Chapter 35

₊˚⊹✷ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐎𝐍𝐄
⤷ lack of sleep’ll do that.

THE FIRST THING ODA became aware of was light. A dull, muted glow filtering through half-closed curtains. It pressed gently against his eyelids, warm rather than invasive, and for several long seconds his brain simply refused to process what that meant. Light meant day. Day meant he had slept. Actually slept. That realization alone should have sent him bolting upright in panic. It didn’t.

Instead, he stayed exactly where he was, suspended in that hazy space between unconsciousness and awareness, trying to piece together why his body felt so heavy and oddly… comfortable. His limbs were sluggish, like they’d been filled with sand, and there was a pleasant warmth curled around his middle that his brain stubbornly insisted on categorizing as safe.

Then something tightened around him. Just enough to register.

Oda froze.

Memory rushed back all at once, colliding in his head like cars in a pileup. The explosions. The pillow on fire. The dark room. The arms around his waist. Bakugo. Bakugo, of all people.

His eyes snapped open.

He was still in Bakugo’s bed. And Bakugo was still wrapped around him. Very much so.

Bakugo was sprawled on his side behind him, one arm slung firmly across Oda’s stomach, the other bent awkwardly under Oda’s back. His face was buried somewhere between Oda’s shoulder blades now instead of his stomach, warm breath puffing steadily against the fabric of Oda’s sweatshirt. 

Oda stared at the wall in front of him, brain short-circuiting.

He checked his body instinctively, waiting for the familiar internal warning signs, the ache in his chest, the sick twisting pressure in his organs that usually followed unmedicated sleep. There was nothing. No pain spike. No blood in his throat. No lingering tremor from a nightmare he couldn’t remember.

He felt… fine.

His heart rate was steady. His muscles were sore, sure, but in the way that came from training, not panic. His head wasn’t buzzing with exhaustion. His mind wasn’t clawing its way out of a fog of fear.

He’d slept.

Slowly, carefully, he shifted his gaze downward, just enough to see Bakugo’s arm draped over him, fingers still loosely clenched in his sweatshirt. Oda tried to move. That was his second mistake.

Bakugo made a low, irritated sound, somewhere between a growl and a grunt, and his grip tightened reflexively, pulling Oda back against him with surprising strength for someone who was still very much asleep. His forehead pressed into Oda’s back, and his knee bumped lightly against the back of Oda’s leg as he shifted closer.

Oda went completely still again and his eyes flicked to the digital clock on Bakugo’s nightstand. 2:07 PM. He stared. Then his brain finally caught up and he sucked in a sharp breath that he barely managed to keep silent.

Two in the afternoon.

They’d slept through the entire morning. Through breakfast. Through lunch. Through whatever lectures or training had been scheduled. And yet—nothing was blaring. No alarms. No pounding on the door. No teachers dragging them out by the collars.

Then he realized it was Saturday and relief hit him so hard it almost made him dizzy.

Bakugo shifted again, this time more deliberately, his breathing changing as consciousness slowly crept back in. His eyes cracked open a sliver, red irises unfocused and bleary as hell. He squinted at the wall in front of them, then down at the arm wrapped around Oda.

There was a long pause.

Then another.

“…the fuck?” Bakugo muttered.

Oda squeezed his eyes shut for half a second, bracing himself.

Bakugo blinked a few times, brain visibly rebooting as the events of the night before filtered back in. His gaze slid from his arm, to Oda’s back, to the clock, and then snapped wide open.

“Why is it light out,” Bakugo demanded hoarsely.

“Because it’s two PM,” Oda said quietly, not daring to move yet.

Bakugo stared at the clock again, then groaned and dropped his head back against the pillow. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

Bakugo clicked his tongue, clearly annoyed with himself, and finally loosened his grip, pulling his arm back like he’d just realized it was there. He rolled onto his back and scrubbed a hand down his face, dragging it over his eyes and through his hair.

“How the fuck did you get in here?” Bakugo asked flatly. Something about the question made Oda think Bakugo already figured out that he was the reason Oda in that fucking bed, but how Oda had even gotten inside was what he didn’t know. 

“Your door was unlocked.” Oda answered cautiously.

“Tch. You didn’t think to knock?”

“You didn’t answer when I knocked.”

“Oh.” 

Oda rolled onto his side then, propping himself up on an elbow so he could look at Bakugo properly. The blond looked wrecked but there was something undeniably different about him. The tension in his shoulders wasn’t coiled as tight. The fury simmering behind his eyes had dulled into something quieter, more manageable.

