#katuski au

[sugarlywhispers]

Just thinking about Pro Hero Dynamight getting caught as a hostage by a villain. How the fuck did that happened? Don't ask. Not even Dynamight himself knows how. Yet he fucking got taken.

His arms are tied behind his back, some kind of cloth around his hands that are wet with some liquid that prevents him from activating his Quirk. Fucking villain is smart.

The piece of shit keeps laughing and threatening him, explicitly calling out how he is going to kill Number Two, Pro Hero Dynamight. He gets closer to where Bakugou is kneeling, a knife making pressure on his throat.

And then, an explosively loud thunder is heard at a distance. But it keeps approaching and getting even louder as it makes everything shake.

Bakugou Katsuki smirks.

The villain looks confused and angry, “What the fuck is that?!”

A strong explosion opens almost half of the room where Katsuki is being held captive and the holy image of you blesses their eyes.

As the villain falls to the floor in fear, you walk inside the room looking like a crazed demon brought from the deepest of hell. Lava surrounds you, the vivid color of burning, high temperature around your face and body makes every villain shit their pants.

But Bakugou Katsuki thinks you're the most fucking beautiful creature that has ever existed in this world.

“That is my wife,” he smiles fucking proud.

a.n; another little lava girl!reader small thingy that wouldn't leave my mind lol ✨️😉

[blondieeu]

early bird. katsuki b.

katsuki knew you better than you knew yourself. he knew your preferences, style, personality, even memorized your social security number since you always forgot it. he’d lived with you for damn near 5 years now.

“katsuki”

so when you wake him up in the late hours of the night, all needy and pent up he shouldn’t be surprised, he doesn’t even bother getting angry at you because you always tended to get needy in the night.

you shook him softly, his back turned to you as you tried to wake him. his body rising and falling with quiet snores that became irregular when you shook him.

“katsuki?”

“mm”

“katsuki!”

“what’s wrong”

he didn’t even bother opening his eyes, still laying there like a rock as he waiting for a response from you.

“can we fuck? please katsuki”

the male sighed and lazily grabbed his phone from the nightstand, squinting hard just to see the time. 2:06AM.

“you can’t sleep?”

the silence in the air already told him the answer, katsuki didn’t bother to keep questioning you as he began to shuffle out of his boxers.

“take your panties off.”

he muttered, helping you on your back and pulling the green underwear off your ankles, not without noticing the wet part on the middle of them and giving you a ‘you needed me that bad?’ look. he put your hand around his cock gesturing for you too put it in since he was too tired to find the hole.

bakugou moaned as he settled himself into your sopping cunny, strong hands almost making dents in the headboard as he rocked his hips into yours and watching your slick create thin strings between you and him.

your legs were loose around his waist, toes curling everytime he let himself go deep with your hands touching at his chest and stomach.

“shit.. pussy make me wan’ give you a fuckin’ baby.”

he grunted the words out with a small shake in his voice, like he was trying to hold back a couple moans. he tiredly let his head fall in between his strong, well built arms that held the headboard as he looked down at your face, eyes teary and mouth half opened while you clenched around his cock.

katsuki sat up from his position with hard-to-silence heaves to pull the black wife beater he had on over his head and throw it somewhere across the room as his body temperature started to rise.

he secured his position by grabbing onto your sides so he could fuck you harder. needy moans filled the warm room along with the quiet sound of skin connecting. you could’ve sworn that you went mute every couple of minutes from the surges of pleasure he was feeding into your cunny. wait could you hear how wet you were?

your long time boyfriend gave a lazy smile as he leaned down to make out with you as an attempt to get you quiet so you could her your cunny talk to him as well. quiet squelching could be heard if you really did listen in detail.

“hear her singin’ ? s’ all you—…shit girl..gets this bad at night?”

your pretty eyes were rolling as you tried your best to nod, barely even hearing him while you were concentrated on not cumming too fast and trying not to squirt since you knew you forgot towels. still, loud pornographic moans bounced off of your bedroom walls.

“y..es..kat-suki..”

“alright. ima take care of it baby”

a/n: i refuse to write a whole smutshot!!!!!

aizawa ver

blondieeu xx

[lilacgaby]

katsuki didn't expect to be here today.

with you, a gorgeous woman at that, laid in his arms. found passed out in the meadows, a flower bed beneath the two of you. time still, wind blowing through your bodies as you rested.

he had been out hunting, blowing off smoke. annoyed at his current situation of being forced to marry a woman he didn't know, one who'd likely never love him. one he knew he'd never love.

a life of loveless marriage, one he was raised under, scared him more than he'd pray tell.

he'd rushed out quickly, barging through the servants, the large doors, and his grand estate. only his bow and sword on him as he trekked through. familiar lands enveloped him, but the sight of you didn't. more importantly, the sight of you, who had started falling.

he was moving before he realized, catching you in muscled arms, the sad crunches of ruined flowers beneath him. though none compared to the sight of the one he held now.

his bow and sword discarded, hands moving out of instinct to wipe the tears off of your face. it was clear you weren't supposed to be out here, your dress one of a high noble, silks too expensive for a common folk to afford. a satchel.. one that bore an emblem that seemed all too familiar. thoug it didn't take his full attention. his body seemed all to keen to focus on you, his chest sought to match your breaths, hearts beating in tandem.

you awoke just a few moments later, eyes wide at the sight of him. he settled you next to him, as you spoke to him. "thank you, i don't know what came over me." you spoke gently, a tone of unconfidence as you looked down at your hands. a ring on your finger.

though it looked unfit on you.

"i understand." he replied gruffly, picking up his weapons behind him, hands feeling antsy to be occupied at the sight of the gorgeous stranger in front of him. "bad feelings 've been in the air lately, it seems."

you looked up at him finally, allowing him to get a clear view of your face. with eyes puffy, lips swollen and bitten, and cheeks red. he fought off a smile, this wasn't the time to be thinking of how cute you looked.

you let out a sigh of sorrow. "it's been getting to all of the heirs of age, it seems."

he held you for a minute longer, hands grasped together tightly, wordless comfort based of mutual understanding given. neither of you said anything, but you both felt like you needed it. he knew it in the way you didn't want to let him go. and you knew it in the way he didn't. it was hard for him to pull away, but he knew he had to.

after a beat, he stood up. lowering a hand to you. "no sense in worrying about the inevitable," you smiled slightly and took his hand. "right."

he looked at the sun, it was slowly falling, prime hunting time. "you should head back to wherever you came, it'll be night soon." you nodded, and brought a bag up from the floor, you opened it, and a bracelet was in your palms.

you handed it to him, the red ruby of the beads matching his eyes as they shinned in the sun. "take this, please."

he was taken aback, seemingly unaware of why you would do this for him. he tried pushing your hand away, but it was unrelenting. a stubborn look in your eyes and he rolled his, sliding it onto his wrist.

he moved to leave, when you grabbed your wrist. it was out of impulse, he felt the internal panic in your stance, your mouth hung open slightly, though no words escaping. finally though, you manage a weak, "your name?"

for the first time since his arrangement, he laughed. laughed at the simplicity of the gesture, at your expression, at his situation.

with a boyish smile, he rested your hand at your side, touch lingering for a second too long. "call me katsuki."

he turned to leave, feet feeling a little more heavy now, knowing he was walking away from you. someone he seemed to get along with so easily.

you yelled your name after him, the crunches of the grass underneath your shoes fading away too. you were gone now.

he looked back at you, feeling the beads of the bracelet under nimble fingers, before squeezing it in his palm.

the hunting went poorly, he was too distracted to aim. the night went painstakingly fast, the arrival of the family, his wife, the agenda for the day.

uncomfortable traditional clothes felt even heavier now, the chains of being binded to someone he didn't know being heavier than any chain he could break physically.

his head that was slumped on the table was now forced up, his mother kicking him in the foot to remind him to at least try and be polite. he sighed, a feeling of dread hanging over him as the footsteps neared.

each one was sealing his fate, the door click the nail in the coffin.

but all his negativity vanished, all poor thoughts ceasing at the sight of you. your eyes were just as wide as his, your hand over your face in shock. the entourage beside you confused at your expression.

"madam?"

"katsuki?" you whispered under your breath.

though he managed to hear you. how could he not when you demanded his attention so seamlessly?

but now it was his turn to be speechless. speechless at the prospect of your rank, of your arrival,

and at the realization that he'd be married to you.

tags: @k0z3me @darhinadadragon @maddietries @exoticrasin @lavendarstarz @hisonlyobsession @i-the-fluffo @cookielovesbook-akie @frosted-flakes @irenne-stans @lulumi1u @bakunis @twirlyphim @drawingforshitsandgiggles

[sp4ceboo]

As Selfish as Love: Merman!Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

genre: merfolk au, fantasy au, merman!bakugou x witch!reader, strangers to lovers, bakugou x f!reader, smut and angst and fluff

summary: in a world infested with purgers of magic, neither a clandestine witch nor a lone merman can remain safe for long.

tw: 18+, smut (afab reader, p in v, bkg has a merman cock, marking + biting, oral f receiving, fingering, crying during sex but not like you think, unprotected sex, creampie), violence, blood, death, vivid gore, grief, reader treated as a tool by evil ppl, random worldbuilding, questionable medical knowledge, kinda plot heavy, other stuff i don't remember

wc: 19.8k

For years, all you’ve known is darkness.

Chained by the wrist to a ring in the wall, swaddled and asphyxiating in the blackness of the brig - it is there where your closest companion has become the dark. It is the absence of light: not only because they do not deem you human enough to spare lamp oil on you, but because the kiss of the sun has been reduced to a foreign concept, a distant, syrupy memory.

Every morning when that door opens, letting light leak in and crawl painfully between the cracks of the roughly hewn floorboards like an intruder, you repeat your name back to yourself, remind yourself who you are - a witch, a survivor, a person at the end of their tether but that all the same does what they can to keep the shadows at bay.

For the darkness is not just the absence of light: it is the absence of hope, and if you let it take you, your very substance will dissolve and you will sink beneath obsidian waves and melt away without a sound. They will have won.

This is something you will not allow.

White knuckled, you hold onto memories of the past the way a drowning man clings to driftwood. They swirl in the currents of your mind, fickle things. Sometimes they are so tangible you can feel the grass beneath your feet and the bracing wind of the highlands on your face even in the still, humid air of the brig, sometimes they eddy away before you can catch a glimpse.

You were barely a woman when they caught you, when they tore you out from where you’d been rooted to the earth, ripping through the stitches that held your life together. You were young, and you were naive and ignorant. This would not have happened if I had been as I am now, you think, but as you are now is shackled in the belly of a ship built for the single purpose of hunting merfolk.

They hunt to purge. Their so-called divine has commanded the eradication of magic, and so that is what each and every child is trained for from birth. The land has been rife with their conquest for centuries, making witches such as your kind unheard of, yet the sea for all its worth has lain mostly untouched until recently.

You are jealous of the merfolk. The magic must come easily to them, because they have not had to suppress it out of fear - it seethes in their blood, potent as an ocean storm, imbued within their essences as salt is in seawater. For this, they are feared, and for this, the hunters are more so hellbent on their extermination.

Over your years spent in the hull’s constant night you’ve learnt that your captors are the most celebrated hunters of their time, held above everything but their leader and their divine. They are revered among their people, and that is why they are allowed to chain a witch in their brig and force her to heal wounds sustained from hunting the undeserving - because they are strong enough and honourable enough to not be corrupted by your magic.

There is nothing honourable about the way they treat you.

Though you are human as they are, you are lower than an animal to them. They have no care for your limits - oftentimes, you are pushed to heal and heal and heal until you are exhausted, and yet you refuse to succumb when the darkness calls, because each time you meet their eyes, without fail, you see, buried deep within, is fear.

They fear what is unknown, what is not under their control, and every time you refuse to break when they beat you just for entertainment, every time they push you almost to death yet you survive, you wrest back an inch of control. You are needed, and that is something you will use one day, when the time is right. For now, you collect those sparks of fear in their eyes and let it feed the fire nestled within your soul that fends off the growing dark.

It is a day like any of the other days. Stirring in your fraying blankets, you wake up to the sound of the crew’s strident voices, and as it is sometimes, you almost forget that they are cruel and stained by their own wrong doings because for now, there is no talk of blood shed, just breakfast. You hate that they can seem so normal with so many innocent lives on their hands.

The day very quickly progresses into the type you have come to dread.

They neglect to bring you your daily portion of bread and water, nor the echinacea you had asked for more of, and it can only mean one thing - a hunt is on. Already, you can feel the unruly lurch of the ship as it skims over the waves, picking up speed. The crew’s voices become louder, crowing and eager, and you despise them so deeply your heart twists and becomes an ugly thing in your chest.

Almost imperceptible, you can hear the rattle and hiss of ropes as they ready their harpoons. This part is the worst, where the darkness closes in so near that you can feel its cold touch brush up your arms and its breath ghosting over your face. Sometimes you hear the anguished cries of the merfolk, sometimes the whoops and victory cries of the crew are loud enough to drown it out. You don’t know which is worse.

After will come the wounded, grinning still and soaked in blood of two kinds - theirs and their victims. You are always numb to it by then, turning a blind eye to the crimson dipped trophies they grip in dirty hands: lopped off fins and strips of scales, sometimes small enough to be a child’s.

How they can butcher beings as beautiful as the merfolk and think it the right thing to do, you do not know.

It makes you sick to your stomach, that somehow you have become their accomplice, stitching their wounds with your magic, saving their lives so they can kill again. You vow that one day, you will strike back, but what good can you do now, trapped in the bowels of a boat that was designed as a vessel for murder?

You have to try. You have to survive, if just to try. You are yet to come up with a method for escaping past what you have already attempted, but if you do not, more lives will be lost, more bloodshed that you had inadvertently aided. Right now, on deck, the patterns for it to happen all over again are falling into place.

You’re sure that this time will be no different.

And so you wait for the injured to come, almost defeated if not for the hard, bright little ball of hate settled in your throat. You wait, and you wait, listening to the strange thumping above that you can’t decipher, and still they don’t bring you their wounded. Neither comes their usual sickening shouts of triumph - you wonder if the merfolk managed to escape. You hope desperately that they did.

Listless, you turn your head as footsteps approach. There are more than normal. You can’t count exactly - five, maybe six, and they all walk with a strange irregular gait as they approach the brig.

I hope the merfolk put up a magnificent fight, you think as the key scrapes in the lock. I hope that taught them; you know it never does. The more damage the merfolk do while they fight for the lives of their mates and children, the more they are damned as unnatural and beastly and deserving of the fates that are doled out to them by men.

With a rusty squeal, the door swings wide, and with it comes the same influx of light that always spills greedily through, stinging your eyes and making them ache - the doing of a tiny, wayward star moulded from precious lamp oil. You blink away the tears that well up at your lash line, testament to your accustomation to the dark, and then blink again.

Back when you took the warmth of the sun on your face for granted, you lived too far inland to ever see one in the flesh. You were still a witch under the disguise of a healer, though. You’d heard tales, seen artists’ renderings and gorey body parts wrenched off as sick memorabilia.

None of those could have ever come close to preparing you for the sight before your eyes.

A merman.

Deep in enemy territory - so deep, in fact, that all those surrounding him, bar you, have murdered more than dozens of his kind each. He is on a galleon rammed bow to stern with killers. And yet, despite it, he has not fallen victim to the purge. Yes, there is a splintered harpoon sunken into his side, yes, he is limp and broken, but even so, shallowly, his chest rises and falls.

He breathes. He breathes, and even that is beautiful. The lamp’s light reflects off his scales; he is mainly jet black, but broad swathes of orange run across the length of his powerful tail like they were drawn with the loving stroke of a painter’s brush. In parts, they darken into a ruby red that glitters and winks as the lamp light dances.

Or maybe that’s just blood.

There’s a lot of it. It soaks into the sheet they strain to carry between them, pools in the dip his weight makes, streaks in smears down his chest and face, coats his hands and is embedded under his sharp nails. You hope that all of it is not his, that he made them regret whatever they must have done to get a merman vulnerable enough and far enough from his pod to capture him.

Deep lacerations cut all along his chest and tail, and one of the spines that extend from his sail-like dorsal fin is bent in a way that must mean it is broken. A smattering of scales reach wide across his shoulders and back and down his arms, some of them twisted and bent out of shape. Your eyes fall to the harpoon buried just below his hip, and you feel the bite of your nails digging into your palms.

“Heal it,” commands the man holding the corner of the sheet closest to you. “We’ve been ordered to bring back a merfolk to be studied. It must be in peak condition.”

You frown as they begin to manoeuvre all three metres of merman into the brig. Studied? They must be looking for a weakness to exploit. After all, merfolk succumb less easily to flesh wounds than humans - the magic of the sea resides in their very bones.

A hand fists the front of your shirt and you’re jerked forward. You can feel the hunter’s foul breath on your cheek, feel the violence roiling just below the surface of his skin, and yet you cannot tear your eyes from the merman until you’re struck across the face. Reeling back, you raise your head to look at him, a hand flying up to cradle your jaw where it has begun to swell.

“Are you deaf? What are you waiting for?” he spits.

Your brain is still stuck on the fact that there is a merman before you, alive on a ship full of specialised mermen killers, but your body has gone through these motions many times before and brings you to kneel by your patient so fast your chain jingles crassly in the relative quiet, your hands already working to gather herbs for a poultice that will slow the bleeding.

Glancing over your shoulder, you see your captors filing out of the door, the last of them grumbling and wiping his hands on his trousers as if being near enough to hit you had sullied him. Realisation dawns abruptly on you.

They’re leaving you alone with the merman.

“Wait,” you call.

Disquiet grows in your stomach. As much as you hate the life forced upon you, serving as a tool for men who would not hesitate to kill you if you ran out of worth, you have gotten used to it, and this merman at your feet has disrupted your delicate equilibrium, tripping you as you balance on a knife’s blade.

You have never had problems with thinking fast in a pinch. You are a healer, you are accustomed to endless wells of blood and snapped bones sticking through skin. Conversely, you are not accustomed to the sight of a half conscious merman taking up the majority of your floor space, a single fingernail on his hand no doubt potent with more magic than is contained in your whole body.

Your tongue is slow, your mind slower, but you force the words out, emboldened because whether he likes it or not, this merman is leverage for you. There is no one else on board that could save him.

“I will need a lamp indefinitely, while I’m in the process of healing.”

You realise how important the health of this merman is to their study because the hunter holding the lamp brings it over with no words of criticism, just the curl of his lip when you draw near enough to take it from him.

Its metal is warm in your hands, and you cup it in your palms - a little sun that clears the clinging shadows from the brig like they’re cobwebs. Carefully, you set it on the floor next to you, just outside the border of the canvas the merman lies upon, sitting back on your heels as the door slams shut.

You stare at the merman for a weighty moment. If it did, there’s no telling what organ the harpoon may have punctured - do his intestines extend all the way down his tail? Or are they in the same place as a human’s, and his tail is just muscles, like legs would be?

Never in your life did you think merfolk anatomy would have any significance to you. Even if you’d thought it did, there wouldn’t be any books for you to study on it. A hysterical, jittery laugh builds in your throat, wringing itself from you when you spot the strange slit - for lack of better words - that sits just below where his skin turns to obsidian scales.

The nervous sound breaks the silence, jolting you into action. Never mind his anatomy, he’s still bleeding out. Somehow, you need to get that harpoon out of him: the hunters don’t clean them off once they’ve used them, and if you’re not vigilant, infection will get him before whatever they’ve got in store will.

Determinedly, you scoot closer to his lower half, stretching out a hand to test the area around the wound. In preparation, you will your healing magic to rise to the surface, and it fizzles at the surface of your palms, warming them.

Your fingertips have barely brushed over his scales when pain slashes across your cheek.

The merman jerks away from you so hard that he cries out, and you wince as you see the wound pull wide, blood oozing out from where it gapes. Gingerly, you touch a hand to your cheek - one of his spines had glanced off your face as he’d moved away, its tip sharp enough to shed blood.

Any human patient would have lost consciousness moments after being hit by the harpoon that’s buried in his tail, and if by a miracle they hadn’t yet, the pain caused by what he just did surely would have knocked them out. Inexplicably, he’s still conscious, blood red eyes glaring at you with blatant distrust.

You hadn’t gotten a chance to look closely at his face before - you’d been too busy ogling his tail. Spikey, sandy hair casts a shadow over his eyes. They glow, carmine and half crazed, no doubt with the same agony that pinches at his face and curls his lip, revealing sharp canines that he bares at you, twin ivory warnings.

