K.BAKUGO X READER (Cover art by me)
In a life where I'd be safe in one moment and on the brink of death in another, I realized that he was the only force that could ground me. Of all the people in the world. My volatile co-worker. My menacing rival...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
(AN: I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter... might come back to fix a few things, but wanted to upload it for now)
part nine
━━━━ ⟡ ━━━━
As I stumbled after him, I realized that the task of patching my partner's wounds would be more difficult than I anticipated. The drone had fired across his entire right side, leaving behind tears in his coat, seeping into the white fabric. I could tell he was fuming, just itching to let loose everything he had been building up these days. A restrained dog wanting to break free and tear apart the chains that bound him.
My boots tripped in the snow. My arms couldn't catch themselves. I was face-first with the reality that I had nothing left to give.
"Hey! Get the hell up!"
My body crawled to its feet. Puffs of breath grew strained through my lungs. Playing with my quirk had taken its costs.
"This is what you get for acting like an idiot," he barked.
"I did... what I had to."
Bakugo dragged us into the trees. Their branches sheltered us from the drones circling above, but the woods were quickly shrouded in darkness. Night was fast approaching. We found an opening inside the incline of the mountain. A small cave, luckily, unoccupied.
I crouched inside, my boots scraping against the rocks. My knees buckled. Bakugo caught me with his other arm and helped me to the ground. Leaned against the wall of the cave, I listened to the pulse in my ears. A reminder that I was alive somehow and not torn or blown to shreds by the tears of spacetime.
I thought it was strange at first that a cave in the middle of a dense forest on the side of a mountain would be occupied by a ventilation system. The hum was comforting. It reminded me of the training facility back at the agency.
That's where I was. Lying against a stack of gym mats, my water bottle next to me. The blonde idiot was nearby, kicking around loose equipment, adjusting the weights. He looked younger, less scarred, and hardened by age. He couldn't have been older than a high schooler.
"The exam's comin' up. You gonna just sit there and let me beat you? Cut the crap you half-assed moron!"
An exam? We were graduated adults. We didn't have exams or tests anymore.
I tucked my knees, taking a sip of water to ease my confusion. He huffed with my silence, storming off and pulling his sweatshirt over his head. That's when I noticed something was off. His attire was branded with UA's logo and design, their signature white and blue gym uniform.