“I only came in here cause you set a pillow on fire,” Oda said. “I don’t know if you know this, but you’re not fire proof.”

Bakugo glanced at him, then away. “Shut the fuck up.” He snapped. 

They sat there in the aftermath for a quiet second. Two people who hadn’t slept in days—weeks—who had finally crashed so hard they’d slept straight through half the day, tangled up in the same bed.

Bakugo scoffed softly, shaking his head. “This is stupid.”

“Yeah,” Oda agreed, entirely too easily. “It is.”

The shorter of the two idiots in that bed snapped to his feet so suddenly that the mattress creaked in protest behind him.

The movement was sharp, almost panicked, like the moment had finally caught up to him all at once and his body had decided that staying any longer was a very bad idea. The haze of half-comfort, half-denial evaporated in an instant, replaced by the very familiar instinct to flee before things got complicated in ways he didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to handle.

“—shit,” Oda muttered under his breath as he ran a hand through his hair.

His phone. He patted his pockets reflexively even though he already knew they were empty, then scanned the room with wide, urgent eyes. 

Bakugo’s room looked exactly like Bakugo’s brain probably did: chaotic, half-destroyed, and littered with evidence of bad coping mechanisms. Torn fabric. Scorch marks on the floor. A nightstand shoved slightly crooked like it had been kicked in frustration. The remains of the obliterated pillow were still smoldering faintly in the trash can.

Oda crouched, heart thudding, checking beside the bed, under it. He spotted the faint reflection of his screen near Bakugo’s nightstand, relief washing through him as he grabbed it.

He straightened, phone clutched tightly in his hand, and didn’t even bother looking back as he headed for the door. He’d done what he came to do. The explosions had stopped. Lingering would only make things weird in ways neither of them was remotely equipped to talk about.

His hand was already on the doorknob when Bakugo’s voice cut through the room.

“If you tell anyone about this—”

The threat was automatic, rough around the edges, carrying that familiar edge of violence Bakugo used. It was the same tone he used when he felt cornered, or exposed.

Oda didn’t even turn around.

He snorted, sharp and humorless, fingers tightening on the knob as he finished the sentence without missing a beat. “—you’ll fucking murder me? Oh, don’t worry. Believe me, the feeling’s fucking mutual.”

There was no heat in it. No real anger. Just bone-deep exhaustion and deadpan honesty. Bakugo went still. For a brief second, the room felt suspended, like the air itself was waiting to see if either of them would say something else. 

Neither did.

Oda yanked the door open and stepped into the hallway without another glance, the door clicking shut behind him with finality. His heart was still pounding as he walked back toward his room, phone clenched in his hand, mind replaying flashes of the night before whether he wanted it to or not. 

𓏵

TWELVE HOURS. Twelve uninterrupted, dreamless, blissfully empty hours of sleep. Oda hadn’t even known that was still possible for him. When he woke up, it wasn’t with the familiar jolt of panic, no red glow flaring instinctively around his body, no frantic scramble to orient himself before his quirk reacted to imagined threats. There were no echoes of monsters, no looming silhouettes, no sense that something terrible was about to happen.

He realized how long it had been since he’d felt rested that way. It was unsettling. And also… incredible.

By the time dinner rolled around and Oda wandered into the common room, hoodie pulled on and hair still a little messy from sleep, the difference was apparently obvious enough that Kaminari noticed immediately.

“Oda,” Kaminari said slowly, squinting at him, “what the hell happened to you?”

Oda paused mid-step, blinking. “What?”

“You look,” Kaminari waved a hand vaguely in Oda’s direction, “like… you actually rested.”

Kirishima leaned over from the couch, eyes lighting up as he took Oda in properly. “Whoa, yeah. Dude, you don’t look like you’re about to pass out standing up anymore.”

Oda frowned, instinctively defensive before he could stop himself. “I didn’t look that bad. I slept. That’s it.”

“How much?” Kaminari demanded.

Oda hesitated, then shrugged. “Like… twelve hours.”

“Twelve?” Kirishima repeated.

“Straight?” Kaminari added. 

The black haired boy nodded.

There was a beat of silence before Kaminari threw both hands in the air. “WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH OUR FRIEND?”

Oda rolled his eyes, but there was no bite. “Shut up.”

Dinner that night was like it usually was: chaotic, loud, and weirdly comforting in a way Oda still hadn’t fully wrapped his head around. All twenty-one of them crowded around the four big tables, plates clattering, voices overlapping, conversations splintering into a dozen directions at once.

