#she’s also nervy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

urativy · 4 months ago

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paying it backward

bakugo x oc | soft!bkg, slight angst if u squint, reminiscing, fluff, implied friendship with history, physical intimacy (sfw), friends to lovers something only a little bit more, war arc | wc: 1.9k | a/n: just posting for fun. if anyone's intersted in my oc's lore tho i'd love to yap about her :>

bakugo’s a new kind of vulnerable. unknowingly, kiyomi's allowed an opportunity.

Bakugo props a socked foot onto the low table in front of the sofa he’s sitting on, a lazy arm draped over the backrest while the other scrolls mindlessly on his phone. The light is impudent despite the brightness being turned all the way low, and the time ticking by the minute perpetually in the corner of his screen makes his eye twitch.

1:46 in the morning, and the hour is way past his usual bedtime.

There is no solace in preparation, no matter how many apologies to Izuku he can make, no matter how many baths with his classmates he can splash around in. It all came down to the same fate;

The final part of the war was approaching in a matter of days.

Katsuki was no stranger to this preparation down to the finest detail. His training regimen was always down pat in every aspect: the foods he ate, his workout split, and of course, his sleeping schedule. All for this.

So why was it that he was so restless when it was most important?

There was no use in using the effort to force himself to sleep in his dorm room. He knows better than anyone that his bedsheets would just be nothing but tousled in. Now, he finds himself in the common room with all the lights off. Maybe the darkness and lack of stimulation would be enough to bore him to sleep.

Maybe it’s working, or maybe the tiredness dulls his senses just enough, because Katsuki suddenly finds himself flinching when he barely picks up on footsteps approaching. Eyes narrowing, the bat-shaped shadow of his classmate appears by him. When she steps into the kitchen, which is scarcely illuminated by the moonlight, she blinks awake as if she had no time to think on the way over.

“Oh. Hey.” She addresses him simply before yawning, stretching upward towards the high cabinet. She lazily pulls out a porcelain bowl before searching for her fruits in the fridge.

He blinks, stunned at the fact that he was not allowed solace here.

He only lets out a huff to respond, to which she inquires, “Why’re you up so late?”

When he doesn’t reply, she chooses not to press.

She appears in front of him suddenly, standing in a pause.

He gruffs, “What?”

She silently hands him a bowl of fruit.

He takes it, furrowing his eyebrows as he does so. He focuses on a perfectly ripe blueberry before mumbling under his breath. “Thanks.” He knows he shouldn’t have any sugar so late into the night, but he finds the gratitude anyway.

He doesn’t say anything when she sits next to him on the sofa. She doesn’t turn the lights on — her sight has probably already adjusted to the dark. He hears her chewing softly, slowly, as if she were deep in thought.

“You know…” she starts. Her voice is still a hush. “I see you trying.”

Memories of the week flash through his mind. A hand, outstretched to Midoriya, is what’s most vivid. “f’course I’m tryin’,” he grunts. “When am I not?”

She shakes her head, but he misses it. “No. I mean, like, I see you trying to forgive yourself.”

He shifts, uncomfortable. She’s always known where to press, how to pry, even if she never realizes it. When he doesn’t reply, she presses on. “It doesn’t mean anything coming from me, but… when I see you putting in so much effort, it’s just…” She gestures modestly, slightly. “It makes me feel like I need to try harder, too.”

He nods slowly, drinking in her words. He stares hard at the phone in his hands, the screen having turned off from being idle. He exhales tiredly, pressing its button twice to turn it on, then off again. The nerves aren’t imperceptible to her after all. “Don’t know a thing about me, Spots.”

It stings when he says it, and she chews on her bottom lip before sighing. The small noise barely reaches his ears. “Maybe not. I never got the opportunity to. Keeping me at arm’s length and all.” It’s an awkward admission, but it comes out before she stops herself.

He finds his nose crinkling at that, not expecting such an honest disclosure. He looks away, feeling the heaviness of a certain shame he’s all too familiar with. “‘m sorry…” His voice, usually hard and unforgiving, loses its edge. The sound of it makes her skin prickle.

“No, I… I didn’t mean it like that.” This unfamiliar vulnerability coming from him isn’t something she’s used to, despite witnessing it consistently this past week.

They sit in silence once more. It’s hard to make conversation when their next assignment is actual war. There��s no room for words, but…

“Do you want to come to my room?” Her eyes trail over to his face slowly, hesitantly. “For old times’ sake?”

Bakugo doesn’t know why he can’t hesitate when he says, “Okay.”

She’s leading him by the wrist to the girls’ elevator, her fingertips cool over his skin. He isn’t sure if he’s imagining the tingling on his flesh.

His footsteps move ahead of him. The muscle memory in his legs carries him all the way down the hall. When they arrive, she opens the door with covert silence, a habit so practiced that Katsuki notices. He remembers that it’s probably because of Eijiro. Maybe it’s him, too.

There’s no room for conversation, and they know this. She tosses the blanket upward, and Bakugo watches it billow into the air as she settles into her mattress. She’s squeezed against the wall, the large expanse of her bed open to him. He feels his body move for him when he climbs onto it, gripping the blankets to pull. He blinks at the pattern of her sheets. She’s changed them since then.

