Ch. 13
Sunday passes, Monday coming much faster than Katsuki anticipates, and from the second he opens his eyes he's filled with the same anxiety that had stopped him from talking to Ami yesterday. This time, though, it's because today is the day he faces his stupid fucking weakness and actually talks to her. No more bullshit, no more procrastinating. When class was over and they met up for training, he was going to sit her down and talk to her.
The day prior had passed by in a blur, and admittedly he'd mostly ignored Ami as a result of his shit nerves. The girls had decided to go out after he'd gotten a text from Mina telling him to "Man up" and talk to her since he hadn't at the party. He never replied, but once the girls had gotten back, they'd exchanged looks and he'd nodded. He'd just needed time to get his head in the right place.
Getting ready for class goes by quickly and he's at his desk before he realizes it, knee bouncing in anticipation. He's one of the first ones there, but in a matter of minutes the rest of his classmates begin to trickle in.
Ami's one of the first to get there, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and nodding at something Asui's saying to her. Her hair is down today, the long curls gently bouncing as she walks to take her seat beside him. When she looks over she gives him a smile, making his heart thud heavily in his chest.
"Morning." He says.
"Good morning," She says back, smile growing slightly. "You enjoy the party? Did you ever dance any?"
Katsuki snorts softly and crosses his arms now, leaning back in his chair, "I don't dance."
"I could tell that from your unwavering dedication to your job as a professional wallflower all night. Like you didn't know how."
Katsuki scoffs, "It's not that I can't. I know how to dance, I just don't because it's stupid."
Ami purses her lips, violet eyes sparkling with amusement. "A shame, because I would've killed to see that." She teases, reaching over to lightly bump his shoulder with her fist. "You could've even danced with me."
His stomach flips at the idea of dancing with her and at the casual touch. He liked this, though, this light joking back-and-forth. Despite the strong want to ignore what he felt whenever he saw her, a much bigger part of him wanted more of it. "Tch, in your fucking dreams."
She exhales a soft laugh through her nose and shakes her head, turning her attention to the front of the classroom as Mr. Aizawa enters. "It wouldn't kill you to loosen up a little," She whispers. "Try it next time."
Rolling his eyes, the blond crosses his arms on his desk and looks forward, "Pass. With my luck recently it probably would kill me." Katsuki can feel her silent laughter at his response beside him as instruction begins. The interaction had put him a little more at ease but he quickly reminds himself not to get too comfortable. The hardest part of his day had yet to come, and he'd be damned if he let a little lighthearted talk go to his head.
Katsuki had gone over and over in his head what he was going to say to her, revisiting and revising it over the last day and handful of hours. Nothing had felt quite right though. Either he was too blunt, too aggressive, or too... soft.
And the last thing he was was fucking soft.
So far he'd decided his current plan of action was to get her to sit with him outside of the training area and own up to how he'd been acting and why. He'd tell her that he had feelings for her, and tell her if she didn't feel the same then it was fine. He would be fine with just being... friends. Even if the way she made him feel was past that point. He'd get over it like he got over everything else he couldn't change. Katsuki had decided that "feelings" were annoying and fucking inconvenient as hell, so the sooner he could work towards smothering them after a rejection the better. He'd block out any hurt at the rejection with more training, trading in his focus on her for the ability to focus only on himself again.
"Bakugo."
He glances to the side when Ami's voice softly hisses at him, meeting her eyes.
"Training today right?"
Swallowing his nerves, he nods. This was what he'd wanted to happen, so why did he feel sick to his stomach?
"Think you're ready for level 4?" She continues, now looking down at her textbook in front of her.
"Been ready." He was out of practice, of course, but he was sure that he'd be able to get back on it. Especially if things went badly. "I've got you figured out."
"Fujiwara, can you tell me what year that was in?" Mr. Aizawa asks, cutting neatly into their conversation with a pointed look.
"2035. May." Ami answers without missing a beat.
Their teacher grunts, "Correct."
Katsuki looks down at the book in front of him and turns to the next page to catch up. He'd been so lost in his head that he hadn't even realized they were in a different chapter now. He hated that his mind was so... unorganized. He was a being of routine and order; he had a schedule he strictly adhered to. Recently he'd not been able to recognize himself with all the changes and internal struggles he was reacting and adapting to. He hated it -truly he did-... and in that moment he really began to wonder...
Was winning over Ami really worth losing his focus like this?
Katsuki glances at her out of the corner of his eye, watching her take notes. He was never this unfocused, and it was because of her. Not that it was necessarily her fault, though. His lack of focus was on him, and even if he'd managed to continue to train and work on his moves, he was still lacking in other aspects. He'd all but completely thrown his sleep schedule out the window, he'd started eating worse and at random times, and his mood had been unstable rather than neutral more often than not.
Ami lightly bites her bottom lip, her brow furrowing at whatever she was reading.
