Childhood best friend!Katsuki who HATED that Mitsuki drug him across the street to introduce the Bakugou family to yours.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki who HATED that your parents become close friends very quickly, meaning he'd be forced into having regular play dates with you.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki who HATED that your moms made the two of you match in coordinated first day of kindergarten outfits.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki HATED that you'd always sit next to him at lunch, yapping away with your annoying voice.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED the fact that you'd much rather play with izuku on the playground than him. Maybe because Deku didn't shove you into the dirt during tag?
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED that stupidly adorable frowny face you'd made when you fell off of your bike - but found him so notso reluctantly offering you his sleeve to wipe your face with anyway. Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED the way his heart thumped when you laughed too hard at his unfunny jokes.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED that other guys would start noticing you and approaching you, asking you to hang out.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED that he suddenly cared about what you thought of his appearance.
High school
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED that they'd placed you in a different class, meaning you'd be in different dorms, meaning he couldn't check up on you whoever he'd want.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how he'd always look for your face during passing period, and especially hated the way his face softened and his heart eased up whenever he found you.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how he'd die before letting any other guy walk you back to the dorms after training. Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how long it took for him to confess, he HATED how his palms got extra sweaty when he did.
Boyfriend
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how hard he'd fallen for you, like it wasn't something he could control. But he loved how natural it felt to have your hand in his.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED every time a villain would look your way when you were patrolling. Sure, he wasn't supposed to have personal motives during work, but he wasn't risking loosing you, so even given a bad look.. he'd make sure they regretted it.
Fiancé
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how nervous he was before proposing - like you'd say no. And he HATED how red he got when you cried saying yes.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how he cried when he saw you walking down the aisle Childhood best friend!Katsuki who HATED how he cried when you said your vows, and could barely get his own words out while saying his. Childhood best friend! Katsuki Who HATED the girly color choice you'd chosen for the wedding but went with it anyway since you looked so happy.
Dad
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how tiny your baby looked in his arms at first - afraid that the smallest movement of his big strong beefy arms would crush the poor guy if he wasn't careful.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how your son would insist on sleeping in bed with the two of you, directly in the middle, cuddling you. So much for having 3 more.
Childhood best friend!Katsuki Who HATED how life moved so fast. His little one was already starting kindergarten, Kirishimas daughter standing next to your son, who looked more than displeased, as you insisted on getting a picture of their coordinated first day of school outfits.
Childhood best friend! Katsuki Who's response is always
"Duh, she's my best friend." When his friends tease him about how they always knew the two of you would end up together.
Childhood best friend! Katsuki Who never really HATED anything you did. He was just too stubborn to use the word
LOVE.
HI this is an old fic of mine (originally posted on my main acc @ogwintersmind) and I’m just reuploading it here to see how it’ll do!
guys. in the winter i was reading this series on here with tutor!Bakugou x camgirl!reader and i genuinely cannot find it again I have searched everywhereeee. all i can really remember is that y/n's cam name had something to do with a flower and there was smut and angst.... puhleaseee help a girl out if you have any idea what i'm talking about
notes: i'm back <3 i missed you all so much, and i missed this series too much to let it die. my goal this year is to finish some of the series i've started—let's see how far we get, eh?
wc: 2.6k (pt. 3 only), tags (whole series): bakugou x reader, oc character death (not reader), grief, healing, found family, getting together, slow (medium?) burn, child rearing, descriptions of pregnancy, morning sickness, friends to lovers, confessions, eventual smut (this chapter is indeed the smut)
(part one) (part two)
There are plenty of things that’ve never made sense to you.
Trigonometry, right-of-way laws, cellophane around produce. Things that feel unnatural—like the earth would just keep turning if society would collectively decide it needn’t punish itself further with the arbitrary, and yet, the commitment persists.
This is not one of those things.
It could never be, because instead it feels like the most natural thing in the world—here in your grief and your love, the latter arguably more devastating, held in the cradle of Katsuki’s thighs while he tries like hell to take it from you. Something he’s always done—but it’s different now.
It’s different now because his hands are on you in ways you’ve only ever dreamed of—hot and familiar under your shirt, up the curve of your spine, collaring the back of your neck like there could never be another place better suited for them. His touch is an old memory forgotten about—concealed for so long you’d paid no heed to the potential of his grip fitting to you like muscle memory—that much more shocking to realize that it could, and it does, and it feels like a homecoming you'd never known before this moment.
The forgetting, the remembering. The shoving down, down, down. The waves of longing so insurmountable you feared they’d drag you straight to where your shame has denned deep inside of you, necrotic and tender. The thing that has kept you from him—because grieving widows don’t do this.
Grieving widows—a wife, as you imagine you’re still considered—don’t touch themselves in the shower to the thought of their best friend. Don’t cum to the phantom touch of callouses against skin, to his lips against the shell of your ear when he’s telling you he’s taking Kaede to the park but he wants you to sleep in, to hard muscle and vivacity and knowing he’s not going anywhere, he’s staying right here with you—
Your hands twist in the fabric of his t-shirt as if he could get any closer. You try—some vain hope for osmosis, like if you are determined enough your skin will allow him to pass through you and embed himself deeper than he already is. He’s been there for years—in your heart, carving out a cavern that no other earthly person ever had a shot of filling.
You knew he’d have ruined you for anyone else if you'd ever allowed yourself the raw pleasure of this moment, so you withheld. You let him go—because you were too young to get hung up on infatuation and needed to check off those boxes hanging over your head. But you burned, whether he was near or far. Takeshi, though you loved him, served to asphyxiate this burning; oxygen deprivation to the fire you knew would take everything if you’d let it. In the beginning, you needed a clear path, someone stable and family-oriented, like Takeshi, like a balm to a wound—though that particular injury was a brand that had already set in your skin, and you knew it. But you’d have let it fester for the rest of your life, because you'd made your decision. You loved your husband and the daughter he gave you. You’d have kept your heart neat and compartmentalized, shaving down the appetency until it was docile—a house cat in the shadow of sharpened teeth and claws.
But you're here now—this smoldering thing in Katsuki’s arms, and the world isn’t ending. You, in this endless bereavement and suffocating obsession—neither wavering for a second, both threatening to pull you under, to turn you into a brushfire and take Katsuki with you—
But you don’t. He holds you there despite the wild thrashing inside of you, and he kisses you like he has time. Because he does, and so do you. And every breath you take from him it solidifies itself into a safe belief—he’s real. He’s here, and so are you. Whole, complete.
