Work Text:
absorb
Katsuki can deny it all he likes, but when Jordan’s fingers are brushing delicately through his hair and her nails are faintly scraping against his scalp, he melts into an absolute puddle on her, purring like a touch-starved stray.
“Who would’ve thought the world's angriest and most bull-headed person alive would turn into such a softie?” She muses quietly, running a hand along his spine, thinking him asleep with his eyes closed and the scowl usually pulling at his lips smooth.
“What’s it matter to you, dumbass—” he murmurs, his voice gruff and slow, on the verge of sleep, “—just get closer and give me more cuddles.”
Jordan giggles, and doesn’t pause her ministrations on the soft blond tresses of his hair, even when his big and warm hands find her hips and pull her closer down to him, burying his nose in her neck.
“Someone’s feeling a little needy.”
Bakugou moans a growl against her throat, tightening his hold around her in a warning. “…Shut up, dumbass.”
He breathes the words against her skin, lips pressing against the steady drum of her pulse as he winds his arms underneath her into an embrace. Within moments, the breath that fans against her neck evens and slows, and she presses a gentle kiss to the crown of his pale, golden hair.
Jordan doesn’t say anymore, a loving smile pulling at her lips. She closes her eyes, and unwinds in his hold, fingers still carding through his hair, she finds sleep.
comic
She had a tendency to cover up her nerves with sarcasm and dark humor.
It might have been more of a coping mechanism when she was younger and had first been exposed to the darker side of the mob, but it all boiled down to an irrefutable fact that if Jordan was panicking internally, she was cracking fucked up jokes externally.
She’s not proud to say it usually goes unnoticed by her friends.
But with Katsuki…he doesn’t even need to see the way her brows scrunch together to know something’s wrong. He doesn’t need to see the way her teeth catch her bottom lip and naws until they're bruised and bleeding. He knows. He knows by the sound of her shaky laugh. He knows by the way her footsteps get lighter until she’s barely making a sound on the pavement.
And he knows she needs his help.
“Hey, dumbass…”
It’s all he says, as calloused fingers weave their way like jigsaw pieces into her own, the pad of his thumb caressing so ever softly over scarred skin from burns and hard hits on a punching bag or even him.
The gesture is small, but coming from him, it means e v e r y t h i n g. Just two words — two words that should be an insult — and a firm squeeze of her hand and she can feel all her worries blast away like they had never been there to begin with. Two words and she can feel herself falling harder for the boy with the bright vermillion eyes.
God, she’s falling hard.
And she loves it.
embrace
Katsuki finds himself in her embrace more often than he is out of it.
He can’t help it.
Not when he feels the world is crashing down on him, when his emotions get the better of him and leave him absolutely w r e c k e d.
Not when self-doubt rears its ugly head and poisons his thoughts with harsh words of ‘you’re not good enough. You’re weak.’
Not when his anger boils over to the point of tears and he has the urge to destroy e v e r y t h i n g in sight.
When he feels he can’t breathe his chest is so tight after a fitful night of terrors, waking drenched in sweat and all he smells is burned sugar.
When he can’t handle his emotions and he’s struggling to rein them in without putting a hole in a wall, he knows he can go to her.
He can always go to her.
Even in the dead of night, all he has to do is knock and she’s there, arms open and waiting.
She becomes his anchor, pulling him down and grounding him in the present when his world is cracking beneath his feet. She’s there, with her calming scent of leather and smoke, arms wound around him while she whispers soothing words into his ear.
“I’m right here…I’m right here.”
Broad shoulders sag and the arms around her tighten.
God, he’d never thought three little words would bring him such relief. Three little words that melt his doubts away, drown his anger and soothe the ache in his chest.
Three little words that have him falling harder for the girl he can’t live without.
friendship
Katsuki’s risking everything with this single move.
Risking everything because he can’t take it anymore.
He swore he had better control, he should be better than this , than this…but—
Fuck.
He loses it when she flashes him that little embarrassed half-smile and it sends his heart amuck, beating so wildly in his chest he fears it’ll stop. Loses it when she leans on him she’s laughing so hard tears sting her eyes and he can’t help it but smirk and chuckle along with her. Loses it when she teases him and bites back when he snaps at her because fuck if she never looked so hot butting heads with him. He’d let her tease him to the ends of the earth if he gets to see the way her eyes light up with the challenge he brings her.
