i. 4:02 am.

His eyes cracked open, bleary with sleep. Gaping blackness leered back at him, taunting him with the silent promise of vulnerability. Fear. It filled his body, along with the realization that he was helpless without his senses, easy prey for anyone to pick out in the dark. Slowly he became aware of a heavy weight on his body pinning his limbs into place. "Stop!" Izuku jolted, thrashing against the oh so familiar presence and swinging a wild arm out as he nearly threw himself off the bed.

The vision dissipated, and he was left holding a fistful of sheets, trying to will the image of striking blood-red eyes out of his mind. It's okay, he told himself, it was just a bad dream. you're not weak anymore. You're in UA, training to become a hero. Eventually he let the sheets drop and his hand came up to clutch at his shirt, still trying to calm the fluttering of butterfly wings in his stomach.

Once he managed to properly collect himself he turned to squint at the red blare of his clock. 4:02 am. But the thought of going back to sleep now seemed impossible, so he swung his feet over the bed and stood up.

He was going just to get a drink of water, of course, then he'd be back in bed because he needed to be well rested for today's training. How was he ever going to catch up with the others if he didn't put in double the effort? He might have a quirk now but he's had fourteen years of quirklessness to get past while others had four.

Quirklessness. What an ugly word.

These thoughts followed Izuku as he made his way down to the dorm room. He poured a glass of water and sipped at it, until the lulls of sleep took over him once again.

6:32 am.

Izuku wakes up to padded footsteps stomping across the ground. He wakes up and catches the crimson red eyes of Bakugou walking across the room in workout gear with earbuds in both his ears and all in all it's a terrible wakeup call, considering how his mind has wandered last night.

Bakugou startles at the noise of the chair skidding and then, those piercing red eyes are sliding towards him. "Deku. Were you sleeping in the fucking kitchen?"

Izuku winces at the tone, and, well, it's kind of sad that he still does that considering the other boy hasn't really gone out of his way to bother him since the Sports Festival. He leans down to pick up the chair and places it carefully back as he formulates an answer in his head. "I didn't mean to - I guess I was tired and just fell asleep. Sorry."

Bakugou doesn't seem to care that much as he mutters something angrily and grunts at Izuku to move out of the way. He pulls a few ingredients out of the fridge and Izuku watches curiously as the boy starts slicing what looks like parsley root.

"You got a problem with my diet, nerd?" Bakugou demands after a hot second, apparently aware of the green eyes trailing him. Izuku almost wants to say something but he values his life so he keeps his mouth shut.

"Nothing. Just - how's Auntie? I haven't seen her in awhile."

"Fuckin' peachy. Old hag's been whining my ear off about how you haven't dropped by in forever. And I've heard you've been neglecting Auntie Inko, too."

"Ah, really?" Izuku rubs the back of his head, feeling guilty while Bakugou grabs two slices of white bread and slaps them into the toaster oven. Inko had definitely become more of a helicopter parent since the villain attacks at USJ. Before they moved into the dorms he would get several text messages and a phone call every time he was even a few minutes late coming home. "I haven't had much time with my training and all so I haven't called her as often. I didn't know it'd make her so worried."

Bakugou's nose flares. "You should call her today. You have time today, yeah?" He leans over and jabs a finger at Izuku's chest. "Your stupid training schedule can manage a ten minute call, can't it, because if I hear one more complaint about you I'm gonna go fucking deaf."

Izuku manages a nod, and then the conversation's over, and Bakugou's at the table with his accompanying plate of parsley and bread, earbuds back in place.

Izuku sighs in relief, drops his cup in the sink, and walks back to his room. How Bakugou hadn't throttled him right then and there was just another reminder of how much the boy had changed since middle school. Izuku sits back down on his bed, basking in the slivers of grey light coming from the window and the calming silence from being alone again. He picks up his phone. Scrolls through social media for a bit. Thinks about calling his mom. His finger is hovering above the call button when a loud buzz startles him and he whirls to see it's his alarm going off for his first workout of the day. Yeah, that's right. He puts the phone down.

What was he thinking, hanging out in the dorm kitchen and wasting time on his phone when he could be practicing, trying to live up to All Might's expectations? How can you ever live up to someone as great as All Might's expectations? a smaller voice says, muffled. The buzz of anxiety is thrumming in his throat again, incessant and demanding attention. It doesn't matter. He has to try. He needs to go train.

ii. 9:30 am.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

His pencil bounces off the desk. Izuku takes a deep breath, grabs the pencil off the floor for the third time. He resumes his scrawl across the notebook. His fight with Bakugou from a month ago crawls across his mind, and his fingers itch with the urge to write.

Now when you started mixing punches in with kicks, that made me angry, Bakugou had said back then. Izuku knew him well enough to tell that it was his childhood friend's own way of giving him advice.

