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 ten
━━━━ ⟡ ━━━━
A firm hand shook me awake. Familiarity took hold of me. The pale cracked lips. The tired circles. The tiny scars under his right eye – apparently from a wound so devastating it was a wonder it healed with such subtlety. From my dream the other night, in the dim lights of the dinner table, he held one similar, tucked under the same eye, born from a face hardened with age. Rather than a few innocent white lines, it instead told a brutal struggle, one that he'd probably carry into his grave.
The boy with glossy skin and the man with a stain on his past were a person I hadn't met before.
Looking down at me, his subtle imperfections brought me ease because I knew the partner behind this face. Fear had blurred the lines of my reality.
"Wake up. Come on," Bakugo insisted.
"...What time is it?"
"Dawn. They're here."
His hand parted from my shoulder, and suddenly, I was stranded, alone in the half-conscious world of my dream. It flooded back to me. I struggled to swim above the current, trapped in the blood staining my hands that wasn't my own. Screaming from the room echoed in my ears as the cracks and shadows of the wall became the hollow, empty look on Bakugo's face. His smooth, untouched clarity, floating in that yellow fluid.
Reminder of that nightmare pulled a rotted string of dread to the surface. The thought of committing such heinous acts, only to be forgotten by him. By the only person I could trust to bring me back to myself, whether he realized it or not. If I dwelled too long on that dream, I'd go mental, surely.
My mind had crafted its own conception of a lab, possibly to match the one we were searching for. It was so detailed, down to the equipment and the specificities of the room. Even the faces I saw were ones I couldn't place from memory –
I had to reason with myself. Realistically, this mission was all anyone could think about. The dreams had started before I'd ended up on this mountain with the blonde idiot, before we knew we were going, and before I really had a part to play in preventing the world's imminent destruction. I'd brushed them off at the time as just my brain running in loops, refusing to quit when all it wanted was to find a solution.
That had to be the reason. A strange coping mechanism if you ask me. But in that case, was there a purpose to that dream, and what was it? Why did I make a copy of Bakugo? And why was I crying?
The pieces sprawled on my table were mismatched, like they were of different puzzles entirely, never meant to fit within the same sequence. It didn't make sense.
"You still with me, or did you lose your marbles?"
Bakugo was impatiently crouched at the cave entrance, carrying our supplies.
