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“Bakugou,” Ochako yelled from upstairs. “Bakugou! Help me down the stairs.”
Bakugou didn’t even bother to put his coke down. The rain was pattering loudly against the window, but not loud enough to drown out Ochako’s screeching. “Help yourself, woman!” Seriously, she still had two good legs, didn’t she?
“Katsuki Bakugou!” He flinched as he heard her heavy steps down the wooden staircase. She huffed like a whale. “If I come down there and you don’t have a good excuse—” But her threat was interrupted by her own heavy breathing. Bakugou was quite glad for it too. He didn’t want to know what she’d do. Ochako in her current state was more similar to his mother than he could have guessed.
“And you call yourself a hero,” she reached the bottom of the stairs, shuffling toward the kitchen where he stood against the counter drinking his coke. “What if I had been in serious trouble?” As she showed up the door, her belly protruded like a bowling ball. She wore one of Deku’s shirts, the only shirts in the house that still fit her—apart from the sweaters specifically made for pregnant women, of course. But Ochako didn’t like those, so her husband’s shirts had to suffice. This one had All Might’s side profile printed on her huge belly. Even in adulthood, Deku treasured the merchandise.
“I would expect you to scream a little louder if you really needed my help,” Bakugou replied with a shrug. “You’re not weak, yet. You can handle the stairs.”
Ochako scoffed. “Oh, how kind of you.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re insufferable, you know?”
Bakugou glared at her. There was no reason for her to be so whiny, he thought. Evidently, she’d managed to come down the stairs just fine by herself.
“One would think you’d be nicer to a heavily pregnant woman, but no,” she whined, “I swear, you got even worse ever since we told you about it!”
“What are you talking about?” She made no sense. Seriously, stuff like this was why he didn’t want to help Deku when he called. But after Deku had called everybody else, Bakugou was the only option left. So, while Deku was out there in Hokkaido saving lives after a huge flood, Bakugou was holed up in here, playing babysitter for a baby that wasn’t even born yet.
“You never visit ever since…” Ochako gestured to her own belly. “You used to come once a week before and now I don’t see you much these days!”
“I’m here now, aren’t I?” If she continued to whine like that, he’d leave right now. She wasn’t even making sense. He hasn’t been avoiding them. He just had stuff to do. He was one of Japan’s top heroes, after all. Just because he had missed two of his almost weekly visits to Deku and Ochako didn’t mean he was avoiding anybody.
“Yeah,” she relented unhappily, “because Izuku made you! I heard you over the phone.”
Alright, he had tried to avoid this evening, at least. Not them as a whole, he just didn’t want to play nanny to a pregnant pro-hero. Bakugou ducked his head. He crumpled the can and threw it into the sink.
“Clean that up,” she cried out immediately. “Seriously, I can’t clean after you in my state.”
“Yeah, yeah!” Annoyed, he picked the can up to recycle it properly. And she was wondering why he didn’t want to play nanny… “Don’t you want to watch TV?” He pointed to the living room.
Ochako pouted. “Yes!” She grabbed his sleeve to pull him along. “And you’ll watch with me. Why else are you here?”
Bakugou had no interest in watching some sappy movie with her; she’d just cry and smear her snot all over the All Might shirt. He doubted Deku had given her that shirt. No matter how much he loved her and that squirt growing in her belly, Deku would know that his merchandise wasn’t safe from her snot and drool in this state.
Even though he didn’t want to watch any Romance movie with her – Ochako didn’t normally like them that much, but she’d grown fond of them over the last few weeks – he still followed her as she waddled into the living room. With a heavy sigh, she crouched in front of the TV, but Bakugou immediately pulled her back up to sit her on the couch.
“I’ll take care of that,” he announced.
“Naw! You do care!”
“Shut up! I just want to make sure you don’t choose a shitty movie.” It was a bad excuse. Most of her movies were shitty. And Deku’s were even worse! In fact, most of the romantic movies Ochako had grown so fond of over the last few months were actually Deku’s. Bakugou’s finger traveled over the backs of the DVD cases—DVDs! Who even still owned DVDs nowadays!—before he chose one that seemed more boring than romantic. He could deal with boring. If he fell asleep, it would make this almost bearable.
