Tics and Scratches

Chapter 11

Bakugo had felt Kirishima's eyes glued to him ever since that one night he snapped, simply waiting for him to tip over the edge. The joke was on him however, as Bakugo never slipped up during the day. His tics were noticeable and he didn't necessarily hide them. But he never showed any incling of the whirlwind that was encasing his mind. It was a habit now that every time a tic took over he reached over to hurt himself in a feeble attempt to stop the part of his brain that was fucking up so badly. But doing that would give away his situation to everybody. He was lucky enough that his arms had healed up unnaturally quickly thanks to his quirk adaptations enabling him to get away with wearing his sleeveless hero costume. Instead he had moved to his stomach, a much more tender patch of skin that wasn't quite so adept at dealing with the burns but much easier to hide. He wasn't stupid after all. He knew if someone saw this it would raise questions and inevitably a safeguarding investigation from his school and that was a can of worms he really didn't want to open.

Unusually, Bakguo was pretty pleased with himself. He had gone a good few weeks avoiding another confrontation with Kirishima by somehow not letting him onto the fact the shivers were indeed getting worse. The physical training lessons had really picked up in frequency now they were reaching the last term of the year and with that came a lot of 'super move' drills. With his classmates consistently shouting the same phrases over and over again appeared a new pressure that settled in the blonde's chest. Unsurprisingly, the phrases had started naturally tumbling out of Bakugo as well. It seemed pretty harmless but was extremely damaging to his priceless pride since Dunceface decided to take it as a compliment. It wasn't. However, it was relatively easy to play off as a joke. He just pretended his new sense of humour encompassed mimicking everyone and no one seemed to question it, excluding the red ball of anxiety that hovered over him these days.

The end of Bakugo's entire facade arrived rather abruptly on a Friday afternoon training session. He had been feeling particularly rough the entire day after he had spent the majority of the night and morning ticcing over and over again. He knew it was about time he went back to Aizawa. Clearly he didn't have the situation under control and the amount of sleep he was loosing over it was starting to become apparent in his actions. But there was still that niggling part inside of him that thought he could fix this. That knew he could fix this. So he had carried on with his day well aware that it wasn't just Kirishima and Aizawa's eyes that were following him now. He was causing a stir amongst his friends with his strange behaviour which he stoically ignored. If he was confident enough that nothing had changed the rest were sure to follow.

After a long day, which he couldn't quite remember in the detail he should've, he found himself in the changing room, shaking his head in a classic attempt to regain some composure. His days were beginning to merge into one big mess of trying his best not to tic and his mind was just getting foggier by the second. He had the sinking feeling that something bad was going to happen immanently.

"Bakubro? You alright man? We're all ready." His neck snapped to the side as he turned to Kirishima who was already clad in his gym outfit along with their classmates. Tongue clicking he cursed this stupid brain for not keeping him in the loop of whatever was going on.

"Just fucking leave without me, I'll be out in a second." He grunted as he begun to shrug his trousers off, the twinge of pain reminding him to make sure no one saw his stomach. To his luck the rest of the class had left by the time he had his joggers on but he couldn't help but notice the spot of red that resided on the bench next to him.

"Red riot unbreakable!" He blurted out staring at his friend. Well shit. That definitely wasn't what he had meant to say. Regardless of the look of mild panic on the blonde's face, Kirishima began to chuckle.

"That's a sweet tic Katsuki!" The loud red idiot cheered clearly pleased with the way he had managed to worm himself into Bakugo's mind. 

"It's not a fucking - just get the fuck out shitty hair! I don't need you baby sitting me change." He huffed pointing at the door. He needed to get the idiot to leave before he took his shirt off.