1.3k words Bakugou Katsuki x reader, aged up characters, Bakugou is an art student, a little angsty, he’s kind of a huge asshole in this at some point but he’s kind of just trying to get under reader’s skin, I’m so out of practice in writing him I hope it’s okay, set in the same universe as my charcoal artist!Dabi and oil painter!Tomura, sorry if this sucks and is pretentious
Bakugou’s studio is impeccable.
Everything has a place. His tools are all lined up, hammers and chisels and rasps all hanging from nails stuck into a large board on a wall. Beneath them are three tool carts filled with various electric saws and files, all placed meticulously. Besides that is a hand truck, you assume for moving the bigger sculptures he works on. He has one corner of the room reserved for all of his statues and uncarved stones, the largest ones pushed towards the back. The smallest stones and sculptures sit on tables near by, all set—what you have to guess—an inch apart from one another. There’s a standing desk with shelves of art books and comics beneath it. The entire middle of the room is covered in a tarp that looks immaculate, like he’s never worked a day in his life on top of it, though you know that’s not true judging from the half finished giant stone sitting atop of the clean tarp, tools sitting on the last step of the stool he’s using to reach the top of the sculpture. It’s draws your eyes immediately upon walking in—the stone that looks as though something is crawling from inside of it.
The last wall is covered in brown sketching paper, three rolls of it mounted on one side so that it can be stretched across the entirety of the wall. The paper is filled with a multitude of sketches and scribbles, notes scrawled across that you can barely read due to the obvious urgency they were written with.
Being inside of his studio feels personal—intimate—like you’re taking a peak inside of his brain, but Bakugou doesn’t seem to mind. Tearing your eyes away from the giant in the middle of the room, you watch him bring an extra stool to the table he’s cleared for the two of you to work on.
The project is simple. You’re both meant to agree on one artist with an emphasis on a single medium of theirs. Both a seven slide powerpoint and a six page essay are due about the topic. Bakugou was assigned to be you’re partner. Despite his obvious bad attitude and the constant frown he wears, he was surprisingly open to working with you. You let him pick the artist, but he wouldn’t let you leave without choosing the medium. So even though your interest in your major is slowly deteriorating, you chose the first one that came to mind.
So now you sit in Bakugou’s studio (brain, heart, soul), listening to him as he explains the importance of your artist during their time period, eyes flickering between the text in your book and the stone in the middle of the room.
“Stop.” Bakugou’s voice snaps you out of the trance you’re in, swiveling your stool between the textbook in front of you and the stone to your right. You feel his hand come down on your knee, pausing your movements so that you’re facing him.
“Huh?” You ask, eyeing the size of his hand on your leg.
“Moving back and forth like that. It’s distracting.” Distracting. If only he knew how distracting his giant stone with the person/monster/angel crawling up out of it has been for you.
“What is it?” You ask him, spinning your stool again so that you’re facing the unfinished sculpture. His hand slips from your knee.
He glances at it for a moment before shrugging, “I dunno yet.”
“What do you mean?” You ask him.
“Exactly what I said.” He sighs, already annoyed with the conversation. “I don’t know what it is yet. I have to keep going until I—”
“Free it.” You interrupt, eyes still on the stone. “Until you free whatever’s inside, right.”
He’s quiet for a moment, head turned towards you as you observe his statue. You see him nod out the corner of your eye. “Yeah. I have to free it.”
When you look back at him, there’s an unreadable expression on his face. Gone is the permanent frown across his lips, the harsh line between his eyebrows. You think maybe its curiosity, maybe suspicion.
What it really is, though, is that Bakugou is suddenly struck with the feeling of being understood. And he didn’t have to tell you a thing. One look at his rocks and you saw it. He’s not sure how to feel.
“I used to feel like that.” You tell him. His frown returns. You recognize that feeling, like something deep inside is screaming to get out, that feeling that you have to set it free or it’ll die inside of you. You used to feel that way every time you pushed your brush into a blank canvas.
“But you don’t anymore.” He gathers. There’s a harshness to his voice, almost angry, but not angry at you—angry for you.
“I think I lost it. I think art school sucked the life out of me.” Whatever spark you had died inside of you like you always worried it would.
“That’s bullshit.” He tells you. He stands from his stool and pulls you up with him. He drags you to the giant stone in the middle of the room, and up close you can see the cross hatching he’s done to it at the top where the limbs seem to start. “You can’t keep your eyes off of this. It’s making you feel something.”
“It doesn’t make me feel anything anymore. You’re just talented.” You shrug.
“I know I’m talented.” He scoffs. “That’s not what you care about. You care that she gets out. You care that I turn this cold, unforgiving piece of solid fucking rock into something beautiful.”
“Or horrifying.”
“It’s not gonna be horrifying.” He speaks, his lips close to your ear as he keeps you turned toward the stone.
“You said you don’t know until it’s done.” You shiver.
“No, you said that.”
“You didn’t disagree.”
“Stop fucking—” He sighs loudly from behind you. “Yes, freeing it is a part of it. But I already know what it becomes. I knew the moment I hauled that fucking stone into this room. And you know it too.”
You don’t think you do, but Bakugou says this to you with such conviction, you think you believe him. You turn around, breaking yourself from the hypnosis the rock has put you under.
“I thought it was weird that you didn’t jump at the chance to choose our artist. I had to practically force you to choose the medium. Maybe art school sucked the life out of you, but you let it.” The truth is harsh, makes you flinch away from him, but his hand reaches out for your wrist to bring you back.
“You don’t have to be so fucking mean.” You wrench your wrist from his grip.
“You think this is mean?” He spits. “You paint, and you sketch, and if you fuck up, you paint over it or you erase it. If you fuck up with this—” his palm slams against the stone in a loud thud next to your head. “—that’s it. It doesn’t forgive you.”
“So what? I’m some kind of lesser artist cause I don’t chip off pieces of stone? Fuck you.” You push at his chest, but he doesn’t budge.
“No, you’re a lesser artist because you gave up.” He takes another step forward, his nose just inches from your own. “Whenever you wanna resurrect whatever the fuck died inside of you, you know where to find me.”
He’s off of you in a second, halfway across the room by the time you catch your breath. Squaring your shoulders, you march your way toward him. You hate that he’s right, even if only a little bit. His sculpture did make you feel something. They all did. You haven’t felt that excitement in such a long time, or that jealous pit in your stomach you used to get whenever someone was so good at something it made you want to be better. You envy him. How could a place that slowly ruined you build and mold a man like him?
“I didn’t give up.” You seethe. He turns towards you, towering over you with that same frown on his face, but his eyes have that familiar look in them from when you spoke about his giant.
you and your friend walk out of the club and your friend’s tipsy and they wave and smile at a hq guy walking by. you whisper no he’s ugly and the poor guy overhears it.
which hq man was it?
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