Kiribaku One-Shots

Love, to Bakugou

Bakugou had heard of love. After all, he had seen it on TV since before he could remember, had heard his former friends talking about crushes in middle school and had been raised by a mother and father who were very much in love.

Everywhere he went and in everything he saw was something enforcing the idea that love is a magical feeling full of blushing, bashfulness and butterflies.

Similarly, the things and people spewing this were, 99% of the time, talking specifically about relationships between men and women. He had always known that some people didn't fit that part, but had never put thought of himself into it.

The closest Bakugou could relate to what he'd heard of love was anxiety, which was the complete opposite of a positive, uplifting feeling.

He couldn't be blamed for taking a longer time than the average person to realise he was in love.

From what he had heard, love seemed to be some kind of magic force that took hold of someone and broke them down, wetting their personality to replace it with stupid and unnecessary feelings that only got in the way.

He wasn't surprised he was never grabbed by it but was still grateful.

It sounded like an inconvenience at best. He didn't need feelings to suddenly burst onto the scene and mess with his goals.

The universe had different plans, though.

He was certain it was an illness at first. There was something about the way his chest squeezed that didn't sit right at all. It wasn't necessarily painful, but definitely present enough to cause active thought.

His stomach flipped, similar to an ache that never quite completely manifested.

It wasn't pleasant. It was not pleasant in the slightest.

There was something that was so intriguing about it in the worst way possible. It wasn't fun, hell it was annoying at best, yet he found himself somewhat chasing the strange kind of high that came with it.

The positives of it included adrenaline and his quirk. With his resting heart beating at what would be normally concerning, his palms were sweating like never before. Despite not knowing this feeling, it was undoubtedly helping him improve more than distracting him, at first.

Though sometimes, particularly at night, he allowed himself to indulge. To think. To theorise. There were certain factors linking these things together, the certain thought of a specific someone triggering a minute version of the symptoms that made him feel like he was floating.

Why was he feeling like this? It wasn't like anything he had heard of before, let alone experienced.

After a while, Bakugou was no longer asking himself what love is. He was no longer trying too hard to question the unexplained burn in his lungs. He decided to leave it completely, drop all thought of it, push it away. That's all he could do while remaining focussed.

It was hard for him to tell whether it was lucky or not when a confession found it's way to him. For some reason, he discovered that he wanted to take part in it. His answer was embarrassingly easy to come to.

It felt like such a weight was taken off his chest the second he muttered acceptance.

Bakugou learned first hand that being in a relationship wasn't just about sitting closer or longingly looking into each other's eyes.

It was also about the trust, the deep conversations about anything and everything that surpassed a level of intimacy that most wouldn't even reach.

It was about feeling safe entrusting your heart and soul to another person, handling theirs with as much care as you would want them to do with yours.

It was about those late night doubts being soothed by words of reassurance and a tight hug around the waist. It was about seeing what was behind each other's masks, kissing every frown line or stress wrinkle that may have threatened to begin forming during the long day of hiding.

It was about understanding and appreciating, never taking what you have for granted. Looking at the beautiful person laid beside you and basking in the reality that you've got this.

And you'd know that most people have this feeling in life, but it still felt as though there was no way it could ever be shared between people that weren't you and your partner.

It was about compromise and communication. Disagreements and maybe even arguments were inevitable no matter how well a relationship worked.

Listening to the other and not getting too loud, not jumping to conclusions and just 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 to each other was important to make sure that things didn't get out of hand, that you didn't hurt each other like you silently promised at the agreement of a relationship.

It was about sticking by each other. Promising to lift each other up but not be placed on any kind of pedestal, yet at the same time it was about dragging each other back to Earth if they were ever thinking anything particularly irrational or irresponsible.

It was about vulnerability.

It was about reliability.

It was about solidarity.

Love, to Bakugou, was seeing his face plastered over every vision he had of his present and future. It was looking at him and thinking 'yeah, this is it.'

Love, to Bakugou, was his willingness to let go of his pride, to drop his ego, to let himself get taken down a peg for him to feel safe knowing who was holding his heart.

Love, to Bakugou, wasn't entirely about blushing, bashfulness and butterflies. Part of accepting his feelings forced him to realise that okay, maybe there was sometimes room for things like that. It couldn't be helped.

Love, to Bakugou, was Kirishima. If he had to explain it in the simplest way possible, that's what he'd say.