Thankfully Todoroki hasn't said or done any stupid shit like that other night.

It's not that it made Bakugo uncomfortable, it's just that with everything else going on, he's not sure what exactly he thinks of Todoroki other than he trusts him.

He thinks Todoroki doesn't really like him, but instead sees him as a good friend and maybe he's just confused?

As afraid as he is of having his friends die on him, he's even more scared to lose Todoroki as a friend if anything else were to happen. He would hate for their friendship to end and leave him alone anyway.

Now he's thinking too much and getting distracted as he's trying to help the idiot squad study. He baked treats for them so they'd feel more motivated, but he didn't make too many since they still needed to eat dinner.

He was explaining everything to them now, and then while he cooked, he was going to have them join him in the kitchen. They'd do the practice exam he made while he cooked dinner.

It was obvious to him how much they'd fallen behind while they weren't speaking.

Mina was here along with Sero, and even though Bakugo wasn't it on a friendly basis with them, he still acknowledged how much they still needed his help. He couldn't just let them struggle on their own. He wasn't that horrible. The only issue was that there was an awkward air around Mina and she seemed really sad.

Sero was more normal, talking to everyone and everyone except Mina replying.

He seemed a little hurt about Mina, but Bakugo couldn't care enough to pay attention to that situation.

If he was being honest, he was a thousand times more worried about making it up to the people who deserved it. Jiro and Shinso were staring at him every time he tried to get something through to Kaminari. It was slightly intimidating, but he also thought it was nice of them to stand up for their friend.

Right now, Bakugo is trying to explain some bonds to his idiots and it's going pretty well. They're picking up on the chemistry part really fast, which really makes Bakugo proud. Especially since it's one of the harder subject at UA.

"Damn, Bakugo, this way of remembering them is super helpful. And thanks for the colors, man, you know how much that helps me," Kaminari speaks up.

Even though they're all understanding this section of the tutoring, Kaminari seems the most excited and happy with the results, which, in turn, gets him nods of approval from Kaminari's two watchdogs.

"Yeah, man, that's real cool of you," Kirishima chimes in before Bakugo goes back to explaining.

After the last few sections of the chemistry they learned this past week, Bakugo deems them ready for their first practice exam and motions them to follow him to the island.

He hands them each a paper. "This is just a refresher on everything we just went over in the common room. Tomorrow will be what we will go over tomorrow and so on. We won't be doing anything on Friday, but on Saturday I'm going over everything once again and testing you on all of it, just like the exams. Got it?"

They all nod, taking a paper and sitting down excitedly.

Funny seeing as these guys hate tests.

"First person who finishes with a passing score gets to choose what's for dessert tomorrow night," he says, hoping to push them a bit further.

After they've all started working, he gets to cooking.

Tokoyami chose some spicy Mexican food that Bakugo is so excited to eat because he loves spicy food.

After some time, when he's abouy halfway done with the meal, his name is called and he turns around to his idiots, thinking it was Shinso who called him, but rolling his eyes when he sees it's Todoroki walking up to him with a wave and a small smile.

"Hello," the other greets.

"What do you want Halfie?"

He gets back to work, loving the smell of the spices in the air.

God, he could eat a cow he's so hungry.

"How are you?"

Bakugo shrugs, noticing the ache in his hands.

That's right, he hasn't massaged them in forever. The ache he's been feeling becoming more apparent now that he knows how they hurt now.

He flexes his free hand by his side and looks over to the other who's gotten really close to him, standing off to his right, but right behind him.

"What are you hovering for? Scooch over. I told you most people don't like hovering," he reminds.

With a frown, Todoroki backs off. "Are you one of those people? I like being close to you. You're nice."

"Halfie, that's a really sad thing to say. If you think I'm nice, then you're fucked for life."

Again, he flexes his left hand, noticing how his right hand becomes increasingly stiff. It's starting to hurt just holding the damn cooking spoon. He's so stupid for forgetting the damn pain he gets in his hands when he goes without massaging them.

