The Tempo Life Brings

Travels

The chirping birds wake Bakugo from his deep slumber, and a pounding headache plunges into his head when the sun overwhelms his eyes and hurts him. It's been a while since he drank that much within that moderately brief period, and he consistently thought that wouldn't happen again, but he was mistaken, that's for sure. Nonetheless, bumping into Kirishima wasn't his idea of an ideal night out, and it diverted into a disaster when he saw Louise, of all people, there with him as a couple. If what Ashido says is correct about how the platinum blonde-haired woman is with the redhead and his behavioral shifts, he doesn't want to know how it all happened, but soon he'll know about it.

Thinking to himself, "I'm never drinking like that again," he gradually sits up and looks around, inspecting his surroundings and covering his eyes from the blinding light from the living room window. He looks over and detects the scrapbook in the corner of the room in a neat pile, the pages sitting on the top of the binding.

"Hey," Bakugo hears Midoriya's voice to his mom, "he's awake."

Looking over towards the green-haired male's voice, the ash-blond male looks over and sees his mom looking over at him, a fresh cup of tea in her hands, and she sighs with relief, knowing he's alive but still worried about his mental health.

"You scared us last night," Mitsuki states. "Why did you do it?"

"I'm tired of being here," Bakugo replies, "and I'm tired of pretending everything's all right."

The words pain Mitsuki, but all she can do is voice her opinion, "well, what do you wanna do?"

Bakugo mulls at the words his mom questioned him, allowing his mind to go back to a few months ago when Bella mentioned that whenever he wants to head out to the states for another career opportunity, he might take her up on that offer.

"If you ever do agree to be Lynnette's drummer," Bella explained to the ash-blond male, "and need to fly out to LA, I'll have a room for you to stay in, okay? Don't worry about the hotel."

"Why are–"

"–Why am I being nice, right?" Bella asked. "Even after you treated my bandmate and best friend like shit? Because I know you never meant to hurt her. Bakugo, I care about you, alright? I'm just letting you know you have somewhere to crash, or if you ever need anything, we're here."

"Probably go to the states and see what's going on there," Bakugo confesses. "It's strange, and I wanna do the same thing Kirishima did when he left me."

Bakugo gets up from his position on the floor and stretches out his arms, back, and legs before heading into his bedroom to get out of his clothes from last night. It was a dumb idea for him to lash out at Kirishima the way he did last night and then go back home to destroy something that had much effort placed into it wasn't the most brilliant idea either. He'll clean up the mess a bit, but where he'll dispose of it is another query for another day.

"You know," Bakugo hollers out to the two adults in the kitchen, "you didn't have to drive here."

"A startling voicemail from my only son isn't something any mother wants to wake up to," Mitsuki points out, "and I didn't know if it was going to be another one of your episodes."

To Bakugo, those episodes are nothing more than a thing of the past because he feels like they transpired a lifetime ago; nevertheless, the image of everyone else's facial expressions burns into his mind whenever he reminds himself, or someone else does the reminding. He wishes they never happened, but how would anyone react if their significant other fell off the face of the earth for no reason?

"Yeah," Bakugo murmurs, "don't remind me."

He steps out of his bedroom wearing an old t-shirt and shorts and meets up with his mom and Midoriya, a cup of tea already ready for him, and mumbles a "thank you" to them before taking a sip.