God, he’s got it b a d.
And for once, he doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t hate the way she unknowingly twists his stomach into knots every time she calls him by his name. He doesn’t hate how she can stop his breathing with one look.
He doesn’t hate that she’s blasted her way into his heart and set it aflame.
“Bakugou, you okay?”
Her voice rocks him from his thoughts, maroon red eyes bearing into steel blue.
He can’t take it.
He leans forward and kisses her with every ounce of his being.
grenade
“Katsuki, you have to let me go.”
She pleads with him, trying to make him see reason. They’ve run out of time — she’s run out of time. She can’t stay. Not when her life jeopardizes his own. Not when the very thought of having him anywhere near danger drives a stake through her sternum, into her heart and she feels like she can’t breathe.
And it fucking h u r t s. To do this to him. To push him away when all she wants to do is take him into her arms and card her fingers through his blond tresses. But the underlying threat of her family even putting a scratch on him feels far worse.
They’ve forced her hand, and she’s helpless to fight against it. She wouldn’t be able to bring herself to if she could, because her family fought fire with fire, and it wouldn’t just be Jordan that burned. They’d take Katsuki down with her, and that thought alone is as gut wrenching as the thought is of leaving him.
He shakes his head, hands trembling and palms sweaty. The smell of burned sugar is between them, a testament to how hurt she’s making him feel. How his heart clenches with agony in every beat. Like he can’t bear to keep going without her, knowing she’s in the lion's den, surrounded by men and women — family — she betrayed.
Family she betrayed because of him.
“No…I won’t let you. I won’t let someone end because of me. Not a second time. I can’t .” He reaches for her. Reaches for her because he knows if he can’t, she’ll slip through his fingers and disappear into a world of torment he can’t bear to imagine. Reaches for her because he knows she won’t be able to refuse him; if he can just get a grasp on her, he can keep her there, safe, in his arms. Protected.
She fights him, swatting his hands away and backing away from him. Emotion chokes the back of her throat, sealing away her voice, tears pricking and stinging the backs of her eyes where she knows they’ll stream down her face if he so much as lays a finger on her.
“I’m not giving you a choice, Katsuki. The mob doesn’t forgive and forget. I can’t put your life in danger like that. I’d never forgive myself if they took you again—”
Her back presses against the wall. His right hand plants firmly next to her head, his left thigh locked tight against her right, trapping her in a cage of his embrace. He snatches her wrist, bringing her palm to his heart where she can feel the rapid beating of his heart. Feel the way her words are cracking it as tears prick at his own eyes.
“And what about me ? Did you think I’d fucking forgive myself if I just let you up and run? Let you run away from me when I know you’re running straight into the League of Villains?”
She yanks her hand out of his grip, uses his momentary surprise to shove him away from her. “You have to! I won’t lose someone I love to Villains again. I’m doing this for you, Katsuki. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Katsuki is quick to recover, chasing after her as she runs for the door. He snatches her by her wrist, spinning her around and locking her flush to him, a gasp leaving her mouth by his sudden force.
His arms tighten around her, and then there’s a wetness on her clavicle.
Tears.
Katsuki’s tears.
The weight in her heart sinks from heart-wrenching to heart-broken.
“Please…I-I can’t lose you. Stay . Stay with me. ”
Fuck.
Fuck, that…
That hurt more than any bullets she had taken, more than any of the broken bones that had to be rebroken to heal properly, than any of the burns she’s suffered through her life.
The pain’s so abrupt she doesn’t realize she’s clutching onto her chest until she forces the air back into her lungs.
None of that compares to the internal struggle going on in her mind. She wants to say fuck it and wrap her arms around him, to kiss away his tears and hold him so tightly she’ll never let go. She wants to be with him, but to keep him safe… Safe from her family, safe from her , (and that’s a revelation that makes her feel far worse) she has to leave him.
And she can’t b e a r it.
It takes every ounce of her being to breathe back the tears.
“I can’t let them turn another Hero into a Villain.”