A rattling, hissing sound emanates from deep in his chest when you attempt to move closer again, his dorsal fin undulating in an obvious threat display. You can tell it hurts him; the spine you’d noticed before is definitely broken, the parts of the fin around it drooping and limp. He growls when he catches you looking.

You really, really don't know what to do.

Your skin prickles, the hairs on the back of your neck rising. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you were left alone with him. Aside from the obvious hostility, his face is effectively blank; there’s nothing in his gaze except the primal instinct to survive, and the unspeakable, offensive terror of a wounded animal backed into a corner and trapped there.

There’s no getting through to him with words. You remember the night you were ripped from your cottage by the hunters, the way you clawed and screamed until your voice was gone and your nails were torn and bleeding. You know what it’s like to have the adrenaline coursing through your veins so fast it burns, you know what it’s like to feel the anger and fear blend together in your chest until it strips away your humanity and you’re reduced to nothing more than a feral, wild eyed animal.

Slowly, you get to your feet, your chains rattling. He growls, making that hissing sound again, and despite his size, despite the muscles straining in his chest and the magic you can sense in his form, he looks small. You grit your teeth. The shock is beginning to wear off, burnt to ashes by a roaring fury that licks up your throat and fills your lungs.

You wonder if he had a pod. You wonder if they got massacred before his eyes.

Ignoring the trembling of your hands, you scoop up the piece of dried fish that remains from yesterday’s meal. It’s the only food you have, so you turn and offer it to him - when he doesn’t hiss immediately, you slide it over to him on the dented tin plate it had been on.

Tentatively, the merman picks up the fish, his nose very obviously wrinkling. As he examines your peace offering, you notice his hands are webbed up to the lowest knuckle and are a little larger than a human man’s, the fingers longer and the nails considerably sharper.

Relief fills you as he begins to chew at the fish, and you retreat to your pile of blankets, sitting down and half facing away to give him as much privacy as is possible in as small a space as the brig. You begin to make a poultice for him, crushing the herbs between your fingers because you’re not allowed a mortar and pestle and depositing them on one of the dishes you have lying around.

Once you’re done, you turn back to him. The edge in his eyes has softened a touch, and when you scoot over to settle closer to him, he doesn’t make a sound, instead just leaning away a little, watching you warily. Warningly, he hisses when you lift your hand, his red eyes flashing.

“I’m going to have to touch you to put this poultice on,” you tell him. “It will reduce the bleeding and might alleviate the pain.”

He twitches but remains silent. You wonder briefly if he even understands - people don’t talk to merfolk these days. They either run or they kill. For all you know, he might speak some ancient language of the sea that you have no hope in understanding.

You scoop the poultice up in your fingers and lean forward, aiming to ease him in by angling first for a smaller wound situated just over a hip bone on a human would be (you’re not even sure if his equivalent qualifies as a hip seeing as he lacks legs).

“Don’t,” he snarls, his voice guttural and rasping, like he hasn’t uttered a word in years.

Fumbling, you almost drop the dish. You guess that answers one of your many questions - he can speak your language, although you presume one word doesn’t really express fluency. For a moment, you consider telling him that they’ll no doubt beat you for not healing him, but it seems rather insignificant since it’s nothing they haven’t inflicted on you before.

Sighing, you sit back on your heels and look at him, defeated. He regards you with those same crimson eyes as before, but they’ve cooled considerably and hold traces of scathing criticism you find you aren’t the fondest of.

You begin to realise that he’s not going to give you any explanation as to why he doesn’t want you to treat him. He doesn’t trust you, most likely - you haven’t given him any reason to think otherwise of you, rather, you’d gawped openly at him. You’re not surprised he hasn’t taken a liking to you. You wouldn’t either.

So you retreat back to what has now become your corner of the brig, since the other three are taken up by the length of his tail and the doorway. On a whim, you prepare yourself a turmeric tea; it’s anti-inflammatory and you know you’ll be needing it sooner or later.

It takes a day, but one of the hunters barges in, light sneaking in past the outline of his silhouette. You don’t know any of them by name, nor would you want to, but you do know that this particular one is the first mate.

The merman hasn’t let you near him still, and although at points his eyes are closed, you’re worried that if you try to sneak up on him, he’ll move away again and tear open the parts of the wound around the harpoon that have partially closed up. The perimeter of blood soaked canvas beneath him has slowed its expansion but still grows.

It’s amazing that he’s survived this long while still losing blood. You presume merfolk must be rather resilient, unsurprisingly - the sea is no easy place to live in, nor is it made any easier by its recent infestation of merfolk hunters.

“Did you not hear your orders yesterday, you useless bitch?”

Passively, you look up at him as he looms closer. “I did.”

“So you don’t want to cooperate, then,” he snaps. “Do I have to encourage you?”

You don’t get to answer. A fist full of scarred knuckles collides with your nose, and your head snaps back, white exploding across your vision as the hunter shoves you backwards. Your back hits the ground and before you can even think of scrambling away, you’re kicked hard in the ribs.

You don’t try to resist it. You’ve learnt it’s better to take it than to fight and make him hit harder.

Red hot pain shoots through you when the tip of his boot catches your chin, clacking your teeth together. You cry out as your blood fills your mouth, streams from your nose, stains his knuckle bones. Hands up in a pitiful attempt at protecting your face, you curl up on the floor, as small as you can. Your ribs throb, your chain trapped awkwardly beneath your body.

You’re still balled up with your arms over your head long after he slams the door behind him. You ache all over, and your lower lip is trembling treacherously. Tears press at the backs of your eyes so you squeeze them shut: you’re not going to cry.

You need to get up.

You need to down that damned turmeric tea you made, just to feel the ginger burn as it slips down your throat.

When you open your eyes, the merman is staring. You grimace as you heave yourself to sit upright, the metallic taste of blood still coating your tongue and curdling until it’s sour. His face is unreadable, shuttered and devoid of any emotion. He doesn’t speak, although that isn’t exactly atypical.

“Well, now you’re not the only one bleeding all over the floor,” you mutter, unable to keep the resentment from your tone.

You turn your back to him as you set your nose with a grunt, letting your magic flow through your fingers and knit your flesh back together. Running a hand over your ribs, you check if any are broken, but when none are, you don’t heal them up; you’ll need to save your energy. The hunter didn’t bring food for you, and you doubt he’ll be bringing you any more until you treat the merman. That could take anything from an hour to a week.

Falteringly, you glance over your shoulder. He stares off to a place far away, a place you cannot see. A scowl furrows his brow, and you sigh, wondering if he thinks of the sea and the freedom that was torn away from him the way it was for you.

Curling up on your blankets, you pull one over yourself, rolling to face the wall and shutting your eyes. Loud in the darkness, your stomach growls, and you twitch but ignore the urge to look over your shoulder and stare accusingly at the merman - you too would not trust a human if all their kind had brought him was pain.

Your ribs hurt. It is alright, though. You’ve fallen asleep through worse.

When you wake, the first thing you do is crouch down beside the merman to check his wounds. The rattle of your chains makes him open his eyes, and you see that his face has paled, the alertness in his gaze dimmer now the adrenaline has worn off. As is becoming clear, he’s more resistant to injury than humans are, but there’s a worrying amount of blood saturating the canvas sheet beneath him, and you doubt he’ll make it much longer without help.

If he lets you near, what you’re going to have to do is far from ideal. The hunters’ harpoons are barbed and vicious, but you can’t exactly keep it in, and you can’t exactly cut it out without risking more blood loss. You’re just going to have to yank on it and hope it doesn’t destroy anything too vital on its way out.

“I’m going to have to take the harpoon out,” you tell him measuredly, gauging his facial expression.

He simply stares at you, his face blank but for the slight pinch of his brow. Shadows bathe half of his face; there is barely any lamp oil left to burn. The little flame flickers and sputters, letting darkness dance up the close walls of the brig, and if you do not hurry, you may have to treat him in the dark.

Slowly, you lift your hand, letting it hover over the splintered end of the harpoon. Tension bleeds into his body, the set of his jaw tight and his hands fisting as if he’s bracing himself, but he doesn’t growl or flinch away. Expectancy and resignation lurk in his gaze.

You don’t like that he won’t say anything in response even though he’s proven he can talk. You can feel his eyes boring into the back of your head as you gather your materials: the poultice from yesterday, a roll of bandages, a thick strip of worn leather. The latter you give to him, sighing when he turns it over in his hands, quizzical,

“Bite down on it,” you instruct him as you roll up your sleeves. “Either that or it’ll be your tongue.”

He frowns, but does as you say. You glance up at him to check if he’s ready. The hard lines of his body stand out, taut as a bowstring. He looks brittle, as if he might break and crumble into dust the moment you touch him.

Years ago, when you healed children’s scraped knees and the broken bones of men who had fallen from their ladders while fixing leaks in roofs, you had the words to comfort your patients. These you lost to the eternal darkness of the merfolk hunters’ ship, and these you wish to find again but cannot.

Instead, you murmur a quiet warning as you kneel by his tail, wiping your sweaty palms off on your trousers before getting a strong two handed grip on the end of the harpoon. Under your breath, you count down: three, two, one. Pull.

It makes a squelching, sucking noise as it comes out. You cringe but keep on tugging - if you stop now, it’ll be worse for both of you. He cries out, voice ragged and spilling over with agony, his tail arcing off the floor, and you feel the movement in the way the harpoon jerks in your hands with the bunching of his muscles.

All of a sudden, the resistance disappears. His tail fin slaps against the floor as he goes limp, both his and your heavy panting filling the room. You’re left with the splintered harpoon in your hands, a chunk of flesh and a twisted scale still clinging to one of the bloodied, rusted spokes. He spits the strip of leather out and it lands near your knee.

Carefully, you set down the harpoon and begin applying the poultice straight onto the weeping gash in his side, spreading the rest over the bandages which you bind tightly around his tail. Leaking from your fingertips, your magic suffuses across his skin as you work; you can’t heal him accurately without knowing much about his inner workings, but it should help to stave off any infection.

He shelters his face in the crook of his elbow, and though he tucks his other hand tightly to his chest, you can see the way he trembles.

You give him his space by swiftly moving on, busying yourself with his other injuries. You splint the spine in his dorsal fin, ignoring the way his hands shake and gently placing the arm crossed over his torso by his side so you can use your magic to clean and close up the various cuts and slashes littering his scar flecked body.

His scales seem to be damp, even though it’s almost been a full twenty four hours since he was brought in. It must be seawater somehow, you decide, or a sweat-like substance that keeps his tail wet enough when he hasn’t been in water for a while. He doesn’t look the most comfortable: he’s probably not used to having to support his own weight without the buoyancy of the waves.

There are little scars all over him, his skin a map of cicatrices, but the one that catches your attention is raised and jagged, spanning from the middle of his sternum to his navel. You touch your index finger to the centre of it, and he inhales sharply, flinching away.

“Sorry,” you mutter, pulling back, half expecting him not to hear you.

He’s silent for a while, ignoring your apology, but then comes a begrudging: “Thank you.”

Though he won’t see it - he’s still hiding his face from you - you shrug. “You should never have been hurt in the first place.”

He’s quiet again, lying still enough for you to imagine him dead if not for the rise and fall of his broad chest. You slouch, the energy having leaked from your body in order to mend his. The lamp finally gutters and winks out, leaving in its absence a tiny pinprick of light, a vanishing ember at the wick’s tip, buried in ashes.

When you tear your gaze away from your expired little sun, you’re confronted with a pair of blazing eyes. Pinned on you, they glow in the darkness like two pools of blood, but you find their luminosity strangely comforting, like Arcturus and Betelgeuse to a sailor: stars to lead you on your course.

“You are a witch, are you not?”

You jump at the sound of his voice, rough around the syllables but measured, as if he rolled them around on his tongue before he spoke. The scarlet light from his eyes dims a little as they narrow (you’re not sure if that’s meant to convey amusement or distaste) and you become aware that maybe he can see a lot more in the dark than you can.

“I am,” you confirm, still squinting at him - to no avail.

“Why do you not fight them, then?” He demands, his tone darkening. “Surely you cannot like it here.”

You scoff. “Of course I don’t like it here. You think I like the way they beat me?”

He’s silent, and though you still cannot see his face, you sense his scowl.

Sighing, you reign yourself in. This merman comes the closest to being an ally than all the others that have entered the brig, and you cannot squander this. He may not trust you, and you may be ignorant and ill informed of his kind, but you both have a common enemy, and though he may not like the thought, you are similar enough: the raw energy that flows through him is the same that you harness to perform your magic.

“I could fight, but there is nowhere for me to go if I escape the ship - there is just the sea,” you explain. “In the end, they are scared of all those associated with magic, even the witch they keep chained in the dark. The moment they deem that the risk I pose outweighs the use I have to them, they’ll kill me.”

He’s quiet again while he processes what you’ve said. “And what of me, witch? Why have they not killed me yet?”

“They want to study you,” you reply, wincing at how harsh your voice comes out. “I think we’re quite far from their lands - a few months’ travel, maybe - but it’s hard to tell.”

“What - ”

“Enough questions,” you cut him off. “My turn.”

A plethora of questions crowd your mind, but as you think of the merman in front of you, you find that they can wait, because although he must have stories of the sea that you’d only dreamed of hearing, and although magic you could learn endlessly from is threaded through his being, he is primarily, before anything, a soul. He is a soul: a soul with eyes that make the permanent night you are lost within just a little more manageable.

You will have to find out whether the kraken is real or not later; you will ask him about selkie skins afterwards.

Instead, you ask him his name, and tell him your own.

Bakugou, he grunts in response before turning his head to face the wall, clearly ending the conversation. Frowning, you stare at his back - or where you presume his back is, in the darkness - and mull over the name he provided you with; you are certain he has given you the one he gives to strangers. You suppose that is what you are.

Pulling absently at your chain, you sit with your back to the wall, your knees to your chest, and think about the merman, about Bakugou. For a moment, you are seized by the absurd belief that his most grave injury is a bleeding heart, but that cannot be true, for he has not said anything that indicates it. Questions find their way to your tongue, but you let them stick there, stifling them before they deign to interrupt the silence.

Neither of you move from your positions until the door opens, revealing the first mate. Squinting, you rise to your feet, a muscle feathering in your jaw as he purposefully kicks Bakugou in the shoulder, lifting his lamp high so he can see the bandages you’d applied.

“I’ll need a top up on lamp oil if I’m to continue the healing process,” you announce. “And we’ll need food and water. He’ll have - ”

You hesitate, glancing over at Bakugou, but he just lifts a shoulder and makes a face of disgust that you know isn’t conscious. Deliberating for a moment, you wrack your brain for any clues about merfolk diets.

“Fresh fish,” you decide. “And crabs. The bigger the better. Also, he’ll need a tub big enough for him, filled with seawater.”

“Watch the way you address me,” the first mate snaps, taking a step forward.

You shrug. “You wanted him healed, didn’t you?”

Your first two requests come within the next few hours, appeasing the increasing hollowness that had resided in your stomach and sending the shadows inhabiting the brig retreating up the walls and into the corners of the room, but the tub doesn’t come until two days after. It is barely watertight, plugged with tar and made from rough sawn wood.

You haven’t exchanged words with Bakugou since you asked his name and he gave you one, though you find yourself on the receiving end of his red eyes more often than not. He’s silent as the hunters bring the tub in, as they fill it with pails of seawater, as they leave and slam the brig’s door behind them. He’s silent, even as he slips into the tub and into a thin slice of his home.

And then, after a moment, he turns to you, and there’s something painful and cutting and cynical in his eyes.

“You know, the water doesn’t speed up the healing.”

You nod. “I know it doesn’t. You were uncomfortable.”

His eyes blaze. “What do you want?”

You regard him, regard the intensity of the fire in his gaze and the way his chest heaves. His tail fin hangs out of the tub, but even so, water swills over the side and splashes onto the floor like it can sense his agitation. Loudly, the links of your chain clank against each other as you cross your arms. 

“I do not want anything, Bakugou.”

He narrows his eyes. “All humans I have known but one are cruel, witch. You wish for me to owe you something.”

“I don’t,” you reply, noticing the strange look that creeps onto his face. “Who is this human you hold in such high esteem?”

A distant look erases the furrow in his brow, and you get the sense he is no longer talking to you when he speaks again: he is lost in some place far away, a place coated in the golden sheen that tints all good memories. His voice turns soft as he brushes his fingers over the scar on his chest.

“His name was Izuku,” he murmurs. “But I called him Deku.”

“Deku?” You echo, your voice crudely loud all of a sudden.

A flash of grief slashes across his features like lightning on the high seas, there and gone so fast you almost don’t catch it. It’s like a switch flips, and suddenly shutters slam down behind his eyes and his expression melts away until his face is blank and cold. Regret sinks heavy in your stomach.

You wince. “I’m sorr - ”

“He’s dead,” Bakugou growls.

He doesn’t speak to you for three days. There is a certain rawness in his blood red eyes that makes you gentler as you change his dressings and reapply your poultices. He looks at you as if he hates that you are healing him instead of leaving him to die, so you avoid his gaze, staring instead at the scars that cover him like warpaint.

You get the sense that he is mourning this human he told you of all over again, and you cannot help but see the weight of it in the tension of his body and wonder if you could alleviate the pain.

On the fourth day, he shuts the vulnerability away somewhere deep inside of him, buried far enough beneath other things that he can pretend it never even existed. Yet you remember it, still vivid and fresh in your mind as you lie curled up on your side, watching the lamp’s flame until your eyes burn. He breaks the silence by clearing his throat, his gaze fixed on you.

“Witch,” Bakugou says softly. “How did they catch you?”

You glance over at him. “I was young and foolish and alone. It’s easy to snatch a girl from her home under those circumstances.”

“You have been here for years, then.”

“I have,” you sigh. “I tried to escape once. That’s why I’m chained down.”

“A weaker soul would not have survived this darkness,” he remarks solemnly. “You are strong, witch.”

You look down at your hands, watching your fingers fidget to and fro in your lap. Your tongue is frozen in your mouth - you had not spoken properly to someone in years before he was captured, and his behaviour confuses you. No words come to mind that express how grateful you are for his acknowledgement.

“Thank you,” you settle with in the end.

He hums but other than that remains silent.

Later you discuss with him the possible logistics of an escape. He explains to you that he cannot channel the magic the way you can, but that he is soaked in the magic of the sea; he is unable to use it for spells because it is innately part of him, enhancing him beyond human capabilities. Together, you come to the conclusion that you must get off the ship before you arrive at the hunters’ lands, or your chances of freedom will have narrowed to almost nothing.

An actual method of subduing or injuring the hunters enough to allow an exit route evades you, though. After all, you are chained to the wall, and there’s no easy way of moving Bakugou - he is, evidently, far too heavy for you to drag around all by yourself.

Uneasy silence falls over the brig. You stare at the lamp again: with it, your ability to see has been restored, along with a piece of your humanity, but now its light seems to illuminate how small a space you are contained in, how strong the chain binding you to the wall is.

As you drift off to sleep that night, you find yourself gripped by the fear that Bakugou will never return to the sea, and instead, they will inflict unspeakable torments upon him.

You will be the one who kept him alive for them. You will be the one who he grows to hate, because you had the chance to let future pain pass him by, but you saved him, and by doing so, you failed to spare him from their torture. And while they cut him open and study his insides, you will be somewhere far away, still risking yourself to heal their most elite, almost as if they are beloved to you.

The thought gnaws at you as the weeks pass. Blood no longer soaks the bandages wrapped around his tail; his dorsal fin is almost healed. He is gaining strength, more rapidly through your magic, and it is clear he has shaken off death many times before if his scars are testament to anything. In particular, the one on his chest draws you: though it is long healed, you can tell it was deep.

He almost died back then, too - the scar tissue around its edges is strange, lumpy and malformed as if he was kneaded back together by a child who saw his flesh as nothing more than clay harvested gleefully from a river bank. Even so, the shape of it is familiar. You know you shouldn’t pry. You remember the way he flinched away when you first touched it, but you ask, anyway.

“Bakugou,” you ask him once you’ve finished changing his bandages. “What did you do to get a merfolk’s blade stuck in your chest?”

He snarls. “All you do is fucking dig, you shitty witch.”

