NEW CHAPTER: created 05/14/2022
author's note as of 07/26/2022:
uhhhhhh its been a minute since i've worked on this. straight up. i've been working on myself, and i've been trying to keep my head on straight. i honestly had a hard time picking this back up for a month because of how large of a workload it seems, but i've been thinking about it since i stopped. i love writing, and if you read this note, i apologize for the upteenth time for the fact that it's taking me this long to rewrite this. love you, enjoy<3
09/18/2022: LMFAO ITS SEPTEMBER
10/03/2022: october smd i'll try to publish this soon(lies!)
katsuki
The one thing I remember is how warm her hand was the entire time.
For some reason I've never found the number nineteen to be one I held onto, one I found lucky. I've never had a connection to numbers in the first place.
I did, however, have a connection to the machine showing her constant heartbeat. Sometimes I found myself entranced by it, spacing out on the monotonous noise of it.
It reminded me she was still alive. That she'd fallen into a coma protecting the people, the kids she cared about because I'd been so stupid as to let her walk them back without a few escorts. Without me escorting her.
I'd forgotten the news article had broken, and I'd forgotten her quirk rendered her defenseless if used too much.
Defenseless was a word I'd describe how I felt around her.
She'd broken down my walls faster than any of my friends had, faster than I'd put them up. I think I'd spent weeks trying to repair the crumbling foundation before realizing I didn't want to fix it around her. I only wanted her to sit in the burning rubble with me.
She was the one who wanted to sit in the ruins with me. She was the one who was okay with me not knowing what came next, not always knowing who I was in certain moments, not knowing if it would all be okay. She stuck with me even when it was terrifying.
For all I knew, she was terrifying.
And I was in love with her.
The fact that she'd just broken it off with her boyfriend didn't stop me from loving her. At least my heart, my head had told me that it was wrong, her feelings belonged with someone else.
That they didn't happen to be with me.
Bloodied knuckles from trying to punch away my feelings into a punching bag at the agency gym left me more confused and trying to figure out my feelings. Broken skin didn't make my heart any less broken over the fact she may never be mine.
The nineteen days she was asleep gave me a lot of time to figure out what I wanted to say to her when she woke up.
Half of the time I'd come in to visit it was way past midnight or just minutes after visiting hours were over. I'd have to beg the nurses to let me see her, and when it worked I'd had a security guard watching my every move when I was with her. It was more annoying than Bubble Girl our first year at UA, but at some point I stopped caring. I wanted to be around her more than I cared about being deemed a potential security threat.
Her hand was always warm, always seeming like she would wake up and show me her eyes. The eyes that sparkled at the kids she nannied, at the kids putting on a talent show, at my sarcasm that no one else found amusing. The eyes that reflected the snow she got so damn excited for just a few days earlier.
The eyes that made me fall in love with her and broke my walls down faster than any drink in a bar when I was twenty-two.
She made me weaker than any whiskey ever would.
I always moved her fingers around in mine. Her hands weren't small, I'd seen her hold more than a few things in them and a kid. They weren't swallowed by mine, but my hands were just bigger than hers so that my thumb hit the back of her hand, square in the middle. Her hands were softer than silk.
In the time I'd gotten hurt and had to step down from hero work, I'd met a woman I didn't expect to like. I'd expected to pick up my nieces every day to give me something to look forward to every day, spend an hour or two with them so Shitty Hair and his wife could get a break or work longer if that happened.
I didn't expect those afternoons and later nights to be filled with talking to the girl who ran the room like she'd done it her whole life.
When I'd gotten injured, I'd started to see my stupid therapist again. My doctors had been worried I might spiral or fall into a depression without getting to beat up a bad guy every day. Knowing they were right, I decided to take their advice.
The anger I usually took out on villains wasn't there and screaming at a therapist who could turn my volume level down at any time with her quirk had to be enough. It would only be for a few months until I was finally able to beat another person to a pulp.
I'd asked my friends, who all had kids at this point, if they needed any help with anything. Most, declined, saying they pretty much had it under control. Deku had asked a couple of times if I could pick stuff up from the store if I had time, which I had too much of at times.
Being the only bachelor left was defeating.
Kirishima and his wife, however, practically begged me to start picking up their kids for a few weeks while I was free. The moron had just opened his own agency after finally taking my advice, and hired seven sidekicks at once. The paperwork had been overwhelming, and getting a schedule in order seemed to be an almost breaking point. I'd agreed, knowing that I'd rather not have a hero turned villain on my hands because I couldn't pick up his kids from daycare.
Even though that red haired idiot was the furthest possible person who might become a villain.
That Monday when I'd first agreed to pick them up after a long weekend of at-home physical therapy and old movies, I didn't expect that picking them up would so dramatically shift my perspective.
"What's the chick's name again? The one who's in charge of all the brats."
"It's Y/N, Bakubro, and c'mon, she's actually a really sweet lady. Maybe you should get to know-"
"Kirishima."
"Yeah Yeah! I know, just thought I'd put it out there. Y'know, the girls are really looking forward to spending more time with you."
