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✦ I Said Stay Still ✦

Pro Hero!Bakugo Katsuki × Chubby Surgeon !Reader

"I said stay still." "I'm fine." "No, you're stubborn." "...Tch." "And if you tear your stitches again, I'm charging you double." ...He still tears them.

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Chapter Three — Orange Memories

15k–18k words

Summary

Bakugo reluctantly invites you to his penthouse, where you unexpectedly meet the rest of the Bakusquad for the first time. A visit to U.A. reunites both of you with old teachers and familiar classmates, stirring memories of the day everything changed. The afternoon ends over coffee, where you're introduced to Hawks—not as the Number Two Hero, but as your annoyingly protective older brother—leaving Bakugo with a first glimpse into the life you keep beyond the hospital

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The keycard sat in your coat pocket like a live wire for the rest of your shift.

Every time your hand brushed against it while reaching for a pen, a chart, a suture kit, a small and entirely ridiculous jolt of nerves shot up your arm. You were a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon. You had held a stranger's heart in your palm and willed it to keep beating through sheer force of focus. You had stared down internal hemorrhaging, ruptured arteries, and the particular flavor of terror that came with watching a monitor flatline under your hands. And yet a small, unassuming piece of black plastic — no bigger than a hospital ID badge — was doing more to unsettle you than any code blue ever had.

You caught yourself smiling at nothing while charting a discharge summary. Nurse Sato had to say your name twice before you registered she was talking to you.

"Sorry," you said, blinking back into focus. "Long day."

"Uh-huh," Sato said, in the particular tone of a woman who had clearly noticed the extra spring in your step over the last two weeks and was choosing, for now, to be merciful about it. "Go home, Doctor. You look like you have somewhere to be."

You did.

By the time you clocked out at nine, the hospital had settled into its low, hushed night rhythm — the overhead lights dimmed to half, the hallways quiet except for the soft beep of monitors and the occasional squeak of a gurney wheel somewhere far off. You changed out of your scrubs in the locker room, and for the first time in longer than you could remember, you actually looked at yourself in the mirror before leaving. Really looked.

Tired eyes, yes. The faint shadow of exhaustion that never quite left a surgeon's face. But something else too, something lighter behind it, something that hadn't been there in years. You almost didn't recognize the shape of your own hope.

You pulled your coat on, tucked your bag over your shoulder, and walked out into the cool night air.

The city had that particular hush that settled over Musutafu after the dinner rush faded and before the late-night crowd emerged — a lull between two versions of itself. You walked the six blocks to the Dynamight Agency tower with your hands shoved in your coat pockets, one curled loosely around the keycard, half-convinced you'd wake up any moment and find the whole thing had been some elaborate, exhaustion-induced fever dream. A man like Katsuki Bakugo handing you the key to his home. A man like that, wanting you to stay.

The tower rose ahead of you long before you reached its base — sleek, black glass catching the neon glow of the surrounding cityscape, all sharp angles and imposing verticality, a building that looked, you thought with a private, helpless smile, exactly like him. Uncompromising. A little intimidating. Beautiful in a way that dared you to look away first.

The lobby was quiet at this hour, manned by a single night guard who barely glanced up from his phone as you crossed to the private elevator bank tucked behind an unmarked door near the back. You typed the code into your phone twice before approaching the panel, just to be sure you had it memorized correctly.

1-9-9-7.

His hero debut year, you'd realized earlier, with a small ache in your chest you hadn't expected. Of course it was. Of course the man who insisted he didn't have a sentimental bone in his body had keyed his private elevator code to the year everything about his life had changed.

You pressed the numbers into the keypad. The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and you stepped inside.

The ride up was longer than you expected — the penthouse elevator bypassing every other floor entirely, rising in near-total silence except for the faint hum of the cables and the increasingly loud thud of your own heartbeat. You caught your reflection in the polished steel doors. You'd changed out of your work clothes into something simple — dark jeans, a soft sweater, hair down for once instead of pulled back in the clip you wore for twelve-hour shifts. You looked, you thought, like a person going to see someone she cared about. Not a doctor making a house call.

The elevator slowed. Your stomach dropped with it, not entirely from the change in altitude.

The doors opened directly into the penthouse — no hallway, no buffer, just a sudden wall of noise that hit you like a physical thing.

"—no, no, no, you absolute walking hazard, that's my controller, put it down—"

"Denki, I swear to god if you drop my phone in the ramen again—"

"IT WAS ONE TIME, AND ALSO IT WASN'T EVEN RAMEN, IT WAS SOUP, THERE'S A DIFFERENCE—"

"There genuinely is not."

"Guys! Guys, focus! Bakugo's home, be normal for like five minutes, is that so hard—"

You stopped just past the threshold, blinking, momentarily convinced you'd stepped into the wrong apartment entirely.

The penthouse — which you had privately pictured as some minimalist, moody bachelor space, all black leather furniture and brooding silence, floor-to-ceiling windows framing a man drinking whiskey alone in the dark — was, in fact, currently occupied by four extremely loud, extremely familiar faces sprawled in various states of chaos across the living room.

Eijirou Kirishima was upside down on the couch, red hair hanging toward the floor, feet kicked up over the backrest, laughing so hard his whole body was shaking. Denki Kaminari was mid-lunge across the coffee table, one hand outstretched in a desperate, doomed attempt to reclaim a game controller that Hanta Sero had snatched cleanly out of his reach — quite literally out of reach, his arm extended in a long, elastic loop that stretched from the kitchen counter all the way to the far side of the couch, the controller dangling tauntingly from his fingertips. Mina Ashido was perched cross-legged on the kitchen island, a bottle of violently pink nail polish balanced on her knee, entirely unbothered by the pandemonium unfolding around her, occasionally glancing up to referee with visible glee.

And there, standing in the eye of the storm by the kitchen island in gray sweats and a loose black T-shirt, arms crossed, jaw set in the exact expression of a man deeply and personally regretting every decision that had led to this precise moment in his life, was Bakugo.

He saw you first.

You watched the shift happen in real time — the tight, irritated set of his shoulders easing, the sharp line of his mouth softening at the corners, something in his crimson eyes brightening the instant they landed on you standing in his doorway.

"You made it," he said, loud enough to cut clean through the chaos.

Four heads turned toward you at once, and the noise didn't so much stop as it detonated in a new direction.

"OH MY GOD," Mina said, hopping down off the counter so fast the nail polish bottle nearly toppled over, catching it at the last second without ever taking her eyes off you. "Is this her? Is this the doctor?"

"The Miracle Surgeon," Denki breathed, abandoning his fight with Sero entirely, controller forgotten, both hands pressed to his chest like he was witnessing a celebrity sighting. "The one who fixed his guts, like — not once, but twice, dude, that's insane, you didn't tell us she was coming over tonight—"

"I didn't invite you idiots either," Bakugo growled, though there was no real heat behind it, "you just showed up. Uninvited. Like a plague."

"We showed up," Sero said, retracting his arm with a soft, elastic thwip and hopping off the arm of the couch, controller still triumphantly in hand, "because Kiri told us you almost died again, and frankly none of us believed you'd actually let a person take care of you afterward, so we needed to witness the miracle firsthand. This is a scientific inquiry."

"It's an invasion of my privacy is what it is."

Kirishima flipped himself right-side up in one smooth motion, hair falling back into place, grinning at you with the same open, unguarded warmth you remembered from the hospital hallway two weeks ago. "Hey, Doc! Good to see you outside of scrubs for once. Come in, come in, sit down — we don't really have much, Bakugo's fridge is criminally empty, like there's a jar of mustard and some protein shakes in there and that's it, so we ordered a mountain of takeout, there should be enough for everyone—"

"It's my penthouse," Bakugo muttered, though he was already crossing the room toward you, his hand finding the small of your back with an easy, unthinking familiarity that made your pulse stutter, guiding you further inside like it was the most natural thing in the world, like he'd been doing it for years instead of weeks.

The gesture did not go unnoticed.

Mina's eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly disappeared into her hairline. "Oh," she said, drawing the single syllable out into three distinct ones, rich with implication. "Oh."

"Don't," Bakugo warned, not even looking at her.

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were about to."

"I was going to compliment her sweater, actually, but sure, assume the worst about me—"

"I know you, Raccoon Eyes. I know exactly what you were about to say."