And Jesus Christ, you want him.
The heat is unbearable—you let it smother the tendril of shame that coils around your gut, replaced so suddenly by the incitement of desire, so strong that you’re gasping into his mouth, teetering on the edge of some precipice unfamiliar to you.
He freezes, pulling back to look at your face. It’s crushing, this pause— and you don’t know when you’ve ever felt more sensitive to rejection in your life. A small death, the concept not so unfamiliar to you by now but in practice still deeply painful, over and over again with each advancing millimeter of space between you. All of those years going without, amplified now that he's right here.
“‘M not goin’ anywhere,” to feel the rumble of his voice under your hands sends a violent shiver up your spine that means to fry every nerve ending, “Just—need to know this is real.”
And you can’t help it—you laugh, a surprised and punchy thing, cutting through your tears—pruning your grief into something manageable. You take him by the hand and pull until his palm is flush to your sternum—a hummingbird’s wings against his skin.
“It has always been real, Katsuki.”
His face pinches, and his grief is there too—at losing you, at lingering, at the realization that you were never so far away. But it’s a fleeting thing—rolling and swelling and dissipating. Leaving something devoid of emotion in its place, which worries you—
“Need you to let me up for a second,” he says, the change in tone again like whiplash—surely he feels your heart rate skyrocket as you try to backtrack, needing to fix it, needing to make him believe you—
“Honey,” his grip tightens on the back of your neck, keeping you still—pacifying you faster than anything else ever has, “Need you to let me up so I can go out there and tell Pinky she’s takin’ the baby tonight.”
You deflate—all at once confused, relieved, and a little turned on—
He grins, and your stomach does a somersault, and then another one when he leans in, a fantasy come to life with his mouth like a burn against the tender skin below your ear—
Three words—told to you before, in quiet moments between study lounges, at your graduation, in the back booth of the bar before the rest of your friends arrived. He'd told you in so many ways, or not in so many words, but never this way; you never knew it could feel like this—something of a freefall from thirty thousand feet into some syntactical safety mat. To hear his love now—to really hear it and know what it means—becomes its own aphrodisiac and your eyelids flutter, drooping in time with your head on his shoulder. It’s easy for him to take you back in his arms—to lay you down in the cocoon of pillows he’s kept on the bed since you moved in.
You feel out of your mind—you register his absence distantly, swaddled in the nest of his bed. His bed, sure—but inhabited by you all of these months, more familiar to you now than any other. All of these nights spent in his arms—not so naive as to believe your own actions to be platonic but wholly willing to use your grief as the justification for them. Feeling that grief grow smaller every morning you found yourself tucked into the bow of Katsuki's body. It was still with you—it likely always would be—but over these last few months, you'd started building it something of a dwelling, somewhere deep inside of you. Not hidden, but not in the forefront of your mind anymore. Putting up a picket fence and practicing boundaries—inviting it out to join you on a walk, and going your separate ways by the end of it.
Now, here, your grief nestles itself back into this home you've made for it—quiet and content to be separate from you in this moment. You twist in the cushion of the pillows, face buried in the one that smells like Katuski—finally allowing yourself to luxuriate in his redolence, only accomplished privately in small doses until now: wearing his clothes, shuffling to his side of the bed when he leaves it before you, taking his car instead of yours, mostly because of his fancy, enhanced safety measures—and also the chance to satiate the olfactory fixation of Katsuki after the gym—
Back with you again, his fingers—heated, familiar—brush over your temple and separate through the strands of your hair, and you achieve a state of matter you were unaware of until this moment; halfway between liquid and gaseous, suspended in this circumferential space; a de-boned thing with twice as many nerve endings. Your awareness of what is tactile is ten-fold: your skin a receptacle for each feeling you'd both suppressed, its greed now a moving, breathing thing. Moving toward every fleeting touch, wholly unwilling to go without again. All on display in the darkened quiet of his room—you'd need no light to see what you can feel in the shortened distance between your bodies. He loves you—he loves you—
Kneeling next to the bed, he's eye level with you, and you'd never look away again if you could help it. Claret burning through the dark, Katsuki never scared you. His intensity was only ever a beacon to you—the thing that welcomed you home no matter what storm raged outside of it. His brashness a salve to some wound sustained from a world so inauspiciously evasive; nitroglycerin-fueled fires only ever a source of warmth, no matter how large or loud the explosion. Once a boy fighting to create space inside a heart that would always be open and willing to receive whatever the man before you offered to you.
"Oh," reflexive, like the weight of this love could knock the breath from your lungs, "I love you."
You wonder how he didn't know. You hear the deflation like you've cut his strings—like this kindling only existed within him, and only now as an inferno does he realize you were the oxidation, like he can't handle being away from you for another aching second—his body covers yours, flush against every curve of you, hard and searing and heavy, pressed straight into the plush of his mattress. Your own form displaced and molded around him like water in a basin; you can only hope to hold him, to warm him like he has done for you. There is no contact point left untouched—ankles and thighs and ribs interlocked like cervid antlers, though the battle has already been fought and won. He rolls to his side and you go with him—back contiguous to the front of him, enveloped as you'd once been almost a year ago, only there is no sorrow this time. There are only the arms that encircle you, that pull you down deeper into this pool with no hope nor desire of resurfacing. Katsuki's mouth a smear against the slope of your neck, your body more animal than it has ever been, created only to feel this.
You push your hips back into the cradle of his—searching, needing more than you have ever—the sound that comes from Katsuki is one you're certain another version of you had heard before, many lives ago, and your body responds exactly as it had then—all of you warms, wets, swells in his arms; the air between you sweetens; the weight of him gets heavier, every inch of him a compression to the soul of you. Even if it’s been so many lifetimes since he's touched you, you feel like a virgin here, now—oversensitive and overwhelmed and still needing.
