ii.
At the Point of Ignition
"There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs as heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone. A pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos." -The Unbearable Light of Being
Katsuki had heard Deku tell the story before. He'd only bothered to actually listen the first time, curious despite himself at how it had all played out from the other boys perspective.
It had come up numerous times after, Kirishima had even instigated it a couple of them in what Katsuki could only assume was an insane bid to annoy his friend into violence. Which wasn't actually all that difficult all things considered.
He'd scoffed at the way Deku retold his first real experience with a villian. Both of theirs actually.
"My legs just moved on their own."
What a load of shit. The memory of Deku's voice, shyly proclaiming that trash like it was true now overlayed with the words he'd spoken directly to Katsuki when he'd had a mouth and nose full of slime, struggling not to pass out.
"You looked like you were asking for help."
What a dick. What a load of absolute shit.
And then of course, because the universe was a vindictive bitch it had to go and throw all his scoffing in his fucking face.
Admittedly, he'd been pretty focused on Deku getting his ass handed to him by one of the League's newest members. Deku had shot out of a glass window on what had to be the fourth of fifth floor of that building, glass everywhere and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
Green electricity crackled around the boy- and Katsuki realized as a meaty inhuman fist collided with his last good grenadier in a spectacular explosion that sent the creature flying backwards into Class Rep- that Deku in all actuality, could probably handle his fight.
The roof shook under their feet, and he would have stumbled but that shit was for trash and Katsuki was not low enough on the rung to lose his balance over some dumb ass building crumbling to the ground almost a block away.
His red gaze snagged on Uraraka, her body in zero-g and dodging debris as fast as she could manage while propelling herself along the length of the clearest path.
She wasn't going to make it.
Fuck.
He was leaping from the three story building that he and Iida had been taking down a Nomu from, fire exploding from his palms in a blast that sent him flying towards the ground faster than he'd ever managed before he could register what he'd done.
No, that would come much, much later. Right now there wasn't time.
Her dumb ass hit the ground in the same second his boots met the concrete and he grasped, half-blind, at any appendage he could get his damn hands on. It ended up being her hand, Ochako's whole body following soon after, and before he could get in a what the fuck, the desperate, terrified look on her face compelled him into motions he didn't understand. He pulled the entirety of her megar bulk into his, all soft rounded curves that belied the toned muscle he knew was there, and curled himself around her.
His actions betrayed him, going farther than necessary to pull her ass out of danger in an effort to wipe the terror off her features. It didn't fucking suit her face. Uraraka was not some weak ass extra character and just the thought fucking offended him enough to heat his palms.
Before he knew it, that piece of shit Deku had a fucking building bearing down on them, and he knew after everything he'd managed in the last hour or so that the explosion he leveled his palm to ignite would probably be his last hurrah for the night.
Katsuki didn't hope it would be enough, because hope was a concept built for people who liked to say stupid shit like "I'll try." and "I did my best."
No, Katsuki didn't hope, he knew; and the way that Uraraka clung to him left him feeling like he'd made the right choice.
Even if he hadn't really meant to make it in the first place.
When he the woke first time, he realized with several blinks that it was dark. Suffocatingly dark- or, perhaps that was an actual lack of oxygen. Sticking with the theme of Fuck Bakugo As Hard As Possible he decided it was the latter.
The next thing he registered were the little puffs of air that kept warming the shell of his ear. His head turned, more laboriously than he would ever admit to anyone save himself, until his nose brushed what he could only assume was Ochako's nose.
His cheeks ignited with heat, her little breaths still coming but now across his lips. He resisted the urge to lick them on reflex.
This was, of course, the perfect time to realize his hand was cupping her breast, soft and voluminous even through the constricting material of her hero uniform. He did his best to move the appendage, his balance askew and his back throbbing with a sensation he wasn't ready to focus on yet.
"Fuck. Shit." He managed through gritted teeth, his head pounding a double-pedal blast beat to one of his favorite thrash metal songs. It throbbed behind his eyes, hot and uncomfortable.
Katsuki tiled his face down, trying to move away from hers but only succeeding in tucking himself into the soft curve of her neck. Her skin smelled nice, like clean soap and something fragrant and he found himself unwilling to move when the pounding in his head receded enough to allow a vaguely coherent thought surface.
It just had to be fucking Uraraka Ochako didn't it, of fucking course it did.
"God damn it Round Face." His words heated her neck, even he could tell with how closely he was pressed into her.
The girl beneath him let out a sound that he didn't want to think about but would more than likely never forget for the rest of his life. A sort of low, languorous moaning sound that brought the unbidden image of waking up next to her in the morning to her making that same sound.
Too bad these circumstances didn't resemble his imaginations.
Not even close.
He had to wonder at himself for even making the comparison- waking up next to Uraraka? Really? But in the end he figured any scenario would be preferable to this shit show.
All thoughts were wiped clean from his mind in the next second when Deku's little limpet began to struggle underneath him. His heart made an uncomfortable twist at the small sounds of panic that ghosted across his skin. Katsuki was an ass hole but he wasn't fucking heartless okay.
"Fuckin' quit it." His voice sounded like gravel, even to him; but it had the rather nice effect of calming her the fuck down. He had a feeling he was going to be doing a lot of that for the foreseeable future.
Pain rippled down his spine, intensifying with each small shift and minute adjustment he made. He cursed, a cough hacking out of him involuntarily that intensified the pain in his back to magnitudes that had him blacking out in small intervals.
"I can't see." She whimpered an utterly pathetic sound. He scoffed against her neck, taking in small, measured breaths full of the scent of her skin.
It helped, marginally.
"No shit." He did not appreciate her pointless commentary.
This pretty much set the tone for their interactions, right up until he got the stubborn idea in his head to see if there was enough room to actually get off of her. This was about when he realized he hadn't just lacerated a muscle, or broken a bone but was in fact impaled on a length of rebar.
It was the sensation of it grinding against his scapula as his stupidly ill-thought movements pushed the metal farther into the bone.
It took everything he had not to vomit. He counted his breaths, the pain so intense he only kept track through force of habit. There was a long stretch where his mind went dark, a total black out of thoughts for an unknown amount of time.
She brought him back from the brink, with his first name of all things. The sound of it rolling off her tongue reminded him of when his banshee of a mother called out to him as a kid getting into fights and popping off his quirk on accident.
He resented her for the help by an equal measure of his quiet gratitude for the returned awareness. Unfortunately, as he would soon discover, awareness was a thing he would not be entirely graced with for the duration of this particular adventure.
AN: Hello everyone, so we are finally delving into Bakugo's side of things, I hope y'all liked this chapter! I'm really excited about the next chapter it came out really great! Y'all will have to wait for till next Tues/Wens though because all the early updates are killing me.
One Another Note: I started a different fic for Kacchako. Mostly because I got the plot bunny fever but also because I needed a break from the heaviness of ATPOI. I really hope you guys will give it a try, I plan to post it this afternoon. Please keep your eyes peeled for: "In the Light of One Lamp" Which is totally different from this fic, and has a premise I haven't actually seen in Kacchako yet- so I'm hoping the uniqueness will be refreshing? Assuming it hasn't actually been done; I might have just missed it somewhere.
As always thank you to all my beautiful reviewers, you guys are the reason I'm still writing.