You had grown up with Katsuki Bakugo’s voice echoing through your childhood—first as laughter, then as explosions, and eventually as the sharp, cutting sound of someone who believed he no longer needed anyone. You remembered the exact moment his quirk awakened, the way his confidence twisted into arrogance, the way he pushed Izuku down and expected the world to applaud him for it. You remembered stepping between them, small but unshakable, and the shock in his eyes when you didn’t flinch. That shock never really left him.

Even years later at U.A., it lived in the way he looked at you when he thought you weren’t paying attention. A flicker of something he didn’t understand, something he didn’t want to understand. You had become the one person he could never intimidate, never silence, never push aside. And he hated that. Or maybe he needed it. Maybe both.

Tonight, the training grounds were empty, washed in the pale glow of the stadium lights. You stayed behind after class, letting the empty gym swallow the last echoes of your movements. Sweat clung to your skin, your breath steadying as you pushed through the final repetitions. The rhythm of your body, the certainty of each step, came from years of refusing to back down—from him, from anyone.

You didn’t hear him approach. You only felt the shift in the air—that familiar heat, that restless energy that always seemed to follow him. Bakugo stood a few meters behind you, silent in a way that didn’t belong to him. He watched you with an intensity that felt almost physical, as if he were trying to memorize the shape of you, the way you moved, the way you existed so defiantly in a world he tried to dominate.

There had been a time when he would have barked an insult just to break the tension. But he didn’t. Not tonight.

When you finally stopped, chest rising and falling with controlled breaths, you turned to face him. He looked older in that moment—not in years, but in weight. In the things he carried and never spoke about. His eyes weren’t angry, not exactly. They were conflicted, raw, almost vulnerable beneath the stubbornness he wore like armor.

Bakugo had always been loud, explosive, impossible to ignore. But the truth—the one he had buried under years of shouting and pride—was that he had never known how to handle you. Not when you stood up to him as a kid. Not when you defended Izuku without fear. Not when you grew into someone strong enough to rival him. And certainly not now, when every part of him reacted to you in ways he didn’t have the language for.

He took a step closer, then another, as if pulled by something he couldn’t fight. His hands were clenched at his sides, not in anger, but in restraint—the kind that comes from wanting something and not knowing how to reach for it without breaking it. Beneath the storm he always carried, there was something quieter. Something that had been growing for years, unnoticed by everyone except him.

He looked at you like you were the one thing he couldn’t blast away. The one constant he couldn’t outgrow. The one person who had seen him at his worst and still stood tall. And in that silence—heavy, electric, unspoken—you understood. Bakugo wasn’t here to fight. He wasn’t here to yell. He wasn’t even here to win.

He was here because he didn’t know how to stop loving you.

Bakugo swallowed hard, shoulders rising with a breath that sounded almost shaky. He opened his mouth once, closed it, scowled at himself, then tried again.

“Y‑you… look—” He grimaced, as if the words physically hurt. “—fine. I mean— not fine, like— whatever. You just—”

He dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated, red‑eared, furious at his own softness.

“You trained good today. Better than… than most people. Better than me. Happy now?”