His eyes follow the subtle movement immediately, eyes going to her lips and sticking there. While she was a welcome distraction sometimes, he knew that even if he did get her, eventually he was going to have to choose between her and being a pro. There was a reason that most pro heroes were single: Trying to simultaneously maintain both a relationship and their pro status was a full-time job. Then aside from that they always had to worry about a villain attacking their loved ones, so they were usually always on edge if they had one. That much Katsuki had seen in person before, when the villain that had targeted Endeavor had stolen away Natsuo.
So was getting her worth possibly going through that some day?
"Take a picture, it'll last longer." Ami murmurs, side-eyeing him.
Katsuki starts. He'd gone from glancing at her to full on looking while he was lost in thought. "Zoned out. Sorry." He mumbles back, immediately looking down at his book. Aside from dealing with a risk like that, was he willing to let her potentially get in the way of him becoming #1? He already had enough to worry about because of Deku, who was already enough of a massive fucking threat with One-For-All and it's cumulative quirks.
Maybe he should give himself another day to think it all over. It would be for the best, right? Giving himself more time to think would give him the chance to weight out even more pros and cons. Besides, he had time to tell her. It wasn't like it was a life or death situation, so it could wait. 100%.
By the time class is over and he's making his way towards the training ground, he's made up his mind to give it another day. It wasn't that he was procrastinating again, he was just... giving himself more time to think. Putting extra thought into something was good after all, wasn't it? You could never be too prepared.
When he walks through the doors he almost swallows his tongue.
Ami lays on the ground infront of him, typing on her phone while in a middle split. Her head pops up and she gives him a big grin. "Stretching," she says. "I haven't really trained or did much in months so I'm kinda out of shape." She's in her hero costume, which is different, and at his look, she glances down too. "Oh. I haven't really gotten to wear it much and it was in my bag still from when we were doing our in-city training and-"
"Fujiwara."
"... Yes?"
"Shut up."
She holds her hands up in defeat, a small smile on her face, "Sorry, sorry. I know, information overload."
Every colorful swear and vulgar curse he can think of flies through his head as he watches her come up out of the split. He knows his eyes are openly glued to her, but it's just really fucking hard to look away.
This was going to be a fucking nightmare.
This was going to be a fucking nightmare.
Ami was already exhausted from hardly sleeping the night before, constantly tossing and turning and waking up repeatedly. She was stressed out to hell and back over training, which sucked because she had always kinda enjoyed it before. She and Bakugo had been mostly on ok terms then though, and this would be the first time since the massive fuckening that happened months ago that they'd be training together.
Alone.
Her body was already ringing from the dreams that had been playing in her mind at night since the dance. She'd caught him looking at her at different points in time throughout that night, which had been what she was hoping for, but he never... came over.
She was thinking into it too much. She knew he wasn't interested. From his opinion on dancing that he'd explained to her earlier, it was extremely likely that he was just looking because he did think dancing was stupid and he was watching because it was just something to do. She just couldn't help but to hope maybe he'd catch her by surprise.
God this is fucking ridiculous.
The dreams had started off as repeats of that night, but then they slowly started to turn into What if? scenarios. In one, he'd actually danced with her, despite being visibly annoyed that he was dancing in the first place. In another... he'd whisked her off to a dark nook, tucked away from all the others and the flashing lights of the dance floor. It was too dark for her to see there, but she could feel the feather light kisses against her neck and down her collarbone, hands gripping her hips when the kisses traveled to her lips... Her hands running down his muscled arms as she matched the ferocity of those kisses...
Ami shakes the feeling off, goosebumps spreading up her arms. That was the last thing she needed to be thinking of when he was standing right there in front of her. Things were awkward enough as they were.
Bakugo goes to change without a word and Ami walks over to her bag to drop her phone in. Even absentmindedly scrolling through it had been a challenge with the state of her mind being in shambles the way it was. Even talking to Mina hadn't helped.
"I just wish I knew what to do." She'd sighed to her friend as they walked back barefoot to her dorm from the party. "I was too much of a bitch to go talk to him, hoping he'd do all the work and come talk to me instead, and now I'm regretting wasting time and not taking the chance when I had it."
Mina had tried to comfort her with a gentle hand placed on her her shoulder. "Don't be so hard on yourself. I saw the way he looked at you all night. If anyone's regretting not taking a chance it should be him."
Ami had noticed that she'd been a bit more... supportive, recently of this interest in Bakugo. Which she figured was a good sign since not too long ago she was the same one trying to keep him away from Ami. Though, that could've been because she knew fighting it wasn't as good of a medicine as letting Ami find out for herself.
"You ready?"
Ami's head snaps up and she looks across to where Bakugo is doing his pre-training stretches. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry." She shakes her head to clear it and jogs over to where he stands. "My head's been a little bit of a mess lately."
Bakugo scoffs softly, but not unkindly, "I know how you feel."
