Pairing/setting: Pro-hero!Bakugou Katsuki x Fem!Reader
Summary: As he re-learns the joys of loving you, Katsuki also learns how to help you back on your own feet when you need it.
Word Count: 1.4k
Warnings: reader has depression and self esteem issues, panic attack, fluffy comfort
AN: So, this is a sort of "in the aftermath" look at the relationship in you feel love in the sodium, from Katsuki's perspective. Honestly, I don't know what hit me last night but it just plopped down onto the paper from my brainsicle and I've decided it's worthy of seeing the light of day. Plus, it has the @katsupeach seal of approval and I trust Emme's brain much farther than I trust my own<33 As always, don't be afraid to come say hi in my inbox or DMs or comments, I always love when y'all do that:D Be kind to yourselves and others. ~valkyrie
prequel: you feel love in the sodium
Two weeks after moving back into your apartment, Katsuki comes home from the night shift to find you crying at the kitchen table. You don’t hear him come in -- don’t pick your head up out of your hands or stop sobbing as he hastily toes out of his boots and comes to your side.
“Hey, what’s up?” He’d been tired after a long shift, eyes drooping on the elevator ride up to your floor, but now his heart is pumping like he’s been doing rounds boxing with Kirishima. His hand clamps firmly around your forearm, to ground himself as much to ground you.
You jolt in your seat as he touches you, letting out a shocked hiccup that cuts off your tears.
“Oh, god,” you breathe. “Is it really that late? I’m sorry, I didn’t want--”
“You’re sorry? Fuck being sorry, what’s wrong?” His tone is maybe a little too sharp, but the way his stomach is flush with anxiety over your blotchy and wet face demands answers.
“I didn’t want--” you start, but have to stutter back more tears trembling on your lashes. “I didn’t want you to see, but I just-- I just-- shit--”
You can’t get a decent breath. Katsuki can see your chest rising too shallowly and sporadically. His hand leaves your arm to twist in your fingers and he finally lowers himself to sit at the table from where he’d been leaning over you.
“Breathe.” The command leaves as gently as he can make it from his mouth. “Don’t rush it.”
You nod, gripping his hand tight and focusing on where his eyes are boring into yours. Painstakingly, he waits as your lungs regulate and start working normally again. Your fingertips are chilly against his sweaty palm.
When your throat seems to unstick itself, you try again.
“I just really hate myself tonight.”
Your words are spoken too softly for their meaning. Katsuki’s never heard something so violent said with such careful reverence. The first response that threatens to pass his lips is altogether too aggressive, and the second would be entirely unhelpful. Four or five possibilities cycle through his mind before one his anger management counselor would deem appropriate pops up.
“Why?”
It’s a simple question, but one he would rather slice his own toe off than know the answer to. He doesn’t want to know why you hate yourself tonight, doesn’t want to hear and dissect the bullshit lies your depression is feeding you to make you feel this way.
But he thinks this is how he gets through without making you shut him out entirely.
Your lips twitch into a smile briefly -- like some part of you is happy to elaborate on how you suck -- before you answer him.
“Because I’m a fat, worthless college dropout with no prospects whose pathetic cries for attention earned her a pity boyfriend who has better things to do than pick her up off the floor every other day. Because I’m an awful, stupid person who does selfish things that hurt the people around her. Because I--” you interrupt yourself with a broken half-sob, half-laugh, and gesture with your free hand to the kitchen floor behind Katsuki. “Because I broke the fucking Pyrex.”
Katsuki follows your gesture, turning to see a mess of soapy water and glass all over the kitchen tile. For a moment, he just stares at it. Your words scatter through his mind until they rearrange themselves into something decipherable.
“You hate yourself,” he turns back to see you biting your lip, “because you broke the fucking Pyrex.”
“Yeah,” you say, looking for all the world like you expect him to start yelling. You blink at each other for a moment, until he bursts out with--
“I fuckin’ hate Pyrex!” He does yell it, but it shocks you so much that you stop looking so pathetic and start looking confused. “Shitty fuckin’ company,” he continues, finally letting go of your hand and standing up. “Says it’s shatter-proof, but look at this shit! Fuckin’ shattered.” He points at the mess, then pins you with the most deadpan face he can manage. “We should sue.”
“Katsuki.” You sniff and run a hand under your dripping nose. “Don’t be sarcastic.”
“I’m not, we should sue for emotional damages. Look at you.” Now, he steps closer into your space and chuffs a finger under your chin. “You’re distraught over-- what? A couple hundred yen of glass? We’ll suck the sons of bitches dry.”
It takes a second, but Katsuki sees the exact moment when the layer of melancholy over your face slips enough to allow clarity.
“Ha,” you laugh tonelessly. “You’re funny.”
“I’m a goddamn comedian. But before we sue a kitchenware company, let’s clean up their shitty trash and discuss more in-depth why my beautiful, intelligent girlfriend hates herself.”
Together, you clean up the glass and mop up the water. Katsuki finishes the half-done dishes in the sink while you go change out of wet pajamas. As the sunrise starts to creep in through the windows, turning your living room grey and breathing into Katsuki a new understanding of exhaustion, you cuddle on the couch and try to believe him when he tells you your brain is a dirty, filthy liar.
When he tells you that you’ve been his first choice since he was seventeen. When he reminds you that you did get your undergrad degree and that he’ll support you when and if you decide to go back to school. When he tucks his body into the curves of you and whispers worship into your skin.
It’s not the last time Katsuki comes home only to have to stack you back onto your feet. He gets better at it, learning when to pry and when to cradle. Learns how to tell you he needs a break in a way that won’t make you feel like a burden. As he re-learns the joys of loving you, he comes to view knowing this side of you as a privilege. To know the whole of you is to be trusted, to be known in return. To know you won’t think he’s weak for breaking down when his own shit gets too heavy.
Nonetheless, it’s not an easy thing to tell if the two of you will be okay. Not for a while, at least. There are moments when he can’t reach you, when he can’t find the right avenue in and becomes destructively frantic to keep you from slipping too far.
You try to break up with him again, once:
“I don’t want this anymore.”
“Bullshit, you don’t want it.”
“You don’t get to tell me--”
“Do you still love me?”
“I--”
“Well? Say it to my face, if you don’t.”
“I can’t--”
“Yeah. ‘Cause, you do. You do love me.”
“Sometimes, that’s not enough--”
“It’s enough for me. I love you. Let me love you.”
“Katsuki.”
“Baby. What’s this really about?”
And there are moments when he’s so manically in love he doesn’t feel real. When it’s just the two of you riding on a speed train through the countryside on the way home from a much-needed vacation. You lean your head into his neck and read aloud from your book, and he tries to keep his head from floating to the top of the train car.
And there’s a moment when you’re standing in the kitchen of your stupid, shitty apartment scrubbing brand new glass measuring cups and humming an indistinct tune that Katsuki feels the gravity of the afternoon he came back to you so fully he can’t breathe. One more day, another hour, if he’d ignored Izuku’s calls, and he wouldn’t have you. You might’ve been gone, too far for him or anyone to reach.
You pause in your humming and place a dish in the drying rack.
“What’s with the face?” Your voice, so blissfully normal and real against the storm in his chest, sends goosebumps across his skin.
“Fuck you,” he says, voice cracking with heatless emotion. “I can’t look at my hot girlfriend?”
That afternoon, he does a lot more than just look at you.
