Author's Note: Hello! Thank you all for reading/favoriting/reviewing! Forgive me for not updating for awhile. This fic is not my main focus right now, it's more of a side project. But I sure am having a lot of fun writing it!
I just want to warn y'all that this chapter, and this whole story really, will contain blood and ~spooky~ things. It's a little horror-esque, a little mysterish, a little psychological... like, I'm not Stephen King or whatever, but like, I really enjoy these types of elements and I'm having a hell of a time exploring them. There will also be some sexual content coming up *eyes emoji* so stay tuned for that!
Hope you enjoy!
"Are you fucking kidding me."
Does this girl have any brain cells left after that concussion?
Damn, she's getting kinda fucking heavy, too. Her brain weighs too much for holding so little. If she wasn't already injured, he'd hurt her himself right about now.
Is she snoring?
"Are you fucking kidding me." Because once was not enough.
She actually starts sliding down and he has to grab her arms to keep her from collapsing. Her cheek is pressing harder into his chest, like it's soft.
And his chest is not fucking soft.
He shakes her shoulder roughly, cursing her name and her mother and the sin she's committing right now, drooling all over his favorite goddamn shirt.
"God, you're disgusting," he utters and he prays that it haunts her dreams.
That's when he hears the elevator moving.
"Fuck," he whispers before hooking his arm underneath hers and dragging her into his room.
He tries to hold her against the wall but she's practically a damn ragdoll, hanging there with loose limbs and a snapped neck.
He huffs and rolls his eyes. "You just couldn't find your own room, could you?"
She mumbles. Mumbles. He grabs her chin roughly and lifts her head, her hair a hot mess around her face.
Except she's still dead asleep. He releases her and her head drops back down on his shoulder.
"Don't fuckin' play with me," he says into her ear. "You better not be."
She exhales deep and slow.
He can hear the guys outside his door, talking about some bullshit. He'll just wait for them to go away, then he'll pick her fatass up and put her in her rightfulplace.
But why would anything work out for him?
She says his name.
"What did I say?" he growls, cupping her jaw in his hand and lifting her head.
"Bakugo…" she whispers, something like smoke slithering out of her mouth. Like it's cold.
His heart begins to race, his grip even tighter than before. "Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? You really think you could fuck with me?" he says low, angry.
She frowns, her brows furrow. Like she heard him.
She opens her mouth slightly, his name slipping out again. But this time, it's tinged with something ugly, something that he doesn't want to give a name to.
He grabs her thighs and picks her up, using the momentum to have her head hang over his shoulder. He's quick to lay her on his bed, trying his best to avoid touching her where she's hurt.
Once she's down, she's squirming in place. Like she's tied up, struggling…
He nearly lurches forward.
A single drop of red trickles down her temple. She trembles, a shaky sigh escaping her, and he knows it's a plea.
He reaches over, dipping a finger into the red and bringing it close. It runs like water down his palm before disappearing beneath his skin.
"What the fuck," he breathes.
Then the color turns thick on her skin, deep like fresh blood. Slowly trickling into her hair and down her cheek. She says his name, panic filling her voice.
"Bakugo… Bakugo," she utters, chest heaving.
"What? What?" he hisses, grabbing her wrist. But when he tries to pull it, her whole arm goes stiff, never going past her hip.
He lets her go, fumbling onto his knees by the bed. He can't help the way his eyes widen, or the way his chest constricts like he's closing in from the inside.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck whatthefuck
"Uraraka, wake the fuck up."
She whimpers, a tear slipping down her face. Her breath sounds more like stutters or sobs, each movement wracking her whole body in place. The stream of blood, blood, reaches her ear and falls past her jaw, slow like honey.
"Bagu-Ka—"
"Uraraka."
"Katsu— don't."
He stops breathing.
"Don't… don't… please," she whispers frantically, her voice cracking, more tears falling. "Please."
The blood trails down her throat, so linear it's disconcerting to fucking see. He tries to wipe it but it only stains, dark like spilled ink. His stomach churns.
"Uraraka," he breathes heavily, squeezing her shoulder. "Uraraka, wake the fuck up." He shakes her hard enough for her head to loll to the side, but her body is still stagnant, her veins visibly pulsing under some invisible fucking pressure.
"Katsuki."
That's what breaks him. If he were to ever tell the truth.
What he thinks of that instant feels cruel, even for him. But he doesn't know what else to do.
How else to bring her back.
With a shaking hand, he takes the pocket of her hoodie and drags it up slowly, physically cringing when her bottle of pain killers slips out the side and rolls off the bed and onto the floor.
A flare of hot anger bursts in his chest and then through his limbs.
He grits his teeth and tears her hoodie the rest of the way up, stopping at the tops of her ribs.
The tops of her broken ribs.
The bandage wrapped around her is thick and tight, but he could still see bruises bleeding under the sides of it.
He dry heaves. He feels the pressure of the blow all over again, slamming him into a spiral.
"Fuck you," he growls, smacking himself with a bit of a burn. He shakes his head and snaps himself out of the dizziness.
