Chapter Text
Kirishima wakes up to the sound of ringing coming from his alarm clock shaped like muscular arms. He slammed the off button and rubbed the sleep away from his eyes. He rolled over a bit and grabbed his phone then pulled his blanket up to his shoulders shielding his skin from the cold air of the early morning. The phone screen lit up and hundreds of notifications from social media flooded his lock screen. He tried to swipe them all away but grew more and more agitated as the more he swiped the more appeared. He gave up and turned off all notifications. He continued to try to get the rest off of his screen when one actually caught his attention.
It was a comment on a post he was tagged in on TikTok, it read “RedRiot breaking hearts”.
“What the hell?” Kirishima whispered to himself as he opened the post.
The video loaded, a familiar blond girl’s face was in focus.
“Hey so I know that RedRiot has been going viral for his upcoming hero work and I wanted to make sure everyone knows what a douche he really is in perso.”
Kirishima was very confused.
“Yesterday me and my friend spotted him in a cafe we always go to and wanted to say hi. We watched him for a while and my friend couldn’t stop talking about how much she loves him!”
Love? Kirishima felt sick.
“Anyways after a couple hours he got up to leave so I told her to shoot her shot! She's pretty and nice so I thought he would at least give dating her a chance. So yeah. We went up and she gave him her number and guess what? He ripped it up in front of her and dropped it on the ground. While she was crying He left laughing with his friend. Why are we making a guy like this famous? He broke my friend's heart.”
What. The. Hell. He didn’t rip it up or laugh at her. All he did was politely give it back and told her he wasn’t in the right place to date right now. Why was she lying about this stupid interaction??!!
He read the caption and it made his heart sink even lower. 'She dodged a bullet anyways, he’s probably going to get fat soon with the large sugary coffee he ordered'. followed by a disgusted emoji, skull emoji, and finally a laughing while crying emoji.
The comments were filled with people absolutely shitting on him.
'I knew I didn’t have a good feeling about him, he looks like he would be a fuckboy who only view women as objects.'
'Well the fame didn’t last long did it LMAO.'
'We can’t have one nice celebrity can we. First Endeavor being a dick to fans and now KIrishima, very sad even our heroes don’t really care about us. All they care about is fame and money.'
'HA! You can see he’s gained weight since the sports festival. It's embarrassing, nobody wants a fatass to save them.'
Ouch. Kirishima felt his throat tense up as tears threatened to fall from his eyes. He didn’t mean to hurt her but he just wasn’t interested, maybe he should have given her a chance? He didn’t want all this to happen.
RING RING RING, his, get the fuck out of bed youre going to be late alarm, interrupted the silence of his room. He wiped his watering eyes and turned his phone over, he doesn’t have time for all this he’s got to get to school.
Kirishima met Bakugou outside of his dorm.
“You’re late.” Bakugo looked up from his phone in annoyance.
“Yeah sorry man, I got sidetracked.” Bakugo looks Kirishima up and down.
“You look like shit.”
It was true, he threw his unwashed hair up in a ponytail not caring about any flyaways or bumps. His uniform was wrinkled and his backpack was wide open, almost spilling out on the floor. Bakugo rolled his eyes and zipped up Kiri’s bag for him.
“I didn’t even notice, heh.” Kiri felt a little bit embarrassed, he remembered his mom had to do this all the time in elementary school when he spent too much time playing with action figures before he had to catch the bus.
Bakugo finished fixing his zipper but hesitated moving his hand.
“Are you…okay?” He tried to sound like he didn’t care but it came out a bit too sincere.
“Yeah I guess. Those girls who we saw at the coffee shop yesterday made a post saying that I was really harsh when rejecting her. People are saying some pretty mean things about me because of it. It kinda affected me to see 100s of people hating me first thing in the morning.” Kirishima lets out a fake laugh then stares down at the carpet.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He sounded angry.
Bakugo walked around to face Kiri.
“You’re really going to let some two faced bitches get under your skin? If they are so pathetic that they can’t take no for an answer, their opinion is worth absolutely nothing. And anyone who believes a single thing that comes out of their mouths are fucking morons.”
Kirishima looked at Bakugo’s determined face. He was right, he just had to keep moving forward.
They walked together to the front doors of the hero course building. Kirishima felt everyone's eyes on him like daggers. It made him want to curl up into a ball and die right then and there on the hallway floor. Kirishima took a deep breath. This is all in your head.. No one is paying any attention to you. you are fine.
“WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT ASSHOLE????” Bakugo yelled at a group of general study students as they walked by. So much for it all being in his head. Crackles of heat project out of his palms, sounds of small grade explosions flood the area. The group now gives both of them a dirty look and whispers in each other’s ears as they walk away. Bakugo scoffs and mumbles profanities to himself as he takes hold of Kirishima’s wrist and leads him through the wave of people surrounding them. He only lets go when they reach 1A’s homeroom class.
Hagakure runs up to Kirishima and Bakugou.
“Did you really laugh at the girl who confessed to you?” She questioned.
“No. I rejected her kindly, no throwing anything at her, no judgment, and I definitely didn’t laugh at her.” Kirishima tried to hide the annoyance and hurt in his voice.
Mina came rushing up behind her and pulled the invisible girl back.
“I told you not to say anything to him! You know he wouldn’t do anything like that!” She scolded.
Hagakure waves her arms in defense. Kirishima could have sworn he saw regret in her face but with her quirk that wouldn’t be possible.
“I know! I just don't know. I needed to hear it from him okay? Sorry Kirishima.” She seemed pretty apologetic but Kirishima still felt hurt she thought so little of his character. Mina dragged her back to their seats by her shirt. Although no one else in the class mentioned it, he knew they were talking about it. It was going around like some stupid middle school drama, he thought he got away from all of that shit.