He says something—none of it in a language familiar to you, none of it coherent words of any language—but you understand by tone alone that his need is as monstrous and wide as your own. You writhe in his arms, a simpler phase of being; an earthworm shrouded in the ecstasy of every one of its nerve endings on display and touched perpetually, simultaneously; like water he moves with you, never ceasing in this onslaught of pleasure. You shed layer by layer until you can peel back no more of him; the hands on your body warm you more than any textile could ever hope to, and all at once you are made aware of how truly decadent this is—mouth against the shell of your ear, breasts heavy in his palms, thigh clamped between your own. Each flex of muscle sends a electric current straight up your spine—your hunger drives your hips down, seeking it out again—
A litany of equal parts profanity and pleading leaves Katsuki—his arm clamps down around your ribs like a vice, the other curving between your breasts, your jaw cupped in the hand that would never harm you—he pulls you down, and his thigh presses up—
"Oh," the pleasure is a whip that snaps your head back, no where to go but the cradle of his shoulder—a startled laugh the only partition between the cacophony of increasingly inhuman sounds leaving you—"I'm—gonna cum—"
You mean it as a warning, but he leaves no room for any feeling other than the pleasure breaking you apart from the inside, dragging you over each anterior muscle, the flex feeling autonomous and shocking against your clit—you chase the feeling despite the limited range of motion, chin tucking toward your chest as the whole of you contracts—his fingers slip until his thumb is a smear across your lips, already parting, already taking him in—
"Cum," he murmurs, soft and separated from the frenzied dance of your bodies, "I love you—"
Every muscle in your body seizes—the pleasure is a blinding thing that immediately tempers into TV static, fizzling and snapping and filling the fissure you'd been trying to coax back together since the day you met Katsuki. He keeps you there, held tightly to him despite your bucking and your shuddering whimpers around the finger in your mouth, his words congealing into some vague understanding of sweetness and safety and unbearable infatuation.
You don't release his thumb, and he doesn't ask you to—it's all you can do to reel in your breathing and bring your heart rate back down below critical levels. He presses his mouth to the parts of you that he can reach—your temple, your jaw, behind your ear, the skin stretched over trapezius muscle and bone—the most familiar warmth bleeding down through skin and marrow to the center of you. You shiver in his hold—more from overwhelm than from the temperature in his room—and he pulls you closer, cranks up his heat like a thermostat dial.
You feel drunk with it—his thumb slips from your lips and is quickly replaced with the soft give of his own mouth. He is everywhere, and yet your breath comes easily once you catch it again—humming into his kiss and giggling between every slurred declaration of adoration for this man that could never be anything else but wholly yours. You, once back in control of your limbs, turn in his arms, pressing your front to his—that same fire blazing again at the feeling of him hot and hard and heavy against your stomach.
"Not right now," his voice is a rumbling thing, a placating thing, hearing the thought before you act on it, "just let me hold you."
And he does—thigh shoved back between your own, arms around you and pulling you back to him, tucked under his chin, safe from the world and from your grief, if only for right now. You let him cling to you because you need him to, because he needs you to—sleep rears its head far faster than you expect and suddenly you are floating again, back in this liminal space where pleasure is the baseline and your mourning remains behind its closed door.
Katsuki tells you he loves you. There is nothing else you need to know today.
Disclaimer:These are random scenarios on how I think the relationship will turn out.
Do you even love me?
The relationship between you, Kirishima Eijirou, and Bakugou Katsuki is still new. The initial excitement is settling into a day-to-day rhythm, and unspoken habits are starting to form. You find yourself, almost without thinking, defaulting to Kirishima for comfort, requests, and affection. Bakugou, who is less instinctively demonstrative and more guarded, begins to feel like a third wheel in his own relationship.
For Instance It's a lazy Sunday morning. All three of you are tangled together in Kirishima's large bed after a movie night. As you all start to wake up, you instinctively shift your body, turning away from Katsuki and curling deeper into Eijirou's chest, sighing contentedly. You mumble a request to Eijirou to pass you a glass of water from the nightstand, even though Katsuki is closer to it.
There's a beat of silence. Then, the bed dips violently. Katsuki shoves himself out of bed with a grunt, stomps out of the room, and slams the door to the bathroom shut.
Internal Perspectives
Your Perspective (The Unknowingly Intentional Partner): You feel a jolt of confusion and anxiety.What did I do? What's wrong? Your mind races. You didn't mean to ignore Katsuki; it's just that Eijirou's affection is so open and easy to receive. It feels like a warm, sunny day. Katsuki's affection is like a storm—powerful and exhilarating, but sometimes you're not sure if you're supposed to take shelter or run out into the rain. Seeking Eijirou's warmth feels like the path of least resistance. You're not trying to exclude Katsuki; you're just trying to navigate this new, complicated dynamic, and you gravitated towards what felt safest and easiest in the moment. The accusation that you're not considering him as a boyfriend feels shocking because in your heart, you absolutely do.
Kirishima Eijirou's Perspective (The Comfortable Middle): Eijirou feels the tension immediately.He loves the cuddles with you, but his sharp emotional intelligence is laser-focused on his best friend. He felt you turn away from Katsuki and his heart sank a little. He knows Katsuki better than anyone and can see the subtle signs of hurt brewing beneath the anger. He's stuck in the middle: he wants to comfort you, but he knows the problem isn't really with him. He feels a sense of responsibility to bridge the gap. His instinct is to be the solid, reliable rock for both of you, but he's also learning that he can't fix this for you. He might give you a worried look and a gentle squeeze before untangling himself. "I should... go check on him," he'd say, his usual bright demeanor dimmed with concern.
Bakugou Katsuki's Perspective (The One Feeling Left Out): To you,it was a small, unconscious action. To Katsuki, it was a pattern, and this was the final, glaringly obvious data point. He's been collecting these moments: you asking Ei for help with homework he's better at, you saving the last bite of dessert for Ei, you always initiating plans through Ei. He's been telling himself he's being stupid and weak for caring, that he doesn't need that kind of clingy affection anyway. But the bed thing?That was physical. That was concrete. Turning away from him confirmed his deepest insecurity in this relationship: that he's the add-on, the difficult one, the one who isn't naturally lovable. His anger is a shield for a profound feeling of rejection. The slam of the door isn't just anger at you; it's fury at himself for wanting something he feels he isn't being given, and for being too proud to just ask for it. He isn't just mad; he's hurt.
The Aftermath & Resolution
Kirishima's Intervention: Eijirou would go after Katsuki. He wouldn't push, just be present. He'd say something blunt but caring like, "Hey. That looked like it hurt." He wouldn't let Katsuki brush it off with anger. He'd act as a translator, explaining to Katsuki, "I don't think they meant it like that. I think they're just scared of messing up with you because you matter so much." And to you, he'd explain, "He's not really mad. He just needs to know you want him here, too. You gotta be direct, like, really direct."
