(Authors note: Hi. sorry if i took a while. I love you all. Thank you for the support! It pushes me to finish this story. Trigger warning for the usual. featuring a lazy, depressed Katsuki and a cliff hanger.)
The next day Bakugou woke up to the greasy feeling of discomfort.
He picked up his phone as he turned his alarm off, alas, his attempts to distract himself from what happened yesterday failed and his eyes started to tear up.
What a failure he must be.
He was drained of energy and his eyes were crusty, his growing hair looking ugly in its bed head form.
He sat up as he aggressively rubbed the shit out of his eyes.
The smell of the spicy chicken was still strong in the air and Katsuki felt a strong urge to throw up his intestines.
Disgusting.
He felt completely discouraged, languidly messaging Kita back.
He wanted to give it all up. He couldn't keep up with this 'diet'.
It was destroying his social and personal life.
Not to mention he wanted to be able to binge once in a while without feeling like utter shit, but his diet was keeping him back from doing that.
In 'it's' eyes, all Katsuki needed to eat was enough to sustain and keep his body functioning.
If he really wanted to, he could go on a complete vitamin diet thing.
One of those ones that involved ONLY eating little vitamin thingys to make sure he had energy, but also stayed thin.
NO.
What happened to getting rid of the diet completely?!?
Who was he fooling? He knew he couldn't dig his way out of a hole this big.
He was trapped.
Last night's binge wasn't a step in the right direction, in fact, it was just a bigger shovel handed right to him.
He was too unhappy to do his workouts.
He didn't even want to go to school.
He just wanted to exist in his bed and be sad about his situation.
It was as simple as.
It didn't even matter if he missed today's workouts anyways because it wasn't hero training today, and he also had a lot of hero training to do at the weekend with Aizawa and his other classmates he forgot the names of.
After convincing himself to take the day of to lay in his depressing state, he messaged Iida to say he was ill.
He trusted Iida to get the message to Aizawa.
His first mission on his day off was to sleep in until like, 12.
And he did just that as he fell right bad into bed, not even changing clothes or following basic hygiene rules.
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"Wait- Bakugou is taking today off?" Kirishima questioned as the breakfast in his mouth muffled his words.
"Yes, I'm afraid he called in ill." Iida reaffirmed.
Class 1-A all shared the silence falling over the crowd of people finishing up their breakfast.
The silence built up until Ashido broke it, "Now that Katsuki isn't here, can we address the elephant in the room?"
Suddenly the taboo subject of Katsuki broke free and everyone started to discuss it.
"So, it isn't just me that's been noticing something off about him!" Denki shouted out.
Momo responded with a, "I think it was quite obvious to tell something was off with him."
"Yeah! He lost a lot of weight and muscle!"
"He doesn't shout as much as he used to!"
"He doesn't have as much energy as he used to!"
"He fell out of the sky one training session!!"
Kirishima and Deku stayed silent whilst the whole class spoke, just observing them.
Kirishima was silent in fear for his friend (and big-time crush) and Deku was silent just in case anyone mentioned anything he hadn't already observed that he could add to his analysis.
"Momo! Your smart! What do you think is wrong with Bakugou!" Mineta exclaimed from somewhere below.
Momo stayed silent with a frown taking place on her face. "This isn't right... why don't we just confront Bakugou ourselves instead of gossiping...?"
Sat next to Momo, Jirou spoke up, "Momo, don't worry about it, I think they just want to hear your analysis on the situation. We can confront him later."
Yaomomo sighed but started to explain her analysis anyways, "I've been thinking, and I'm sure that Bakugou has been... starving himself."
She said it so bluntly (for lack of a better way to say it) and most of the class all fell into loud overlapping of people taking and exclaiming loudly with worry.
In all honesty, people were starting to think the same, even before Momo said anything, but they were all scared to admit it, and let the fact sink in that they had sat idle whilst their friend fell into sickness.
Izuku sat muttering to himself, he was glad that he wasn't the only one had picked it up, but now that the whole class heard Momo's words, he was sure most of them would come up with a plan similar to his and get in his way.
That was no good, what was he supposed to do? Tell everyone about his plan and let them all get even more involved?
No.
This was never going to work out now...but what was a guy supposed to do.
Kirishima was frozen on the spot, he had the slightest suspicion that Bakugou was... doing that to himself, but now everyone in the class thought it, and all the evidence pointed to it.
Kirishima silently begged for it not to be true. He didn't know if he would able to sleep at night knowing that Bakugou was doing that to himself.
He wanted to do something, and he was sure most of his classmates were planning to do something to do, but as someone who was close enough with Bakugou to have slept in the same bed as him, he knew that they couldn't do anything to help. (By themselves)
If Bakugou wanted something, he got it. That included pushing people away to the point they weren't even considered friends anymore.
Kirishima knew he still had to do something, even if it meant he would have to break down all of Bakugou's walls, but he didn't know if that something would be affective, or if it would get himself on Bakugou's hate list.
He was stuck between his instincts and overthinking the whole situation, and Bakugou was just too hard to understand.
