Not Being Nice

"Kacchan!" Midoriya greets Bakugo, whose face immediately sours upon seeing him. "Why are you at the hospital? I thought you've been discharged."

Bakugo clicks his tongue impatiently. "Have you never heard of follow-up check-ups, idiot Deku?" He gestures to his bandaged arms.

"O-oh, of course!" Midoriya scratches the back of his head sheepishly. "A-a-as for me, I just came to visit Uraraka-san."

"Did I ask?" Bakugo snubs, his brow wrinkled in annoyance. Pushing past Midoriya, he adds, "I don't have time to chitchat with you."

"W-well, see you at school then!" Midoriya calls to Bakugo, who completely ignores him, disappearing up the stairwell that led to the floor with the doctors' clinics.

"Get lost already, Deku," Bakugo mutters to himself. He stops at the first landing on the stairwell and counts to 10, and then slowly, he goes back down and sneaks a peek at the information counter where Deku had been.

Satisfied that the nerd is no longer in sight, Bakugo quickly crosses to the other side of the hospital lobby and makes his way instead up the flight of stairs that led to the private rooms.

"Deku-kun!" Uraraka pipes up as soon as she hears the door to her room slide open, only to trail off uncertainly when the visitor turns out to be someone else.

"Do I look like that shitty Deku to you?" Bakugo glowers at her from the door frame.

"Ah haha no," Uraraka rubs the back of her head with a small chuckle. "It's just that Deku-kun came by a while ago and he left his wallet," she explains, gesturing to a small red object on her bedside table. "I thought it was him coming back to get it."

Both of Bakugo's arms are heavily bandaged, and there are red splotches on the exposed skin of his neck from the scrapes and burns that have not quite finished healing. But all in all, he looks a lot better, and definitely livelier, than when Uraraka had seen him last.

"Anyway, come in," she urges. "I was wondering when you'd come visit!"

Bakugo slides the door shut behind him and makes his way to the plastic chair beside her bed. Instead of sitting though, Bakugo sets his backpack down on it and rummages inside to retrieve a neatly wrapped lunchbox, which he then unceremoniously drops onto Uraraka's lap.

Uraraka stares at the lunchbox, feeling its warmth seep through the blanket around her thighs, and then at Bakugo, who's taking considerable measure not to meet her eyes as he fixes his bag back around his shoulders.

"Wow," she breathes, incredulous. "You made me a bento, Bakugo-kun? What's gotten into you to be so nice?"

"Screw you, I'm not being nice," he denies vehemently, affronted that she would dare assume such things about him. But then in a strangled voice that takes his every effort to push out, he grudgingly adds, "I just got discharged from here, so I know they serve shitty food."

The corners of Uraraka's mouth twitch, and though he's avoiding looking at her directly, Bakugo catches the movement in the peripheries of his vision.

"It's got nothing to do with being nice, all right?" He snarls at her, red in the face. "You'd heal up faster if you eat better. And the faster you heal up, the sooner we can put this shit behind us. That's all there is to it!"

He glares at her, as though daring her to say otherwise. She grins back at him.

"I'm not being nice," he clarifies for a third time, for good measure. "I'm just practical. Get that in your head."

It sounds like a threat, Uraraka thinks, and coming from Bakugo, it probably is.

Unperturbed, Uraraka simply shrugs as far as her neck brace would allow. "Sounds like being nice to me," she chirps, "but whatever you want to call it is fine."

Bakugo grinds his teeth in annoyance. "I said—"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it already," she cuts him off, waving her hand in a gesture of dismissal, and Bakugo clenches his jaw so hard he could swear his molars cracked.

Uraraka chuckles at his expression. If she weren't recovering from grave injuries, Bakugo would have challenged her ass to fight right there. But as it is, he settles with an annoyed grimace.

Her face, on the other hand, melts into a gentle smile. "Thank you, Bakugo-kun. I'll eat well."

He grunts an acknowledgement.

"Also… thank you for that other thing," she continues, almost meekly.

"Huh?" Bakugo's expression crumples into one of confusion. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You know, that," Uraraka says pointedly.

When he gives her a blank stare, she clears her throat and clarifies, "You know, saving my life? I haven't had the chance yet to thank you."

Bakugo's face darkens.

"Don't tell me you don't remember!" Uraraka chides, not having caught on to the change in his mood. "You stepped in just as—"

"Stop."

The order was quietly spoken, not at all like Bakugo's usual outbursts, but something about the way he said it freezes the words in Uraraka's throat. He's glaring at her, his crimson eyes filled with an icy hostility she's unaccustomed to.

"Don't you fucking patronize me, Uraraka," he spits.

She feels a chill creep down her spine. Although Bakugo cuts an intimidating figure as a rule, she has only ever seen him seriously angry when it concerned Deku. Now, that dangerous anger is being directed at her, and she finds herself completely unnerved by the rage that consumed his features.

