The question takes her by surprise.
It shouldn't.
But it does.
They're getting ready for bed on a pretty uneventful Thursday night. Neither of them had gone into work that day — both off at the same time in what seemed like forever.
They'd started the day lazing around in bed before Katsuki — the perpetual busy body that he is — had managed to convince her to come with him for a run in exchange for making that special strawberry mochi she loves. After their run they had come straight back home, hopping into the shower together and getting on with the rest of their day. She'd spent the majority of it putting their numerous streaming subscriptions to work and catching up on television while he deep cleaned the bathroom and read through files that she was sure were supposed to stay at the office.
Later on in the evening they had cooked dinner together.
Now, Katsuki is brushing his teeth as Ochako washes her cleanser off her face.
"Cheeks?" He spits the toothpaste from his mouth, minty white foam still around his lips. "Hey."
"Yup?" She looks over at him, eyes following the water droplets that fall from his chin onto his bare chest on their bath into the cotton fabric of the boxers sitting low on his hips. "What is it?"
"Do you…" Some strange little moment of hesitation flutters across his face for a moment. It's so foreign and unsettling on the face of her notoriously confident husband that Ochako turns away from her serums to give him her full attention. The look —insecurity, hesitation, /pain/ —passes almost as soon as it comes and when he speaks it's in that gruff, deep tenor that she's come to expect from him. "Do you ever wish I was him?"
She stares at him in stunned silence as the world stops spinning for a minute, the record scratches, and pigs sprout wings because she was not expecting that at all. In fact, she thinks she may have actually stopped breathing for a moment.
Bakugou stares at her in that time, searching for something in her face, before sighing, rinsing off his face and walking out the bathroom into their bedroom.
She's left there with soap on her cheek, gaping.
Her face is still wet and the cap is still off on her toner. His drying towel is hanging skewed on the rack from when he'd hurriedly wiped his face. Some water drips from her face into her fuzzy socks. His side of the sink is damp even though she's constantly asking him to wipe it off after he washes his hands because he's the one who wanted the wooden counters in the bathroom.
But she's not thinking about any of that as she watches his shirtless form retreating from the bomb he's dropped on their mundane, normal Thursday evening.
Katsuki wasn't the type to just ask emotionally charged questions out of nowhere. She was always the one who came to him asking him how he felt and explaining how certain situations made her feel or asking questions that betray one of her many self enforced insecurities. Whenever that happened he was always quick to soothe away her worries with a few gentle touches and the soft words he reserved only for her.
She frowned when she wondered if this was something that he had been bothered by a while, something he had been thinking. It hurt to think that he'd been sitting on this without talking to her about it.
And what hurt more is that she knows exactly who he's talking about.
Do you ever wish that I was him?
What?
Was that what he really thought?
She moved to the doorway, watching as he pulled the covers over his legs. He had his reading glasses on —the thick rimmed black ones that she always liked seeing him wear —and was holding one of those files in his free hand.
"What?" She gripped the doorframe. She didn't know what else to say. "Huh?"
His red eyes found hers —just like they always had — but his expression was tight, betraying nothing and everything all at once.
"'S nothing." He shrugged, turning away and flipping the file open. He tried to hide it —and if she wasn't Ochako she may have missed it —but there was a hint of bitter disappointment and frustration in his eyes. Her frown deepened. "I was just wondering, is all. Coming to bed soon?"
He didn't wait for her reply, lifting sheets from the file and looking at them with that intense, singular focus he did everything with, effectively shutting her out. Something he hadn't done in years. Which left Ochako in the doorway looking at her husband with water mixed with soap wetting the collar from her shirt, eyes wide and full of contemplation.
How could she get to bed now? How was she supposed to sleep?
Ochako was awake now.
Awake and restless.
A strange pain settled in her chest as she looked at him and his closed off posture, reminding her of a neglected, angry boy who carried the weight of everything that happened with self sacrificing stubbornness. The boy who she'd spend so much time comforting and coaxing out of all of his walls and barriers.
The boy she loved.
His question repeated in her head like a dark echo.
Do you ever wish that I was him?
It shocked her because it was a valid question.
And it shocked her because she could not, immediately, figure out the answer.
She knew what the answer should have been. Of course, she did.
