Snowed In

Part 18

The drive home feels sluggish.

The further Bakugou goes from the tiny mountain town still decorated with Christmas lights, the more he feels the weight of the past week settle in on his shoulders. He thinks twice about turning back. Once when he's still wiping at his eyes trying to stop the tears from clouding his vision and another nearly an hour later when his car makes a noise, creaking and choking, and immediately Bakugou thinks he could go back, get it looked at.

'I thought you said you fixed it?' he could say when pulling back up to the hotel. 'Stupid thing sounds like it could fall apart any second.'

But his car doesn't stop and the noise only happens once, so Bakugou continues on through the mountain roads keeping his focus straight ahead just like he had when he left, almost afraid to find out what he would actually do if he looked back.

He tries not to think about it too much, though it's really the only thing on his mind for the first half of the drive, but as the winding highway and treeline turn a little easier, less inclines with the roads slowly widening as nature disappears in favor of buildings first speckled around and then growing more and more frequent like it's own urban forest cluttered together reaching up towards the sun, Bakugou finds it a little bit easier to focus on what's ahead of him.

Getting home. Going back to Cat. Having to get a new phone, call his doctor to get looked at, call the firehouse to tell them he was in an accident but feeling fine and he swears he can go back to work.

Bakugou floods his mind with everything in the city, everything that he's been living with before the last week, everything that will continue on after, and it makes it a little easier to continue driving. To pull up to his apartment building. To only grab one bag for now because he's tired, so tired, and let that fatigue settle in, let it creep down his limbs, because it makes it easier to say all the heartache is just from lack of sleep instead of the thought of what he left behind.

As soon as he gets up to his apartment, unlocks his door, drops his bag and leans heavily against the wall as he kicks his shoes away, Cat is there. She comes to him quickly, meowing loud and nonstop, looking from Bakugou's perspective positively irritated.

His apartment feels cold.

He sighs, leaning down to her level so she can headbutt him, meowing right in his face as she does so.

"I know, I know," he says, scooping her up in his arms even as she continues practically screaming in his ear. "I wouldn't have wanted to be left alone with Deku of all people for a week too, but it is what it is. I heard you got to fuck him up a little though."

He scratches at her ears and she responds with more meowing before biting at his hand, not hard, but enough that Bakugou knows he too will be on her shit list for a little bit. He takes the punishment as is, letting her chew and grasp his hand tightly with her claws as he walks over to his couch and falls on it with Cat still held in his arms.

Bakugou knows he shouldn't sleep. There's so much to do. He needs to unpack. He needs to do laundry. He needs to go shopping for both him and Cat. There's his phone and his doctor and work. He should probably get his car looked at again, just in case. He should probably call his therapist with all the sleepless nights he's had. There's so many things that have gone wrong and right in the last week, so many things he still needs to deal with, to process, to handle, but right now he can't think of any of them.

He's on his own couch, in his own home, with his stupid cat in his arms, surrounded by a place he feels comfortable, safe, if not a little bit less warm, a little lonely, with a little lless sparkle in the lights, but he pushes all that away and decides, instead, to just let himself not think about it all.