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It starts at 5am on a Saturday morning.
It’s a surprisingly warm morning, at least, in comparison to some of the previous recent mornings – though the day promises to be a humid one. When Katsuki awakens, he’s already sweaty. It’s not ideal – his sweat soaks his shirts in nitroglycerin, which is both a pain to get out of fabric, and difficult to carefully avoid setting his laundry alight with his own quirk. It takes time to properly dispose of his tracksuit pants and shirt to make sure some idiot with, say, an electricity quirk (or half-fire quirk) doesn’t blow them all to hell.
In the morning, Katsuki wakes up, and washes his hands before he goes to pop his hearing aids over his ears. They’re relatively heavy duty for hearing aids – he’d grown up wearing the kind designed to be unnoticed, matching his skin colour, and then his hair, when it got a little longer. Now, he wore flashy hero-grade ones designed to rep his orange and black hero branding.
But – the batteries still needed to be changed, since he was wearing his backup pair, rather than the more expensive rechargeable ones he usually wore. Those were locked away in some fucking lab, while they figured how to make them more waterproof or something, since his nitroglycerin kept sneaking in and surprise exploding against the side of his fucking head.
The world is almost as quiet after he pops the hearing aids in his ears. The only real change is a sudden drop in the tension that coils inside him, at not being able to pick up noises outside the dorms.
Weekend mornings are usually quiet ones. Kirishima and Uraraka prefer to start the day off with heavy weights at 6am – around the same time Iida wakes up, drinks half a gallon of orange juice and then jets off on a half dozen marathons of distance. Deku heads out at around 6:30am usually, although more commonly around 7am now that Todoroki has joined him on his morning wake up jog. The rest of the dorm is content to sleep in on weekends, although Sero, Ashido, Shouji and Ojiro have been known to wake up early on a Sunday and spend the day in the gym doing crazy parkour shit.
But Bakugou wakes up at 5am.
Part of it is that he’s in bed by 9pm, because unlike most of the class, he values his sleep. The rest of it is a combination of anger management classes, therapy and medication which highly suggests both going the fuck to bed and having time to be by himself and work through some shit before he says it.
It’s helpful, to finally have some alone time.
It’s why, when Bakugou is halfway down the stairs, he starts to glower at the sounds coming from the living room.
The sudden influx of rage is overwhelming for a moment, that he genuinely hangs back to take deep calming breaths and remind himself that whoever the fuck is out there has not actually done anything, but perhaps exist, in a space they are allowed to.
Irrational rage is by definition irrational.
Once he’s pushed down the general feelings – unease? Uncertainty? Sheer un-fucking happiness that someone has gone and blown his routine, since half the class has no real concept of leave him the fuck alone because he doesn’t even like them-
-He does. They are his friends.
Bakugou corrects himself mentally, with a lot more sharpness than Hound Dog necessarily may have intended, when he recommended actively correcting his own bastard thought patterns.
He breathes in again and walks into the common room.
The common room is dark – but the TV is on a low volume, and the screen flashes light which helps to illuminate the two figures huddled on the couch and covered in blankets from their dorms. The two figures turn to look at him, and they all stare at each other for a weird moment before Bakugou even recognizes them.
Eyebags and Earjacker are both curled up on the couch. If Bakugou didn’t know them better, he’d think he’d stumbled on canoodling happening, except for the fact that both are wearing cat-ear headbands to pull their hair away from the thick green facemasks they’ve slathered on. There are all kinds of unhealthy snacks around them – and what looks like the remnants of chocolate milkshakes in glasses with actual whipped cream on top.
Shinsou and Jirou stare back at him with relatively surprised expressions, before Jirou reaches for her phone and looks utterly baffled at her lockscreen. Bakugou squints at the two – sure they’re now both in his class, ever since the Aoyama situation, but he can’t recall ever seeing the two hang out together without half the class surrounding them.
It makes sense though – they’re both vaguely sad little emo kids with tired looking eyes and shitty tastes in music. Bakugou’s not one to gossip about his classmates but can already see how this is going to go, if Kaminari finds out about this.