But she had also lived enough life now to know that nothing was ever really as simple as she once thought things should have been.
Katsuki was often written off as being a hothead whose only emotion was rage but he had always been more deeply attuned with the feelings of the people around him than people ever gave him credit for. She'd been a part of those people at one point too but after sometime around him she recognized his anger for what it really was —the untethered passions of one of the most emotional people she had ever met. When they were younger — a time dominated by training and studying with bodies flooded by hormones —his emotions had boiled down to the lowest common denominator and just left him annoyed at everything. But as he got older, he'd mellowed out considerably allowing the deeply sensitive, fragile, introspective person that Kirishima and her had seen under his brash exterior to peek through to the surface.
He was sensitive, deeply. Even when he was younger she had seen it in him — the ability to see into the essense of people, to understand at the simplest level. And Katsuki had always had a way of seeing everything where everyone else was concerned.
He had seen Deku's struggle years before the rest of them were privy to its source. When Kirishima was battling with insecurity, Katsuki had been the one to offer him the rough reassuraces that had propelled him into self confidence.
And he's seen the truth in her too.
He saw her struggle with the perception that people had of her because of her quirk, her appearance and her demeanor. He'd seen her battle with insecurities concerning all of that and met her with the blunt acceptance that allowed her to grow into who she wanted to be as a hero and a woman.
Katsuki had always seen her. Everything about her.
Her feelings for Izuku were no different — he'd seen them too. And she wouldn't insult him by denying that she ever had them.
She had.
She still thought about him every now and then, He was still her best friend, her comrade in battle and an irreplaceable part of her life. Ochako loved him — she always would love him.
She could admit that.
He had been his first love.
The first person who in her fledgling womanhood had brought a flush to her face and quickened her heartbeat. The first who had inspired sigh filled daydreams about the future, who had been able to evoke that sort of caring and devotion from her, and she couldn't help but reminisce on that innocence.
It wasn't just a crush.
Ochako had really loved him.
It was a love that was gentle, kind and comfortable. Not the kind of love that people wrote stories about but the kind that inspired poems, soft and intimate, the type that everyone secretly wanted.
It wasn't just a crush.
She'd thought one day she'd be living her life with him by her side at one point, that she'd spent boring Thursday's with him. She'd look at him and get butterflies and life would be easy, sweet and good. That they'd live a life wasn't always easy, good and sweet but it would be whenever they're eyes found each other.
Just like Ochako — older, wiser, and stronger —looked at Katsuki now.
The question echoed through her mind again.
Do you ever wish I was him?
Do you, Ochako?
Do you ever worry that you choose the wrong man? That you made a mistake?
Would you trade what this is for what you could have had ?
Do you ever wish that it was Izuku that you married? Do you wonder what it would be like if it was him who you slept next to? Him who you called your husband?
What would have happened if you loved him just a bit more than you love me?
Do you wonder? Do you have regrets?
Ochako wanted to scream.
God, did he really have to ask her that? He just had to send her spiraling into confusion and unrest on this random Thursday, didn't he?
Ochako walked back into the bathroom and wiped off her face.
Her reflection looked back at her in the mirror. There was a silvery scar visible where her shirt — one of Katsuki's old shirts —draped on her smaller frame and less puff to her cheeks. The dark circles under her eyes that had plagued her in high school were only worse now that she was a Pro. Her hair was longer, her skin less supple, and her smile still a common feature on her face was ever so slightly dimmed by everything she'd seen and lost.
The girl that she was didn't exist anymore.
Just like the boys that Izuku and Katsuki once were didn't either. Or Kirishima. Mina either. Shouto, Tsu, Iida —none of them were the people they once were, they couldn't be. Too much life had happened for them to be.
Those kids would remain ghosts. Only to resurface in those small glances shared between classmates once turned comrades and now turned friends. Now they were stories interweaved and tagged together by adventure and magic, suffering and joy, victory and defeat.
Tales of a boy who loved so hard that it broke his bones and the man he would become. The power behind that boy's laugh, the vulnerability of that boy's tears. The blood that was left on battlefields and the power that raced through clasped hands. Stories of a girl whose feet sometimes didn't touch the ground and the boy with supernovas in his palms who was and is always ready to grab her ankle or her wrist and bring her down to earth.