You found yourself laughing despite the sudden warmth flooding your cheeks, some of the day's bone-deep exhaustion melting off your shoulders in a way you hadn't expected. There was something disarming, something almost dizzying, about seeing him like this. Not the Number Two Hero barking orders across a trauma bay. Not the guarded, defensive patient hiding pain behind a scowl in a hospital gown. Just a twenty-eight-year-old man standing in the middle of his own chaotic living room, surrounded by the people who clearly, obviously, unconditionally loved him — even if not one of them would ever say the word out loud, and even if he'd rather set himself on fire than admit he needed it.

"Sit, sit," Kirishima said, patting the cushion beside him with an enthusiasm that made the whole couch shake. "We've got, uh — Denki, what did we even order?"

"Everything," Denki said proudly. "I ordered everything on the menu. It felt right."

"You ordered everything because you can't read the menu without your glasses and you refuse to wear them in public," Sero said.

"That is slander and also completely accurate."

You let yourself be tugged down onto the low, oversized couch, wedged comfortably between Kirishima's easy warmth and the arm of the sofa, while Bakugo remained standing for a moment longer near the kitchen island, arms still crossed, watching the scene with an expression that was trying very hard to look put-upon and failing spectacularly.

"You could've warned me," you said to him, tilting your head back to look up at him. "About the invasion."

"I didn't know," he said, and for a second the irritation in his voice was almost genuine. "I told Kirishima I was 'having someone over' and apparently that translated, in his brain, to 'please bring the entire circus.'"

"You said it weird," Kirishima protested. "You went all quiet and cagey about it, which, historically, from you, means something's actually going on. So naturally we had to investigate."

"There is nothing to investigate."

"Bro," Denki said, deeply unconvinced, "you have your hand on her back."

Bakugo's hand, which had in fact remained resting lightly against the small of your back this entire time, twitched like he'd only just noticed it was there. He didn't move it.

"So?" he said, daring anyone to make something of it.

Mina made a small, delighted, strangled noise into her fist.

Dinner, when it finally arrived in an absurd cascade of paper bags that Sero and Kirishima hauled in from the elevator, turned out to be less a meal and more a full-scale culinary event — soba, gyoza, three different kinds of curry, an entire tray of grilled skewers, and, inexplicably, a single lonely tub of ice cream that Denki insisted was "for emergencies."

"What kind of emergency requires ice cream," you asked, accepting a carton of soba from Kirishima and settling it in your lap.

"The kind where Sero says something so stupid I need emotional support," Denki said.

"That happened literally an hour ago," Sero said. "Where was my ice cream then?"

"You didn't earn it. The stupidity has to clear a certain bar."

The apartment, once the food was spread out across the low coffee table and the couch cushions had been rearranged into something resembling a nest, settled into a warm, easy chaos that you found yourself sinking into without meaning to. Denki attempted, with the fervent, misguided enthusiasm of a man who genuinely believed he was a natural teacher, to explain the rules of some elaborate fighting game to you, gesturing with his chopsticks at the paused screen like it was a tactical map.

"Okay, so, the yellow bar is your health, obviously, but the blue bar is your special meter, and you build that up by landing hits, and once it's full you can do a Limit Break, which — okay, don't look at me like that, it's not that complicated—"

"I genuinely have no idea what any of those words mean," you admitted.

"That's because he's explaining it wrong," Sero said. "He always starts with the special meter. You start with movement. Basic movement, basic combos, and then you build up to specials."

"Excuse me, who's the one who's ranked higher than you—"

"That was ONE season, Denki, one season, and you've been bringing it up for eight months—"

"It was a GOOD season—"

Kirishima leaned over toward you conspiratorially, lowering his voice just slightly under the noise. "Fair warning, this could go on for a while. They've had this exact argument, like, four times since I've known them. It's basically a ritual at this point."

"Noted," you said, smiling, and picked up a gyoza with your chopsticks.

Across the room, Bakugo had settled onto the arm of the couch just behind you, close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating off him, one arm draped loosely along the backrest, close to your shoulders without quite touching. He wasn't really participating in the game argument — he was watching you, you realized, in that quiet, assessing way he had, like he was cataloguing every small, unguarded moment of you laughing at his friends' nonsense and filing it away somewhere private.

"You're staring," you said without turning around, though you couldn't keep the smile out of your voice.

"I'm observing," he said. "There's a difference."

"That's what you said about the training ground too."

"It's a versatile excuse."

Mina, who had abandoned her nail polish entirely in favor of parking herself directly across from you on the floor, chin propped on her hands, was watching this exchange with the intensity of someone conducting a very serious anthropological study.

"Okay," she said finally, unable to contain herself any longer, "I have to ask. How did you two actually meet? Because Kiri's version of the story is just 'she was the surgeon on his case' and that is clearly not the whole story, given—" she gestured vaguely at Bakugo's arm along the back of the couch "—given, you know. This. Whatever this is."

You felt Bakugo go very slightly still behind you.

"I was the surgeon on his case," you said, keeping your voice light, deliberately vague. "He was a difficult patient. I have a very specific skill set for difficult patients."

"That's not an answer, that's a dodge," Mina said, delighted rather than deterred. "Come on. There has to be a moment. There's always a moment."

You felt the old memory stir somewhere in the back of your mind — a school nurse's office, eight years ago, a boy with a burnt arm and eyes that dared you to say something about it, the quiet, careful way you'd cleaned the wound without asking any of the questions you desperately wanted to ask. You hadn't told anyone that story. Not even Midoriya, not fully. It felt like something too fragile, too old, to hand over casually in the middle of a living room full of noise and takeout containers.

"There might have been a moment," you said carefully, glancing sideways, up, to find Bakugo watching you with an unreadable expression, something quiet and searching in his crimson eyes. "A long time ago. Before the hospital."

"WAIT," Denki said, abandoning the fighting game argument entirely, spinning around so fast he nearly fell off the couch cushion. "Before the hospital? Like — you two knew each other? For how long?"

"It's not a big deal," Bakugo said, a little too quickly, a little too flat, in the exact tone of a man who very much wanted the subject dropped.

"It is clearly a huge deal, your ears are doing the thing—"

"My ears are not doing a thing—"

"Bro, your ears go red every single time you're lying, it's your one tell, we've known this for six years—"

"I hate all of you."

"You keep saying that and yet we're still here," Kirishima said cheerfully, reaching over to steal one of your gyoza without asking, which you allowed with a small, fond huff of laughter. "Honestly, though — for real, whatever it is, we're happy for you, man. You've been different since the hospital. Better. Lighter, almost." He glanced at you, something warm and sincere in his sharp-toothed grin. "Whatever you did, Doc — keep doing it."

You felt a small, sudden ache bloom in your chest at that, something too tender to have a name yet. Bakugo, behind you, didn't say anything, but his hand shifted from the back of the couch to rest, briefly, warmly, against the curve of your shoulder — not quite an embrace, but close enough to one that Mina made another small, strangled noise into her hands and had to be physically restrained by Sero from saying something else.

The evening rolled on in that particular way good evenings do, time slipping past in a soft blur of food and noise and easy laughter. You lost, resoundingly and repeatedly, at the fighting game Denki had been so eager to teach you, much to his delighted, undisguised glee.

"You have to actually block," he said, for what felt like the tenth time, as your character was once again launched off the screen in a shower of pixelated stars. "You're just standing there taking hits like a sponge."

"I'm a surgeon, not a video game prodigy," you said. "Different skill set."

"See, that's fair, actually," Sero said. "I wouldn't want her doing surgery on the fly either, that's a whole different kind of precision."

"I could probably manage a controller better than most of you manage a scalpel," you shot back, which earned a genuine, booming laugh from Kirishima and a wounded look from Denki.

"That's so mean. I respect it, but it's mean."

At some point, Mina dragged you into the kitchen under the transparent pretense of "helping" divide up the last of the curry, though the actual purpose became clear almost immediately once you were out of earshot of the others.

"Okay, real talk," she said, voice dropped low, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed, all playful bravado momentarily set aside. "I'm not trying to pry. Well — I am, a little, but not in a bad way. I just — Bakugo doesn't do this. Like, ever. He doesn't bring people up here. He barely tolerates us being up here, and we've known him since we were fifteen. So whatever's going on with you two, it's clearly not nothing to him. I just wanted to say that. In case nobody's told you."

You felt something warm and a little overwhelmed settle in your chest. "I didn't know that," you admitted quietly. "About the not-bringing-people-up thing."

"Yeah. He's private. Like, aggressively private. Even with us, and we've seen him at his absolute worst — like, sobbing after the Kamino incident, screaming at himself over stuff that wasn't even his fault, all of it. But letting someone into his actual space, his home? That's different. That's new." Mina studied you for a moment, her usual bubbly energy tempering into something more sincere. "So, yeah. Just — take care of him, okay? He's tougher than anyone I know, but he's also kind of an idiot about taking care of himself. You clearly already know that part."

