Incendiary | 4 | Bakugou X Reader

incendiary | 4 | bakugou x reader

pairing: Bakugou Katsuki / Reader

length: 4.5k of ~23k / 4th of 8 chapters

summary: When you accidentally go viral in defense of quirkless people, an extremist group puts a target on your back. Pro hero Dynamight is the last person you want watching it.

tags: romance, enemies to lovers, sexual tension, light hurt/comfort

warnings: themes of discrimination (please see note in fic masterpost), canon typical violence, eventual smut, aged up characters

notes: Please see my notes in the fic masterpost.

The next thing you registered was a strange warmth on the side of your face, the rasp of someone’s breath across your cheekbone.

“Oi—brat, you’re fine, just breathe.” A rough voice filtered into your consciousness.

Your eyes fluttered open, only to be encountered with a handsome face far too close to yours. Bakugou was crouched over you, and you’d somehow been shifted more fully over one of his arms, balanced against a thigh, so that one of his hands could cup your face.

Behind him, the yellow light of the hallway limned the spikes of his hair in a rusty gold, casting his face in shadow. Your legs were crumpled uselessly between his body and the floor, numb.

“What—?” You demanded blearily.

“Look at me, princess,” Bakugou said, gently turning your face more fully towards his. His mouth had thinned to a grim line.

“Now take a deep breath,” he ordered. He breathed in deeply as if in demonstration.

It took you a couple seconds to process what he was saying, and then a few more to follow orders, almost as if you’d forgotten how to operate your own lungs. Air punched into your chest like a blow to the sternum. Bakugou took another breath, ordering you to do the same.

It took a couple seconds more, but eventually you took another one, and then another and another. The two of you sat like that for a few long minutes, Bakguou scrutinizing your every breath closely, eyes flicking between your face and your chest as you heaved air in. Once he was satisfied that you’d fallen into the familiar rhythm of breathing again, he shifted you back into his arms.

“Gonna get you back inside, princess. You need to lay down.” His voice was gruff but he didn’t sound as angry as he usually did. His imperious, assertive tone didn’t even annoy you—you had the wild thought that you were grateful for once, that he might know what he was doing.

The realization that you’d lost a minute or two disturbed you more than you’d ever understood it would, watching movies where somebody passed out, reading stories where maidens swooned in the company of handsome gentlemen. You didn’t know why more people didn’t talk about how unnerving the experience was.

Despite yourself, you huddled a little bit closer to Bakugou, relieved you were in the company of a pro hero. You didn’t want to think about what might have happened if you’d needed to stumble back to the safehouse on your own.

Your gut shifted as Bakugou picked you up again, and you had trouble focusing on the doors as you passed them, the hall a strange kind of yellowed blur. But soon enough Bakugou was kicking in a door, crossing a kitchen, and laying you out on a familiar couch.

He pulled up a blanket over you, and it occurred to you once the warmth settled over you that you had been cold—and that you were giving tiny, almost imperceptible little shivers. You had the vague impression that this annoyed you.

“Breathe, idiot,” Bakugou said again, and you startled, not realizing he’d rounded behind the couch. You heard his boots stomp into the kitchen, the clatter of cabinets and clank of some kitchenware.

You did as he said, heaving in another breath, and then another. You focused on the feeling, the even flow of air in and out, fresh and clear in your lungs. You must have zoned out, because the next thing you knew, Bakugou’s face was filling up your entire vision. His eyebrows were knit, mouth tight, and eyes burning into yours—but he didn’t look angry, exactly. He got a hand under your below, helping you sit up.

Then something warm was being shoved against your hand, a leafy, almost floral scent meeting your nose, and you looked down to see a mug of tea being pressed into your palm.

“Drink it, brat, you’re still shivering,” Bakugou commanded.

You couldn’t dredge up the will to argue, too wrung out, and you took an obedient sip. A shiver went down your spine as the heat flooded onto your tongue. It was so strangely warm, in a way that you had never appreciated before, like every single one of your nerve endings were instantly concentrated in your mouth.

Then the strange feeling shifted, and all of a sudden, some strange, nameless emotion welled up in your chest. Tears pricked the corner of your vision.