"That doesn't answer my question."

With a scoff, Bakugo replies, "Yes, Halfie, I'm one of those people."

Todoroki sighs, shoulder slouching just slightly.

"Even with me?"

Bakugo squints at him with annoyance. "Halfie, probably most of all with you."

In the most dramatic fashion, Todoroki leans over the counter and bangs his fist on the marble, faking his misery.

"Alright, get over it and I'll make you some soba for lunch tomorrow," the blond says, turning around to grab the rice on the counter to start cooking that.

When he does, he sees his idiots staring at him with a weird look on their faces.

Well, all of them except Kaminari who's scribbling on his paper like crazy before he shoots up, hands in the air with his paper and a wide smile on his face.

"Eat shit, fuckers!" He yells and shoves the paper in Bakugo's hands, throwing the pencil at Kirishima, who's caught off guard because he was still looking at Bakugo, even through Kaminari's outburst. The piece of wood bounces off his head and lands somewhere behind him.

Unsure of what they're looking at, he points at their papers, making them get back to work as he looks over Kaminari's paper.

He skims it, noticing how his writing has gotten better, and not only that, he's only missed two questions, leaving him with a solid 90.

With a proud smile, Bakugo nods.

"Nice, Sparky. Solid 90 is passing in my books. What do you want for dessert tomorrow?"

The other jumps up and down in excitement and happiness at his results and shakes Bakugo excitedly, causing his shoulders to tense up in pain.

He doesn't say anything, just lets Kaminari take in the win he deserves. He was obviously working really damn hard. He had his tongue sticking out in concentration and everything.

"I want- hmm," he pauses, backing off and crossing his arms over his chest, "I don't know. Let me think about it and I'll tell you by tomorrow morning the latest."

Bakugo nods, "Alright. Now let me get back to cooking if you want to eat. Sit down or go celebrate."

When he grabs the rice, his hand cramps painfully, but he doesn't let himself react, just switching to holding it with both hands, small frown on his face.

After turning around, he sees Todoroki looking at him with a frown of his own on his face.

"What?" He asks, grabbing a pan from the lower cabinet to cook the rice there.

Todoroki shakes his head, "Can I come to your room after dinner?"

"Sure," Bakugo shrugs, hoping it doesn't have to do anything with his mom. He's been doing pretty good recently and he can't afford to fall apart when his friends need him.

It's the only thing he can think of doing to keep himself afloat.

Todoroki just sits on the floor, out of the way but still close to Bakugo as he reads some article on his phone.

Mina finishes next, calling Bakugo's name quietly. It still gets the attention of the others just slightly, but they go back to their own papers right away.

Quickly scanning the page, he nods, "85 good job."

He turns back to finish cooking, glad she understood his teaching for the most part, but not over the top excited for her like he was for Kaminari.

When he hears a sniffle, he turns around and sees Mina walking away with her head down before looking over at the others with a confused look on his face.

They all stare back at him and shrug, the only one who looks at the pink girl is Sero who still looks worried before he looks over at Bakugo.

Bakugo nods, motioning for him to go see what's up with the girl.

After he leaves, Jiro, Kirishima, and Shinso finish, almost at the same time, but not quite. They little mock exams are all above an 80. Jiro's being the highest with a perfect score.

"Fuck yeah, Jiro. An easy hundred on your exams next week," he praises, giving her a high five and letting them all relax.

"Foods done. Text Iida to tell the class. He loves doing that shit," Bakugo says, starting to plate everyone, Todoroki first since he still looked like he'd seen a cat get punched in the face.

"We can eat it my room, Halfie. Go on up, I'll be right there."

The taller teen stands up, grabbing the plate and nodding at the blond.

When he serves the next plate and goes to hand it to the first person he sees, he notices that Shinso is looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"What's going on with that?" He asks.

Bakugo scrunches his eyebrows. "What?"

Shinso just shrugs, a suspicious expression on his face. "I don't know. It just seems like there's something going on with you and Todoroki."

