CW: Discussions of child abuse, abuse victim realising that he is in fact an abuse victim.
The atmosphere was heavy as Bakugo and Mirko arrived back at her office after a tough afternoon’s patrol. Well, calling it tough was perhaps a little unfair – it had started out well enough, and indeed for the most part things had gone as smoothly as possible. While a large part of Bakugo craved a little more action, he could at least appreciate that if heroes were bored, that at least meant there were no disasters going on.
That is, things had been going well until he had done what he always seemed to do and screw it up.
In the heat of the moment it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. He’d only realised what had gone wrong when Mirko hopped back to him with a scowl on her face and told him they’d talk about it after patrol was over. He knew what that meant. His mother always had the exact same look on her face when she told him they were gonna talk about something.
Mirko flung herself into a chair and began taking off her boots. "Alright brat, I said we were gonna talk about it later and now it's later. So let's talk."
"Right", Katsuki bit out. There wasn't a table, or at least not one at a convenient height, but the kitchen counter would probably do. He walked over to it, trying not to delay in case that made it worse. Once he was there, he shucked his pants down and leaned against it. He really hoped Mirko wouldn't insist on his underwear too.
"What the fuck?" she cried from somewhere behind him, sounding utterly aghast.
"I-" this was bad. This was danger. Before he'd known what to expect, or at any rate he'd thought he had but now he was in uncharted territory.
"Jumpin' Jesus, kid, pull your pants back up! Fuck, am I even allowed to see this?"
Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. He grabbed at his pants and hauled them up, suddenly mortified. Why was it like this? What was happening? "I don't... I don't know what you want", he begged. He managed to look her in the eye, though it took more effort than he would have thought possible.
Her face softened. "I meant what I said. I just wanted to talk about what y- about what went wrong earlier. Bakugo, please, come sit down."
He marched over on mechanical legs and slouched into the other chair. Mortal terror gripped his heart and he still didn't know what was going on.
"Did you really think I was gonna...calling it spanking sounds so childish. But did you really think I was gonna do that?"
"I fucked up", he explained, "I fucked up and I embarrassed you in public. Fuck else are you gonna do?"
"God, no. Bakugo, everyone fucks up sometimes. 'specially when they're new at something, and I don't know if you've noticed but you're pretty damn new at this whole hero thing. It doesn't matter if you fuck up right now, because we can fix it later."
"I...OK. OK"
She got up from her own chair and knelt beside him, one hand on the armrest. "Can I ask why you thought I was going to hit you?" she asked, gently.
He was silent. It was as if saying it out loud would make it more real.
After a moment, Mirko pressed on, “Is it because you’ve been hit before?”
He nodded.
“Does it happen often?”
“Only when I fuck up.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. Whether or not you fuck up, nobody should be hitting you for it. But… whoever hit you, do they do it regularly?”
He nodded.
“Is it a teacher?”
“What are you talking about? Teachers don’t do that shit.” Even as he said it, he wondered. It seemed like his entire world had tilted – the rules he thought everyone lived by weren’t rules at all. Just shit that had happened to him.
She smiled bitterly. “You’d be surprised. OK, if it’s not your teacher, is it your parents?”
He hunched in on himself, and somehow that was a confirmation. “My mom”, he whispered after a long moment of silence.
“Thank you for telling me, Bakugo. That was incredibly brave of you.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not an expert or anything, but I do know enough to know that talking about these things is extremely difficult. It shows real strength that you could tell me.”
He thought about this in silence.
"Now, I was planning on reviewing today's patrol but right now I don't think that would be very helpful. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna skip that for tonight and tomorrow we'll just patrol again, and try again."
"And what about if I fuck up again?"
"Well, tell ya what. Tomorrow I'll keep a closer eye on you, and if I see anything going wrong I'll be better able to step in and guide you. Hell, I probably shoulda been keeping a closer eye on you today anyway. It’s partly my fault, if ya look at the big picture." She clapped a hand on his shoulder, "Listen. Overall, you did well today. Real well! Just keep it up, keep improving, and you'll be a damn good pro in no time at all."
Despite it all, his determination managed to throw up a spark. "Forget damn good, I'm gonna be the best!", he grinned.
"Yeah! That's what I wanna see!" she punched the air triumphantly, “Now, we’ve both had a heck of a day today, so I’m gonna use one of my cheat days. We’re getting takeout, what do you want?”
“What? Uh, I dunno, Chinese.”
“Sure thing! There’s this great place over on Shintera-Dori avenue, I’ll put in an order while you get back in your civvies.”
He got to his feet, and belatedly realised he hadn’t actually done his pants back up. Having to hold them up with one hand was perhaps a little embarrassing, but nothing compared to what he’d just been through.
He continued to grapple with the conversation in the shower. Mirko had said that talking about these things was tough. He knew what she meant. He knew that neither of them had actually said the word abuse, because each had known that the other was already thinking it. He searched desperately for some reason, some explanation for how he hadn’t really been abused, and came up empty.
And then as he got dressed and made his way back to Mirko, he wondered why. Why didn’t he want to have been abused? The word VICTIM flashed in his mind, big and ugly, and part of him hated himself for just how badly he wanted to avoid it.
There was only one thing for it. It was gonna be difficult, just one goddamn more difficult thing after a day that had been full of them, but he was Bakugo Katsuki and he never hesitated to face a challenge head-on. He slouched back into the office and asked Mirko “I should see a therapist, huh?”
She thought it over for a second. “Shit dude, probably. They’ll have someone at your school, and they can help you figure out what’s gonna work for you. In the meantime dinner’s arriving in ten minutes, so we’re gonna eat, we’re gonna chill the fuck out, and we’re both gonna do better tomorrow. Sound like a plan?”
“Hell yeah.”