The 9 Millimeter Kiss - Chapter 70: Chapter 70

Yuki allowed himself a few silent tears.
At the glimpse of someone turning into the street, he wiped them away. As much as he would have liked to stay longer he wasn't about to look like a crazy guy balling his eyes out in the middle of a bright sunny afternoon, outside a seemingly strangers house.
Yuki turned away from the place, feeling lighter than he had before and began his journey back to U.A.
"Satori!" Yuki winced upon entering the dorms. He along with his other classmates at the scene looked over to their homeroom teacher. A visible scowl rested on his exhausted features.
"Y-yes, Aizawa-sensei?" Yuki carefully spoke.
"You were expected back before noon. The old lady said your work study ended early." Aizawa informed the boy as he marched right up to him. "Care to explain where you've been for the last 8 hours and 37 minutes?"
Yuki froze. Opting to look away from his instructor and keeping quiet.
"If this is how it's going to be during your work study then I might as well put an end to it while--"
"No! No, I just-- I stopped by my place. There were a few things I wanted to... review... freshen up on topics... sir." Yuki racked his brain for the most believable excuse he could muster. His classmates looked between the two. Yuki had visibly made himself look smaller than Aizawa as he was being stared down. Also noting a white box Yuki held.
"What was the point of letting you participate in the work studies if you were going to break the rules set in place to keep you out of trouble?" Aizawa scowled.
Yuki lightly shrugged, "To be fair, I kinda missed the train back--"
"You have your scooter do you not?" Aizawa's gaze changed upon pointing it out.
A strained laugh left the boy, his eyes widening at how transparent his lie and obvious mistake. His classmates held back giggles, getting comfortable in their spots to see how he'd get out of that one.
"Well... you see..." Yuki cleared his throat looking down. "I have pastries. For everyone."
"Don't attempt to deter the subject." Aizawa told him.
Yuki nodded slowly walking away from him, "They really need to be refrigerated--"
Aizawa narrowed his eyes on the boy. Receiving a look from him, he took it as a sign he would eventually come to him to talk it over.
Hesitating to let the topic drop he sighed, "I'll expect an explanation within 24hours."
"YEs, SiR!" Yuki nervously shouted.
Upon Aizawa leaving the dorms he was found surrounded by children.
"What kind of pastries did you bring?"
"Is there chocolate?"
"Are there any souffle's?"
"I should get the tea started."
"Are they from the cafe we went to last time?!" Kirishima shouted among the bombarding questions.
Yuki instinctively held up the box above his head. "Yes! There's plenty for everyone, calm down!"
It was late into the night. Yuki was in his sleepwear enjoying a bit of pudding he'd managed to sneak away from the others while catching up on a bit of homework. Two knocks later his regular visitor walked in without waiting for a reply.
"You should really be patient when it comes to waiting for an answer, Bakugo." Yuki spoke. He didn't need to look up from his homework to know it was him.
Bakugo closed the door and walked over to the reading nook just behind Yuki.
Yuki looked up and watched as he began to set up the futon. "You're not playing your video games?"
"No."
With a shrug Yuki went back to his homework. The rustel of blankets calmed down as Bakugo managed to get himself comfortable.
"I start remedial classes tomorrow." Bakugo mumbled.
"Oh! Really?" Yuki grinned. He was starting to talk again.
"Yeah, IcyHot kept bringing it up every morning and he wouldn't shut up."
Yuki hummed, "It's normal to be nervous about things like this."
"I never said I was nervous!"
Yuki looked over to him and saw Bakugo sitting up. Quickly noting the light tint of red on his neck. Something he noticed would happen when he was angry, or maybe in this case embarrassed. Fully giving the explosive boy his attention, Yuki leaned back against the coffee table.
Yuki raised a brow before asking, "You can't sleep, can you?"
Bakugo annoyingly grunted, averting his eyes elsewhere. Yuki tilted his head to get a better read at his expression.