Her body turns as he settles, suddenly stopping to face him with doubt etched in her face. “I just think it might be good… one last time and all, before… you know…”

He lets out a soft tsk to interrupt her before shaking his head. “You’re getting soft on me.”

She finds herself frowning lightly. “I can’t help that. Not when it comes to you.”

He freezes. His neck wants to nod, but his bones feel like hard rubber. “It’s been awhile,” is what comes out of his mouth, but it’s not all he meant to say.

“I wanna say ‘too long,’ but that might be selfish of me. I know you’re busy. You can’t afford to not be.”

His hands try to busy themselves to process what she means. It really has been too long. When they opt to play with the hem of her shirt loosely, her eyebrows unfurrow when he doesn’t resist the vulnerability. He doesn’t have much to say, but then again, he was never one of many words in the first place. “Yeah.”

Kiyomi’s the one who nods instead. “I’m guilty, too.”

Another tired sigh escapes his lips. He finds himself looking at her, really looking at her. A recent, but fading cut covers the constellation of pale freckles by her outer eye. He remembers that one. His fingers dust over it lightly. He doesn’t flinch when Kiyomi scoots into his space, as if the act granted her permission to. Her shoulders tense as he wraps his arms around them all too suddenly. He feels different. Foreign. Like she’s aware that his embrace feels a little more rigid, that the muscles in his biceps tell the age of the time they spent apart. His frame feels larger too, a sign of growth. What has he gone through that she hasn’t been there for?

She’s been debriefed time and time again, of course; texts from post-missions, scars to tell the tale. Feeling them underneath her fingertips though, makes it feel like these stories are miles away from her.

“You’re an entirely new person, Bakugo.”

His grip tightens reflexively. “No, I’m not. I’ve been here. We see each other every day.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” He feels a warm sigh tickle his collarbones. Her body thaws into his and he lets it. He lets it like he always has been.

He shakes his head, and the contact of his chin rubs atop her head. White strands of hair graze his neck.

“Do me a favor, then,” she continues.

“Hm,” he mumbles into her scalp. He inhales, and the memory makes his head spin. Juniper, orris root, and amber. When he closes his eyes, it’s summer again.

She inhales in return, smelling the caramel and salt stirring into his skin. She burrows further into him, to press her face into the same memory. Harvests, training, and study sessions in this very room. “Let me call you by your first name,” she admits more candidly than she means to. A chill runs down his spine nonetheless.

His voice croaks in reply, “My first name.”

“Yes.” The word Katsuki sits in the back of her throat. A frog about to leap.

There’s a tangent beat in the air. A string of tension so taut, Kiyomi could reach up and pluck it. Katsuki doesn’t know if he wants it to snap. “Earlier, when I said you don’t know a thing about me. It doesn’t mean you can’t. Back then, if you had called me by my name, I…” His eyes flicker downward. His fingers loosen over her shoulders, although his embrace never gives way.

He barely hears the lilt in her voice when she presses. “You, what?”

The words tumble out of his mouth. “I wouldn’t have corrected you.”

“Even if I don’t know you,” she echoes, teasingly.

“Kiyomi,” his voice rumbles. She startles, because he beat her to it. His usual lack of hesitation is instantaneous as it is calculated. “Give me a break, yeah?” She doesn’t have to be looking at him to feel the slightest smile on his face. “I’ve said enough first names this week already.”

“Katsuki,” she murmurs, tasting his syllables on her tongue. Despite it feeling foreign, it’s something close to home.

He only hums into her as the air questions the sound, and his voice is carried with a lightheartedness that Kiyomi hadn’t heard in some time. “What’s this for, anyway? All of a sudden.”

Her lips are pressed, pointing downward. Her silence is enough for him to guess.

“If this is about not having any regrets, save it. I don’t plan on losing.”

“Do you ever?”

He exhales through his nose, moving a hand down her cheek. His thumb skirts along the highpoint of her cheekbone, before letting his fingers cradle her chin. When he gently pries her face towards him, his next words are a warm breath on her lips.

“I’m serious, idiot. I never say that just to say that.”

She knocks her forehead against his in the dark. “Too soon, then?”

The both of her hands lie hesitantly against his chest as she’s pressed against him. Bakugo wraps his fingers around her wrists, and tugs them even closer to himself. “No. Now sleep.”

She nods, forehead still nudging against his.

There’s so much to be said, but perhaps there was no need for any of it to be. Like the old days, with their bodies nestled close — it’s the actions doing all the talking. Now that she’s no longer restless, she allows herself to still. They let the sounds of their mingled breaths carry them to slumber.

#i love thinking about bkg being emotionally raw from just being such a quiet version of himself during this time #yomi is probably the only person who gets to see more of it tho just cuz she can press certain buttons #she's usually quiet but he's More Quiet #i also think about kiyomi A Lot #but i get too shy to talk about her idk!!!#posting this into the void probably #i hope at least some ppl in the community will let their eyes graze over it a little #but thinking about it also makes me nervy #arggggg #ʚ♡ɞ kiu's quill #bakugo x oc #bakugou x oc #mha x oc #bnha x oc

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