"Going on? What?"

What?

He hands Shinso the plate and gets started on the next one.

"I'm just saying. You seem close to him. Like a smoochie smooch kind-" his hand had accidentally gripped the spoon too tight and caused his hand to cramp, leaving him to pull his hand away in silent pain. Of course, this caused the spoon to fall, making a small mess since there was food on the spoon.

Kirishima was left in the splash zone so his slippers got coated in the spicy sauce Bakugo had made.

"Shit, sorry," he apologizes, putting the plate down and immediately grabbing napkins to clean up the other teen's shoes.

Kirishima crouches down, putting his hand on his arm and stopping him from trying to clean it up.

"Just finish serving us and go upstairs. Todobro is waiting. It's not that big of a deal anyway, I needed a reason to buy some new slippers."

Even though he still felt guilty for the mess, he did what Kirishima suggested and got back to serving, glaring at Shinso who had the biggest smirk on his face.

~~~~~

"What's wrong with your hands?"

Bakugo stopped mid bite and looked at Todoroki for more clarification.

Fuck, Todoroki knew and now here Bakugo was, pretending to be dumb and not know what Todoroki was talking about.

"Well, it's more than just your hands. It's your arms, too, right? They hurt? Why do they hurt?"

Sighing, Bakugo sits up, getting ready to explain.

"My quirk causes real bad kickback which hurts my arms like a bitch. Usually it's fine, but I forgot to massage them like I should be. My m- my parents usually reminded me about that kind of stuff and did it for me since it was hard for me to do it alone. I just haven't been keeping up."

Todoroki just sits there and looks at him while he's talking like is he's saying the most interesting thing in the world. Like if he was spewing some insane fact and enlightening him in some way.

It was a little nice to be paid attention to in such a way. The idiot is barely even eating.

Todoroki is only halfway done with his food while Bakugo is scraping his plate, almost wanting to lick the damn thing clean because this is one of the best things he's made and he could eat it every day for a year.

Maybe that's how Todoroki feels about cold soba.

"Do you want me to massage your hands?" The other asks, reaching out his hands for the other.

Bakugo looks at him with a hesitant look, unsure if he wants that.

His mom was the last one to massage his hands and arms. If Todoroki massages them, he's wiping it away. He's taking that away from him.

"I-" he doesn't know what to say, "okay."

The look on Todoroki's face was too much, but it'll be okay. He still has the fact that his mom's spicy tofu was the last spicy tofu he ate.

He won't eat spicy tofu ever again because then he wouldn't have that and it was important to him that he has that. Because then he'd just be erasing his mom. That's the last thing he wants.

Todoroki's small smile seems to fall immediately after Bakugo agrees.

"What's wrong?" He asks.

Bakugo doesn't know how to answer that without making himself look pathetic.

"Nothing, damn. Just thinking," he deflects, trying to add a little playful tone of voice at the beginning to make sure Todoroki knows he's not mad at him.

With a sigh of relief, Todoroki nods. "Okay. Well, he can start with your hands, and if I'm not bad at it, I can do your arms and shoulders. Is that okay?"

Bakugo nods and watches as Todoroki moves around to the side of his bed.

The taller teen puts his unfinished plate on top of Bakugo's, and walks over to put the plates on the dresser near the entrance of his room.

Feeling like he's betraying his mom, he takes a deep breath, shaking off those thoughts before he spirals. That's the last thing he'd want. Especially right now in front of Todoroki because he's already had a breakdown in front of him.

"Do you have a cream?"

Bakugo nods, motioning to his closet. For some reason his voice escapes him, but he clears his throat, trying to get himself together.

"In the closet on the right shelf. Choose whichever except the oatmeal vanilla one."

His mom loved that one. She said it made him smell like a coffee without the coffee.

It was funny, but she said that all the time.

In the next second, Todoroki was criss cross in front of him on his bed and Bakugo was facing him, hands in the other's.

