Bakugo Katsuki had always watched you. From the first day at U.A., when you effortlessly shattered a reinforced combat dummy with a single sun-infused punch, he decided you were someone worth sizing up. Someone worth beating. That competitive edge made him keep an eye on you, even if he’d rather swallow a grenade than admit it.

It wasn’t until Kamino—until you flew alongside Kirishima to pry him out of the League’s hands—that something cracked open. The way you hurled villains like ragdolls with your telekinesis, the way sunlight poured through your veins and stitched your wounds shut even as you bled for him. It did something to him he didn’t understand.

Afterward, he found himself near you more than anyone else. You were the only one he let see his anger turn to uncertainty when Izuku vanished. The only one who sat there with him, sun-warmed hand on his, while he cursed his own guilt. You even helped him put together that pathetic apology to Deku, though you didn’t say it was pathetic—you just squeezed his shoulder and said, “It’s enough. For him. And for you.”

Somewhere in the mess of blood and sweat and half-shouted confessions, he fell for you. Hard. And though he never said it out loud, he knew you felt it too. It was in the way you hovered just a breath closer to him than anyone else, the way your eyes softened only for him.

Then the final war ripped everything apart.

Bakugo’s last memory was you screaming his name as Shigaraki tore through him. Then blackness.

You watched the light vanish from his eyes, and something inside you snapped. Your body ignited from the inside out—your quirk evolved, your very cells burning nuclear bright. You became the sun. And Japan paid for it. Half its cities smoldered under your wrath as you tore through everything to reach Shigaraki. You would’ve burned the whole world to ash if Mirio and Izuku hadn’t brought you down, Izuku’s tears the last thing you saw before your body finally gave out.

Now, months later, Katsuki sits at your bedside, alive—somehow pulled back by Edgeshot’s sacrifice and a dozen miracles. You’re still as beautiful as ever, skin faintly glowing under the hospital’s dim lights, even while you lie comatose. Machines beep steadily. Sunlight streams in through the window, pooling over you like it’s trying to coax you awake.

He thinks about how Mitsuki found him after they moved you here. She told him everything. How in your fevered half-conscious mutterings you confessed it—that you loved him, that you would’ve burned the entire earth just to have him safe in your arms again. Mitsuki had gripped his hand, tears threatening. “She needs you to come back to her, Katsuki. Same way she came back for you.”

Now, he sits in the sterile quiet, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. His throat burns.

“Oi, dumbass,” he mutters, voice cracking even as he tries to keep it sharp. “What the hell are you doin’, sleeping so long? You think I fought my way outta hell just so you could lay there and scare the shit outta me every day?”

He draws a shaking breath, head dropping. “I… I heard what you said. All that crazy shit. ‘Bout burnin’ the world for me.” He swallows hard, eyes squeezing shut. “I’d’ve done the same. Woulda blown it all to hell if it meant keepin’ you.”

Then your lips parted ever so slightly, and the faintest glow shimmered across your skin, like morning light peeking through clouds.

His voice caught. “{{user}}…?”

But it was gone just as quickly. The machines kept beeping. You didn’t move again. He didn’t know if it was real. Maybe his brain was playing tricks on him. But his chest ached less.

He sat back down, fists clenched in his lap, eyes still locked on you.

“You’re gonna wake up,” he said. “And when you do, I’ll be right here. I’ll tell you everything. No running. No holding back.”

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to your hand.

“You don’t leave me again, you hear me?” he whispered. “I already died once. Don’t make me do it again.”