Summary: Everyone thinks Bakugou is the one who struggles to show his feelings, but the truth is he's been waiting for Uraraka for a very long time.
A/N: I originally wrote this for the Kacchako Holiday Zine last fall and am so happy to be able to share it with you all now! My holiday was White Day, which, if you didn't know, is Japan's version of a sort of reverse Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day, girls typically gift something to the boy/person they like, and on White Day, the guys give response gifts in return.
My fic is a bit of a mess and there are so many things I want to change now looking back on it haha (the curse of being a writer), but oh well. Here it is anyway, in all its messy glory. xo
the world begins again
She could break him again and again but he'd still always belong to her.
Bakugou has never been a drinker.
Alcohol falls under the category of stupid decisions he's far too disciplined for. Anything that needs a warning label is pointless at best, destructive at worst, and anything that impairs judgment will never have a place in his explosive hands.
Control does not come easy to him. He refuses to give up the meager amount he has for a quick buzz.
So when Kaminari jokingly offers him a glass of whiskey with the obvious intention of drinking it himself, their entire class goes silent as Bakugou snatches the tumbler from Kaminari's unsuspecting grasp and downs the amber liquid in one go.
There is a long, irritating beat of stillness that makes Bakugou want to roar. He never thought he'd wish for the idiots he once went to school with to be their normal, rowdy, criminally annoying selves, but in this moment, he craves the predictable gushing they'd all succumbed to when they initially reconvened in this restaurant. It's better than having them all watch him with knowing, pity-filled stares.
"Kacchan—"
Bakugou silences the green-haired idiot by harshly shoving back his chair. The screech of wooden legs against glossy epoxy feels deafening in the room, even with the low hum of the piano in the background. Yaoyorozu had reserved the entire building for this reunion, so there's a lack of strangers' prying eyes that they've all grown used to—it's just their former classmates and the staff in the classy establishment, a show of overkill that had made him scoff when he'd arrived—but Bakugou has never felt this heavy even when the world was breathing down his neck.
"Oh, fucking can it," he snaps, and he hates that they still know him so well, so intimately, after all these years that they don't even flinch at the venom in his tone. "I'm fucking twenty now. If I want to have a drink, I'll have a fucking drink, so stop staring at me like I killed your goddamn dog."
Kirishima is quiet. "Bakugou…"
"Shut the fuck up," he grunts. "I said I'm fine, alright? Just leave me the fuck alone."
With that, he storms out of the room and it's a testament to how well they understand him that they don't make a move to follow.
The balcony still feels stifling when he bursts out into the night. He's ripping off his tie before the door falls shut behind him, hating himself for feeling claustrophobic over nothing, hating himself for putting the stupid tie on in the first place—because what the fuck had he expected? That he'd walk into the restaurant, all dressed up in a suit she'd always loved, wearing a color she'd always adored, and she'd fall back into his arms like it was Valentine's Day of their last year and there hadn't been enough water between them to drown a fucking boat? She's not even here.
She's not even here.
He never should've come to this stupid thing. Never should've returned to Musutafu at all. After graduation—after Uraraka had left him and never looked back—it had been his every attention to avoid this place like the plague and put the fucking past behind him.
But then he'd gotten the call from UA, and Kirishima, and several of his other classmates as well.
They'd all begged him to accept before he even had a chance to listen to the school's original invitation. They kept talking about how long it had been since they'd all been together. How they all needed to amass; catch up. UA was inviting them back to attend closing ceremonies for this year—their class is still pretty famous, even two years post-graduation—and they wanted to take advantage of the opportunity.
Make an event of it, Kaminari had insisted.
Make it a reunion, Ashido had squealed.
A large part of him wanted to tell them to fuck off without hearing them out, but Bakugou had never been as good at ignoring his former classmates as he tried to be. And when Deku quietly mentioned that Uraraka would be coming, too…
Well, he never claimed to have complete control over his actions.
But now it's ten days before UA's closing ceremonies and everyone is here except for her. He'd spent weeks—months, possibly even years—imagining what he'd say once he saw her again, and none of it even matters because she fucking lied, and she probably did it because of him.