He leans over her, placing his palm over the right side of the bandage.
He hesitates before pressing in.
He sees the brown of her eyes before he sees the tears pouring from them.
She's silent for what must have been forever and a day and he wishes it was, because the noise that rips out of her throat is so purely pained that it sends the most sickening shivers down his spine.
He slaps a hand over her mouth and cups the back of her neck with the other. She doesn't look away from him.
He tries to say sorry with his eyes.
She rips his hand off of her mouth and hitches forward, her teeth sinking into his shoulder. She digs her nails into his bicep, scratching so hard he can feel the blood leaking, like her tears that are leaking into his shirt.
He doesn't realize he's got his fingers in her hair and holding her down to him until she sobs brokenly into his neck.
That's how they stay, until her breathing slows and his blood dries.
"Uraraka—" he says when it gets too much and he starts to pull away, but she wounds her arms around his neck like she'll die if he leaves and he doesn't know where to touch her so he doesn't touch her at all.
"You," she begins, hot against his skin. "You…"
"What happened, angel?" he says before he can think, sliding his hand over her back.
"Died." She grips the back of his shirt and wrings it in her hands, hot tears spilling fresh on his collarbone.
"Go to sleep," he says softly.
She whimpers. He reaches behind him and takes her wrists in his hands, trying to break them away but she only holds on tighter.
"C'mon, angel," he whispers in her ear. "Go to sleep." I'm here.
Her arms fall loose around him, and he gently unwraps them. He guides her back down on the bed.
No blood. Not even a hint of it.
She blinks at him like she doesn't even believe he's there, like she's waiting for him to disappear.
And for the life of him, he doesn't know why he doesn't.
Maybe it's the sheer strangeness of it all. Maybe it's the fact that he can't actually leave his room without looking suspicious.
Or maybe it's that string of rot, bright red and gleaming, tugging at their chests as she succumbs to sleep.
When she wakes up, her whole entire body feels so wound up that her heart immediately starts to pump right out of her chest.
Every single part of her is sore, especially her ribs. Like she's taken a brand new beating.
It doesn't help that she feels someone watching her. Or that the sunlight is streaming right in her eyes.
Or that this room isn't hers.
She cranes her neck and twists her spine as best as she can, only to find Bakugo sitting in a chair next to his bed. Glaring.
"Buh—" she starts, but really, she's at a loss for words. How did…?
"Final-fucking-ly," he says gruffly, rubbing his tired face.
"Baku-go," she whispers.
"Urara-ka," he mocks. "Tch. Get outta my bed. It's Sunday and I want to fucking sleep."
"Y-you didn't sleep?"
He gives her a hard look, and doesn't miss the way it softens just slightly. "No." He blinks with bleary eyes, the bags underneath them purple like bruises.
"Why?"
"'Cause you decided— you really don't remember?"
Her stomach twists. What isn't she remembering? She racks her brain, trying to find something, the slightest semblance of anything.
"Bakugo," she says almost desperately, fear rounding the corner.
"Don't say my name."
The way he's looking at her, the stillness of him… the hairs on her arm stand. She gulps, tears pooling in her vision.
He only tears away from her to pick something off the ground. She hears a rattle and feels a wave of nausea come on.
He holds the bottle up, almost gingerly. "You're not taking these anymore."
Right. I took those last night…
"Why?" she asks, feeling stupid and small, like a child who's done wrong.
"Whoever's trying to get to you— us," he grits, the familiar rage contorting his expression, "was trying to do it through these pills."
That's when his palm sparks and destroys them all in an instant. She gapes at him, feeling the throbbing return in her head and side.
"What?" she finally manages.
"Do you remember waking up last night?" he says, cold again.
"No, n-nothing."
"What did you dream about?"
It catches her off guard, the softness in his voice, however little there is.
The burning smell hits her nose then and she gags, her body coming up forcefully. She grabs her chest and tries to breathe deeply, slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth but it doesn't keep her from coughing.
He's tugging her up roughly and it sends her head spinning once, twice, until she's stumbling back into him. He slings her arm over his shoulders and drags her to his bathroom, kneeling her over the toilet as he pushes the seat up.
Her body throws nothing but saliva up for awhile. Then there's nothing left in her and she's dry heaving, rocking back and forth. His palm is hot over the base of her neck and she tries to shake it away.
She sinks to the floor and presses her face to the cool tiles. He leaves her and she almost whines, but then he's back and picking her back up.
"Drink." He holds a water bottle to her lips and she lets him feed it to her, nearly choking when he tips it too far up.
"Shit," he mutters. She touches his forearm and he takes the bottle back, placing it on the floor.
"Thank you." She tries to smile but it comes out feeling wrong, because she's too exhausted to really move anything.
He stands up and lifts her swiftly from under her armpits instead of speaking. She wobbles on her feet, her knees buckling with the weight of herself. He's quick to press a hand into her back and hold her to him.
He looks down at her, face depleted of emotion. "You need to go back to sleep. In your room."
"O-oh," she says, because it's all she has.
"Leave."