"I do," you said softly. "Believe me, I know that part very well."

Mina grinned, the playful edge sliding back into place. "Good. Then I like you. Officially. Welcome to the club, or whatever we are. A found-family disaster squad. It's not glamorous but the snacks are usually good."

You laughed, and the two of you carried the divided curry back out to the living room, where the argument over the fighting game had apparently evolved into an argument over whose turn it actually was, with Kirishima serving as an entirely ineffective referee.

Somewhere around eleven, the energy in the room began to wind down, the way good nights eventually do — Denki sprawled sideways across one entire cushion, eyes half-lidded with the particular exhaustion of someone who had been loud for several consecutive hours and was finally paying the price for it. Sero had switched from the fighting game to something quieter on his phone, occasionally showing Kirishima something that made them both snort with laughter. Mina had gone back to her nail polish, humming something under her breath.

You found yourself, at some point, sitting a little closer to Bakugo than you had been earlier, his arm settled more firmly around your shoulders now, no longer just resting there but actually holding you against his side, warm and solid and quietly possessive in a way that made your heart do something complicated every time you thought about it too directly.

"You're tired," he said quietly, close to your ear, under the cover of Denki and Sero's low, meandering conversation about some upcoming patrol schedule.

"A little," you admitted. "It's been a long week."

"You always say that."

"It's always true."

He didn't say anything to that, but his hand found yours where it rested on your knee, fingers lacing through yours with an easy familiarity that still, somehow, managed to send a small thrill through you every time it happened. You let your head tip sideways, just slightly, resting against his shoulder, and he went very still for a moment, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with the weight of you leaning into him so openly in front of his friends.

Then, slowly, you felt him relax, his thumb tracing slow, absent circles against the back of your hand.

Across the room, you caught Kirishima glancing over, a small, soft smile crossing his face before he deliberately looked away again, giving you both the illusion of privacy in the middle of a crowded living room.

By the time midnight rolled around, the group finally began to disperse, in the loud, disorganized way that seemed to characterize everything they did together. Denki nearly faceplanted trying to put his shoes back on while still half-asleep, catching himself on the doorframe at the last second with a wounded "I'm fine" that convinced absolutely no one. Mina cackled the entire way to the elevator, already texting someone — probably, you suspected, recounting the entire evening in exhaustive, gleeful detail to whoever would listen. Sero dragged a still-protesting Kirishima along by the collar of his jacket, the two of them bickering good-naturedly about whose turn it was to pay for the next round of takeout.

"It was really good to properly meet you, Doc," Kirishima said, pausing at the door long enough to give you a warm, genuine smile, ducking out from Sero's grip for just a moment. "For real. Thank you. For everything you did for him. And for — this. Tonight. I haven't seen him laugh like that in a long time."

"Thank you for having me," you said, meaning it more than you expected to.

"We're gonna do this again," Mina called back from the elevator, already halfway inside, pressing the button repeatedly despite the doors clearly not needing the encouragement. "Don't be a stranger! You're part of the chaos now, there's no getting out!"

"There was never an option to get out," Sero added. "That's not how this works."

The elevator doors slid shut on Denki's muffled protest about someone stepping on his foot, and then, quite suddenly, the penthouse fell into a deep, comfortable quiet — the kind that only exists after a room full of noise finally empties out, leaving behind the faint echo of laughter still hanging in the air.

Bakugo let out a long breath, running a hand through his hair, some of the easy tension from the evening still lingering in his shoulders. "Finally," he muttered, though there was no real bite to it. "Thought they'd never leave."

"You love them," you said, watching him with a small, knowing smile.

"Don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like it's some big revelation. Obviously I love the idiots. Doesn't mean I want them squatting in my living room until midnight every damn week."

You laughed, crossing the now-quiet living room to where he stood by the kitchen island, the mess of takeout containers and abandoned game controllers scattered across the coffee table behind you like evidence of a very good night. "For what it's worth," you said, "I liked them. All of them. They clearly adore you, even if none of them would ever say it outright."

Something in his expression softened, the last of the evening's bravado slipping away to reveal something quieter underneath. "Yeah," he said. "They're idiots, but they're my idiots." He looked at you for a long moment, something unspoken passing behind his eyes. "Thanks. For putting up with them. For coming, tonight. I know it's — probably not what you expected, when I gave you that key."

"It was better than what I expected," you said honestly. "I was picturing something a lot quieter."

"Yeah, well." A faint, rare smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Sorry to disappoint."

"You didn't."

The quiet between you stretched, warm and easy, the kind of silence that no longer needed filling. He reached out, his hand finding yours again, lacing his fingers through yours with the same unthinking familiarity from earlier in the evening, like it was simply where your hand belonged now.

"Stay a bit," he said quietly. "Now that the circus is gone."

You didn't need to be asked twice.

You ended up back on the couch, the mess still scattered across the coffee table forgotten for now, your legs tucked up beside you, his arm settled around your shoulders as the city lights glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the penthouse finally, blessedly quiet.

"Your friends are a lot," you said, resting your head against his chest, listening to the steady, familiar rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your ear — the same heartbeat you'd monitored on a screen just weeks ago, terrified it might stop.

"Tell me about it. I've been dealing with them since I was fifteen." He was quiet for a moment, his fingers idly tracing patterns along your arm. "Mina's right, though. About the — the not letting people up here thing."

You tilted your head to look up at him. "You don't have to explain."

"I want to," he said, surprising you. "I don't do this. Any of it. Letting people see the actual apartment, not just the training grounds version of me. It's not — I don't know how to explain it right. It just felt different. With you."

"I know the feeling," you said softly, thinking of eight years ago, of a nurse's office and a boy who let you see a wound he'd hidden from everyone else. Some things, apparently, hadn't changed as much as you thought.

He looked at you for a long moment, something quiet and searching in his crimson eyes, like he was trying to read something in your expression that you hadn't said out loud yet.

"You're doing the thing again," he said finally. "The thing where you look like you're somewhere else. Somewhere old."

You blinked, caught off guard by how easily he'd noticed. "I didn't realize I did that."

"You do it a lot. Usually right after someone mentions U.A." He studied you carefully, his voice dropping lower, more serious than the easy banter of the evening. "You gonna tell me what that's about someday?"

The old memory pressed against the back of your throat, close enough to almost surface — a burnt arm, a quiet nurse's office, a boy who never asked why a General Studies student knew exactly how to treat a wound like that without flinching.

"Someday," you said, and meant it, even though the word cost you something to say. "Not tonight."

He didn't push, which surprised you more than anything else that evening. He just nodded, accepting it, and pulled you a little closer against his side, like he was content to wait for whatever piece of yourself you weren't ready to hand over yet.

"Fair enough, doc," he murmured against your hair. "I can wait."

And for a long, quiet moment, neither of you said anything else at all — just the hum of the city outside the windows, the steady beat of his heart under your ear, and the strange, settling certainty that whatever this was between you, it wasn't going anywhere.

But the quiet didn't last, because your body, ever the traitor, chose that exact moment to remind you of the very real, very unglamorous truth of your life: you had a seven a.m. shift, and it was already well past midnight.

You felt the yawn coming before you could stop it, and it must have shown, because Bakugo huffed a quiet laugh against the top of your head.

"There it is," he said. "Was wondering how long you'd try to fight it."

"I wasn't fighting anything," you mumbled, though the second yawn that followed rather undercut the point.

"Sure you weren't." He shifted, easing you upright with a gentleness that still, somehow, caught you off guard every time — like he was handling something fragile, even now, weeks past the worst of his own injuries. "You've got morning rounds."

"I do." You rubbed at your eyes, some of the day's exhaustion finally catching up to you now that the adrenaline of the evening had worn off. "I should go."

He didn't argue, though you caught the small flicker of reluctance cross his face before he smoothed it over. "Yeah," he said. "Probably should."

Neither of you moved for another moment.

"I mean it," you added, laughing softly at your own hesitation. "I actually have to go this time. Unlike the tactical nap incident."

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

"It is not." But he was fighting a smile as he said it, and he finally let you go, standing and pulling you up from the couch with him, his hand lingering in yours even once you were both on your feet.

You gathered your coat from where you'd draped it over the back of a barstool earlier in the evening, and he walked with you toward the door, unhurried, his hand finding the small of your back again in that same easy, unconscious way it had all night.