It's one thing to avoid Bakugou because of their history, but to take that out on their classmates, who had been excited to congratulate her for her accomplishments, who had been starry-eyed and pathetically optimistic about the chance for them all to be together again, despite the fact that they have reason to be as jaded and disillusioned as he is… How fucking selfish can she be?
He's so lost in the internal rampage of his mind that he doesn't notice the balcony door opening behind him until he hears her voice.
"Bakugou."
He closes his eyes. Tightens his grip on the tie that is still clenched in his hand. Inhales.
And then lets it all go.
"Uraraka."
The past couple years have done her very well. Her body is still sinful in its perfection, her pale skin somehow glowing under the distant moon. She'd long since grown her hair out from that bob she had when they were fifteen, admitting to Bakugou under the influence of fatigue and nighttime depression that it made her feel childish after everything they'd been through and under the weight of all the losses they were forced to bear.
After that, she would keep it up in a ponytail during work or training—which basically encompassed every moment of her day—so the only time he saw her with her hair down was under the blanket of the night, when she crawled above him or beneath him, the silky locks either spread out like angel feathers on his pillow or tumbling down her bare back as she tipped her head in ecstasy from the way he kissed her, touched her, moved inside her.
Seeing her with her hair down now, soft chocolatey strands blowing lightly in the cool breeze, isn't healthy for his blackened heart.
Seeing her look at him with nothing but guarded concern in her enormous brown eyes isn't any better.
"How's the view?" Her voice is casual and light, not giving anything away.
Over two years without seeing each other and that's the first thing she says to him. He wants to fucking laugh, but bitterness is telling and he's not ready to tell her anything right now. Not anymore. "It's a view," he says.
He doesn't ask her how she knew he was out here. She doesn't offer. She simply moves past him and leans her elbows against the railing, letting her eyes close for a brief moment as she breathes in the tainted air their city has to give.
Silence fills the night. It mixes with the sound of distant cars and murmured voices that seem way too far and not far enough, but it's not uncomfortable. It never is, not with them.
To others, he may be a fucking grenade that's half a second away from going off and she may be the sunshine sweetheart their class feels the unfounded urge to protect, but between them, there is an understanding. Even before they got together and caused a school-wide panic where everyone thought Uraraka must've been possessed by some sort of villain to have agreed to go out with him, there was always an understanding.
He is explosive, but she knows he does not exist without sacrifice. She is cheerful, but he knows she often battles with demons she cannot show.
They're wild, they're a mess, and they never made sense to begin with, but no one fills the quiet like she does, and he used to rage war on anyone who so much as joked that they'd take her away. He would've killed anyone who tried. Once, he almost did.
And then she left on her own two feet, one month before they were supposed to graduate.
Bakugou has never cared about anyone enough to feel betrayal, but somehow Uraraka Ochako managed to make him bleed.
"Are you staying with Deku and Todoroki?" she asks eventually, her eyes still trained on the twinkling city spread out in front of them.
"What the fuck do you think?" He was supposed to. Deku had offered, had insisted, but existing is hard these days and Bakugou doesn't have the energy to yell more than he has to.
He feels her solemn understanding like a brand beneath his skin. "I'm staying at a hotel, too," she says, voice quiet. "Across the street, actually. Nice place. Only a short train ride to UA."
His body goes still. "You were hiding." Traffic hadn't been the culprit like the others speculated. This whole time, she'd been here—ready, waiting, wanting—but she hadn't come. "Because of me."
She cups her hands in front of her mouth. Blows into them to warm her cooling extremities. "It's not what you think."
"Oh, don't even fucking try to pull that shit with me," he growls. "Do you think I'm stupid? You dipped out before we could even graduate, refused to return anyone's calls for two years, had to be practically bullied into coming back to this shitty ass town for this reunion—and then you sat on your ass for hours as the rest of us waited for you while you were literally a minute away. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the reason. Why the fuck did you even come if you wanted to avoid me that bad?"
"How many of them had to bully you into coming?" she counters.
None, because he started packing his bags pretty much the moment Deku told him she'd be here, but fuck if he'll tell her that. "You're not fucking like me, roundface. You made that very clear."