His hands fly to cup her cheeks, forcing her gaze to his. Red-brimmed vermillion eyes stare at her, and Jordan can’t breathe as tears stain his cheeks.
“You don’t think they’ll do that to you? You’re talking about marching into the League, you don’t think they’ll turn you against us? Against me ?”
The crack in his voice, the desperation, the pain, doesn’t go unnoticed.
With a shake of her head, the tears fall. “You can’t turn a Villain into a Villain.”
Like that, the air evaporates from the room, and time itself seems to stop as shock and horror take a tangible form, freezing in his veins.
“…What? What the hell are you saying?”
Jordan bites her lip, prying herself from him. Her throat closes up with emotion, and she has to fight to catch a breath so she can spit the words, spit the secret she’s tried to keep buried.
“I’m the traitor.”
And she runs.
hanahaki
The flowers had begun as small slivers of maroon red, falling into her hands with specks of crimson blood, nearly blending in with the color of the petals.
She blinks at the bloodied petals, thinking she hit her head too hard today in training ( which has happened on the few occasions she sparred against Tsu, like today. )
⋆☽ﾟ
“Jordan, why didn’t you say anything?” Mina breathes, her hand trailing along Jordan’s back, the closest she can get to the root of the pain that’s been wracking her for weeks — worse than any bone she had ever broken or every bullet she had ever taken.
“Never thought…never thought it was that serious. They’re fucking flowers, not tuberculosis,” Jordan’s endeavor at insouciance fails miserably as her body racks with the force of her coughs, staining her palms red with blood and petals.
“I’m pretty sure they’re just as bad.”
The maroon petals — red roses — had been the only evidence Mina Ashido needed when Jordan had walked out of her dorm with a handful of them, spotted in blood, asking about them and what it meant for her.
“Jordan, with this many flowers…you’ve had to be suffering for weeks . Have you told anyone yet?”
No, she hadn’t. For weeks, the burning in her chest, in her throat, was bearable. Cough drops soothed the scorching of her throat when she coughed up the petals, and an inhaler helped the chest pain. She hoped — foolishly, she’ll add — it was just a crush, hoped she would lose interest and the whole coughing up flowers thing would blow over.
But now, looking at the thorny stem and rose buds in her hands, she realized that wasn’t the case. She had fallen.
And she had fallen h a r d.
“Mina, please…you can’t tell another soul about this.”
“Jordan…you’ll die if you don’t tell someone.”
“I know,” the words leave a sour taste in her mouth, worse than the taste of blood lingering on her tongue. Worse than the tightness in her throat and the burning in her chest because she knows . “I know . Trust me, I wouldn’t be asking you to keep this a secret—”
“Ravello, Ashido, everything alright?”
Kirishima’s voice stops Jordan in her tracks, the air in her lungs dissipating the nanosecond her gaze shifts to the blond haired boy next to him.
Oh, shit.
Her throat closes the moment his eyes settle on hers, chest burning like her Quirk had turned against her and set every part of her aflame when his vermillion eyes narrow, astute and piercing.
The breath she takes is strained, the smile painfully forced, and she prays they can’t see past it. “Yeah, we’re good.”
The pointed stare Mina gives her doesn’t go unnoticed.
Her fingers curl around the flowers in her hands, praying to god he doesn’t notice. Praying he doesn’t notice the red roses and the blood staining her palms. Praying he doesn’t notice the way her breathing stops right in her throat because she’d rather suffocate than let him see the flowers he has no clue he’s caused.
She prays she’s seeing things when his eyes soften, the scrunch between his brows smoothing out as one of them raises with curiosity and concern.
The taste of iron and earth is on her tongue, flooding her mouth and burning her senses. She swears with every step he takes towards her, her throat gets tighter and tighter she can barely breathe .
“You sure? You don’t look so good.”
Fuck .
The millisecond her knees hit the floor, flowers falling from her hands, staining the carpet deep crimson, he’s moving. Moving to her because all he sees is bloodied petals and his heart s i n k s.
“Jordan!”
“Are those flowers? !”
“Don’t just stand there, Shitty Hair! Get Recovery Girl!”
