Water And Scars

Water and Scars

Hero!Bakugou x Retired!Reader

He was used to this. The floor slightly scuffed where he stood everyday silently after he got back from patrol; completely enamored by you. You; blissfully, unknowingly dancing your heart out in the large home studio you got custom built, jumps in the air, rolls, leaps, breaking. You lived and breathed dance, movement was a part of your soul, and it never failed to completely enthrall him.

The way you moved so effortlessly, completely bending and spinning at speed and angles he couldn’t think of, almost waterlike. Like the river water swirling through rocks, carrying fallen flowers down the stream to a dam of twigs and sticks, the flowers gathering over time; an offering at a shrine, praising you, your beauty.

He won’t lie, sometimes it scared him, after all, nobody he knew could move so fluidly, he would have thought it impossible if not for you. Ever after you retired from your job as a pro hero, he always seemed to be scared for you, for hurting yourself; yet times like this remembered that you were ever so capable in whatever aspect you desired.

Retired. That's right. Once, long ago, Bakugou would have looked you in the eyes and broken up with you just for retiring after injuring yourself; it was unfathomable to his past self that any job apart from being a hero had any worth whatsoever, a waste of time. Yet you had breathed life into him, Captivated and lured him; siren-like. He couldn’t fathom leaving you, and after all his experiences he was grateful to have met you in the cramped UA classroom all those years ago.

He fell for you long before he asked you out, because you just lived. You lived so.. real. So authentic, so much like you were truly favored by the gods. Your work ethic, your empathy, your love; he was forever lucky for you.

You both had fought in the war together, side by side when death seemed inevitable. The both of you holding your heads up high and looking it in the eye as you fought, vowing you would end this war or it would end you.

You also were there for each other, together. He remembers those days, the days when after the war you would both sit in the showers fully clothed, drenched to the bone, your foreheads touching as you cried, laughed, reminisced. It pained him to remember those particular nights, ungodly hours of holding you in his arms as you sobbed in pain from old injuries, insecurity washing through you from your scars, and he remembers when you did the same for him. Just two unfortunate people helping each other through the aftermath of the impossible.

The impossible; what a funny concept. They didn't believe in you until you did do the impossible, but they didn't care after, letting the heroes carry the trauma and burden by themselves, only happy that they didn’t have to live in fear; no fucks about the people who lived the fear.

It never stopped you though. You kept the fire burning in you, decades after the war as you kept fighting and protecting the people of Japan. Until last year that was.

Last year, a particularly brutal villain attack; shattering your arm. You were fine now ofcourse, he wouldn’t accept anything else. But you decided to take yourself out the industry, you had done your part, and now it was your legacy for people to hold themselves up to. That's what you told everyone, but he knew you; you were the love his life, of course he did.

He knew it had to do with the fact that you disliked the industry. Even after everything that you went through, you had seen the truth of the industry and how heroes were treated. He saw how sometimes your eyes would gloss up while patching him up after a particularly rough villain attack, even if he pretended he didn’t. It was quite endearing actually; during the war, you had been so numb to any suffering, you had told him to get the fuck up and fight, you had popped his leg back in, ignoring his pained yells. You, a force to be reckoned with. Angry waves ruthlessly beating the rocks littering the coast. You had done so much for everyone; it wasn’t fair to force you to keep fighting.

That's why he supported you when you decided to retire, why he stood his ground and defended your name in rooms you weren’t in, why he loved you, why he watched you dance every day after patrol in secret.

Well not really. You always noticed him - you had been the top hero for the better of two decades; it would be shameful to your legacy to not know your surroundings. Yet you always stayed silent, putting on a show for Bakugou when he looked especially sad. You knew he was being transported somewhere else everyday while watching you, the way his eyes glazed over, and tears pricked at his waterline. But just like he didn’t mention when you cried you didn't either.

Sometimes you wondered what he thought about. Did he think about the same memory everyday? Or was it something different each time?

It didn’t matter. If him watching you ‘secretly’ doing what made you happy made him happy, you wouldn’t mind indulging him and putting on a show.

Tried to keep a water theme! How did I do?

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