You blinked rapidly, horrified you were about to start crying in front of Bakugou. You struggled to free your other hand from your blanket, but he caught it before you could raise it to wipe your face.

Your eyes darted to his, startled.

Bakugou’s brows drew together. “It’s….you’re fine, princess. ‘S normal.”

You stared at him in disbelief. “W–what?”

He looked uncomfortable.

“Fucking everyone is a crybaby with shit like this. You’re not special. It’s fine,” he said again, gruffly. You watched the minute shift of his expression, the downward pull at the corner of his mouth. You’d have said he looked almost concerned, if you didn’t know better.

You shifted in embarrassment, not fully understanding why this was such a big deal for you. You’d handled assholes like this before—though no one had outright attacked you since you were kids, taking out their parents’ prejudices on you in the sandbox, before any of you really understood what you were struggling in the dirt for. Maybe that was it.

Outside the window, you could hear the shift of wind in the scraggly trees, the loud chatter of a group passing by. Tears kept pooling in your vision, turning the room into a blur. You took a few deliberate, calming breaths.

“Those guys,” you finally managed. “I don’t know why I’m so…It’s not the first time something like that has happened, but….I don’t know why I’m being so dramatic.”

Bakugou scoffed, startlingly loud in the quiet of the safehouse. “Whatever. Those guys are fucking assholes.”

The baldness of his observation startled a bitter laugh out of you.

You’d assumed he was the same, before he’d come for you.

You hadn’t had a second to really think it through yet, but now that you did—Bakugou had interfered at the convenience store. You’d assumed he had it out for you, but he’d come charging in, figurative guns blazing, and gotten those two douchebags up against the shelving in five seconds flat.

He saved your life as far as you could tell.

But…that didn’t explain why he had been such an asshole to you this whole time, too. He might have saved your life but there was something significant underlying all those weeks of judgment, those sulky silences.

“You’d probably know,” you muttered uncharitably, unable to keep the exasperation out of your tone. The way he’d spoken to you earlier still smarted, and you could still feel a little of your previous anger hot in your veins.

“Oi—” Bakugou said. He leaned down to try to catch your eye again but you jerked your face away quickly.

The couch dipped down next to you, and then Bakugou was kneeling in front of you, shoving his face right into yours again. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, brat?” He demanded.

Your heart rate kicked up with his proximity, blood bubbling into a simmer. He was wearing that pissy little expression again, and your jaw suddenly ached with the familiar need to bite him.

“You know exactly what it means, Bakugou,” you said tightly.

Bakugou made a noise of disbelief. “I just saved your ass, you shitty fucking brat, what the hell is wrong with you!” His expression twisted again into something ugly and angry.

“You want to know what it means?” You demanded. “It means you’ve been an asshole the entire time we’ve been here, Bakugou! You might have saved me but I am abundantly clear that you hate me too. That’s all I’m saying.”

Bakugou’s expression clouded over. “I don’t hate you, you overdramatic little shit. You’ve been up my ass about that since we got here and you still don’t fucking know anything.”

You threw your hands up, sloshing your tea around violently as you did. Some spilled down your hand and over your wrist, scorching hot, and you bit down a swear.

“So you keep telling me,” you said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know anything! If that’s so true then why don’t you explain it to me, huh? You’ve hated me since the second you laid eyes on me, you refused to take on this assignment to protect me, you’ve been giving me nothing but attitude since we got here, and you even blamed me for what happened in the first place!”

Your mind was jerked back to those sandboxes, sidewalks, rough hands and scraped knees. A calm, almost callously amused teacher, echoing, “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it, sweetheart.” Another, asking, “Well, did you provoke him?”

Bakugou’s eyes burned blood red in the center of your vision, and you realized your voice had risen to a screech. “You don’t even know me, and as far as I can tell, this has everything to do with my quirklessness. Doesn’t it? Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong!”

Bakugou’s face went almost mottled purple, and there were several moments where it looked like the pin had been yanked from the grenade of his temper—like he was seconds from exploding in your face. His hands clenched and unclenched in the corner of your vision, opening and closing like he was thinking of using his quirk.

Finally, he managed to grit out, “It’s not a problem with your quirklessness, asshole.”

You stared at him, uncomprehending.

It was so obviously a problem with your quirklessness, so what the hell did he mean?