"Did you or did you not come to me to talk?" Yuki reminded him, "It's not like I'm going to hold anything against you or tell anyone-- unless it's very serious then I might bring Hound Dog or Recovery--"
"It's not that serious." Bakugo tells Yuki with a light pout. Yuki waits for him to continue but he can see him visibly struggling to string words together.
"Get up." Yuki tells Bakugo.
"I just laid down." Bakugo replies.
"I know. Now get up."
Yuki stands and waits for Bakugo to stand in front of him.
"Are we going to do some shitty stretching?" Bakugo asked with a bit annoyed. He'd already tried all of that stupid nonsense.
"No. Not exactly. Hands." Yuki places his hands out as an example and Bakugo follows.
With a grin, Yuki grabs Bakugo's wrists and pulls him in before locking him into a hug.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Bakugo screams, trying to push and pull the healer off of him.
"Hugging." Yuki replies, keeping his grip tight around him.
"WHY?!"
"Just be quiet for a couple seconds."
Bakugo angry grips at the back of Yuki's shirt, keeping quiet. He's not uncomfortable with being hugged but it's still a foreign feeling, even his parents wouldn't hug him for this long.
Yuki gradually gets comfortable in the hug, feeling Bakugo calm down. The boy's heart beat, having calmed down and shoulders relaxed. And with a low voice Yuki tells Bakugo,
"Hugging can lower blood pressure, anxiety and stress."
Bakugo stays quiet.
Yuki brings a hand up to Bakugo's head and begins to use his quirk to ease the tension on the back of his neck. They stayed in each other's arms even after they began to sway lightly. Yuki wouldn't let him go until he felt Bakugo had truly relaxed.
In the morning, Yuki had woken up with Bakugo having already put away the futon and left early for his Remedial classes. He felt proud of himself that Bakugo had knocked out in a couple seconds after their little stress relief hugging. The poor explosion boy must have been so anxious and stressed out about falling behind.
Yuki had been in high spirits having been of help to Bakugo, he'd completely forgotten about meeting up with Aizawa to give his excuse about his whereabouts after his work study. So he didn't tell him an excuse. He told Aizawa the truth. Even if his teacher was trying to intimidate the truth out of him... there was no point in that.
"So you went back to your childhood house?" Aizawa asked, his arms crossed and leaned back into his seat.
"Yeah..." Yuki awkwardly shifted his weight. "This was before... the whole... well, you know."
Aizawa didn't say anything and Yuki continued to avoid looking at him. The teacher's lounge was practically empty with them being in class.
"If we're being honest here," Aizawa sighed, "I would have authorized some visiting hours. Had you asked..."
Yuki felt guilty. His phone had died on his way back and his genius self even dared go visit the cafe and stay until closing time. Which happened to be earlier than usual for whatever reason. So with no form of communication and being dense enough to not even check his phone after the cafe, he wound up with 40+ missed phone calls, messages and voicemails all together from the school, teachers, and his classmates.
"I'm really sorry." Yuki slightly bowed.
"That being said, this is still inexcusable behavior and therefore you will receiving detention with me on the days of your work studies for the next 8 weeks--"
"8 weeks?!"
"For each hour you were gone missing." Aizawa enunciated.
Yuki grimaced but nodded. "Yes, sir..."
Yuki's work study was the same every week. Dr. Nozawa hadn't bothered to hide his grudge against the boy for pulling him out of retirement and all he did was assign Yuki to tasks the interns at the hospital would have learned in school.
Aizawa, on the other hand, kept his word in terms of detention. Though his detention would actually count as intense training using the capture weapon and his staff. Hitoshi had joined in a couple times but Aizawa was particularly aiming to make Yuki suffer.
"You're reaching the mid-way of your work study, correct?" Dr. Nozawa asked. He held his hands behind his back as he looked through a patient's file. Yuki had practically become his secretary and he wasn't very fond of that.
"Yes, sir. This is the 5th week." Yuki replied, clutching onto the clipboard he held. Maybe he would finally get to learn something else.
"Do you have your response?"
"Huh?"
"Remember what I asked you on the first day?" The doctor turned to look at the boy. "Why do you want to be a doctor? Why a hero? I was there when they first brought you to the hospital."
