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Sometimes when the night got to be too much and his thoughts hounded him, Mineta found himself in the kitchen. Sometimes he went there on purpose, sometimes he found himself there after getting lost in his thoughts.
He usually ended up staring at the fridge for an hour or eating something tasteless because eating was at least doing something, no matter how bland it tasted. Sometimes he’d lose whole hours in the company of those white painted wooden cabinets that felt new and fake, that light that hummed softly and constantly and filled his head with bees that buzzed and rattled around in his brain, that chrome fridge that looked over him like a sentinel. It was a destination, a liminal space that meant little to anyone else, but felt like a constant to him. That he could stand there and shut off for hours until he could finally sleep.
But tonight the kitchen wasn’t empty.
The kitchen was always empty at this time, when it was early rather than late and every student was fast asleep after another exhausting day. Yet, disturbing the constant, there was another person.
Bakugo Katsuki.
He stood under the ceiling light, illuminated like a beacon. One hand braces on the counter, fingers white and empty of blood flow, the other gripping a box of Kraft mac n cheese tight enough to dent the cardboard. His eyes were unfocused, and Minoru wondered what he was seeing, beyond the blue box and cooking directions printed therein, beyond the kitchen, beyond ua.
Normal people didn’t end up in places like this, not at this time. Then again, Bakugo wasn’t really normal or well adjusted. It was a well known fact that he wasn’t completely sane and had major issues, but nobody seemed to care beyond that. Bakugo was a constant, an untouchable.
But under that light, holding a box of Kraft and staring into space, he seemed almost tangible, almost real.
Bakugo was a better student than him, and a better hero. It wasn’t a surprise when his eyes refocused and his head snapped up, a snarl on his lips. Mineta vaguely wondered that, if they were animals, they would be fighting over territory.
“What.” The blonde snapped, red eyes blazing with fury and something almost like nervousness, fingers twitching and the sweet scent of nitroglycerin burning Mineta’s nose. That box of Kraft was going to be super flammable later.
Mineta stared at him, looked in his eyes and tried to focus. Did it matter? Should he just turn around and go back to his room that was too quiet and too fake? Did it matter if he stayed?
Mineta never made smart decisions, it wasn’t in his programming. Instead of avoiding the conflict that was Bakugo and his anger management issues, he stayed. He stepped forward into the circle of light on the linoleum, into the bubble, and found his way to his usual spot in front of the fridge.
He could eat something, but it didn’t feel necessary. He craved his music, endless soundtracks that turned into white noise that kept the world at bay. He focused on the hum of the light and rumble of the fridge, the soft squeak of the left most cabinets loose door that occasionally opened and closed ever so slightly from an invisible breeze. He focused and felt the familiar buzz fill his head, content to get lost and properly stop existing for a while.
But eyes were on him. Eyes red as spilled blood staring through him, burning holes into his back. It made the bees skittish, made the world too silent.
“What.” He echoed, mouth moving and words hanging limply in the air, just breaths and throat noises, meaningless in any way that mattered.
“You’re weird.” It should be in insult, but as Mineta anchored himself back to the kitchen and turned his head to the other boy, he heard instead a question. He didn’t have to answer it, or say anything, but he felt the strangest want to speak. To be heard.
“Helps me get lost. Escape it all.” He said, like it made sense to anyone besides him. Just words, empty and nonsensical.
“…” Bakugo was still staring, not at his eyes, but at him in general, at his concept.
Mineta closed his eyes again, ready to return to the bliss of disassociation, but Bakugo spoke.
“Does it help?”
Did it? Why did Bakugo care? He heard something there, something desperate.
“Not really, not in the grand scheme of things, but it’s an escape. Not having to think or exist for a while, face the reality and lack of it.” He wondered if he sounded crazy, he wondered if he cared. He knew that this wouldn’t accomplish anything, that everything was already written and nothing could shift. Bakugo knowing he was crazy didn’t really matter.
Bakugo returned his piercing stare to the box of pasta, the cardboard caved around his finger’s merciless grip.
“What’s it look like to you?” He asked, works echoing and bouncing, breaking through the fog.
“What’s what look like?”
“Everything”
“It’s… like a movie. Like watching a movie and knowing you can yell at the screen and it won’t actually matter. Just watching from an outside perspective.”
Bakugo contemplated that for a moment so long and quiet that his head started to buzz. Mineta wondered what he was thinking, it this moment and his choices therein would have any effect beyond tonight. With that thought, he started to speak. It was easy to speak when nothing mattered.