Everyone started packing up their things to head to the cafeteria. Sero was shoving Denki’s foot with his leg trying to wake him up. Mina was already heading out the door with her girlfriends, and Bakugo was aggressively trying to fit his notes back in his bag. Kirishima takes Bakugo’s papers and neatly presses the wrinkles out from his previous attempts. He then was able to fit it in no problem. Kiri flashes Bakugo a cocky grin and he rolls his eyes.
“Whatever, let’s go.” Kirishima laughs a bit, that’s the closest thing he will ever get to a thank you from Bakugou.
Kirishima pays for his lunch. They had his favorite meal on the menu today, hibachi. He paid a little extra to get both beef and shrimp, meat is super delicious and always keeps him full and energized during training. Bakugo got his usual spicy raman and they went to join their friends at their table. Kirishima sat between Sero and Denki and Bakugo sat next to Mina.
As they were enjoying their meals and talking about what they were doing for training next period everyone but Kirishima got an alert on their phones. Denki, Sero, and Mina check their phones right away. The boys look at each other and share a grin but when Kiri looked over to Mina he felt uneasy. Her face looked worried and a little panicked, an expression he hasn’t seen from her in a while.
“OMG! Why did you never tell us you were emo in middle school Kiri?!!!” Sero bursted out laughing at Denki’s remark.
Kirishima rips Denki’s phone from his hands and looks at what was on the screen, suddenly he was regretting leaving his phone on his bed. It was a twitter post showing a photo of him in middle school. He lacked his signature red spiky hair and bright smile instead being replaced with shoulder length jet black hair and black eyeliner smudged on his eyes. He cringed looking at what he used to be a little over a year ago.
“Wait, did you dye your hair black?” Bakugo asked the question he really didn’t want to answer. He wanted to lie to save his own ego but he knew he couldn't lie to his friends, especially not to Bakugo.
“Um, Actually that's my natural hair color. I started dying my hair when I got into UA to match the person I want to be.”
“Person you want to be? What annoying, loud, red?” Bakugo sounded genuinely confused.
“No, I was thinking more like bold, expressive, confident, sexy even.” Kirishima winked and Bakugo rolled his eyes at the fake flirting.
“Shit Kiri, you really put on some muscle mass.” Sero stared at the younger Kirishima.
“Yeah you looked so skinny before, how’d you do it man?” Kaminari added.
Kirishima went pale and his fingers started to twitch a bit. Mina stood up.
“Lunch is almost over and you two still have half your lunch to finish!” Denki and Sero immediately start scoffing down their lunches like wild animals. Bakugo looks at them disgusted but both Mina and Kirishima feel relieved. He gives Mina a thankful look for the change in topic.
Kiri looks down at his lunch, not even half gone. He suddenly feels too nauseous to finish the rest.
Despite the strange day Kirishima was having, Training was the same as always. Aizawa pushed them all their quirks and physical abilities to their limits. The pain from the overexertion of his muscles brought a sense of tranquility to his mind.
Once training finished up, everyone headed back to the locker rooms to shower and change. Sweat was pouring down his face and neck collecting on his clothing, it dried to his face and scalp irritating his skin. Man he couldn’t wait to shower.
He started to peel his training uniform off till he was stripped to his underwear. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror and a feeling of dread washed over him. He was overwhelmingly aware of how much space he was taking up and the little bit of flesh that stuck out over his elastic waist on his boxers.
“Hey dude what are you doing? Aren’t you going to get in?” Kaminari shouted at him while lathering his hair with shampoo.
“Yeah I'll be right there!” Kirishima looked away from his reflection and headed to the communal showers. His self deprecating thoughts can wait till he's clean.
Kirishima started walking to the dorm, hair still dripping wet. The water collected on the back of his shirt creating a rather large wet spot. Bakugo walked up behind him and threw a towel at him. It hit him hard in the back of the head and then fell on the sidewalk. He narrowed his eyes at Bakugou as he bent over to pick it up. He brushed off the small amount of dirt and debris, then dried his hair with it. As he draped in over his shoulders he sarcastically thanked Bakugo.
“Tch, you always forget your towel and walk around like a wet mut.”
When they get back to the dorms they go their separate ways to their respected dorm rooms. When Kiri walked into his room and shut the door behind him a wave of relief flooded his system. The need to act like everything wasn’t bothering was ripped away from the sudden solitude. He messily kicked off his shoes causing them to fly in two different directions and threw his jacket onto his desk chair. His bed seemed like the comfiest thing in existence, He laid backwards on top of the covers and just stared up at the ceiling fan slowly spinning, it put him into almost a hypnotic trance. He felt vibrations on his back and dramatically rolled his eyes. He pulled out his phone from underneath him to see what was going on now. He clicked on the first notification and it brought him to the post about his middle school self. The post had collected over 500 comments. He knew he probably shouldn’t look at what they were saying but his curiosity took hold of him. It was a mixture of people making fun of his old style, talking about how far he’s come, and giving him compliments. One comment really stood out.
Yikes. He looked better a year ago before he gained weight tbh. The comment had over 100 likes.
Kirishima was overwhelmed with anger and shame. Logically he knew he was the healthiest he’s ever been. Despite logic he couldn’t help the voice he thought shut up last year gnawing and clawing its way to the surface of his head. “You are disgusting”, he felt the voice whisper.
Kirishima turned off his phone and covered himself with the covers. Everything would be okay, he would be okay. He just needed some sleep.