Pastimes of the Invisible Girl

Absent Friends and Obligated

Toru woke up in the nurse's office (though, to be fair, it was more of a school hospital). Recovery girl gave her a last check up, told her to read up on warning symptoms of hypothermia before diving naked into the snow, and sent her back to her dorm. Since keeping itself warm had drained her body of energy, there wasn't too much Recovery Girl could do for her other than dredge up whatever energy could be spared to warm her up.

Thus, Toru was dragging on her way to the dorms. She walked underneath the soft line of the sky where the royal blue of night and the red-gold of the sunset met. She kept her eye on it to stop herself from looking down, sure that if she did she'd follow her eyes to the ground.

"Just keep walking," she muttered to herself.

Her legs burned something awful. And despite not having hypothermia anymore, she still felt pressed in by ice.

"Oy,"

She jerked to consciousness leaning against a lamppost, having no memory of falling asleep.

"Wha-wha?" It took her a full five seconds to actually register what her eyes were seeing.

Bakugo was clicking his fingers in front of her face.

"What happened to your gabble of friends?" he asked, his expression saying he didn't really care, he just had to do something out of obligation since she was in his way. "Aiyazawa got them to volunteer to walk you back and everything."

She just blinked at him. Then shrugged. "Maybe they got laid up." She laughed drunkenly of her own joke, thinking of Mina and Kirishima. Gal, she was terrible.

Hey...wait. "It's dark." Where'd the pretty sunset go?

"No shit," said Bakugo. "Come on. Move."

She pushed off the lamppost and started forward-to find the sidewalk rushing up to give her a kiss.

He caught her with an arm about the waist. She drifted back to when she tripped during gym, when they had been walking to their match. If he had caught her then... By the time that train of memory had fizzled out, she was being shaken out of sleep again by him.

"Don't you dare make me carry you, Titty. I'm shitload of tired too, you know."

"You really like my boobs, don't you?" she mumbled.

"What was that?"

"Boobs," she giggled, eyelids so very, very heavy and itchy. "My boobs."

"You're the freaky perv who squatted outside my window naked. UP."

She tried again, but this time she didn't even get to see the sidewalk. Everything just went black.

His hard shoulder digging into her gut panged through the darkness.

"Oof. Owie, stop it."

"Be grateful."

"You just wanna touch my butt."

"My hand ain't nowhere near it!"

"Hee...hee..."

She couldn't really tell if it was anyways. She fell down a bit more on his shoulder so it was more against her hips than her stomach and somehow that was enough for her brain to run away into subconsciousness.

Then her world got all topsy turvy and flipped because her feet were on the floor and her head right-side up, even though her legs still weren't working. Bakugo's heat next to her and under her arm told her how. He had an arm around her waist and one of hers around his neck.

"Wake the hell up already!"

"Huh?"

"Keys, woman, key."

She tried to think, remember, but it was like trying to push through tar. "Ugh, just blow it up."

"Check your pockets."

"Don't wanna."

He growled-oh, she loved it when he did that. She wanted him to do that while his face pressed against her neck. "You really are a sick perv, I am not checking your pockets!"

"Ha ha, do I even have any? Skirty skirts."

"Stop screwing with me! I'm one second to just dropping your ass."

She mumbled something else not even she caught and blinked heavily at a corner of carpet that wrapped around the doorframe. Bed would be nice. Pocket of her uniform jacket. That's right.

And then her key was in her hand. Shiny. Sleepy. Somehow, her brain made her think that having the key already meant she was in bed.

But then his rough fingers scraped her palm, leaving it somehow burning from the touch, and jammed the key into the doorknob. He half dragged her in, swore when he tripped on the edge of her shag rug, then moved his hand from her waist to fumble around for the lightswitch.

"Evil," she hissed when the light turned on.

"Fucking pink," he said. Which, yeah, her room was. He crossed the space between the door and her bed in two strides and all but flung her on it. "There you go, Titties. My charity ends here."

But he turned off the light and closed the door after him. She fell asleep then and there, her legs hanging off the side of the bed, still in her school uniform with her backpack on.

And she dreamed that he hung back against her door in the darkness, watching her for an immeasureable amount of time before coming forward to run those hard, hot palms against her back, her backpack mysteriously missing. He didn't say anything as he leaned down on her, brushing his nose and brow against her neck, then her scalp. There, he nuzzled through her mane of hair, which had lost all her carefully placed pins. His heat laid over her, heavy and reassuring and comforting as she had never known anything to feel. No hug had ever made her so content. She never wanted to move again, even with her legs still hanging at the wrong angle off her bed.

When she woke up, she thought him still there, only to find it to be her fluffy comforter, which she had squirmed under in her sleep to escape the pervasive chill.