“I - ”

Hissing, he swipes at you half heartedly, and you stumble backwards, dodging his fist and almost tripping on your chain, caught off guard by the agitation in his eyes. Stunned, you gape at him. The fury is vehement on his face, evident in the grit of his teeth and the tremor in his hands as he grips the side of the tub; you can tell he despises how he is trapped in here with you, fending you off with the sting of his words.

You open your mouth. You’re not certain what you’re supposed to say, other than an apology that he will shake off easily, but you hope that words will form on your tongue. He levels his gaze on you, and this time, within it dwells an overwhelming sorrow that stops you short.

“Don’t try,” he whispers. “You cannot change the past.”

Brow furrowed, you stare at him. You take in the pain carved all over him, and this, you realise, not his scars, is his warpaint - he holds it close to him, like a cloak of inwardly turned, savage blades, reminding him to keep his distance. It is present in the bow of his head, the slump of his shoulders, a weight so heavy it threatens to rend his flesh from his bones.

You get to your feet, and in the lamp light, the single tear that rolls down his face is turned to solid gold.

Balefully, he looks at you, yet he holds still as you reach out and smooth it away with your thumb. A rawness resides in his eyes that you wish you could soothe as you catch the next tear that spills over, gently as if he is made of porcelain.

“You need not bear the weight of your world on your shoulders, Bakugou.”

Your words wrench a sob from him. His fingers curl tight around your wrist, tearing your hand away from his face, silently weeping as he grips you so hard you begin to lose feeling in your palm. You watch as the anguish in his eyes evolves into anger, harsh and brittle and bleak.

“Get away from me,” he spits, voice strangled, and yet he does not release you, so you perch on the side of the tub and make a show of not looking at him so he is not alone in his privacy.

It’s then that you realise that whether or not he likes it, you have gotten through to him. In the month that goes by, sometimes he is cold and aloof, keeping to himself, and sometimes he allows you close enough that you can feel his warmth. You find you savour his company when it’s there.

His wound is fully healed, a pink scar bordered by healing scales, and his dorsal fin spine is back in working order. You check up on him still, every other day or so, careful to monitor them in case you have somehow healed him wrong, careful to keep your regular intersections with him, because although you would never admit it to him, he is amusing, and he keeps the darkness at bay.

You are unsure what he thinks of you. Sometimes, he smacks you upside the head with no real force, and you dare to label it as affectionate. He gives you the name which he gives to those that mean more to him than strangers, too - well, you wring it out of him.

(“Bakugou, what’s your name?”

A scoff. “Witch, have you hit your head?”

“We both know you’re not obliged to answer, so if you’re not going to tell me, spare me the insults.”

Pause. “Katsuki. It’s Katsuki.”)

There are times when he has nightmares, too. You surmise that most of them are about Deku, and that the scar branding his chest, the one made by a merfolk forged weapon, is linked somehow to this dead human. Incomprehensibly, he mutters in his sleep, snarling about krakens and storms and sometimes even witches, but it always leads back to Deku.

Sometimes he protests against him, speaking a language you do not fully understand, cursing and thrashing so hard you fear the tub will splinter, while sometimes he proclaims his love, his voice slurred as he slumbers, but each time, without fail, he begs: forgive me, Izuku, forgive me, Deku, I’m sorry.

Katsuki is unaware of what he gives away in his sleep. Often, he settles down quickly after raising his voice, but sometimes you look over to see him stiff and terrified and shake him awake; he then jolts upright, the water sloshing out of the tub as he reaches for you, his stricken eyes searching yours for something you do not know the identity of, but he always finds.

He does not let you go, not ever. At these times, you lean or sit by the tub and let him crush your fingers in his grip.

He never speaks of it in the morning.

You would not hide from him what you have learnt, nor the feelings that grow treacherously in your heart, but you are too cowardly to tell him of either. It is certain that he loved Deku, and that maybe Deku loved him too. What was it like, you often wonder, to have loved Katsuki?

When he holds onto you, still half lost in the dark lands of his nightmares, you think about it. He would have been less guarded, a young merman not yet covered in scars; he would have given Deku his name immediately, for he would not have learnt that he needed to be wary of humans. Still, he would have fought for him until the end with the same ferocity he would fight for his own heart - because Deku was his own heart.

And Deku, you imagine Deku saw people as they really were. You imagine Deku with bright eyes and a brighter smile, with a face that all his emotions could be read off as easily as a book. He must have been good, persistent, if Katsuki had fallen for him. Soft, even, but tough when he needed to be.

They fit each other, no doubt.

You feel guilty, as if your speculations are invasive, rummaging around within Bakugou’s heart where he has not let you set foot. Mercifully, he can pin his red eyes on you as much as he likes, which he often does, but he will not hear your mind.

Now that he is healed, that is how you pass your days, exchanging words with him when either of you wish to, while you wrestle with the unspoken in your head and while god knows what happens behind his eyes. It is normal for silence to fall after a conversation - it is not awkward, but not comfortable either. It is pensive, it is familiar.

And today, it is shattered by screams up on deck.

Katsuki perks up, his keen ears picking up things your dull ones cannot, and he tilts his head, listening intently. You do not have to hear what he does to know what is happening: there is the sound of clashing steel above you, the all too familiar war cries of the hunters. It is not often that the merfolk are prepared for the hunters as they pass by, but neither is it impossible.

The ship lurches, harshly enough that some of the water in Katsuki’s tub overflows. You wager it must be a whole pod, then, maybe two, and you glance over at him, wondering if he knows who they are, wondering if -

“Are they yours?” You blurt.

“Huh?”

“Your pod,” you clarify.

Bitterly, he scoffs. “If the merfolk wanted to rescue me, they wouldn’t have waited months.”

You freeze. The detachment in his voice does nothing to hide the betrayal beneath, and ice begins to crawl up your spine, for he addresses them as the merfolk, not as his kind, his people. Harshly, you swallow as you start to understand that the hunters would never have been able to capture a merman if he wasn’t alone.

“You don’t have a…” You trail off, feeling far too inadequate and stupid to continue.

“My pod renounced me the moment they learnt about Deku and I.”

A picture forms in your mind, of a Katsuki who lost his family because he gave away his heart to a human - of a Katsuki to which the sea was no longer home, but a huge expanse of alone. Horror closes over your head like cold water as your eyes slide down to the scar on his chest.

His pod didn’t stop at just renouncing him.

You had always hoped that beings whose very essence was rooted in magic would be fair and just as the tales said. Your hope had always been that the merfolk would see that humanity was not united in the purging of them, that they would spare you if your path ever crossed theirs. Never did you think they would be so blind as to turn on one of their own for something as reliant on fate as love. You are a fool.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and it comes out almost like a sob.

“We are no better than you are,” he replies.

His voice is so devoid of hope that it cuts you to the quick. You open your mouth so say more, to try and fill that emptiness inside him if you can, but your words are stuck in your throat and before you can force them out the door flies open, banging loudly against the wall and almost extinguishing the lamp’s flame.

Three gravely wounded are deposited in front of you and then the door slams. Silently, you get to work, sealing the deep slashes to their flesh more carelessly than you should be - but with Katsuki watching, you feel sullied, a betrayer who works for the purgers of magic. Their blood coats your tingling palms, and yet not in the way you wish it could be.

You have just finished the last when four more are dragged in, and you’re hit hard across the face and ordered to work faster, which signifies only one thing: more are coming. As blood wells up in your mouth, you hope that the merfolk are victorious, even if it means sinking the ship and letting you drown within.

Hate rises within you again, searing and acrid like smoke clogging your lungs, but this time it is different. You hate them for what they have made you; a tool, a means to an end. The determination you nurse in your heart is unimportant as long as you do what they say, and yet you cannot defy them, and this is what you hate yourself for.

Prickling sensations begin to claw up your arms as you heal. You are lost in it, the blood and the battle and the patients, and you swear you see the same faces twice: hunters who you healed once coming back more injured than last time. Your energy dwindles like a dying flame and you dip into your reserves when you recognise the violent light in the hunters’ eyes.

You cannot ask for a break. They already bay for blood and death; what more is yours but just another magic using bitch’s?

You are being bled dry. You are no longer aware of your surroundings, just the halting of the flow of blood beneath your hands and the wheezing gasp of your breath and the rattle of the chain locked around your wrist.

They have not been attacked like this in a long time. You almost forgot how fast the darkness closes in when you send out your energy through your palms to knit flesh and skin back together again. Spots cloud your vision, and futilely, you swat them away. Muffled, Katsuki’s voice hums in your right ear, but you do not understand the words he utters.

Your hands tremble. You pitch forward, slumping over your newest patient.

A hand fists in your hair. Knuckles press into your jaw, far harder than a lover’s touch and yet it feels like it in the way your head lolls slowly to the side. It takes time, but pain radiates through your skull, vibrating your teeth and sharpening your focus, and then you can hear yelling, yelling for you to wake up, yelling for you to carry on or they’ll kill you -

There are so many of them. So many hunters with frenzied eyes and blades that shine where they are not coated in innocent blood, and they are hurt and they want to return back to the battle and you must abide by their demands. The air is too thin as it whistles in and out of your lungs. You cannot think.

You press your palms to the blood slick abdomen of the next man placed down before you and do as they say. Your mouth is dry, your head pounds, your eyes won’t focus, and yet, you do as they say, you always do what they say.

What a fucking coward you are.

Letting them push you farther than you ever would let yourself go. You’re right on the edge, right over the edge, clinging onto the side of the perilously vertical cliff face even as the mossy stone crumbles beneath your fingers and threatens to make you fall down down down. But still, you heal. Your body performs numbly what your mind cannot take any more.

All of a sudden, there is not an open wound for you to heal or guts to force back inside a torso, there are just crimson soaked planks and a raised voice. Loud. An incensed, raised voice, cursing and roaring. Can’t you see she’s almost gone? They shout, earsplitting enough to make your head pound. She can’t heal you fucking bastards if she’s dead!

Bakugou. No, not that name. It’s… Katsuki. Katsuki making all that racket. You don’t know when it happened, but now your cheek is pressed to the rough planks that make up the floor. There’s blood everywhere. Some more splatters to the ground and you notice that the din isn’t being made by Katsuki any more. Your eyes are hazy as you lift them upwards and see a hunter raise his fist again.

“Kats,” you slur. “Watch… watch out…”

The lamp goes out, which is strange, since the oil got topped up this morning. You pay it no mind, though.

You’re too tired.

You wake surrounded by water. For a moment, you wonder if the merfolk won, and if somehow you managed to get tossed off the boat and into the sea, but then you move your leg and it hits something hard and vertical which must be wood. Peeling your eyes open, you find you’re in… the tub? Katsuki’s tub?

Lifting your head, you’re met with a pair of concerned red eyes. One is almost swollen shut, and blood has crusted down the side of his face from a wound in his temple, yet he smooths his hand soothingly over your upper back, watching attentively as you come to.

“You’ve been out for just under two days,” Katsuki says. “You need to eat, get your strength back up.”

Your memory begins to trickle back, and with it floods a torrent of shame: you always told yourself that you survived out of spite, out of the belief and conviction that one day you would hurt them enough to negate all the healing they made you to do, but it was all a pretence. You were scared and so you took the easier road of complacency, and it has caused the deaths of hundreds of merfolk.

It is without a doubt that if you had healed even just a papercut more, that if Katsuki had not stopped them, the life force within you would have winked out, and you would have died. Death had loomed right over you, brushing boney fingers over your face, and even now, it lingers.

You are burnt out, exhaustion weighing on you as if a whole mountain rests on your back. Worse is the fear, revealed in the blinding light, shackling you, for you are its slave, and you cannot shake its hold off you.

Your face crumples. “I am spineless, for letting them use me so. I am a coward, a - ”

“They give you no choice, witch,” Katsuki remarks. “Do not put it on yourself.”

You shake your head. “You cannot ask that of me. How many lives have been lost because I obeyed when the hunters told me to save them?”

Bowing your head, you sob. Fatigue envelops you, the chain around your wrist unspeakably heavy, and you lean heavily against Katsuki; he holds you like you are precious, handling you with care so that the pieces you have shattered into do not fall apart and scatter onto the floor. He tips up your chin, forcing you to look him in those eyes of his as he wipes away your tears.

“What was that you told me, as I wept like you do now?” He asks. “You need not bear the weight of your world on your shoulders. That was what you said to me.”

Nodding, you feel more tears leak out when you squeeze your eyes closed. He strokes your hair, and you hide your face in his chest and wish you could do forever, for he is warm and he is far gentler than you ever imagined he could be. You are tempted, but he nudges you and chides you, reminding you that you will feel much better once you have eaten.

Wobbly as a newborn fawn, you climb out of the tub, Katsuki steadying you with a hand on your arm. Wrapping one of your blankets around you like a shawl, you retrieve a hunk of bread to gnaw on before planting yourself on the tub’s rim, loath to be any farther away from him than you have to be.

Though hunger worries insistently at your insides, sending tremors through your hands and weakness in your legs, you force yourself to eat slowly; you cannot risk wasting any of the food by throwing up. Katsuki rests his forearms on the sides of the tub, watching you with a keen gaze that you cannot read. You become more aware of the purpling bruising across his face and reach out without thinking.

He catches your hand before you can tap into the slowly replenishing well of magic inside of you, his fingers circling your wrist before he lets them slip down and lace with yours. Something ignites behind his eyes, and you find you are mesmerised - you lean closer to see how the spark dances.

“Katsuki,” you breathe, and then your lips are on his.

He tips his chin up to lean into you, his fingers threading into your hair as he pulls you closer to him, so tender that it makes your chest ache. You could stay like this for eternity, simply doing nothing but tasting the salt of him on your tongue and savouring the sweet, sweet scrape of his canines over your lower lip; he is all that matters, all that is.

Slowly, his hands come round to cup your shoulders, pressing you closer to him, and so you feel the moment his grip falters and he stiffens, feel the way he recoils from you as if you have burnt him, and you can do nothing to prevent it. You’re propelled backwards with the force he jolts away. Though it is only a few steps, you feel the gap between you yawn wide, stretching into an uncrossable chasm.

“No,” he chokes out, shaking his head. “No, not - not like - ”

Abruptly, he falls terribly, terribly silent. Stunned, you touch a hand to your mouth; your legs buckle, and you throw out a hand to steady yourself against the wall before sinking to the floor. It feels as if you are drowning.

Katsuki does not love you - how can he, when he fits with Deku like they were made for each other? You were wrong to hope for anything else, wrong to give in to what you wanted, because you have torn open old wounds that never properly healed. It is no longer significant that he does not love you, for you should have seen that already; what matters is that in your blindness, you have ripped him open.

You’re beginning to realise that it was not the lamp that kept the shadows back, but him. It is only natural that you are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, only natural that you were too weak to resist flying straight into the fire. This time, it is not only the moth who gets hurt.

You are left alone with your thoughts. Time passes, as it always does, but you pay it no mind. However hard you try, you cannot bring yourself to meet his eyes. You are numb, numb to the slow rock of the ship as it cuts through the waves, numb to the sounds of the crew at their battle stations again, numb to it all now that it is undeniable: you love him.

He cannot love you.

Wearily, warily, you raise your head when the door opens, revealing the first mate, soaked in blood. Crossing the room in a few strides, he stands before you, chest heaving, a frantic sort of desperation contorting his face as he tightens his hand around the hilt of his sword and glares at you.

“The captain is near death. We drop anchor home in a fortnight. I will be put in command if he does not survive, and if this happens, I will make certain that you come upon a death slower and far more painful than his.”

You do not answer, nor do you pay any mind to his threats. You can sense Katsuki staring in your direction, the feeling of his red eyes on your skin unmistakable: no doubt, he has heard what you have. We drop anchor home in a fortnight - a fortnight until Katsuki is delivered into hands who seek to study him, to slit him open while he still lives and examine his insides and the way his heart beats, ensnared in the cage of his ribs.

Just like that, you know what to do.

You wait silently until they bring the captain to you. The first mate did not lie when he said the captain is near death. Sweat creates a sheen on his brow, and though his eyes are open, he is barely conscious, for he has been sliced open from gullet to navel by a merfolk blade. Briefly, you touch a fingertip to the lip of the gash, ignoring the pained moan it causes and the disquieted mutters of the other hunters.

If you were superstitious, you would deem the wound too similar to Katsuki’s to be anything but fate, but you do not believe in such things. Instead, you put your trust in the strength of good steel and the sharpness of a tongue. Yes, you know what to do, and you will do it.

The chain fixed around your wrist is not broken, but it does not have to be. You are free to do what you wish, because before you is the captain, and he is leverage. There is no fear left in you, no shame to hold you back as you look up at the first mate; he opens his mouth, about to ask why you do not jump to heal his captain, but he pauses when he takes in your cold smile.

“Free the merman, and then I will heal him.”

A silence falls. They are left with no other choice but to do as you say, and they know it. The first mate’s hands ball into fists, a reminder to you of what will come once Katsuki is let go and you heal their captain, but it does not concern you any more. None of it is of concern to you, only his freedom.

“What the fuck did you just say, witch?” Katsuki spits.

His voice jolts the first mate into action. He heaves you to your feet by the front of your shirt, seething, and punches you squarely in the nose. Something cracks. Your head snaps back, the air knocked from your lungs when he drives his knee into your stomach and lets you crumple to the floor by his feet. Gritting your teeth, you glower up at him.

“Come at me all you like,” you hiss as blood pours down your face. “It will not save your captain.”

He crouches down before you. You do not listen as he shouts at you, because you see it in his eyes. He knows you have them all backed into a corner, he knows you’re aware he will not risk the captain’s life. Over his shoulder, Katsuki urgently mouths something to you: do you know what they will do to you because of this? They will do worse than just kill you!

“Let them,” you reply, and as you gaze at him, you smile again. To the first mate, you say: “Bring me up on deck. I want to see.”

The first mate hurls you away from him, barking orders at the other hunters, but all you hear is the crash of the waves outside and all you taste is the nectar of victory on your tongue. You watch, still smiling, as they grab Katsuki and drag him from the tub. He fights, of course he does, screaming your name and slashing at the hunters, but there is but one of him, and he is unarmed.

Cursing, the first mate unfastens your chain from the ring in the wall, wrapping the length of it around his hand and jerking you forward with it, pulling you to follow him through the ship. There is murder written on his face and in the curl of his lip, and you let it slide it off you like water from a sea bird's feathers.

He throws open the hatch, and for the first time in years, you see the sun. Slowly, you step into the light, and the salty breeze tugs playfully at your clothes and hair, fresh and briney and strong, pulling tears from your eyes. All around you is empty space, just blue sea and blue sky and the wind that dances gloriously between them as far as you can see.

The air is invigorating and crisp in your lungs. Hesitantly, you take a step forward, then another and another, seeing the way the sun plays on the water’s surface, scintillating as it warms your cold skin. It is as resplendent as you remember it.

“Witch!” Katsuki cries, shaking the hunters’ hands off him. “Why? Why would you do this to yourself?”

There are countless ways you could answer him. Instead, you take him in one last time, his spiky ash blonde hair and his crimson eyes and the way his scales glitter under the sunlight. You do this for love: if you can’t give him your heart, you will give him his freedom.

“Go,” is all you say, and though tears stream down your face, you smile.

“I will not forget you, witch,” he replies, voice thick. “I swear it.”

Running to the side of the ship, you cling to the taffrail and lean forwards to watch as he dives overboard. He slices through the water, the amber of his tail bright as he goes, further from you with each passing second, and your breath catches in your throat - he is more beautiful than you imagined he would be in the light.

As he crests a wave, he looks back at you, and you see the shimmer of his scales and the graceful arc of his dorsal fin one last time before he twirls in the surf and dives. With that, he is gone, and you are alone again, yet you do not fear what is to come.

A hand grips your shoulder, nails digging sharply into your skin. “Enjoy your peace, you thankless bitch, because once you heal the captain, all you’re going to know is pain.”

You turn to the first mate and laugh in his face.

He loves you.

Bakugou Katsuki fucking loves you.

He loves your deft hands, careful despite their calluses and nimble despite the chain around your wrist. He loves the smell of you, herby and laced with petrichor. He loves the brightness dancing in your eyes when you laugh. Most of all, he loves your sweet soul: the fierceness woven into it like second nature, the blaze of your heart when you stand up for what you believe in.

He was stupid for pulling away from that kiss. You had fit your lips to his, and suddenly panic rose in his chest, and he jerked backwards as if ignoring his heart would silence it; he was scared to love another human, scared because last time it led to pain. His fear had hurt you, and this is his regret - that he was the one to cause the slow dimming of the light in your eyes.