Someone complained about the rice being overcooked. Someone else argued that it was fine and they were just picky. Ashido tried to start a food fight and got shut down immediately by Iida, who looked like he might actually combust if anyone threw so much as a grain.

Bakugo came down late.

Oda noticed immediately, even though he pretended not to.

Bakugo still looked like Bakugo—permanently pissed, shoulders squared—but the dark circles under his eyes weren’t quite as deep. His movements were steadier. 

Oda made a conscious effort to keep his eyes on his food, to focus on the conversation happening directly in front of him, to treat Bakugo’s presence like background noise. That wasn’t new. Ignoring Bakugo had been his default state long before Kamino, long before explosions at 1:30 in the morning and… whatever the hell had happened the night before.

This was normal.

He told himself that over and over again as he ate, as laughter bubbled around him, as Kaminari leaned over to steal food off Kirishima’s plate and got immediately elbowed for it. Normal meant not thinking about the way Bakugo had clung to him. Normal meant not replaying the quiet, hoarse “don’t” in his head.

So Oda ignored him.

And for the first time in weeks, with his body finally a little rested and his mind finally quieter, it almost worked.

The other thing sleep did—something Oda hadn’t quite anticipated—was give him his brain back.

Not all of it. But enough of it. Enough that when he sat down at the small table in the common study space later that evening, books spread out in front of him and pencil actually in hand instead of forgotten behind his ear, he didn’t feel like he was drowning before they’d even started.

Todoroki noticed almost immediately.

They always studied in relative silence, broken only by the occasional question or Todoroki’s quiet, precise explanations. Tonight was no different in setup—two chairs pulled close together, textbooks stacked between them, the low hum of dorm life echoing distantly through the walls—but the feel of it was different.

Oda wasn’t slumped.

He wasn’t staring through the pages like they were written in another language entirely. He wasn’t blinking slowly, eyes unfocused, fighting the invisible gravity that usually tried to drag his thoughts straight into the floor.

Instead, he was reading.

Actually reading.

He frowned at a paragraph, tapped his pencil once against the margin, then flipped back a page on his own without being prompted. Todoroki paused mid-sentence, blue and brown eyes sliding sideways to study him with quiet curiosity.

“…You already knew that part,” Todoroki said, not accusing, just surprised.

Oda blinked. “Huh?”

“The example I was about to explain,” Todoroki clarified. “You skipped ahead.”

Oda looked down at the page, then back up again, realization dawning. “Oh. Yeah. I—” He stopped, brow furrowing. “Yeah. It makes sense actually.”

There was a beat of silence.

Todoroki stared at him.

“…Are you feeling okay?” he asked eventually.

Oda snorted under his breath. “I’m actually feeling pretty good.”

They continued on, and for the first time in days—maybe weeks—Oda felt like the information wasn’t just hitting him and sliding right off. It stuck. When Todoroki explained a concept, Oda could follow the logic from one step to the next instead of losing it halfway through and pretending he hadn’t. He asked questions that were actually relevant instead of vague, desperate attempts to stall.

They worked for over an hour without Oda once feeling that creeping, suffocating sense of panic that usually came with studying. The numbers still weren’t friendly, but they weren’t hostile either. They were just… there. Manageable. Something he could wrestle with instead of something that immediately flattened him.

When they finally packed up, Todoroki paused, books tucked under one arm. “You absorbed more tonight than you have all week.”

Oda leaned back in his chair, stretching until his spine popped softly. “Yeah. Turns out sleep is kinda important.”

Todoroki studied him for a moment longer, then nodded. “You should try to keep doing that.”

The black haired boy mouth twitched, something wry and tired pulling at the corner of his lips. “Working on it.”

As Todoroki left, Oda stayed seated for a minute, staring down at the notes he’d taken. Actual notes. Legible ones. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly.

𓏵

EXPLOSION DOOMED OFF that Saturday and Sunday night, bleeding messily into Monday. They weren’t as sharp or violent as they had been the week before, but they were frequent, irregular, and relentless in a way that gnawed at the nerves. 

By the time Monday training rolled around, Bakugo looked wrecked again. His anger had gone sour. It was sluggish and volatile at the same time. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, his movements just a fraction slower than they should have been, his reactions sloppy in ways that were dangerous for someone whose quirk literally exploded out of his hands.

Oda noticed. Of course he did.

He noticed because he was right back there too.