Yuki tried his best not to frown.
"You were scared of needles, you nearly strangled yourself when we had to restrain you..." The old man looked away and back down to the files.
"When I was brought along for the trials the amount of things I found out about you-- a child-- the things you had to do... and now you seem perfectly fine with it. You didn't have to become a hero yet here you are. In your work studies. A U.A. student. Training to be a hero and a doctor." Dr. Nozawa put down the file and went to sit down behind his desk. "So I just want to know why and how..."
Yuki stood there. Unsure of how to answer the question.
"Well," Yuki huffed, "I made a promise. I promised a crazy friend of mine we would go to U.A. and help sick people get better. I have a quirk that helps a lot of people now, but then... in that place... it only slowed down the end and I don't want that to happen again."
Yuki looked down at his hand if he thought too much about it, he could still see and feel the warmth of their blood. "I want to say that I'm used to it or that I've gotten over it but I can't yet. So while I'm desensitized, I still want to make it up to them. To everyone I saw and never saw again. I want to make sure I'm helping and healing others so that maybe I can feel like I'm free."
Dr. Nozawa clasped his hands together over the table, "You want to heal others so you can heal yourself."
Yuki looked up from his hand. "Yeah... I guess I do. Maybe that's why I overwork myself." he joked.
"But I haven't seen a therapist in years so I can't say for sure."
Bakugo sat at the coffee table as Yuki flopped onto his bean bag chair.
"You stayed the entire day at your work study." Bakugo noted.
"Yeah...." Yuki groaned. "I think I finally managed to convince Dr. Nozawa to properly train me. Only he's training me with lab stuff."
"What's the difference?" Bakugo grumbled, twirling his pencil as he looked at his homework.
"I have to strain my eyes to look through a microscope," Yuki lifted his hand putting a finger down, "I can't use my quirk to figure things out, even if it is easier. I need to use more proper terminology instead of 'there's stuff in the gut'--"
"Who the fuck says that at a hospital?" Bakugo teased.
Yuki lifted his head up in offence, "First of all, sir!" he sat up as straight as he could on the bean bag, "I'll have you know I'm perfectly capable of explaining in detail about there being stuff in the gut."
"Uh huh. Sure you are." Bakugo monotonously replied, writing down his answer and circling some English words.
"Why are you in my room? Don't you have your own where you can do homework?" Yuki scoffed, getting up and going to his bathroom.
"It's the weekend and the losers won't let me finish my homework." The sound of the shower running filled the room.
If it hadn't been obvious to the two before, it was now pretty obvious how comfortable both had gotten with each other. Yuki now could change without a thought with Bakugo in the room and Bakugo having made Yuki leave the bathroom door open after his almost drowning became a habit.
After a refreshing shower, Yuki emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and another over his shoulders. Bakugo didn't dare look up and forced his eyes onto his math homework. However, Yuki was always in his peripheral vision and he couldn't exactly focus but he forced himself to look busy and distracted. With Bakugo focusing on focusing on his homework he didn't feel Yuki look over his shoulder until the healer spoke. The smell of his shampoo flooding Bakugo's smell and strands of wet hair faintly dragging on the back of his neck.
"-- is wrong. You had to use this formula starting at number 7 and then--"
Bakugo slammed his notebook shut. "I'm going to my room."
"Huh?" Yuki quickly moved out of the way as he watched the blonde stand and clumsily collect his things.
"I thought you said they wouldn't let you--"
"Yeah well I'm sure they've given up on bothering me." Bakugo didn't turn to Yuki. But Yuki could see a faint flush of red growing at the back of Bakugo's neck.
"There's nothing to be mad about. I was just trying to help." Yuki explained.
"I don't need--"
"Well you don't have to leave." Yuki frowned.
Bakugo didn't reply. Having quickly opened the door and slammed shut behind him.
Yuki stood in the room confused. He knew Bakugo didn't like being wrong but he was acting childish if he was just going to run away after offering help.
"And here I thought he was finally managing his anger issues." the healer obliviously sighed.