As he sat next to Ochako, the woman snuggled up on his shoulder. Ugh! Now she’d snot and cry on his shirt instead of Deku’s! Sometimes he wished Deku was the jealous type. Then surely, he wouldn’t invite Bakugou to keep an eye on his heavily pregnant wife while he had to work. But no! Saint Deku was even happy that his wife and his rival got along so well.
Bakugou didn’t pay much attention to the movie. Instead, his eyes drifted to the terrace door. The rain was still hitting the window, cascading down the glass. He scratched his left arm absentmindedly. His scar itched.
With a sigh, he turned back to the TV when Ochako grabbed his arm. “This is my favorite part!” she said. He glanced at the screen. It was just a scene where a single Dad was playing with his daughter on the beach. He humphed. Boring! But at least it wasn’t a kiss scene.
His gaze drifted from the TV towards the wall clock. Deku wouldn’t return for at least five hours, not until the early hours of the morning if not even later. He could think of so many better ways to spend the rest of the evening. A nice dinner with Shittyhair, work… he’d even prefer instructing the new interns over this.
An odd sound distracted him. He turned to Ochako who’s face had changed from mirthfully happy to slightly worried. A hand rested over her belly. “Huh, I think he’s kicking.”
Good, Bakugou thought. A strong boy, then. After all, that poor lad would learn soon enough that these nine months were the only time where he could get away with something like that. Bakugou was proud to say that his mother had always told him he’d been quite the kicker back then as well.
Ochako’s mouth twisted in pain. “No, that’s not—”
“Ugh, disgusting!” Bakugou jumped off the couch when he felt something wet against his thigh. He stared down at the rapidly spreading liquid on the leather cushion.
Ochako stared down at it in disbelief. “Is that—” she stammered.
“Hey, you said it wasn’t time yet!” Bakugou exclaimed almost reproachfully. He pointed down at her lap. “It’s too early! You said it was still a week away. I didn’t sign up for this!”
This couldn’t be happening now, right? Shit! And shitty Deku for leaving him with what was really his mess! Bakugou had only come to spend a boring night with Ochako, he wasn’t prepared to deal with her giving birth.
“Shut up, Bakugou!” Ochako yelled over him.
“Shut up!?” He shook his head. “I’m not prepared for this! You didn’t warn me!”
“I didn’t know! Why are you panicking? I should be the one panicking! I am—I am panicking!” She took a deep breath. “Holy shit. He’s too early.”
“He’s too early,” Bakugou agreed. “Tell him to wait. It’s not time, yet. We’re not ready.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t—Argh!” She curled in on herself, then stretched out over the wet couch. “I don’t… Ah—What do I do? Where’s Izuku?”
“He’s at work,” Bakugou answered bluntly. Surely, she hadn’t forgotten that.
“I need Izuku, I need—KATSUKI, GET MY HUSBAND!” He flinched when she suddenly screamed out his first name.
What was he supposed to do? Deku was halfway across the country. He couldn’t just magically bring him back home. Still, with fumbling hands, he reached for his phone. Taking a deep breath, he knelt next to Ochako, uncertain. Then he called Deku.
Nobody picked up.
Shitty Deku was at work and couldn’t hear his phone ringing, it seemed. Bakugou ended the call and tried again when he reached the voicemail box. Still nothing.
“He is not picking up.”
“That—IDIOT!” she spoke between huffs of air.
Eyeing her, Bakugou came to a horrible realization. “You’re not having the kid now, right?”
“WHAT DO YOU THINK!?” Her fingers found his wrist, holding on tightly.
“Okay, okay—” He scrolled through his contacts again. “Hospital, we need to get you to—” He called Iida first. They needed somebody to drive them to the hospital. But of course, Iida didn’t pick up either. And the others were not in town. There was a reason why Bakugou was Ochako-sitting this evening, and it wasn’t because nobody else wanted to. That flood in Hokkaido needed most of his colleagues and friends for the clean-up.
“What the—fuck are you—doing?” Ochako asked impatiently when he called Froppy next.
