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Katsuki falls hard, and swiftly, and alone.
Ochako is ragingly oblivious. Katsuki knows this. He knows it achingly, painfully well. Their relationship doesn’t start with soft little sparklers, but rather a boom.
***
It starts when Katsuki notices her notebook, strewn on the floor. “Sorry,” he says gruffly, leaning down to pick up the loose papers, because he’s not actually an asshole.
Uraraka flushes deeply, flexing her fingers outward. When he gathers them all together, he accidentally touches one of her weird little paw pads. It sends a zing flushing through his bloodstream, nitroglyceren flooding into his palms like there’s a threat, like Uraraka Ochako makes him nervous, or on edge, or something stupid like that.
On the papers are sub-par drawings of a person. Of Uraraka, clad in her hero suit. Except, despite the poor line work and eraser shavings, it’s different. “Submitting a new design?” Katsuki says. Immediately he brings the papers closer, rifling through them.
Uraraka eeps, leaning forward into his space and attempting to snatch at her work. The edges of her skirt brushes against him. “Don’t look at those!”
“Why not?”
“Because—they’re not complete yet.”
Katsuki squints. “No shit. Are those supposed to be your hands? They look like cartoon gloves.”
Uraraka scowls up at him. Nitroglyceren smudges on to her pages. Katsuki ignores it. “So-orry we can’t all be artists.”
Katsuki looks at her and tries not to grin. “So? Have you submitted them yet?”
Uraraka doesn’t quite meet his eyes. She fidgets with her fingers instead. “No. Last time I tried, they didn’t agree. They said the changes weren’t marketable enough.”
Katsuki took another look at the pages. And then at her. Without a second thought, he grabs her hand, ignoring how spongey her paw pads were, and marched her out of the room. “Bakugo!” she says. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going down to the support branch, where you’re gonna make them change their minds.”
“Wha—why are you helping me?”
The back of Katsuki’s neck isn’t red. It isn’t. “I’m not helping. I’m the muscle—you gotta do the convincing.”
He stomps down the corridor, her hand still clasped in his. Her palms are hot. Or maybe it’s his own.
***
Tuesday nights, Katsuki cooks dinner early. He does it because a good chunk of their class have their hero internships on Tuesday afternoons, so it’s the one time of the week that they don’t clog up the kitchen with all their smells and not enough spices. The only people who are home are Shoji, who has his weekly family phone call scheduled then, Tokoyami, and Koda, who stick to their rooms, studying.
And Uraraka.
She always ends up in the common room on Tuesday nights.
Not that Katsuki notices. He doesn’t notice that she splays out on the couch, the only time where there’s enough room to do so, all of her books and papers strewn about her. She isn’t a messy person, from what he’s noticed, but when she’s as close to alone as you can be, she seems to take up as much space as she can. Katsuki thinks it’s good—as far as he’s concerned, she doesn’t take up enough space as it is.
Not that Katsuki is concerned. But Tuesday nights is when he cooks the most, and also when Uraraka studies the most. She works the hardest at physics, despite the fact it’s the one that comes easiest to her, and Katsuki does not notice that, not at all. English is her weak point, and sometimes, even from the kitchen, he can hear her muttering ad-verbs aloud to herself.
Maybe he brings her water and a plate of dango when the muttering stops for too long. It’s not good to wear yourself out, after all. If there’s one thing that quirks forced you to realise, it was that. And he’d seen her barf enough times to know Uraraka was aware of that as well.
One Tuesday, when it’s raining outside hard enough that the entryway is full of all the animals in the nearby area that Koda couldn’t find shelter for, Katsuki finds there isn’t a single textbook to be seen. Instead, Uraraka is busy fiddling with a gaming console, looking lost.
“What are you doing?”
Uraraka jumps, accidentally floating the remote control in her hand. “Wha—Bakugo, you scared me.”
He just stares at her until the red in her cheeks fades. Like she didn’t know he was in the kitchen—like he’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t. “Not studying this time?”
Uraraka sits decisively on the couch. Katsuki has to lean down to look at her, arms braced on the back of it. She looks up at him resolutely. “I’m taking a break.”
The look is undermined by the piece of hair delicately brushing past her mouth. It’s annoying. Distracting. Katsuki wants it to move out of the way. “By doing what?”
The TV lights up. He doesn’t recognise the game on the screen, with its tiny cute pixel art work and watercolour shading. It suits Uraraka. But she’s clumsy with the remote, back hunched over and staring intently at the screen. He thinks she’s two seconds away from poking her tongue out in concentration. “I’m playing a cozy game. Hagakure lent it to me.”
“Hagakure plays video games?” He bites his tongue on saying the same about Uraraka. It’s obvious that she doesn’t.
