Suicidal Todoroki x Depressed Bakugou | Fragments

15 | Argument

Shouto Todoroki

I hate these feelings that sit inside my guts like knives, Todoroki thought while shifting his position ever so slightly. It feels like they gouge through me, and even after the pulsing pain diminishes, if I do anything at all to agitate the wound, it hurts like hell. I have to terminate these damn feelings. But why... Why do I seem to care about him? I don't. I can't. I won't. No one cares about me, and I don't care about anyone anymore. I've been used too many times to let that happen. Even so, I still want the people around me to be happy. I'll still save others without hesitation, but my capacity to care has essentially been closed off. So, why does he make me feel different? He inhaled, and with that, he drowned himself into reality again.

"...in' that outta truth, or pity for me?" Bakugou queried with the click of his tongue.

Todoroki yawned after deeply inhaling the sweet, smoky scent of his temporary boyfriend. "I'm telling the truth," he sighed. "I don't think I have room to pity anyone." He blinked with leaden eyelids as Bakugou's scent pervaded his being; reminiscent desideration gripped his chest.

The soft, saccharine scent of baked goods glazed the air as Todoroki meandered into the kitchen. There, his mother greeted him with a smile like the ribbons of white icing that adorned a vanilla cake.

"I know how much you've been training lately," Rei sighed ruefully while crouching down and extending her arms to her son. "I hope this cheers you up, Shouto." Her warm arms coupled with the soft, velvety feel of her turtleneck sweater ensconced Todoroki into a sublime blanket of reassurance.

"Why do you try to be so cold?" Bakugou furrowed his brows.

Todoroki blinked in silent shock as his senses bled into his soul. "Enough questions for now. Rest..." Strands of desolation skittered across his flesh. "Please, Bakugou." Pinpricks of a foreign, constricting emotion racked his chest.

"Fine," Bakugou uttered in a defeated growl. "Oi... If yer my boyfriend, just call me Katsuki." He expelled a jagged sigh.

Nodding slowly, Todoroki's cheek brushed up against Bakugou's head. "Call me whatever you want."

"Got it, 'Whatever You Want.'" Bakugou snorted out a snicker.

Before long, Todoroki sank into a silent repose, and in what felt like mere minutes, his eyes fluttered open. In the grainy haze of his swerving, squinted vision, he could see Bakugou sitting at his desk. As his obscured vision was polished, he realized that Bakugou was drinking down a bottle of what he presumed was an alcoholic beverage. With a drawn-out sigh through his nostrils, Todoroki lifted himself up from the bed.

"Bakugou..." Todoroki sighed, hobbling up to the ash-blond as a spear of lightheadedness pierced his head and licked his spine. "Sorry. Katsuki. My bad." He took a deep breath in.

With the roll of his eyes, Bakugou set his amber bottle of beer down. "What? You think I can just stop? Don't give me that fucking look." He turned over to the next page in his textbook. "To hell with logarithms."

Glancing down at Bakugou's textbook, Todoroki shrugged and winced from his aching, bruised body. "I never said that. You could save the remainder for later. But did you get any sleep?"

Bakugou nodded. "Yeah. Maybe like an hour or two. Finally... But I'm finishing the rest. I don't wanna hear shit about it." He gulped down a swig of beer, crushing his reflection on the bottle with his fist.

"I'll give you shit about it," Todoroki asseverated at point-blank. "Katsuki, it isn't going to help you if you're thinking like that. How many have you had today?" He slightly arched his brows.

Plastering on a gruff glare, Bakugou stared with coruscating eyes of vermillion into Todoroki's deadpan stare. "I could feed you the same fucking shit with your trying to erase all your fucking emotions. This is only my third, asshole." His words began to melt together.

"Then let this one be the last one for today."

"Fuck off."

"No."

Bakugou grit his teeth and spat, "You want me to cut it all off just like that? Like it's that fucking easy? I can tell myself 'one more' a dozen times and still want more. Don't be giving me shit when you look like you could drop dead at any fucking moment. You want me to just make this the last one? Go fucking eat something without throwing it up, you pathetic piece of shit." His eyes were murky, crimson knives.

Although a twinge of pain pulsed through Todoroki's sternum, his countenance was unfazed. "I will give you shit if you're treating yourself like shit. But you make a lot of assumptions, don't you?" He underscored the "don't you" with a subtle yet sharp emphasis on the initial click of the "don't" while his voice sank down to his final word.

"You really wanna fucking say that to me?!" Bakugou snarled as the tenacity of his hand on the beer bottle caused the glass to quiver. "YOU TRIED TO KILL YOURSELF! I'm treating myself like shit?! Said the anorexic twig! How can you call yourself a Hero when you're starving yourself?! Save yourself first, goddammit!" His teeth were bared like a wolf defending its fresh kill. "I know you weren't just throwing up because you didn't feel well. You're just a fucking bullshit liar! You were gagging on your own fucking fingers, weren't you?!" He slammed his beer on the desk with a hefty, bulbous clunk as he shot up to his feet.

Every time I do this, somewhere at the back of my mind, I wonder: why am I doing this to myself? I don't want to do it, but I have such strong urges to do it. I let my mind take over. I let it erase me. I let it replace me. If I keep doing as I'm told, one day, it'll finally be enough, right? I've always known the truth, but I'll swallow it down because it favors me over them. Even if the nausea blurs reality and the truth until I can't remember which is which, if the pain implants false ideals into me, if the uncomfortable irritation overpowers my sense of self and my situation, and even if it weakens me to my knees, I'll destroy the truth. So, obey his words, and obey the mind he controls, and one day, it'll be enough...

Todoroki flinched, but his sangfroid remained inviolate. "I wasn't..." He stared at the floor with remote, glacial eyes as a scorching fluid sloshed around his stomach.

You are a bullshit liar, he reminded himself. You live to lie, and you lie to live. Your entire existence is nothing but lies and half-truths. Pull the string, and you come undone, unraveling into who-knows-how-many you's all fighting to be one—all claiming to be 'the one.' What's your real name?

Like a spitting cobra, Bakugou hissed, "How do you lie to everyone's face like this?! You're still denying the truth! You want me to stop? You should just get a fucking grip and stop! You're the one killing yourself here, and you won't stop when you're telling me to stop, so how about you swallow your own fucking advice first?! Oh, it's just like you to throw it up instead!"

Dousing the roaring flames of Bakugou's words, Todoroki muttered, "This argument isn't getting anything accomplished." Acrid frost steeped his baritone voice.

"Oh, so you wanna run from your shitty problems again like the weak, worthless piece of shit you are?!" Bakugou's voice was an incendiary assaulting Todoroki's ears. "I'm right, aren't I?! You didn't even fucking deny it, you fucking coward!"

A flicker of shame swam through Todoroki's eyes as he silently began to exit Bakugou's dorm. He's right, Todoroki thought to himself while Bakugou roared about where the hell Todoroki thought he was going. He's absolutely right. All I do is run. I'm no one. I'm nothing. I'm pathetic. I'm a coward. I'm a perfidious significant other. I'm weak. I'm worthless. I'd imagine he's yelling about my flaws that he can relate to in one way or another. He's hurt. He's been through a lot. He's told me that he knows how it feels to abhor the thing you see in your reflection, so I'm sure he hides a lot of self-loathing behind his anger. Right now, I'm surely his own reflection...