Bakugo x Uraraka / Quirkless AU / Prisoner x Therapist / they're all grown up in this ofc / cussing
[This has honestly been sitting in my notes for so long and it's not a completed story yet, but I thought I'd share this somewhere, in case this dynamic scratches anyone else's brain, too]
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„It's nice to meet you, Bakugo-San. My name is Dr. Uraraka Ochaco.”
The patient showed no sign of acknowledgement. He sat slouched over the back of his chair and faced the sterile, white ceiling.
“I understand that the director has informed you about the fact that I will be your new therapist for the time being, since my predecessor has accepted a position at a different institution.”
She wasn't deterred by his silence. Working with the imprisoned came with a unique set of challenges.
So instead of being insulted by the lack of participation, she took the time to note something on the crisp, white paper tucked under the clasp of her clipboard.
Patient unwilling to engage in social pleasantries or getting to know the new staff in the beginning of the session. Shows strong disinterest in conversing. Relaxed posture.
The sound of the heavy ball point pen smoothly gliding across the page filled her small bubble of awareness. She wasn't sure whether the speaker could pick up such a delicate noise. Bakugo certainly couldn't hear it through the triple pane window that separated them.
“How have you been for the past month?”
The patient remained unresponsive. She tried again.
“It has been a while since your last therapy session, since the institution made sure to find someone new who is fit for the position. Has this change affected you in any way?”
His silence was answer enough. Her pen swayed back and forth between her thumb and index finger as she thought.
She paused to give him the chance to respond.
He did not.
“I don't enjoy opening up to strangers either. I'm sure we will be able to warm up to each other eventually, though.
Not even Uraraka herself was able to take that seriously.
Tick. Tock.
She licked her lips and looked over the familiar pages again. A face stared up at her from the police photograph on page three of the dossier. It had been taken at his arrest, days after his final bombing.
The man in the photo had wild, blond hair, stubble on his chin and upper lip. Dark shadows starkly contrasted the whites of his eyes that surrounded his blown-out pupils and thin, brown irises. Compared to the Bakugo of today, the man in the photo looked more like his deranged twin.
These days his face was cleanly shaven, his hair short and tidy. Apart from the metal cuffs around his wrists, he looked like a regular guy in gray overalls.
“I see you don't seem to mind the change of personnel. Were you unhappy with your previous therapist?”
Even though his eyes faced the ceiling, she could see them opening briefly, as if softly startled by the question, before an amused scoff sounded through the speaker. That was as much of an answer as she could hope to get.
She crossed her legs and sat back in her chair. A strand of her hair found its way between her fingers, and she fiddled with it absentmindedly.
“Considering the fact you have had more than 5 different therapists within the span of two years though, it might just be a regular Tuesday to you,” she made sure to sound as disinterested as possible, “Sitting across the new face of some shrink you wouldn't even give a fuck about if your life depended on it.”
His head snapped to face her; brows furrowed at what he'd just heard.
Upon locking eyes with him for the first time, she made it a point to smile at him in earnest. Even as she could feel his scrutinizing gaze on her, the smile didn't falter. The hand fiddling with her hair sank back into her lap, however.
“Thought you people had too much of a stick up your asses to cuss.”
His voice sounded calm and raspy. Unused.
“We're just having a conversation, right? If you're allowed to cuss, so am I.”
He scoffed again and relaxed back into his previous position. Eyes closed, basking in the sunlight shining through the window on his right.
Reacts well to less formal language being used.
“Conversation…”
He allowed the word to stay in his mouth a bit longer. Swirled it around, tasted it.
The bitter tone of his voice made it clear how bored he was of this procedure. Being talked at by so-called professionals that always attempted to dissect his brain, as if he were an animal. As if that made it any less of an act of murder.
“Is that not what this is?”
With a grunt, the patient let his head fall back against the seat of his chair.
“Shut the fuck up already.”
At that, she smiled to herself. They were getting somewhere.
“Sorry, Bakugo-San. I'm afraid that's what I get paid to do. So even if you don't want to participate, you'll have to get used to the sound of my voice.”