Apprehensively, she tries to placate him. "I wasn't—"

"I saved you?" He interrupts loudly, his fist clenching tightly around the back of the chair beside him. It makes an unpleasant screeching noise as its legs drag across the tiled floor. "Saved you?"

Bakugo's eyes sweeps across her body, from the neck brace that supported her head, to the splints that held her broken fingers together, all the way down to the cast that enclosed her left leg from the knee down.

"You're a fucking mess because you saved me!" he thunders.

Uraraka watches the plastic of the hospital chair fizzle in his death grip, tendrils of smoke rising from beneath his skin.

"I lost to that villain, and you dragged my pathetic ass off with you instead of escaping on your own," Katsuki recollects spitefully. "If I hadn't been a fucking deadweight… if I had been able to stand my ground…"

He releases the chair, its back half-melted, and pushes it away aggressively. It falls over with a crash that sounds almost pathetic compared to the volume of Bakugo's anguish.

"I saved you?" A dry, humorless laughter accompanies the words. His fingers threads roughly through his hair, his eyes shut tight.

"I couldn't save anyone, Uraraka!"

Bakugo's chest heaves with the intensity of his outburst, small sparks popping weakly on his palms. A long moment passes.

Then Uraraka sucks in a long, loud breath, brings her injured hands up to either side of her face, and gives her cheeks a slap that resounds crisply in the silence that has grown thick between them.

"What the fuck?!" Bakugo exclaims in surprise, rounding on her. "Aren't you hurt enough?!"

"I'm fine, it's not a big deal," Uraraka reassures with a small lopsided smile. Meekly, she adds, "I was just berating myself for not considering your feelings. I'm sorry, Bakugo-kun."

Bakugo drops his gaze then, his face assuming its usual scowl. "I don't need your pity or any of that shit."

Uraraka shakes her head. "You know, you're right. I saved you, and I got seriously hurt doing it."

Her eyes are round and wide as she recounts, "I was so scared, actually. That villain was so strong. At some point I thought it was really going to be the end of me…"

She trails off, watching his reaction. When he remains unresponsive, she gently finishes, "…which is exactly why I'm not taking back what I said, Bakugo-kun."

Bakugo has an argument ready to roll off his tongue, but Uraraka is quick to silence him. "Listen to me first," she requests politely, and he grudgingly shuts his mouth again.

"I saved you, yes," she concedes. "But you saved me, too. At that last moment, when the villain caught up to us… if you hadn't stepped in then..."

There was no need to verbalize what they both knew. That attack would have snapped her neck. She would have died, and he would be visiting her grave instead.

Bakugo suppresses a shudder.

"You should be thanking the pros, not me," he grumbles, gaze still on the floor. "If they hadn't come, all I'd have managed was get killed before you. Fucking pathetic."

"No, it wasn't," Uraraka counters vigorously. "I thought what you did was plenty heroic, honestly."

Bakugo's eye twitches. "I told you to fucking stop that shit."

"But it's true!" She insists. "You were so injured you couldn't even use your Quirk anymore, but you confronted a villain to shield your teammate. If that isn't heroic, I don't know what is."

Her voice is energetic and positive, and Bakugo can tell without needing to look that she's smiling again.

Bakugo grimaces, but he chokes on any rude comeback he might have had when his eyes finally find their way back to her face.

Uraraka is beaming up at him, so brightly her eyes sparkled.

"You were seriously so cool, Bakugo-kun!"

He stares, for a moment struck dumb by her sheer radiance. Then heat creeps up his neck and face until it seemed he was going to emit smoke from his ears.

Immediately, he breaks eye contact again. Trying to ignore the accelerated pounding of his pulse, he wipes his suddenly clammy palms on the fabric of his jeans to prevent them from igniting.

"Wh- whatever," he mutters, turning away and heading for the door. "I'm leaving."

"Eh? Already?" Uraraka asks, and she sounds genuinely disappointed.

Bakugo just grumbles something unintelligible in response and hurriedly steps out of the room. Before he slides the door shut, he meets her eyes one last time to shoot her a warning.

"Don't tell anybody about the bento or I'll blast your face off."

Uraraka looks up expectantly when the door to her room slides open again, only to find Midoriya standing there, holding on to his knees and panting.

"Uraraka-san," he wheezes. "I left my wallet… Sprinted all the way… from the station…"

Then his eyes find the burnt remains of the plastic chair on the floor, and the blood from his face drains.

"What happened here?!"

A/N:

Look what I found while sorting files on my laptop!

This was actually my first MHA fanfic, but while writing this, inspiration for 'The Hard Road' struck, and I put this on the back burner. I never got to post it because I'd actually forgotten that I was able to finish the story.

Anyway, while I'm working on Chapter 2 of 'The First of Many To Come' (which is taking a while because, work is keeping me busy), I hope you can enjoy this short one-shot.