The Necessary Confrontation: You would have to gather your courage and approach Katsuki. You knew you haven't given him an equal amount of attention as Eijirou but you didn't think it would lead to a consequence.You just hoped you could fix this before it turns to a 2 person relationship.
During the evening after an awkward dinner you helped katsuki with the dishes.He kept his distance from you even flinched when his hand was in contact with your.The small action made your heart sink, you couldn't take it any longer.
"Katsuki, I was wrong. I've been leaning on Eijirou because it's easy, and I've been making you feel unseen. That's my fault. I am so sorry I made you feel like you weren't my boyfriend. You are. I want you to feel that."
"I....I know I'm not the most affectionate person but I'm trying and for you to just fuck...to push me aside it hurts more than you know.But I accept your apology."
From then on, you'd have to be consciously, intentionally fair.
· You make a point of asking Katsuki to do things for you ("Katsuki, can you help me with this? You're better at it.").
· During cuddle time, you sometimes make a point to be the one in the middle, or you specifically reach out and hold Katsuki's hand.
· You learn to appreciate his language of love: the aggressively made meal when you're tired, the grumbled compliment, the fact that he stays in the cuddle pile at all.
This scenario isn't about you being a "bad" partner; it's about the learning curve of polyamory. It highlights how easy it is to fall into patterns that exclude, even with the best intentions, and how vital open, brutally honest communication is—especially with the partner who is least likely to ask for it.
Today is Katsuki's 22nd birthday and for once in your life you've finally managed to wake up before him. You've spent the entire morning decorating the kitchen with bunches of party decorations—streamers hanging from every corner, orange and black balloons bouncing on the floor and floating near the ceiling, and two big #2-shaped golden balloons in the middle of the kitchen island.
The counter is covered in a cozy spread: fluffy tamagoyaki, miso soup, pancakes and syrup, bacon, and a tiny stack of onigiri shaped like hearts (what a sap). In the center sits a lopsided cake with icing that definitely fought back, not wanting to be spread on the sweet bread you'd made from scratch— the lettering was smudged, layers uneven, but most importantly, tons of love was included.
Katsuki hears the ruckus coming from the kitchen. “The hell is this woman up to now..” he thinks to himself. When Katsuki enters the kitchen, his hair still messy from sleep, he freezes. His expression changes quite a few times— first surprise, then a rare quiet smile. He grumbles something to himself about “All this dman glitter on the floor..” but he can't stop the stupid smile that's plastered along his face as he stares at everything. Especially the cake. “Did you and the cake go to war or something? Looks like Denki made it when he short-circuited.” “oh f you.” you retaliate.
Despite all the teasing you endure the entire morning over the cake, Katsuki is so obviously grateful for the care and effort you put in to celebrate him. He pulls you into a tight hug. “You're a damn dork, but I love you. Thanks.” you look up at him and smile. “Happy Birthday, Katsuki.”
My glorious kings Birthday is today 🤩🥳 (this is a joke.. Gulp)
I hope u enjoyed reading! This is pretty short sorry I rlly have no motivation but wht kind of stan would I be if I didn't write a bday fic for my amazing Katsuki Bakugou?!
THANKS FOR READING!
Requests r open!
(to ANON who requested barbarian king kats I'm working on it my brain is Js very scrambled but its coming!!)
notes: heheheheheh i wrote this all over the last 5 hours and i am offering this to you with both hands bloodied and tears streaming down my face.
wc: 6k (pt 2 only), tags (whole series): bakugou x reader, oc character death (not reader), grief, healing, found family, getting together, slow (medium?) burn, child rearing, descriptions of pregnancy, morning sickness, friends to lovers, confessions, eventual smut
(read part one here)
Katsuki hasn’t worked in six months.
He knows this, keeps track of this—and yet, that’s where it stops.
10 years ago, he would’ve been chomping at the bit to punch someone into the ground. To get out, to get himself into the thick of it—that's where he thrives. But right now, as has been true for the better half of the last year, none of that matters.
What matters is the little girl that now sleeps in a proper crib in a room that Katsuki has designated as hers. What matters is the food he cooks to nourish her body, the way she absolutely does not like carrots but will tolerate sweet potato with (no small amount of) coaxing from him. What matters is her mother, whom he believes he would burn the entire world down for at the slightest inclination that she needed it done.
Jesus Christ.
He knows that your relationship is—different. You are his best friend, and yet he knows—has known—that friends don’t feel like this, like his heart might well and truly punch its way out of his chest to get closer to you when you’re not around. But by the time he developed the critical thinking skillset necessary to unpack any of that, you were pregnant.
And now…
Now he’s—whatever it is that he’s doing, he’s doing it. The sense of responsibility that struck him so deeply on the day of Takeshi’s death has not waned even a fraction. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, or what any of this means to him—but he wants to keep you safe. Both of you. He wants you to be here, with him, where you’re protected and taken care of. So, whatever you need, he’ll do.
It’s not a hard promise to keep.
_
Just wondering if you’re retired now. A text from Aizawa, seven months into his self-prescribed hiatus. I’ll buy you a coffee.
It takes 35 minutes of constant assurance that you will be fine (“Katsuki please get the hell out of the house, we’re fine”) to get him out of the door, and another 10 spent self-soothing, convincing himself that you are, in fact, fine. He lingers outside of the coffee shop for another five before going in.
“Well,” Aizawa regards him lazily, like he’d just woken up from a nap in the utility closet, “never thought I’d see you again, stranger.”
Katsuki huffs, rolling his eyes petulantly. “Been around.”
“Not really, kid. Not like you were.”
“Of fuckin’ course not.”
Aizawa looks at him with thinly veiled mirth, and it grates at Katsuki’s nerves. “Say what you want to say.”
“Just wondering who’s running your agency while you’re playing house.”
“Ei’s got it,” he says. It’s another beat before the full weight of the comment hits him. “I’m not fuckin’ playing house you old chucklefu—”
Aizawa raises both hands in mock surrender, the smirk evident on his face. “It’s not a bad thing, Bakugou.”
Katsuki sits back in his seat, hackles raised. He glares at a spot on the floor where the linoleum has peeled up, kicks it with his shoe. He gets his blood pressure back down below critical levels, and then—
“Just let me know if you need a witness when you adopt that baby.”
_
Eight months after her father dies, Kaede has her first birthday.
