the interview ᵏ.ᵇᵃᵏᵘᵍᵒᵘ

𝟎𝟎𝟖 ･ 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬

A/N: Made this a kind of meaty chapter as a small sorry for the lack of updates. Around 1500~ words.

TW: Beginning of panic attack and hallucinations (tactile and visual)

IT WAS A MONDAY which meant you were back on U.A. Grounds. You had a pass which allowed you to come in to avoid an incident similar to one that happened after it was revealed that the infamous Number One Hero, All Might, was teaching at the school. You internally thanked the U.A. staff for doing that, because you know your heart wouldn't be able to handle that.

You had been particularly anxious these last couple of days. You hadn't heard from your parents in a while and that worried you a lot, also the insane amount of stares you were currently getting as you stepped onto school grounds. You, wanting to represent your school somehow, wore your school uniform and it suddenly seemed like you were a brand new living and breathing museum artifact.

For most of the day, you'd just walk around the school with your notepad noting anything you were particularly drawn to. It'd add that genuine feel and flare to the paper. But, sometimes you felt paranoid in the halls. You'd often look around a lot or just stare at a specific area for an amount of time before going back to everything as normal.

~

It was lunch time now and you were setting up the interview room. As you positioned the microphone, you internally yelled at your teacher for making you "need to show video evidence", she was just making everything harder. Apparently you were too focused on cursing out your teacher that you hadn't noticed the ash blond walk into the room and as you turned around you jumped at the sight of him.

"Holy shit you came by yourself." You said.

He rolled his eyes at the comment, "Yeah, yeah, let's just get this over with."

You began to ask him the questions that you had on your notepad, ranging from basic information about himself to how he felt during the fights, but your mind was somewhere else. You kept seeing things out of the corner of your eye and hearing things that weren't there.

I'm going insane.

You tried to maintain eye contact with Bakugou but it was hard to whilst a black figure watched you with a death stare from the corner.

You wanted to cower and run.

You wanted to curl up into a ball.

You wanted to just rip your eyes out.

Oh, you wanted to sleep and never wake up again.

And yet you managed to not act that weird with Bakugou, emphasis on 'that'.

~

You managed to finish the interview fairly early. Looks like having a shadowy figure look into your soul was quite the motivator. You tried your best to fix everything up as quick as possible, for good reason. Unbeknownst to you, Bakugou had noticed something was wrong, whether it was the way you stared at your notebook for longer times, he knew you could read faster than that. He also noticed how seemingly still you seemed to be. It wasn't out of concern, no, no way thee Bakugou Katsuki would be concerned about someone who's entire job was to praise him, he reached out to you.

Just as his fingertips managed to touch your forearm,

"I'm a doctor remember, I would never-"

You slapped his hand away.

There was some silence between you two, neither party knowing what to do.

You left the room in a hurry.

~

It seemed like word had spread around the school about you. You felt insulted, how have they not noticed a random student in their halls yet?! This didn't end well for you, as people were now crowding around you. There was an onslaught of questions and a lot of touching. It felt like the air was getting pushed out of your lungs and your voice was being ripped away and sweat was dripping and people were touching and oh god the figures are back and you just wanted to stab yourself.

You managed to get out before absolutely speed walking to the girl's restroom and shutting the door on one of the stalls.

The feelings didn't stop, in fact it got even worse. How could you choose such a tight place? You'd never been in the U.A. stalls before, had they always been this oxygen restricting? You sucked it up and closed your eyes, trying to ignore heavy breaths and the figure who watched above you for the next 15 minutes.

~

The lunch bell had gone off, which signified the end of break. You made sure to wait a little before exiting just to make sure nobody was in the stalls next to you. As you stared yourself in the mirror, you noticed how disheveled you looked. Messy hair, sweating bullets and bloodshot eyes from how hard you were squeezing your eyes shut. As you began attempting to fix your hair, you felt a strong presence behind you.

You stared in the mirror, nothing was there, so why did it feel like the emperor was right behind you?

You used all of your strength and balls to rush out of the bathroom.

"Wow, you look like shit."

You didn't need to know rocket science to know who that was. It was Bakugou, of course, but it still made you freeze. Was he waiting outside the restroom this entire time? You turned your head around a little to be able to look at him and it became clear to him just how frightened you looked.

"1-A's got a free lesson right now, reward for our not so shitty grades I think and Aizawa told me to go to you to continue. But it's fucking obvious you're not ready to do that right now."

Silence, he was probably expecting you to respond, but you were mainly focusing on bring able to stand up.

"I'm going to touch you, yeah?"

You gave him a small nod of approval which led to him holding your shoulder as he helped you walk to the interview room.

~

He insisted you sit on the couch with him. He didn't fully understand the situation, but he did know this. You were about to have a panic attack, he recognized it from his first training session. He still didn't know what to do, he got stopped by All Might basically holding his shoulder, but it was obvious that wasn't your forte for whatever reason he didn't want to press about.

So there you two were, sitting on a couch together with one of you desperately trying to keep themself together. Bakugou tried hard to think of something to do because it was going to be a pain in the ass to have an interviewer breaking apart at the seams. Maybe he could try calming you down? He felt at calm when his idol patted his shoulder, maybe getting you calm would solve or at least help you.

God, he hated feeling like this. Not knowing what to do, it was a scary feeling really.

There you were, breaking apart like an unbalanced lego tower right in front of him. He should know what to do. You shouldn't be going through this right now, but he was too incompetent to know what to do.

Useless. He thought.

You begin to close your eyes and try to balance out your uneven breaths, it didn't help much. All of those strong presences were still there. You'd gone through this before, but you couldn't remember what you did to calm yourself down.

"Hey, maybe you should like, I don't fucking know like take a rest?"

You begin to try and relax your body, therefore sinking into the couch more. Maybe a small nap was all you really needed.

I'm being dramatic, aren't I? I'm causing him so much trouble over something so small. If this could be resolved with just a nap then it was all for nothing. He probably hates me now oh god I can't breathe-

"Calm down. Try and rest yourself, and ignore whatever that shit brain of yours is saying. Rest."

And so you did.

And as you began putting your thoughts on silent mode slowly but surely, you were asked a question.

"Can I touch you?"

You opened your mouth to speak but the words seemed to run away from you, so you closed your mouth and gave him a small nod, at least you guessed he was sitting in that direction. As a result, his hands slowly touched your shoulders as to not scare you and began attempting to give you a shoulder massage. You felt calm. For once.

"I'll make sure to wake you up when the lesson's over, after that you'll go home. But for now, rest."

And so you rested like your life depended on it.