“We need somebody to drive us to the hospital,” Bakugou answered, distractedly waiting for Froppy to pick up.
“How do—fuck! How do you think this will work? It’ll take forever, until they get here, and then—AH ha!”
“What else do you suggest?” Bakugou asked a little aggressively. He had considered carrying her to the hospital, but his explosive means of flight were so abrupt and jerkily that he could seriously hurt her or the baby. And she couldn’t use her quirk very well in her current state.
“You drive!” Her fingers tightened around his wrist, nails digging into his skin. She spoke as if it was obvious.
Bakugou froze. When he lifted his head, he didn’t look at her, but at the water cascading down the window.
Screeching brakes. The screams. The crash.
“It’s raining,” he said simply.
Ochako stared at him, failing to comprehend. “So what?”
“I don’t drive in the rain.” His voice was very quiet, almost drowned out by her heavy gasps of air.
She stared at him funnily. “You don’t—Katsuki Bakugou, I’m having a baby! I need a doctor and you’re a hero, and you don’t DRIVE IN THE RAIN?”
Bakugou blushed in shame. He bit his lip so hard it hurt. Ripping his wrist free from her grip, he stood. “I didn’t call Aizawa yet…” They hadn’t been Aizawa’s students for almost a decade now. But they still stayed in contact. Surely, he’d offer to help...
“What’s going on, Bakugou?” Ochako pushed herself up into an almost sitting position. “Even if you reach Aizawa, by the time he arrives here it might be too late. The hospital isn’t that far away.”
“I can’t drive!” He yelled it out as a definite fact. “I can’t! Aizawa will—"
“With the traffic and the rain, it'll take him at least half an hour to arrive here. Bakugou! I need you to—Please!" She looked distraught. Holding her belly as if she feared the baby might fall out otherwise, she made to stand up. There were tears in her eyes.
He felt suddenly guilty.
You’re a fucking weakling! He thought to himself. Hero? Get your shit together!
But as he stepped up to her, his body was trembling. “Okay,” he said, voice shaky. She was right. “I’ll drive… Where are your keys?” He didn’t need to ask. Deku and Ochako kept all their keys in the small box above the shoe cabinet. But it was a good distraction; he needed a moment to calm his thoughts.
Pulling one of her arms over his shoulder, he picked her up bridal style. “We’ll get you to the hospital…” He sounded as if he was assuring himself instead of her. Then he grabbed the keys from the box and opened the door. The rain hit his face immediately.
It was hard to see anything with all the rain. The wipers were working as fast as they could and yet the rain came down faster. Still, Bakugou wasn’t too worried. The streets were almost empty, and he was a good driver. The mood in the car was great. Denki leaned over from the backseat to switch between radio channels, Kirishima was telling a story about an old lady he’d saved that morning.
“She said her grandchild is a big fan of mine,” he said not for the first time. “My fan! Haha! Oh, Denki! I like that song, leave it!”
Denki took his hands from the radio.
“It’s our song,” Kirishima said, nudging Bakugou’s side.
“It’s not our song,” Bakugou disagreed.
The redhead pouted. “You forgot? It’s the song that was playing the evening after our first job together! You forgot!”
Bakugou huffed, annoyed. “I didn’t forget. Doesn’t make it our song, though. We don’t have a song. We’re not one of those shitty weakling couples that have songs.” His eyes were trained on the road, trying to concentrate.
Kaminari laughed. “You are the shittiest weakling couple I know. Of course, you have a song.” He put a hand on Bakugou’s shoulder.
“Nobody asked the Spare Batteries,” Bakugou grunted, half turning to wipe Kaminari’s hand away.
“Hey! Look out!” Bakugou saw the threat before Kirishima had finished his warning. A big red truck came from the side, no lights, no warning. Nothing but the roaring of the engine drowned out by pattering rain against the windshield.
Bakugou jumped on the break. It was an old car, the breaks screeched and creaked as always, but the car still worked fine. It usually did anyway. Now, as Bakugou stepped on the breaks, nothing happened. They barely slowed down.
The water on the road, he realized at once.