Uraraka nods. Her tongue makes an appearance. Katsuki tries not to stare, tries not to grin. “Yeah,” she says absently. “She likes the avatar-creation part the most. I just wanted something different to focus on. Something other than my laundry.”
Katsuki stares at the nape of her neck instead. Her hair is in a little bun, pinned up with one of those weird clips girls always seemed to have. Watching her play video games, he realises, is the lamest thing he could possibly be doing. “Well,” Katsuki clears his throat, “If you need help beating the bad guy, I’m making dinner.”
Uraraka turns to him, looking up at him, all smiles. It’s a cute little smile, pulling at the corners of her eyes so he notices how long her eyelashes are. “Thanks, Bakugo.”
For some reason, he feels like she’s thanking him for more than a stray comment. Like she noticed the glass of water he set down next to the couch for her. He walks away as quickly as he can without looking suspicious, hands thrust in his cooking apron so she doesn’t see him flexing his fingers, doesn’t see any nervous tells. Not that he has any.
***
Sometimes, Uraraka does laundry at the same time as him. It’s sporadic—nothing like his meticulous, weekly routine. Katsuki tips his nose up at her, and she grins, like she finds him funny or something.
When she pokes him in the shoulder one day and tells him he’s about to ruin one of his shirts, his heart beats jaggedly, skin buzzing. “Hah?” Katsuki says, sneering down at her.
Uraraka’s little smile doesn’t waver. She points one of her little padded fingers at his plain black shirt. “That needs to go on a cold wash, or it will shrink.”
Katsuki isn’t blushing. He’s not. “Since when were you good at laundry?”
Uraraka tilts her head at him. It’s like she sees right through his bluster. “I lived alone before we had to move to the dorms. It’s better if you don’t have to sacrifice any favourite clothes, like I definitely have. But it’s pretty easy, really. There’s only so much you can mess it up.”
Katsuki tsks, and tries not to think of all the pink shirts he has, accidentally tie-dyed by his mistakes. He flicks the machine on to cold wash as she skips away. “Is that your favourite shirt?” she says.
“No,” he says quickly. “Of course not.”
***
“I win!” Uraraka’s eyes are as wide as light globes, sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks.
Katsuki feels a little nauseous—or a lot nauseous—and her grip is tight against his wrists. He could buck against her weight sitting on him, but he currently has none. Both of them are breathing heavily.
His wrists tingle where she clutches them. Her thighs are soft bracketed against his hips, in sharp contrast to the sparring mat scraping against the edge of his lower back where his shirt had risen. “What?” she beams down at him.
Her forearms are glistening with his sweat, where he’d attempted to grapple with her. There were marks of him all over her, the collar of her shirt where’d he’d grabbed her for a throw, the curves of her hips, her left ankle. Proof Katsuki had touched her.
He flushes brightly. “Let me up,” he says urgently.
Uraraka frowns down at him, tilting her head curiously. It sends gold down his veins, starting from his heart and exploding through his body, forcing its way through his blood and centreing around his pelvis, centreing around his wrists still tightly clasped in her hands. Everywhere she touches him burns. “Now.”
Uraraka eeps at the scratchiness in his voice, at the feral look he gives her, scrambling off of him. Katsuki doesn’t take a full breath until even her shadow isn’t touching him, until she stares at him warily and retreats to her water bottle, probably (hopefully) as unsure of his moods and irascible temper as all of their classmates usually were. No one else in the gym seems to notice, besides a silent Tokoyami, who gives him a wide berth.
Good. He doesn’t need anyone else understanding him, and his gold-shot veins. He doesn’t need anyone to see how Uraraka’s arms sparkled in the light, how it matched the sweat on his palms and maybe the glint in his eyes. Nobody needs to know that. Nobody needs to see that. Least of all himself.
***
There’s a power outage one evening, at the time Katsuki always does his washing. Uraraka, naturally, because of course, is the only other person in the room when the lights flicker out.
“Bakugo?” she whispers, as if she isn’t only two machines to his right. It drags his shoulders back down from his ears, because total darkness didn’t exactly bring back pleasant memories. Her voice doesn’t seem worried, doesn’t tremble or hesitate. Not that he’d ever seen her hesitate, not really. And not that he can tell if she’s worried just by her saying his name.
“What?” he says harshly, but he’s also whispering.
Uraraka’s hand finds the crook of his elbow. “Are you okay?” she says.
Katsuki can’t see her face. Her fingers are warm. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
She seems to ignore him. As if she knows. Instead of saying anything, she tugs down on his arm and he follows her down until they’re sitting side by side, her shoulder brushing his and her knee pressed into his leg. Like she can tell he’s lightheaded. Katsuki doesn’t realise his heart is racing until she leans a little into his shoulder. “Scared of the dark or something, Cheeks?”
