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willowser · 2 years

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you feel like home (you're like a dream come true)—

bakugou x reader

wc: 3k+

tags: SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 359+, explicit language, angst, this is trash garbage but it's how i'm coping

Dynamight wins the For-All Selfless Service Award.

A wet, cement-like dread fills your belly at the sound of his name echoing across the atrium, thunderous and so powerful that, for a split-second, you fear it will shatter the glass ceiling.

It's like the awakening of an old God, one that wanted to be left well enough alone; summoning him is a swarm of night-black clouds, filled with ample rain to drown all those that dared disturb his slumber. Not a breath is spared as you all wait for the downfall.

Beside you, Masaru shifts, turning in his chair to peer out over the sea of well-dressed tables and shining Heroes, as if he's lost his own. It's not until Red Riot shuffles sheepishly across the lit stage, waving shyly as he accepts the golden FA Best Jeanist is cradling gently in his hands.

There's a hint of hesitation before the retired Pro relinquishes it, a small exchange that's lost to the low blooming chatter across the ballroom. Kirishima beams a signature smile as he takes it and has to lean down into the mic, like the gentle giant he is.

Almost in unison, the room heaves a collective sigh; disaster avoided.

"I know Dynamight is so honored to receive this…honor,"

It's been a long time since you've seen him.

"So on his behalf, I want to thank everyone that has supported him all these years—"

Been a long time since anyone has.

Bakugou's been out-stationed for a half-decade, maybe more, but you can still remember the tension lining his face in the flat light of the train station. In public, with his parents and friends and their ready goodbyes.

All he'd given you was an insincere glare, half a hug, and a gritted demand to call him later, once he'd arrived at his new agency. It seemed a silly request; he's always been terrible about voicing how he feels, maybe a little smoother on the phone and out of sight, but just as stilted and unsure as ever.

On the high definition screens above the stage, photos of him shuffle, too reminiscent of a memorial to settle your upset. Stills from recorded footage of his takedowns and captures, of his rescues. The same ID picture on his Hero profile, from when he was 22, and his graduation photo. A smile haunts your face; he's never been one for cameras.

Masaru settles back into his seat, straightens his tie and shrugs at the team, who are all watching him with crest-fallen faces. You try to stay neutral, avoiding all their gazes as you fiddle with an eloquently folded napkin on the table.

Like a child, some giddy part of you hoped to see him take the stage, accept the award in all his glory. Unashamed and confident as ever, not so disheartened by his loss, because that's always been Bakugou.

But a small part of you is relieved; he's not a stage monkey and it wouldn't be Bakugou either, to give a rehearsed speech of false thanks. Blowing it off, a fuck you to what remains of the Comission—that's more like it. You want to believe it means some things haven't changed.

The show plays on without another hitch, something that bothers you, and when your coworker leans in to whisper a harmless "I wonder where he's at", you are up and abandoning the table, set on a mission of unknown expectation. The wants in your body are all coalescing into one another—to find him, to never see him again, to come clean about how you feel, whatever that may be—becoming a resounding overlap of voices that set you to autopilot.

You heard his voice last nearly six months ago, when Masaru called his number on speakerphone so the team could sing him a happy birthday. It was met with ill-tempered complaint, irritated at his father blowin' up my phone for nothin', but Masaru was smiley as ever, unaffected.

How jealous you were; if only the tone of his voice could mean so little to you.

It's something you remembered often in the middle of the night, when you would turn to the empty space of your bed and recall how pliable he was, whenever he worked up the courage to stay with you. Bakugou would let you kiss his cheeks or poke at his stomach or hold his hand—little affections he was too resistant to in the daytime. He would always claim to be half-asleep and unaware, but you'll never forget the red gleam of his eyes as he watched you through his long, dark lashes.

When you come into the open lobby of the hotel, you find it astonishing to see his solid figure at the bar-top, suit jacket haphazardly draped over the chair he's in; it's rare that he drinks, only on few occasions with Masaru and the requisite glass of champagne at events such as these—though he doesn't attend many. After everything that's happened, all that's been said in his wake, to see him now is—

Not Godly. Just a man.

You sit to his left, without a word. Maybe if you were a better person, you could say that it was for his benefit, that you're offering the space for him to reveal himself at his own choice—and while those things aren't untrue, the matter of the fact is that you don't think you're ready to see it just yet.

There's only a half-empty glass of water in front of him, and he's drawing lazy, mindless doodles into the frost with his left hand. His right arm is still entirely bandaged, wrapped up in a sling he's keeping close to his chest.

If he recognizes you at all when you sit down, he acknowledges nothing, minutely raising a shoulder as if to curl further into himself. The bartender takes your request for a glass of water, too, and at the sound of your timid voice, Bakugou stills completely.