The brief miracle of twelve hours of dreamless sleep had evaporated the moment the explosions started again, and by Monday morning he was running on caffeine, stubbornness, and the thin promise Recovery Girl had given him with a tired smile and a clipped tone that said she hated how fragile this situation was.

“Right after the provisional exam,” she’d told him. “It’s already in transit. You just need to hold on until then.”

Hold on.

Oda was so tired of holding on.

He kept himself upright with coffee he didn’t even like, energy drinks that left his hands shaking, and naps stolen in the nurse’s office whenever he could convince someone he felt “a little dizzy.” It helped, marginally. Enough to keep him functional. Nowhere near enough to keep him safe. Every time he startled awake in that sterile little bed, heart racing and quirk buzzing under his skin, he was reminded just how thin the margin for error really was.

More than once, the thought crossed his mind that maybe he should just go home.

Ranpo’s house didn’t house twenty other students who could get hurt if Oda lost control in his sleep. If he rocked the place, at least the only person dealing with it would be Ranpo, and Ranpo had seen worse. The idea tempted him late at night, when the dorms felt too quiet between explosions and his own body felt like a live wire stretched too tight.

The other option was to keep doing what he was doing. Keep napping in fragments. Keep pretending it was enough.

It wasn’t.

And that was when the idea surfaced.

Unwelcome. Inappropriate. Entirely against his better judgment. Once it was there, though, it refused to leave. Bakugo was a problem.

Bakugo was also—unfortunately—a solution.

They were both having night terrors. They were both losing control of their quirks when they slept. They were both days away from a provisional exam that could shape the rest of their lives, and they were both slowly self-destructing in parallel, too stubborn to ask for help and too exhausted to think straight.

Oda hated how logical it sounded.

Monday night, when the first explosion rattled the wall behind his bed, he didn’t even flinch anymore. He just stared at the ceiling, jaw clenched, counting his breaths until the second boom came, then the third.

That was it.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up before he could talk himself out of it.

The walk down the hall felt longer than usual, his footsteps echoing too loudly in the quiet. By the time he reached Bakugo’s door, another explosion cracked from inside the room, sharp and muffled, vibrating through the metal handle beneath Oda’s hand.

He didn’t knock.

He shoved.

The door slammed inward hard enough to rattle the frame, and Oda stepped inside, adrenaline overriding every ounce of self-preservation he had left.

“Okay,” he said immediately, voice flat and loud enough to cut through the noise. “We need to talk.”

Bakugo whipped around, eyes wild, palms already sparking. “What the fuck—get out!”

“No.” Oda planted his feet. “I’m not here to fight you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m here because neither of us is sleeping,” Oda shot back, words tumbling out faster now that he’d committed. “And because if we keep going like this, we’re gonna bomb the provisional exam so hard it won’t matter how strong we are.”

Bakugo stared at him like he’d just insulted him. “You’ve lost your damn mind.”

“Probably,” Oda agreed casually, hands in his pockets, posture deliberately loose. “Lack of sleep’ll do that.”

Bakugo scoffed, turning away, shoulders tense. “Get out of my room.”

“Not until you hear me out.”

Bakugo turned back, rage flaring bright. “Say whatever dumb shit you came here to say, then get the hell out.”

Oda took a breath. “We help each other.”

There it was.

Bakugo’s expression went nuclear. “Absolutely not.”

“Listen.”

“No.”

“I’m not saying anything weird,” Oda rushed to add, holding up a hand. “I’ll sleep on your desk chair. Sitting up. I do better like that anyway. I won’t talk to you, I won’t breathe in your direction.”

“That doesn’t make it better!”

“It makes it practical,” Oda countered. “If your quirk goes off, I wake you up before you blow a hole through the building. Mine is less likely to go off if there are other people in the room.”

Bakugo’s jaw clenched. “You think I need a babysitter?”

“I think you need to pass the provisional exam,” Oda shot back, voice sharp but not mocking. “And so do I.”

Silence stretched between them, thick and hostile.

“I’ll leave the moment you tell me to,” Oda added, softer now. “But you can’t tell me you’re fine. You’re not. I’m not. And I’m too damn tired to pretend this is normal.”

Bakugo’s hands shook at his sides, sparks popping uselessly into the air. His eyes flicked toward the smoking pillow on the bed, then to the scorched marks on the wall, then back to Oda.

“…You sleep on the chair,” he growled. “You don’t touch anything. You don’t say shit unless I’m blowing stuff up.”

Oda nodded immediately. “Deal.”

Bakugo turned away with a sharp click of his tongue. “This is stupid.”