There are countless other things he regrets. He should have trusted more easily, he should have fought harder as they yanked him out of that silly tub and away from you, and he should never have left you by yourself on that ship with those despicable hunters.

He didn’t tell you he loved you, and now he is scared he will never get the chance.

He has left you in a den of beasts. Deku would never have let this happen if it was Katsuki in danger. Deku would have found a way to get him out. In fact, Deku did, he saved him instead of himself, and now Deku is gone, and he fears his heart is not strong enough to lose another. He does not want to lose another.

That serene little smile on your face as you watched him go - it haunts him, fucking burns itself into his retinas, because you knew. You knew precisely what you were doing, when you bargained with that hunter’s life, and you knew exactly what they were going to do to you for making them let him go.

You must be hurting right now. You must have been beaten within an inch of your life. You, who broke down the walls he rebuilt, brick by brick, after Deku was gone - the same walls that Deku himself tore down too. Katsuki is beginning to think that their foundation has always been flawed, or maybe they crumbled like Jericho simply because you shine brighter than the sun on the waves, and he could not look away if he wanted to.

He has been tailing the ship for little over a day. Keeping out of sight and in the shadows is easy; he has felt the sting of their harpoons enough and he will not risk an injury when getting you away from them is the priority, yet he can’t help but resent the way he must hide. There is no other way, though. Currently, he has no plan, and he must bide his time.

Katsuki was never the most patient, but he has no choice but to be patient since he has no sword and no allies. It is plausible that he could scuttle the ship by himself, but he can’t risk it with you chained inside and possibly unconscious.

But then he sees it - a shape in the distance.

It is an isle, small enough that it could sustain maybe one hamlet of people, and rather plain, with rocks that make up a small cliff on one side and a sandy beach dotted with rock pools on the other, a thicket of trees spanning the distance between. One could call it nondescript, but there is nothing nondescript about it to Katsuki.

He has bled out on that golden beach. He has fought to protect his own life and the life of another in the waters near that isle, and he has failed. He has wept on that shore, wept enough to cleanse the blood soaked sand beneath his newly fixed body that held his newly broken heart.

That isle is where Deku washed up, half dead, a decade ago. It is where he watched from afar as this green eyed, freckled human nursed himself back to health, and where he watched from a little closer as he learnt that humans were more than what they are portrayed as in the tales of his pod.

He understood many things on that isle: what love was - the touch of his lips to a man with unruly green curls and an infectious smile, and what betrayal was - when his pod found out and the waters were tinted red because of it.

Just like that, he knows what to do.

Hidden in the underwater caves below the isle is a monster that slumbers until a soul dares to wake it. The humans call it a kraken, but the merfolk leave it unnamed, for it is too great to be reduced to a simple moniker. He has seen it once before, through the haze that descends over one close to death, and felt as its power stymied the lifeblood that poured hot from a wound spanning from the middle of his sternum to his navel.

Both he and Deku had lain on the beach after his pod ambushed, both bleeding from fatal wounds. He had been too fucking weak to get to the kraken first, and so Deku had been the one to sacrifice himself and give himself to the monster so Katsuki could live, when it should have been the other way round.

This time, though, he is strong enough.

He remembers slipping back into the ocean with his freshly healed wound so the saltwater of his tears mixed with the sea, unable to understand why Deku would leave him. Now, he understands all too well, and he will not fail to protect the one he loves again.

Summoning the kraken means no going back. After waking it, the summoner is transported into the kraken’s form, and they have a limited time within it before the kraken reaps its payment - the summoner’s soul. It will shatter their spirit and ensure they cannot return to their body.

Katsuki dives down deep, breaking away from the ship and swimming ahead of it to find the gaping mouth of the cave that the kraken slumbers within. He is far down enough that the water is murky, frigid as it weighs heavily on him, the sun a weak pinprick of light suspended somewhere above him that does nothing to pierce the gloom.

The entrance is curtained with seaweed, the cold fronds  caressing his skin as he slips past them. Nestled in the darkness, it lies there, slumbering: a behemoth shadow, looming as high as the cavern’s ceiling and filling its width like the berth of a warship docked in a seaside hamlet’s harbour.

As he swims towards it, he realises he has already had his last glimpse of you through his own eyes. The last time he will see you, he will be fighting to keep hold of himself before he loses his soul to the kraken, and then it will just be bottomless darkness until it is summoned again. You might not even know it is him inside the monster.

It doesn’t matter - a lot has ceased to matter to Katsuki. He can no longer deny that he loves you, and with that epiphany comes another: you knew what the hunters would do to you when you bargained for his freedom, and yet you did it anyway, with no fear of the consequences. Now, it is his turn to put his life on the line for you, and though he may lose it, you will be free.

He will never feel the sweet touch of lips again, but that’s alright. He hopes that you will find another to make you happy, another who will make your heart soar and help you forget him. They will be to you what you were to him: a light to scare away the shadows, a star in the night sky to guide you, even if at times, just like him, you believe you do not wish to be guided.

Katsuki pictures your face as he draws near to the kraken.

Its flesh is odd beneath his palm - slippery and uncomfortably cold. Pressing his palm to its skin, he wills it awake, and it obeys him alarmingly fast, an eye as big as his head snapping open and rolling around until it fixates on him. An abyss of a pupil sucks him in, beckoning him forward to a place that will be the last he ever visits.

Though he knows his body remains still, he feels himself fall forward, sucked towards the magnetic emptiness within the kraken as if it aches to be occupied. For a moment, he resists, pure instincts making him struggle against it, but he forces himself to let go. Sensation briefly forsakes him.

When his vision is restored, he finds that he is looking at his body, limp and vacant. Already he can feel a difference in the water, the sharp tang of fear drifting toward him on currents that hadn’t been there before as creatures begin to flee, aware that something ancient has been roused from its sleep.

A tempest is brewing.

Katsuki - or a version of him that no longer is really Katsuki, but instead a wrathful monster caller - cannot see the dark clouds amassing above, but he knows they are scudding across the blue skies to taint the high midday sun, and it is his doing. Cruel winds accumulate in the shadows cast by his thunderhead, and he can hear the sharp snap of canvas and the raised voices of a crew readying their ship for a storm.

Unfurling a tentacle, he curls it around his old body, careful not to crush it, and reaches up high enough to deposit it on the beach. He begins to move the kraken out of the cave, dislodging pebbles that would have been boulders as the bulk of its body manoeuvres through the exit.

In a way, he is disconnected from the body that is his now; there is empty space that he is not large enough to occupy, like he has donned a garment made for a merman the size of a mountain. It is strangely silent inside this huge vessel, although he is not alone. Shadow wreathed souls lurk in the corners of his mind, and he knows they are disgusted by him.

He is not surprised. Historically, the kraken have been summoned only in the utmost peril. To the merfolk, the kraken are as sacred and as old as the sea, called upon in the wars of old, when the magic beings of the sky were eradicated. Despite being only scattered shards of themselves, the past summoners look down on him, because he does not summon to seek the solution to mighty matters.

For the second time in a lifetime, the kraken is being summoned for a cause as selfish as love.

There’s an awful symmetry to it, really. He imagines the way they must have abhorred Deku, a dying human who did not use the kraken’s power to destroy, but to knit together the wound of a simple, unnoteworthy merman.

Faces contorted beyond recognition flash before his eyes and hands claw at his sides with nails as vicious as knives. They want blood, they want a whole fleet to rip through and ruin. He tells them that they will have to settle with one ship, and they cry their discontent in his ears, their voices rough and rasping, like rusting metal on stone.

He has not broken the surface of the water yet. His body prowls many leagues down, but still, he spots the shadow cast by the ship, and the moment he does, his vision narrows, blurs, and he sees winking lights on board: the lives of the crew, twinkling and tantalising and begging to be snuffed out.

The kraken jets upwards and breaches, spraying up a wall of water, and though he does not command it, he bellows a war cry, the sound so bloodthirsty and wild it almost sweeps him up and incapacitates him. The shadow souls close in, fragments of vengeful souls garbed in shadow, greedy and eager to see him torn apart, and he shakes them off, wrenching himself from their grasp with all his strength.

A twinge pinches at his side, and he glances down to see a volley of harpoons glance off his hide, leaving shallow gashes in their wake. The crew swarm on the deck, their terror sour as he breathes it in and savours it. They are but ants, small and irritating with their measly weapons and made to be crushed and devoured -

He seizes the mast and uses it to rock the ship from side to side, fighting to keep the visions of blood staining the water red away from him. Too fast, his control is slipping, and he feels the souls swarm around him, filling his field of view with darkness until all he can see is those tiny flames that he must put out. There is something he wanted to do, something he needs to do -

Selfish, the souls hiss in his ears, trying to sink their hateful claws into him again, and he agrees with them.

He loves, and therefore he is selfish.

It is no bad thing.

The storm clouds gather over the ship, roiling and rumbling with thunder. Lightning strikes, a bolt of white fury that splinters the deck and extinguishes one of the little lives on board, producing a delighted cackle from the souls at his back, but he ignores them. He knows what he must do.

“Bring me the witch,” he roars.

His voice comes out warped and foreign, the words of men coming out strange and misshapen on his tongue, but the crew understand enough, scuttling to obey, desperate to believe he may spare them if they give you to him. The grip of the souls tightens, squeezing at his throat - he has spent too long in their presence already, and they nip at the edges of his mind, stealing away parts of him when he isn’t looking.

He realises with a jolt that he does not remember his name any more.

It is fine, though. He will join the souls in their namelessness soon. They are a cacophony in his head, and he can no longer hear anything but them, the burn of their claws threatening to tear him apart and shred him the way they are already torn apart, but he barely cares.

The little gnats bring another up and present it to him. This one shines brighter, suffused with a magic the souls cannot wait to devour, and they encourage him forward - surely he too will enjoy the honeyed taste of this offering? Plucking it off the ship’s deck, he brings it to his eye level, and his shadow companions clamour for him to crush it, but he hesitates.

It looks at him like it knows him. In its weak, tiny voice, it yells something that gets lost in the howl of the winds, but even so, it makes the souls shrink back, receding enough for him to remember that this little thing he holds is important. Important for what, he can’t recall, but it is important all the same.

Kicking its legs, the small being beats its fist on his tentacle, still shouting. He leans closer, wincing as the shadows scratch and tear at his back, trying to draw him away again.

“Katsuki!” You scream.

He jolts. It is you, his little, beloved witch - you are why he is being so selfish, summoning the kraken just to save one life. Peering closer, he notices that you are bruised all over, and suddenly the storm worsens overhead, crackling as bolts of lightning stab down like vindictive knives and the wind tears at the ship full of aghast hunters, tossing it violently among the waves.

Carefully, he places you on the beach, next to a body that used to be his. You scramble towards it, limping, and he turns away, looking back towards the ship and the lights it is infested with that still need to be destroyed. Anger comes easily to him, because these are the ones that have marred you with bruises.

The shadows close in again.

Roaring, he tears at the ship, rending it in two and crushing those that leap overboard, yet the souls are never appeased, never satiated. It feels as if power leaks out the seams of his spirit and if he does not let it go it will destroy him from the inside, but he knows he cannot let go. He needs to hold on, to hold himself together, for something that drifts further and further out of reach -

It is as if he has been tied to the bottom of a sea trench for so long, drowning in darkness, that the surface is just a fanciful thought. He does not remember the sun’s sweet face, nor the sound of your voice as you called out the name he has lost again. They sink their teeth into him, ready to tear him apart.

He struggles. He will not go without a fucking fight, he will not let them have him before he has tried valiantly to swim upwards to the sun, where the shadows will not survive.

But the light is so far from him. It floats away every time he strives to be closer, or maybe there are hands holding him back, ripping him open and tethering him to the blackness. They cling to him, shrieking in his ears, sinking curved claws into him and refusing to let go, ready to reap the kraken’s payment.

He is losing himself.

And then - a hand, gentle, touching his face. Emerald eyes fill his vision, wide and lovely, and suddenly he is able to ignore the souls and their blaring dissonance, the pain in his side fading away into nothing. There is a soul that still remains named here, mixed in with those who have been rent apart by hate.

“Kacchan,” the soul says earnestly. “You must fight it, Kacchan.”

“Deku,” he sobs, leaning into the soul’s warm palms as he wipes his tears away. “I’m sorry.”

Deku smiles, and Katsuki weeps, because he looks so proud of him, as if he is worth an eternity spent trapped within a kraken alongside shattered souls that only wish for chaos and destruction. He weeps, because here are Deku and Kacchan, back together again, but they cannot stay this way forever.

“I understand,” Deku whispers, and his touch heals Kacchan once more. “I understand you love her. You need to fight, you need to return to her and love her like you want to. I died so you could live, Kacchan. Let go.”

He looks down and sees the way he clutches onto Deku so hard he is white knuckled, while Deku cradles his hands in his scarred ones, softly as if Kacchan is fragile. Trembling, he loosens his grip, and he feels the light draw closer, the sun’s rays warming his face. Something tightens in his chest when he finally allows himself to release Deku, but it hurts in the manner of stitches pulling taut inside him and binding him together again.

One last time, he looks over his shoulder, to where Deku watches as he goes, smiling brightly, shining like he is a star plucked from the night sky. His brilliance holds the shadows back, rendering them powerless. He pays them no mind, though - his viridescent eyes are lit up and fixed only on his Kacchan.

Deku says something, but the sound of his voice is drowned out by the crashing of the waves and the winds of a dying down of a storm. Still, Katsuki knows what he said by the shape of his lips: I love you. Smiling, he takes a final look at him, at those unruly green curls and those sweet eyes and bright smile, and then he turns and is bathed in light.

The kraken sinks again beneath the waves, but Katsuki does not sink with it.

You know it’s impossible, but you sense the moment Katsuki is back in his body. You’ve heard the tales of the kraken, and you know he should have been taken from you, but there he is, present in the weak pulse of his heart beneath your palm and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Shallow cuts have appeared all over his body, remnants of the damage of the hunter’s harpoons.

His eyes are open, but barely, and he blinks slowly, fighting to keep them fixed on you, giving you only glimpses of familiar crimson. There is a strange looseness to his awareness that must come with the recency of doing the impossible, but still he grips your hand desperately, struggling to stay awake long enough to force words out.

“I - I lo - ”

Before he can finish, his voice cracks and he coughs. His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to start again, but you smile, tears blurring your vision as you press a finger to his lips and hush him, and thankfully he relaxes under your touch, curling closer to you and seeking shelter in your embrace. Once he is rested, he will have all the time in the world to tell you whatever he likes.

What matters is that he is here. That in itself is beyond even a miracle. 

Almost disbelieving, you cradle him to you, pressing your forehead to his as tears you cannot stop spill down your face and mingle with his blood. You are bone tired after repeatedly healing your own cracked ribs and fractured wrists, but you are whole enough for now - you won’t waste your energy on your own bruises while he still hurts.

So you hold him against your chest, sweeping your fingers delicately over the deeper of his cuts to seal them. The sky has cleared, the storm clouds departing as fast as they arrived, and the sea is dipped in ruby by the bleeding sunset. It lacquers the wet sand with the glow of dying embers as the incoming tide smooths over where the storm had churned it up, erasing the mark left on the island as if this afternoon had never happened.

If it were not for Katsuki in your arms, it would be like the kraken never came.

You glance down at him. He seems at peace, though worn and battered, as if he has reconciled something deep within his heart; he has closed his eyes, simply leaning against you with his face pressed into your side, his warm hands tucked just beneath the hem of your shirt.

You cannot help but smile. Because of him, you are free. No chains bind your wrists, no threats limit you in what you decide to do next. You are not sure where you will end up later, but for now you intend to fall asleep beneath the open sky, beside the one you love infinitely more than any life you might have had and even this new life he has fought and bled to give you.

When you drift out of your dreams - just simple, golden things full of a contentment that lingers past waking - the tide is high, the ocean lapping at the sand at your feet. The moon is almost at its highest point in the sky, depositing a residue of silver on everything around you.

Katsuki stirs in your arms, and when you glance down, you are met with the twin beacons of his eyes, luminous in the dark and full, brimming and spilling over with unspoken things that leave a deep ache in your heart. Trembling, he grips your hands, and you lace your fingers with his, brushing your lips over his knuckles and stroking his face as the tears begin to flow.

He cries like he is mourning. You wonder what he saw while his soul donned the kraken’s skin, how poignant it must have been to wrench these fitful sobs from him. Cupping his face in your palms, you wipe his tears away, and he clings to you to keep you close while he bares his newly healing heart to you; it is wrapped in the past’s scars. He shows you the rawest parts of him, and you soothe them as best you can with your healing hands.

There is no magic to this cure, though. It is just the love that burns within you, consuming you so entirely it makes you shake. You did not know it was possible to love like this, but the proof weeps in your arms, a merman who summoned the kraken and somehow conquered it so he could make it back to you.

“Tell me,” you whisper, tracing the strong lines of his face with your fingertips.

Curling his arms around you, he hides his face in your neck. “Deku stood with me against the dark inside the kraken,” he replies softly. “He held them back so I could come back to you. I - I thought I had lost him forever, when he summoned the kraken to save me.”

Carefully, he brings your hand to touch the scar stretching down his chest, and you outline its edges, comforted by the warmth of his body and the steadiness of his breathing beneath your fingers. You would be happy to stay like that forever, linked to him by your skin on his and the synchronised beat of your hearts.

“He told me to fight so I could return to you,” Katsuki murmurs. “So I could love you.”

Your breath catches, your voice sticking before any words come out. He is blunt and honest as always, but this time, he is without his walls, without his guard up, open and vulnerable for you to lash out at him if you wished to, but he trusts you will not. Still, you hesitate, your throat constricting.

“I… I didn’t know him, or what he was like, but I know I can’t be him to you,” you falter. “I cannot be Deku, Katsuki.”

You do not expect your voice to come out so small, so timid. Neither do you expect the overwhelming tenderness that fills his eyes - no one has ever looked at you like that, as if they really see the whole of you, the blemishes and shadows on your soul and they love those too.

“I don’t ask you to be like him,” he replies. “No one will ever be like him. No one will ever be like you, either. I love you because you are you, not because you are him.”

“Katsuki,” you breathe, unable to swallow down the tears welling in your eyes.

“You know I can’t give you the life you deserve, either,” he continues, voice thick. “If you tie yourself to me, you tie yourself to the sea too, regardless of if you like it or not.”

Searchingly, you look at him, and it feels for a second that as you meet his eyes, you know the whole ocean, down to its unexplorable depths, down to every grain of sand and every critter it shelters and sustains. In that moment, there is a total, utter understanding within you - you would love him whatever the condition.

“I would tie myself to the most pitiful of the things on this earth if it meant I could love you, Katsuki.”

“I too, witch,” he replies, and a fond little smile pulls at his lips. “I would summon that kraken a thousand times if it meant I could win your heart.”

You laugh, out of pure joy more than anything else, and he laughs too, rolling in the sand so he can prop himself up on his elbows. Flopping over, you adjust yourself so you can rest your head against his stomach, lifting your eyes to watch as he tips his face up to the sky, letting the stars reflect in his gaze, as if he holds the galaxies of the universe in each pupil.

Your fingers find his as you stare up at the moon where it hangs highest in the sky now, full and silver as the stars. A new moon: symbolising fresh starts and new beginnings, or maybe even the waxing of a love that was planted in the darkness of the brig of a ship soaked in blood, nourished by nothing but the weak flame of a lamp and swift hands knitting flesh back together.

A familiar prickle trails coyly down the side of your neck, and the sound of sand whispering against itself reaches your ears as Katsuki shifts beneath you, lightly skimming the high tide’s surf with his tail. You are not ready to leave the easy silence you’ve made yet, so you bask in his presence and his warmth a little longer.

The moon has just begun its descent when you turn to face him. He’s just looking at you, looking and looking and looking as if he can’t get enough. You smile, aware of the fresh edge in his gaze that was not there before, the string binding your soul to his pulling delightfully taut.

“You’re as beautiful as the ocean,” he mumbles, fiddling with a lock of your hair. “More beautiful than the ocean. But in a different way, you’re…”

You grin. “Worse?”

“Worse,” he agrees, smirking, but he looks at you as if you breathed life into his seas. “Much worse.”