A headache is forming behind his temples.
“Oh! It’s 5am already?” Jirou announces, as if Bakugou would be down in the common room for any other reason.
“Have you been up all night?” He instead demands, because what the hell, “Go to bed you insomniac morons. Why the hell are you awake?”
Shinsou considers him, and then points towards the television with his middle finger.
Even with his hearing aids, Bakugou’s not great at picking up low noises. Hearing aids may be a fucking godsend, most of the time, but all they really do is amplify noise – half the time, the noises just overstimulate him until he claws them off his own ears, and the other half of the time, he can’t differentiate between sounds. People talking becomes a weird monotonous sound; bleeding together and becoming an impenetrable wall he cannot surpass.
It makes a hell of a lot more sense when he squints at the TV to find that the wall of incomprehensible noise is because they’re both watching something in Korean.
“The fuck are you watching?”
“혼술남녀,” Jirou says.
“아주 좋은 것 같아요” Shinsou adds, as he pulls a well-loved hello kitty blanket over his shoulders that clashes with his elsewise all-black aesthetic.
Bakugou squints at them harder, but flicks his eyes at the TV – there are subtitles, but not in Japanese, which means-
“You two know Korean?” He asks a bit more harshly than expected, “Or are you on some Duolingo shit?”
“저 한국말 좀 해요” Shinsou responds back, with narrowed eyes. Bakugou has no fucking idea what sleepytimes said but can taste the sharpness of his smile by the teeth he flashes back. He’s aware enough to know when he’s accidentally poked a really sore spot, but not a single fucking clue what.
This is some Deku friendship is magic shit to deal with.
“Cool,” Bakugou responds back, “We all looked over everyone’s hero resumes in class, I didn’t see shit, so why the fuck didn’t you two mention your little Korean language club on it?”
The two glance at each other, and Jirou shrugs first.
“We only really do ‘Korean language club shit’ when we’re watching K-Pop or K-dramas,” Shinsou says, with all the dry unrepentant asshole-infused sarcasm that makes him worth knowing, “Or when we’re shit talking.”
The ‘shit-talking you’ is heavily implied by the drawl, and the smirk.
“Sometimes we watch the hero news in Korea,” Jirou adds, “Their current number one has a fermentation quirk.”
Bakugou internally rage screens, because he doesn’t fucking care-
“Put it on your fucking resume,” Bakugou snaps, “And go the fuck to bed.”
Bakugou does not look back while he gathers his shoes from the communal shoe rack, and certainly not when he finally leaves for his morning run.
-
Because Katsuki Bakugou is doomed to live a life of misery, the end of his peaceful run is interrupted by a bunch of the new 1-A students, who flitter around and run like they’ve been trained by a marionette.
He’s a bleeding goddamn heart for the future of the heroics industry, so he drops from his run to loom over their tiny little frail bodies and yell at them, until they manage to hold a proper runners form. People have been threatening him with community service for his entire fucking life, and don’t seem to realise that he’s been stuck doing it since he realised the average person getting into a hero school was someone who he really didn’t trust or want to rely on to save him.
The average man is Denki 'lick a battery' Kaminari.
The rant goes for much longer than expected, because children are dumb and their capacity for learning diminishes when faced with the real-life war hero who lived three dorms down from them. By the time the kid with three actual eyes on his face finally can run without looking like he’s waddling, the sun has been up for almost an hour.
All three of the kids, clap excitedly and Bakugou is about to tell them to go and get haircuts that aren’t so stupid looking when one of the kids perks up and waves at something behind him. For one moment, Bakugou is cursed with the feeling that he’s about to be faced with another fifteen-year-old who hasn’t been taught to run without staring at their goddamn feet, when he turns, and the rage is pulled from him.
Sero is one of his more emotionally regulated friends, and he’s jogging lightly towards them. It isn’t until he gets closer when he can start to hear Sero’s cheerful voice.
“Bom dia!” Sero says, and utterly grins at the kid with the hair made up of telephone wires, “Tudo bem Aline?”
The girl beams, and she launches into a dizzying onslaught of sound that makes him crank down the volume on his hearing aids with great prejudice.
