Bakugo had gotten accustomed to being woken up by an elbow to the rib or a mouthful of hair, but this was a new one.

He was pulled out of sleep gradually, smoothly transitioning from deep slumber to the vague awareness of the warm weight in his arms. It took a moment for his brain to adjust, but once it registered what was happening, Bakugo's mouth went bone dry.

Uraraka had returned to normal in the middle of the night without them knowing. Of course they didn't. Would they have been in this suggestive position otherwise?

Her leg was thrown over his hip, hooking him close and pushing their bodies flush against each other. Bakugo wasn't entirely faultless either, his right arm squeezing tight around her waist while his left supported her head. Their faces were so close to one another, they would've brushed lips if she tilted her chin up.

Holding his breath for fear of waking her with the slightest breeze, Bakugo slowly attempted to pull his arm out from under her.

"Nooooooo." Uraraka whined and tightened her hold around his neck. "Stay..."

Fuck.

Fuck it all to hell, what was he supposed to do now?

Forget breathing, Bakugo was now worried that the deafening thumping in his chest would wake her. They were certainly close enough for her to feel it. For all the training he did for getting out of dangerous situations, nothing prepared him for this.

But before he passed out from the lack of oxygen, the alarm went off.

"Shit. Shit shit shit." He whispered, desperately trying to wiggle out of Uraraka's grasp.

"Whaaaa?" She groaned out and grasped around indiscriminately, trying to stop the beeping but pawing at Bakugo's hair instead.

"Let go, cheeks." Bakugo said with a strangled voice, hoping she'd stay half asleep.

But he had no such luck, her whole body tensed and her eyes shot wide open at the rumbling from his throat. She let out a high-pitched "Eeep!" and shoved Bakugo away, accidentally activating her quirk and making Bakugo hit his head against the headboard of the bed.

"Ow! Fuck!"

"Oh. My god! I am so sorry!" Uraraka squeaked out and released him from her anti-gravitational hold back onto the mattress. She was so mortified, that she couldn't find it in her to laugh as he landed awkwardly on his side and then promptly proceeded to crash onto the floor.

Rubbing the back of his head with a hiss, Bakugo scowled up at her. "What the hell?"

"I-I-I…" Uraraka stammered unintelligibly as she fumbled around to cover her bare legs with a blanket. She was once again wearing that thin-strapped yellow dress from when she was hit with the baby quirk. Having wrapped the sheet around her like a cloak, she leaned forward tentatively. "A-are you ok, Bakugo?"

The pain dulled into the background as a pang of overwhelming hurt hit him square in the chest. Since when did she call him Bakugo?

Determined not to let it show on his face, Bakugo hardened his features and stood up abruptly, stopping the alarm with a slam of his hand. "I'm fine." He spit out, skull still ringing.

"Do you need an ice pack? I can go get one-"

"I said I'm fucking fine."

Uraraka frowned slightly and then inhaled in that stuttered way before deciding against saying something important. She bit her lip and finally settled on a quiet, "Ok. I'm, uh… I'm gonna go."

Bakugo nodded stiffly and watched her scurry out with his blanket still around her shoulders, closing the door resolutely behind her and trapping him in with his thoughts.

Good riddance. Now he could finally get back to his life, unbothered and free. Just how he liked it...

That's what he wanted to say. If only he could stop feeling so shitty about it.

He shouldn't have felt so bad and empty, it wasn't like he expected her to stay a kid forever, or even until the end of this week. But there was an undeniable part of him that hoped things would be different when she came back and when she didn't call him by name, he knew that wasn't the case.

Shoving down the disappointment, Bakugo forced himself to go about his day like normal, but his normal was all off.

He habitually grabbed his phone to go to the bathroom and pressed play on that ridiculous brushing song, letting it run through the first few words before realizing it was unnecessary and jamming the stop button with a growl.

Then he pulverized his protein shake well beyond its point of completion and took the pitcher to the gym, not bothering to pour it into a cup. Once there, Bakugo proceeded to run in circles for an hour straight in an attempt to forget about the training mat stashed by the door with items like baseballs, snack packs, and books of various weights that he thoughtfully gathered the day before.

After a quick shower, where he sat crouched under the steady stream of water for a few minutes longer than he'd like to admit, Bakugo finally entered the classroom, for once not being one of the first to arrive.

"Yo, Bakugo!" Kirishima slapped him on the back with a grin. "Must be a big relief to have Uraraka back, huh?"

Relief was a good word for what he should have been feeling instead of… whatever this shit was. He would've gladly scraped at the hole in his chest with his own hands in order to fill it with anything but this fucking awful feeling if he could.