“Yep.”

“And if you tell anyone—”

“I know,” Oda cut in easily. 

Bakugo didn’t respond.

Oda quietly dragged the desk chair closer to the wall, sat down, and leaned back, and Bakugo painstakingly went back to his bed, laying down faced away from Oda.

𓏵

THE EXPLOSIONS STILL came.

They were louder when Oda was in the same room as them, not because Bakugo was doing anything differently, but because distance had been the only mercy before. Sound carried differently when you were sitting less than ten feet away from the epicenter, when the air itself buckled and snapped with every detonation, when the heat rolled over your skin in short, violent waves.

The first one jolted Oda awake so hard his spine locked.

The chair scraped softly against the floor as his feet hit the ground on instinct, heart slamming so fast he could feel it in his throat. For half a second he forgot where he was, forgot the deal they’d made, forgot the desk chair and the dimly lit room and the fact that he had deliberately put himself in the blast radius of Katsuki Bakugo’s nightmares.

Then the second explosion went off, sharper than the first, and Bakugo made a sound that wasn’t a yell and wasn’t a curse, something strangled and furious that clawed its way out of his chest without permission.

“Shit,” Oda muttered under his breath, already moving.

The third explosion cracked like a gunshot, and Oda saw it clearly then. Bakugo was half upright in bed, muscles locked, hands glowing and sparking violently as if his quirk had overridden his ability to process anything else. His breathing was ragged, shallow, and completely out of sync, like his body had decided it was still on a battlefield and was reacting accordingly.

“Oi,” Oda said sharply, stepping closer. “Bakugo. Hey.”

No response.

Another explosion detonated, scorching the air near the headboard, and Oda flinched despite himself. His quirk hummed under his skin, reflex begging him to put up a gravity barrier.

Bakugo’s hands jerked, sparks flying wildly, and his body twisted like he was trying to fight something only he could see. 

“Fuck,” Oda hissed.

He closed the distance in two strides and grabbed Bakugo’s wrists, red glow flooding over his hands as his quirk kicked in whether he wanted it to or not. The explosions cut off instantly, the pressure around them shifting as gravity bent to Oda’s will, anchoring Bakugo’s flailing limbs before he could blow another hole through the room.

Bakugo thrashed against the restraint, teeth bared, eyes unfocused. “Get off—!”

“It’s me,” Oda snapped, voice cutting through the chaos. “You’re dreaming okay, you idiot? Relax.”

Another violent jerk, Bakugo’s strength surging in a panicked burst, and Oda was suddenly very once again aware of how bad an idea this had been. Even with gravity working in his favor, even with adrenaline screaming through him, Bakugo was strong and desperate and terrified in a way that didn’t listen to reason.

Oda lost his footing when Bakugo surged forward.

The bed dipped sharply, and suddenly Oda was falling, knees hitting the mattress, balance completely shot. He barely had time to register it before Bakugo’s arms wrapped around him with bruising force, hauling him down.

The explosions stopped.

Completely.

The room fell into an eerie, ringing silence broken only by Bakugo’s breathing, harsh and uneven, hot against Oda’s chest. Oda froze, hands hovering uselessly for a moment before instinct took over and he pressed his palms flat against Bakugo’s back, gravity easing just enough to ground them both.

“…Shut up,” Bakugo rasped, voice barely audible, face buried against Oda’s sternum. “Just shut up.”

Oda swallowed hard.

This was not the plan. This was absolutely not the plan. And he hesitated.

Once again every rational thought he had told him this was a mistake. That he should gently disentangle himself, go back to the chair, keep things distant like he’d promised.

But Bakugo was shaking.

Just enough that Oda could feel it now that they were pressed together, the subtle tremor of a body that had been running on adrenaline even in rest.

Oda exhaled slowly and let himself sink back against the mattress, carefully shifting so his weight didn’t press down too hard. He kept his quirk active, just a low-level field, enough to keep Bakugo anchored without hurting either of them.

“Fine,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Bakugo didn’t answer. His grip loosened just a fraction, breath evening out by degrees so small Oda might have imagined them if he wasn’t hyper-aware of every sensation.

Minutes passed.

Maybe longer.

Oda stared at the wall, muscles aching, mind buzzing too loudly to relax, until at some point his body betrayed him. The tension drained out of his limbs in a slow, unavoidable slide, exhaustion finally outweighing fear.

The last thing he registered before sleep took him was the steady rise and fall of Bakugo’s breathing against his chest.