He scoffed, unamused by her attitude. “You'll be gone by the end of the week.”
The patient stretched out his body as much as he could. Metallic noises sounded through the speaker when he lifted his arms. He let the meat of his underarm rest against his forehead and held onto the wrist of that arm with his other hand, to keep it from dangling by the short chain between the cuffs.
“End of the month tops.” he added, content with himself.
In this position, the fabric of his sleeves was taught around his biceps. Uraraka wondered if he spent all his free time working out with other inmates in the courtyard, or by himself in his cell.
What other hobbies does he have? Who does he spend time with?
Based on the established pattern, he assumes the personnel switching will continue, so he sees no reason in opening up to me yet.
“Well, until then, how about you tell me about yourself?”
The arm covering his eyes lifted for a moment. Hostile eyes pierced into hers.
“What, too lazy to read all of a sudden? ‘Thought you shrinks do nothing but study files of inmates all day and then congratulate yourselves on not being crazy.”
Uraraka found herself stunned. After the twenty-four-minute-long silence at the beginning of the session, she hadn't expected him to actually continue talking to her.
A glimmer of triumph flickered in her stomach.
At the lack of fuel added to his passionate distaste for doctors, his hostility extinguished again. He visibly relaxed.
“Then you go home to the guy who beats you and puts his dick in you while you sleep because it turns him on when you can't give consent first.
You flip through your favorite magazine that tells you that you need double eyelid surgery and Botox, so you can look like a live blow-up doll. A page after that there's gossip about some rich cunt who got her tits lifted and how she's a whore because of it.
Then you go to your corporate job where some guy, who only hired you because you acted like a trained mutt -short from actually eating out of a bowl and barking when he says to- buries you in tasks and complains when you want to take a day off to go to your mom's funeral.
But we're fucked in the head here, right?”
She blinked at him, surprised. It was the most he had said in thirty-two minutes. Much more than she had anticipated him to say during the entire session.
Makes a lot of assumptions about others, based on minute details in their speech. Tries to analyze me back. Control.
Thinks he has other people figured out. Nothing new to learn.
“I agree. I don't think it makes sense to think anyone is mentally healthy for accepting abuse willingly. Nor is it healthy to consider getting plastic surgery for minor things, while condemning others for actually going through with it. But I also don't think of my patients as ‘crazy’, Bakugo-San.”
“Yeah, right,”
Clearly, that meant ‘fuck you for pretending’.
He waved a hand, as if to shoo away a pesky insect.
“You think we're poor, misunderstood souls, who took a wrong turn in life. Either that, or insane monsters, who deserve to rot. I've heard it all before.”
“I actually think that you're a normal person like I am. I think you're someone who has led a tough life ever since he was a child, which then resulted in developing a skewed moral compass. And I would like to understand how you concluded that engineering bombs and using them to destroy, maim and kill would be the logical thing to do.”
“’A person like you’? Which chapter of your stupid book on psychology was that in?
‘Try to level with a patient so compassionately, that they temporarily forget the sensation of cold metal around their wrists and the smell of disinfectant and concrete in their nose.”
Excellent work doc, your dumb voice is almost so distracting that I couldn't feel these shitty ass overalls anymore.”
That made her laugh out loud. She put a hand in front of her mouth, while mentally reminding herself that these sessions were being recorded.
Looks down on empathy being expressed towards him. Sees it as weakness?
Hates being treated as unequal, less than.
A faint “the hell” reached her through the speaker mounted above the window between them.
“I'm glad to be of help.” she said and swallowed the last chuckle. “Have you actually read any textbooks on psychology, Bakugo-San?”
He stared at her, dumfounded.
“The fuck is this? Some sort of shitty book club discussion? I thought you're here to ask me about whether I was beaten or if I ever got hard while pressing the detonator or some shit like that.”
“How about answering my question first?”
Now it was his turn to bark out a laugh. He looked up at the rounded, dark gray camera installed at the ceiling and asked if they had run out of actual doctors.