“Por favor repete, mais devagar!” Sero laughs, and then nods along, dropping in an occasional ‘Lindo maravilhos!’ or’ É mesmo?’”
Bakugou squints at them, until Sero pats the kid on the head, and shoos them away with a gentle ‘Tchau’.
“Ah, she’s from the same town in Brazil that my mum’s from,” Sero announced with a laugh, “She’s just real excited that someone else knows how to speak Portuguese around here. Hope she wasn’t any trouble. I’m heading back to the dorms for breakfast now, anyway – wanna join?”
Bakugou squints at him, and then turns away.
“Kid was fine,” He grudgingly returns, “You can join me as long as you can keep up.”
-
The common room is much livelier on their return. Bakugou heads straight for the showers, while Sero huffs and heads for urgently needed water. He is relieved to see that Jirou and Shinsou have departed from the couch – and even cleaned after themselves, which is more than he can say for some members of his class.
He usually places a change of clothing in the bathroom the night before, just to avoid doubling back to his room first. It is with a growing sense of unease that he allows himself the extra time under the shower, and lets the hot water soothe his aching muscles. They are not sore from the morning jog – that is, after all, more of a morning stretch, but from the last week of hero training.
There is a growing sense of unease he tries to untangle, and cannot for the life of him, figure out what is upsetting him. Being able to name his emotions and trace their source has always been really fucking hard for him, and even though Hound Dog challenged him to finally do something about that, it had not been an intuitive process.
Because he took a long shower, and because he needed to spend a good few minutes wiping down his hearing aids with some foul-smelling mixture which apparently neutralised nitroglycerine, the noise hit him like a fucking freight train when he opened the bathroom door to get breakfast.
“你疯了吗!” Yaoyorozu yells – and it’s probably the first time he’s ever heard Momo lose her proverbial shit, “王八蛋!”
Good for her.
“变态” Iida adds with dark eyes, and by this time, Bakugou has drawn closer to realise they’re yelling at Mineta.
Ah, whatever.
“What the fuck did grape nuts do?”
Sero shrugs and looks equally lost. He’s hunched over a bowl of Denki’s American cereal, although it looked like he’d already eaten all the marshmallows out of it. Todoroki was sitting next to him, sipping a juice box that Katsuki absolutely knew belonged to shitty hair.
Iida was standing so straight Katsuki could have used him as a ruler, even as he glowered down at the smirking little shitlord that was leaning against the fridge like he’d personally discovered immortality.
Yaoyorozu was standing in the kitchen; she looked halfway through preparing a traditional Japanese meal for her breakfast. A small block of silken tofu was front of her.
There was a knife in her hands.
All signs pointed to imminent violence.
Todoroki was the one to finally respond, “Mineta commented on her green hat.”
Momo was indeed wearing a green hat – a baseball cap that looked like she’d snagged it from Uraraka. It had the name of some D class hero failure on it from Gunma.
Bakugou scowled.
“And then asked if she was selling tofu,” Todoroki added, “And then if she enjoyed eating tofu. It is deserved.”
Well – whatever the fuck that was about, it was clearly happening in the middle of the kitchen, where breakfast needed to be made and eaten, and rather quickly, to stay on schedule.
“我妈妈会听到的” Mineta spit back, and the utter surprise that the goddamn grape industry’s failed mascot can speak Chinese is enough to have him straighten up in surprise.
Todoroki blinked, and then took a sip of his juicebox, “操你妈. 操你祖宗十八代.”
Mineta reared back in absolute offense, and then gave a rather pathetic looking sniff before turning on his tiny heels and marching back up into the dorms.
“笨蛋,” Yaoyorozu says, rolling her eyes fondly at Todoroki. She went back to cutting her tofu, with a much more pleased look on her face.
“What the fuck is this?” Bakugou announced, “You all speak Mandarin Chinese?”
“We went to the same class as children,” Iida responded, “There’s specialty classes for children from high class and hero families, to help prepare us for international work opportunities. Iidaten has an international office in Beijing.”
