Chapter Text
For most people, the dark hours of the night are peaceful, calm, and filled with dreams of incredible feats. But for some, it holds their most vulnerable moments, the moments they keep hidden away from other people. It holds their fears, their worries, and their worst nightmares.
During this time of night when the moon is at its highest, casting shadows all around, it’s not uncommon to find Bakugou Katsuki wide awake, tossing and turning in his bed. Whether it was from the frequent vivid nightmares of being attacked and kidnaped that he was too proud to admit to having, or the lack of sleep to prevent said nightmares from occurring, only the dead of night knows.
Tonight he stares at his ceiling, refusing to look at the time, knowing it will just make him more frustrated at his inability to fall asleep. He prays that his mind and body will let him sleep without instantly going on alert for one night.
For the umpteenth time that night he turns onto his side, but still finding no comfort in this he throws his blankets off begins to pace around the room. Bakugou steals a glance at his small clock to check the time, and just like he thought, looking at it made him angry for still being awake. Finding it too early to properly start his day without alerting everyone in the immediate vicinity of his sleepless nighttime habits, he decides to just head towards the common room for a change of environment. He grabs his phone and quietly exits his room.
Bakugou makes his way to the stairs, the elevator would easily be the fastest route, but the stairs give his body more of a reason to tire out. That’s what he tells himself at least. He reaches the third floor and as is to be expected, is met with the everlasting silence of no one being awake. Sometimes though, on his almost-nightly walks downstairs, he’ll be able to hear a snore from Kaminari’s room. And without fail each night that happens, he thinks to himself, ‘God it must suck sleeping next door to him.’
The second floor is more... interesting, for lack of a better word. There is almost always something going on when he passes this floor. Either it’s Midoriya’s light filtering out from under his door and the occasional sound of him talking to himself about whichever topic has his interest on that given night, the sound of Mineta sleep talking – at least he hopes its sleep talking with some of the things Bakugou hears – or its an unexpected ‘thump’ noise, or the sound of someone moving through their room almost as if they’re looking for something coming from Tokoyami’s room.
On more nights than one he’s found himself bracing for an attack, going on high alert with adrenaline coursing through his veins as he slowly approaches Tokoyami’s door, fully prepared to fight anyone he finds on the other side. But much to his relief in those moments, he will hear the bird-headed boy talking to his quirk in a low voice before he does anything drastic.
Tonight is one of those mostly quiet nights from the second floor though. Bakugou can hear Mineta’s voice spurting things no different to when he’s awake. It makes him grimace as he continues down the stairs. He can’t help but wonder how he even remains in the hero course, let alone the school without being knocked out by any number of the girls he talks about. He can’t count how many times he’s wanted to do it, so the number for them must be tenfold at the very least.
When he makes it to the bottom of the stairs, he spots a single light turned on in the kitchen. Bakugou hears cupboards open and close, and the sound of things getting set down on the bench as he gets closer. Tokoyami is in the kitchen, back facing towards Bakugou as he goes about what he’s doing. While nearing the area he coughs slightly, letting the other boy know he was also there without scaring him completely. He definitely didn’t feel like risking something being thrown at him or being attacked out of the initial shock of an unexpected presence.
Tokoyami does still jump slightly at the sound, but when he turns and sees Bakugou he simply nods his head slightly at him and carries on. Another semi-regular theme of the nights was Bakugou seeing Tokoyami on his way down to the common room area. Sometimes they walked past each other on the stairs, other times Bakugou would only catch a glimpse of him retreating into his room. Some nights turned out like this though, where they both stood in the kitchen area for an amount of time, until one finished whatever they were doing and left. Seeing him didn’t happen every night, but often enough for them to both be somewhat used to it.
Bakugou starts making himself some tea, he and Tokoyami don’t speak to each other as he does. If they did then it would be almost like addressing the nighttime vulnerabilities in Bakugou’s eyes. Even though they don’t speak, Bakugou does watch from the corners of his eyes as Tokoyami’s Dark Shadow bounds around the room grabbing various items. Some nights he wonders what a quirk like that would feel like, other nights he finds the endless energy from the shadow annoying.
Tokoyami starts to turn around to leave, and Bakugou’s eyes turn back to his mug. “Goodnight, Bakugou.” He says as he passes by.
“Yeah, night.” It’s the most they ever say at these times.
Bakugou finished making his tea, turns off the light and heads for the couch in the common room. When he sits down he pulls his phone out from his pocket, trying to find some way to distract himself. A group chat he seems to always get added back into, no matter how many times he leaves it, has unopened messages, so he settles on reading them to pass the time.
As he reads the barrage of messages that either make no conceivable sense, or are just a single word misspelled repeated over and over again to mock the original user, he starts to feel drowsy. Not wanting to deal with other people coming down and waking him up or even just seeing him sleeping on the lounge, he makes the trek back upstairs to his room.
He’s still looking at the chat as he lays in bed, and falls asleep leaning on his phone with his screen unlocked. A message of random characters gets sent as he moves in his sleep.