For a long time, you've thought about this moment. What you would say upon seeing him again. There's a script somewhere in the ridges of your mind that's been perfected, one you've poured over and over again on sleepless nights, when you felt alone and angry and hated him.

The last full conversation the two of you had was set up similarly; chock-full of tension, trying to hide from the obvious as it made space between you. How unfair it felt, to be mad over something that hadn't gotten the chance to blossom just yet.

No point in tryin'. Gonna be gone for, shit, I don't know. Should just find someone else.

You felt ashamed for loving him so badly. For wanting him more than anything and being unwilling to voice it.

All you care to say now is, "It's so good to see you again."

It directs him to you immediately, though when you dare to look up, he turns, ducking his chin on his right side. The very notion of it makes you sick; not the wreckage itself, but what it's done to him, how it must make him feel if he can't even look at you.

To be so afraid of it initially wells a guilt the size of his tight fist in your chest. How selfish. How vain.

Bakugou tries to speak, but has to clear his throat once. "You—got some weird thing with my dad, or what?"

You let out a sudden spark of laughter, bewildered at the question. You make a face, considering, and take a sip of water. "I mean, he is pretty handsome."

"You're disgusting."

A balloon of relief airs in your lungs as you laugh again; some things never change. From the corner of his eye, the sound draws his attention again, gaze jumping from your face to your dress and back to the safety of his glass.

"No," you tell him, "I'm on his team designing costumes, and stuff."

A wave of embarrassment washes over you that he didn't even know about your career. With as much time as your work squad spends with the Bakugou family, you would think that you would have been mentioned, at least once.

In fact, you're certain it must have been brought up; Masaru cares too much. Buys you special edition mugs on your birthday and brings coffee for everyone on those early mornings, is the last to leave some days. On the news that morning, when they'd broadcasted the battle—Dynamight's Downfall?—you were the first person he'd looked at before rushing off to find his wife.

Either Bakugou never wanted to hear about it, you, or he's just scrounging for conversation.

Silence settles as you ponder. When you come back to the here and now, you take in what you can of him; the smooth plane that he allows you of his face, the few faint scars that have appeared in the time since you last were together; his hair is a little shorter now, albeit just as ashen and wild, not tamed in the slightest; the top two open buttons of his shirt, and the tie that barely hangs around his neck. You're surprised he even put it on.

It dawns on you how much he must have changed over the years, even before all this. How much you've missed. Traitorous tears sting the backs of your eyes and you have to sniff to keep a handle on your composure, and not a second of it goes unnoticed by Bakugou; you become aware of the anxious jerk of his leg as he bounces it, how he shifts and curls and clears his throat.

Begrudgingly, he murmurs, "'m not takin' that damn award."

You hum with assent, leaning forward to cross your arms on the bar, prop your chin in your palm. "I don't blame you, it's like," you shake your head, thinking, "'Thank you for your service. Sorry you almost died.'"

He huffs out a laugh, shaking his head as he takes a drink of water. "For fucking real."

You'd said it carelessly as a joke to ease the tension, settle the nerves bubbling in your stomach, but now that the words are out, the mention has you feeling ill again.

It's all anyone has been talking about for days: Bakugou’s damage, how much he must have suffered, how he'll never be the same again. To hear it, and then to speak of the calamity to the man himself—it adds weight, that slow-drying cement.

Selfishly, you think of him before, when you were both young and standing at the precipice of something neither of you knew how to handle. If you'd known what you know now, you wouldn't have let him walk away. You wouldn't have agreed quietly, broke your own heart because you were afraid.

Another wave of emotions swallows you, and no matter how fast you blink or how far back you tilt your head, the tears rise and fall.

If you speak any louder than a whisper, you'll crack. "I was with your dad that day, we all were, because he always leaves the news on, you know? Keeps it—keeps it muted in the workshop, and when he—when the volume went up and we all looked and—" you frown, hard and dissolving, and hate how it must make you look. "And all I could think about was all the things I never said to you that I—"

In a flash, Bakugou shoves away from the bar, grabbing his jacket as he rounds the chair and mutters, "I can't listen to this right now."

You have to slap a hand over your mouth to hold back the sob that threatens to ruin you, but the fissures run deep, echo down to your bones.

Some things never change; he's always had one foot out the door with you, ready to run at the first sign of that all-encompassing feeling he didn't know how to escape. On the rare nights he allowed himself to spend with you—even then he wore a deep frown, tucked his face into the crook of your neck as if he wanted to stay buried there. Held you tightly, enough to leave little reminders long after he was gone.

The first time he'd kissed you, he shouldn't have and you both knew that. After graduation, waning in the shadow of his looming departure. The shitty studio apartment you rented, that cost more than it was worth; Kirishima and Bakugou agreed to help move what few things you had at the dorms, what was left over at your parent's house. It wasn't much, but the process went much smoother with the two of them.