It’s a big deal, for several, obvious reasons. Kirishima, Denki, and Mina handle the party planning, and Katsuki wants no part of it. He does, however, take it upon himself to bake the cake. Baking is not necessarily his forte, but he’s never been a quitter and some little runt's birthday isn’t going to change that.
It’s small, and minimally decorated—he fully anticipates Kaede to rip through it like an animal. He puts it in the fridge for safe keeping, and he realizes that he must’ve blacked out while making the damn thing, because when he turns around, his house is a nightmare.
There’s pink, frilly shit everywhere, hanging from the ceilings and wrapped around curtain rods and all over the fucking floor—his mind cannot catch up enough to what he’s seeing to make a comment, so he just stares, wide eyed and slack jawed at nothing in particular.
“Oh god,” Mina breathes, pausing in the middle of hanging up yet another streamer, “I think Blasty’s having a stroke.”
Katsuki opens mouth—to say what, even he’s not sure—but then he stops. This isn’t about him, he thinks—and if it makes you and your brat even a little happy, then he supposes he can deal with it.
His jaw shuts with a faintly audible clack of teeth, and he just shakes his head, deciding he’ll check on Kaede instead of blowing all of his friends’ faces off.
He leaves the three of them there, gaping at each other.
“Dude,” Denki says finally, a grin splitting his face, “Kacchan is so whipped.”
_
He can tell it’s hard on you.
You’re all smiles, of course, but when you follow him into the kitchen after the cake and lean your weight into the backside of his body, he feels your fatigue. Your arms wrap around his middle and he reaches back, wanting to anchor himself to any part of you he can. He just catches the hem of your (his, actually) sweatshirt, but it’s something. He holds on to it like it’s everything.
“Y’want to lay down?”
You shake your head, digging your forehead into the muscle that covers his shoulder blade. He picks up a dish to wash to distract himself from the feeling.
“It’s my daughter’s birthday,” you sigh, squeezing him a little tighter, “I need to be here.”
“Been here all day,” he reminds you, not nearly as delicately as he intended, “Y’need to take care of yourself.”
You sag against him, and he feels some relief that he hasn’t hurt your feelings. You sigh again, controlled and warm into the fabric of his T-shirt. His skin prickles with the sensation—a conduit that flares when you open your mouth to speak.
“Come with me?”
He pauses, searching the corners of his mind for even a shred of rationality, knowing he will not find any. Not when it comes to you.
He follows you down the hall, and to his surprise, he hears no comments from the assholes behind him—oddly, no one seems to notice the two of you slip away at all.
You’re down already when he moves through the doorway, pulling the covers up to your chin. This part is easy to him—to lay next to you and pull you to him feels like breathing. You lay your head on his chest, and not for the first time does he think that you are the most precious thing in this world.
“Thank you,” you murmur after a few silent moments.
He only grunts, trusting that you understand there’s nothing you have to thank him for.
“Really, Kat,” you tilt your head up to look at him, and he feels your breath brush against his jaw. He’s never relied on hero training more than he does in this moment. “She won’t remember this, but I will. Thank you for taking care of us.”
You have no idea, he thinks. You have no idea just how badly he wants to shake you, to tell you that you deserve more than he could ever give to you and yet he will never stop trying, not ever—
Takeshi wasn’t a bad guy. Katsuki didn’t mind him, really—it’s just that he would lie awake at night and think about it too hard and make himself sick over it (it was only after this happened on three separate occasions that Katsuki finally realized that his feelings toward you were neither normal nor platonic). Truthfully, he was grateful that Takeshi was as patient as he was, as willing to have Katsuki in your life as you wanted him to be. He was a better man than Katsuki could ever hope to be, just by that metric alone.
But he’s gone, now. And Katsuki has spent the last eight months treading water around that void, careful not to get too close to the edges. He has no intention of replacing Takeshi. He just wants to be what you need. If it is only this—if he is only afforded these small, quiet moments with you, then that would be just fine. There is some guilt, of course—some fear that he’s taking advantage of you in your grief—and that keeps him in check. But he would always, always come if you called. An Achilles heel.
He lets you rest—fingers raking through the fine hairs at your temple while he counts your breaths. Each inhale that expands against his own chest—one—and the exhale that triggers his own breath—two—if only to chase the feeling of your heart beating against his ribs. He hopes you sleep, but knows you won’t— instead he lets the moment be still. He hopes that, if nothing else, to be silent in the dark of his room with him is enough of a reprieve to make the rest of the day feel manageable.
In the quiet, he thinks, and thinks, and thinks—about you mostly, and about how the hell he even got here, with this you-shaped hole in his heart and his own grief and so much shame and someone else’s baby celebrating her first birthday in his house. He thinks about what his shitty old teacher had said—all the heckling, sure, but that wasn’t what really stuck, if he was to be honest with himself.
It’s not a bad thing, Bakugou.
Wasn’t it, though? He has no idea where the line is for this sort of thing, but he’s nearly certain he crossed it months ago. He forces himself to engage in a sort of perspective reversal—often, just to remind himself of the reality he’s living in right now—and after a few minutes he has to stop because it makes him feel so fucking sick—to imagine himself torn from you and yet forced to float around and watch as another man takes his spot with relative ease. It makes him feel like a neanderthal, and it makes him feel something like awe for Takeshi, who he knows loved you enough to come to terms with this exact reality. Katsuki wonders if it crossed his mind, at the end—if he worried about you and Kaede, or if he knew that you’d be taken care of.
Katsuki spent the entirety of your relationship with Takeshi braced for a confrontation that never came. Every birthday, every holiday, every family dinner—Takeshi welcomed him into your home with a warmth that Katsuki could never get himself to reciprocate fully. It wasn’t his fault—Katsuki would’ve had a hard time with anyone else, and he knows that he should count himself lucky that it never was anyone else, because at no point did he feel any animosity from the father of your child. Not even when his child was born, and you asked for Katsuki first.
…
“Bakugou,” he’d tapped his shoulder, jarring him out of a sort of twilight sleep he’d achieved in the middle of the hospital waiting room, “she wants to see you.”
And maybe Katsuki’s guard was down, between restless dozing and worrying himself sick about you for the last several hours, because all he could think to say was “are you sure?”.
Takeshi had only smiled, sinking down into the chair next to him with a sigh. “She’s given me a gift that I will never be able to repay her for. She can have whatever she wants. Right now, that’s you.”