“We have business relationships in China,” Momo simply said.
“Endeavour wanted me to be a hero that outmatched All Might,” Todoroki said, “I stayed because they roast him on Weibo.”
Fucking rich legacy kids.
“Why the hell didn’t any of you put this on your goddamn resumes?” He tries again, because he looked at all of them, and not a single goddamn one of his classmates had put down any language skills.
“Oh,” Momo straightens, “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Yeah,” Sero looks surprised, “I’ll make the change man!”
Bakugou huffed, and then pushed his way into the kitchen to start the day right.
-
Of course, just because he gets to prepare and then consume a healthy meal, does not mean the rest of the day goes right.
Bakugou is washing his dishes, when Kirishima arrives back in the dorms. He’s absolutely covered in sweat, and shirtless. Uraraka is laughing by his side, and they both look absolutely destroyed by their new suns out, guns out weightlifting session.
It’s been working – both are gaining muscle and looking fucking good.
“Eggs?” Bakugou asks, because Kirishima looks like he could devour a horse. The other man’s face lights up, so before he even thinks about it took much, there’s a pack of thick bacon on cooking and a carton of a dozen eggs ready to go. Momo has left a huge amount of rice left in the cooker and fluffed it up all pretty – so Bakugou hefts a bunch onto two plates and slides them beside the stove while he focuses on making omurice the way that Kirishima likes it.
When he slides a plate across to Uraraka as well, her eyes light up like she’d being gifted the most precious thing in the world. Bakugou is halfway to making a second plate for the both of ‘em – growing heroes they are – he almost misses when Kirishima laughs.
“ขอบคุณครับ” Kirishima says, and Bakugou watches him in the reflection of the glass as he leans to Uraraka and goes, “อร่อย ไม่เป็นไร ไม่เผ็ด.”
Bakugou whirls around in absolute disbelief.
“What?” He demands.
“Oh!” Kirishima says, like he is genuinely surprised, “I speak Thai.”
“What?” He repeats himself, and then leans forward over the countertop until he is right in front of Kirishima’s face, “Since when?”
“Crimson Riot is Thai,” Kirishima says, and it’s with the same kind of worshipful face that Deku gets when All Might so much as farts around him, “I wanted to be able to talk to him if I ever get a chance to meet him.”
Katsuki gazes back incredulously, “Crimson Riot speaks Japanese – you’ve shown us every interview he’s ever done.”
“Yeah man,” Kirishima says with a smile, “But I wanna be able to speak to him from the heart.”
Katsuki whirls around and focuses on not burning the bacon even as his shoulders tense up. Instead, he makes two more plates of omurice, this time with more protein in it. Once the heat is off, he crosses his arms and leans against the counter
“What about you,” He demands of Uraraka, who shrugs in return. Katsuki has something over her though – he cooked breakfast, and she’s still hungry enough to want to finish the second plate of fucking delicious food.
“Oh, he’s just been teaching me a little while we’re lifting weights,” Round cheeks says, “It really helps me to get my mind off things – and it’s always good to learn a little of another language right? It might come in handy one day!”
Bakugou considers her – but if she’s just been picking up a few choice words while lifting a few days a week with Kirishima, she’s not fluent in it, by any means.
“-And in return, I’ve been helping Kirishima with Vietnamese!” She says, like it should be fucking obvious.
“Bullshit,” He fires back, in absolute disbelief, “How do you know Vietnamese?”
“Gia đình tôi thuê công nhân xây dựng Việt Nam,” Uraraka returns, with a smile that looks rather pleased, “Tôi học bằng cách lắng nghe khi còn nhỏ. Tôi biết tất cả những lời xúc phạm.”
Bakugou feels like screaming.
“Put it on your goddamn resumes.”
-
Bakugou experiences true peace for three hours, before Kaminari ruins it. There is a little homework to do, so he leaves the dishes with Kirishima and Uraraka, and heads up to his room to focus on Ectoplasms’ latest math horror, because getting a bad grade is not an option.
