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.
part six
━━━━ ⟡ ━━━━
Despite my healing injury, I stayed with Bakugo. We walked the forests, more cautiously this time. They replaced my radio. We still stuck to each other's side.
After the afternoon stretched to evening, I realized we were getting nowhere. And with the sun falling over the horizon, it was too dangerous to be walking the woods in the dark. Bakugo wanted to go on his own, to continue the search for the hidden laboratory.
"My hands glow. I can see just fine. You go back."
I refused to leave him out here in the night. Dragging his boots, I managed to convince him to put the search on the back burner. The healer would be arriving any time now. Once they could treat my head injury, I'd be back to the usual teleporting, and we could resume the hunt and the regular, bickering business. Things would go back to semi-normal.
What I didn't anticipate were the dreams. They were persistent, and gradually growing more vivid. I was invaded by visions of the past, back at the river, falling in and out of consciousness, blending present reality with memory. At night when I closed my eyes, instead of the past, I lived glimpses of a life I'd never had before.
On the third night, I was at a dimly lit table, full of fancy food. Murmured chatter, the clink of dishes. Heads of colorful hair and bright smiles surrounded me. The UA group was dressed to the nines. I was too, surprisingly. Everyone looked different. A few years older. Age had darkened the structures of their cheeks and eyes. Kirishima's signature, red locks were longer, for one.
Bakugo was there. He looked different too, with his shorter, neater hair, and a blaring scar under his right eye. Whatever injury had caused it must've been painful. There was probably a story behind it. He sat beside me. He wore a dark dress shirt and a tie? The closest thing to formal I'd seen that blonde-buffoon wear was a half-buttoned shirt for the agency photo day, and that was after our supervisor hassled him into it.
We all reached for our glasses, clinking them to the center of the table, and they were shouting Congratulations! For what, I wasn't sure. Maybe one of them had gotten a promotion?
That's when I saw it glimmer in the corner of my eye. Like a sparkle of privacy. Something I shouldn't have laid eyes on, even though it was exposed to the rest of the world around us.
Holding his glass to the middle, fingers cupping the base. Bakugo was wearing a ring. A simple, gold band on his left fourth finger. I stared at it like it were a drop of red in the snow.
I woke in a cold sweat. We seemed to be happy. All of us. So, why was my heart racing?