Fo a simple man such as Kirishima, his brain hurt whenever he tried to think of what to do.
Approaching him and bringing it up gently in conversation was the best he could do, but even so he was scared. Guilt followed him around the whole day whispering mean things into his ears.
'If you could notice the signs, why didn't you do something sooner?'
'Bakugou probably thinks you don't care about him.'
'You such a bad friend, what makes you think you can even think of Bakugou in a romantic way, he doesn't deserve someone who ignores him and his issues.'
By the end of the day, Kirishima was exhausted and upset.
He didn't want to have to deal with it, but it wasn't like he could run away from the situation, as much as he would love to.
(But he was already festering in guilt, no need to stir that pot even more.) Not to mention, that wasn't how his mothers raised him.
After sulking in the common rooms with Mina and Denki and some other class members, he finally got himself up and languidly made his way to Bakugou's dorm room.
He stood outside for a good 40 seconds before knocking, nerves building up.
"Who's there?" Bakugou's muffled gruff voice came through.
"Hi Bakugou, it's Kirishima... can I come in?"
It was silent for a bit on the other until he heard muffled shuffling and the lock on the inside of the door turning.
The door opened to Bakugou standing in sweats and a baggy t shirt.
After the class had pointed out that Bakugou could be starving himself, it was so much easier to notice small details.
Like how the skin on his face sunk and his eyes looked bigger in his skull.
Looking down at his wrist, the ligaments were poking out and it looked really pointy.
His fingers looked fragile and wobbly.
He couldn't pick apart anything else due to the peer bagginess of his clothing.
"So, are you going to come in, or just stare at me?"
Kirishima startled a bit before looking up and offering a small apology.
Soon enough he ended up in Bakugou's room, sitting on his bed with him.
"Did you need anything Kiri??"
"Uhm, I just wanted to hang out and talk to you and... stuff."
Bakugou gave him a questioning stare before nodding carelessly.
"Ok, but when you leave, do you mind if you take down the empty chicken bowl? The spices have already stunk up my room, Haha."
Kirishima laughed at the way Bakugou was already planning his departure.
"Ok, sure."
"Do you want to watch some Netflix?"
"Ok"
"You can pick shitty hair." Bakugou said uncaring as he got his laptop set up.
Kirishima thought fast on his feet, picking a documentary on a celebrity who had died from anorexia, hoping maybe he could end up cornering Bakugou with the topic.
Looking over at Bakugou he could already tell that he knew.
He knew that Kirishima knew.
The colour fully drained from Bakugou's face, and he went rigid, zoning out and leaning away from Kiri, scared.
That reaction immediately set of Kirishima's fight or flight. He had cornered Bakugou and it had worked.
He knew. And Kirishima knew.
But what he didn't know was how the night was going to play out.
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"Hey, Kirishima went upstairs, right?" Mina questioned, everyone residing in the common room already knowing where the conversation was heading.
"Yes..." Midoriya muttered quietly.
"Right, so we're all thinking the same thing." Denki said.
"Mhm," Mina started, "Do you think Kirishima will be able to get through to Baku?"
Everyone went quiet for a second before Izuku spoke up again.
"He's the best shot we have... if we want to go about it in the non-invasive way."
Denki slightly chuckled despite the serious topic, then he quieted due to the disapproving eyes on him.
Todoroki was a bit too quiet on the couch, staring at his knees whilst he furrowed his eyes brows in thought.
"Todoroki...?" Midoriya questioned.
"I can't believe now everyone's trying to help him after we all collectively ignored the signs..."
Some people in the room tried to butt in, but Todoroki continued too quickly.
"We all saw him fall into... whatever this is in the online school, but we ignored it. We all saw how badly it was after we met back at school, but then again, we all ignored it, too scared to face everything head on. Like cowards..."
Everyone's eyes went down to their laps in guilt.
"Aren't we the ones who are supposed to be training to be heroes? I'm sure the only one who even tried to do anything was Midoriya, but even after I heard about his plan, I myself, tried to convince myself that his stupid plan wasn't because of Bakugou's dramatic weight loss."
Midoriya internally cringed, the cat was out of the bag now...
"I'm one hundred percent sure that in that mental health day thing, we all thought of Bakugou when they talked about the signs. And I'm also one hundred percent sure that if Ashido didn't bring anything up this morning, the majority of us would still ignore it. We've all failed Bakugou tremendously."
"You know what, Todo," Kaminari spoke up, voice quivering. "You're right, but how do we go back now? We can't reverse everything that's happened now... can we?"
"You're right that we can't go back in time, but that doesn't mean we should waste the time we have left... before its completely irreversible and we lose him..." Midoriya joined in.
"You don't think it'll get to that point... do you?" questioned dark shadow, basically just copy and pasting Tokoyami's thoughts.
"Well, we can all agree that we think it started during the isolation. Who knows how bad it's gotten, and it's no lie that people die from this type of stuff all the time, we can't, as heroes, training under UA, let this go on any longer with Kacchan."
They all agreed to do something to help with the protection of Katsuki, but first they had to be patient, and wait for Kirishima's report on what happened when he went over.