Somehow, her heart sinks and it shatters and somehow, someway, when he lets her go she doesn't fall.
Something in her feels torn with the way he isn't looking at her. Her legs are shaking so hard that her knees nearly give out again and she bumps against the door. She doesn't fight the overwhelm and she sobs like she lost something.
I lost him. He's pushing me away.
She gulps, watching him climb into his bed and turn to face the wall. There's a tug at her chest and she grabs the door handle, turning it despite the violent tremor in her hands.
"Okay." She says it so quietly that it's air, and as he falls asleep, she slides over the door frame and into the hall, closing him off.
Then there's a warm hand closing over hers, a thumb rubbing over her knuckles. She doesn't have it in her to react. She only shifts her eyes to meet kind ones, eyes that weren't like his.
"Hey," he says softly, and it makes her feel like a helpless animal, dying on the road.
But it makes her lean forward. He holds her up, always as gentle as he is strong. She cries silently but he still hushes her, rubbing her back.
"C'mon. I'll take you back to your room."
She nods weakly against his shoulder, the warmth of him lulling her. He wraps his arms low around her waist and lifts her to the other side of the floor, and by the time he lays her on the bed, she's embraced by the nothingness of sleep.
He wakes up because some dumb motherfucker with a death wish is knocking at his fucking door.
"Fuck. OFF."
"I need to talk to you, Kacchan."
Of course it's that fucking nerd. Because who the fuck else would it be?
Maybe today is the day he kills him. Maybe.
He's up in a flash despite the aching in his whole entire body, and the pain is hot everywhere. He grits his teeth and rips open the door, the fire flaring in his eyes, but he finds the same in his.
"What the fuck do you want?"
The nerd pushes past him and shuts the door, so calm despite his face. It's almost eerie seeing him like this.
"Kacchan."
"What?"
He remembers the way she said that not to long ago. He grinds his teeth together, shoulders tensing even more than they already have.
"What happened to Ochako?"
He feels ice prickle his veins.
"Fuck are you talking about?" he says, wary now, narrowing his eyes.
"I came earlier today because I figured you'd be up, at around eight," he begins, his stance rigid. "And just as I'm about to knock, Ochako comes out of your room."
"Ask her why she was here. And why the fuck did you even come in the first place?" he says, turning his back to him, frustrated at the way he's betraying himself.
"I came to ask if you wanted to train with me today."
He says nothing else. The silence draws his breath away from him.
"You got your answer. Leave."
"Why was she crying, Katsuki?"
That's when he turns so abruptly that his own head spins. Still, Deku doesn't react. His stare is almost blank, the emotion behind it restrained.
He gets so close that their noses touch.
"Get. The fuck. Out."
Just as he's about to shove him, Deku grabs his wrists, and his palms burn the skin there, sparks erupting.
Without a word, he releases him. A silent promise.
"There's nothing to know," he says, voice tight. He knows exactly what that stupid fuck is thinking.
He ignores the wave of nausea that rips through him.
"I didn't hurt her."
"I hope so."
Then he's gone, shutting the door soundlessly.
He doesn't realize that his nails have dug so deep into the heels of his hands until he reaches for his phone and sees red rimming the tips of his fingers.
He isn't shaking, he tells himself. He isn't fucking shaking right now.
"Twelve fucking thirty?"
No wonder why he feels disgusting. When was the last time he's slept in for this long?
Except, I only slept for four fucking hours.
Except, I couldn't fucking sleep.
Except, I wish I didn't wake up.
He shakes the thoughts away, trudging to the bathroom and soaking his face in cold water.
He stares at himself in the mirror, gripping the sink. Counting all the veins he can see in the whites of his eyes.
His vision doubles. There's no focus anymore. He's never been so exhausted.
He's tense as he brushes his teeth, every slight movement hurting his shoulders and spine.
When he rinses his mouth, a chill courses through the heat.
He freezes.
There's a pressure at his vertebrae, something pressing slowly. He wraps his hand around the running water, trying to catch it.
Stifling the rising panic.
A drop of red falls on the porcelain in front of him, fading into the water. He cranes his neck up to his reflection.
Thick, soaked into his hair, trailing down the side of his face. He can feel the blood now, he can hear it.
He pulls his arm back and throws it into the glass.
And just as his punch lands and shatter it all, he spots a smudge in the corner of it. Watching him.
He only knows he's injured when he looks down, fresh cuts splitting his knuckles open. His breathing is so ragged, sporadic like a hurt little kid, helpless and fragile and breakable, and he doesn't want to hear it anymore.
He quickly walks out of the bathroom, letting himself bleed. The stinging starts to set in in bits and pieces.
He paces back and forth, holding his breath. Trying to catch it. Holding it. Turning in circles.
Spinning.
When the world doesn't look like the world anymore, he collapses on his bed, clutching his chest and pulling on the string, trying to rip it. Trying to set himself free.
He's never felt so weak.
His phone vibrates next to him, over and over and over. He couldn't even answer it if he wanted to. He's paralyzed.
He knows it's her.
He just lays there. Useless.