“BAKUGOU!”
He jerked the wheel violently to avoid the truck. With a loud, too late warning honk, the truck rushed past, and then the car broke away. Something hit him hard, just as the car was overturned, turning Bakugou’s world upside down. Kirishima’s rough and hardened spiky hair poked against his skin.
He sat behind the wheel of Ochako’s car, rain pattering against the windshield. His body felt odd. As if he wasn’t even there. The keys were already in the ignition system, but he hadn’t turned them yet.
“What are you waiting for?” Ochako asked from the passenger seat. Her breathing was labored and slow.
Shaking his head, Bakugou tried to get rid of the memory. “Nothing,” he growled, but it wasn’t nothing . Even as he turned the key and the engine purred to life, he still wasn’t ready.
“Bakugou!”
“I know, I know.” He put the hand on the shift, putting the car on Drive, before slowly putting his right foot down on the gas. “I know…”
What kind of a hero would he be if he couldn’t even deal with this?
But he drove slowly. Too slow. Ochako was making sounds of distress and impatience. “Bakugou, I need you to—The baby wants to get out! And I don’t want to do this in the middle of the road.”
“I know!” His hands tightened around the wheel, as he pressed his foot down to speed up a little.
Clap!
Thunder rolled over the sky. Yellow lightning danced over the dark blanket of clouds, lighting up their faces for a short moment. Bakugou stood on the breaks. The car came to a sudden stop. He stared into the sky.
For a moment, time seemed to stop. Then Ochako spoke a little quieter than before.
“Is this about Kaminari?”
Bakugou turned to stare at her. His face was almost white in the darkness of the evening. Her panic had ebbed a little. Instead, she looked at him with a somber sort of understanding. Carefully, Bakugou lifted his foot from the break, starting to drive again.
“It was raining that day,” he said quietly. “I was driving, I didn’t see the truck in time.”
Speaking served as a distraction. He managed to speed up the car to a reasonable pace.
“It didn’t have lights on,” Ochako said. “It wasn’t your fault. Even Kaminari says it wasn’t your fault.”
Bakugou shook his head. “It wasn’t because of the lights, though.” He’d never told anybody. It all happened so fast, the other two hadn’t even noticed it. But Bakugou knew… It wasn’t because of the lights. It was his fault…
As he came to, he was still in the car. Kirishima was lying half across him, quirk turned off and skin soft. He had protected Bakugou from the shattering windshield and the crushed roof. Bakugou ached where the wheel pressed painfully into his thigh, and a piece of glass had cut his right arm open, but he felt mostly alright.
“Hey, Shittyhair, get off me!” Bakugou pushed the other man, certain that the hero was fine. No way would Kirishima even get a scratch from something as harmless as this. And indeed, as Bakugou pushed at him, Kirishima stirred and groaned. Fumbling around with his limbs, he carefully sat back up. It was quite the ordeal, as the car was ruined and smashed in several places, pieces of metal sticking out this way and that. The interior of the car was so misshapen, that it was hard to move at all.
“Pikachu! You alright?” But as Bakugou turned to look on the backbench, pain shot through his neck. He stiffened.
Kirishima used his quirk to push bits of tin away from where the roof of the car had ripped open over the hard pavement.
“Oh shit!” he exclaimed. Then he scrambled to climb from the passenger seat onto the backbench.
“What’s going on?” Bakugou asked, shifting around in his chair, but his whiplash kept him from turning completely. He saw Denki’s legs splayed over the bench, but his torso was hidden behind Kirishima and his head was outside of Bakugou’s line of sight. “Is he alright? Hey! Kaminari!”
“I don’t know,” the redhead answered, sounding uncertain.
“We should get him out of the car,” Bakugou decided, still not able to see anything. He pushed the door open. As he did so, the window shattered in thousands of tiny pieces. Stiffly, he climbed out of his seat. Getting to his feet, he felt a little nauseous, but he was glad that all his limbs were still properly working. His thigh and arm were hurting. It would scar, he thought, but it wasn’t the worst he’d ever been.
Turning, he pulled the back door open… And froze.