His hand is on her back as he kneels beside her. She doesn’t see his grimace as the fully bloomed rose — stem, leaves, thorns and all — falls into her hands, the ruby red petals dripping crimson. She doesn’t see the pained look in his eyes as she wipes the back of her mouth, streaking her skin red. Doesn’t see the fury that replaces it moments later while she leans against the wall.
“…I’ll kill them.”
Jordan blanches.
“…What?”
“I’ll kill the fucking bastard that did this to you. I’ll blow their ass up so bad they’ll be piecing them together for weeks!”
“I didn’t — Bakugou — you can’t—”
“Oh yeah? Why not?”
“I haven’t told them.”
“ What ?”
“I can’t tell them.”
The growl that rips past Katsuki’s lips is inhuman; so full of rage Jordan swears she’s never seen him so riled, breath heavy and carmine eyes seething. Not even at the Sports Festival — when he had to be bound and muzzled he fell so far off the deep end — had he been like this. She’s never seen him so unhinged.
Never seen him so mad at her .
“Is this what you want, dumbass? You want this—” he snatches the bloodied rose from her hands, holding it between them “—to be the last thing they see of you? Not Tombstone, not Jordan Ravello, but a fucking flower because she was too scared to confess?”
Her palms warm, the scent of smoke and burned sugar brewing between them. It’s not like she wanted to be hacking up flowers until she suffocated on them. Couldn’t he fucking s e e that? She kept it hidden for so long because she didn’t want anyone to find out. She wanted to push it all aside, bury the feeling deep down where it could never surface again. She didn’t want to fall in love.
But…damn if she fell hard.
“Alright then. Say if I do and they don’t feel the same? I’m dead either way and I’d rather choke on these—” she swats the rose from his hands “— flowers than go through that heartbreak.”
“Why?! You haven’t even fucking tried, dumbass!”
She snaps.
“Because I can’t lose you, Katsuki!”
Like that, the air evaporates from the room, from her lungs, all fire leaving her as terror takes a tangible hold and freezes the blood in her veins.
“…Bakugou, I—”
“Shut up, dumbass.”
His arms wind around her, yanking her onto his lap, onto him, until they’re flush against one another.
“Bakugou…”
He does the unthinkable.
He kisses her.
She doesn’t move, limbs still frozen.
But then her hands are tugging at his hair, twisting into the fabric of his wife beater, urging him closer.
“Katsuki…”
Jordan breathes against his lips, the reality that holy shit this is happening crashing into her with waves of euphoria and bliss.
After a month of pain and agony, of burning and choking, she can b r e a t h e.
The feeling is…
Heavenly .
He sighs against her lips, a groan of her name slipping past, warm fingers lingering with the smell of burned sugar cradling her jaw, keeping her there, locked in his embrace.
As if she would leave.
“Dumbass…,” Katsuki breathes, putting a few inches between them, despite the heat surging through his veins, urging him to lean forward, press her against the wall and kiss her until he can’t breathe. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Jordan ducks her head bashfully, heat stinging her cheeks.
“Never thought you’d feel the same…didn’t want to slow you down with a silly little crush. Never thought you’d really give me the time of day.”
His fingers are gentle — nothing at all like the destructive explosions they set off — as they grasp her chin, coercing her to look at him.
“I’ll always have time for you, dumbass.”
hands
Katsuki has a fixation with Jordan’s hands.
In his defense, she’s become a fluent speaker in gesticulation — brandishing her guns or her flames, enunciating her words with sharp flicks of her wrists and closed fists driving home her arguments, holding cups of coffee and tea by the cup and not the handle, the way she fiddles and spins the rings on her fingers.
Those hands that had the power of demons and gunslingers in them, that held the power of mobsters and killers, and she chose to card them through his hair, to lace their hands together, to work out the cramps in his own hands when he overworked himself.
Sometimes he doesn’t realize he becomes so focused on them until those slender extremities are waving in front of his face.
“Katsuki, something wrong?”
“Huh? No, why?”
He feels the apples of his cheeks burn with the realization she caught him in the act.
She quirks him a brow, cupping his cheek with a hand while the other brushes back the hair covering his forehead.
“You looked lost…like you were somewhere else. Everything alright?”