"Text me when you get home," he said, echoing the words from before, except this time there was no bravado behind them at all, just quiet, plain concern. "I mean it. Even if it's just one word."

"I will."

"I'm serious. Last time you said that you fell asleep on the subway and I didn't hear from you for forty minutes and I nearly called every hospital in the district."

"That was one time."

"It was terrifying, is what it was." He stopped at the door, keeping hold of your hand, his thumb tracing slow, absent circles over your knuckles. "Just — humor me. Okay?"

"Okay," you said softly, something warm unfolding in your chest at the plain, unguarded worry in his voice. "I'll text you."

He nodded, seemingly satisfied, though he still didn't open the door. He just stood there for a moment, looking at you in the low light of the entryway, like he was trying to memorize the shape of the evening before it ended.

"Tonight was good," he said finally, quiet, almost like he was admitting something.

"It was," you agreed. "Thank you for having me. All of it. The chaos included."

"Especially the chaos, apparently, since you seem to have enjoyed torturing Denki at that game more than you let on."

"He was an easy target."

"He really is." Bakugo huffed another quiet laugh, and then, before you could say anything else, he leaned down and kissed you — soft, unhurried, one hand coming up to cup your jaw like you were something worth being careful with. You melted into it without meaning to, your free hand curling into the front of his shirt, and for a moment the tiredness pulling at your bones didn't matter at all.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours, his breath warm against your skin.

"Get home safe," he murmured. "Call me if the subway's being weird this late. I'll come get you."

"You're supposed to be resting your fascia, not chasing down late-night trains."

"I'll rest it in the car."

"That is not how resting works."

"Feels like it should count."

You laughed, pressing one more brief kiss to the corner of his mouth before finally stepping back, putting a necessary sliver of distance between you before you lost the will to leave at all. He opened the door for you, walking you the short distance to the private elevator, his hand not quite letting go of yours until the very last second.

"Goodnight, Katsuki," you said, stepping backward into the elevator as the doors began to slide shut.

"Night, doc," he said, and even through the narrowing gap of the closing doors, you caught the small, rare softness in his expression — the look of a man who was, against every instinct he'd spent a lifetime building, letting himself want something simple and good.

The ride down felt shorter than the ride up had, your reflection in the polished steel doors looking a little more flushed, a little more undone than it had a few hours earlier. You stepped out into the quiet lobby, nodded goodnight to the same half-asleep security guard, and walked out into the cool night air.

The streets were mostly empty at this hour, streetlights casting long, amber pools across the pavement, the distant hum of the city settling into its late-night quiet. You pulled your coat tighter around yourself and started the walk back toward your apartment, your mind still pleasantly, warmly full of the evening — Kirishima's easy grin, Mina's knowing looks, Denki's wounded pride, the steady weight of Bakugo's arm around your shoulders.

Halfway home, your phone buzzed in your pocket.

Katsuki: you better be walking and not standing outside my building overthinking again

You laughed out loud, alone on the empty sidewalk, and typed back a quick reply.

You: I'm walking. Don't worry.

Katsuki: text me when you're home. not almost home. home.

You: Yes, Doctor's orders received.

Katsuki: don't turn my own line on me

You: Goodnight, Katsuki.

Katsuki: night. sleep. actually sleep, not chart-reading sleep.

You slipped your phone back into your pocket, smiling the rest of the way home, the cold night air doing nothing to dull the warmth still settled deep in your chest. By the time you climbed the stairs to your apartment, let yourself in, and collapsed onto your own bed still half in your coat, you fired off one last text before finally letting your eyes close.

You: Home. Safe. Going to sleep now, for real this time.

Katsuki: good. goodnight, doc.

You fell asleep almost instantly, the ghost of his kiss still warm on your lips, and for the first time in longer than you could remember, you didn't dream of monitors or flatlines or trembling hands.

You just slept.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ ────── ✦ ────── ˖ ࣪ ⊹

Morning rounds came far too early, as they always did the day after a good night's sleep was interrupted by a good night in general. You moved through the ward on autopilot, coffee in hand, checking charts and vitals with the ease of muscle memory, your mind only half-present until the caffeine finally kicked in around your third patient.

By ten, your pager buzzed with the reminder you'd nearly forgotten in the pleasant haze of the last twelve hours: U.A. Medical Advisory Council — 1:00 PM, Main Campus.

You allowed yourself a small, private smile as you tucked the pager back into your coat pocket. Most people at the hospital didn't know about this part of your life — the quiet, unglamorous role you'd held for two years now, sitting on a small advisory board most students never even knew existed, reviewing injury protocols and practical exam safety measures for the very institution that had once looked past you entirely.

You signed out of your morning shift a little after noon, changed out of your scrubs into something more presentable, and made the familiar drive out toward the sprawling green campus at the edge of the city.

The walk across U.A.'s courtyard always did something strange and complicated to your chest, no matter how many times you made it. Eight years ago, you had walked these same paths as a General Studies student — invisible among the flashier hero-course kids in their tailored uniforms and effortless confidence, learning anatomy and emergency triage in a back classroom while explosions rattled the windows from the training grounds outside, close enough to feel in your teeth but always, always out of reach.

You remembered watching them from a distance back then. The hero course students moving like they already knew they mattered, like the whole institution had been built around the certainty of their futures, while you sat with your textbooks in a room that smelled like old paper and dry-erase markers, learning how to save the very people who would never learn your name.

Now you walked in with a visitor's badge that read U.A. Medical Advisory Board, and nobody looked twice. It still felt, some days, like wearing someone else's coat.

"Dr. [Name]."

You turned at the familiar, gravel-worn voice. Shota Aizawa fell into step beside you outside the faculty building, his usual sleep-deprived slouch somehow still radiating a quiet, unmistakable authority, his capture weapon coiled loosely around his shoulders even here, even now, like he was perpetually one emergency away from needing it. "You're early. Council doesn't convene for another hour."

"Wanted to review the training ground incident reports before the meeting," you said, falling into step beside him. "Better to walk in with the details than get blindsided in the room."

Aizawa made a low, approving sound in his throat — about as close to a compliment as he ever came, you'd learned over the past two years. "Good instinct. Nezu's been riding the board about response times since the incident with Bakugo. The board wants updated protocols before the next practical exam cycle." His dark, tired eyes slid sideways toward you, sharp and assessing in a way that made you feel, briefly, like one of his own students being evaluated. "Speaking of. You did good work there. Twice, from what I understand."

"Just doing my job," you said, keeping your voice carefully level.

"Mm." He didn't push further, though something in the set of his mouth suggested he suspected there was more to the story than a straightforward doctor-patient relationship — Aizawa saw everything, it was, unfortunately, his entire professional ethos, and you had the distinct impression he'd already drawn his own conclusions about the particular warmth in your voice whenever Bakugo's name came up. He said nothing more about it, though, simply falling into a comfortable, familiar silence as you walked.

"How's the recovery wing renovation going?" you asked instead, steering the conversation somewhere safer.

"Slowly. Bureaucratically. The usual." A ghost of something almost like humor crossed his face. "Recovery Girl would have hated the paperwork involved in replacing her own retirement."

"She always said the paperwork was worse than the actual medicine."

"She wasn't wrong."

The council room was already half-full by the time you arrived — a long, sunlit space dominated by a wide oak table, files and tablets spread across its surface, a mix of U.A. staff and outside medical consultants murmuring quietly among themselves while they waited for the meeting to formally begin. You took your usual seat near the end of the table, pulling out the incident reports you'd printed that morning, only to look up moments later and find a familiar, towering figure folding himself carefully into the chair directly across from you, a booming laugh already halfway out of his mouth before he'd even fully sat down.

"Young Doctor!" All Might — retired now, leaner and more weathered than the golden-age silhouette that had once dominated every magazine cover in the country, but still radiating that same relentless, larger-than-life warmth — grinned at you like you were an old and cherished friend, which, in the strange, sideways way U.A. had of collapsing distinctions between mentors and colleagues, you supposed you had become. "I heard you handled young Bakugo's case personally. Twice, I understand. That boy does have a talent for testing the very limits of modern medicine."

"He has a talent for ignoring doctor's orders," you said dryly, and All Might laughed, a full, booming sound that turned a few heads at the far end of the table, several younger staff members glancing over with the particular reverence reserved for the man who had once been the Symbol of Peace, even now, diminished as he was.