Time stops for a moment, and you sit up, bringing your face close to his until your breaths mingle - you cannot help but let his crimson eyes consume you, heart and soul. You linger there for a moment, the air crackling between you, both of you waiting as if to see who will give in and pounce first.

Bringing his hand up, Katsuki lets his fingers slide under your jaw, lifting your chin so you are merely a hair’s breadth away. He fills your senses; you can feel the warmth of his body, the roughness of the calluses on his fingers, the feather-like brush of his breath against your cheek, smell his briney sea scent, hear the swish of sand as he shifts infinitesimally closer. A lethal spark gleams in his eyes, tying you in helpless knots.

You lean forward and claim his lips.

It draws a quiet groan from him, and suddenly you are beneath him in the sand and his hands are all over you, grabbing handfuls of you and shucking the damp material of your shirt up and over your head so he can touch your skin. The way he looks at you, with those stirring embers that tug at something low in your stomach, reduces you to a sailor under the influence of a siren’s song - he is irresistible, he is magnificent.

Tangling your fingers in his hair, you pull him ever closer, licking into his mouth as if you might find the god’s nectar hiding beneath his tongue. He nips at your lower lip with those keen canines of his, and you cannot help but buck your hips as the tide swirls around the both of you.

Chuckling, he skims a palm over your thigh, pulling your leg up to hook over his hip. It brings your clothed core right against the length of his hardening cock that has emerged from the slit in his tail; you stifle a moan at the feel of him, grinding agonisingly slowly down on him and sighing as he trails wet kisses and purpling bites down your throat.

Katsuki licks at the spot under your jaw, and this time, at the second graze of his teeth against your skin, your fingers tighten in his hair, pulling at it and squeezing another sweet noise from him. You keep your hands threaded through his ash blonde locks as he licks at the valley between your breasts. Meticulously, he marks your plush flesh with the imprints of his teeth, laying his claim on you.

When he reaches your stomach, he mouths at your skin, nipping playfully just over your hip bone before he raises his eyes to meet yours. They are heavy lidded and sultry, and they stir the fire building in your core as he toys lazily with the waistband of your trousers. His fingers are casual as they curl beneath the fabric.

“Let me taste you, witch,” he implores.

“I cannot argue when you look at me like that,” you reply, breathless. “Nor would I, anyways.”

That is all the consent he needs before he is helping you out of your remaining clothes, almost ripping them in his hurry to have you on his tongue. His hands slip beneath you, gripping your ass and guiding your legs over his shoulders, and there he pauses. Yearning blazes in his crimson eyes, and then he dips his head and puts his mouth on you.

You gasp his name. Your hands scramble for purchase before you bury them in his hair again, yanking to encourage him further, and he responds by sucking harshly on your clit, making your hips jump and buck into his face. He groans into your heat, and the vibrations of it make you see stars.

Slowly, he pulls back, glancing up at you, and the sight of him is enough to make you moan: his eyes are glazed, fervent, worshipful, and your slick drips down his chin, the moonlight making it seem like liquid diamond. Bewitched by him, you choke out his name, and he smirks and slips two fingers inside you. Your legs begin to shake when he pumps them slowly in and out of you, bending them at the knuckle so he can hit that spot inside you.

The friction enraptures you, mounting in the pit of your stomach and winding up tight, and your thighs close around his head, clenching as Katsuki pushes you closer and closer to the edge. Turning his head, he sucks at your skin, marking you there, too.

You balance on a knife blade’s edge.

Abruptly, he slides his fingers out and your pussy clamps down a second too late; already, you open your mouth to lament it when he bends his head and replaces them with his tongue. Your words dissolve into wretched moans; you grind your hips against his face and lightning spears through you when his nose nudges at your clit.

Pleasure rises within you, a gradual, swelling thing that sneaks up on you in the unhurried nature of his movements. You can feel his smile against your cunt. You can feel the light burn as he grips your flesh, anchoring you to him so you could not pull away and part him from the taste of you even if you wished to.

You cry out his name as you come.

Katsuki nestles you close to his chest as you come down from your high, kissing your face as the aftershocks send shivers down your spine. Tenderness resides in his eyes, right beside a longing that makes you melt into him, weak with ardour as you slip your hand between your sea damp bodies to curl your fingers slyly around his cock.

His lips part as you jerk him, and you cross the small distance between you to bite at his lower lip, sucking it into your mouth and swiping your tongue over it as you feel him grow impossibly harder in your palm. Ridges swell down his length, flushed a coruscant orange that blurs down into obsidian at his base.

Tipping your head back, you look him in the eye. “I - I need you inside me, Katsuki.”

The words are clumsy on your tongue. You do not know how to articulate the pressing need to feel him, to not know where you end and he begins, to collide with him right there on the beach of this island that houses a kraken, to get lost in the salt on his skin and the eddy of the sea at your joined hips.

Lowly, he curses, treating you as if you are holy as he spreads your legs and settles between them, gripping the curve of your hip with one hand as he lines himself up. You press your lips against the warm bronze skin of his shoulder, sighing against him, urging him forward, urging him closer, a blissed out sound slipping from you as the ridges of his cock push past your entrance, the stretch nothing short of divine.

At last, he is sheathed fully within you. His hips kiss yours, and he remains there, pulsing hotly within you, the pleasure on his face bordering on pain as your cunt bears down on him, yet still, he will not move. Jaw clenching, he squeezes his eyes shut, and a hoarse groan tears itself from deep in his chest.

Panting, he bows his head, and when he looks up, tears rim his lash line, glittering like individual crystals dipped in the light of the stars. One rolls down his cheek and plops down onto yours, and you raise a hand to caress his face, raking your fingers through his hair to push it back from his forehead; he leans into your touch, turning his head to kiss your palm.

Slipping your hand round to cup the nape of his neck, you bring your mouth to his. Delicately, Katsuki kisses you before pulling back to press his lips feather-light to your eyelids - he lingers there, his breath fluttering warmly against your skin, his thumb drawing circles on your cheekbone.

Again, he kisses you, and it is only then that you taste the salt of your own tears on his tongue.

Your soft, raw sob echoes across the beach, and you dig your nails into his wide shoulders, urging him to move. With a gasp, he begins to rock his hips into you, and it breaks you apart. You keen, pushing back into his fluid, achingly unhurried strokes, scrabbling at his back in an attempt to bring him closer, to let him consume your very being.

Right there on the sand, under the moonlight with the seafoam lapping at your sides, he fucks into you, slow and deep, trembling and crying above you, and tenderly, you kiss him again. The roll of his thumb over your clit sends thrills chasing down your spine. He dips his head, burying his face in your neck, and fiercely, you hold him to you.

“Mine,” Katsuki whispers, and his teeth sink into your skin.

Something snaps inside you, and the fire in your gut blazes. Your cunt clenches hard around him, vice like around his cock, and you feel him twitch when your velvety walls clamp down on him, feel his soft exhale and know that he too knows the burn of the inferno in your core.

“Please, Katsuki,” you whine. “Harder.”

“Fuck,” he growls, his voice rasping in your ear, and suddenly you are empty.

Before you can protest, he flips you over, pressing your back into his chest and you reel, momentarily blinded by the night sky stretching high and wide above you. He is solid beneath you, and he knocks the breath from your lungs when he surges up into you.

You can feel all of him. Ruthlessly, Katsuki pounds up into you, as if he is desperate to taste the sea salt on your skin and inhale your scent and never let you go. Your body jerks with each thrust, your voice cracking as you cry out his name, the new heady angle of his cock inside you leaving you writhing, lost in the bliss he wrings from you.

His tail thrashes in the surf as he fucks up into you. You are limp in his arms, trembling all over as your back arches - he squeezes your breasts in one hand while the other settles between your legs, his skilled fingers working over your clit to kindle a mind shattering type of euphoria within you that renders you boneless and speechless, your jaw slack.

Your head falls back on his shoulder, your eyes falling shut as you moan, your pussy constricting tight around him. A hand circles your throat, squeezing lightly, and you mewl, your cunt unashamedly spasming at the feel of his calloused fingers about your neck.

“Let the moon and stars witness how I pleasure you, my love,” he snarls.

Your eyes roll, your toes curl. Somehow, he fucks up into you faster, harder, and his cock hits places that cause your vision to white out, the relentless friction of his ridges on your walls enough to make you sob and claw at the arm he uses to keep you in place. Distantly, you can hear yourself begging him, pleading for him to go harder, deeper, to not stop, to ruin you.

You scream Katsuki’s name as you come for the second time tonight. Uncontrollably, your thighs shake, and your cunt convulses around his cock; you can feel him slowing his thrusts, letting you ride out your high, but despite the overstimulation building in the tautness inside your stomach, you grind against him.

“Don’t stop,” you gasp. “Want - want you to come inside me.”

Your words elicit a groan from him. “Fucking filthy, aren’t you?”

Helplessly, you whimper in response, your pussy fluttering as he hammers up into you. He swears as he comes, spilling hot inside you, the sweet sound he makes muffled when he bites down on your shoulder. Both of you lie there for a moment, catching your breath, before gently, he manoeuvres the two of you so you lie on your sides, careful to keep himself deep in your heat; he is warm against your back.

Katsuki splays a palm over your stomach, holding you close, and you lace your fingers with his, sighing happily as he begins to pepper kisses over your back. You can feel the upwards curve of his lips as he smiles against your skin.

“Are you alright?” He asks, nuzzling the nape of your neck.

“Better than alright,” you confirm.

You remain silent for a while longer, happy just to lie there cocooned in his arms and the quiet wash of the ocean; you can feel the pulse of his heart against your back, steady and comforting. A hushed, steady noise comes from him, a satisfied noise, almost a purr. His cock is beginning to soften inside you, its ridges coming down - you both groan as he slips out, moving so his length is tucked against the curve of your ass.

“How did you know it was me?” He asks suddenly. “When I summoned the kraken.”

You squeeze his hand. “I saw you in its eyes. You know, I couldn’t have missed it if I tried, especially not when you yelled for the hunters to bring me to you. I heard it all the way from below deck.”

He laughs, and you shuffle closer to him, feeling his arms tighten around you.

“I didn’t even know the kraken was a real thing,” you tell him. “I wasn’t scared, though. I knew I’d be safe when I saw it was you.”

Katsuki scoffs. “You’re horrendously sappy, witch.”

You laugh, pushing your ass back against him. “I think you like it, merman.”

Laughing, you roll to and fro in the sand, with you grinding on him as he grips your hips and tries to wrestle you into submission. Eventually, he manages to incapacitate you by holding you tightly against his chest, dipping his head so he can whisper hotly in your ear.

“Keep that up and I’ll have to fuck you again,” he grits out.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” you challenge.

Giggling, you wriggle out of his grip and plunge further into the shallows, just catching him muttering something about insatiable and damn witch before he dives in and streaks after you, his dorsal fin cutting through the water. A hand closes around your ankle, and you squeal, flailing as you shake him off.

Clumsily, you take off towards the rock pools, wading through the sea water as fast as you can. You know Katsuki will catch you (you’re not exactly opposed to it - you’re running into the sea rather than out of it, after all). Again, he makes another grab at you, and you romp with him in the waves, grinning as you fend him off by splashing water at him, squirming out of his arms again.

In the end, he grabs you around the waist and traps you against one of the tide pools, the rock rough against your back as he smirks down at you. The sight of him above you is enthralling: droplets run down his chest in rivulets, rolling down the grooves his muscles make, and the moon hangs the sky behind him, crowning him with a halo made of silver. Your mouth waters.

Taking your chin in between his thumb and forefinger, he brings his face close to yours. A shiver runs down your spine. His red eyes fill your vision, glowing in the night, hypnotic and burning with craving so devout it borders on veneration.

He smiles. “Caught you.”

Katsuki takes you again, against the rock at your back. Afterwards, you lie there, spent and tangled together in the waning moonlight until you grow hungry again and you straddle him, mesmerised by the sight of him staring up at you, pleasure twisting his features as you ride him. You fuck and make love until the sun begins to rise, and it is only then that the two of you are finally sated.

So there you lie, held in his arms and the sea’s embrace - and inexplicably, you find that you do not regret all the pain you suffered at the hands of the hunters, because if it was not for them, you would never have been in that brig to heal him. Inside you, something blossoms within your soul, young and fresh and beautiful as the new moon, and it spills forth from your lips, a whispered confession pressed to his skin like a kiss.

“I love you, Bakugou Katsuki.”

Cupping your jaw, he brings his forehead to yours and murmurs your name. “I love you too.”

Katsuki glances down at you, where you are curled into the curve of his side like you were made to fit him, and he feels his failing, tired heart bloom once again. You have healed him in ways that run deeper than just his flesh.

He looks in your eyes, and when he does, the sea looks back.

You are his home.

A/N: by the way guys, afterwards they travel somewhere cool and the reader sets up a lil witchy abode by the sea and the villagers come to her for cures and half of them are lowkey a bit terrified of her mermaid husband but it doesn’t matter because she still gives really good remedies and he hasn’t eaten anyone yet and sometimes she and bakugou go out in their boat and attack hunter ships for funsies

also here's a picture i found off pinterest which i kind of imagine his tail being like except it's a bit more rigid and the dorsal fins are more spiney and longer, also there's more black and less red

taglist: @freakingsparkydreamer @d1orhaz3 @msjaeger @mellasimp14 @eyesforbkg @cottagedumpling @silkdolli @teeesthings @raksstuff

[defnotriri]

“just don’t leave me alone, wondering where you are.”

||Katsuki Bakugo x Reader||

SMAU !!! , ANGST , PRO! BAKU

warnings: angst, prohero baku, pet names, swearing, drunk/high mention, cheating mention, ur married to him,dog dying mention (movie) mina and kiri are engaged

you thought being married to THE dynamite would be the best decision of your life. So why do you feel so alone in this big mansion?

[yan-li]

Something fast

I was thinking in something like ghost Deku being coerced in to becoming a demon so he can be considered a true monster. But this is actually very bad and Bakugo it’s taken back when izuku tells him about it.

Im free from my dia de los muertos extra work… they order us to participate in the parade and it was a nightmare. We were working all month in the costumes and shit….. but it’s finally over.

[quitesins]

Back, Back Again!

Masterlist | One | Two | Three | Four

Tags: 18+, Sfw/Nsfw[humour], Smau, Female!Reader, Aged up!Character, Pro Hero!Character, Boss!Character, cursing, this mentions SEX a lot so take caution 😝

Didn’t expect to make a part 2 let alone three, but this au is so fun lmaooo here’s some more!

[mtchee]

Silence is Silver, Your Voice is Gold - [Katsuki Bakugo] SOULMATE SERIES | GN

blurb:

You've got the cranky egoist in 1A as your soulmate. Deemed as an 'extra' in his straight laced life, you've resigned yourself to covering your soul words and sealing your lips, becoming U.A's first year general course prodigy, the silent designer. Despite his distasteful character and colourful atittude, as one of Bakugo's primary costume creators, you work to your utmost to satisfy beyond your client's needs. It's unfortunate that despite your title, the angry pompom won't take a goddamn hint from your silence. When you even go out of your way to avoid him, you start to think that he knows you a little too well despite never having uttered a word.

cw: not edited, second-person-pov, [name] is a general course student, swearing, sassy [name], lowkey enemies to lovers, you hate him, he likes your attitude, onesided e2l??, i know nothing about textiles and design except the bare minimum, [name] and bakugo are kinda cute why am i eating this up omg, [name] tormenting bakugo with bright pink and ribbons

| masterlist | boku no hero academia collection |

[2.5k]

Avoiding Katsuki Bakugo has been a piece of cake.

The guy has such an inflamed ego that he expects the people to part for him wherever he walks.

You met him when the hero course first years were scheduled to mix with the costume design students to discuss both the practical and fashionable output of their hero costumes.

You'd been one of the main designer's for Bakugo's suit, with two others having asissted you in its curation. From his original sketch, you'd syphoned the relevant materials for the prototype, your colleagues aiding in the stitching and detail while you further assessed how it could potentially enhance the use of his quirk.

'Beat it, extra.'

The words had tingled on the back of your neck after he growled at you before you could consult him on his gauntlets' latest design. You had swiftly looked him up and down with disgust at his audaciousness before slapping your sketchpad on the table in front of him and storming off.

You remember hearing the maniacal laughter of his friends while one of your other classmate's (the designer of Shoji's suit) shakily explained to him your presence.

You'd had much better things to do that day, but had decided to go out of your way to personally discuss with him his preference in design and utility so you wouldn't have to go back and forth with various prototypes.

Instead, you got cussed out before saying a single word; what an utter waste of your generous time.

Like hell you were going to deal with a soulmate like that.

You started wearing a thick, velvet choker to hide your golden inked soul words.

Since then, you'd sent your assistants to deliver any sort of message to him. With them doing your communicative bidding, you could put your full focus on the active improvement of his hero costume.

When it would come back burnt from training, you would change and reinforce its material until it was fire resistant. When it got ripped, you would reasses its durability. When his gauntlets got in the way, you would restructure them for better mobility and control.

One day when one of your assistants reluctantly relayed to you Bakugo's irrational displeasure with the pigment of his headpiece (for the seventh time), you'd sent it back hot pink with a black and white frilly ribbon.

He broke your lab door the same day.

Since then, when you'd send off your poor assistants in sacrifice, he'd rattle them and demand for you to face him personally.

You ignored him, but then when your classes started mingling more you couldn't get away from him quick enough.

One of your classmates would sweat in a panic off to the side as you worked at your bench tirelessly with thinned lips and an irk whilst Bakugo yelled and threw a hissyfit at your every move.

"What the hell is that supposed to be? Spandex?!"

"That looks like a lump of shit."

"God, it's ugly."

"Whaddya using that for? Weakass bullshit cloth."

"STOP MAKING IT PINK!"

"No way would that work with my quirk!"

"I'd blow that to smithereens easy."

You had to stop yourself from throwing your sketchpad at him most days. But sometimes you caved and summoned a roll of pink ribbon to stuff in his loud mouth.

He spat it at you and yelled even more, but that single moment of peace and his reddened face made it worth it.

On occasion, you would be lucky and actually get a few decent conversations out of him. His mouth was still foul, but his volume would be acceptable, and his suggestions surprisingly competent and reasonable.

On those days, he would leave with his voice intact, and you with one step closer to the final product.

Your impeccable work ethic and skills and Bakugo's mild decency lead you way ahead of the others in your unit. Eventually, you started having enough time to help out with some of the other hero costumes too--with the permission of both the creator and wearer, of course.

They've all been more than thrilled to work alongside U.A's renouned silent designer.

Although you worked quietly, you made more of an effort to communicate personally with the heroes in training regarding their costumes.

Most were surprised at that, having only known you to work alone and to commune from afar as you've done with Bakugo.

While word of your ingenius spread, unfortunately so too did your most recent work relations.

Bakugo didn't seem to find it funny that you talked to everyone but him.

So you threw all your stationary at him when he stormed into your design lab to make it everyone's problem.

But more specifically, to make it your problem.

"Miss me, nerd?"

Your scathing glare did nothing to Bakugo's arrogant smirk as he waltzes his way past everyone to your work bench.

You narrowly snatch up your latest prototype sketches before he sets down a pair of cold drinks on the table. The condensation drips down, pooling on its surface.

"This it?" He casually quirks up a brow at the strip of hard textured fabric and metal atop your bench. He picks up one of the drinks and slurps from its straw obnoxiously to get on your nerves, "hm, doesn't look like shit this time."

Lately you've been redesigning his utility belt to match the clasps between his protective gloves and gauntlets, additionally extending it to hold extra grenades that activate through his quirk. You've already sent in a request to the support department for those.

"Put ribbons on it like you did last week and I'll kill you."

You fight back a petty smile, recalling the pretty little pompoms decorating the numerous tiny pink bows stitched to each belt loop. He scoffs at your poorly concealed pleasure, and you turn your nose up at him, biting the inside of your cheek mischieviously.

He narrows his eyes at you before rolling them, placing his drink down way too close to your precious papers--again--and resting his cheek on his fist boredly.

Your lips twitch downward in ire at his intrusion of your space, but you work around him nontheless. You don't blink when he cusses as he smacks away a scrap of fabric you toss at him in casual vengeance.

"When's this gonna be done anyway--quit it. I've got a mission in Shinjuku next week." Bakugo snatches a pen you throw at him in mid-air.

You shrug at him, not your problem, but hold up two fingers anyway.

"Two days, huh," He clicks his tongue, "you slackin'?"