God, what did he do to deserve her?
He leans into her hand, covering them with his own, thumb brushing along the knuckles until he’s turning her hand over to press feather light kisses along the lines of her palms.
“I’m fine. Everything’s…perfect.”
Jordan chuckles, a playful brow raised at the sudden attention he’s giving her hands and hearing him utter words extremely uncharacteristic of him. “I think this softie’s turning into a sap.”
She chuckles again when a growl rumbles in his throat.
“I am not soft, and I am certainly not fucking sappy! I’m a beast!”
He roughly pulls her closer to him to emphasize his point, narrowed eyes shooting daggers up at her, though it does little when he continues to obsess over her hands, covering them with his own as they brush against the bone of his cheek and card through his hair.
Jordan doesn’t believe him one bit, but she says nothing. He can deny it all he wants, but when his eyes flutter closed as she lightly drags her nails along his scalp, pleased with the long sigh he releases from it, she knows deep down he was always a sap; he just never had someone to show it to.
job
A calloused palm rests against her neck, above the juncture of her shoulder, where her pulse thrums wildly.
Where the prominent scar of Dabi’s Quirk lies beneath sweaty fingertips.
“I did this…I did this to you,” Katsuki’s voice is broken, guilt-ridden, any sign of his trademark anger snuffed out like a dying candle.
Takes her a few moments to discern his words, to realize what he’s saying, but when the pieces click into place, her tongue is tied so intricately, desperate to mitigate his guilt.
“…What?”
“I was too weak, I couldn’t stop this. I couldn’t protect you.”
“No, Katsuki… This… You didn’t do this .”
“You don’t think the bastard who couldn’t protect you isn’t responsible for nearly killing you?” Katsuki whispers, voice hoarse and angry. Guilt-ridden. Broken.
“Katsuki—” she takes his hand, tangle their fingers together, pressed against her heart, blue eyes peering into red, honesty ringing through her tone. “—you listen to me and listen to me well. There is no one else who has been or ever will be as important to me as you. You are not going to blame yourself for this, because if they had gotten you instead of me, if they had taken you just like they snatched you our first year in Yuuei, you wouldn’t be here, and you bet your ass I would’ve been right behind you.”
⋆☽ﾟ
His fingers trace down the jagged, depressed, rough skin of her newest scar, down her body until he finds older, healed ones. He traces them with such delicacy, mapping out their shape as if he was mapping out the stars in the sky.
As if she was everything to him.
As if he saw her as his moon and stars.
It’s the most intimate contact she’s had in years.
Even among family, her blood , this is the most loved she’s ever felt; his lips kiss her scars, trace the harsh lines with gentle fingers, lavish them with love, like she ought to be worshiped.
There’s a burning sensation behind her eyes, stinging, and she shuts them tight, tangles her fingers in his pale, golden hair because she can’t let them fall, let him see her cry.
Only to feel a wet drop onto his hand.
The moment he peels away from her, just enough to see her face, he’s shocked to see her crying.
“Teddy bear, baby, what’s wrong?”
Calloused hands smelling of burned sugar cup her cheeks, thumbs brushing away the tears as they fall, maroon eyes bearing into cerulean, wondering if he’s stepped too far, if he’s wounded her in any way.
Emotion chokes the back of her throat, and she can barely utter the words through the thick wad because fuck there are so many thing she wants to tell him .
“I’ve…I-I never thought I’d get to do this… After everything I’ve done… I never thought I’d get to feel this. I never thought I’d get to love someone, never thought I’d get to love you.”
He pauses, huffs out and airy laugh, because fuck he swears he’s never met someone more deserving.
He knocks his forehead against hers, noses brushing as he angles his face to meet hers, lips brushing as he utters twelve words that fills her heart she swears he’s going to send her into cardiac arrest.
“Dumbass, you’ll always have me. Until the end of time, you’ll have me.”
nice
He finds himself sitting in the common area more often than he spends in his own room.
He can’t control it.
Not when he wakes in the middle of the night, a scream lingering on the tip of his tongue and his sheets reek of burned fabric and sugar. Not when he can still feel warm, rough fingers squeezed around his throat, the scent of burned flesh charred forever in his senses.