“You know, when I was ten, I had a…the doctors called it a ‘mental breakdown’.” He peered at Bakugo through the shadows cast by the humming fluorescent bulb. “I think that’s dramatic. I barricaded myself in my room for two days, they had to call the fire department to break my door down, and someone to suppress my quirk.” He had surrounded himself, face covered in dried blood as he overused his quirk over and over and over, refortifying.
Katsuki stayed silent for a long moment, still glaring at the box of Kraft before taking the bait. “Why?”
Mineta smiled sadly down at his hands, small and weak. “Because I discovered that nothing really had consequences, that nothing ever actually changed. I realized that I can push and push and nothing ever happens. I destroyed my room and caused all the trouble, but nothing changed, and they just pretended it didn’t happen.”
“I’ve seen you get decked.”
“Yeah, but it heals, never permanent.” He shrugged, loosening his balled fists as his knuckles started to ache. “And here, I guess I have a problem, I harass a lot of people, but nothing happens. Maybe I… It’s stupid and reckless, but maybe I just want an actual consequence for once. Proof that anything I do matters. Meeting Denki helped, Hound Dog helped and drawing helped, but I’m still stuck in it.” He sounded so pathetic to his own ears, but it felt cathartic to admit. Normally the idea of confessing his fucked worldview to Katsuki Bakugo of all people would horrify him, but it didn’t really matter, did it? “Used to hurt myself, like a scar could be permanent, but it just convinced me that I was the only one able to touch me. That nobody but me could see them.”
Katsuki looked at him, a searching earth shattering look that made his spine stiff and heart race. “I see them.”
They stood in silence, both thinking, both stuck.
It was Katsuki who broke the silence, sighing heavily and setting down the box of pasta.
“I see shapes.”
“Shapes?”
“One day, after I got my quirk, my ma was talking to me. She was just making dinner and talking and I was doing homework, and something in my head broke.” Katsuki didn’t look at him, couldn’t look at him, shoulders sagging with the burden of truth. “And everything became shapes. My mom was just fleshy skin, and nothing she said meant anything. The food was just coloured shapes, tasted like shapes. I just realized that nobody actually existed in that moment, that I was alone, surrounded by dead shapes.”
Minoru knew that this was something no one else had ever had admitted to them, not in this way, not willingly.
“I stopped caring, hated everyone, still do. Everything is still shapes, still meaningless, but having a goal makes things easier. Like maybe finally becoming number one like I always wanted before would fix things, even if I didn’t care about saving people anymore. I know I can.”
“I attacked a kid. I didn’t know if he even did anything, but he was just shapes, and I hit him, and there were red shapes, on my hands and in the grass… and he was screaming but it was far away, and people were pulling me back but it felt like they weren’t actually touching me, just a corpse I was attached to. Good thing my quirk wasn’t developed, I guess. Barely singed the kid.”
“God.” Mineta wasn’t sure what he felt, but he also understood. They faced different demons, different illnesses, but they were the same in many ways.
“I had to go to psychotherapy for years, only just stopped. It helped, I guess, but I think it’s still broken up there. I don’t know if it can be fixed.”
Katsuki pulled himself up to sit on the counter, and with averted eyes and an extended hand, there was an offer. Minoru accepted without a word, letting himself be pulled up to sit beside him. They weren’t friends, but there was a mutual understanding.
“Tell anyone about this and I’ll fucking kill you.” Katsuki snarled to the empty air, eyes fixed ahead, refusing to look at him.
Mineta just smiled, a small hopeless little thing. “Permanently?”
Finally Katsuki looked at him, met his eyes, and they saw one another. For the first time in years, Minoru wondered if another person truly existed that’s path could change.
“You know, they say that everyone thinks they are main character in their story. It’s a nice thought, but I know what a main character is. I know what I am, what I’m not. Sure, I want sex and girls and to be a hero, but I know that I can’t completely change the future. I can’t effect anything, that nothing I do matters. You though, you always struck me as a main character. An asshole, but a main.”
“I wonder what life has planned for you Bakugo.” He whispered into the stagnant air of their mingled breaths.
“Katsuki. It’s not like it matters anyway.”
“Minoru. Since nothing matters.”
“Sure thing, extra.”
It wasn’t healthy, and it wouldn’t solve anything, but it practically felt like ecstasy to have another person feel real. Maybe they would get better, maybe something would give, but in that moment they were just two sick people. Kindred spirits.