The walk down the hallway, back to your room in the birthing wing, was the longest of his life. It was the first time he’d ever really considered whether he was doing something irreparable—whether his own selfishness would come at a cost to you, someday. The thought almost made him pause—and he would have, maybe, if he’d had any control over the bottom half of his body—his legs making it very clear to him that they would carry him to you whether he wanted them to or not.
He’d paid no mind to the orderlies that whispered barely-concealed observations of him being very clearly not the father—didn’t even register their presence as he shouldered past them into the room, only concerned if you were alright—
You’d fallen asleep, and he stopped himself before he got through the door, sagging against the frame with an emotion he’d no idea how to name or where it came from.
He was suddenly angry at Takeshi, for putting you through this—felt his palms heat up at the knowledge that some rat bastard got his rocks off once and made the next nine months agony for you, resulting in this—you bruised and battered and connected to far too many wires and tubes for Katsuki’s liking. He’d hear the beeps of the heart monitor for the rest of his life. A mix of gratitude for the sound and something else he didn’t know how to name.
You’d shifted in your sleep, and it snapped him out of whatever spiral he’d been headed down. He was at your side immediately, reaching out to brush the sweaty strands of hair back from your forehead.
"You look like shit," he'd said, immediately regretting it, wanting to take it back. But you’d only smiled at him.
"Yeah, well, you push a watermelon out of the smallest orifice in your body and let me know how you feel."
He'd gagged, knowing it would make you laugh. Needing any indication that you were still whole under that sheet. Nearly coming out of his skin when the sound he loved more than any other was cut off with a sharp gasp.
"Oh, don't do that," you exhaled, long and controlled, "Everything hurts."
He could only watch as you tried to get comfortable around the IV and the leads and everything else that he knew, rationally, was meant to help you, but that the insane part of him only wanted out of his fucking sight.
"Y'r okay?"
He didn’t understand how you could still smile at him like that. "I am. She's so beautiful, Kat. I can almost forgive her for totally wrecking me on the way out."
He’d completely forgotten the whole reason you were here until he heard the little grunt from the other side of the room—something in a little plastic cradle—swaddled in a pink blanket and a matching hat. He looked back at you, needing one last second to believe that you would still be who he knew you to be before he saw the thing that cemented this new reality in forever. He took an aching step toward the crib, and couldn’t get any closer. It was fear, it was grief, it was anger—all pointed toward this little alien looking thing that he knew didn’t deserve it.
You’d snorted, clearly entertained, clearly not understanding. "You can get closer, Katsuki. It's fine."
He forced himself forward again, really trying hard to not be an asshole about this, completely ready to fake it on your behalf—but then he saw her clearly.
This time, looking over the plastic railing, her features became distinguishable under all of the fabric, and he knew they were yours. The realization was an abrupt one—so suddenly he’d known exactly then what the gift was. It punched him in the chest and took root there, this little nagging thing that told him that it didn’t matter who the hell fathered her; Katsuki would protect her for the rest of his life.
He looked to you, watching him, and back to your daughter—this little thing that was in no way his, but that he knew he would care for as if she was. If you’d let him.
The emotion was so sudden and so overwhelming that he needed an out—because something was happening to him and he needed pulled from this moment—
“You shit the bed?”
He’d heard you groan, heard the clinking of plastic as you inevitably tried to stifle the embarrassment. "I think I did."
…
He feels you shift, jarring him out of his thoughts.
“Gonna go back out there,” you rasp, squeezing him a little tighter.
“Go,” he has to fight not to hold you there with him, only if for another moment. “Be there in a minute.”
You roll to the other side of the bed—he hears your feet hit the floor as they carry you out the door and away from him.
Katsuki feels the emotion well up inside his chest and burn behind his eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s doing—and he thinks he needs to tell you, because he’s terrified and so guilty and every time you seek him out he feels something sick like hope curl around in his gut, and it’s. Unfair to you.
He throws an arm over his face and drags in breath after breath into his lungs until it’s easier. He needs to get it together, and it’s a much easier task when he tells himself he needs to do it for you.
He doesn’t open that door until he’s certain he looks like he always did—like nothing is tearing at his insides. When he does, he makes it back down the hallway to where you stand. You look over your shoulder at him like he's called for you, smiling at him like you do, and he’s tempted to turn around and never come out of that room again.
But he stops beside you, and you fit yourself into his side—he pulls you closer like it’s muscle memory. He reminds himself that this is all it is, and that it’s fine how it is, and you’re okay, so he’s okay.
But Kaede takes note of his entrance—smiling and gurgling out some string of incoherent mess that makes him grin back at her, despite himself. She gets stuck on the consonants, as she’s been doing the last few days—she squishes her fingers into the remnants of his carefully crafted birthday cake on the tray in front of her and carries on like that. It’s disarming, watching her figure things out—so he’s not expecting it at all when she grabs a handful of icing in her tiny fist, flings it halfway across the room in his general direction—when she points at him with her cake-covered fingers and shrieks “papa!”—
—
No one breathes.
Katsuki’s brain short-circuits, and all he can do is stand there, shell-shocked and mouth agape like a fish.
All the air leaves the room and in its place is something deeply uncomfortable. Never in his wildest dreams would have had anticipated this (because not even his dreams could be so bold, or so fucking cruel), so there was no way to brace for the impact, and it's just devastating—
He sees you shift out of the corner of his eye, feels your body tense up next to his, and his stomach drops. Surely this is the moment you pull away from him. He looks at you, and there’s nothing on your face that he can use to figure out what’s going on in your head. He sees the corner of your mouth twitch, and he prepares himself for the worst—
And you laugh. It leaves you in a rush, and then you’re doubled over with it, bracing yourself on his arm just to keep you upright—
Katsuki looks away from you for exactly enough time to lock eyes with Mina and try to communicate whatever it is he’s experiencing right now. Somehow, all of the color has drained from her face.
Kaede’s watching you, too—and whatever you’re laughing at spreads to her, because she cackles right along with you, legs kicking out under the tray like the hilarity of it all is too much for her little body to keep to itself.
You and your daughter, cracking up over what feels like a funeral.
Katsuki thinks, distantly, that it’s fitting. Thinks that, even if this is some sort of psychotic break, he will allow himself to feel these 30 seconds of unadulterated relief at hearing your laugh for the first time in eight months.