Stories that one day she wishes to share with her children.
Do you ever wish I was him?
Katsuki had wanted an answer.
Ochako sighed, bowing her head as she thought deeply of the two loves that had shaped much of her life.
Izuku, who was the first, was kind, awkward, and shy. He was always willing to go beyond for people he loved, he was always ready to protect and serve. Always willing to help, always willing to forgive. He carried the weight of a gargantuan legacy on his shoulders with nothing more than an inspirational smile and an unshakable optimism.
He'd grown into a fine hero and a good man. Handsome, too, with his more mature face, scattering of freckles and tall, muscled frame.
Of all her friends she is the most proud of his growth. He was always heroic — in his own way. She'd heard of his struggles and heartaches but he had preserved under unfortunate odds and stolen the heart of the symbol of peace through his willingness to put his life on the line for those he loved. And he'd only gone on to grow into both his power and his role.
He was a hero by nature, a man who would always be there to protect those who needed him.
That was something she loved about him. That was also part of the reason they hadn't worked.
From the moment that he'd risked his future to save her during the entrance exam, she'd been one of those people he wanted to save. And for a time that had been nice.
Ochako had always known she could lean on him when she felt weak or afraid, that he would always be there to comfort and support her when she needed him. When she was with him, when she talked to her, she wasn't Uravity—with her duties and responsibilities and a city depending on her— she was Uraraka.
Ochako. It was all she had to be, that was enough for him.
The problem was that she was more.
She was weak and afraid sometimes but she was also strong and courageous. She was Ochako and she was Uravity in equal measures. She didn't always need rescuing, she wasn't always fragile and fragil. She could handle herself, she could defend herself without needing someone else to swoop in and save her.
He hadn't understood that. And she hadn't been the one to teach him.
Melissa — quirkless, beautiful, smart — had been the one to show him the strength that lies in everyone. She was the essence of everything that he'd hated all his life, a reflection of who he could have been if his dreams hadn't fallen from the sky. He'd told her once that Melissa had made him uncomfortable, that he wanted to protect her because she was weak and exposed but she'd been the one to save him, that she was a reflection of himself that he'd never wanted to look back at. She'd filled in the gaps of his weaknesses and supported him with everything that she had — she'd made him better.
She had forced him to deal with the small, weak, quirkless boy with a mind that often moved quicker than his lips could and embraced him because he made him better. And along the way, he'd stopped seeing Melissa as this person who needed him to stand in front of her and defend her from the world — instead he welcomed her to his side.
He loved her because she was brilliant, stubborn, beautiful, kind and she helped him love himself.
Ochako couldn't have been that for him. She couldn't have made him better in the same ways that Melissa did and Izuku wouldn't have been able to make her better in all the ways that she needed either — they hadn't known how.
Their gaps didn't fit.
Ochako walked back into her bedroom and watched as Katsuki laid down, blankets cast towards her side. She would admit that she was a major blanket hog, but he never complained. Even when she stuck her cold feet between his warm ones to steal his heat.
He just shuffled closer to her and played his part as her human radiator.
She smiled at that.
Katsuki was closed off sometimes, proud, fearless, reckless and brutally honest, hesitant to trust and even more hesitant to love.
She moved across the room and got into bed with her husband, slotting herself against his broad back and wrapping her arms around his middle. He stirred slightly, bringing his own hand to fall over her clasped ones.
Katsuki always wanted to be in control of every situation, no matter what it was, and was confident that he could fight his way out of anything.
Katsuki was fiercely loyal and completely devoted to whatever he put his mind to, a frighteningly strong man who fought through his problems with a smirk and hands posed to explode. He was confident and surprisingly levelheaded, wise beyond his years.
Katsuki listened.
Sure he shouted and yelled and argued sometimes but he was always listening. And it was through his listening that he understood things no one else did.
He understood her. Completely, deeply and without prejudice.
After their fight at the sports festival, things had changed. From then on, whenever Ochako had found herself tired, weak, ready to fall down and surrender, to bow in defeat before her enemies, she'd think of him. Of how Katsuki stood tall and faced his problems with strength befitting a true hero.