Maybe she can hear the strain in his voice. “Is it so weird to check on you?”
He swallows. He can’t see anything at all, not even Uraraka’s bright pink sneakers. “Who are you, my mum?”
Uraraka hums gently. “Your mum is a lot scarier than I am.”
Katsuki doesn’t know about that. “Better than my dad nagging me, at least.” He doesn’t know where that comes from. Maybe it’s that he can smell laundry detergent, instead of blood. It doesn’t smell like an underground room. It smells like Uraraka.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me more about him.”
Katsuki hesitates, until she presses her knee reassuringly against his. As if she can tell he needs it. He’s never realised before, how good at reading people she is. “He’s stupidly nice.”
“That’s not nice,” Uraraka says. He thinks she’s teasing.
“Yeah, well, you’re stupidly nice too.”
Uraraka squeezes his elbow. Was this how Kirishima always felt, whenever he threw his arms around their classmates necks? Was this why Kirishima always went out of his way to touch people? To…reassure?
Gold threaded through his veins. Maybe it wasn’t so dark in here after all.
“He doesn’t get it,” Katsuki blurts out. “My dad. He doesn’t get why I have to be a hero.”
“Really?” Even Uraraka sounds surprised. “But that’s…who you are.”
Katsuki swallows. She says it like it’s an irrefutable fact. Like all the setbacks and failures he’s experienced, ones that his dad didn’t even know about, doesn’t change anything. “He doesn’t agree. Masaru Bakugo is probably the only person in the world who doesn’t think I’m special.”
He doesn’t say it to be conceited. Katsuki is well aware of his capabilities, of his specialness. After all, special didn’t necessarily mean good. It didn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t on the dangerous quirks list, hadn’t been treated as different, as special, his whole life. It was either Katsuki be prodigal, be the exception, an awesome power, or to be Icarus. That was what the League had expected him to be. It was either he rise above it, and be the greatest hero the world had ever seen, or to fall from unprecedented heights, never to touch the sky again. Burnt out of the world. Burnt by it.
In a world of black and whites, of good and evil, his dad only sees him as his son.
Uraraka doesn’t say anything, but he can feel her gaze on the side of his face. “Obviously he loves me,” Katsuki says, and for some reason that’s harder to say. “But I’m just his son. I’m not a hero, or a villain. There’s nothing special he sees there. Sometimes, it’s kind of nice. Sometimes…it makes me wonder if I actually am special. If my own dad can’t see it, how can anyone else?”
Uraraka inhales softly. He can feel how her breathing displaces the air. Somehow, it’s not quite as dark anymore. “He definitely thinks you’re special, Bakugo. Just, not because of your quirk. I bet your dad thinks you’re special for a myriad of other things, for a bunch of different reasons.”
Katsuki smiles wryly. “Yeah? Like what?”
“Like how you make dinner for everyone on Tuesday nights. Because they’re too tired after their internships.”
Katsuki swallows, his breath catching.
“Or like how you bought extra umbrellas to put in the dorm entryway. Or that you wash the blankets that are always in the common room, or that you yell more quietly when Koda is next to you, or that you always make sure Kaminari has electrolytes after he’s overworked himself—”
“Okay, Cheeks, I get it, I get it.”
She squeezes his arm. The lights turn on. Katsuki had almost forgotten they were in darkness. He’s sure, that when Uraraka looks into his eyes, she sees all of him. Including the gold burning in his veins.
***
Katsuki can’t look away from her.
Uraraka doesn’t notice. She’s the only one who doesn’t notice. Kirishima squeezes his shoulder a little tighter, Jirou smirks a little wider, and even Kaminari stops talking about how pretty Uraraka is. Like he has a reason to stop. As if Uraraka ever even looks at Katsuki, not really, not the way he wants.
And suddenly Katsuki realises he’s a goner. That for all that Uraraka sees right through him, she doesn’t see that. That his eyes burn when he looks at her. At her smile. At her generosity.
There are so many moments he could pinpoint as the beginning. All of the moments that felt like the start. Now, Katsuki knows they were just the ending—that it’s already too late, already inevitable. Katsuki looks at Uraraka, looks at her and wishes, even in his mind, he could call her Ochako. Maybe he crash lands on to his feelings for her, but he knows, intimately, that they have been there, growing and rising up in his throat, past his teeth and past his lips, into the air and into her atmosphere for a long time. Maybe since forever.
“You’ve been wearing that shirt a lot lately, Bakugo.” Mina comments while their class is in the gym. Uraraka looks over.
He fingers the soft material, soft from several, careful, cold washes. Katsuki makes direct eye contact with Uraraka. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s my favourite.”