“I don’t think we should move him,” Kirishima said carefully.
A piece of sharp metal was driven deep into Kaminari’s neck and back. He was breathing shallowly, but he wasn’t moving or reacting to their words and touches.
It didn’t take long to reach the hospital. Ochako was right, it was barely ten minutes away from her house. With clammy hands, Bakugou still held on tight to the wheel. He let his head sink against the warm leather, then turned the ignition off.
Stepping outside, rain drenched his hair and clothes in a matter of seconds, but he didn’t pay it any mind. Instead, he walked around the car, opened Ochako’s door, and helped her get free of the seatbelt. He carried her all the way to the front desk, then up to the maternity ward, until he settled her into one of the beds.
“I’ll go and call Deku,” he said, feeling a little numb.
Ochako nodded. “Come back after you did.” She looked sweaty and exhausted already. “I don’t want to—to be alone.”
He nodded. However, instead of going back immediately after calling Deku, he called Kaminari first.
**
Shou was a lively boy. He had his father’s green hair, his mother’s eyes, and his favorite uncle’s spunk. Which was a good thing, after all, because despite popular belief, he was named after his favorite uncle. It was his little secret. Whenever he told anybody, of course, they automatically assumed he was talking about Uncle Shouto. But he wasn’t.
“Will you drive me to school, Uncle Katsuki?”
“Brat!” His uncle exclaimed angrily. “It’s ten minutes on your bike. What did you even get that thing for?”
“But it’s cold,” Shou complained, “and rainy!” He shuddered.
“You’re such a whiny baby,” Katsuki grunted. “You’re not made from sugar!”
“If Mom were here, she’d drive me,” Shou argued.
“Well, your mother is at work,” his uncle replied, “and we both know she wouldn’t.”
He was right of course. Mom would just tell him to take his coat. “Dad would, though.”
Uncle Katsuki sighed. Got him! “Of course, your Dad would, the little weakling. You have him all wrapped up around your little finger.” He scratched his spiky mess of blond hair. “Well, grab your stuff. I need to go that way anyway.” He kicked the door open for Shou. “But don’t get used to it, brat!” He growled, just as Shou grabbed his satchel and jacket and ran outside to the car.
“Of course not,” Shou replied innocently.
Furrowing his brows doubtfully, Uncle Katsuki unlocked the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. “And I hope your boots are clean.” He glared at Shou’s muddy shoes. “Get your shitty boots clean!”
Shou stomped his feet, to get rid of some of the mud, before climbing into the car, soles still muddy. Katsuki looked unhappy about it.
“Mom doesn’t like it when you curse around me,” the boy said smartly.
“Well, your Mom can come and complain to my face once she finds somebody else to babysit your sorry ass.” He turned on the ignition. Rain was pattering against the windshield. The wipers swiped the water aside. “Become a hero,” Katsuki muttered to himself, as he drove down the driveway. “You’ll be the strongest of all! Win every fight! Fuck me… Glorified babysitter, that’s what I am.”
Shou giggled. “You know, Uncle, you don’t have to agree every time Mom asks you to come over? It’s not like there’s nobody else who’d do it.” He scratched his head. “Uncle Ingenium is already miffed that Mom and Dad didn’t ask him the whole year. And Auntie Froppy offered to help out too.”
Katsuki scoffed. “Why do you call them by their hero names but not me?”
Shou shrugged. “Anyway, the point is, if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to.”
“Brat!” Uncle Katsuki exclaimed. “Keep talking like that and I just might decide that I don’t want to, after all. You wouldn’t like that, would you? You know, I’m your best uncle. Better than your useless Dad even. I can beat your Dad up!”
“Dad says that too,” Shou agreed quietly, though he wasn’t so certain about it. After all, his Dad was Deku, the greatest hero ever. “You can’t beat Mom, though.”
Uncle Katsuki hesitated. “No, not her,” he grumbled. “You’re a smartass, you know?”
They sped down the hill. Then Uncle Katsuki stopped. For a moment the rhythmic noise of the turn signal was the only noise in the car before Katsuki pulled out into the main road leading straight to Shou’s school.