And during those hard times, it was his voice that she heard pushing her forward, strong and clear:
Stand, Ochako. Stand up and keep fucking fight. You're stronger than this, you're better than this. I know you are. You know you fucking are. Never let any of these extra tell you otherwise.
Katsuki had no time to be wasted on those he saw as beneath him. It made him seem like an asshole sometimes and definitely wasn't winning him any popular contests but …
Katsuki pushed and prodded her. Loving him would never be comfortable and easy because he demanded more from her. More in every aspect of her life, more than anyone had ever expected from her before.
Katsuki didn't want to have people around him who were content to stand below or behind him — he wanted the people around him to walk besides him, to challenge and be challenged.
Katsuki would always stand beside her... but never in front of him. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered. He would not let her lean on him like a crutch. He'd stop beside her, pick her up and hold her for as long as she needed and help set her back on her feet, or give her a quick push to keep going.
He wanted her to get better, to do better. To be more.
Just like she wanted for him.
It was the reality that they lived in. They didn't have the privilege to be just Ochako or just Katsuki, they were more. They were Dynamite and Uravity. They were heroes that people depended on.
It was hard and sometimes it felt unfair but it was what they'd dedicated their lives to.
So it was a challenge that had to be met head on.
With Katsuki, Ochako had to be more than herself, more than she ever thought he could be, reach higher than even her own expectations dared to go.
Because Katsuki believes in her. He was that in her — there was not a single doubt in his mind that Ochako had what it took to do whatever she wanted and then some.
Ochako smiled into the crook of her husband's neck under the glow of the moonlight and the soft summer darkness.
Ochako loves him and Katsuki loves her. When you love someone, you give them control of your heart. You trust that they'll take all of the scary parts of yourself — your insecurities, your weakness, your fears, your dreams — and that they'll see them for the treasure that they are. You trust them with everything you are.
Sometimes they can break you and other times they keep you safe. Sometimes they help you grow and sometimes they watch you either because they don't know how to treat you. Sometimes it's beautiful and other times it's sad.
But it's scary. It's always scary.
And Katsuki—stubborn, passionate,fiercely independent Katsuki— of all people, had freely given up his control to love her.
Ochako looked at his face, tracing the sharp angles and delicate features as he slept. She'd spent countless hours looking at his face, she knew every inch of him.
And she wondered in that money who she would be, if the man beside her had never come along.
The answer was instant.
Because this was Katsuki.
Her husband, her friend, her greatest supporter and her fiercest competition. The man who was so hesitant to trust but had trusted her.
The one who made her strong enough to be able to banish her own fears.
Who inspired her to be more, of being great, for herself. Who wasn't satisfied with being enough even in a world where you could just that and survive.
Ochako is older now— she's finally reached the summit of being "grown up"— and she's more than she would have ever expected. And she's wiser, too. She knows that life is more than just first loves and schooldays. That life is what we make it. A culmination of decisions, people, losses and defeats.
She knew where she would be now, if she had never met him.
Katsuki was her husband, her friend, her sparring partner, and she would never want anyone else besides her but him.
If she'd never met him...
Ochako simply wouldn't be herself.
Oh. Maybe the answer was simpler than she thought.
A voice niggled at her mind.
You should probably tell him that, Ochako.
(Unsurprisingly, it sounded just like Izuku.)
She sighed into the warm night air and looked at calm on her husband's face for a few minutes more before reaching out to poke his cheek.
"What the fuck?" Katsuki stirred, moving onto his other side to look at her. "What's up?"
Ochako smiled at him and his bed head.
"No." Ochako told him. "My answer is no. I don't."
Katsuki looked at her for a moment before his signature smirk split across his face and suddenly he looked ever inch of the fifteen year old boy who she'd once tried to crush with a meteor storm.
"No, huh?"
"Never," She answered.
He pulled her closer to him, so close that it felt like they were sharing one breath. Fitting, she thought, since they share one heart.
"Good." He breathed.
Ochako kissed him, softly, hoping to convey how she felt physically now that she'd vocalized it. She pulled away, watching the red of his irises adjust to the darkness, and asked one more question.
"Why were you wondering?"
Katsuki stilled.
Ochako frowned.
Was something wrong?
"Katsuki?" She urged him. "Are you okay?"
Katsuki turned on his back, eyes staring up at the ceiling and brow pulled as he tried to find the words.