He’s so close to finishing it – so close to being able to slam the paper on his completed work pile and then do some light reading when there is a frantic banging at the door. There is only one idiot who regularly knocks to the beat of europop music, and it’s one of his idiots, so he snaps out a harsh ‘enter’, and then crosses he arms when Kaminari flops down on his bed uninvited.
“Dude,” Kaminari says, “I’m in love.”
Oh hell no.
“Get out,” Katsuki snaps, “Go and bother Kirishima.”
“Dude,” Kaminari says, “I think it’s real this time.”
It’s always real with Denki, and yet never real at all.
Katsuki grumbles but makes no real attempt to kick him out.
“I think I ruined it,” Denki said, as he clutches his phone to his chest, “I went in too fast.”
“Explain or leave,” Katsuki offers, as kindly as he can muster, and it’s not a lot, really.
“I’m talking to this girl,” Denki says, twiddling his thumbs, “We met online.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Her profile was so hot dude,” Denki said, “And I sent her a message and now I think she’s ignoring me.”
“Show me,” Katsuki demanded, completely unwilling to entertain a half hour game of wheedling out whatever fucking bullshit Denki was up to, “Now.”
Denki unlocked, and then handed over his phone.
“What the hell,” Katsuki demanded, as soon as he set eyes on the screen, “What language is this?”
“Oh,” Denki quirked his head; he was aiming for loveable idiot, but completely missed the loveable and stuck the landing in idiot, “It’s Finnish.”
Katsuki took a calming breath. It was nice and deep, and he held it for the three seconds that Hound Dog advised, before releasing it slowly.
Denki seemed to find it disconcerting and shuffled away from him on the bed.
“Denki,” Katsuki repeats, as levelled as possible, “What language is this?”
“Oh, ah, yeah, Finnish,” Denki said again, blindingly upbeat, “I had an online Finnish girlfriend in middle school. We used to multiplayer. I got really really good at it, and now I’m pretty much fluent.”
“-And what does this message say?”
“Onko sinulla kartta? Koska olen kadonnut sinun silmiisi,” Denki helpfully said, and then stared at him for a long time.
“Which means?” Katuski prompted, with a glower forming on his face.
“Oh! Ahaha, well,” Denki cowered under Bakugou’s gaze, "Do you have a map? Because I'm lost in your eyes."
“Cut that shit out right the fuck now,” Katsuki hissed, “You’re going to be a goddamn pro hero in a few months.”
Denki nodded sharply, his eyes widened as Katsuki stood up and leaned over him, and grabbed the scruff of his shirt, “And put Finnish on your resume.”
It doesn’t get any better, when he drags Kaminari out of his room, hands him off to Kirishima and let him know that Denki’s been sending weird messages again. Bakugou can threaten, but Kirishima can publicly shame. It’s fully psychological, and even more so when Kirishima texts Mina, who comes skipping down the stairs in absolute joy at being able to give another lecture about respecting women. Sero is fast behind her, because the two usually spend their mid-mornings gossiping and doing manicures.
“It’s in Finnish?” She says, “I’m actually a little impressed you know another language.”
“I also speak Italian,” Kaminari says mournfully, “Italian and Finnish – the two languages of love.”
Mina cracks up, which sets off Kirishima as well.
Bakugou stares back at Kaminari in absolute disbelief.
“Ok, sono un buon ballerino, sono attraente e il mio corpo è fantastic,” Denki says, more to himself than to his laughing friends, “Dammi sostegno qui, sono l'adorabile sfavorita!”
“Don’t look at me dude,” Kirishima says, “I just speak Thai.”
“Just Brazillian Portuguese here,” Sero says, “I took like, a year of German when I lived in Brazil as a kid though. It’s awful.”
“I’m fluent in English,” Mina offers, “But my grandma taught me more than a little Khmer – my Mum speaks it much better though.”
“What does it sound like?” Kirishima asks curiously.
“ខ្ងុំឈ្មោះ មីនា,” She says, and Bakugou can only recognise the sound of her own name, “អ្នកចង់រាំជាមួយខ្ញុំទេ?”
“That’s so cool,” Denki says, “I wanna learn some.”