Bakugou’s gaze was so heated it felt like fire on your face. “It’s not a problem with your stupid fucking quirklessness. It’s not a problem with you either, you goddamn brat. It’s a problem—” He seemed to struggle with the words for a moment, his throat working. You watched him, unnerved.

“It’s a problem—it’s a problem,” he finally managed. “It’s a problem with me, okay?” He spat the words out in some disgust, like they were a bug he’d accidentally ingested.

It took a second for the words to actually register with you. When they did, you couldn’t do anything but gawk at him.

A problem with him? What the hell did that mean, a problem with him? He obviously had plenty of problems, but you couldn’t begin to imagine what he was talking about, if it didn’t have anything to do with your quirklessness.

Bakugou’s hands clenched and unclenched in the fabric of his pants, and he looked like he was milliseconds away from leaping up and kicking the coffee table across the room. It took several long minutes of this for him to work himself back into a state where he might say anything.

Finally, he pronounced tightly, “My problem with you isn’t that you don’t have a quirk. It’s that you remind me of some little fucking asshole I used to pick on in school.”

The swarm of swirling thoughts slammed to a sudden halt in your brain.

This—the past was not quite where you had expected this conversation to go. You watched him as he heaved out a gusty sigh, strong shoulders rising and falling.

“Some little shit-faced nerd, who wanted to be a hero even though he didn’t have a quirk,” Bakugou’s voice was like gravel, rough and rasping. “He wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it, no matter how many times I kicked his ass.”

He swallowed, and then swallowed again, like he was having trouble getting his throat to work right. “No matter how many times people gave him shit for it. He’d always get back up and keep fucking yapping, couldn’t shut his mouth like he knew what was good for him. And I kept fucking coming after him for it—I beat the snot out of him, told him some really fucked up stuff. Told him he should give up and wish for a quirk in his next life.”

The words sounded like a gunshot in the air, and your mouth fell open in shock.

“But just like you, he couldn’t mind his own fucking business, and he kept chasing after whatever he damn well pleased. And you know fucking what?” Bakugou demanded. “He was right. That absolute fucking shitstick was right, and I was wrong about it, just like all of these fucking douchebags giving you shit about your own quirklessness. And while I’ve done some apologizing, and he’s forgiven me, I don’t see how I should be the one trusted with shit like this again.”

Bakugou took a heavy breath through his nose. “So my problem with you, is that you’re exactly the fucking same. No,” he quickly corrected himself. “You’re even worse, so fucking mouthy and demanding and up in everyone’s fucking business like the you’re the goddamn princess of quirklessness—They should have trusted anyone else with you instead of me.”

The room descended into a ringing silence.

You sat there, stunned.

You couldn’t have found the words to say, even if you could have dredged up the brainpower to say anything at all. You just watched Bakugou’s fingers twisting in the fabric of his pants. His knuckles were white against the tan of his skin, and scars crisscrossed the skin, a long one leading up the side of his wrist, disappearing behind his elbow.

This was not what you had expected from him at all. Nothing even close to what you had been imagining had been going on in his brain this entire time. Nothing could have prepared you for the turn this argument had suddenly taken.

“What do you mean,” you finally asked, “that they should have trusted anyone else with me instead of you?”

Bakugou’s face stilled into an impassive mask. It seemed to take him a few moments to find the words. “Jeanist knows, the fucking asshole. Knows what I did, and he gave you to me on purpose. Called the police right the fuck up when he heard and asked to get me involved. When I should be the last person babysitting your mouthy little ass.”

His scarlet eyes flicked over your face. You watched him back, thoughts churning.

So, Bakugou had been some kind of quirkist, that was frankly no surprise. Obviously you had assumed as much, with the way he’d been avoiding you, and shitting all over you when he couldn’t do that. But to hear it was rooted in something more complex than that—not because he still thought he was a quirkist, but because you dredged up the memory of what he had been—

—It was…unexpected.

“I was wrong about it, just like all of these fucking douchebags giving you shit about your own quirklessness,” he’d just said. Wrong about your quirklessness making you somehow inferior, wrong about intimidating you into silence, wrong about everything that had put you in this situation in the first place.