"Yeah, whatever." He didn't even have the strength for a good comeback, shrugging off Kirishima's hand with a glare and sliding into his seat. All the while making damn sure he didn't look at that corner desk in the back where practically all of class A was gathered to greet the much-missed brunette.

"Uraraka, you were such a cute kid!"

"A-ah, thank you?"

"Not that you aren't adorable now!"

"Oh, no. You're still our super cute 'Chako Chip now, of course-"

"-Of course!"

"But girl, you have to see this pic of you and Bakugo sleeping on the couch from the other day!"

"It is PRECIOUS!"

"No!" Bakugo slammed both his hands down on his desk, leaving palm-shaped scorch marks across the surface and setting his stack of blank drawing paper on fire with the stray embers.

"Well, damn. Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed today." Mina muttered with her phone in hand, making both Bakugo and Uraraka break out in a twin blush at the memory of waking up together.

"Bakugo, go stomp out the fire in the hallway and grab a new desk from next door. Everybody else, get to your seats." Aizawa directed monotonously from his position on the floor and watched the class disperse to their respective spots with bloodshot eyes.

"Don't worry, Ochako. I'll send it to you later." Mina whispered assuredly to her still-flushed friend before scurrying off with a wary look at the explosive blonde, who was hauling his charred desk towards the door with a deadlier aura surrounding him than normal.

And maybe Aizawa knew what he was doing, because Bakugo came back into the classroom a little less tense than before, having let out some of his frustration on the smouldering pile of ash outside. But then again, maybe not, because the bitterness just returned every time Bakugo felt the urge to look at the empty spot next. By the time the bell rang for lunch, he was more than ready to bolt out of there.

Frustratingly enough, the cafeteria posed its own set of problems. He picked out a bowl of spicy tantanmen in the lunch line, fully intending to enjoy the first peaceful meal alone in a long time, when his hand hesitated over the last package of mochi in the dessert section.

Bakugo looked behind him to see Uraraka towards the end of the line, still swarmed by classmates. Damn it, she was too far away to guarantee that she'd get the sweets before someone else took them. Nobody said it was his responsibility to make sure she'd get the thing, he wasn't her keeper, but Bakugo knew the exact pout she would make at the realization that they were out and couldn't live with not doing something about it. With a groan, he swiped it up and paid for the sticky sweets.

Staring ahead at the exit, Bakugo refused to make eye contact with Uraraka as he placed the mochi on her tray, along with the receipt for her to show the cashier that it was already taken care of.

"Bakugo? What…?"

"It's yours."

Ignoring the flabbergasted exclamations of their peers, he walked all the way back to the dorms, where he could eat without being bothered in his room. The same room where Ochako's drawings were taped onto seemingly every open surface on the walls.

Suddenly not hungry anymore, Bakugo set down his food and began to pull down the artwork. It wasn't like he had anyone to bug him about putting up every single scrap of paper that had even a speck of color on it anymore. The random cut-out shapes and strips were dumped into the garbage without a second thought, but the drawings were another story.

Among the multiple pictures of the Uraraka family and strangely colored animals was one of Ochako and Bakugo holding hands on the beach. It wasn't particularly well done or even close to being proportionally accurate, but…

You're my favorite.

Remembering Ochako's words, he slowly, carefully, folded the tape over the edge of the paper to keep from ripping the drawing and sandwiched it between two notebooks in his desk drawer. He couldn't say if he would ever willingly let it see the light of day again, he would never live it down if others found out he kept it, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away. That piece of paper was the only tangible remnant of the little girl that loved him.

He shuffled the rest of the drawings into a pile and made a mental note to eventually send them to Uraraka's parents in case they wanted a piece to hold onto too.

Now that those weren't staring into his soul anymore, he hurriedly slurped down the lukewarm noodles and changed into his blue and white gym uniform before booking it to the training area.

Arriving just as class started for the second time that day, Bakugo knew how he looked to others. Frazzled and out of control, he was doing a piss poor job of convincing others that he was unaffected by this whole Uraraka thing. He would need to up his game if he wanted to get them off his back.

Determined to prove he was fine and completely unbothered by the fact that Ochako would no longer be around to cheer him on, Bakugo set out to ace his newest simulation.

It started off pretty well. In fact, it was the best he had felt all day, blasting things apart to his heart's content and demolishing everything in his path. But then he saw her watching him off to the side and he misfired.

"Ochako!" He yelled out in horror as the side of the building collapsed from his explosion and a 3 ton chunk of concrete embedded with ragged metal beams hurtled down towards the brunette girl who now had her fingers splayed out in preparation for defense.