“Not if you’re just going to try and hit on girls from Cambodia!”
“What about you Kats?” Kirishima asks.
The tension coils in Bakugou’s stomach.
“Fuck, just Japanese.” He says, “And whatever bullshit English Mic-Sensei makes us do.”
They all do Present’s Mic’s English class, but the class is really more designed for basic conversational skills, and way more focused on bare minimum hero work than any kind of fluency. Mic sure tries though – it’s just that the classes weren’t as important as the war they’ve gone through. The war that interrupted all their classes. The one that blew up half Japan.
His friends exchange glances.
“Don’t worry Kats,” Kirishima grins, “We’ll teach you a little bit of what we know!”
It’s meant to be reassuring, he’s sure, but the tension and unease grow until he can feel himself hunching over and narrowing his eyes like a cornered cat.
“I’m busy,” He shoots back, “Dunce face interrupted my homework. Figure him out.”
With that, he spins on his heels, and does not hesitate to flee like an absolute coward up the stairs.
Now that he’s aware of it, it’s everywhere.
He comes down the stairs, hours later, for a late lunch, to find Tsuyu teaching Deku Tagalog – because apparently, she grew up in the Philippines because she’s Filipino. Deku is taking notes and replicating sounds like he was born with a language proficiency quirk.
Deku’s eyes are bright and he’s beaming under the praise of getting things right – and then Ojiro comes up and speaks to Deku in Spanish – and all three of them are chatting and laughing and Bakugou can’t breathe.
He manages to get outside by storming past everyone so quickly that he watches Deku’s eyebrows shoot up and hide in his hairline in absolute bewilderment.
No one says it, but he knows what they’re all thinking – He hasn’t had an episode in a really long time, and the anger that’s curling around him is lacking the structure it once had, when it was a daily occurrence. He feels like a live wire and needs to make sure everyone is clear of the blast range when he finally goes off.
Deku speaks multiple languages.
Bakugou has known that since middle school
Deku knows fluent English and fluent Spanish because those two language groups produce the most All Might content, and Deku was a real fucking weird kid that needed to be able to argue with other real fucking weird kids on forums. But Katsuki had also listened to him chatting on the phone with the weird Rody kid from Otheon, in that fucked up Otheon-French that had made Aoyama look nauseous and complain theatrically about Deku beating the French language to death or some shit.
They’ve buried the proverbial hatchet.
Izuku is his friend now-
-But something old and wounded in his pride writhes, bites, snaps, and snarls and makes him throw himself into the lower branches of a tree like he’s a brat throwing a tantrum.
He breathes in, he holds, he breathes out, and the anger curling around him takes a moment to calm the fuck down. It has nowhere to go, but he holds in it desperately - he doesn't explode anymore - he doesn't do that shit.
Of course, this is the exact moment when Kouda’s head appears, two trees left and one bush down, and tries to flee without being noticed.
“Oi!” He calls, “Kouda.”
His classmate hesitates and looks for a moment like he’d been sentenced to the gallows. Katsuki can’t even blame him – he knows he’s a real shit when he’s angry.
“Please,” He adds, “Here.”
Kouda shuffles over and looks like he’s prepared for a noose to be tied around his neck. His phone is in his hands – there’s a near certainty that Deku sent out a mass text message to warn everyone about the Category 10 Bakugou Warning currently in effect in their local region.
“Do you speak any other languages?” He demands, and then goes frigid when Kouda nods back.
‘I can understand English, and we studied Korean in middle school.’ Kouda signs, ‘I can sign in Japanese Sign Language, American Sign Language, and Australian Sign Language.’
Katsuki twitches in his tree.
‘Does my quirk count?’ Kouda asks, curiously, ‘Because then, I also speak to animals.’
Katsuki goes rigid and freezes and his eyes get more and more narrow until they’re thin slits, concentrating his rage down into a pinpoint laser. His lungs ache, and his eyes sting and by the time he can calm himself down, he’s dug half crescent holes into his palms where he’s gripped his fingers too hard.
It’s so fucking stupid. It’s a ridiculous thing to get so worked up over, especially because again, they’re all his fucking friends and what they put or don’t put on their own resumes is their own goddamn business.
