AgathaHart
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Rise of Red Alert (KiriBaku ficlet)
🕑 Added 2020-01-01 21:00:00 +0000 UTCSo I'm currently hyperfixating on My Hero Academia and had this idea of Bakugo's quirk slowly damaging his hearing. I've been ranting about it on my tumblr and one of my headcanon posts transformed into a ficlet--enjoy!
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Bakugo’s hearing loss started subtly enough that he didn’t really notice it. There wasn’t a singular damaging event that killed his eardrums, but a bunch of minor injuries that slowly wore away at his hearing. He always judged his ability to withstand the shock and heat of his own quirk based on whether he felt pain in his arms, he completely ignored the ringing in his ears. After a few months of noting in his civilian identity that maybe his hearing wasn’t too good, he used his quirk to the point of making his ears ring and realized the two might be connected.
A doctor confirmed his suspicions, but Bakugo really didn’t want to hear things like ‘irreversible’ or ‘degenerative’. Bakugo was just a sidekick--right on the verge of being able to go pro. He couldn’t already have a debilitating, career-ending injury. He insisted on a second opinion and then a third.
He got himself hearing aids, but he only wore them during his hero work, hidden under a set of noise filtering headphones that a support group made up for him. He was able to move forward and go pro like this, but in his civilian life he was retreating.
He socialized less, talked less, he didn’t want to admit he had a problem, didn’t want to wear his hearing aids so people might see there was a problem. He didn’t tell his parents, he just texted more and called and visited less. He didn’t tell Kirishima, even though he really, really wanted to.
The truth was that Bakugo was fucking terrified. He was scared his career was ending before it even began because of something completely out of his control. He was trying to ignore the fact that his lifelong dream of being the number one hero was slipping from his grasp--admitting to anyone that he had a problem would mean having to face that truth himself and he wasn’t ready for it.
A crack in his pride let anxious whispers into his mind. A voice in the back of his mind kept reminding him of how he used to taunt Deku for wanting to be a hero when he was quirkless. Quirks had seemed essential for hero work, but now a part of Bakugo darkly whispered that actually, being able to hear was probably even more essential. Quirkless Deku had been Bakugo’s baseline for the least hero potential for almost all his life, but now the thought he was slipping below that line kept Bakugo awake at night. Bakugo was slowly drowning, but if he was stubborn and angry enough, maybe his head wouldn’t go under.
It did though.
The breaking point came when Bakugo fucked up. He failed to hear a civilian’s cry for help. He left someone behind. If there hadn’t been another hero on the scene they might have died. Bakugo actually got yelled at by one of his peers (not even a seasoned pro), accused of being careless AND uncaring when neither was true.
He sat in his apartment later and got drunk--which was how he knew he was low, he hadn’t ever been so weak to need some sort of crutch like drugs or alcohol, but he was already so disappointed in himself one more thing didn’t seem to matter. Judgement impaired and pride in critical condition, he texted Kirishima, told him he thought he might close his agency and quit hero work.
Kirishima called him. Bakugo did not pick up. He’d taken out his hearing aids and he was too tipsy to go find them again.
He didn’t hear when Kirishima knocked on the door, but luckily his best friend had a hard head and rocks for brains.
Bakugo nearly fell out of his chair when his door burst open. He jumped up before he realized who it was, then looked at the state of his door frame and said a silent goodbye to his deposit.
Bakugo shoved the door as closed as it could go. Kirishima was very upset and thus, very loud, so Bakugo could almost understand what he was shouting as he shuffled around looking for his damn hearing aids. Kirishima went quiet when Bakugo found them and put them in.
This pissed Bakugo off enough to feel more like himself--who finds out someone is hard of hearing and then gets quieter?! The alcohol makes him feel numb and the anger makes him feel stable--he tells Kirishima everything.
Kirishima scolds him for keeping it a secret, genuinely hurt and angry. It’s weirdly soothing?
Kirishima makes coffee and grabs some snacks from Bakugo’s pantry. He sets these before Bakugo, but not before forcing him to drink a whole glass of water. Bakugo isn’t sure if the red head is being more of a mom or a wife in that moment but then decides he’s just a fucking good friend.
Kirishima finds some paper and pens. The first thing he writes down is a question: ‘do you still WANT to be a hero?’
Kirishima doesn’t bat an eye when Bakugo’s voice cracks on the affirmative, just nods his head and starts writing because he’s a fucking great friend.
Kirishima sits opposite him at the table, writing down ideas for how they could work around this and periodically showing them to Bakugo for comment. Bakugo is reminded of finals in high school when they’d sit in his childhood bedroom and he’d try to bully some knowledge into Kirishima’s hard head.
He watched as Kirishima clicked the tip of his pen over and over, lost in thought. Bakugo couldn’t really hear the clicking sound, but as the coffee started to clear his head he couldn’t help an irrational feeling that everything was going to be okay.
Thankfully he still had just enough alcohol still in his system that he didn’t think before he asked: “What do you think of hero duos?”