"I know those shitheads are, they're my fuckin' godkids. Like hell they don't want to spend time with me."
"Okay, well, pick up time is around eight or eight-thirty."
"What? Why so late?"
"That's usually the time that my wife and I have been getting off of work recently. Trying to keep up a routine of some kind, I guess."
"Alright, if you say so. I have errands to run on a few days, is it alright if I pick them up early a couple times?"
"Yeah, man! As long as you pick them up, all good. Hey, I gotta run, I just got a new stack of paperwork for the sidekicks."
"Later."
"Bye!"
I'd walked through the daycare doors, ready to get these girls into the car, take them to a burger shack and drop them off later. It was what I'd had planned all day, after doing jack shit since I still wasn't cleared to start working out again. I'd picked up a book and it evaporated in my hands.
It wasn't a good book.
When I'd greeted the lady at the reception area, they were in a different room than they were since I'd last picked them up. I assumed, in the last eighteen months it had been since I'd been asked to pick them up there had been reassignments, new hires. I didn't mind.
Shoving open the door with more force than I'd intended I'd immediately picked up on the fact that the room was quiet, except for a quiet humming that didn't stop when the nanny used her quirk to keep the door from slamming against the room as I entered.
She'd rubbed her hands as she pulled her hand back into her body, sighing. The humming stopped, and she pulled herself up from the pile of small bodies lying around her, asleep.
I opened my mouth to start speaking, to make an excuse for myself, but she stopped me. She cut me off before I could start, looking at me. Her eyes pierced into me, feeling like they were burning holes into me.
"Don't. They just fell asleep." She almost whispered, her eyes turning to me.
I shuffled, before mumbling out that I was here to pick up the red-head's brats. I turned my eyes downward, I didn't want to stare, raising my eyebrows at the floor as my eyes focused on the linoleum.
"I'm here to pick up shitty hair's brats." I mumbled, my eyebrows furrowed. My hair was in front of my face, and I resisted the urge to pull it all back with one hand. One of my sidekicks had said it might make my hair greasy, with my quirk and all.
She looked puzzled for a half second.
"Who? And watch your mouth, I don't feel like dealing with Ingenium's kid swearing up and down." She told me, gesturing to the child sleeping on her shoulder. He was passed out, and definitely didn't hear a word we'd spoken.
A wince crossed her features, however fleeting and undetectable. She was in pain and trying to hide it, however much she could. I felt guilt in that moment, a twist in my stomach fueling it.
"Akemi and Kyauta. Red Riot's brats." I stuttered before continuing, my hand finding the back of my neck as my heart rate skyrocketed, "I'm here to take them back to my place for the night, I'm on the list." My voice teetered on meek, I didn't want to wake any of them. I knew I could be brash and loud sometimes, and this was one of the times I couldn't be. Heat found my face.
"Name?" She asked me as I looked around the heap of children at her feet.
"Katsuki Bakugou."
I'd spotted them four feet to my right and bent to pick them up. Akemi stirred, like she always did when I picked her up when she was asleep. She buried her face into my shoulder and I smelled the soap her mother had bathed her in the night before.
"Hi, Uncle Suki." She mumbled and my heart skipped a beat. The ache in my soul that everyone else had filled hurt worse and worse every day. I felt the crease between my brows disappear for an instant.
I pulled myself together, clearing my throat and picking Kyauta up, not waking as I moved her in my arm.
"Is there anything I have to sign? I remember having to do that last time-"
"Nope, I'll do it later when I get off my shift." She said, cutting me off and giving me a smile with her eyes.
"Late shift, don'cha think?" I asked her, glancing at the clock.
"Not for me, no."
"Never met a daycare lady who's a night owl."
"And I've never met a guy who calls his friend's kids brats." A smirk played on her lips and my heart skipped a beat again, my throat tightening as I tried to catch my breath.
She was refreshing. And she was pretty.
"Just get those girls home. They need to sleep." She told me, after a quiet thirty seconds of eyes locking and staring each other down.
"No shit, that's my fuckin' job." I told her, feeling a bit of pride in myself. I loved these girls like they were my own, and babysitting was one of my favorite things to do, even if Kirishima thought I felt like it was a chore.
A smirk was held back on her face, and I could tell she wanted to smile.
"Whatever, just make sure they get to bed," A smirk fully appeared on her face now, "They miss their dad, so make sure to give them extra snuggles." She told me, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
"Tch, shut up. I'll get them home fine." She had me flustered, and it felt like my cheeks were on fire. I hiked the girls up on my arms, making sure they weren't falling as I turned away, heading for the door.
I heard a giggle from her, and a small smile appeared on my face, knowing I'd made her do the same.
Jeez, she was something.
***
Her something had turned into falling in love with her.
My heart didn't seem to care that she had a boyfriend, let alone lived with him. She went home to him every night, and my heart went with her. It stayed outside of the apartment door, waiting like a dog waiting to be let in after pissing in a storm.
Her hand was warm. And it stayed in mine when she was asleep for nineteen days.
Nineteen days of wondering if she'd ever wake up to be mine.