Tics and Scratches

Chapter 9

The situation had only escalated by the time Bakugo made it onto the train back to his house. He had spent the whole of last night and this morning holed up in his room pondering over what Aizawa had suggested.Reminiscent of earlier that term, Kirishima had come and sat outside his door a couple of times in almost successful attempts at getting him to let his friends in both physically and metaphorically. But Bakguo had managed to resists all of their attempts, even when food was offered. Luckily, in the morning, he had managed to slip out of the dorms earlier than their designated leaving time stopping anyone from jumping him for answers. 

As he clasped the swaying handle of the tube he could feel the raw skin of his arm rubbing against his sleeves making him wince every so often (although he did briefly consider that they could be shivers...tics?) Even when faced with the ache of burn wounds, he was determined to carry on with his plan. He had spent a lot of the night desperately trying to condition his brain into realising whatever it was doing was wrong. Although he had seemingly made no progress yet, it was still early days and he held up hope for his recovery, if you could even call it that. A bit of old fashioned pain punishment had never failed him before and he was sure the new addition of "self inflicted" wouldn't affect the results.

Despite his determination to act like a completely regular human being and not to embarrass himself on the train his shivers didn't stop. It was almost like his 'conditioning' was making things worse, causing his body to lash out at him and belt stupid little things like "Yoshi" and "Kacchan" at the top of his lungs in front of some little old lady. His movements and sounds were starting to annoy even him so the people around him must absolutely despise him at the moment. Not that he wasn't used to the scathing glares that have accompanied him since the sports festival.

Even with his body occasionally forcing a gasp or grunt he was starting to find it hard to breath. So when the doors finally slid open to reveal the station platform next to his house he bolted off reviling in the fresh air that poured through his lungs. He slapped his upper arm a couple of times as both a scolding to himself for the shit show that was that journey but also as a way to bring himself back to the platform. He was starting to feel himself lose control over the situation and the last thing he wanted was to walk into his house in the midst of what he now knew were probably what people called tic attacks. 

By the time he had made it to his front door he had managed to mostly take back control of the situation and realised it wasn't going to get any better than this. In the couple short months he had spent at school the occasional head jerk and nose scrunch had turned into whatever the fuck this was and there was no way he was going to be able to hide it from his mum. He didn't even know if he wanted to hide it from his parents at all. He just wanted them to help him fix this and they couldn't do that if they didn't know. But he knew his mum wouldn't just change overnight and believe him. She was a woman of very strong beliefs and him being anything below her standard of perfect would go against everything she stood for. And there was no way in hell that his dad would grow a backbone and stand up for him. The whole situation sucked. He was still partly convinced he didn't have tics. His extensive research had told him that him having both verbal and motor tics would indicate Tourette's syndrome which normally developed at around 8 years old. He was double that age! He couldn't imagine anything worse than telling his mum about all of this just to find out he had been making it up the whole time. Mitsuki would actually murder him. Emphasis on the 'actually'. Not that he wouldn't also be murdered if this was a permanent thing. Long story short, he was screwed either way.

Sighing, he swung open the front door only partly prepared for the hell he was going to have to go through this weekend to remain inconspicuous. Under normal circumstances he would've still had a few months to pull his act together before the next big holiday. But ever since UA had noticed the huge decline in student mental health they had encouraged the students to go home every few weekends, which Bakugo thought was utter bullshit. The whole reason the dorms were implemented was to keep them safe and all in one place. Maybe he was just biased because he didn't want to leave the comfort of the school.