Untethered: Bakugou x OC x Todoroki

Chapter 10: Rivalry

Kaida tossed and turned all night, barely surrendering to as close to what one could consider sleep as possible, her anxiety making slumber nearly unattainable as she restlessly rolled around beneath her covers. By the time light filtered through her blinds again with the first glint of sunrise she abandoned her resolve to rest and annoyedly threw her comforter off of her body, tossing her legs over the side of the bed. Her tired sigh echoed throughout her bedroom as she dragged her hands down her face and groaned to herself in the mirror of her vanity that sat along the wall in front of her. Her hair wildly framed her face in a bird's nest of tangles and the dark circles under her eyes made her lack of sleep all too obvious.

Ugh, she internally grumbled at her reflection before the memories of the previous night hazily began to resurface.

The recollection of Bakugou's warmth enveloping her on the couch mere hours before seared into her brain as she envisioned what they'd looked like from an outside perspective. Just a heap of blanket and human snuggled up together innocently watching a movie. Placing herself back into the moment, she daydreamed about the way that his muscular body form fit to the back of hers, the way his sweetened scent engulfed her senses, and the steady beat of his racing heart against her shoulder blades. His breath on her hair, his grip underneath her hip, the way they tangled their legs together, and the sound of his tired sigh; the images swam around in her mind as she sat silently on the edge of her bed with her eyes closed. Butterflies danced in the pit of her stomach and a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth as she swayed slightly from side to side and let out a contented sigh.

She dizzily leaned a bit too far to one side and almost tipped over before throwing a hand against the mattress to catch herself, sheepishly shaking free from her trance. Embarrassment overwhelmed her to be thinking about the experience so intimately, especially given that Bakugou had never actually even expressed that he was interested in her in any way more than a friend. She was definitely the one to lean into him first the night before, she was pretty sure. She didn't even understand why she did it. Was it just intuitive? It almost did feel like she had just let her primal instincts take over and simply physically reacted to the closeness of another human, and if she was the one to lean on him first then that clearly meant she was the one to instigate it...and if she was the one to instigate it then that didn't necessarily mean that Bakugou wanted it to happen.

It suddenly occurred to her that maybe what had happened last night wasn't even something to feel intimate about in the first place and that maybe he was just being a good friend by not rejecting her apparent need for physical contact. For all she knew, he really did only mean to rest his arm on the couch and her lack of experience with romantic relationships, at least ones that weren't toxic as all hell, reminded her that she really had no clue what was or wasn't considered amatory and she was completely unable to recognize interest unless it was flat-out obvious.

Fuck, she mentally cursed as she realized, I've totally cuddled with friends before. I shouldn't even be thinking about it like that. It probably didn't even mean something to him, I mean, he barely likes people anyway so there's no way he's interested in me like that...we're just becoming better friends...that's why he was okay with me snuggling up to him. She retreated into herself and hugged her arms around her chest, her actual fear of rejection smoldering in the embers of her brain, subconsciously twisting her thought patterns to steer her toward the least painful options.

Unknowingly, her own mind had convinced her long ago that not having something to lose to begin with was far less painful than losing something at all, and the instinctual self-sabotage was inescapable as her subconscious convinced her that she didn't even have the right to appreciate the situation romantically.