He wants to take pleasure in the way he makes her flinch—has wanted to hurt her for so fucking long, hurt her like she hurt him by blindsiding him, by tearing the floor out from under him, by leaving him behind—but his chest has always been a fucking traitor and he wants to rip out his rotting heart for the way it practically ruptures at the sight of her pain.
He wants to rage and scream and burn the fucking sky for the weight it's bearing down on him, but it's all he can do to clench his hands to keep from grabbing her and begging her to never leave again.
"I wasn't avoiding you," she says.
He lets out a low, dark laugh. "Didn't know you became such a liar when you left. I wonder what else has changed. Did you make promises to new friends you never intended to keep? Jump into bed with another idiot who was stupid enough to believe you'd stay for him?"
"Bakugou." Her shoulders are iron, weathered and worn. "Don't you fucking dare. You know me better than that."
"Apparently I don't because I had no idea that fleeing the country with your tail between your legs had been an option you were considering until it fucking happened. And I certainly never expected you to be the kind of coward who would ditch her friends just because she didn't want to see her bitter ex."
"Bakugou—"
"Stop fucking saying my name like that!" he yells. "I'm not some goddamn dog you can order to stand down! I don't belong to you anymore."
"You never belonged to me—"
"Didn't I?"
She flinches as if he'd struck her, and when her expression morphs into something agonizing, he realizes all too late that this confrontation is probably going to be the best and worst thing he's ever done. "I wasn't avoiding you," she repeats, and she whips around, her long hair curling around her like a harness, an embrace. "I wasn't—don't you get that? It took everything I had to walk away when I did, and every day since then has been a battle where I remind myself why I can't come back and it's a fight I barely win. Every single time." Her eyes are fire and water; agony behind tears. "Bakugou, it didn't take me hours to work up the nerve to walk over here because I didn't want to come. It took me hours because I wanted it so badly I could barely breathe."
"Then why the fuck did you leave in the first place?" he wants to scream but the words are shaky and weak and he fucking hates himself for the way his voice cracks, but he's too wound up to try again.
She freezes then. Wipes her tears. Her soul retreats.
"Fuck no." He surges forward to grab her shoulders and it fucking lights him on fire when her eyes go wide but she doesn't even try to pull away. "You're not leaving without an answer again. If you have something to say, then fucking say it, damn it!"
"You don't want to hear what I have to say."
"Don't fucking tell me what I want. You have no fucking clue."
"What do you want then?" she bursts out. "Huh, Bakugou? I've heard the rumors; you never do anything outside your hero duties, are never seen anywhere that doesn't have to do with harnessing your Quirk. You're a ghost, and there's not a single person who can say they know you, really know you, aside from your desire to be the world's greatest hero." Her words are choked up, her voice like shattered glass. "Do you even know what you want anymore?"
"Of course I fucking do."
"Then what is it?"
He wishes he's strong enough to voice an answer that doesn't involve him gripping the back of her neck and slamming his lips against hers.
Two years of minimal contact with other human beings has turned him into an unpinned grenade, susceptible to explode at the slightest pressure, and Uraraka has always been his strongest trigger. She's the addiction he's denied for years and the virus that swam through his blood long before he realized he was infected. She's a fucking fire, a storm, and she burns him with her touch and her tears and her wordless wails into his soul as she kisses him back, just as fiercely, just as desperate, just as unhinged—because she is no wilting flower, no quiet rain, and once upon a time he reveled in the fact that he knew her better than any other stupid idiot in their blind fucking world. A world that doesn't deserve her, tried to remake her, break her.
A world that hurt her. Hurt her enough to make her want to leave.
He doesn't know her anymore but he knows her like this, and for that reason alone, he never wants this moment to end.
By the time they break apart, they're both needy and gasping. Her amber eyes are so round, so full, but there's no surprise in them, just reverence, because despite what others may think of her, Uraraka Ochako has never been stupid. Not even close.
"You taste like whiskey," she blurts out.
"Sparky," is all he says. It's not an answer and she can't possibly understand what he means from it, so of course she does anyway. Her understanding gaze could break a fucking saint.
