Nasha Rei-kun left a super nice review (thank you!) and requested "Bakugou sucks at doing first aid. Even on small cuts."

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Katsuki is pissed.

Pissed that it was raining, pissed he was in the infirmary, pissed that Recovery Girl is apparently on strike from anything to do with him. HE wasn't even the one who was injured! The dampness of his hands and fingers make the paper wrapping on bandaids hard to open and he really wants to just blow it up, but then again, blowing things up is how he ended up in here.

It had been about three months since Uraraka had started shadowing him and copying his training regimen. It irritated him after the first week and he confronted her after class. She explained that she wanted to become better at hand to hand to avoid having to use her quirk all the time. He proceeded to tell her that was bullshit. She really ought to learn to just use her quirk to enhance her own fighting style- that was what he did, anyway.

The thing she said next caught his attention in full. You're the only one that won't go easy on me.

Next thing he knew he was launching himself at Uraraka, fist prepared. She managed to drop to the ground and avoid more than a glancing blow. On instinct her hand came up and he found he had no gravity. Ever since then, they would meet after class in the gym, on the training grounds, occasionally late at night in the common room- no quirks allowed.

He'd figured for a while that she was imitating that fucking nerd, but it was never more prominent than in their festival fight and the first few in their training. Anytime Uraraka has to think, the result was a Deku-eqsue plan that normally involved wearing herself out. It was only when he started their common room fights, an ambush on her waking up from one of the couches, that he got pure Uraraka-style.

Those fights were much more fun, more exhilarating. He knew how Deku thought and fought already and it honestly didn't suit her or her quirk at all. Attacking her when she didn't have a plan often forced more creative thinking and more than once he found himself pinned by a piece of training equipment to the ceiling. Her flexibility and weight limit increased and he got to try out new explosive moves that most of their classmates would balk at facing. But not her. Her eyes narrowed out of their roundness and were sharp as a knife, a true visual learner who could pick up the small details in his stance that could give him away.

It was during their last match that those brown eyes had missed something.

The rain was relentless outside, but their training wasn't held up for any weather, just like heroics couldn't wait for a sunny day. He was at the disadvantage in these conditions, palms diluted with rain water. Perhaps that was where it had gone wrong; the desperation to win, to overcome the weather against a worthy opponent, consumed him. It wasn't much different from his Howitzer Impact, but he put maybe too much force into it, assuming the rain would dampen his explosive tornado.

It didn't happen. The spinning wicked a lot of the water off and the heat of the initial burst burned the rest away. And because he kept pushing, he hit Uraraka with way more force and a wider funnel of flames than either of the expected. He can still clearly see her dodging and covering her face with her hands between flashing strips of his explosions.

So now he's in the infirmary, having carried her as fast as he could, only to find Recovery Girl MIA. Uraraka is sitting on the cot closest to him, alternating between swaying and leaning against the wall. For what he expected, she doesn't look too bad. He figures she cancelled her own gravity to let the heat wave preceding his attack blow her mostly out of his line of fire. Either way, her hair is singed, tiny cuts from debris are littered on every patch of open skin, she has a hell of a lump on her head and there are red burns raw on her hands and forearms.

He's rifling through the medicine cabinet left open for students free use, knocking things off the shelf. He's positive there ought to be some burn cream or ointment or whatever the hell its called in here... there are so many people with fire related quirks! He finds it in the very back and grabs a handful of gauze and bandaids. She hazily told him as he carried her in to wash out the cuts and run her arms under cold water. As someone who'd never been burned, he guessed this made sense and for once, followed direction.

Uraraka blearily holds her hands out to him when he walks over and he takes her left first. There's a significant difference in temperature between her skin and the burns, cool from the water and hot from the inflammation. She hisses and he tries not to look at her face, feeling worse by the second as he notices the red marks not only curled around her wrists and arms, but out onto her fingers, too. He bites the inside of his cheek hard and doesn't warn her, look at her before putting the cream on her arm.

She hisses again and her fingers flinch, curling in reflexively. He keeps his fingers on the burn-free areas as best he can while maintaining his grip. When he gets to her hand, he goes slower, like taking his time will make it heal faster.

Katsuki is a lot of things, but he isn't someone who'd want to take away another's quirk, to burn it away with his own. Unless they were a Villain. Or an asshole. Or-

His thoughts cut off when Uraraka giggles.

"What the fuck are you laughing about?"

Her grin is a little lax and her head tilts to the side more from tiredness than playfulness. "You. My fingers." She snorts as he returns to his work, a little concerned that she knew something about burn care that he didn't. Was he doing it wrong? He's switched hands when she speaks again, "So gentle, Ka-tsu-ki."

He can't help but go red. She doesn't call him by his first name at all, only 'Kacchan' when she's trying to provoke him into a fight. The punctuated syllables catch him off guard and he splutters. "The fuck you mean? You think I can't be gentle?!"

She's giggling again and he's done with her arms and hands, carefully wrapped (poorly, if Recovery Girl had had a chance to give her opinion) in the gauze. He's just come back with an icepack and she's staring at him. She looks a little concussed, but mostly like she's just figured something out. Something amusing. She accepts the icepack and it slips out of her hand, floating. She lets out a 'oopsie' and grabs it, holding it to her head.

Inwardly, Katsuki breathes a sigh of relief; her quirk is unaffected by the burns.

Because of the bump on her head, he has to stay until a teacher or nurse arrives and he sits on the edge of the desk next to her cot. Arms folded, he looks at her again, assessing if there were other injuries that he needed to see to. Well, the blood on her cheek seemed a bit more than necessary. The wet towel in his hands just reminds him of the terrible weather outside, pounding on the windows. He wipes the blood off her face as Uraraka tries to stay very still. He curses under his breath when his damp fingers can't rip the bandaid paper the right way, stretching one side of the adhesive strip.

He's pasting the damn thing on her face, trying to avoid the very obvious eye contact she was attempting when she speaks again, voice tinted with wonder or maybe delirium.

"You're like a cactus."

He stops everything. What.

"A cactus! You're prickly on the outside, but soft and sweet on the inside."

His hands are still hovering near her face, her eyes creasing in happiness, the icebag melting, when the door swings open.

"What's going on in here? What- oh no, you call that a patch job? Shoo shoo, I need to redo all of this..." Recovery Girl sweeps into the room, ushering him out. His hands are still suspended in front of himself and a last look at Uraraka shows her on the infirmary bed, head tilted into the hand holding an ice bag, a crooked and stretched bandaid on her rosy cheeks. She waves with a badly bandaged hand and just before the door closes, he reads her lips.

Cactus.

He crouches outside the room, burning face in his hands.