He cackles demonically while you log a chunk of stainless steel at his head.

Swear to god--you're gonna make his whole suit neon pink!

He visits you again after his mission, which is evidently successful judging by the fat cocky smirk on his face as he approaches while you stitch up a hero costume from class 1-B.

You deadpan at him as he drops a take away paper bag at the corner of your work bench. Then he tosses his empty utility belt over your most recent handiwork.

"Clasp blasted off."

Bakugo makes himself at home in the spinny chair opposite you, leaning back and putting his boots on the desk as he snags a tasty pastry from the paper bag before pushing it towards you.

An eyebrow twitches as you stare at the no longer existing metal clasp on the support item. A square char mark is left where it would've been. The belt is otherwise untouched.

What, was he aiming for it or something?

Scrunching your nose at him distastefully, you flick the belt off the costume you had been working on and resume your stitching.

"Oi! What about me!?"

You shoot him a sharp glare that makes him scoff. He pipes down nontheless, settling back into his chair with a roll of his eyes and a grumble.

Bakugo's visitations become more frequent.

At this point in time, his hero costume shouldn't need any more major improvements or adjustments until the start of your second year. And yet he's coming in what seems like every other day for any single little thing that bothers him.

Hell, he even comes in to bug you about repaires--you don't do repaires. But he argues that he doesn't want anyone but you 'touching his shit', as he so eloquently explains.

He's come in for his belt clasp six times now, his visor for four, his gauntlets for five, and for the sole of his boots thrice.

The bottom of his fucking shoes.

He can eat your sparkly, bow tied, hot pink and purple swirled shit.

He doesn't even need you anymore!

You're just some stupid non-hero extra. The hell is his deal now?

Bakugo's come in angry today.

He's normally angry, but it's different this time.

You watch him wearily from the corner of your eye as you type out a risk assessment at your desk. School's finished now, but you've been putting this off for a bit, and wanted to get it done while you were still feeling productive.

Less than ten minutes after the last bell rang out and everyone left for the day, Bakugo had come barging in with a stiffer than usual scowl and a dissatisfied furrow in his brows.

But he's been silent.

Bakugo's never been silent.

He sits in the seat adjacent to you, leant all the way into the backrest with his arms tightly crossed and his eyes narrowed, boring into your form.

Each time you glance at him you look away in a hurry as you meet his gaze.

Okay, now it's getting to you...

Slowly, your fingers stop typing, unable to function properly under the intensity of his stare. You don't look at him this time though, and you sweatdrop uncomfortably.

The tension causes your skin to prick, and you tug at your choker discomposibly. The velvet rubs at your skin, irritating it.

You jump when he suddenly speaks.

"What's up with you, huh?" He says it more like a statement, "you're so damn quiet it's eery. Say something."

You give him a disgruntled look.

Is he for real? Is that what his tantrum is about? He can go eat grass.

You turn your attention back onto your laptop, typing again.

He growls at that.

"Don't ignore me, damnit! I know you can say shit!"

Oh, and the shit I would say. You snicker to yourself, but that only seems to tick him off more.

"[name], answer me."

Your stomach drops--he's never called you by your name, let alone your first name. You glance at him again; Bakugo leans forwards with his elbows on his knees, eyes piercing you with a threatening intensity that sends off warning bells in your head.

You look back at him once you grasp the gravity of his tone.

Your annoyed frown fades, and your features soften as to prompt him. He takes in a deep breath, gaze flicking up and down your form as he processes his thoughts first.

He meets your eyes again with a determined resolve.

"I know you're my soulmate."

Fuck, what.

Bakugo scowls when you visibly stiffen, shock coursing your system.

"Get over yourself, you ain't slick. 'S why you've been runnin' from me." He crosses his arms across his chest, lips firmly downturned at your lack of verbal response.

Ice freezes your blood and your gaze flicks away from him apprehensively. What exactly is he expecting from this? Bakugo is a cocky bastard.

An egocentric prick with the means to flaunt it. He's one of the top students in the hero course and he knows it--what the hell does he want from you?

You feel your temper flare.

So what if he knows your soulmates? He obviously thinks he's too good for this shit; fuck fate and all that it stands for, you're just some side character behind him, just like he's said.

You aren't shit to him, and if he thinks he can actually do better than you, well then you know that you can. Who is he to pick and choose who he deserves? In that case, you know what, yeah, he's right, because you deserve better than him any day-

"What?" Bakugo's unappreciated tone fans the flames of the rapidly burning thread containing your tolerance, "still silent?"

"Shut up, asshole! You think you're too good for shit!" Your outburst as you slamming your hands down atop your work bench, the few utensils scattered about clattering in tandem with the vibration, "I'm not just some side piece you can bulldoze! I know my worth, even if you can't fathom it, you eighth-grade-syndrome twit!"

A tense silence settles over the room, and his eyes harden as you stare him down with an unwavering resolve.

Bakugo's lips twitch.

And then he's cackling like a hyena.

You flinch at the abrupt switch, scrambling to process whether you should feel glad or offended that he doesn't seem to be taking your words to heart.

You know for a fact you would not beat Katsuki Bakugo in a fight.

You shiver at the thought, and he beats his fist on the edge of the table as he recovers from his laughter. He lets out a long winded breath, wiping an exaggerated tear from his eye which you deadpan at.

"Ah, damn," Bakugo snorts, "we're really meant to be, eh?" He lifts up the edge of his loose shirt just enough to reveal the glowing golden words inked vertically on his toned waist, "knew there was a reason I could tolerate you more."

"Ditto." You spit out despite the relief flooding you as he stays put. You rub the back of your neck subconsciously.

He eyes the movement skeptically before motioning for you to move towards him. You scrunch your nose at him but oblige when he clicks his tongue irratedly. You've tested his patience enough already.

Once you're close enough he yanks you down and unclasps your velvet choker. You emit a scandalised gasp, feeling naked without it.

"Hey!"

"Give it up," He drawls, "get over yourself."

Bakugo latches a hand around your nape, pulling you forward so your head is bent level with his chest, and your face flushes. Both your hands grip at the armrests of the chair, caging him in as you fight not to fall off balance.

"Ack-" You choke at the feeling of him ever so gently tracing beneath the words on the back of your neck, "-stop that!"

He huffs a laugh, and his breath pans over your skin.

His eyes soften ever so slightly, "You're not jus' some extra, you know..." He lets you up. He ignores the imbuing embarrassment that pairs with the subtle blush tinting his cheeks.

You mull over his words for a second, pushing yourself back to face him head on. You blink slowly, registering his meaning. A gentle warmth settles across your cheeks, and a quiet glee bubbles inside you.

"Yeah?"

Although you bite back a smile, there's a hopeful glimmer in your eyes.

Bakugo grins, "Yeah," and places a reassuring hand atop your head, "not my soulmate."

[lilissmut]

Dad bakugo x Mom reader

“Cmon Sumi, you’ve gotta eat, take at least two bites? Pleasee?”Sighing to yourself as your four year old is refusing to eat, again.

“but mama, i don’t wanna eat this” Sumi, your daughter, is a very picky eater.

“please baby? You can’t just eat French fries and chicken nuggets.” You’re starting to get frustrated when you hear your 8 month old, Hatsuki, start to cry.

“Eat half, or else dada is getting involved.” Sumi sighed in frustration, but was a mamas girl, and didn’t like her dad as much as you, her mom. So she started to take a couple bites of her food, knowing how angry her dad gets at her for giving her mom a hard time.

smiling at your daughter, you walk upstairs to your eight month old son, Hatsuki. He wasn’t much of a crier, but when he did cry, it was hard to get him to quiet down.

You picked up your son, and rocked him back and fourth in a soothing motion, praying he’d go back to sleep. Or else he’d be up all night.

“s’okay, mamas right here baby” you sat down on the bed, holding him in your arms. You couldn��t get over the fact that Hatsuki looked so much like your husband, Bakugo. The feeling of relief washed over you when you finally got Hatsuki to quiet down, and fall back asleep.

Walking down the stairs with your baby in your arms, you see Sumi still eating her food.

“thank you baby. You ate so much of it.” Smiling at her, you gave her a kiss on the forehead.

It was around two hours later you Heard the door open, and you knew those steps so well, they were katsukis.

You overheard your husband asking “where’s mama, sumi?” You were half asleep and didn’t even both to listen in any further.

“babe I’m in the living room!!” You stated loud enough for him to hear, but hopefully not loud enough to wake up the baby.

smiling as you heard him walk towards you.

“Hey babe how was work?” He smiled and gave you a kiss on the lips.

“it was good. Stupid wanna be villains, but you know how it is babe.” Sumi ran over to her dad and gave him grabby hands, wanting him to pick her up.

Grunting a little as he picked her up, and sat on the couch beside his gorgeous wife.

You leaned into bakugos shoulder, tired and stressed, but those emotions were shared between you two.

You were just finally happy to have your husband home.

[angel-sweets666]

Stuck together

Barbarian prince! bakugo katsuki x princess! Reader(fem)

Your parents arranged you to the brash and rude prince of the barbarians to save their own skin. warnings and stuff inside of the story: talks of virginity, talks of a virginity check (its accurate to the time period ok?) a/n should I make this a series? I think it’d be fun but idk ur rich btw so just like there’s rich stuff. Btw if I do make this a series(this is a sneak peak) it’ll be a slow burn

full version here

AGED UP

Mitsuki leaned back, her piercing gaze fixed on your parents. "So, what do you say? You give us your daughter, and we'll form an alliance," she proposed, pausing for their response. "It would offer protection from the Todoroki kingdom Flamoria, no?" The blonde woman smiled at your father, trying to sway him.

Your mother hesitated. "I mean, I dunno…"

"We'll do it," he interrupted, cutting off your mother.

"Huh?!" Your mother turned to him, shock evident on her face.

"Perfect. Sign here," Mitsuki said smoothly, handing them a piece of paper. It was a betrothal agreement, arranging the marriage between you and her hot-tempered son, Bakugo.

Your father reached for the pen, the gravity of the situation pressing down on him. "This will secure our safety and ensure a powerful ally," he murmured, almost convincing himself as much as anyone else.

"But our daughter…" your mother started, her voice filled with concern and disbelief. She looked at Mitsuki, then back at your father, torn between the political necessity and the love for her child.

"We don't have a choice," your father replied firmly, signing the paper. "This alliance is crucial for our kingdom's survival. The Empyrean empire is strong.”

Mitsuki's smile widened as she took the signed document. "Excellent. You won't regret this. Bakugo will make a fine husband, many heirs will come from this, she is a virgin right?” The blonde asks “we can get her checked for it, *name* was very sheltered growing up so we can assure you she’s a virgin.” Your father explains, leaning back in his own chair. His gaze turns to your mother, who seems distraught about marrying off her child to the barbarian prince. Someone famous for being a violent person.

at 17 years old bakugo had brought back the head of a powerful tribe leader and put it on a stick for everyone to see, at 18 years old he had gathered a small army of men and defeated the midoriya kingdom and had a bloody cloak from the one of the dead soilders to prove it. Then at 20 years old bakugo had forced izuku, the Feywood king to surrender his crown. Which put feywood in the empyrean empire. No one knows where izuku midoriya currently is, all the people know is that he was last scene getting dragged by his green locks by bakugo and was never seen again.

Later on

“YOU ARRANGED ME TO WHO!?” You screamed, staring at your parents in complete horror. How could they do this to you? You make one wrong move and your own husband would order your death! “Look it’s not so bad..” “NOT SO BAD? HES KILLED HUNDREDS! THOUSANDS EVEN” “He won’t kill you though!” Your father exclaimed, An attempt to calm you. “Look, bakugo may seem like a man killing war machine of a prince but his parents assured us that he’s very gentle with women.” You scoffed, leaning your weight to one hip “bullshit. He’s gonna kill me.”

Over the next few weeks, you tried everything to call off the arrangement. You attempted to run away before the virginity check, feigned illness, and concocted elaborate excuses. Nothing seemed to work. Your parents were resolute, insisting that you marry Katsuki Bakugo for the strength of their own kingdom.

Lying in bed, you tossed and turned, unable to escape the looming dread of marrying the great, scary barbarian prince, soon to be barbarian king. What if he rips your head off just because you refuse to give him a kiss? The thought made your heart race with fear.

Suddenly, a knock on the door snapped you out of your spiraling thoughts. A maid entered, her eyes downcast. "Your Highness? Tomorrow we will wake you early to help you begin packing for the travel to the Empyrean Kingdom," she said softly, her voice trembling as she tried to avoid any kind of trouble.

You groaned and turned your head toward her. "When am I being sent to them?" you asked

"U-uh, most likely the day after tomorrow," the maid stammered, clearly uneasy with your distress.

You sighed deeply, feeling the weight of your impending fate settle even heavier on your shoulders. "I see… thank you," you muttered.

You looked back at the red headed maid “How far is the journey?” You asked her softly, she fidgeted with her fingers “a-about two days, they live f-far from our kingdom your highness” she stammered. You smiled to the red head and dismissed her.

As she left you stared at the ceiling, your mind racing. The thought of being married off to someone you had never met, someone with a terrifying reputation, filled you with a sense of dread and hopelessness. Your parents decision felt like a betrayal, a sacrifice of your happiness for the supposed greater good of the kingdom

You stood in the corner of your large room, watching as numerous servants took gowns, corsets, shoes, and other clothing items, placing them into bags. "U-uh, don’t barbarians wear less formal clothes? Shouldn’t I bring less?" you asked the maids. All of them turned to look at you, a hint of surprise on their faces.

"Her Highness makes a point," the same red-headed maid from the night before whispered to an older maid. The older maid, seemingly more experienced, turned toward you with a thoughtful expression.

"You're right, Your Royal Highness. They would probably end up burning these clothes or turning them into barbarian-styled garments," she conceded.

You sighed, your shoulders dropping in resignation. "What do barbarian women wear?" you asked the older maid, hoping for some clarity.

"Hm… flowy skirts, I’ve seen a few wear headdresses," she replied, as some of the gowns were hung back up in the closet. The maids began to sift through your belongings, selecting items that might be more appropriate for your new life.

As you watched the process, you couldn’t help but glance out the window. Your mother and father were walking in the garden, deep in conversation. They seemed so in love, so perfectly matched, yet they were throwing you into a marriage that promised nothing but misery. The contrast between their happiness and your dread was almost unbearable.

"Your Highness, we’ll pack lighter, more practical clothing for your journey," the older maid reassured.

"Thank you," you murmured, though your heart wasn't in it. The thought of being dressed in unfamiliar clothes, adapting to an unknown culture, and being wed to a man you feared only added to your anxiety.

As the servants continued their work, you wandered over to your bed, sinking down onto the edge. The weight of your impending departure pressed down on you, making it hard to breathe. You had grown up surrounded by luxury and love, and now you were being sent away, to marry probably the most violent man you’ve ever heard of

Tears welled up in your eyes as you thought about the future that awaited you. Would you ever find happiness in the Empyrean Kingdom? Would Katsuki Bakugo, the fierce and terrifying prince, ever come to care for you, or would you be nothing more than a means to an end?

"Your Highness, is there anything else you would like us to pack?" one of the younger maids asked, her voice gentle.

You shook your head, wiping away a stray tear. "No, just… make sure to leave out a few comfortable things for me to wear until we leave."

"Of course, Your Highness," she replied, her expression sympathetic.

As the maids continued their preparations, you lay back on your bed, staring up at the white ceiling. You tried to find comfort in the familiar surroundings, knowing that soon you would be leaving them behind.

"So, what's the barbarian kingdom like?" you asked, looking over to the maids. The older maid once again turned her head to look at you.

"Most of the people live in either big wooden houses with all sorts of weapons around or in these hut-like tent things. Either way, they have all these symbols painted on them," she described, clearly having been to the Empyrean Kingdom before.

"And what about the Bakugos? Where do they live? You asked

"They live in a stone castle with intricate paintings on it, and there's a lot of security. The last time I was there, they had spikes on the bridge leading to the castle, with people's heads mounted on them," the old maid replied,

"How long ago were you there?" you asked, feeling a chill run down your spine at the gruesome detail.

"When the young prince was about fifteen, so around five years ago," she said, placing one last corset into a bag.

You glanced at the six bags of items packed for your journey, feeling a mix of relief and trepidation. It was a smaller amount than you had anticipated, yet it seemed to signify the end of one life and the beginning of another.

"Did you meet the prince?" you asked, trying to glean any information that might help you understand the man you were to marry.

"Briefly," she replied, her expression softening. "He was intense, even as a teenager. Always training, always pushing himself. But there was a sadness in his eyes, a loneliness."

You sighed, trying to reconcile the image of the fierce, terrifying prince with the glimpses of vulnerability the maid described. "And the people there? How are they?"

"Fierce, proud, and loyal," the older maid said. "They value strength above all else, but they also have a deep sense of honor and community. If you earn their respect, they'll defend you with their lives."

The more you learned, the more daunting your future seemed. Yet, there was a strange comfort in knowing that the barbarian kingdom, despite its harsh exterior, had its own codes and values.

As the maids continued their work, you tried to imagine what life in the Empyrean Kingdom would be like

"Is there anything else I should know?" you asked, your voice softer, almost hesitant.

The older maid paused, considering your question. "Just remember, Your Highness, that if you respect them and they’ll respect you."

Her words resonated with you, giving you a small but vital sense of empowerment. You nodded “alright, seems easy enough..”

The day that you needed to travel to the empyrean kingdom came, your parents watched you walk from

The ride to the Empyrean Kingdom was grueling. As the carriage rattled over uneven roads, you gazed out the window, the lush greenery of your homeland gradually giving way to the rugged, bushy landscape of the barbarian territory. The closer you got, the more your anxiety grew, each kilometre bringing you closer to the empyrean land

When you finally arrived at the castle, you were struck by its threatening look. The stone walls were decorated with weird red painted symbols, and the spiked bridge, as described by the maid, loomed menacingly ahead. Your heart pounded as you stepped out of the carriage, taking in the harsh surroundings.

A group of stern-faced and very attractive guards escorted you inside. The castle's interior was as intimidating as its exterior—dimly lit, with weapons and trophies of past battles displayed prominently on the walls. You felt a shiver run down your spine as you were led through the cold halls

Finally, you were brought to a large chamber where a tall, muscular figure stood with his back to you. His spiky blonde hair was unmistakable. As he slowly turned to face you, his piercing red eyes locked onto yours with an intensity that made you want to look away.

he was tall and about 6ft with messy blonde hair, scars all over his body and face, and peircing

"So, you're the princess they sent," Katsuki said, his voice dripping with disdain. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, his expression one of barely concealed annoyance.

You straightened your back, meeting his gaze with as much confidence as you could muster. "I am," you replied, trying to keep your voice steady.

Bakugo scoffed, looking you up and down as if to check if you were just a weak small baby or strong enough to be a wife and a queen “Great. Another weakling to babysit," he muttered under his breath.

Anger formed within you at his dismissive attitude. "I am not a weakling," you snapped. "And I am certainly not here to be babysat."

He raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. "We'll see about that," he said, turning away from you. "Follow me. There's no point in wasting time."

You clenched your fists, biting back a come back to insult him with as you followed him through the castle. Every step echoed in the vast, cold corridors.

Bakugo led you to a large hall where a group of people—presumably his advisors and some of the castle staff—were gathered. He introduced you curtly, barely sparing you a glance as he did so. The looks you received ranged from curiosity to outright hostility, they clearly didn’t want you here. Just like the old maid back had home had warned, these people hated the weak.

After the introductions, Bakugo dismissed everyone, including you. "You'll be shown to your chambers. Don't get in my way," he said, the blonde clearly trying to end the conversation between you two before he could get sucked into some conversation he didn’t waht

You followed a servant to your chambers, a mix of anger and sadness within you. The room was surprisingly comfortable, a stark contrast to the rest of the castle, but it did little to lift your spirits. You sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the weight of your new reality settle over you.

Over the next few days, you tried to find your place in the castle. The people were distant and wary, their lack of trust clear in their every interaction with you. And Bakugo… he was even worse than most . He ignored you most of the time, and when he did speak to you, it was with a cold, dismissive tone that made your blood boil. He always had a tone of sass, trying to get under your skin constantly.

as the days grew closer and closer to your wedding date he seemed to just get more and more annoying, constantly having some tone of sass. Never wanting to talk to you and constantly flirting with your maids

oh you are so done with his bullshit

[bbkoolkatz]

pairing: barbarian prince! katsuki bakugo x fem! reader.

content warnings: FEMALE READER! physical fighting [training] smooching, shared bath, husband undressing wife [without permission] husband cleaning wife [literally, because you we're dirty] other than that there's nothing major... yet... sigh...

completely forgot I was supposed to upload this Saturday... so here ya go! can't wait for the next chapter *evil giggle* hope ya enjoy!