In hindsight, he shouldn't have doubted her ability to handle the situation on her own. And if it were anyone else, he wouldn't have cared. But in that moment, all Bakugo could think about was the little girl who could hardly float a lunchbox the day before.

He sprinted towards her with gut-wrenching familiarity, hoping once more to god, any god out there, that he'd make it in time to protect her.

In a last ditch effort, Bakugo jumped and shielded her with his body as he thrust his hand up to blast the falling wreckage and hopefully lessen its impact on his soft flesh and crushable bones. His body seized at the realization that he almost didn't make it, his fingers brushing up against the bottom of the rough surface just before setting off his quirk.

"I got you." He squeezed his eyes and braced for the impact, but instead of feeling the raining debris pelt his back and head… there was nothing. Why wasn't it falling back down?

"Ummm. Bakugo?" He heard her say underneath him.

Opening his eyes and looking up, Bakugo saw that the blasted fragments of the building were hovering above them, held up by Uraraka's power. She must've touched the thing right before he blew it apart.

Of course she did. She could more than handle herself.

"Did you… did you just call me Ochako?" Her cheeks turned pink from both the implication and the pressure of holding up so much dispersed weight.

Though he wanted nothing more than to deny it and walk off, he couldn't just leave her there in the landing zone of dangerously sharp debris, not to mention their whole fucking class was witness to what just happened. So Bakugo pulled her out from the shadow of the looming rubble, thick enough to block out most of the light, and watched as she let it drop into a massive dust cloud.

There was a tinge of pride at the sight of the destruction she was capable of. And then it was quickly replaced by the gaping loss of his right to celebrate it with her.

Not only was he not her person anymore, he was the one who put her in danger in the first place.

Damn it.

Maybe all those people had a point. All he did was destroy things.

Bakugo quickly turned and left the training area before he did something embarrassing like cry in front of everyone. Thankfully Aizawa stopped Kirishima and Deku from running after him because he wasn't sure he could yell at them without his voice breaking.

He reached his room without interruption and was left alone for the next two hours. He would've preferred to have been getting his frustrations out through a physical outlet, but he didn't want to risk running into anyone and, well, that's what he tried to do in class and look where that got him.

"Bakugo?" Her voice accompanied a soft knock. "It's me, Urara… Ochako."

He opened the door tentatively to see Uraraka standing in the hallway with his blanket folded neatly.

"I came to bring this back." She offered it up to him and bit her lip when he didn't accept it right away. "A-and to apologize. I think I've been making things weird between us all day."

It wasn't her fault. At all.

"I don't mind you calling me Ochako, I was just caught off guard when you said it. I was already pretty frazzled when I woke up this morning." She full-body blushed at the memory. "And trying to piece together the last two weeks…"

"So you don't remember." The dread he'd been trying to brush aside came rushing back.

"I remember feeling safe." She smiled warmly to herself and hugged the blanket to her chest in reminiscence. "And happy. I was really happy."

So was he.

Snapping out of the daydream-like memory, she shook her head and re-extended the blanket. "So thank you. And I'm sorry for any trouble I caused. Though, I don't know if I can be held accountable for what I did as a 3-year old." She laughed.

Bakugo took the sheets back from her, stuck between wanting her to leave and stay forever. "It's fine. It's whatever. And... I'm… I'm sorry. About the building thing earlier."

"You don't have to be sorry about that."

"Yes, I do." He grit hit teeth in anger towards himself. "I almost hurt you!"

"But you didn't?" She frowned, not understanding his inner turmoil. "I could've handled it."

"I know that." Shit. The last thing he wanted to do was offend her. "But I was being reckless with my quirk. It should've never happened."

"Is this about that high-risk quirk form? Kirishima told me the police gave you one at the amusement park."

How did she pinpoint things so exactly?

It seemed like his silence was enough confirmation for her. "Because it's totally ridiculous they're making you fill one out at all." Uraraka crossed her arms in annoyance on his behalf. "Did you return it yet? If not, I can go with you to the station to explain things."

"You would do that?"

"Of course!"

She was doing it again, vouching for his character when no one else would. Maybe it wasn't child-like wonder and a clean slate that made him so great in her eyes. Maybe… maybe it was just her.

"Why?"

"Because you totally saved my life?"

"I mean… why are you…" So nice to me. So ok with all of me. "What do you think is good about me?"

"That's not a very Bakugo question. You know how incredible you are." Uraraka laughed to herself.

But when she saw that he was the furthest thing from laughing along with her, she stopped with a sharp inhale. "You do know how incredible you are… don't you?" Her voice was slow and soft and alarmingly disarming.

He already had the inconvenience of grieving the loss of something that was never meant to be his in the first place. There was no way he was subjecting himself to any more of these feelings if he had any say in it. "Obviously. I'm the strongest, the best in class. Forget I asked. Bye."

