"Be Still, Just for Me" {Bakugo x Reader}

The Night We Met

Notes:

thanks to all my beta readers!!! <3 @birinboom, @bananabossbitch, @jems-all-in-a-wood on tumblr, and a few others who prefer to remain anonymous. NOTE: please ignore and forgive anytime i might've misspelled "Yaoyorozu" because I swear I spelled it three different ways throughout the chapter and @birinboom bonked me on the head for every single one

the song at the end is "the Night we met" by lord huron if for some reason the link doesn't work
also mmm... sorry for the wait and also... sorry for [REDACTED] :')

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"Oooh, I feel like I'm gonna barf." Your hands never felt so jittery before, shaking like a leaf in the wind; well, no, that probably wasn't entirely true, but it damn sure felt like it was in the top five potential nervous breakdown moments in your life so far. Just to be safe, you hurried to the bathroom with the toilet seat up and paced on the cold tile. Despite your stomach's twisting unease, nothing came up.

Waiting for someone to whisk you away to the world of My Hero Academia so that you could reconnect one last time with Bakugo Katsuki would no doubt give anyone brain fog at the plausibility of it all.

You should've been excited - you were excited - but the stress of committing such a risky leap into turbulent waters was nerve wracking to say the least. If things turned out well and Katsuki didn't outright reject seeing you as his surprise birthday gift after six months, then you'd not only get to spend valuable time with him again, but you'd get to meet his friends, see Japan, and experience the world of My Hero Academia with your own eyes; an opportunity singular to you and only you in the entire world as far as you were aware.

On the other hand, what if your sudden reappearance instigated Katsuki into another angry outburst to mirror that awful night after the theme park date? What if waiting months after Uraraka arrived with her gift at a second chance was the wrong thing to do? Rejection tasted like glass shards, sharp and bloody and nearly impossible to pick out every tiny piece. Hearing it from him the first time was bad enough even though he took it back and apologized less than an hour later... but you weren't sure if you could take having all of his friends watching as he potentially rebuffed your arrival at his own birthday celebration.

Catching yourself in the bathroom mirror, you frowned at the stress evident from the shadows under your eyes; sleeping last night proved nearly impossible with anticipation twisting in your stomach. Nevertheless, you tried to rest as best you could considering the incredibly busy day ahead of you if things went according to... well, whatever plan Katsuki's friends had in store.

You'd been anticipating this moment ever since Uraraka left your apartment months ago. The realization of what exactly you agreed to didn't set in until that evening when panic slowly crept in as you went through a mental checklist of what you needed to do in preparation and what could possibly happen to derail all of it once you arrived. You asked for time off from work for the week of April 20th right after the holidays. To keep your parents from worrying if they tried to contact you, you told your parents that you were going on a week-long trip with some friends where you wouldn't have close access to cellphone towers.

Most unexpectedly of all was the fact that you and Livia from the ramen shop had actually become friends. Though she was younger than you and things had obviously been awkward at first, you found her energetic and optimistic personality a welcome gift in your dejection as it slowly waned with time. And because she had actually met Katsuki, you told her that you were planning on going to Japan to try and visit him for a week. It wasn't a lie... your trip was taking you to Japan... just in a different universe.