It had surprised him when he first started thinking about it. After all, he always considered himself to be above such petty doubts. He was the best at everything he did and things he wasn't the best at… well he was striving to be. Constantly working to be better. That didn't leave much room for doubts to settle in, let alone bother him like this had. Doubts were for people who have faith — in the process, in themselves, in...
Katsuki trusted his wife. And Ochako trusted him.
(Why would he have given her so much control over him if he didn't?)
He loved her. Everything about her. He loved how easily she let people into her heart, keeping them cherished and warm in the way that was so natural to her. How even though she'd lost much of her childhood softness when she laughed — really laughed — her cheeks still rounded just like they had all those years ago. He loved that she was strong, capable and kind. He loved Uravity and he loved Ochako in equal measures.
He even loved the things she didn't love about herself, the things she hid away, even from him, because she thought they made her less.
And he knew that she loved him. On a subconscious level he knew that she had chosen him.
But still the question popped into his head one day and burrowed itself into the soft part of his heart, nagging at him.
The question of whether he was second best. Whether he was Ochako's simply because Izuku couldn't be.
And, what surprised him more, was how much the question hurt him.
In the past he may have made that into more than it was. He would have worried and stressed and raged because if he was feeling this way — doubting her affection for him — than that must mean that what they had wasn't strong enough.
But he has grown up since then. He didn't want something easy and comfortable— he wanted to be pushed and prodded and forced to be better, to keep up. To go beyond.
He knew that a love unquestioned and untested wasn't one that was worth having.
Katsuki needed to know if this — if he —was what Ochako really wanted. As much he wanted to stay with her, if this wasn't what she really wanted or needed then he would let her go, for her own sake, if need be.
He just needed to know.
And Ochako's answer, blunt and straightforward just like he liked answers to be, had been enough for him to finally settle, for the weight in his heart to lift.
"Oh, well," Katsuki finally replied, sitting up slightly. He looked down at her, as beautiful in the moonlight as she had been that day in the stadium and every day afterwards. "I wanted to make sure this was what you wanted. That, you know, that you would really be happy."
Ochako chuckled. If only he knew…
"I am." She touched his hand. The metal of his ring was cold against her skin. "Happier and happier each day."
"Yeah?" Katsuki laid back down, pulling her onto his chest.
"Yup." She popped her 'p'. Now was as good a time as any. "We'll be happier and happier each day, I think. There's no one I'd rather do the next few months with..."
"You planning to get rid of me in a few months?"
She shook her head. "No. Just… we'll both be busier in a few months, is all."
Busy?
That was a strange thing to say. But then again… his wife was a strange person sometimes...
"Um, okay. You lost me." Katsuki looked down at her. She laughed into his skin, snorting softly and scattering hair over her face. "What?"
"For one of the smartest people I know," She smiled at him, "sometimes you can be an idiot."
"Oi!"
"I was planning to do this whole thing with a onesie and maybe cook dinner but then you had to drop that bomb of a baby question on me…" She took a deep breath, leaning up against his chest. "I don't want you to freak out..."
Ochako stopped, obviously thinking that he must know what she is hinting at now… unfortunately, he hadn't.
"What?"
Ochako rolled her eyes in utter exasperation.
"Your response isn't exactly encouraging." She pouted. "I thought you wanted children."
There was a very, very long pause as Katsuki ran through ever decision and choice that had led him her with a woman who was better than he would ever be telling him that she was… that he was going to be… that…
"I…I…"
"God, Katsuki." Ochako sighed. "How else can I say this?" His eyes were locked on her stomach. " There's a bun in the oven? I'm in the family way? Up the duff? Make more mochi because I'm eating for two?" She dropped back down to lay her head on his chest. "Congratulations. You shot up my club?"
Katsuki blinked.
If he'd dropped a bomb tonight, then Ochako had brought out a nuke.
"ARE YOU SERIOUS?!"
(In the best possible way of course.)
Ochako nodded, laughing into the warmth of his arms and the shine of the moon. He pulled her closer, pressing kisses on her forehead and nose and cheeks.
Her whole fucking face. Taking an extra minute at her lips just because he could — she was his. Just as much as he was hers.
Everything was the way it was supposed to be.
And this… this was theirs.