Why the fuck does he even care.
It’s getting darker, and he’s both fucked his entire Saturday by climbing and sitting in a tree, and then brooding like a child because he what – wasted a class reviewing everyone’s shitty ass resumes? He pauses, and then feels the niggling itch of wrongness in his chest and tries again.
That he didn’t fucking know that his friends could speak other languages? They’d fought in a goddamn war together, and it didn’t come up that Kirishima could speaking fuckin’ Thai?
Katsuki loves spicy Thai food.
“The darkness is quite enchanting,” A voice jumps out from below the tree, and Katsuki hisses like a cat at the surprise. It’s a near miracle the dumbass below doesn’t get shot in the face with an explosion.
Dark Shadow cackles.
“Yet, dinner awaits,” Tokoyami announces, “And you have been outside enough, I think.”
“Do you speak another fucking language,” He bites back, and watches as Tokoyami squints at him like a little insect under a log.
“I am capable of reading and writing in Latin,” Tokoyami announces, “And I am quite versatile in Romanian.”
Bakugou blinks.
“Fucking Romanian?” He responds, “For some goth shit?”
“For some goth shit,” Tokoyami agrees wearily, “I was very into vampiric lore in my youth. Some might say, a little too into vampiric lore.”
"Very much so," Dark Shadow said, "He wore fake fangs and drank red juice a lot."
Bakugou laughs and laughs, but climbs down from the tree, and follows Tokoyami back into the dorms. Guy’s a literal hoot and half, and he is grateful that they sent Tokoyami to get him, rather than Kirishima, or Deku.
When they do arrive back in the dorms, the kind of manic energy that has been chewing at the fat under Katsuki’s skin falls back into a kind of frantic energy that makes him want to sourly sulk like Early Todoroki (or EarlyRoki, as the kids call that era). The entire class is sitting at the dinner table, and there is a kind of nervous energy that is transmitted when they share side glances, like they’re not sure if he’s about to explode again.
It's – not a good feeling.
There is a full spread of food on the table. They look like they’re about to start eating, and when he approaches, Deku looks like he’s about to inhale for strength, clench his butt cheeks and give a motivational speech.
“Listen up,” He says, and steals the wind from Deku’s sails, “I’ve been talking with all you losers today – put your hand up if you speak another language other than Japanese at this table.”
The hands go up, and Bakugou is floored when everyone has raised their hands. He watches while everyone looks around the table in awe at their communal hands, and then folds his arms over his chest like Aizawa.
“Hagakure, speak,” He demands.
“Um,” The invisible girl says hesitantly, and then, “Hindi and Bengali?”
There is a pause, before half the class starts in a nauseating wave of ‘that’s so cool’. Bakugou lets off a small explosion in his palm, purely to draw attention and shut down what will be a half an hour emotional praise session if he doesn’t halt this shit in its tracks.
“Rapid-fire,” He says, “Shouji.”
“Laotian,” Shouji pauses, “My stepfather’s family was from Laos.”
“Satou,” Bakugou snaps, “Speak.”
“Bahasa Indonesian and Indonesian Malay.”
The group gasps and preens and mutters compliments.
“Then why,” Bakugou snaps, and fires off another small explosion – the kind that’s a bunch of loud noises and a few sparks, “Did none of you put this shit on your resumes?”
“What,” Deku says, with eyes bright with dual wisdom and stupidity, “Um, is that why you’re really mad?”
“Half you shits were worried about not being competitive when you officially debut,” Bakugou said, and the rage kept growing, “You think being bilingual or fucking multilingual isn’t going to be a huge draw for agencies? Do none of you read hero legislation – you get paid more if you’re bilingual.”
Uraraka suddenly looks very interested.
Deku hums, and then laughs, “Oh I never really thought of it that way, to be honest! I just learned different languages to talk about All Might online, really!”
“How many languages do you speak, Deku?” Uraraka asks, in excitement.
“Oh,” Deku says, and smiles apologetically “Just 8.”