He returned to his previous position, like he had at the beginning of the session, and she didn't feel the need to press for an answer.
Ultimately it was irrelevant. On that day, all she wanted was to get a feel for this man, who had terrorized all of Japan with his bombings. Who had caused so much destruction and horror in the hearts of millions of people.
The man who had successfully made all his previous therapists quit, either through adamant silence or leading them in circles by dodging questions and then turning the scalpel around, so that it faced the doctor, not the subject.
More importantly, she had wanted him to look at and talk to her, even if only about nonsensical things.
Check library database.
Shows signs of being confronted with unexpected behavior from my side. Questions my capability.
The ticking of the clock made her check it again.
“Our session is coming to an end Bakugo-San. Is there anything you would like to talk to me about, before we see each other again on Friday?”
“Fuck off, already!”
She smiled to herself again and an amused breath left her nose. The remaining ten minutes were spent in mutual silence. Uraraka went over her notes once more and took a good look at her patient again, to really soak up his presence.
A clinical dossier, police reports and news broadcasts could only tell her so much about a man. Despite how people might be portrayed through the eyes of someone else, it will always be affected by their own lens they see the world through. Even doctors have their own agenda and judgements concerning patients, no matter how hard they try to hide it. With Bakugo, it was evidently the same.
Tokyo News might have dubbed him an ‘Americanized maniac’, taking him for a Hollywood-influenced man, who wanted to become as well-known as people like Dahmer or Bundy, but this statement fell short of encompassing the entirety of his being.
And even the previous doctors working with him, who had diagnosed him with all sorts of personality disorders, did not acknowledge any positive attributes regarding his character. For example, at exactly two minutes to the full hour, he was calmly seated in a chair, doing absolutely nothing, except relaxing in the afternoon sunlight, meaning he couldn’t just be this destruction-crazed hell spawn everyone had made him out to be.
It was then, she realized, he probably was relaxing, was basking in the sunlight.
Cells of priority A prisoners, such as Bakugou, did not have windows. It was to keep contact to the outside world to a minimum, as well as a form of psychological torture. This practice was outright inhumane, but prison was a different world, where different rules applied.
However, the rooms the inmates were put into during their therapy appointments, had big, south-west facing windows. (Bulletproof glass, of course).
In theory, the contrast between a dimly lit cell barely big enough to fit a futon and a bright, clean room with access to sunlight would make the patients want to open up.
Evidently, some were resistant to this theory.
She wondered about whether this was the reason why his previous doctors had had little to no success in getting through to him.
Maybe all he used the bi-weekly hour for was to soak up the only form of safely accessible warmth touching his skin.
Inquire about granting him access to more sunlight / fresh air.
The clock on the wall indicated the full hour had come to an end. Uraraka gathered her things and held them up to her chest.
“It was nice to talk to you. I'll see you again in a few days, Bakugo-San. Have a good week until then.” Polite as she was, she bowed as she spoke.
“Suck my cock, you bitch! A good week? How ‘bout you-”
The door on his side of the glass opened and the guards, who had waited until the end of the session, stepped inside.
In this prison, inmates were prohibited from speaking in the hallways, so the guards cut off the rest of his sentence with threats and reprimanded him, before he could step out of line. It was evidently in vain.
Uraraka watched him cuss at them and struggle in their grip. She could tell he wasn't actually serious about it, though. It seemed more like a coordinated dance to make sure they knew he hated what they were doing. That he disagreed with what was happening, just for the sake of it.
Even after the door had closed, she could hear his booming voice, since he was led out into the same hallway she'd return to her office through.
The connection between them was sealed off with metal bars and a gate, of course, so that inmates had no way of getting their hands on the staff, even if they would somehow manage to overwhelm the guards first.
Hates pleasantries. That's why start of session was without reaction. Possibly reminded of how much he hates life in here.
Oppositional defiance. It's important to him to demonstrate he's somewhat in control of the situation, even in handcuffs.
She looked over the notes one last time, before looking back at his chair. It laid on its side now. Collateral from the conflict displayed a minute ago.
The sunlight no longer touched it.