You ran through every interaction with Bakugou, reframing it all under this new lens. All that barely-contained frustration, the clipped words, the “you don’t know anythings” suddenly made so much more sense.

“And that means you can’t be trusted?” You asked suddenly.

Bakugou’s eyes narrowed. “Did you not hear what I just fucking said?”

You raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Do you still have a problem with quirkless people?” You asked.

Bakugou scoffed. “Fucking—no. Just you and your goddamn attitude.”

This startled a laugh out of you. It was a wretched, hiccuping little thing, but it was still a laugh, the smallest, strangest little moment of relief. Exhaustion chased after it instantly, like it had just been waiting for the smallest sign of weakness to sweep back in. You leaned against the back of the couch for support.

Bakugou pressed forward, looking concerned. “Oi—you’re not gonna faint like a fucking princess again, are you?” He demanded.

You huffed another tiny laugh. “No. I’m just…..taking it all in.”

It really was a lot to process.

He said he shouldn’t have been trusted with you. Except that he had saved you just now, hadn’t he? He had come barrelling into the convenience store after you—even though you’d just been fighting with him, had accused him of being a quirkist asshole—and he had still come running in. And then he had carried you all the way back here, let you pass out on him mid-transit, covered you in a blanket, and made you tea.

If what he was saying was true, that he’d moved past that line of thinking and didn’t begrudge you your quirklessness, and he had proved in the moment of your need, much as you hated to admit it, that he would save you…then, well why wasn’t he to be trusted?

If he’d changed, in the way that he was hinting he had, then why wasn’t he to be trusted?

Your mind was too muddled with everything to settle on any solid feeling, and you would have to think things over when you hadn’t been about to get basically force-choked by some rando in a 7-Eleven. But there was some shift of feeling. Some small sliver of conviction, that Bakugou was maybe not a quirk supremacist.

Maybe.

He was still a tool, way too salty and loud-mouthed and rude as hell.

But maybe, at least, not a quirk supremacist tool.

“And,” Bakugou said loudly, so loudly that you jumped, spilling half your tea all over your blankets. Your head whipped up again and you watched him warily as he shifted, even more visibly uncomfortable now.

He seemed to struggle with the words. He kept opening and closing his mouth, looking angrier the more he did so. Finally he managed to choke out, “I’m fucking—sorry. Or whatever.”

This floored you even more than his admission about his school years. You watched him in shock, unable to even begin to formulate the question you wanted to ask.

The tips of Bakugou’s ears were rapidly going red, and his look almost dared you to say something, but he continued. “I shouldn’t be taking it out on you,” he said. “The stupid thing with Jeanist. He’s a fucking meddler and it’s not—it’s not your fault. You didn’t ask for this shit.”

You thought this over, for a long time until the room was almost dark with the onset of evening. Street lights flickered on, one by one, illuminating the plant by the window in an orange glow.

“Thank you,” you said into the silence of the room. It surprised even you that you’d spoken, and that this was the set of words you’d chosen. But now that they were out there, they felt fairly right.

Bakugou’s eyes flicked up to yours.

“I don’t—I’m not sure how I—I mean, that’s a lot to think about right now,” you said. “But thank you for saving me back there. And thank you for the—um, for carrying me back, and the tea.”

Bakugou’s face twisted like he wanted to deny it.

“I’m too tired to settle on how to feel,” you said, lingering thoughtfully on the words for a minute. “I think you can be trusted. Just, based on what happened there. I’m not sure about all the rest yet, but…I’ll think about it.”

Bakugou nodded slowly. His quiet was almost disturbing in its unusualness, and his focus was laserlike, nerve-wracking in its intensity.

He was quiet long enough that you fully gave up on supporting yourself and leaned all the way back against the couch, just watching him think. Eventually his expression evened out, and he heaved himself off the couch, getting to his feet. “Drink the rest of your tea, brat.”

You were too tired to argue. You obediently raised the mug to your mouth, taking a warm sip. Bakugou looked on approvingly, red eyes picking over you closely. You finished the rest of the tea under his watch, the two of you sitting in a strange, contemplative silence.

As you were finishing up, his phone rang. He shoved a hand in his pocket, face twisting as he read the contact name.

“Dynamight,” he answered briskly.