-FUCKING
WHAT
The subsequent calamity is quite frankly an utter embarrassment.
Katsuki’s vision just…goes red and he’s breathing heavy like a mad man, and crunching his fingerbones like he had on the very first day of school, when he had been driven by a cruel need to rip Deku apart and break his bones and drink the goddamn marrow. He wants to bite and bite and maybe he hisses when Kirishima tries to reach for him and maybe he's still ranting about goddamn resumes even as he starts to spiral.
He doesn’t want that anymore.
He doesn't want to be that anymore.
He watches his classmate's back-up and makes the decision to sit the fuck down where he stands because Hound Dog had once told him that it’s much harder to start a fight or throw a punch if you sit down on the ground, western style. He's sure it's bullshit, but he does it anyway because he's taking therapy seriously, this year, on account of the heart problems.
“Update your fucking resumes,” he says, wheezes, and then feels like such an idiot.
The room is too small, too crowded, and at first, he thinks the room is starting to shake, before he realizes that he’s the one rocking back and forth.
“Did we break him?” Denki asks, meets his eyes, and then turns to bolt up the stairs towards Aizawa’s room.
Deku is standing a little closer, hovering like he doesn’t quite know what will happen if he gets too close, what might be forever known as Bakugou’s long-awaited, much anticipated breakdown.
Godfucking damnit.
When Aizawa comes, he clears the room and then perches on the bench at the table, with a look of utter bewilderment.
“Deku speaks 8 languages,” He says flatly, and then exposes his back molars in a smile, “And I wanted to drink his fucking marrow.”
Aizawa levels him with a kind of long look that can only be described as utterly confused and highly concerned. It’s filtered through Aizawa’s typical expression of a long-suffering and underpaid pro hero.
“I’m not equipped to deal with this kind of complex emotionality tonight,” Aizawa says, and then squints, “Come on, we’re going to Hound Dog.”
And Bakugou stands and follows him.
As far as emergency counselling sessions are concerned, this one is probably one of the better ones that he’s ever attended. Hound Dog greets him like an old friend and sits him down but does not allow him to wiggle out of looking at himself honestly.
It goes long into the night, and by the time he’s released back into the dorms, Hound Dog had helped him take a critical eye to his emotions and figure out why the fuck he’s been on edge all day.
He’s grown comfortable being known for his competence – he’s wrapped it around his identity and secured it in his bones and it has been wrenched loose. His ability to get shit done and be one of the best – and fucking now of all places, in the last leg of his third year, he’s finally starting to understand that he cannot do everything.
But all his classmates can do just a little bit more than he can, and it pulls his heart from his chest and curdles it like milk. It’s a bitter feeling – and in the middle of it is Deku, with his 8 fucking languages.
He’s never had the feeling before that everyone else is leaving him behind. He sits with it and hates the taste of being less than in his mouth when he admits it.
Hound Dog releases him with a promise to see him again the next time, after he’s had a little time to reflect on his own emotions. The emotions that he cannot control, because everyone has always told him he’s a loose fucking canon, so why try to control that shit.
Bakugou reaches the dorms well past his bedtime; it is thankfully empty downstairs because he feels like he’s been emotionally rubbed raw and bloody, and then put through a wringer twice over. He doesn’t need people to see him that way.
There are still people awake – he can hear them in their rooms, even with his shitty ass hearing, but it’s clear that they’ve been given Aizawa orders to leave him alone.
Occasionally, Eraserhead pulls through on foresight.
He heads upstairs and crashes on his bed with a heart that feels oddly empty and drained and checks his phone only to see the half dozen messages of ‘we love you’, and ‘feel better’, like he didn’t have a meltdown at the dining room table like a toddler.
And he sleeps.
When he wakes up the next morning, he decides to finally just get shit done and leave the bedroom he’s been hiding in – he opens his door, and a book falls onto his slipper. He picks it up and squints at it until he feels a smile crack across his face.
‘Russian for beginners’, the textbook says, ‘Vol 1.’
The note attached is longer:
‘Catch up Kacchan – our future agency will need us both at our best’.
And this, he can work with.