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 2; 𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖒𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓 4.3𝔨+ 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔰

chapter 1

"he says, you are too stiff, frú mín!" ragna called, perched on a nearby boulder, "it makes you slow!" translating katsuki's barked criticisms.

he lunged forward, swinging the wooden blade at your feet, throwing you off your footing.

katsuki stood before you, as you stumbled, sweat glistening on his toned body with the harsh sunlight, beaming down on him, "hold your ground," he growled, lifting his sword to charge at you again. you took a breath, chest heaving as you gripped the handle of the wooden practice sword, raising your weapon to meet his.

the clashing of pine echoed through the clearing, the vibration rattling through your arms, into your chest and your knees buckled slightly under the force. but you grit your teeth, stubbornly refusing to fall.

you quickly adjust your stance, the muscles in your legs trembling as you tried to balance. katsuki's hot gaze narrowed, a smirk of sorts splayed on his face.

"again!" he barked, stepping forward a bit to launch an attack. the wooden sword came at you in an arch, the force of his strike sending a jolt up your arms, and your grip slipped, leaving you with barely any time to parry.

"too slow!" he spat, his voice hitting you like a whip as he struck again, aiming for your side.

your flesh rippled as the flat end of the training sword connected with your ribs, knocking the air out of your lungs. you stumble back, clutching your side as you gasped for breath.

"your enemies won't show you mercy," he circled you, pacing, like a predator stalking it's prey. forcing air back into your aching lungs, you straightened yourself, salty sweat dripping down your brow to sting your eyes.

ragna tilted her head, observing, lips twitching to form a smile on her beautifully sculpted face as she translates your husband's words for you.

"again," you rasped, voice hoarse but determined to make him falter just once.

katsuki raised a brow, eyes narrowing at your resolve as he charged forward without another word, sword swooshing through the air.

stepping aside, you doged his strike as you brought your weapon up, aiming for his shoulder. katsuki—obviously—blocked effortlessly, the impact reverberating through your bones, but you pushed forward, pressing your advantage as your heart pounded in your chest.

your strikes came faster, more fluid, as though the rhythm of the fight was finally clicking into place. your arms burned with every effort to move them, your breaths coming in short, sharp gasps, as you kept fighting.

your husband's eyes gleamed with a vicious light, his lips curling into a wild, feral grin as he matched your pace, his movements precise and unrelenting as ever, pushing you to your limits.

every fiber of muscle in your body screamed in protest and katsuki's blade collided with yours once more, the clash nearly sending you to your knees. you grunted, planting your feet firmly in the dirt as you pushed back with all your strength.

katsuki's grin widened as he kicked you off balance, sprawling you out on the dirt field in under two seconds... you lay there for a moment, squinting up at the endless expanse of sky until the familiar, wild tuffs of blonde hair loomed over you, casting a shadow over your exhausted frame.

"get up," he ordered, offering no hand to help... you huffed a puff of breath, rolling onto your side to push yourself to your knees, the hard cracked earth grounding you as your muscles throbbed under your skin.

gods you wanted a bath right now... a nice, cold, spring water bath... wack! and you were on the ground again. "your mind isn't focused!" ragna cackled your husbands words, holding her stomach and covering her mouth in a feeble attempt to hide her amusement.

"you're getting better, my lady," she smiled, leaning over your—once again—sprawled out body on the ground. you brought a hand up to wipe the sweat off your forehead, "i'll die before the rebels get me," you laughed, a hoarse, gravelly sound scraping it's way out of your throat.

☆.｡.:*❀.｡.:*☆ 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔫𝔢𝔵𝔱 𝔡𝔞𝔶

smoke curled lazily from the chimneys of the villagers homes. the smell of freshly baked bread mingled with the earthy aroma of tilled soil as the pang of the blacksmith's hammer rang in the distance, a rhythmic pulse that echoed like a heartbeat of the clan.

"are you sure about this, my lady?" ragna queried, a little skeptical as she stepped in stride beside you. you nod, assuring her of your decision, "if i'm to be part of this clan, ragna, i can't just sit at stronghold and watch," gaze sweeping over the bustling activity as you adjust your shawl around your shoulders.

ragna's plush lips cracked little smile at your determination. your first stop was the weaving circle, where several women sat on low stools, their fingers deftly threading wool into intricate patterns. their chatter hushed as you approached them.

the women exchanged awkward glances, muttering amongst themselves, before a middle aged woman with streaks of gray in her braid, gestured to an empty stool next to her, for you to sit.

the work was meticulous, the rhythm of the loom soothing your nerves as your fingers fumbled over the threads, earning quiet murmurs of disapproval from the others... the elder woman stood behind you, gently guiding your hands to correct any mistake, until she finally nodded her approval.

after weaving a few pieces of cloth, you moved to the fields, where men and women worked side by side, their hands covered in soil as they prepared the land for planting.

you knelt beside an old, wrinkled man, his gnarled hands moving with ease as he dug rows into the soil. he glanced down at you, brows furrowing as you picked up a tool and began to mimic his movements. he said nothing, slowing his movements for you to get a better look and follow.

"keep your back straight, my lady," ragna instructed, crouching beside you as she translated the old man's quiet words of advice.

sweat beaded on your brow as soil clung to your skin with each swing and dig, that sent a dull ache through your arms and back. the work was grueling, but with every row completed, you were closer to finishing and getting in your bath...

when night came, you found yourself in the kitchens, where women bustled about, preparing meals for the workers. the aroma of herbs and roasted meat overwhelmed your nostrils, as the heat of the ovens welcome you inside.

"hæ! þú ert hér! loksins hér!" a young girl beamed, running over as she saw you enter. "she says, hello, you finally made it," ragna chuckled, patting the girl on her back. "ég er celeste," the young girl introduced herself, gently taking your hand in hers to guide you over to the bubbling cauldrons. "it seems she's excited to see you, my lady."

"it seems so," you giggle softly, at the girls eagerness.

-

"don't stir too much, or you'll ruin it," one of the cooks muttered, correcting your technique as she leaned over your shoulder.

ragna smirked, her translation tinged with amusement as she leaned closer. "you've been given a passable teacher, my lady," nudging your shoulder with her elbow as you playfully rolled your eyes.

the women around you began to soften their guarded expressions as they watched you work. they shared stories of past harvests, of children born and loved ones lost, their words painting a picture of a people as complex and enduring as the mountains that sheltered them.

by the time the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of amber and violets, you were exhausted. the day's labour lingered in your body, but the tension that had once filled the air around you, felt lighter.

upon your return to the stronghold, you saw katsuki waiting at the entrance, his arms crossed over his chest as he glanced at the little dirt, smudged on your face and clothes, and the weariness in your steps. an almost imperceptible smirk crawled over his thin lips as you walked up to him leaning against the stronghold's walls.

ragna stepped forward, translating his words, "you look like someone buried you alive," he snickered, his tone gruff, minus the usual edge to them. you shy away, looking at the ground.

he lifted your head by your chin to look at him, eyes drifting down to your chapped lips then back up to your tired eyes.

he kneeled down in front of you and you turn to ragna, "what is he- woah!" his fingers sink into the back of your thighs as your hip bones pressed into his beefy shoulder, with your ass on display—next to his face—you prop yourself up, your hands pushing against his flexing back muscles, as he walked with you through the giant wooden doors and up the stairs to your chambers.

his eyes flickered with something as he threw you over his shoulder—pride, perhaps, or respect?—adjusting your weight with a low grunt.

katsuki shoved the heavy doors of your chambers open with his free arm, carrying you inside without so much as a struggle. he set you down on your feet with surprising gentleness, with warm palms resting comfortably on your hips, his narrow crimson eyes scanned over your dirt-smeared frame.

"þú ert skítug..." he muttered under his breath, his voice deep and laced with something you couldn't quite place. his expression was... unreadable as he motioned for you to stay put.

"what?" you whisper, softly shaking your head in confusion. he didn't respond, simply moving toward a small chest tucked away in the corner of your room. he rifled through it briefly before pulling out a clean linen cloth.

you watched him with a mix of curiosity and wariness as he stepped toward you again. he gestured at your dirtied clothing, the meaning clear even if his language wasn't.

"oh, i can do it myself," you insist, raising your hands defensively, though exhaustion made your movements sluggish. katsuki narrowed his eyes even more, with pinched brows. his patience visibly thinning...

"sitja kyrr," he commanded, firm as he gestured for you to stop resisting.

you huffed, crossing your arms in protest, legs trembling slightly under your weight, which didn't go unnoticed, his sharp gaze flicking to your unsteady stance before letting out a low grunt. without waiting for your permission, he stepped closer and began unfastening the ties of your shawl and outer layer.

"hey! i'm perfectly capable o—" you started to argue, but he silenced you with a sharp glance and growled, "kyrr."

his fingers worked quickly but carefully, his rough hands brushing against your skin as he peeled away the layers of dirt-streaked fabric. you felt your cheeks heat as he removed the last of your garments, leaving you exposed to his unwavering gaze. he didn't leer or linger, though; his movements were efficient, his focus entirely on the task at hand.

once you were bare, he reached for the cloth and dipped it into the warm water waiting in the tub. he wrung it out, motioning for you to step closer. he brought the damp cloth up to your face, carefully rubbing the dirt stains off, he moved down your arms, to your chest—where your heart pounded against your ribs—rubbing down your torso, to your soft legs all the way down to your aching calves. it felt like he was scared he'd hurt you with the softness he used to clean you off.

"farðu," he said, gesturing to the stone tub, impatiently.

you hesitated for a moment, the language barrier making his commands more intimidating than they probably were. but the promise of warm water was too tempting to resist, and you eased yourself into the tub with a sigh of relief.

the heat soothed your aching muscles immediately, and you leaned back against the smooth stone, letting your eyes flutter shut. that peace was short-lived, however, as katsuki shed his clothing and stepped into the tub with you.

"wait—what are you doing?" you stammered, your face flushing as you quickly averted your gaze.

he ignored your meaningless words, his expression neutral as he settled in behind you. his hands found your shoulders, rough palms gliding over your smooth skin.

"katsuki, i—" you started to protest, but his fingers pressed into a knot of tension in your shoulder, and you couldn't stop the sigh that escaped your lips. his hands were firm but careful, his touch surprisingly soothing as he continued his task.

"þar," he murmured, his voice low and steady as if explaining something to you. you didn't understand the words, but the tone carried a strange reassurance, as though he was telling you to let him handle this.

you relaxed slightly under his touch, the tension in your body melting away with each pass of his hands. he moved methodically, scrubbing away whatever dirt that'd been clinging to your skin and hair. when his hands found their way to your back, you leaned forward, giving him better access.

it wasn't until his fingers brushed over the curve of your waist that the atmosphere in the bath... changed... his touch lingered just a moment too long, his fingers pressing lightly against your skin as though testing your reaction.

you turned your head to glance at him over your shoulder, your breath catching when you caught the intensity in his gaze, his vermilion eyes burning with a heat that matched the warmth of the water surrounding you both.

"is something wrong?" you murmured, your voice barely above a whisper.

he didn't reply—not with words, at least. instead, he leaned closer, his hand moving to cup your jaw as his lips brushed against yours in a tentative but firm kiss.

your initial surprise melted away as the kiss deepened, the heat between you both growing as his hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you closer. the water lapped gently against the edges of the tub, the only sound in the quiet chamber besides your mingled breaths.

when you finally pulled away, your heart was racing, as your face flushed from more than just the warmth of the bath. katsuki's lips parted as if to speak, but the words never came. instead, he rested his forehead against yours, his breaths coming slow and steady as if grounding himself.

"ég hef eitthvað handa þér." he rasped as you leaned into him again. what on earth did he just say? you have absolutely no idea... but you'll ask ragna after your bath.

☆.｡.:*❀.｡.:*☆

katsuki had dragged you out of bed at the crack of dawn and brought you out into the forest, in the outskirts of the stronghold, which was eerily quiet, save for the rustle of leaves and the occasional snaps of twigs underfoot. katsuki walked ahead, his broad frame cutting through the bramble with ease. you followed cautiously, your breath visible in the crisp morning air. he hadn't spoken much—if at all—since dragging you out of bed and motioning for you to come with.

now, the towering trees gave way to the dark mouth of a cave. its yawning entrance loomed before you, cold air seeping out like a ghostly warning. you hesitated, turning to katsuki by your side.

"komdu," he barked over his shoulder, the command abrupt but not by any means harsh.

still, unease prickled at your skin. you stepped into the cave, following him into the deepening darkness. the light from the entrance grew faint as you moved further in, swallowed by shadows that seemed to press against you.

"katsuki?" you whisper, but he offered no reply, only a grunt as he suddenly stopped, causing you to bump into his back with a mphf.

before you could question him, the ground vibrated beneath your feet, a low rumble echoing through the cavern, resonating in your chest. then, two massive orbs of glowing crimson pierced the darkness ahead, locking onto you with a huff.

your breath caught in your throat, as the rumbling grew louder, accompanied by the sound of scales shifting against each other. a massive head emerged from the shadows, scales shimmering faintly in the dim light. the dragon's maw opened, revealing rows of sharp teeth as it let out a deep, guttural growl.

"þetta er hann," katsuki said, gesturing to the creature with an almost casual wave.

you gaped at him, words escaping your brain. a dragon? you weren't sure what you had expected, but it certainly wasn't a fucking dragon.

"what is that?" your voice came out as a weak murmur, tinged with both awe and terror. you had to make sure you weren't seeing or hearing things...

"drengr minn," katsuki replied, based on the look on your face, stepping closer to the dragon and placing a hand against its massive snout, the beast huffed, as if in acknowledgment.

your legs threatened to give out as katsuki turned to you, motioning for you to come closer. you shook your head, frozen in place.

"komdu hingað," he called, his voice firm.

reluctantly, you stepped forward, your pulse thundering in your ears. the dragon's gaze followed you, unblinking and intense. when you were close enough, katsuki grabbed your hand and placed it against the warm, rough scales of the dragon's snout.

the beast rumbled again. it was almost... a purr.

"ekki hrædd," katsuki muttered, his voice softer now, though it still carried their usual edge.

katsuki pulled himself up onto the dragon's back, his movements sure and practiced. he extended a hand to you, waiting. you hesitated, but the weight of his expectation—and the dragon's unyielding stare—left you with little choice. with a deep breath, you grasped his hand and allowed him to pull you up and plop you down in front of him.

the dragon shifted beneath you, its massive body uncoiling as it prepared to take off. your hands instinctively grip katsuki's forearms, your heart hammering in your chest.

without warning, the dragon launched itself out of the cave and into the sky with an ear piercing roar, as you screamed your lungs out.

the ground fell away beneath you, the wind tearing at your hair and clothes as the beast's wings beat powerfully. for a moment, fear threatened to consume you. but then the view unfolded around you—the sprawling forest below, the endless expanse of sky above, and the distant peaks of mountains on the horizon.

your grip on katsuki tightened as the dragon banked to the left, the motion sending a thrilling jolt through your body. he turned your head slightly, a faint smirk playing on his lips as he barked something over the wind. though you didn't understand him, his tone was definitely teasing, almost amused by the expression on your face.

slowly, the fear ebbed, replaced by a tentative awe. the dragon's movements were surprisingly smooth, its powerful wings carrying you effortlessly through the sky.

"oh my gods," you murmured, your voice barely audible over the wind.

he glanced down, raising an eyebrow in question.

"this is..." you trailed off, searching for the words. "unbelievable," you grin, your mouth drying out with the wind.

he didn't reply, but his smirk widened, his chest puffing slightly with pride as though he understood you.

as the dragon soared higher, you found yourself loosening your grip just enough to look around, as katsuki snakes a strong arm around your waist to keep you from falling over. the world seemed smaller from this height, a patchwork of green and brown stitched together by rivers of silver. for a brief moment, you forgot your fear, your uncertainty, and the weight of everything that had brought you here.

when the dragon began its descent, the rush of air grew fiercer, and your grip on katsuki returned. he muttered something under his breath, seemily reassuring you of something.

by the time you landed, your legs felt like jelly, and your heart hadn't yet stopped racing. katsuki dismounted first, extending a hand to help you down.

you took it, your knees wobbling as your feet touched the ground. "þú stóðst þig vel," katsuki rasped, low and seemingly approving.

-

your body vibrated with excitement as you stood outside the stronghold, feeling the cool breeze brushing against your skin. today, is the beginning of your journey back to your kingdom.

katsuki, stoic as ever, walked with his dragon, its massive form thumping its way around. the beast moved like molten lava, each muscle rippling under crimson scales as it emerged fully into the sunlight, its fiery red eyes scanned the clearing as it's massive body cast a long shadow on the ground.

katsuki turned to you, his intense gaze holding a question.

"farðu upp," he urged, gesturing to the dragon's massive back.

you hesitated, your stomach knotting at the memory of the flight earlier. while breathtaking, it had also been utterly terrifying.

"i'm not sure i can do that again," you confessed, nervously laughing as you shook your head in refusal, "i'll stick with the tetsugami."

he frowned, his brows knitting together in mild frustration. "ekki vera veik," he snapped, though the edge in his tone softened slightly as he stepped closer. "þú lifðir það áður."

"you do know that i have not the faintest idea of what you're saying..." you counter, looking him up and down, crossing your arms.

he stared at you for a brief second, his lips fixing into a scowl. after a moment, he let out an irritated breath and muttered something to himself.

he motioned for the dragon to stay put, his sharp whistle echoing through the clearing. the beast settled onto its haunches, its wings furling tightly against its sides as it let out a snort. katsuki didn't argue further, instead taking a few purposeful steps towards you.

"ég mun horfa ofan frá." he grumbled, the words curt but resigned.

you furrowed your brow, piecing together his meaning. he wasn't thrilled, but he accepted your refusal.

hours later, preparations for the journey were complete. you stood at the edge of the stronghold, the weight of the coming trip settling over you.

in the thick of the tall trees, a sound of heavy, slow and deliberate footsteps, accompanied by a metallic scrape that sent delightful shivers up your spine, echoed.

you avert your gaze from your husband, and toward the noise coming from behind them. your eyes widened as the tetsugami emerged into view. it's rust-red carapace glinting in the sunlight like aged armor. it's body was crab-like in shape with a wide, flat shell that curved protectively over it's back.

it's seven remaining legs, each the width of a tree trunk, moved with surprising grace despite the size and weight of the creature. the absence of its front right leg didn't seem to hinder it's movements; it's gait was steady, with powerful legs sinking into the soil with each step, leaving deep impressions behind. its pinchers clacked excitedly as it shifted its weight, the sound reverberating like distant thunder as its antennae twitched, scanninng the air for potential threats, while it's small, bead-like eyes glimmered with an eerie intelligence.

strapped to it's surface were supplies for the journey—barrels of provisions, rolled up tents, and neatly stacked crates secured with thick leather straps.

"þetta er tetsugami," mitsuki stood proud, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. you turned toward her, recognizing the words enough to know she was introducing the creature. her expression softened as she gestured to the beast, inviting you to approach.

you hesitated, glancing back at katsuki, who was already climbing onto his dragon's back. his crimson eyes met yours briefly before he turned his focus to his mount, silently leaving you to make your own choice.

you stepped closer to the tetsugami, its sheer size making you feel small in comparison—as if the huge people you now live with weren't enough... its mandibles clicked rhythmically, a surprisingly soothing sound as you placed a tentative hand on the edge of its shell. the surface was rough and cool, like weathered stone, but it radiated a subtle warmth from the sunlight it absorbed.