“Oh, hell—” you use your grip on him to pull you back up, swiping the corners of your eyes with your sleeve and fighting a losing battle against another round of giggling.
“Honey,” Mina starts, rising to her feet and approaching you like you’re a wounded animal.
“Oh, stop,” you wave her off, shaking your head. “I’m fine. It was funny.”
Still, nobody moves. Katsuki looks around then, and he doesn’t think he’s seen Denki looking so uncomfortable in his life.
“Seriously,” you say to all of them, pulling it together a little bit to get your point across, “She’s been with Kat every day for the last 8 months. I’m not shocked, and also it’s really funny. Please breathe.”
Eijiro is the first to heed your instructions, letting out an audible breath. The rest of the group follows, thawed out by the knowledge that you’re…okay, apparently. Amid the resuming chatter, Katsuki looks at Mina again, who smiles at him—but there’s something like pity underneath it. You might not be shocked—but he feels like he’s going to be sick.
You leave him to retrieve Kaede from her seat, and he feels his face twist along with the crack he feels bodily, deep in his chest. He’s frozen where he stands. And then he's being moved.
“C’mon Blasty,” Mina says softly, threading her arm through his and towing him out of the room, toward the front door, “let’s take a walk.”
It’s raining when he steps outside—just enough to make the air muggy and thick. He tries to suck it down anyway, fighting the lump in his throat and this god awful thing in his chest—
“What’s going on with you?” Mina asks, and he knows that she already knows—finds it unnecessarily cruel that she’d have him say it. She keeps her arm firmly wrapped through his, and he wants so badly to get away from here. Just for a moment, just to stick his head in the dirt and scream, or let off an explosion that makes him go deaf, or fucking something—
“Bakugou,” she tries again, pulling him to a stop, now that they’re out of sight of the house. “It’s okay. It doesn’t seem like it’s a big deal to her.”
What cracked inside him splinters again. He squeezes his eyes shut, takes as much air as he can into his lungs, and—
“It was. To me.”
He deflates. The truth feels so much heavier outside of his body.
“Oh, honey,” she murmurs, pulling his arm tighter to her side, “I know it was.”
He can’t say anything. There isn’t anything to say. He’s so full of shame that he can taste it.
“That little girl loves you,” Mina offers, walking forward, pulling him farther away from the house, “so does her mother. You know that.”
He nods, and then shakes his head. Because he does know, but that’s not what this is. Or maybe it is, and that’s what has him nearly catatonic in his guilt right now.
“You have been,” she pauses, considering her next words, “wrapped up in each other for years. I don’t think you’re the only one that feels this way.”
He shakes his head, already ramping up to protest, “But—she’s—”
“Grieving, Bakugou,” Mina cuts him off, gentler than she ever has. “And to some extent, she always will be, at least a little bit. But it won’t always be so hard. I mean, did you hear her laugh?”
Something bumps up against his heartbreak—something to soothe, maybe. He’d had no idea how badly he’d missed the sound of your laugh, or how long it’d been since he heard it, until today.
“Get through the day. And then maybe talk to her.”
He pulls himself together enough that he feels at least a little able to rejoin the group. Both he and Mina are soaked by the time they make it back to his house. He hears your voice when he walks through the door, and his heart betrays him again, flopping in his chest like he’s some lovesick teenager.
He supposes that’s where this started, after all. Being 19 and feeling so much bravado over the quirk he did nothing to earn, too much pride to properly process the trauma he’d just experienced as a child soldier—and in the beginning, far too eager to let everyone around him know that he was far above them. He was lucky the friends who’d followed him there knew him better, because he certainly didn’t make any new ones that year.
But then he met you, the following year. Some class he didn’t want to take, because he thought he knew everything. And there, he heard what you’d done during the war—a short-range quirk, not really good for anything by his standards, but you’d done your best to use it anyway—heated compresses for injuries, hot water for sterilizing, temperature as a palliative measure for people who wouldn’t live to see the next morning. And something about that—knowing that you likely did more good than he ever could have—changed something in him. And he just sort of…attached himself to you, after that. For the first time in his life, he was made aware of this giant gap in his knowledge, and he wanted to learn. So he asked you questions—the same ones he’d always been too proud to ask.
—
“Why do you care?” he’d asked, interrupting the quiet of your studying.
“About what?” you looked up from your textbook, shutting it with a pen between the pages to mark your place. You were the only person who’d ever given him your full attention to answer a question.
He waved his hand in front of him, gesturing to nothing, trying to get his point across. “This. People. What you did in the war. Why would you work so hard when you knew they’d die?”
He didn’t feel shame around asking, because you’d never shamed him for wanting to know. This was no different.
“Hm,” you paused, sitting back in your chair to consider, “You know, I want to say something really admirable like I did it because I felt called to do it by some higher power, or because I always knew I’d be a hero somehow.”
You smirked, kicking at his foot underneath the table. “But I think it was mostly because I felt uncomfortable with the suffering. I felt badly about the death and destruction, and I knew I would be guilty for the rest of my life if I sat in that discomfort and did nothing with it, easy as it would’ve been to do it. I didn’t want to be a hero, but when it’s a choice of being a coward or being admired, it kind of makes itself.”
He could understand that. He appreciated that you didn’t give him some bullshit answer, nor were you worried about how he would receive the truth. In a world full of egotistical maniacs disguised as good guys, it felt refreshing. He thought, maybe, there was another perspective to be learned from you.
“You could’ve died,” he muttered, and it was more of an observation than an accusation.
“Sure,” you said, shrugging. “And that terrified me. Still does.”
And that was that. Katsuki was wholly fascinated, though—by this school of thought that so differed from the self-sacrificing one he’d been brought up in.
He told himself he just appreciated your insight until he had to admit that wasn’t all it was. For three years he lied to himself and it was enough, and then suddenly, you both were graduating, and the next thing was unknown.
“Where do you think you’ll go?” you’d asked quietly, squeezed next to him on his ratty couch in his dorm. You’d joined him, Eijiro, and Denki for a movie, as you usually did every Saturday night.
“Jeanist,” matter-of-factly, because it was—the decision had been made long before then.
You hummed, still looking at the screen. You all pointedly watched the most cutesy, animated movies you could find every week—there was no need or want to relive any sort of action from the past. Mind-numbing fluff was just fine. “I got an offer.”
His head turned on a swivel at that, trying to gauge what was going on in yours. “Korea,” you’d said, still not looking at him, “Data analytics. Something in PR.”