You'd spent most of the summer together, by chance, and all of your efforts went into diverting the feelings that threatened to grow under your surface. Most everyone that you knew was quick to issue a warning: Bakugou wasn't interested. In all the time they'd known him in school, very little of his attention went to girls and dating, and setting your sights on him was a doomed task.

At that point, you'd refused to acknowledge that's what you'd done; Bakugou made sure everyone got home safely and not just you; he got lunch with Kiri and Mina just as often as you two did; he didn't look at you in the dark any special way, so close on the couch as a movie danced on the TV screen.

It must have been an accident—that's what you tried to tell yourself for a long time.

After the boxes were moved in and Kirishima was gone, he stood in your tiny kitchen and claimed to hate it. Opened the cabinets and poked at your oven and tested the temperature of your freezer, looked through the narrow window that offered a view of—nothing: the back of a small pharmacy.

You asked him what was wrong and his face twisted up, like he was going to be sick or cry and then he grabbed you. Hands trembling against your face and tangling in your hair, lips clumsy and harsh, furious like always. Like it was his last chance.

Half a decade later, more than, and you still swell at the thought of him.

You wipe a hand under your eyes gingerly, wary of your airbrushed makeup, before sliding off the chair. The rest of the team has probably conjured up all manner of conspiracies as to where you are, and perhaps you should tell Masaru of his son's state.

When you turn to retreat, however, Bakugou is standing there. Not ten feet from you, like he meant to run before thinking better of it. Fully open. Bare.

Human.

The right half of his face is still tender, shiny and raw, and his eye is ringed in red. It's jarring; Bakugou has always been a pretty boy, despite his animosity towards the label, and the tabloids stay littered with mentions of him and his dangerously good looks.

There's been nothing but speculation about how he's come out and you'd been admittedly nervous, because you were afraid to find that you were more vain than you'd ever known, unable to look upon what remains of the boy you knew.

But to see it so blatant; the untouched side of his face in comparison to what's been war-torn.

All you can think is—

"I'm so glad you're still here."

You don't miss the shine that waters his left eye or how hard he swallows, averting his gaze even further. When you step up to him, he doesn't resist you, only lets out a breath you feel as you run your hands across the marble of his chest.

Despite everything, you waver with a watery laugh that captures him again, because you mean it. All the years and anger and hope and terror and silence and waiting—it holds no candle to him, here and alive and looking at you as he did in your kitchen that day.

Carefully as you can, you wind yourself up in him, around his sling and neck and pressed as close as you can be, and it's not until you nose against his throat that he wraps his arm around you. Tight, like it might be his last chance.

"You," he murmurs, and you can feel how hard he's clenching his jaw from the way it digs into your cheek. "And the shit you didn't say?" Bakugou breathes in sharply, unaware of how deep his fingers dig into the skin your dress exposes. "All I could think about is what I did say, how fuckin' stupid—"

I'm leavin', so don't—I can't—just, don't expect anything from me.

All the long nights and dropped calls and heartbreak and distance—it holds no candle to him, here and alive and looking down at you through his dark, wet lashes.

You slip up onto your toes and kiss him as you've wanted to for years, as you were too afraid to; fingers gentle against his cheek, thumbing the edge of his jaw, passing all that you've kept from him through slow and purposeful lips.

It takes him off guard, which you expected, but only a moment passes before he's gripping you with intent, melding into you as his trembling hand goes to your neck. You can't help the smile you curl into, one he feels, and Bakugou huffs, annoyed, before slanting his head, parting your lips with his own as he dissolves.

It's foreign now, to what it was years ago. Unhurried, no longer afraid, giving instead of taking all that he could hold in both hands. Half a decade later, maybe more, and you swell at the promise of him, the thud of his still-beating heart as it echoes in your chest.

And then there's a loud roar of applause from down in the award show room and you freeze, suddenly put back into place as the sound of glasses clinking and heels on the tile and murmured conversation surrounds you.

"Sorry," you gasp, trying—and failing—to pull away as his hold tightens. Insistent, like it will never slacken again. "We're in public."

"Don't care," Bakugou rasps, gently butting his forehead against your own as he sighs, great and lax and slow. Just before he goes to kiss you again, he says, "'m just glad I'm still here."

#JUST TO BE SAFE i'm adding #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #bakugou x reader #bakugou x you #bakugou angst #bnha x reader #it's been so long since i've posted an actual Thing (TM) that i don't remember how to tag anything LOL #anyway do not perceive me #i just miss him LOL #i wrote half of this in the middle of the night and the other half in the morning and i feel like there is a disconnect and you can tell bu #but oh well #uh i think that's it #✿ willow writes #✿ one shot: bakugou

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