"Do you still hate me?"
His voice is a rough whisper. "More than anything else in the world."
"Good." She clears her throat. Leans her forehead into his chest. He can feel her tremble in a way that makes him want to fucking die, so he holds her tighter instead. "Good," she repeats. "I'm glad. You should."
"Don't fucking tell me what to do."
She is trembling almost violently in his grasp, and she smells like fucking flowers, and her hair is so soft against his lips, torturously smooth. His fingers itch to mark her, to claim her skin, to grab her shoulders and shake her blind while demanding what the fuck she expects of him, how the fuck is she surviving when he's spent the last two years falling apart, but at the same time, he is a weak human under a sleeping pup. Too scared to move even an inch for fear of scaring her away.
When he his palms press against the icy skin over her spine, Bakugou realizes with a jolt it isn't just her tears that make her weak. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he snarls, pulling back to glare at her with all the misplaced fury he's been fostering for years. "It's winter, you dumbass! Why the fuck can't you ever dress appropriately for the weather?!"
She glances down at her dress, strappy and open and way too stunning to be legal. "It's technically only winter for another six days."
"Tell that to the fucking frost on the windows."
"It's not that bad."
"You're shivering."
"Maybe I'm just really happy to see you."
"Goddamn it, Uraraka—"
"Are you going to give me your jacket?"
"Fuck no," he snaps, even as he shrugs off his coat and drapes it over her slim shoulders.
She visibly fights a smile. "Maybe if you'd find a warmer place to brood next time, I wouldn't have to—" She goes deathly still, her face abruptly blanking.
Before he can demand what the fuck's wrong with her, she removes her hand from where she'd stuffed them into his jacket pocket for warmth to reveal the tiny black velvet box he'd stuffed in there earlier.
His chest fills with burning ice. "Fuck. It's not—"
"How long have you had this?"
His lips twist. "Who says it has anything to do with you?"
"Bakugou."
He exhales loudly through his nose. His fists don't know what the fuck to do. The air is too thick. His chest feels like it's about to explode. Suddenly he's tired, so fucking tired, the kind of bone-deep fatigue that feels so much older than he actually is, and he only has the energy for the truth. "Since the day after Valentine's Day our last year."
Amber eyes widen. "You've been carrying it this whole time? For the past two years?"
"Don't fucking say it like that," he grunts. "It makes me sound like a wimp."
"Bakugou."
Red tints his cheeks. "Shut the fuck up! It's only because the spiky-haired bastard was bugging me about getting you something good in return for White Day, alright? So don't get all fucking worked up about it. It's not a big deal."
"Riiiight," she says slowly. "It's just an engagement ring you got me. For White Day. Two years ago." She smooths her thumb over the soft velvet of the surface. Her eyes never leave the cube. "It's White Day today."
He looks away. "What are you, a fucking calendar?"
Of course he knows what day it is. He isn't stupid. She knows that—though he suspects that's why she's so still. Because she knows that.
And he'd let her take his jacket.
They hadn't celebrated Valentine's Day the first year they got together. Not officially, at least. Their relationship had been too new, their feelings too unpolished. They had existed, of course—existed enough that he waged fucking war on the dickhead she sparred against during their second Sports Festival for accidentally groping her ass in battle—and back then, Bakugou remembers being pathetically pleased when she surprised him by giving him homemade chocolates after midnight, shyly telling him not to freak out. It wasn't for the holiday. It was just because.
Exactly one month later, thirty seconds after their first White Day, he told her she was keeping him. Just because.
By the time they made it to their last year, there was nothing on the planet that was strong enough to represent the way they felt about each other but she made an attempt anyway. They had aged so much in those last few months—lost so much; lost too much—and when she finally told him she loved him for the first time on that pink and red excuse for a holiday, Bakugou was so fucking gone he would've blown up the whole world if she asked.
The next day, he went out and bought the ring.
A week after that, she left for America and Bakugou spent the next two years feeling too broken to even scream.