Todoroki squeezed some cream in his hands, thankfully listening by not picking the oatmeal vanilla one, and using his quirk to warm up the cream a bit.

As soon as he was massaging his hands, Bakugo wanted to get up and run, kicking himself for letting Todoroki do this.

This was something his mom did. Not Todoroki.

He wanted his mom to do it. Why did he have to resort to Todoroki doing it? What did he do wrong to lose his mom?

"Bakugo? Am I being too harsh?" Todoroki asks softly, a worried look on his face as he eyes Bakugo.

With a shake of his head, Bakugo denies that. If anything, it's helping more than Bakugo would like. He feels so guilty. That's all he ever feels but it's such a horrible feeling.

"No, I'm just realizing how relaxing this is," he admits, not wanting to say that it'll probably relax him so much he'll end up crying.

"Okay, just tell me if I hurt your hands, okay?"

Bakugo nods, lost in his thoughts as the ache in his hands starts to lessen with each firm knead of Todoroki's ministrations.

It feels amazing, not noticing how bad he'd been neglecting his hands again.

As Todoroki's fingers massage higher in his palm, he finds his fingers twitching and hand spasming, pain leaving his hand with each stroke.

Ow what the fuck, that hurt.

Although it's starting to feel a million times better, the initial massage was painful.

"Was that too hard?" Todoroki asks, voice betraying his worry.

"No, it was just unexpected. I put this shit off for too long and now my hands hurt like a bitch. It hurt for a bit, but now my hands feel so much better. You're good, Halfie."

The other smiles at the compliment, something that Bakugo is great at doing, apparently; getting Todoroki to smile.

He kneads for a few more minutes until he nods in satisfaction. "It feels like I've completely relaxed your hands. Should I do your arms and shoulders or is that not okay?"

Bakugo waves his nerves off.

"Yeah, you can massage my arms now. Don't feel so worried about everything. I'm not gonna freak or anything."

Todoroki nods in acknowledgment before he points at Bakugo's shirt.

Oh yeah.

Once he's shirtless, he's face down on his bed. Laying down and waiting for Todoroki to get started on his arms.

The other starts right away, causing a grunt of pain to leave Bakugo's mouth at the first knead.

Fucking ow.

Immediately after, he's met with small relief before Todoroki digging in again. By the end of the massage in that spot, Bakugo is pain free there.

God damn, the massages did wonders.

As Bakugo starts relaxing, he finds himself thinking even more. More than he should.

Would he forget his mom would do this for him? Sometime in the future, would he credit someone else for something his mom originally did for him?

What would be have left?

Holy shit, one day he'd live on this earth without his mom longer than he has lived with her.

He sits up in a panic, freaking out about that shitty fact.

He can't breathe, he realizes, unable to get his breath under control. He's so screwed and there will be a time where he'd- fuck he hates that. He doesn't want to think about it.

His heart pounds relentlessly against his chest as he does everything to get rid of the panic.

"Bakugo?"

Everything is so loud. The ringing in his ears makes it all worse,

He gasps for air, not sure how to get that shit in his lungs where it belongs.

"Bakugo, it's fine, come on, deep breaths," Todoroki tries to instruct.

Bakugo listens, but has a hard time getting the air in. He's breathing too fast and his heart is running at a million miles a minute.

After a few seconds of pure fear and anxiety, he's calm and feels ridiculous about his short breakdown. They never ever last long which leaves him feeling like an attention-seeker.

"That's it. Deep breaths. Do you want to talk about it?"

With a shake of his head, Bakugo leans over to rest on Todoroki's shoulder.

"I'm done with the massage shit for today. It was too much too soon."

Todoroki nods.

"Alright. Just deep breaths."

***
Word Count: 3210
My bad yall this shit is also so short ugh I have so much homework HELP HELP HELP ME HELP okay im fine. Anyway the next chapter will be regular sized and less shitty. It'll go up on Sunday at 11:30 pm central time. I love you all and tysm for reading <3