16 | Empty Adoration

                                    

                                          
Katsuki Bakugou
A brilliant barrage of burning bullets pulverized Bakugou's skull, and the trigger? The phlegmatic student known as Todoroki who had never once raised his voice or allowed any vestige of emotion to leak into his words or being; that absolute stoicism fired the plumes of smoke and the volleys of fire. The paroxysms of atrabilious emotion scraping through Bakugou shredded his sensibility into ash.
Shit, Bakugou savagely chastised himself as Todoroki paused at the door to his dorm. Shit! What the fuck have I fucking done?! He's gonna leave me. This is why I can't fucking be trusted around anyone! I do this every single time without realizing what I've said! I get mad, and then the words just start pouring out of my mouth, but I can't stop myself until I'm empty. Goddammit, don't leave me... DON'T LEAVE ME LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!
As Todoroki began to vanish into the hallway from the door, Bakugou clasped onto Todoroki's wrist and forcibly dragged him back into the dorm. With glistening eyes and a fire-licked expression, Bakugou thrust Todoroki against the wall. He moved as though leaping through lightning, but his efforts were asinine—Todoroki did not struggle.
"Don't you dare walk your ass out on me!" Bakugou bellowed as trepidation and guilt coiled around his neck. "I didn't mean half the fucking shit I said!" He began to recollect his denigrations, and as the words that he had so flagrantly and belligerently beleaguered his boyfriend with swirled around his mind, tears blurred his vision.
With the expression of a lifeless doll, Todoroki replied, "Sorry. It's in the past now, though. It's fine. I shouldn't have walked off." His arid voice egged on the torrent of emotions that Bakugou was biting back. "I'm not mad. I'm not sad. I'm not hurt. It's fine."
"That doesn't excuse what I fucking said!" wailed the ash-blond. "What I said wasn't fine, and it never will be! You won't even retaliate... I called you weak, but you're stronger than I'll ever fucking be. You won't even punish this inexcusable shit. Why the hell can you just shrug this all off when I—"
"I think you're punishing yourself enough," Todoroki sighed, perhaps detecting Bakugou's onslaught of self-loathing. "You're letting yourself cry in front of me. You've admitted what you needed to. You, Katsuki Bakugou, are telling me that you were in the wrong. I know that can't be easy for you to say. People who hurt others have likely been hurt severely before. I know this applies to you. You're hurt beyond what I can see, so I'd rather not exacerbate your wounds. Before you tell me our punishments are nowhere near equal, if everything had an equal punishment, don't you think that that would be unfair? Should the thief who stole a single pen be sentenced to the same punishment—death—as the serial killer who tortured countless children to death? I don't think so. Life isn't fair, Katsuki." His eyes were glaciers drifting slowly through a thunderous sea.
How can he be so lenient and calm after all the shit I told him? Bakugou pondered while his twitching lips perniciously peeled back. It's like he understands every feeling and thought going through my head. He says he doesn't care, and he's cold as fuck, but he's going out of his way to explain all this shit to me. He made a whole damn analogy. What the absolute fuck goes on in his head?! I just can't understand him! Why is he being so considerate to an asshole that called him all that shit? Here I've been telling him to stop running away from his problems, but I don't know at all what his life is like. I called him a coward...but the only coward here is me. I can't even tell him that I'm sorry.
Bakugou's shoulders shakily jerked with his raspy breaths as he disgorged the sob stuck at the back of his throat. His quaking palms released Todoroki's hands, but Todoroki did not squirm away.