And he felt—so fucking indignant, at that. “Fucking—PR?”
“Oh my god, Bakugou,” Denki groaned, “I am trying to find out how Princess Tiana is going to break the spell, could you please—”
“Fuck you,” Katsuki snarled at him, not bothering to waste another second on a more elaborate insult because he could not believe what he was hearing—”Why would you take something like that?”
You’d just shrugged, not put off in the slightest by his outburst. “I don’t have other offers. The civilian track is famously unpopular.”
You in Korea? Doing publicity shit for some asshole in a costume? Over his dead fucking body.
“No,” he bit out, shaking his head like it would dislodge the entire conversation from his memory, “Absolutely not. M’talkin’ to Jeanist tomorrow. Find you a real fuckin’ job there.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he’d watched you turn to him, something like a shit-eating grin on your face.
He blinked, and then it hit him like a truck. “Did you just fucking play me?”
You laughed at that—a cackling thing that lit up every nerve ending in his body. “No, I really did get an offer. But it’s nice to know that you want me to follow you.”
He groaned, shoving you away with some half-threat of blowing your fucking face off to sidestep the embarrassment he felt at being so horribly caught.
But then you just…let him be. Batted his hands away and snuggled right up next to him, head on his shoulder, not another word about it. And he knew in that moment that you’d become something else to him entirely.
—
“Where’d you go?”
You follow him into his bedroom, shutting the door behind you. He strips off his wet shirt, using the last dry bit around the next to shake the water out of his hair. When he looks up, you already have a shirt held out to him.
“Mina wanted to talk about some work shit,” he evades, hoping that you will do what you’ve always done, and just let him lick this wound privately.
You decide not to do that.
“Right after my daughter calls you papa?”
It feels like you’ve struck him, the way he reels from the word. He can only look to the ceiling and try to breathe. You sigh, pushing away from the door and moving behind him to flop down on the bed.
He pulls the shirt over his head and moves through the same motions for the bottom half of his body, pulling on dry sweats before sitting down on the edge of the bed—fighting every urge to lay down next to you and stay there for good.
“There are probably ways that we can discourage her from it,” you say quietly, reaching up to run your fingers down the grove of his spine, “It’s hard because she’s so small, but I’m sure she’ll grow out of it.”
Katsuki fights the shiver at your touch and firmly shakes his head. And again, just for good measure, because he can’t rightly say a word right now, but he needs you to know that that’s not why he’s about to fall apart at your feet.
“Are we okay?”
Behind him, your voice is timid, like you’re worried, and he can’t stand it— “Because I really do think it’s okay. It’s just a funny thing, and I don’t want you to feel like because she’s made that connection, that it’s something I’m asking of y—”
“Stop,” he reaches back and pulls you up off the bed in an instant, maneuvers you as close as he can possibly get you to the rapid, thrumming thing inside his chest, “Stop. Please.”
His forehead hits your shoulder and he tries to pinch off the emotion surging up his throat. He fights with himself like that, with you there on his lap, running your nails up and down his bicep because he’s acting fucking insane and for some reason you still try to comfort him.
His arm stays around your waist, keeping you there, and he wants to laugh because who is he fucking kidding? What friends do this?
“Please talk to me.”
He sucks in a breath, willing himself, one of the greatest heroes of all time—supposedly—to be brave enough to tell you the truth. Which is, for some reason, harder than all of the other shit combined and on fire.
“Can’t take it back,” and he’s almost pleading with you—here’s an out, please take it— “once I say it.”
Your eyebrows furrow, but you never stop the brush of your fingertips down his arm. “That’s okay, Kat.”
And here it is—the emotion that he’s been pushing down, down, down, back with a vengeance. All of the shame, all of the guilt, and all of the love he’s been hiding weighs down on him like one huge anchor in such an embarrassingly physical display—his chest shudders underneath your own and his eyes burn and he has to take his hands off of you before you notice them trembling—
“Katsuki,” and he knows he’s scaring you—
“You are,” he fights to keep from gasping, begs his body to keep it together just this once, because this is humiliating, “everything. To me.”
You’re silent, then—your fingers stilled around his elbow, studying his face. He hopes to god it’s a permission to continue, because he has to.
“And when you hurt, I just—want to fuckin’. Throw whatever it is off a cliff—” you snort, and it gives him whatever tiny bit of confidence he needs to go on, “but the hurt you’ve been carrying—I can’t take that from you. No matter how much I want to.”
He makes the mistake of looking at your face. He can’t look at your tears right now—he knows with a harrowing certainty that the sight will cut him in two.
“Honey, I—” he sighs, trying like hell to not ruin this entire thing with his next words, “if this thing between you and I is how it’s always gonna be, then that’s what it’ll be, and I’ll be one lucky asshole for all of it.”
He reaches for your fingers, and wraps them in his own—for what he prays is not the last time.
“But I need ya to know that I heard her call me that and just for a—a fuckin’ second, it was real. The shit I’ve been dreaming about for years was right in front of me and it just. Hurt like hell to remember that it wasn't.”
You make a wounded, whimpering sort of sound and Katsuki has to squeeze his eyes shut and count to 10 before he’s able to speak again.
“I can’t take his place,” he says quietly, straight to your heart, “Wouldn’t dream of it. But I need ya to know that there hasn’t been a moment since I met you that I haven’t loved y’so much it made my fuckin' teeth ache.”
Your tears hit the fabric of his sweats, and he hopes to god he’s not breaking your heart right now.
“When you had Kaede, I knew that I’d love her for the rest of my life. That I’d do whatever y’needed to keep you both safe and happy. And I would’ve been okay with doing that from the outside. But now you’re here and I—can’t breathe without you here and I—”
Sudden, strong compression cuts him off, and it takes him only a second to realize you’ve wrapped yourself around him like a vice. You couldn’t get any closer to him if you tried, and for one sickening second he’s so hopeful—
“I love you,” you tell him, every word branding itself into his chest, burrowing into his heart, “I love you.”
It’s a weight removed, then—that big ass anchor disintegrated into nothing as he holds you there. Knowing with some finality that he will never let you go. Hoping it’s real, hoping he’s not misunderstanding, hoping that this means something—
And then everything stops, because your fingers curl around his jaw to pull him up—and then you kiss him.
—
part 3 at some point in the near future <3 thanks for reading love u
