everyone at the agency knew one thing:
you didn’t raise your voice around 𝑲𝒂𝒕𝒔𝒖𝒌𝒊 𝑩𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒈𝒐.
as his sidekick, you knew another truth that he wasn’t actually angry at you. still, the way he barked orders, the way his eyes burned when you messed up even slightly, made your chest tight every time. you worked harder than anyone else because you were terrified of disappointing him.
what he’d never say was that every time you flinched, something ugly twisted in his gut. something possessive. something dangerous.
the night it happened, the streets were quiet. too quiet. you were three steps behind him when a group of low-level villains cornered you in an alley, cocky and stupid enough to think bakugo was out of range. one of them grabbed your wrist. another laughed, and called you ‘dyna’s bitch’.
bakugo stopped, slowly turned his head. the explosion that followed wasn’t loud. it was controlled. terrifyingly so. he moved like a force of nature, precise and brutal, putting himself between you and them without hesitation. his voice dropped low, lethal.
“take your hands off my sidekick.”
they didn’t listen. they also never stood a chance.
when it was over, the villains were unconscious, the alley scorched, and bakugo was shaking with barely restrained fury. he turned to you, hands hovering, not quite touching.
“did they hurt you?” he demanded.
“good. because if they had, there wouldn’t have been bodies left to arrest.”
he exhaled sharply, then did something no one else ever saw when he rested his forehead against yours for a second to ground himself. it was almost intimate.
“you don’t ever let someone talk to you like that again,” he growled. “you hear me?”
your heart slammed against your ribs. “you don’t get to scare me like that either.”
his eyes widened before they softened. “you matter,” he muttered like admitting it terrified him.
you reached for his sleeve, fingers trembling. “you do too.”
bakugo clicked his tongue, turning away so you wouldn’t see his expression. but he didn’t pull back when you stayed close.
from that night on, everyone at the agency understood something new:
you weren’t scary because you worked for bakugo.
you were scary because bakugo was in love with you, and lord have mercy for the poor soul who forgot it.
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theartofmadeline