He writes the idea down as quick as his hands will let him. It's not enough. Izuku needs to analyze more, to pick apart the fight with meticulous hands until there's nothing left. At this point in his life it's the only thing he's good at. Because it doesn't matter if he put up a good fight, he lost in the end, and if he loses against Kaachan it means he's really still a

Useless

Deku

Right?

The bell rings and Aizawa walks through the door. The class quiets down almost instantaneously. Most of the heads are turned towards their teacher, but Izuku notices with an uncomfortable chill that Iida and Uraraka are sneaking glances at him. Izuku usually talks to them before class starts about cool quirks and weekend shenanigans but - stop. Focus. He has ten more seconds until Aizawa starts class and he needs to finish this last sentence of analysis on whether the Ground Beta's climate and terrain was more of an advantage for him or Kacchan and-

Aizawa greets the class, tells them to open up to page 94 in the textbook. Izuku looks down at the notebook page on his desk, sees that his last paragraph has devolved into wild lines under the minute trembles of his hand. He lost focus again.

Something's bothering him. Something that's been crawling under his skin for years. He doesn't know what it is yet, but if things continue at this rate it won't stay hidden for long.

He snaps the notebook shut and pushes it under his desk.

Lessons drone on for half an hour and Izuku manages to pay attention to some extent. They're doing individual work on a set of math problems and Izuku's gnawing on the end of his pencil when he hears it.

The sound of crackling, loud pops like popcorn in an oven.

Izuku slams his hands on his desk and stands up.

The effect is instantaneous.

Concerned questions from his classmates, Aizawa-sensei's gruff voice rising above theirs, but most prominently the growling cry of "Deku! The fuck are you-"

Searing amber eyes bear down on him. Izuku can't think. He swings a fist and it hits Bakugou squarely in the face, throwing him across the desk.

Bakugou rebounds with fury rivaling a roaring dragon, and all Izuku can see are clenching hands that should be crackling and he flinches, resigned to his fate-

The blow never comes. Suddenly Izuku's being dragged back, multiple hands wrapped around his biceps, and Sero, Ojiro, and Kirishima are doing the same to Bakugou, albeit with more of a struggle.

"Woah, woah, hey, what's going on?"

"Bro, I need you to calm down-"

Bakugou's thrashing like crazy, yelling obscenities, but Izuku doesn't say a word as he lets himself be pulled away. His body slumps under the grip of his classmates like a rag doll even when Aizawa strides over, quirk activated and the embodiment of the word furious. "What do you two think you're doing?"

"This fucker punched me unprovoked!" Bakugou snarled.

"You got in my face, I thought you were going to attack me!" Izuku protests, finding his words again. His heart is thudding in his chest.

"The hell?! I'll show you getting in your face, you motherfucker-"

"Detention." Aizawa's face is pure lines of fury, baked from hell to back. "Both of you."

- 3:31 pm.

After his last class, Izuku runs inside the school bathroom, fumbling with shaky hands to pull a small bottle from his backpack before he returns to class for his detention. He'll regret this later, but at the moment he can't find it in himself to care.

He swallows the pill and stays there, back pressed against the stall door, until his hands stop shaking.

- 3:42 pm

Izuku slumps in the plastic chair. The cold hard plastic rubs against his back. Bakugou sits several paces away from him, grumbling intermittently. There's a big square bandage pressed on his cheek. Aizawa, after many stern warnings and the threat of suspension hanging over their heads, is gone for a few minutes retrieving papers from the teacher's breakroom.

"Sorry." Izuku admits quietly when the silence becomes unbearable. "I kind of lost it back there."

"You think?" Bakugou says. "The hecks up with you, overreacting because of..." I do this every week, and you've never reacted this way, goes unsaid.

"I've just been a little more anxious recently." Izuku admits. "You know I struggle with it, even back in middle school."

"Hmph." Bakugou says. "You should see Recovery Girl if the meds aren't working anymore."

"You're right." Izuku says, even though he knows he can't. "You know, I've been thinking about Ground Beta… Out of all our classmates, I think I got the most out of fighting you. We should do it again, but this time, without breaking the rules."

Red eyes are snapping towards him, widening as they catch onto the implication. Izuku watches them dully, focuses on breathing slowly in and out. "After today- You're asking me to train with you now?!"

Izuku nods. "You don't want to? It'd be a good way to release tension, and we're both competing to be #1 so…"

"Fucking-fine." Bakugou looks away for a split second, and there's a flash of something on his face that Izuku can't decipher. "But don't expect me to go easy on you. Tonight at 6, training room C. Be late and I'll kill you."

Izuku lets himself smile, all too relieved that the precarious relationship the two of them have painstakingly built, stick by stick and held together by tape, hasn't toppled over yet. If it did, he doesn't know if they'd ever be able to recover considering their past. "Of course."