Now he watches her breath catch as she stares at the lid and he pretends he isn't fucking dying. When she merely blinks down at it for several beats, her expression impossibly blank, his patience is shot and he makes a swipe for the box as he snaps, "Well, if you're just going to fucking stare at it—"
She quickly moves it out of his reach, slipping it back into the pocket of his jacket that he'd been nice enough enough to let her wear. "Nope, it's mine now. No take-backs."
"You didn't even fucking look at it," he scowls, but she sees right through him. Her expression grows soft.
"Later," she promises.
That one word says thousands.
Suddenly her eyes light up like the sun, and he's been in love with her long enough to know that look only means trouble. The muscles in his jaw are ready to snap an automatic, empty "fuck no" to whatever she's about to suggest, but instead of spewing some crazy idea, she only grabs his arm with all five fingers then proceeds to jump off the fucking balcony, dragging him behind her like some sort of red-faced helium balloon.
"What the f—?!"
Before she can hit the ground like an undercooked pancake, she touches her own chest with her free hand, allowing her to hover above the gravel. She then lets go of Bakugou's arm so she can release them both from her Quirk.
He is angry and spluttering the instant he lands on his feet. "Are you fucking crazy?! You can't just—"
"Let's run away together."
"What."
"Not run away run away," she amends with a light laugh, as if that's the issue in her statement, and her smile is so bright, so sweet, but her eyes are deeply sad and it's killing him to fucking see. "I'm not going crazy, I swear. And I will absolutely understand if you say no so please don't feel pressured to leave with me."
She has to know that's the stupidest fucking thing she's ever said—has to know he'd follow her anywhere, even now—but it's all he can do not to stare at her like she's grown three extra heads. "What the hell are you talking about, roundface?"
"I just… I don't want to go back in there. I'm not ready to face our classmates yet. Not now." When he doesn't respond, only stares, she says, voice feather soft, "Please, Bakugou? Just for a little while?"
That's when he knows what this is. She isn't asking him to abandon their responsibilities. She isn't asking him to stay. She isn't even asking him to be with her, really be with her, the way he'd planned to be with her when they were only two stupid, idealistic teens who dreamed of saving the world.
She just wants this moment.
They'll spend a few hours in each other's presence. She'll hold his hand. They won't do anything in particular. He doubts that she has anything planned, that she'd dreamed for anything beyond being able to stand next to him again. She isn't him. Wanting more has always been his exclusive function, and Uraraka forever struggles to break down her walls just enough to let him in.
It's the curse of being kind. The nice ones never seem to have the heart to ask for what they need.
Yet here she is, asking him for this. For now. And at the end of it, he'll return to Tokyo and she'll go back to America and they might never speak again.
The thought nearly wrecks him. It's the most painful thing he's ever fucking imagined.
Of course he agrees.
They are not anonymous as they walk down the busy city streets. They are only together, but somehow the crowds must know how much he fucking needs this because no one approaches them. They watch, and they listen, and he knows there will be dozens upon hundreds of articles and pictures posted before daybreak where the public will freak out over his and Uraraka's seeming reconciliation, but he doesn't care.
In this moment, they are no one. They don't belong to the world. They're just two people who are very much in love but can't be together and can't fire the gun that will voice it. After all, being a hero is everything they thought it would be and nothing all at once.
There's a reason everyone on the top ends up alone.
He wants to tell her he'll give up his dream for her, but he knows she'll just smile. He wants to beg her to stay with him, but she knows he never will.
And it's not because of his pride. Not because of his arrogance.
He just knows her. And hurting her is something he will never, ever do.
Tomorrow morning, she'll return his ring without looking at it. They'll go their separate ways. They'll risk their lives for a world that doesn't deserve her, she'll wear a smile she doesn't feel, he'll continue to fight for the thing he always thought he wanted, and they'll pretend it isn't costing them everything.
She won't call, even when she's weak. He won't expect her to. She's stronger than she's ever believed.
Maybe one day, on another Valentine's Day, she'll gift him with a yes. And then one day, on another White Day, he can sign away his heart and she'll actually take it.
That day isn't today. But they'll always have tonight.
And for tonight, just tonight, his world can begin again.