…"
Uraraka had seen this special on tv months ago, after All Might stopped All for One. Bakugo must've recorded it, and she wondered just how many times he'd watched it since. Looking back at him, he seemed a bit off. His Rage Aura dampened into something more internal, as if some of his outward fury was now directed at himself.
"Dabi is known to have been even worse as a child. Short tempered and arrogant, he burned anything he deemed weaker than himself. He had a small group of followers—I wouldn't call them friends—who essentially worshiped the ground he walked on. Little is known of him after he dropped out of high school other than that he spent most of his time committing serial murder until he joined the League of Villains sometime last spring…"
Bakugo was growing increasingly violent with his bandages, hissing as he pulled too tightly and irritated the injury.
Her legs were crossed in front of her, and Uraraka wrapped her fingers around her ankles to keep from reaching out and offering to help him.
"How many times have you watched this?" she asked, her voice quiet and strong. There was every chance in the world that he wouldn't even bother to respond...but on the off chance he did, she knew she had to tread carefully. If he opened up to her even a bit, if she could help him in some small way like he'd helped her, she didn't want to ruin the opportunity.
He was silent long enough that Uraraka thought he might not respond at all, but she could have a little patience if it meant helping him work through some of the stuff he kept all bottled up. And, after another minute ticked by, he finally said, "Not enough."
"Why?"
He finished wrapping his hand and flexed his fingers a few times to test his handiwork. Satisfied, he rested his elbows on his knees and looked to the screen again, then to the All Might figure now standing proudly beside it.
"As is often the case with this sort of villain," one of the commentators went on. "Analysts and psychiatrists spend most of their time asking what led these people to this way of life? Was it a series of choices and circumstances? Is evil something that is born and bred? It villainy an inherent trait in some people? And how does this 'Villain Gene,' if such a thing exists, relate to Quirks? Why is it that villains seem to primarily have Quirks that destroy, and how is one thing related to the other?"
Bakugo stood and began shoving things back into the first aid kit, and Uraraka hopped up onto her feet and took a step closer to him.
"Is it 'not enough' because you haven't figured out the difference between the League and you?" she asked to his back, and his shoulders tensed just slightly. Uraraka swallowed, shutting down the fleeting thought that pricked her mind—he has a very nice back.
"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about."
She followed him as he went to the connected bathroom to store the supplies, and when he turned from the cabinet, she was right in his face, floating to meet him eye-to-eye.
"Bakugo, listen," she said, wanting to take her time to choose her words but also wanting to say everything as fast as possible before he kicked her out. The words ended up spilling out of her, end over end in whatever order they came to mind. "If you were really like Shigaraki, or Dabi, or any other villain, you would've gone with them when they kidnapped you. If you really wanted to be a villain, you wouldn't be here right now."
He opened his mouth to protest, eyes averted and brow furrowed, but Uraraka spoke over him, her hands gripping either side of the bathroom door frame so there was nowhere for him to go.
"If you had a 'Villain Gene,' which is a load of crap to begin with, you wouldn't have done Midnight's silly trust exercises. You wouldn't put up with Kaminari teasing you or Kirishima insisting that he be your friend. You wouldn't be working so hard to get your provisional licence, and you wouldn't care so much that you didn't pass the first time. You wouldn't...you wouldn't care so much about Deku getting strong enough to pose a challenge to you."
Confident that she had his attention, she lowered herself back to the ground, and when his eyes met hers, there was something vulnerable there she wasn't used to. It scared her a bit, knowing that she might be the only person that got to see this, that got to help. But she wouldn't shy away.
She balled her hand into a fist and pressed it into his chest, and the skin-to-skin contact sent a spark of electricity through her veins.
"Somewhere in here," she said, pounding her knuckles gently against him and willing her voice to be unrelenting. "Somewhere in here, you have a heart, Bakugo Katsuki. And I think you have a hard time seeing that. You want to be number one so badly that I wonder if it's because you want to be like All Might, because being like All Might would prove to you that you're good."
