#do i need a surrender masterlist? blergh

[ofmermaidstories]

I love when you talk about jewelry! I was wondering what type of jewelry would bakugou gift surrender!reader, if any at all? What type of gifts do you think he’d be the type to give, and would they be spontaneously or just for special occasions. Your writing brings me so much joy, by the way. Just re reading Surrender made me tear up because I was so happy to have something to cushion my bad day. Also, the Pro hero x secretary reader was so amazing!!! No pressure, but would you ever spin that into a separate fic? Who would you pair reader with? I feel like in your brain rot, reader had special chemistry with bakugou, but I’m also biased for how you write him😭💗

Sorry for so many questions. Have a great day❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

The first gift Katsuki gives you after Christmas is a pocket knife.

It’s weighty; a proper, old-fashioned folding knife. You hold it in your hand and thumb over the brass handle as you glance to him, silently questioning.

“S’hand-forged,” is how he answers. He’s frowning at it, contemplatively—at the fit of it in your hand. It’s a good length—less wieldy than the knives you use in the shop. You can use it easily. “Sharp,” he adds, quiet and firm and you cannot ignore why he’s giving it to you now, in this gloomy twilight-hours winter, when your hours at the shop stretch into the dark and he cannot be with you all the time.

“It’s beautiful,” you say softly, because it is. You flip it close, careful, and then smile at him. “It’ll be handy with the roses.”

Katsuki grunts, and then goes back to eating his dinner and you let your new knife sit on the table, the brass handle shinning like dull yellow gold under the lights of Katsuki’s kitchen.

(‼️📍18+/cw: some very, very vague smut at the end, like, not even two sentences but idk let’s go)

Things keep finding their way to you, after that. Thick, heavy towels larger than you and made of fluffy cotton you can run your fingers through. A new wash stool and basin, both in dark Hinoki wood and copper, to match his—it’s mostly decorative, living in the dark luxury of his very modern, very western bathroom, but you like seeing it in there, sitting next to his. He buys you soap—hand-milled and smelling like rich, expensive green-tea, leaving it sitting on top of a bunch of muslin face towels.

They’re all practical objects. You’re not even sure Katsuki considers them gifts, as much as just him just thinking ahead to what you might need—a lot of the time these items just appear in his apartment, waiting for you to touch them, to use them, to treat them for granted as yours.

He leaves for a cross-country mission that takes a week to finish, explosively, the carnage on the news—and returns to you with new cooking knives for your apartment.

They have wild-wood handles, polished smooth, the kind of knives woodland spirits might hunt with. You admire them and their wave-like ripple, on the edges of the blades.

“Some old fart makes them,” Katsuki says from under his towel, where he’s trying to dry his hair aggressively. “They’re better than the cheap shit you have at yours.”

“I take care of my cheap shit,” you retort, slipping the one you’re holding back into it’s box. Your snob of a Pro Hero boyfriend has bought you the basics: a large chef’s knife, a hefty one for vegetables and a blade for bread.

(It’s only later when he’s asleep and you’re pressing your face against the relaxed, soft give of his arm that you get curious enough to wonder about them. A furtive search online will tell you more than you wanted to know—indeed made by some little old man who lived by the sea, a fifth-generation craftsman who sold his pieces for a cool 30,000 yen plus, each. They are now, officially, the most expensive piece of kitchenware you own).

When he gives you the kintsugi vase, without ceremony or fuss, you think: oh. This is it, this is how this man will show you you’re important to him—by giving you things you can use, in his home. Tangible proof he is trying to fit you into the secret heart of his life, in the tiny ways he knows how to, that are important to him. So you start mimicking him: you buy bigger towels for your own apartment—darker sheets for your bed, lighter in weight so they don’t trap him and make him sweat. You invest in a heavy, fat chopping board and learn how to diligently look after the knives he’s given you, though when he’s in your space he scrubs them with baking soda and oils them up anyway, carefully running his thumb along the edge of the blade. You learn he prefers his singlets at home, the dark cotton of them, and find good-quality basics for him, for when he’s at yours. He tries to grow you strawberries in his gleaming, intimidating kitchen—you in turn grow him pottles of herbs in your tinier one. It’s a small exchange of here’s-something-that-will-make-you-more-comfortable and I-saw-this-and-thought-of-you-and-wanted-it-in-my-space, over and over again, a constant promise to each other.

“Y’okay?” He asks one night, out of blue. He’s silent, lately—deep in his own head. Tonight’s been no different and as such you’re curled up opposite to him, on his wide couch—a new blanket across your lap. It’s wool; soft and heavy and in the blues and greens of the ocean, a map of the waves. It had just appeared today, draped over the back of the couch—waiting.

“We’re okay,” you promise him, smiling. His hand passes over your ankle—bared to him as it is—and you resist the urge to kick at him, instead making a game of trying to wedge your other foot under the warmth of his thigh, his ass, ignoring his grunt when you’re successful.

“Watch my damned nuts,” he says and you laugh silently, breathlessly; the kind you know he can feel the pull of, touching you like he is.

You think nothing of the moment, beyond how much you love him, how similar it is to others with him—but Katsuki keeps his habit, now, of reaching for your ankle if you’re at opposite ends of the couch. It’s only sometimes—only when he wants to touch you, have you closer. You start to press your feet up against whatever part of him you can reach in return, like that, just to be annoying—digging your toes into his rib cage, seeing how smoothly you can pet him with your foot. He swats at you, swears, wriggles away—but it’s how you play, how you poke and prod and annoy each other.

Your first birthday with him, when it comes, is marked by dinner at his—against the large windows of his living room, everything dimmed for the occasion as the city glimmers before you. On the table, amid tiny candles and the riot of orange flowers he managed to surprise you with is your birthday present: a thin, black velvet box.

You try to ignore it, scared despite yourself—scared of what, you don’t know, you can’t name. But Katsuki waits, not mentioning it even when you’re done with dinner, done with your lingering over dessert. It’s a patience that belies the molten fire under his skin; when you do finally open the little box—slow and shy under the weight of his gaze—you can almost warm your hands on it, the stir underneath him.

It’s a bracelet. Spider-thread thin gold glinting in the low light, dotted with diamonds, twinkling gently.

Katsuki tches as your fingers trace over it in wonder. “S’for your stupid foot,” he says, and you realise then and there that you’re looking at an anklet. One of your first significant pieces of fine jewellery, and it’s an anklet. It’s ridiculous. It’s your new favourite thing.

“I didn’t know you were such a pervert,” you tease. The answering scowl Katsuki gives you is ugly—and all show, your heart singing as he finds your fingers across the table to bump them with his knuckles.

(It’s later that night when you’re lolling your head back and breathing in as Katsuki moves above you, languid, that you realise—

It’s just like all the other things he’s given you. Tangible proof that you fit into the secret heart of his life, his hand circling your ankle; thumb brushing the dainty chains like reassurance.)

I hope a new day means a better day for you, Anon. 🥺 You bring me much joy by being here!!!! I probably will never write that Office Work AU out, mostly because I am very much a blue-collar girl LOL and have literally zero idea of what secretaries actually do, beyond… idk…. calling other secretaries on old rotary phones? Idk. Idk!!!