Thirsty? (Bakugo x OC)

Forty-Five - Year End

I'm not okay, Ei.

So can you go home, please?

*

Bakugo didn't groan or grumble as he usually did that morning when he sat up in bed after barely sleeping the night before. He simply let out a short puff of air through his nose, a defeated sigh as he told himself to accept the last 12 hours of his life had really happened and they weren't a fever dream.

Not that he slept enough to dream in the first place. He screamed silence into Ren's pillow all night. Dry-crying nothing into the linen until his aching eyes and sore throat forced him to give up. He didn't have to ask himself why it hurt so much, he knew. He just wished she did too.

His swollen eyes darted around her room, at the half-tidied and half-packed things scattered around what was normally a fairly tidy space. Her suitcase sat next to her desk, meant to be ready for them to head to his house for the break the afternoon before. 

Yesterday, he couldn't wait to get home. To spend uninterrupted time with his girlfriend. He wanted them to do all the cheesy stuff he'd seen in the lame romantic comedies she'd made him watch. Go on a picnic, bake together, have a shopping montage trying on ridiculous outfits until one of them came out in the perfect one. For what, who cares?

Bakugo slipped out of Ren's bed, cursing himself for making her bed smell like him. He took a last glance around the room, trying to make himself agree that he couldn't and shouldn't come back here. His vision tunnelled to the door handle, the sooner he was out the better he'd feel.

His fingers had just grazed the metal handle when something called out to him. Not literally, maybe spiritually. Bakugo glanced behind him at Ren's now unmade bed. Her whale shark plushie he'd bought for her on their first date, smooshed and contorted into the corner against the wall.

He snapped his attention back to the door in front of him. Shaking his head and furrowing his brow to cast the thought from his head. He wrapped his fingers around the door handle, ready to push down and pull the door open but the damned thing called out to him again.

Bakugo cursed himself again. Snatching the fat blue thing so quickly it was like he was hiding the shame from a loud audience of judgemental people. Tucking the plush under his arm, he prepared to leave again, taking in one last look at her room and feeling the stabbing and uncomfortably heavy twinge of pain in his chest as he did.

He didn't care if someone did see him in the hallway but he left silently all the same. Closing the door in the way he'd learnt made the least amount of sound and avoiding specific floorboards he knew creaked in the early morning until he reached the stairwell. He hadn't checked the time yet that morning but he knew it was early.

Too early even for Iida. Not that the class rep would be harassing them the morning after an event like that.

Once he was back in his own room, a sight he thought would be comforting but only made him feel more empty, he decided to check his phone. He'd turned it off the night before when the constant buzzing of messages and calls after call from friends and family checking up on him. He sat on the edge of his bed as the screen lit up, taking the time to scratch at a little dent on the side next to the on button.

A few bubbles popped up and then the screen flooded with missed call notifications and messages from people he didn't remember giving his number to. None of them from the person he most wanted to hear from, and most of them from his mother. Bakugo scrolled through the list of missed calls from his mother, the most recent being only twenty minutes earlier.