"That does sound like him," he agreed, settling back into his chair, the old wooden frame creaking audibly under what remained of his considerable frame. He folded his large hands atop the table, his expression softening into something more thoughtful. "You've done this school a great service, you know. More than one, in fact. Recovery Girl always used to say the General Studies students who went on into medicine understood something the hero course students often took years to grasp — that saving a life and taking one are two sides of the very same coin. Precision. Restraint. Knowing exactly how much force is enough, and not one ounce more." He looked at you with an unexpected gentleness. "She would be very proud to see you sitting at this table, Doctor."

The mention of Recovery Girl sent a small, warm ache through your chest, sharp enough to catch you briefly off guard. You hadn't expected it — hadn't expected, after all these years, for her name to still carry that particular weight, that particular grief tangled up with gratitude. She had been the only adult at U.A. who had ever really seen you, back when you were an anonymous General Studies student with an unusual gift for anatomy and an even more unusual habit of lingering near the nurse's office long after your own appointments were finished, just to watch her work.

"She recommended me for this position, actually," you said quietly. "Before she retired. I don't think I ever properly thanked her for it."

"She knew," All Might said simply. "She always knew more than she let on. It was rather her signature quality."

You didn't get the chance to respond before the meeting was called formally to order, Nezu's small, precise voice cutting cleanly through the room's remaining chatter from his perch at the head of the table, and the next hour dissolved into the familiar, unglamorous machinery of institutional oversight — incident reports reviewed line by line, budget allocations debated for the recovery wing's ongoing renovation, a lengthy and occasionally heated exchange over updated safety protocols for quirk-related trauma during practical exams, prompted directly, you knew without needing to be told, by the events of the past several weeks.

"The Bakugo incident," Nezu said at one point, his sharp, clever eyes flicking briefly toward you, "raises a broader concern about post-injury clearance protocols for active Pro Heroes returning to duty. Dr. [Name], you were the treating physician in both instances. Perhaps you could speak to the specific failure points that allowed a patient to return to active field duty while still recovering from major abdominal surgery."

You straightened slightly in your chair, the clinical part of your mind sliding smoothly into place, grateful, in a strange way, for the reminder that you were here as a professional first, whatever else might be true underneath that. "The failure wasn't in the discharge protocol itself," you said. "The patient was cleared for light activity with strict, clearly communicated restrictions. The failure was in enforcement — there's currently no mechanism requiring active-duty heroes to report field activity back to their treating physician between follow-up appointments. A civilian patient recovering from similar surgery would be under considerably more direct oversight. Pro Heroes, particularly high-ranking ones, often have more autonomy than is medically advisable during a recovery period, precisely because the expectation of continued public service makes it politically difficult to enforce true rest."

Nezu's small eyes glinted with interest. "You're suggesting we need a formal reporting structure between agency medical staff and treating hospital physicians."

"I'm suggesting," you said, "that we need something with actual teeth. Right now the honor system is the only thing standing between a recovering patient and a second emergency surgery. In this case, it very nearly cost a life."

A murmur of agreement passed around the table. Aizawa, beside you, gave a small, approving nod without looking up from his tablet. All Might watched you with something like quiet pride.

"Duly noted," Nezu said, scribbling something rapid and illegible onto the pad in front of him. "We'll draft language for the next board review. Thank you, Doctor."

The door opened partway through the budget discussion, and Izuku Midoriya slipped in with the particular breathless urgency of a man who had sprinted at least part of the way there, a stack of student evaluation folders clutched under one arm, his hair — somehow always slightly more disheveled than the last time you'd seen him — sticking up at odd angles. Two years into his part-time teaching post, he still hadn't quite mastered the art of arriving anywhere looking composed.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, dropping into the one empty seat beside you with an apologetic wince toward the head of the table. "Class ran long. My first-years nearly took out half of Ground Beta during the capture simulation. Took longer than I expected to get everyone settled down and debriefed."

"Again?" Aizawa said flatly, not even glancing up from his tablet, in the exact weary tone of a man who had stopped being surprised by this particular sentence years ago.

"They're a handful this year, sensei, I swear, I had three separate kids trying to improvise past the exercise parameters at once—" Midoriya caught himself, glancing sideways at you with sudden, sheepish realization. "Ah. Sorry. This probably isn't as interesting to you as it is to me."

"I've heard worse over lunch," you said. "Bakugo tells his own war stories about wrangling first-years."

"He would." Midoriya huffed a tired laugh, shaking his head as he finally set his folders down. "I told the class to hold formation until my signal. They held it for about four seconds."

"Sounds about right for that age," Aizawa muttered, unbothered.

Midoriya gave you a small, warm smile despite the exasperation still lingering on his face — some silent acknowledgment passing between you, unspoken, of Friday's dinner, the quiet walk home afterward, the question he'd asked about old memories that you'd both, wordlessly, agreed to let lie for a little while longer. He didn't bring any of it up here, not in front of the council, but there was a new ease in the way he settled into the seat beside you, like whatever tension had briefly existed between you had resolved itself into something simpler — something like real friendship, uncomplicated by anything except mutual fondness and a shared, exasperated concern for the same infuriating, explosive man.

"How's Kacchan settling in at home?" he asked quietly, pitching his voice low under the cover of Nezu redirecting the meeting toward the next item on the agenda.

"Stubborn as ever," you murmured back. "But healing. Mostly behaving himself. Mostly."

"That 'mostly' is doing a lot of work in that sentence."

"You have no idea."

Midoriya's smile widened just slightly, something knowing and pleased flickering behind his green eyes, like he'd already gathered more than you'd actually told him. "I'm glad," he said simply, and left it at that, turning his attention back to the folder open in his lap as Nezu moved the meeting into its final stretch.

The remainder of the council session passed in the familiar rhythm of institutional business — a proposal to expand the recovery wing's quirk-specialized equipment, a debate over updated liability waivers for the upcoming provisional license exams, a brief and mildly contentious discussion about whether the cafeteria's new meal plan adequately accounted for high-metabolism quirks, which Present Mic, attending remotely via video call, seemed inexplicably passionate about.

By the time Nezu finally adjourned the meeting, your notepad was covered in half-illegible shorthand, your coffee had long since gone cold, and the golden afternoon light slanting through the tall windows told you it was later than you'd realized.

The council meeting ran nearly two hours longer than scheduled, and by the time you finally stepped back out into the courtyard, your feet ached in that particular way that came from sitting rigidly upright in a hard chair for far too long, and your stomach was reminding you, none too gently, that you'd skipped lunch entirely.

The training grounds were quiet today — no explosions rattling the windows, no chorus of shouting first-years drifting across the courtyard. For a strange moment you found yourself almost missing the familiar racket of it, a reminder of just how much of your understanding of this campus had been built entirely on secondhand sound eight years ago, never actually seen up close.

What caught your attention instead, as you crossed toward the faculty parking lot, was a small, quiet pair seated on the garden benches at the edge of the courtyard — a girl with pale hair and mismatched eyes, a sketchbook open on her knee, and a boy beside her, arms crossed, leaning back against the bench with the studied disinterest of someone who'd clearly been talked into sitting there and didn't want to admit he was enjoying it.

"Eri," you said, recognizing her immediately, softening despite yourself. Aizawa's ward — technically under Mirio Togata's guardianship now, though half the staff at U.A. seemed to consider her something between an honorary student and a shared responsibility — looked up at the sound of her name, her face breaking into a warm, easy smile that had none of the shyness you remembered from years back.

"Dr. [Name]!" she said, closing her sketchbook. "You're here again."

"I am." You came to a stop near the bench, glancing at the sketchbook. "Still drawing?"

"General course elective," she said, a little wry. "Turns out I'm actually decent at it."

"Kota keeps telling her that like it's news," you said, nodding at the boy beside her, who immediately rolled his eyes, though not before a flicker of something warmer crossed his face.

"Somebody has to," Kota muttered, arms still crossed, clearly trying very hard to look unbothered. "She never believes it when I say it."

"That's because you say it like you're annoyed about it," Eri said.

"I am annoyed about it. Annoyingly, you're good at this."

You laughed, watching the two of them fall into the kind of easy, familiar bickering that only came from years of actually knowing someone. "How's the rest of school going?"

"Fine," Kota said, at the exact same moment Eri said, "He's failing support course theory," which earned her a betrayed look from Kota that only made you laugh harder.

"Are you here to see someone?" Eri asked, tilting her head. "Or just visiting? Kota told me you're the one who patched up Bakugou-san after that whole mess with the villain."

"Something like that," you said. "He's doing better, if you're wondering."

"Good," Eri said, with the same quiet seriousness you remembered from her as a child, though there was a steadier confidence behind it now. "He came to visit Aizawa-sensei once, before the surgery. Practically threw the door open. Scared half the recovery wing."

