The Universe Listened | Kiribaku

And if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones

•Chapter Fourteen•

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Kirishima was ignoring him.

And if Katsuki were Kirishima, he'd ignore himself, too. He was more than certain that he would do more than just ignore, though, like, he'd beat the shit out of himself. Mentally, that's what he was doing.

Never in his life has he ever felt bad about being a jackass. It never crossed his mind that maybe what he was doing was the worst possible thing. He never cared enough to actually wonder how the things he said and did affected the other person. But as he relished in the fact that he fucked up, hurt the one person in his life aside from his father who seemed to care about him, he began to feel like shit.

So suddenly, way too quickly, the world he had started to build came crashing down and crushed him in the process. Guilt was new to him. At first, he wasn't sure if what he had been feeling was the remnants of guilt. Sure, he had survivor's guilt when it came to his mom but survivor's guilt proved itself to be very different from the kind of guilt he had been feeling. The kind of that was not caused by his cry for help but was instead caused by his inability to not be a douche.

No one talked to Katsuki. Kaminari and Mina brushed him off whenever he tried to ask about Kirishima because they were mad at him, too, he thought. That was their friend, their everything, and he used him.

Katsuki wasn't one to sit around and think about the thing he's done. But when Kirishima didn't show up for practice over the weekend due to his assholeness, Katsuki found the time to mull over and recall the shit he pulled. It didn't feel good. Sitting alone with his thoughts, the memories, letting them marinate in his head wasn't a great thing to experience. He avoided it as best he could but now he no longer had the distractions he used to. Homework was done and by the looks of it, practice wouldn't be picking up any time soon unless he managed to get everything sorted out. Snow piled high on the sidewalks, leaving no areas for him to run on, and the air was so cold, so thin, that it hurt to try to inhale. The roads were almost too icy to drive on. He thought about going to the dance studio to work on some moves that didn't relate to the routine but Mina was most likely there and he was one hundred percent sure she'd try to beat him. His room was too small to dance in; a fact he stumbled upon hen he tried to do a move on the floor and ended up bashing his shin on some table his dad found for him. All he could do was think.

All he could do was think

think

think.

By the end of the weekend, he hated thinking and wanted nothing to do with it.

One day, he got a little brave with the idea in mind that maybe Kirishima would be willing to hear him out but that thought was quickly shut down. He approached Kirishima, touched his elbow before doing anything else, and tried to open his mouth to speak. Almost instantly, the redhead pulled his arm away and began to walk down the hallway nonchalantly. Like someone wasn't just trying to talk to him.

Katsuki followed his steps quickly. He caught his elbow again and said, "Shitty Hair, please fucking talk―"

"You know, Katsuki, I used to have respect for you," Kirishima began, eyes averted, lost somewhere on the fur of the dog he couldn't see, "but I don't think I do anymore."

Then he walked away.

For the rest of the week, Katsuki tried to approach Kirishima because he wasn't ready to back down; and for the rest of the week, Kirishima avoided Katsuki like he was the fucking plague.