He breathed out of his nose. It was a long, heavy sigh that told Uraraka she was right, but he was trying to come up with a way to refute her. She didn't break eye contact with him, and it occurred to her, briefly, that they'd be killing it on Midnight's test right now, but she wouldn't say anything. Bakugo had taken the time to pick her up and brush her off and renew her confidence after Nighteye, and she would do the same for him no matter how patient she needed to be.
"And," the words were still falling out of her, like somewhere in the back of her mind she'd been thinking about this for a while. "You aren't like All Might...You're not the person with happy smiles and kind words and a hand to help people up. You're not. You...you're all bad temper and brutal strategy and uncensored outbursts and—"
"Shut up—"
"And this desperate desire to be good. Even though you'll never be the same kind of good as All Might, you want to be a hero, and that's what matters. You don't want to be like Shigaraki, and so you won't be."
Bakugo had that look on his face again, like he wanted to say one thing but ended up saying another as he shoved his hands in his pockets and spat, "Get out of my room, Angelface."
Angelface. He was raring for a fight then.
So she pressed her knuckles into him harder and grinned, a hint of defiance in her tone as she told him, "We're a team. And I've decided that I'd very much like to be your friend, whether you want me or not. You're good, in your own way, and your heart's in the right place." Uraraka paused, gesturing to the tv. "They said that villains have destructive Quirks. What they don't really say is that villains use those destructive Quirks to destroy. Your Quirk can be pretty destructive, but I've seen you use it to save, and that makes all the difference."
(Bakugo)
It rocked him.
Her face was set in sheer determination, like this was the most important thing she could be doing—talking his idiotic ass out of the rut he'd dug himself into. And she'd said almost the same thing as All Might.
And how she'd worked it all out, worked out so many of the things that ate at him, he couldn't know. Surely he wasn't as easy to read as she was. Surely this was some fluke, some moment of weakness on his part. And perhaps a bit of stubborness on hers. She was completely unwilling to take him at face value, completely unwilling to believe that anger and rage and violence made him up inside and out. She'd seen bits of him that scared him to think about, bits that he'd tried to push out of his conscious thought for fear of letting them take hold. Uraraka saw them and was unafraid, saw them and thought he was more than his failures.
Her eyes, like they always did, held both a challenge and a promise, and Bakugo's defenses began to crumble in the face of her.
"Fine," he growled out, urging all the animosity he could muster into the single syllable.
"What?"
He breathed out hard through his nose, a final chance to not do this. A final chance to spare himself the the stupid feelings and fucking nonsense he was getting himself into. A final chance to build back a barrier between himself and Uraraka.
And yet.
"I'll be your shitty friend...or whatever."
"Really?"
"I'm serious if you are, Angelface, so make up your damn mind."
Her smile lit up every corner of the room, as if it had blossomed from the very depths of her, a place where she stored up sunshine to battle the darkness.
"Don't be so happy about it. It's pissing me off."
She didn't buy it, and pressed her knuckles into his chest again, sending another heatwave radiating through him.
She was so close, and he could smell that jasmine and lavender scent and feel her breath against his chest. His fingers twitched as he almost reached out to touch her—her hand, her waist, her stupidly pink cheeks. But he was Bakugo Katsuki, and he had more self control than that.
"Now get the fuck out, Uraraka. I'm sure you can come up with something to write for the damn assignment." He knew he could.
She smiled again, in that uncanny way she had of making him feel weightless without ever activating her Quirk.
"You bet I do!"
She turned then, nearly bouncing as she headed back toward the door. She reached it, and her hand was on the knob as she paused, turning back to him with a thoughtful half-smile on her lips.
"Hey, Bakugo?"
He could've ignored her, could've yelled at her, but instead, he raised his eyebrows, a silent urge to go on.
She smiled wider at this. "You have some faith in your damn self too, got it?"
A small wave and a final grin saw her out the door, and as he watched her go, Bakugo realized 'totally and utterly fucked' didn't even begin to cover it.
A/N: Again, thank you all so much for the lovely reviews and the follows and favs! This chapter was a bit shorter than normal, but it was very self contained and needed to just be this, so there you are. Please review!