Their eyes meet for a moment, but Ami's the first to look away. She didn't like the way her chest felt when she looked at him. "So," She continues, rolling her shoulders back. "Should we... ease back into it? Or should we-"
"Start where we left off." He says abruptly. "I got it."
She rolls her eyes almost involuntarily. Back to his usual self already I see. "Alright, just let me know when you're ready." She says, backing up a few steps.
Bakugo braces himself after a moment and gives her a nod, "And don't hold back on me either, Shortstack."
If you say so.
Without another second of hesitation Ami dials up her quirk and hits him with it full force, expelling her smoke from her palms and reaching Bakugo in milliseconds.
At first he blasts himself away to dodge it, sending the smoke in the opposite direction, but the moment he lands the smoke recondenses and arcs for him again. He only manages to send Ami a quick, shocked look before darting away again, "Shit-"
The black smoke ripples and expands, Ami moving her hands to keep them never less than a foot behind him. "Going to have to do more than just evade me eventually." She yells, separating her hands and bringing the left one up and around to surround him instead.
Bakugo flips around and launches himself into the air, maneuvering between the wisps of smoke and out over the top. "What about now, you-"
With a flick of her wrists, Ami encapsulates him in smoke forcing him down to the ground below. "Now, you try to break the hold." She returns. "Focus." She once again brings him to his knees, locking his joints in place.
Despite the fact that he was pissed and it was amusing to watch him fight what he was so confident he wouldn't have a problem with, his silent fight was actually beginning to work. It was like he was attempting to pick a lock, with the right tools but without proper instruction. He struggles against her hold, angry eyes flicking up to meet hers.
That's a nice look. Bakugo on his knees.
She blinks away the intrusive thought, clearing it from her head. Although true, she couldn't afford to lose focus now with him being so close to figuring out how to properly break her hold. "Whatever you're doing is working, but only a little." She says after a moment. "But I can tell you're fighting it out of anger, and blindly thrashing won't do what you want it to do."
"I... got it..." He grunts, irritation lacing his tone. He was still fighting it with anger, though. "Just-... shut up for a second."
Ami exhales a laugh and waits, refraining from restrengthening her hold. She'd let him work through breaking it first, then she'd let him go through the second round. But for now... Her eyes travel down his arms, watching the muscles flex as he strains against her quirk. Before she realizes it, her brain flashes back to her dreams, her hands running down those same arms...
This momentary lapse in focus causes her quirk to falter.
Bakugo breaks free, lunging forward in an instant and taking Ami by the wrists. He pins them to her sides, stopping the flow of smoke from continuing. "Ha, broke free." He announces proudly.
But then he pauses when he realizes he's barely an inch from her face.
Ami's eyes meet his and a shaky breath exits her lungs, his hands on her wrists sending flashes of earlier dreams through her head. She starts to feel her quirk start up on its own as a defense mechanism in response to her nerves but she quickly reels it back in. She quickly snatches her wrists free, causing his hands to drop to her waist instead.
Which was considerably worse.
Her hands accidentally brush against his midsection and butterflies start up in her abdomen at the muscles there, too. Her mouth dries immediately. Ah fuck.
"I.. uh," Bakugo's eyes turn almost pained for a moment. "Fujiwara... I-"
The sounds of the doors to the training gym open and the two spring apart quickly, hearts in their throats.
"Of course I'd find you two here." Mr. Aizawa's annoyed voice cuts through the silence, causing them both to turn. "So I'm assuming neither of you were actually listening when I said for the class to meet in the dormitory common room?"
The pair fall silent, exchanging a look with each other before shaking their heads.
"Well, since you two missed out on helping due to not listening, I have something you both can do to make up for it." Their teacher motions for them to follow. "Get changed and grab your things."
They follow Aizawa back to the school once they're back in their school uniforms, and up to their classroom, where he leaves them for a moment before returning with cleaning supplies.
"You want us to... clean the classroom?" Bakugo asks, frowning.
"Yes, the whole classroom. Sweep and mop the floors, clean the windows, wipe down the desks. And next time," He points at the both of them as he leaves. "Pay attention in class."
Ami groans and shakes her head once the door shuts. This is exactly what she got for focusing on the wrong thing, and now this was definitely getting back to her uncle. Alone with Bakugo again, but this time in a compromising position? Yeah, that was a done deal. "Fuck!" She runs her fingers through her hair before going to snatch up a broom. "Well I'm definitely getting bitched at over this."
"Why would I bitch at you?"
Ami turns and frowns at the blond, "Not you. My uncle. He already didn't want me hanging out with you so much anyway, then lo and behold, the first time we go back to training we get in trouble."
Bakugo's face goes from annoyed to angry in an instant. "Snipe? What's he a got a problem with me for?!"
Ami groans and starts angrily sweeping, "It's not really you exactly, it's me. That, and a long fucking story from stupid ass Seiai that made there be conditions for me to come here." She mutters.
"So... what the fuck does that have to do with me?"
She glares at him, "Bakugo just shut up and clean."