Not when he can still feel the leather straps wearing into his skin, and he rips off his shirt because god he can’t be trapped again, not again. Not when he feels the phantom chill seep into his bones where the metal restraints weighed on his wrists and no matter how many explosions he sets off to warm them, the chill won’t leave and it's terrifying .
Not when he feels the walls are closing in around him its cramped and he can’t fucking b r e a t h e.
Not when he feels his skin crawl with the memory, there’s a burning sensation behind his eyes and a lump clogging his throat and he has the urge to scream and cry and do nothing all at once and he doesn’t want to be alone and he doesn’t want to be seen as weak and he doesn’t know what to do —
“Bakugou.”
A voice, her voice — calm, quiet, loving — calls him, his muscles going painfully rigid and he swears he heard his neck snap he turned so fast, vermillion eyes on the gunslinger standing in the doorway.
“Ravello—”
He doesn’t know who moves first, limbs crashing together in a tight embrace on the wooden floor, his hands tangling in her shirt and hers in his pale, golden hair.
He doesn’t know how long they stay that way, coiled in one another’s embrace, and part of him wishes she would never let him go he swears he’s never felt anything as nice as her pressed against him, holding him together and humming an Italian lullaby in his ear, but she does, and his body chases hers like a man starved of water and he’s found his oasis.
Her warm hands cup his cheeks, brushing away the tears he didn’t remember falling, lips following the wet trails they leave, presses feathery light kisses to his eyes, before their foreheads meet. “It’s alright, Bakugou. I’m here now. Everything’s going to be alright.”
He believes her.
return
“Hey there, firecracker.”
Jordan chuckles, as if she hadn’t vanished off the face of the earth for a month chasing after her deranged sister. As if she hadn’t left him broken and alone, wondering for her safety for an entire thirty days. Acting as if she had been with him the entire time, but the guilt that feels like someone is stabbing a knife into her chest, breaking through the bone and into her heart is difficult to ignore.
The scent of burned sugar is in the air.
Katsuki can’t help himself.
He’s exploding across the room so fast the coats hanging from their racks and the shoes neatly lined at the door fly every which way, so fast that she doesn’t realize he’s in front of her until he’s slamming into her with such a ferocity an “Oomph” leaves her mouth, crushing her to the sofa and caging her there in a warm embrace.
“I see someone missed me,” she breathes, not quite recovered from the air being knocked out of her lungs, fingers carding into blond hair as he buries himself in her neck.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” He growls against her throat, where her pulse drums wildly under his lips.
“You’re dating the daughter of a mob boss, I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be a possibility.”
His fingers tighten around her waist, and the growl that rips past his lips sends shivers down Jordan’s spine. “You know what I mean, dumbass.”
Don’t leave me behind .
Her fingers thread further into his hair, and the kiss she presses to the crown of his pale, golden hair is gentle. So gentle he swears if he hadn’t memorized the shape of her lips he wouldn’t have known she had done it.
“I won’t. Never again,” she confirms, threading her fingers further through his hair.
smooch
“Bakugou…hey, you okay?”
He can’t take it.
He leans forward and kisses her with every ounce of his being.
His lips are on hers, hands reaching to cradle her cheeks, tilts her head just so, lips slotting together like perfectly made jigsaw pieces. Like they were always meant to fit together so beautifully.
The kiss is so soft, so slow, so… different from the Katsuki she knows. So different from the violent, explosive, hot-headed idiot her stomach ties into knots for and it’s something so n e w her heart pounds against her chest where it threatens to break out of her ribs.
The feeling is…
Heavenly.
But then there are hands clutching at the hem of her shirt, fingers burning into her waist he pushes her back against the wall and molds his frame against hers and kisses her like she's the last thing he’s ever going to see.
“Bakugou…”
She breathes against him, the name so hushed it leaves like a whisper past her swollen lips if he’d been any farther he wouldn't have heard her.
Her fingers wind their way into the fade of his hair, breathless as she gives him that half-assed smile he lost it over and there’s something burning in her eyes he can’t describe but f u c k if he’d ever let it go.
“Just shut up and kiss me, dumbass.”
She does.