"That does sound like him."

"Anyway," Kota said, standing and stretching, clearly eager to change the subject away from anything resembling sentimentality, "we've got study hall. Come on, before Present Mic notices we skipped the first half."

"We didn't skip it," Eri said, gathering her sketchbook. "We relocated it."

"That's the same thing and you know it."

You were still smiling at that when a familiar, dry voice cut in from nearby.

"Relocated. Sure. That's one word for it."

You turned to find Hitoshi Shinsou leaning against the low garden wall a short distance away, arms crossed, his usual half-lidded, unimpressed expression settling into something almost like amusement as he took in the scene.

"Shinsou," you said. "I didn't know you were back on campus."

"Guest lecture for the general course kids. Cursed contract Aizawa talked me into." He nodded toward Eri and Kota, who were already gathering their things with the particular efficiency of students who'd been caught and knew it. "These two decided my lecture was optional."

"It was very long," Eri said, entirely unrepentant.

"It was fifteen minutes."

"Very long fifteen minutes."

Shinsou gave her a flat look that had absolutely no effect on her whatsoever, then turned back to you. "Heard you pulled Bakugo back from the brink. Twice. Man owes you his whole idiot life, probably doesn't say it enough."

"He says it in his own way," you said.

"That tracks." Shinsou checked his watch. "I've got an actual class in ten, unlike some people's definition of one. Good to run into you, Doctor."

"You too," you said, and he gave you a small, two-fingered salute before herding Eri and Kota back toward the general studies building, the two of them still bickering good-naturedly the entire way.

You were still smiling at the sight of them disappearing around the corner when your phone buzzed in your coat pocket.

Deku: Are you still on campus? Got a break before my next class if you want to grab something to eat before you head back.

You typed back a quick yes, grateful for the excuse to sit down properly before the drive back to the hospital.

Twenty minutes later, true to his word, Midoriya found you in the mostly empty staff cafeteria, sliding into the seat across from you with a tray considerably more modest than his usual appetite would suggest, clearly rushed between classes.

"Sorry, this is the fastest I could get away," he said, already digging in. "I've got maybe twenty minutes before my next block."

"It's fine. I needed to sit down properly for once." You picked up your own chopsticks, grateful for the quiet after a full afternoon of council business. "I ran into Eri and Kota outside, by the way. And Shinsou, apparently guest-lecturing."

Midoriya brightened immediately. "Oh, they've been inseparable all week. Eri's gotten so much braver since she started spending time with the other kids — Kota still pretends he doesn't like being around her, but he brought her those pencils himself, I watched him pick them out."

"He tried very hard to make it sound like an accident."

"That's very on-brand for him." Midoriya laughed, then glanced at you, something a little more careful in his expression. "How's Kacchan doing, really? I haven't seen him properly since the discharge — just texts, and you know how those go with him. Three words if I'm lucky."

"Recovering well," you said. "Slower than he'd like. Stubborn about pacing himself, as always."

"That does sound like him." Midoriya smiled, then hesitated, turning his chopsticks over in his hand. "For what it's worth — I'm glad it's you. Looking after him, I mean. He's easier to read than people think, if you know what to look for. And you clearly do."

You felt a small, warm flush rise in your cheeks, glancing down at your tray rather than answer that directly. "He's not as complicated as everyone makes him out to be," you said instead. "Just guarded."

"Guarded's the right word." Midoriya checked his watch, wincing. "I should go, actually, before I'm late and Aizawa gives me that look again. Thank you for this, though. It's nice, just — talking. Normal talking. Not hero-business talking."

"Anytime," you said, meaning it, and he gave you a quick, warm smile before gathering his tray and hurrying off toward his next class, leaving you to finish your lunch in the quieter company of your own thoughts.

By the time you made your way out through the main gate, the golden late-afternoon light had softened into something closer to dusk. For once, no one was waiting for you — just the ordinary rhythm of the train platform, students and staff filtering past on their own separate errands, the city settling into its evening commute around you.

There was something quietly novel about it, walking to the station alone, no towering, scowling presence materializing out of nowhere to whisk you off somewhere. You let yourself enjoy the short walk, replaying the day in your head — Eri's steady, hard-won confidence, Kota's begrudging kindness, Shinsou's dry humor, Deku's easy warmth over a rushed lunch.

You'd just settled into a seat on the mostly empty train when your phone buzzed.

Katsuki: how'd the meeting go

You smiled at the screen, typing back a reply as the train pulled out of the station.

You: Long. Productive, though. Nezu's finally pushing through better reporting protocols between hospital staff and agency medical teams. For situations exactly like yours, incidentally.

Katsuki: great. bureaucracy. my favorite.

You: It might have saved your life, that bureaucracy, if it had existed a few weeks ago.

There was a longer pause before his next reply, the little typing bubble appearing and disappearing twice before he actually sent anything.

Katsuki: yeah. probably.

Katsuki: ran into deku today?

You: Had lunch with him, actually.

Katsuki: he say anything

You: Like what?

Katsuki: nothing. forget it.

You bit back a smile at your phone, recognizing the exact shape of his jealousy from weeks ago, outside the hospital doors, in a dress he'd called nice in the single most Bakugo way physically possible.

You: He asked about you, actually. Whether we knew each other. Before the hospital.

This time the pause stretched long enough that you almost put your phone away, watching the city blur past the window instead. When his reply finally came through, the usual bluntness of it had softened into something more careful.

Katsuki: what'd you say

You: That it was a long time ago. That I wasn't sure you remembered.

Katsuki: I remember. more than I let on, probably.

Katsuki: not over text though. we should talk. properly.

Katsuki: I'll pick you up after your shift.

You stared at the messages for a long moment, your chest tightening with the particular ache of something old finally being ready to surface.

You: Okay. After my shift.

Katsuki: okay.

You tucked your phone away as the train pulled into your stop, the quiet, unhurried rhythm of the ride home settling something in you that you hadn't realized needed settling — a reminder that whatever this was between you, it didn't need him at every turn to feel steady. It could wait. It could breathe. And when it was ready, it would still be there.

The coffee in your cup had gone lukewarm, but you didn’t mind. The late afternoon sun was still spilling through the café window, casting long, golden rectangles across the scarred wooden table. Katsuki sat across from you, his elbows resting on the table, his hands loosely clasped. He was staring at the dark surface of his own coffee, his expression uncharacteristically subdued.

The silence between you wasn’t empty; it was heavy with the things you’d already said, and the things he was carefully weighing.

"You know," he started, his voice a low, rough rumble that barely carried over the soft jazz playing from the café’s speakers. He didn’t look up. "I’ve been thinking about that day. The day the campus got hit. The day All Might..." He trailed off, his jaw tightening as he swallowed the rest of the sentence.

Your breath hitched, just slightly. You knew exactly which day he meant. It was the day the sky over U.A. had torn open, the day the Symbol of Peace had finally, irrevocably fallen, not in a stadium miles away, but right on the school grounds during a surprise villain raid.

"I remember," you said softly.

Katsuki finally looked up, his crimson eyes locking onto yours. They were sharp, searching, stripping away the clinical distance you usually kept between you. "Do you? Because from where I was lying, bleeding out into the dirt, it felt like the whole world was ending. And then... you were just there."

He leaned back, running a hand through his ash-blonde spikes, his gaze drifting past you as the memory pulled him back.

The air tasted like copper and pulverized concrete. The sky above the U.A. campus was a bruised, sickly purple, choked with the smoke of a dozen explosions and the lingering, toxic miasma of villain quirks. The ground beneath your knees was shaking, though whether from the aftershocks of the battles or your own trembling, you couldn’t tell.

You were a medical intern, assigned to the triage zone near the Heights Alliance dorms, but the triage zone had been blown to hell ten minutes ago. So, you were out here in the open, kneeling in the rubble, your white medic coat stained with soot and blood.

A few yards away, the epicenter of the devastation lay in a crater of shattered asphalt. All Might was there. The Symbol of Peace was on his knees, his emaciated form swaying, steam rising from his shoulders as the last dregs of One For All violently evacuated his body. He had fallen. Not with a triumphant roar, but with a ragged, wet cough that sounded like the breaking of the world.

But he wasn’t alone. Thrown into the crater, having taken the brunt of a point-blank kinetic blast meant for their mentor, were Katsuki and Izuku.

