At Your Feet, This Is My Unbecoming

Kept Inside, I Won't Let Go 'Til I Burn Beyond Control

Bakugou clenched his jaw and kept his eyes screwed shut. The ringing in his ears reminded him of earlier that day, when all he could think about was the scritch scratch, though his mind was uncharacteristically blank, empty. In the back of his mind, he barely registered that there was pounding and yelling at his door... right, he had locked it earlier.

He inhaled deeply, the sickly-sweet scent of burnt flesh filled his nose, traveled with the air down his throat and into his stomach, filling him with nausea, but he couldn't seem to force himself to exhale the cursed air.

His ears were foggy and even the ringing seemed to float by as though it had been miles away. All he could taste between his clenched jaw was the awful stinging of his own saliva that had sat in his mouth for too long. Because all of his other senses failed him, he wrenched his eyes open.

He regretted that choice immediately, though not seeing did not and would never mean that it wasn't there and that he wouldn't have to deal with it.

The noises originating from behind his locked door, his only lifeline at the moment, suddenly became much louder–much more real. He wrenched his eyes back shut, though the darkness of his eyelids only greeted him for a moment before his traitorous mind replaced the void with what he had seen.

Deku had been pushed to the other side of the room, leaning against the wall in the center of a large dent, burned with a dislocated wrist. The ropes that had bound him to the chair had splintered, almost completely incinerated save for a few small strands. Several angry red rashes from rope burn were exposed through rips in his pants, though they were insignificant in comparison to the deep burns that covered almost his entire body. All of his white starburst scars and fresh cuts were unnoticeable amidst the pure disaster of his skin.

Fuck.

He scrambled to Deku's side on all four limbs, crawling like an animal—though he literally didn't even notice that he had acted like an inferior coward. Bakugou's vision became blurry once more against his will as he attempted to assess his childhood friend's state.

He practically slammed his head down onto the nerd's chest for the second time that evening, somehow more desperate and anguished than the first. He stayed still, trying to drown out the yells from his mother and his own ears ringing. He needed to hear it, it had to be there. Obviously, it was just like last time, right? Obviously the nerd was just passed out and he would get to yell at him for being a dumbass! That was it!

There was nothing, no heart beat in his body, not at his wrist or his neck or his chest or anywhere. It just wasn't.

A pressure welled up in his chest and the tears finally escaped past his eyelashes. His vision cleared a bit, though that only served to give him a clearer picture of the damage he had done. The fear that lingered in Deku's expression wrenched an uninvited wail from his throat. Bakugou wrapped his arms around his long-time acquaintance's back and neck and pulled him to his chest in a desolate hug.

But as he did so, he froze at the sound of a crunch. He shifted the hand supporting the neck and was met with another cracking sound.

It was the neck.

He didn't even have the capacity to process exactly how his explosion had launched him with enough velocity that the impact against the wall would splinter his spine at its weakest point.

Bakugou felt like throwing up.

It was then that his mind finally registered that his mother was pounding at his door and screaming. He couldn't make out the words, but it all became clear when she finally broken down the door to get inside.