"he's beautiful," you murmured, more to yourself than anyone else.

the tetsugami let out a low, resonant hum—a sound that rumbled deep in its body, vibrating through your fingertips, like a contented purr, and it made you smile.

ragna approached from the side, her brows arching in surprise as she took in the sight of the beast. "quite the creature, isn't it?" she said, though her tone carried an air of caution.

you turned to her with a grin, "ride with me," you offered, gesturing to the sturdy harness slung across the tetsugami's shell.

ragna hesitated, her gaze flicking between you and the creature. "the tetsugami is only brought out for important people, my lady-"

"you are important," you insisted, taking her hands in yours, your voice soft and earnest, "it's a long journey, and i'd feel better having you by my side."

ragna's lips pressed into a thin line, her expression conflicted for a moment before she nodded, "v-very well," she gave in, sighing as you clapped to yourself.

with mitsuki's help, you climbed onto the tetsugami's back, settling into the cushioned saddle fastened securely near the center. the saddle was surprisingly comfortable, with a wide padded seat, designed for stability. ragna joined you, careful as she adjusted her position beside you.

the tetsugami let out another hum, chittering as it adjusted to the added weight. its antennae twitched again, and it began to move, its legs carrying it forward with a deliberate, swaying rhythm.

as the caravan set off, the sounds of boots crunching against dirt and the occasional clang of weapons accompanied the steady thuds of the giant crab's steps, broke the silence. the missing leg added an uneven cadence to its movements, a faint scrape with every third step that served as a reminder of its battle-scarred history.

katsuki's dragon took to the skies with a powerful leap, its wings slicing through the air as it ascended, leaving the rest of you to follow below.

the journey had begun.

»»————> 𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘! <————««

"frú mín" - my lady

"hæ! þú ert hér! loksins hér!" - Hello! You're here! Finally here!

"ég er celeste" - I am Celeste

"þú ert skítug" - You're dirty

"sitja kyrr" - Stay still

"kyrr" - Still

"farðu" - Go

"þar" - There

"ég hef eitthvað handa þér" - I have something for you

"komdu" - come

"þetta er hann" - this is him

"drengr minn" - my boy

"komdu hingað" - come here

"ekki hrædd" - don't be afraid

"þú stóðst þig vel" - you did well

"farðu upp" - get up

"ekki vera veik" - don’t be weak

"þú lifðir það áður" - you survived it before

"ég mun horfa ofan frá" - I will watch from above

"þetta er tetsugami" - this is tetsugami

if you've already asked to be in the tag list and you're not there then please check your settings and fix it accordingly or ensure that you have at least one post on your blog and ask again.

»»————> 𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙!

@twoplayergaymers @ch3rryjampi3 @lxdystxrdustt @selfishgucci @sleepyfxce @depressed-waffle-time @abinformyobsessions @kodzubaby @cottagedumpling @msjaeger @condy-wants-a-cookie @who-xo @naiomiwinchester @your-mum3000 @weebperson2003 @koigeidi @lanadelgarf @misaki-kira8 @lightsinmycity @kit-katsukii @the2ndl @kalulakunundrum

mlist!

[silverynightart]

Fantasy AU 🧡💚

Kofi / Patreon

[bugiseverywhere]

quirkless au katsuki bakugo, who’s fresh out of college and meets you for the first time, hanging out with his idiot friends who didn’t introduce the two of you sooner.

(This turned out way longer than expected. Oops)

August is already right around the corner. The streets are beginning to fill up as it seems everyone’s preparing for the school season. The sun beating down on everything, illuminating the streets he’s walking down.

“Mina just texted, said everyone’s there. Wanna stop here and get something to drink before we head to her place?” Katsuki nodded and followed kirishima who was already opening the door to some local coffee shop katsuki never really remembered the name of.

Him and kirishima have spent, what seems like, the whole summer together. Not that katsuki had a choice in it. Both agreeing to rent an apartment after graduating. Kiri protesting it was the cheaper route for them both, and that he needed the company. Katsuki didn’t mind it at the time, but the more his roommate and friends dragged him around the city, the more he wished he would’ve just moved back home with his old hag.

an hour ago:

“C’mon bro, you can’t keep trying to hide in the apartment all summer.”

“I already said I’m not in the fucking mood to babysit you guys. Go without me.” katsuki retorts as he throws himself on the couch. He tried to ignore the phone calls from kaminari, sero, and mina, but it was hard to ignore kirishima when he can just show up whenever he pleases.

“It’ll be fun man! And you won’t have to babysit us. It’s just a cookout at Mina’s, nothing bad, I swear!” kirishima slams the door shut behind him pointing at katsuki who was trying his hardest to avoid the conversation, “Seriously I’m not leaving until you agree to go. I already let you get out of the last time!”

“Whatever.”

end of flashback.

After he finished being bombarded by everyone (mostly Mina who was pissed he ignored her 7 missed phone calls and 20 unanswered text messages) katsuki had settled himself in the kitchen of Mina’s lake house.

Often throughout high school, the group would find themselves spending weekends/holidays out at this place. Mina’s parents used to live in the house during the summer seasons to get away from the city, but in the groups first year of college, it was given to Mina to do whatever she pleased with.

Unlike the hustle and bustle the city, katsuki didn’t mind the quiet atmosphere out here and always enjoyed when the group would get together and hang out. Even if it did drive him absolutely insane sometimes.

The sun was already setting by the time he and kirishima arrived. Everyone inside helping mina get the food ready.

Except for you.

Katsuki hadn’t seen you before. No one said anything about someone else being here. Were you with Sero? Maybe Kaminari, but last katsuki checked him and jirou were still together?

“Y/n. She’s a friend from one of my classes last year. I tried to tell you she would be here but you decided to ignore my phone calls.” Katsuki shifted his gaze from you to Mina who was staring at him with attitude.

“why’s she sittin out there by herself? She weird or something?”

“Nah. She just probably doesn’t want to listen to everyone. She’s kind of like you in way. Gets annoyed easily. Especially by these two morons.” Mina repsponded as she smacked Denki and Sero on the hands as they were trying to sneak pieces of food she was cutting up for dinner.

Katsuki hummed in response as he looked back in your direction. He wondered if he’s ever crossed paths with you before. He must’ve at somepoint right? Not that it really mattered.

As Mina finished prepping the food, katsuki left the kitchen and found himself in the living room lost to a conversation kiri, sero and denki were having. During this time he must’ve not noticed you move in the living room until sero chirped out, “hey she’s finally not pissed at us kaminari!”

The comment making you giggle softly as you made your way to sit next to the two. “You guys make my ears want to bleed. I just needed to not hear you two talk for a bit.” Your eyes moved from them and glanced in katsuki’s direction.

His heart skipped a beat when you smiled and opened your mouth to introduce yourself to him. what the fuck-

“You’re bakugo right? Mina’s talked about you a bit. It’s nice to meet you finally.” You were beautiful. Katsuki found himself lost for words, which wasn’t particularly normal for him. All he could get out was a,

“Uh- Yeah.” Just as he was about to try and say something else, Mina shouted that the food was ready. You, denki, and sero, made your ways to the kitchen, working through the food. Katsuki stayed in his seat on the couch watching you talk and laugh at the boys and mina.

You must’ve met them all before.

How come they never said anything about you sooner?

Why does he care this much, he just met you.

“Mina introduced us to her about a month ago. Y’know, the last time you decided to not hang out with us” kirishima stared at katsuki with a half assed smile on his face.

“Why is everyone being such a prick about that. I didn’t feel like coming out here. Besides no one told me Mina was gonna bring her.” Kirishima laughed at katsuki as he stood up from the couch, looking down at the blonde,

“I don’t know man, seems to me you’re just pissed you didn’t meet her sooner.” Katsuki rolled his eyes, kicking kirishima in the shin. His eyes shifted back to you and met your gaze which was already staring at him.

Little did katsuki know, you just finished fighting with Mina about how she didn’t tell you her hot friend from college was going to be here tonight.

God, you could just kill her, and so could katsuki.

-

-

-

I did not proofread this so I apologize in advance if it is horrible. I just needed to get it out of my head. 🙏

[lilacgaby]

˗ˏˋ🖍️crayons and connections

pairing: prohero!katsuki x nanny!reader

summary: after a harsh relationship he really didn't want another try at romance for a while. at least, not until he hired you. he thought he loved the way you cared for his kids, but you both knew it was something more.

tags: fem!reader, domestic au, use of pet names, no proofread, fluff, cursing, taking care of kids, a millisecond of angst i swear trust me, comfort

(a/n: i couldn't get this au out of my headdd)

wc: ~3k

katsuki was honestly sick of his wife.

she would nag him constantly, asking for his cards and attention without ever asking about him or how he was doing. everything was an argument now, most of their nights would eventually end up with him on the couch.

the only lights of his life were his newborn son and one year old daughter. he had adopted the 'staying for the kids' mindset, but her skipping out on their shared daughter's first birthday was his breaking point.

who knew 'i want a divorce' would be the happiest words he'd ever uttered such far? watching her cry and swear she'd be better feeding the hole of despair that had opened over their three year relationship, that had only really blossomed because she got pregnant.

he had made her sign a prenup, thankfully, so he got to keep the house. with a payment and some paperwork he was left with full custody of his kids in his house, to sleep in his bed for the first time in ages.

well, only because he hired you.

it was only natural that he needed a nanny, i mean he was gone for most of the day patrols. after taking some in for interviews, he eventually landed on you after some hours of questioning.

he was exhausted, some of these hags were terrifying, both in their practices and appearances. he relaxed a bit at the sight of you. you were really pretty.

"hi mr-- um bakugo was it?"

you and no idea who he was? it kind of hurt but would end up working out in his favor.

"yeah, just katsuki's fine."

"oh, okay! i'm [name], uh-- i have a couple years experience for babysitting and i worked as a nanny for some other families too--"

as you rambled about your past experience and why you were good for the job, katsuki's mind went elsewhere. you looked breathtaking just speaking there, he swore your hair was flowing in the wind and that the sun shone brighter around you.

not to mention you were really sweet, he had saw you making small talk to the hags earlier, which meant you really were a saint.

"so uh-- yeah that's all about me... uh, hello?"

"oh! yes? that was all really impressive [name]. so, would you be available from eight in the morning to about ten at night? those are my current patrol hours, and obviously you'd be compensated for this trial."

"yes, that's perfect for me! when can i start?"

"uh.. tomorrow?"

"okay!" you stuck out your hand, a small smile on your lips. "nice to meet you katsuki."

he shook your hand firmly and you bowed before leaving.

the next day you arrived earlier than anticipated, he was suited up in his heroes outfit, relishing in the moments where his kids were still asleep.

he heard a knock at the door and opened it. it was you, a tiny purse behind you. "hi katsuki! woah wait a minute.. are you like a hero?"

he shrugged his arms. "yeah, you know only like top three, nothing big."

he saw your eyes widen. "oh wow! sorry for not recognizing you, i don't really keep up with all that stuff-- but im sure you're really strong!"

he nodded, "hell yeah i am. anyways, come in."

you were greeted by a large family home. you were sure your apartment was the size of the kitchen alone. huge halls and grand staircases filled the space, lavish chandeliers all shaped as explosions hung from the ceiling. not to mention the crazy amount of trophies displayed.

the rocking chairs and baby blankets scattered about were seriously out of place, making you giggle a bit.

when he looked back at you, you immediately slapped your hand over your face. "something funny?"

"no, no it's just-- your house is so nice!"

"thank you? anyways, i'll take you up to their rooms now."

you followed behind him, even his kids had huge rooms. you were super kind of jealous.

he opened the door and waved you over to see a small, adorable baby boy sleeping in a cot. "this is kei, he's only eight months." he whispered. "he fusses a lot, but he loves music."

he closed the door slowly behind, and walked to the room straight across. a tiny toddler laid in a princess bed, the room drowning in all things pink. "this is kioko, she's a handful. she turned two a bit ago." he whispered, closing the door behind him to give you a basic rundown of the schedule.

"so, they normally wake up around eight. there's a lot of formula for kei in the kitchen, and kioko just likes cereal. kioko can and will play all day, but kei gets real sleepy."

you nodded along making mental notes of everything.

"they eat lunch around three, but a snack before then is fine. dinner is at seven and they go to sleep at eight."

"okay, i think i got it."

he nodded. "i think you do too. there's extra keys in the counter by the door. call my assistants if there are any emergencies, i wrote the number on the fridge."

you nodded again, "kay, i got it. you get going though, it's already eight twenty!"

"fuck. okay, i'll see you later."

"bye katsuki."

the door closed behind him and you were alone. you decided to start prepping a bottle. just as you finished, you heard the wails of a baby ring throughout the halls.

you walked up to the cot, speaking softly. "hi kei, i'm [name]." as you picked him up, he gurgled in confusion. "i'll be taking care of you from now on, let's go eat."

you kept him in your arms. he was looking up at you curiously, making you smile as he touched your face. as you walked to his sister's room, where sure enough she was awake too.

"hi kioko, im [name]. i'll be taking care of you, okay?" you said, reaching out a hand for her to shake it.

she grasped your hand. "okay. go eat?"

"yes, let's go eat. follow me, okay?" she followed after you sleepily, her blanket and stuffed animal in her arms as you led her to the kitchen.

you placed her brother in a high chair first, giving him his formula. "can i pick you up?" you asked her.

"up-up!" she said, raising her arms up in the air. you carried and placed her into one too. "so, what do you wanna eat?"

"cookie!" she pointed to an expensive cereal brand you'd never even seen before. "oh, okay."

you placed a bit in a tiny bowl, adding some milk. they ate relatively peacefully, were they really as crazy as katsuki said?

yes, yes they were. kioko was a ball of energy, walking any and everywhere. she wanted to play every single game known to mankind. it didn't help that hide and seek was hard in such a huge house.

kei clung to you. as you searched for her he never wanted to leave your side, he'd start sniffling when you even left his sight.

lunch and dinner were a blur, you made the food katsuki had told you to on the sticky notes he'd left around. you had a bit too, and man did these kids eat good.

kioko finally crashed, tugging on the back of your pants. "sleepy time." you were washing dishes, so you wiped your hand clean to ruffle her hair. "okay, go wait for me in your room."

you finished up, picked up kei from where he was sat by his activity cube, and walked over to kioko's room.

you read her a book, 'the giving tree.' she fell asleep halfway through, utterly tuckered out from the day. kei fell asleep against your chest, you went and laid him down in his cot.

you looked around the house, seeing the mess. you sighed. "let's do this."

the house was sparkling once you were done, a pot of coffee on the stove as you waited for katsuki to get back. you seriously didn't know how you were going to go back your one-bed apartment now that you've seen how the rich live.

the door sounded, it was katsuki. "hi katsuki! how was uh-- patrol?"

he was covered in soot and dirt from head to toe. you internally sobbed at your hours of mopping going to waste. "oh uh, it was good. caught some guys and shit."

"ah, that's cool!"

he looked around. "did my brats cause you any trouble?" he eyed how clean everything was, from the dishes to the floor.

"they're full of energy, but so cute it makes up for it."

he wore a soft smile. "yeah, they really are."

"you know, they both look exactly like you. it's cute."

he flushed slightly, "yeah?"

"mhm, oh! i had leftovers from earlier? if you wanted some."

"yeah, i'll eat them." she smiled and started to grab her things. "so, does this mean i pass?"

he smiled too. "yes,

yes you did."

days melted into months of your routine with kei and kioko. some days katsuki would come home early, letting you play games all together. you'd cook with him sometimes too, laughing at how precise he was about it.

everything got a bit real the second kei spoke his first word to you.

"mama."

you and kioko got so excited, recording a clip to send it to katsuki immediately.

the entire day you were so happy, treating the kids to a secret extra snack, and letting them beat their favorite baby popcorn.

a knock on the door was heard, you were feeding kei so you walked over to the door with him in hand. you thought it was odd, why would katsuki knock?

except it wasn't him, it was some woman. "uh.. who are you?"

"oh, so he thinks he can replace me so quickly? newsflash, bitch, i'm his ex wife."

"can you not curse in front of the kids?"

"i'll do whatever the fuck i want. you know why? because i'm actually connected to those kids. you're just playing mother, he'll dump you eventually."

she slammed the door behind her. "star her mama?" kioko asked behind you.

"yeah, stranger."

you had gotten a bit weird after that, acting weird about affection and things surrounding it. you didn't know why, but she really did make you question your role in their lives.

you weren't a mother, you were a nanny.

katsuki finally got fed up with your new, odd attitude. he questioned you with a look in his eye.

"why you been acting so weird?" he asked, his mouth full with food.

"huh? i don't know what you mean?"

he pointed his chopsticks at you. "you've been acting all weird 'round 'em. you don't like that they call you mom or something?"

"no! it's just.. don't you think it's weird?"

"no. i'm happy that they like you so much."

"you don't think i'm trying to replace their mom?"

"they never really had one in the first place. she was never around, so if she said some shit to you know she wasn't half the person you are."

"oh.."

"so she did come."

"yeah. she did."

"[name]. you are ten times the person she ever was. you're perfect without trying. actually, you do try. and that's why..

that's why we all love you."

you both turned red, which made you laugh. "thank you katsuki."

you reached out and held his hand.

"seriously, thank you."

he put a restraining order on his ex the next day, also going to get flowers for you as it was his day off.

you'd started to sleep over after that, the affection between the two of you growing gradually.

he gifted you a room in the house, fully furnished with about ten thousand dollars left in one of the drawers so 'you could decorate for yourself.'

that room went mostly unused though, as most nights you'd end up cuddled with katsuki in his bed.

the fridge was filled to the brim with photos by kioko, who'd love to draw all four of you as one big family.

katsuki even asked her for a small one, one that he now keeps in the back of his phone case for good luck.

he asked you out officially with kioko's help, her unwanted help that is.

she snuck out after bedtime where he was speaking to you on the couch, you in his arms as he was mustering up his courage--

"pleaseeee have a play date with daddy, pleasee?" she said, using her puppy eyes.

"we all love you a lot, but he loves you this much!" she spread out her arms to make a point, making you laugh.

"okay! okay, i already said yes kioko. go to sleep, okay?"

"yay!" she ran up to her room and you heard the door close.

"so.. about our playdate?"

he took you out to a fancy dinner of your choice, telling you to order whatever you'd like. his mom was babysitting so you two could relax.

he'd learned a lot about you from his kids, your favorite color, the music you liked, the way you like your eggs, but it was different to hear it from you.

he thought you were so gorgeous and kind, so sweet to him and the lights of his life. who was he kidding? over the last year you'd become a pillar of his life.

he enjoyed going home knowing you were there with his kids, you were there to hear about his stresses and support him.

he was happy to support you, to let you stay in his house. to let him pay for things for you, to let him make you smile.

one 'playdate' turned into multiple, you went out every other week.

he knew he had to do something, a grand gesture to show you just how much he loved you, how he wanted to continue building this perfect family of his forever.

he knew how much you treasured the opinions of his kids, he loved that about you.

so, he got them in on it. kioko and kei each held a gift for you, one of your favorite flowers and the other of your favorite perfumes.

you were at a seriously gorgeous park, streams the only noise you could hear for miles. you saw your two favorite kids sitting on the picnic blanket.

"kioko, kei?"

"mommy!" they ran up to you, kei handing you the bouquet of roses, and kioko handing you a vial of perfume.

"aw, thank you you two. where's your dad?"

"hes waiting for you! come come!"

"come!"

they guide you to a secluded area, with a natural arch of overgrown vines, where katsuki is waiting for you.

"katsuki?"

"[name]."

"what's all of this for?"

"you." he took your hands into his, looking deeply into you.

"you're important to me. you've.. you've become the thing i was missing. the thing i searched for in other people.

and, you've become that to the people i care about the most too.

so,"

he got down on one knee infront of you.

"will you marry me?"

the word yes escaped you before you even realized it. you tackled him into a hug, which prompted kei and kioko to join in.

everything was just so sweet from then on.

kioko was the flower girl at your wedding, kei was the ring holder.

your first kiss shared under the altar was magical, the memory of it forever engrained in your memories, and in your lips.

your honeymoon was bittersweet, as you missed your two headaches. but you and katsuki also enjoyed the private time alone with eachother, embracing and finding comfort in eachother's presence.

when you got home though, your picturesque family was about to have a new addition,

you were pregnant.

whilst everyone was debating whether or not you'd have a boy or girl, to everyone's surprise once you and katsuki cut the slice of cake open..

it had both colors.

you we're having twins.

as you looked over at katsuki, a shocked expression on his face, all you could do was laugh.

laugh because you couldn't have ever imagined a life this perfect for you.

but it was a wax-drawn line of fate that led you to katsuki,

and you'd always be thankful for it.

tag: @kovu-bunnbunn

[treef-greef]

[djinniiy]

BNHA Delinquent Days Manga Recreation! I think Bakugou would do the same thing Endeavor did when they went to his agency for their work-study, haha!