Izuku was unconscious, his right arm bent at a sickening angle, his breathing a shallow, wet rattle. Katsuki was conscious, but barely. He was on his hands and knees, coughing up blood, his explosions sputtering out into weak, pathetic sparks. He had thrown himself in front of All Might. He had saved him.

Recovery Girl came running, her small frame hurried, her face pale and streaked with tears. She reached the crater, her hands glowing with the soft, green light of her quirk, but as she knelt beside Izuku, the light flickered and died. She gasped, clutching her chest, her stamina completely depleted from treating dozens of students over the last hour. "I... I can't," she sobbed, her voice cracking. "My quirk... it's gone. I have nothing left."

Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in your chest. But training took over. You grabbed your medical kit and scrambled down into the crater, sliding on the loose gravel.

"Recovery Girl, go check on Aizawa-sensei!" you shouted over the ringing in your ears. "I've got them!"

You dropped to your knees beside Katsuki first. He was the louder bleeder, a deep shrapnel wound tearing through his left shoulder and another grazing his ribs. You immediately went to work, your hands moving with practiced, frantic precision. You tore open a pressure dressing, packing the wound, your fingers slick with his blood.

"Get off me," Katsuki rasped, swatting weakly at your hands. His red eyes were blown wide, unfocused, blown out on pain and adrenaline. "Check the nerd. Check Deku."

"I'm checking you first, you idiot," you snapped, your voice cracking. You pressed down harder on the wound. He hissed, his head falling back, his teeth bared in a silent snarl.

"I said—"

"Shut up, Katsuki!" The name tore out of your throat, raw and desperate. You didn't use his last name. You didn't use his hero name. You used the name he only let a few people say. "Shut up and let me save your life, or I swear to god I will let you bleed out just to teach you a lesson!"

He froze. His chest heaved, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. Slowly, his unfocused eyes dragged to your face. He stared at you, really looked at you, through the haze of pain. His gaze dropped to your hands—your hands, which were currently coated in his blood, holding him together.

"You're shaking," he murmured, his voice surprisingly quiet, stripped of its usual venom.

"I'm fine," you lied, your voice trembling as you taped the pressure dressing down. You moved to his face, gently tilting his chin up to check his pupils. His skin was burning hot, covered in a fine layer of sweat and dust. You used your thumb to wipe a smear of blood from his cheekbone.

He leaned into your touch, just a fraction of an inch, his eyes fluttering shut. "Don't look at me like that," he whispered.

"Like what?" you asked, your breath catching in your throat as you checked his pulse. It was thready, but steady.

"Like I'm broken."

You stopped. You looked down at him—at the boy who was always so loud, so fiercely unbreakable, now lying in the dirt, looking at you with a vulnerability that made your chest ache. You gently cupped his jaw, your thumb brushing over his cheekbone again.

"You're not broken, Katsuki," you said softly, the chaos of the battlefield fading into a dull roar in the background. "You're just hurt. And I've got you. I'm right here."

He let out a long, shuddering breath, his eyes dropping shut again. His hand came up, his soot-stained fingers weakly curling around your wrist. He didn't push you away. He just held on, anchoring himself to you as the sirens finally began to wail in the distance.

The memory faded, the sounds of the café slowly bleeding back into your awareness. The soft clinking of cups, the low murmur of the other patrons, the hum of the espresso machine.

Katsuki was watching you, his expression entirely open. The tough, explosive exterior he wore for the world was gone, leaving only the man who had held onto your wrist in the dirt.

"You called me Katsuki," he said quietly, breaking the silence. "In the middle of a warzone. With Recovery Girl right there. You didn't use Bakugo. You used my first name."

You swallowed hard, your fingers tightening around your lukewarm coffee cup. "You were dying. I thought... I thought I was going to lose you. The formalities didn't seem to matter."

"They mattered to me," he said, his voice dropping an octave, rough with an emotion he rarely let surface. He reached across the table, his large, calloused hand covering yours. His thumb stroked the back of your knuckles, a gentle, rhythmic motion. "When I was lying there, half-convinced I was going to bleed out in the dirt, the only thing I could focus on was your voice. And the way you said my name. It was the only thing that made me want to keep my eyes open."

Your heart did a painful, fluttering ache in your chest. You turned your hand over, lacing your fingers through his. "You're not allowed to die on me, Katsuki. I've put too much time into patching you up."

A small, genuine smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Good to know, doc. I'll keep it in mind."

The moment stretched, warm and fragile, the golden hour light wrapping around the two of you like a physical embrace. You were just about to say something else, to bridge the gap and pull him back into the easy banter you usually relied on, when the little brass bell above the café door chimed.

The sound was sharp, cutting through the intimate quiet of your booth.

You glanced toward the entrance, and Katsuki’s hand instinctively tightened around yours, his head turning to follow your gaze.

Walking through the door was a man who commanded the space the second he crossed the threshold, even when he wasn't trying to. He was tall, lean, and dressed in a casual but impeccably tailored yellow jacket, his signature red wings folded tightly against his back. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, and his light blonde hair was tied back in a loose, messy ponytail.

It was Keigo Takami. The Number Two Hero. Hawks.

But as his golden eyes swept the café and landed on your booth, the lazy, performative swagger of the Pro Hero vanished in an instant. The easy, public-facing smile melted away, replaced by something much softer, much more grounded. The mask of the Number Two Hero slipped, and the older brother stepped forward.

"Well, well, well," Keigo drawled, his voice carrying that familiar, melodic lilt, though it was stripped of its usual mocking edge. He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, revealing eyes that were sharp, amused, and entirely focused on you. "If it isn't my favorite little sister. And here I thought you were busy saving lives at the hospital."

You let out a breath you didn't realize you'd been holding, a fond smile breaking across your face. "Keigo. I didn't think you'd be in this part of the city. I thought you had a press junket in Osaka."

"Cancelled it," Keigo said smoothly, closing the distance between the door and your table. His movements were fluid, predatory in a graceful way, but as he reached the table, his gaze shifted from you to the man sitting across from you.

The amusement in Keigo’s golden eyes sharpened into something distinctly protective. He looked at Katsuki’s soot-stained jacket, the bandages peeking out from his collar, and then down at their hands—Katsuki’s large, scarred hand completely enveloping yours.

"Ground Zero," Keigo said, his tone light but carrying a clear, underlying warning. "The explosive kid who keeps ending up in my sister's medical bay. I should have known she'd be spending her off-hours patching you up."

Katsuki’s jaw tightened. He didn't let go of your hand; if anything, his grip became firmer, his thumb pressing a silent claim against your skin. He sat up a little straighter, his crimson eyes meeting Keigo’s golden ones without an ounce of intimidation.

"Taka—" Katsuki started, then corrected himself with a scoff. "Hawks. Didn't realize the Commission let you off your leash this early."

Keigo laughed, a bright, genuine sound that drew a few glances from the other patrons. He pulled out the chair next to you, spinning it around and straddling it backward, resting his arms on the backrest. "The Commission doesn't let me do anything, kid. I do what I want. And right now, what I want is to check on my little sister."

He looked at you, his expression softening again. "You look tired, Y/N. You're working too hard. I told you, you don't have to take every shift they throw at you. I make enough for both of us."

"I like my job, Keigo," you said gently, used to his overprotective streak. It was a habit he’d developed when you were kids, when the system had chewed up your parents and left the two of you to navigate the foster system together. He had joined the Commission’s hero program to get you out, to build a wall of money and influence around you so you could go to medical school in peace. He carried the weight of the world so you wouldn't have to. "And I like taking care of people. Even the stubborn ones."

Keigo’s eyes flicked back to Katsuki, a sly, teasing smirk returning to his lips. "Stubborn is one word for him. 'Walking hazard' is another. You know, when I saw the news about the campus attack, I almost flew straight to the hospital to drag you out of there. But then I heard you were the one treating the survivors, and I figured you had it handled."

"I had it handled," you confirmed.

"Yeah, yeah, you're a miracle worker, we know," Keigo waved a hand dismissively, though his eyes remained serious as he looked at you. "But seriously. You pushed yourself to the limit that day. I saw the footage. You were knee-deep in the rubble with the big guns. You didn't have to be in the crater, Y/N."

Before you could answer, Katsuki spoke up, his voice a low, rough rumble that cut through Keigo’s teasing.

"She was in the crater because if she hadn't been, I would have bled out," Katsuki said flatly. He didn't look at Keigo; he was looking at you, his expression fiercely defensive. "Recovery Girl was tapped out. The other medics were triaging the walking wounded. Your sister was the only one who didn't hesitate. She jumped right in."

