Sometimes, he thought he couldn't breathe when he saw you.
Whenever you sat by his side, it felt like there was someone inside him wanted to reach, to kiss and touch and hold and cry with you. He wanted to see you smile again, wanted to laugh with you, find light and joy in your time together.
But at the same time, every time you got close enough that he could smell your hair, feel your warmth, something in his hands and body burned, pain stung his chest, a hollowness he couldn't describe dug at his ability to think and speak and move.
You told him to go.
You wanted to hurt him. He saw it in your eyes- but he only now realized how bad he was hurting you too.
After blowing up in front of the class like that, even if they didn't hear anything, all he wanted to hide himself away.
In the corner of his room, he sat, still breathing heavy from earlier. He didn't know how to calm down. Whenever he freaked out about not being good enough, about not progressing enough, whenever he overworked himself, you were there. He could lean on you, he could bury his head in your neck, feel like everything was gonna be fine, but now-
This wasn't the first time since the incident he'd had a panic attack. Actually, it felt like almost every night, a certain shadow would move a certain way, or some askew wind would brush against his window. No matter how small the disruption, it made him jump out of bed, made his hands heat with the prospect of explosions, his body seize, his lungs heave.
You were right upstairs- he had to remind himself that you were right upstairs and everything was okay and no one was hurt.
Tonight, nothing could move him from where he sat. He was just so exhausted. So lost and angry and no matter what, he just couldn't stop wanting to hurt himself even more than he was hurting.
The Provisional License Exam was tomorrow. The old him would've freaked out about it, gone to bed early, tried to remain confident, checked his costume three or four times, but he just couldn't move.
He couldn't even cry.
He just thought of the look on your face when he said all those awful things out of desperation. You didn't even get mad. You didn't even yell. You didn't even hit him or fight because even you could see how broken he was.
Bakugo's throat let out a broken sort of noise as he grabbed at his hair, stared down at the wooden floors, shaking. Why couldn't he get past it? Why couldn't he just stop feeling this much... guilt.
Suddenly then, he heard the trees rustling outside, some leaves colliding with his window. The boy flinched at the sound, backed away from it, growled as for a moment he flashed back to the scene where the villains were chasing him. The leaves against the glass, the wind, it sounded like their footsteps, like their fire and their blades. The shadows, the sudden noise, it looked and felt like the darkness of the ruble, like the figure of a gun held by a nightmare aiming to finish the job.
Bakugo stood up, scraped the wall with his hands, they were so tense. Out of the corner of his eye, something else interrupted the moonlight, looked like someone about to grab him and he flinched again, stumbled backwards as he swung at his own desk till it collapsed on the ground. It was just a bird flying by that cast another shadow, but still he felt more fear than he ever had.
Someone must've heard the commotion, hopefully no one thought too much of it. His hands shook, blood from scrapes and splinters at how hard he threw the furniture streaming down his palm and fingers.
It didn't even hurt.
He was too scared for it to hurt.
And what if he wasn't paranoid. What if someone really was there and they wanted to hurt you? What if there was someone in his room? What if they tried to break in, disable him so he couldn't protect you? What if he was just too focused on his stupid panic to even realize it?