On the other end of the line, you heard the familiar tones of Best Jeanist—clear, crisp, and disappointed. “What happened?”

Bakugou’s mouth flattened. “She ran out,” he said, his voice gravelly but even. “I started shit with her.”

His honesty surprised you, the complete lack of excuses on his part.

Best Jeanist heaved an audible sigh. “I really believed you could handle this, Katsuki.”

Bakugou’s face twisted, and your eyes dropped to the ground, wanting to give him the dignity of some small privacy in this moment.

“Yeah, I know you did,” he said.

Something about the flatness of his tone pulled at your heartstrings just a little. You fiddled with your tea mug nervously, frowning down into your lap.

Best Jeanist didn’t say much more on that, just left it at a long moment of silence before launching into a bunch of follow up questions. Bakugou walked him through the events from his perspective, tracking you to the convenience store, seeing two men corner you and the cashier cower behind you, watching you panic as you realized you couldn’t draw in any breath.

The description he provided of the two men surprised you in its observancy—he noted many different characteristics and mannerisms you hadn’t picked up on your own, and though everything was almost a blur in your own memory, he recounted everyone’s movements down to the most minute detail like it was a set of choreography he’d spent weeks memorizing.

He detailed your reaction, your shock and momentary loss of consciousness, and the observation he was currently following up with. And then he circled back to the fight that had caused it all. “We….talked or whatever. It won’t happen again,” Bakugou said finally.

Best Jeanist paused, then said something quietly enough that you couldn’t hear.

Bakugou scoffed. “I fucking said it, didn’t I?”

You couldn’t tell whether Best Jeanist’s silence was thoughtful or judgmental. Eventually he answered, just as quietly as the previous comment. Bakugou grunted, and then hung up.

When he turned to you, he eyed you thoughtfully. “You still hungry, brat?”

You startled at being addressed again so suddenly. “I—uh…”

Bakugou didn’t wait for your answer, padding back over to the kitchen. You heard the clank of various kitchen equipment, the clatter of cupboard doors and the sticky sound of the fridge opening. You listened for a long time, to the thump of a knife on a cutting board, the hiss of butter in a pan.

You were almost asleep against the side of the couch by the time Bakugou came over, bearing two plates laden down with two small mountains of food.

He shoved one under your nose, and you stared down at it, eventually registering some kind of dressed chicken, a small pile of asparagus, and—you let out another shocked laugh—a baked potato, with a neat little pat of butter, and a distinct lack of the cheese you’d shaken over your own earlier.

“If you’re gonna eat that shit you need to balance it out with actual food,” Bakugou pronounced judgmentally, sinking onto the couch with his own plate. “Sick of you fucking scarfing down absolute garbage.”

You didn’t deign this with a response.

You accepted silverware from him, balancing your plate on your lap and carefully cutting into your food. It was disturbingly good, perfectly balanced, everything cooked and seasoned to high perfection. It irritated you, vaguely, that Bakugou was so good at cooking, which you had long suspected but had never had the opportunity to confirm. It meant he’d been eating like this the entire time you’d been subsisting on old granola bars.

The two of you ate in companionable silence, the kind that you hadn’t had since you’d been yanked unceremoniously from your dorm. Bakugou was surprisingly good company, when he wasn’t screaming or scoffing or staring you down judgmentally.

The food satiated a hunger you hadn’t realized was eating away at you underneath everything else. Filled with food and hot tea, and safely ensconced in your covers on the couch, your exhaustion fully caught up with you. You managed to get your plate onto the coffee table before slumping down between the back of the couch and an arm.

“Oi—you still think I’m your maid service?” Bakugou demanded, but he didn’t sound as mad as usual. You just watched him from beneath your blanket until he eventually sighed, collecting your plate on top of his.

“Just, get some rest, brat,” he said. “You’ll feel better after you sleep.”

You nodded, only half-registering his words.

You heard the clink of your two plates together, the metallic slide of silverware across them as Bakugou rose to his feet.

Dimly, you noted the sound of the sink running in the kitchen, the clatter of plates in the basin. Exhaustion pulled on your eyelids and a strange feeling of safety wrapped around you like a thick blanket.

And then, for the second time in as many hours—you slipped into sleep.