Keigo’s smirk faded slightly. He looked at Katsuki, really assessing him for a moment. The playful older brother routine dialed back, replaced by the sharp, calculating gaze of the Number Two Hero. He was reading Katsuki, evaluating the intensity in the boy's red eyes, the protective set of his shoulders.

"I know she did," Keigo said quietly. "She always does. It's what she does." He paused, his golden eyes flicking down to your joined hands again. "But it's nice to hear you admit it, Bakugo. Most of the kids in your class just think she's the scary medic who yells at them when they don't follow post-op instructions."

Katsuki’s lip curled in a familiar, arrogant sneer, though it didn't reach his eyes. "They're idiots. And if they think she's just scary, they're blind."

Keigo chuckled, the tension breaking. He reached out and ruffled your hair, a deeply ingrained older brother gesture that made you swat his hand away with a laugh.

"Alright, alright, I get it," Keigo said, holding his hands up in surrender. "She's amazing, she's a miracle worker, and she's the only person on the planet who can handle your explosive temper, Bakugo. I'm taking notes."

"She's not just amazing," Katsuki muttered, looking back down at his coffee, though the faint dusting of pink on his cheeks betrayed him. "She's... she's important."

The words hung in the air, simple and devastating in their honesty.

Keigo went entirely still. The casual, lounging posture vanished. He sat up straight, his golden eyes locking onto Katsuki with a sudden, piercing intensity. The air around the table seemed to drop a few degrees. This wasn't just the Number Two Hero looking at a student anymore. This was Keigo Takami, looking at the boy who was claiming his little sister's heart.

"Important," Keigo repeated, his voice dangerously soft.

Katsuki didn't flinch. He lifted his chin, meeting Keigo’s gaze head-on, his grip on your hand tightening just a fraction. "Yeah. Important. Got a problem with that, bird brain?"

You held your breath, your heart hammering against your ribs. You knew how protective Keigo was. You knew the lengths he had gone to, the shadows he had walked through, just to keep you safe and happy. If he decided Katsuki wasn't good enough for you, he would make the Pro Hero's life a living hell.

But Katsuki wasn't backing down. He was glaring at the Number Two Hero with the same fiery defiance he used against villains twice his size.

For three long seconds, the two men stared each other down. The air was thick enough to choke on.

And then, Keigo threw his head back and laughed.

It was a loud, booming laugh that made the waitress jump behind the counter. He slapped his hand on the table, shaking the coffee cups.

"God, I like this kid," Keigo gasped, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. He looked at you, his face split in a massive, genuine grin. "Y/N, I approve. He's got guts. Stupid, explosive, reckless guts, but guts nonetheless."

Keigo's phone buzzed against the table. He barely glanced at the screen before letting out a long sigh.

"...There goes my afternoon."

You smiled knowingly. "Commission?"

"When is it not?"

He slipped the phone into his pocket before standing, stretching his shoulders until his wings shifted behind him. "I've got to head back."

His golden eyes landed on you. "And you're coming with me."

You blinked. "I can get to the hospital on my own."

"I know you can." He reached over and flicked your forehead lightly.

"But I haven't seen you in weeks. Humor your big brother and let me drive you." You rubbed your forehead with an exaggerated glare.

"You're impossible."

"So I've been told."

He grinned before looking across the table at Bakugo. The smile softened into something more observant.

"So."

Bakugo raised an eyebrow.

"So?"

"Take care of yourself."

"Tch."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

Keigo gave a small nod. "I've seen enough stubborn heroes ignore doctors until they're back in surgery."

Bakugo scoffed. "I'm not that stupid." From beside him, you gave him a flat look. "You tried removing your own stitches."

"..."

"That was one time."

"It was yesterday."

Keigo snorted. "I take it back. You are that stupid."

"Tch."

For the first time since he'd arrived, Bakugo didn't snap back. Instead, he simply looked away with a quiet click of his tongue. You stood, slipping your bag over your shoulder. "I should get going."

Bakugo looked up instinctively. There was a brief silence. Not uncomfortable. Just... unfamiliar. Neither of you had spent time together outside the hospital before today. You offered him a small smile. "Don't skip your follow-up appointment."

"I wasn't planning to."

"And don't train with fresh stitches."

"..."

"Kats—"

You caught yourself.

"...Bakugo."

His eyes widened ever so slightly. You cleared your throat. "I mean it."

He looked away first. "...Yeah." Another pause settled between you. Then he muttered quietly, "...Thanks."

"For what?"

"The coffee."

You smiled. "It wasn't that good."

"It was."

He said it so matter-of-factly that you couldn't help laughing. A faint warmth crept onto the tips of his ears, though whether from embarrassment or annoyance, you couldn't tell.

Keigo watched the exchange without saying a word. There was no teasing. No assumptions. Just quiet observation. After a moment, he hooked a thumb toward the café door.

"C'mon, kid." You nodded.

"See you at the hospital, Bakugo."

"...Yeah."

He watched as you followed Hawks toward the exit.

The little brass bell chimed softly overhead as the café door swung shut behind the two of you.

Outside, Hawks casually draped an arm across your shoulders, already talking about Commission paperwork, the newest hero rankings, and whether you'd actually been eating proper meals between shifts.

Your laughter drifted faintly through the glass before disappearing into the evening crowd.

Inside the café, Bakugo remained seated.

His coffee had gone cold.

He stared at the empty chair across from him longer than he meant to.

"...Weird."

He couldn't explain why today felt different.

She was still just the doctor who yelled at him whenever he ignored medical advice.

Just the woman who happened to save his life.

Nothing more.

...Right?

With an irritated sigh, he grabbed his jacket and stood.

There was still training tomorrow.

And somehow, he had a feeling he'd be seeing his doctor again sooner rather than later.

━━━━━━━━━━━ ❖ ━━━━━━━━━━━

"So," hawks started, his tone dropping the casual, teasing lilt he'd used inside. "Bakugo, huh?"

"Don't start," you said, adjusting the strap of your bag. "He's a patient. An incredibly stubborn, self-destructive patient who thinks he's immune to infection."

"Mhm. And you usually buy your patients coffee and let them almost call you by their first name?" Keigo glanced down at you, his golden eyes sharp beneath his visor, carrying that annoying older-brother perception that you could never quite dodge. "I'm just saying. I've seen how he looks at people, kid. Usually, it involves a lot more shouting and a lot less... whatever that quiet thing back there was."

"It was a truce," you insisted, though the memory of how quickly he'd corrected you—it was good—made a strange little knot tighten in your stomach. "He's just grateful. I patched him up after a nasty villain raid. Anyone would be polite after that."

"Bakugo Katsuki isn't 'anyone,' and he doesn't do polite," Keigo chuckled, unlocking the car with a quick beep. He slid into the driver's seat, his wings tucking meticulously into the custom slits of the chair. As you climbed into the passenger side, he looked over at you, his expression softening into something genuinely protective. "Just be careful. Heroes like him—the ones who carry the whole world on their shoulders—they tend to pull people into their orbit whether they mean to or not."

You looked out the window as he pulled into the evening traffic, the neon signs of the city beginning to blur against the glass. "I'm just his doctor, Keigo."

"Yeah," Keigo murmured, stepping on the gas. "For now."

Back at the café, Bakugo walked the three blocks back to his apartment in silence, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. The cold air usually cleared his head, but tonight, it wasn't working. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard that slip of the tongue. Kats— She’d almost said it.

He clicked his tongue again, louder this time, drawing a nervous glance from a pedestrian passing by. He ignored them. He was irritated because his training schedule was botched, because his skin still pulled uncomfortably around his torso where the villains had caught him, and because a certain doctor had somehow managed to make him feel small just by looking at him with a pair of sterile gloves and a frown.

It was just coffee, he told himself as he unlocked his front door and tossed his keys onto the counter. The apartment was dark and quiet. Just a regular damn coffee.

He walked over to the bathroom, pulling up his shirt to inspect the mirror. The stitches were neat, perfectly aligned—the work of someone who didn't just care about closing a wound, but about how it healed. Bakugo let out a rough breath, letting the fabric drop.

Tomorrow, he'd go to the gym. He'd push himself until his muscles burned and his palms smoked, and he'd completely forget about the way her laugh sounded outside the café glass.

But as he threw himself onto his bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, his phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was an automated notification from the hospital database, confirming his mandatory check-up for the following afternoon.

Attending Physician: Dr. Takami.

Bakugo stared at the screen for a long, quiet minute. Then, he flipped the phone face down, a ghost of a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Stupid," he muttered to the empty room.

But he didn't cancel the appointment.

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