But before he could close the door on her, she grabbed him by the arm with a "Wait!"'

God, why couldn't he say no to her?

"Bakugo, you are so much more than just your quirk, or your strength, or even how smart you are. You need to know that I wouldn't be around if it weren't for you." She peered into his eyes, searching for any indication that he was getting through to him.

"That's an exaggeration. Your parents would've just taken you home." He argued gruffly.

"I'm not talking about the whole babyfying thing. I mean I wouldn't be here as a hero." She insisted, holding him by both arms now. "When people look at me and my quirk, they assume I'm just a weak, naive little girl. But not you. You've never once held me to any other standard than the one you put on yourself. You demand that I be strong and constantly better myself so that I can stand next to you as an equal. And I am so grateful for you."

Bakugo slid his arms out of her hold, much to her disappointment. But then her frown turned into a surprised gasp when he leaned down to embrace her. He couldn't see her face, but he just knew she was smiling when she wrapped her hands around his torso in reciprocation.

"If you ever need a reminder, just come find me." She murmured into his shoulder.

Happiness flooding his body as he breathed her in, Bakugo wondered if that offer extended for the rest of his life.

-x-x-x-

Katsuki was on his stomach, building things out of legos with his daughter after dinner when she burst into tears out of nowhere.

"Wha-what the fuck?" He watched with his mouth open in surprise.

"Akari? What's wrong?" Ochako put down her work file and stood up from the stool at the kitchen counter to comfort the crying 3-year old.

"Is it because I took this red thing off? I can put it back, kid. See?" Katsuki stuck the aforementioned piece back onto the top of the castle without any effect on the crying girl.

Well, he tried. Maybe this was just one of those things she needed to cry out?

He and Ochako learned pretty early on that Akari was more prone to mood swings compared to other kids. She got frustrated quickly, like him, but ,also loved openly, like her. Pretty much an even blend between the both of them, the little girl even mastered that scowl on her round face like Katsuki had imagined all those years ago.

"Was daddy being a meanie?" Ochako teased as she scooped Akari into her lap and held her with soft pats down the back.

"Nooooooooo." She cried, shaking her blonde pig-tails furiously.

"Ok, then. What's wrong, baby?" The couple waited patiently for her explanation.

"I-I-I…" She tried to form her words through the hiccups. "I can't marry daddy!"

… What?

Katsuki still had no idea what was going on, but his wife seemed to be handling it just fine, nodding and affirming the crying child's words.

"I see…" He didn't. Not at all. "You're upset because you wanted to marry daddy, but you can't because mommy's already married to him."

Oh.

"Uh huh!" Big fat tears rolled down Akari's round cheeks and Katsuki couldn't imagine holding more love for anyone in the world. "I love him so muuuuuuuuuuuuch!" Well, there went his heart. RIP forever.

Ochako laughed and squeezed her daughter close with her arms and legs in a whole-body hug. "Me too. Isn't he the best?" She looked at Katsuki with a knowing twinkle in her eye.

He was a lucky, lucky bastard.

"I have an idea." Ochako wiped the tears from under Akari's eyes, now sparkling like rubies, and smoothed her bangs out. "How about we share him? Hmm?"

"... Ok, mommy. We can share." She sniffled after a hesitant agreement and climbed out of her mom's lap to find his.

Katsuki sat up with his back against the couch to let the toddler rest on his chest as she finished calming down with shuddering breaths, fiddling with the top of his shirt like she had done since she was a baby until she fell asleep from the emotional exhaustion. And when Ochako finished her work and shimmied into his side to rest her head on his shoulder, his whole being melted into her.

"Hey, Ochako?"

"Hmmm?" She peered up at him with complete adoration in her eyes and he hoped she could see the same reflected in his.

"I love you."

And though he'd said it countless times before, she smiled like it was the first. As if all she ever wanted was for him to say those words.

He didn't need her to say it back. He already knew.

Everytime she smiled at him or held out her hand to hold, there was this tiny part that whispered from within that he didn't deserve it. But he'd be damned if he let it win. She did too much for him to throw it away like that.

So before she could feel obligated to repeat his words back, he leaned down to kiss her.

But he really should've known that she'd find a way to sneak in the last word because he found himself smiling into her mouth as she whispered right before they touched,

"I love you too, Katsuki."

Thank you to everyone who should love and interest in this story through your favorites, alerts, and reads. I especially want to recognize those who left comments- Jestyr, chica-flick, PrincessAndromeda56, Mayonaka Hikari, goddessof, Claradare, and guests. I loved reading every single one of them, thank you!