cw: pregnancy, kids (you guys have a daughter together), fwb’s, angst with a bit of a hopeful ending, refers to you as ‘girl’ once
Friends with benefits Bakugou who never really got over his ego to fully commit to you. You’re a little ashamed to admit it, but when you fell pregnant, you thought that things would change. That the whole “no feelings” aspect would’ve been dropped, that he would’ve embraced you fully.
But he just…didn’t? If anything, he distanced himself away from you, became so formal like you were another coworker he would address. It was heartbreaking, going through your first pregnancy feeling so, so alone, but having to grin and bear it the whole way through.
He supported you though in every way that he could. He never missed an appointment, would trek to your house during late nights whenever you craved something. He even moved you in to his own apartment during your last trimester, but a couple months after your baby was born, you went back home. You never felt unwelcome, but you couldn’t pretend to be a happy family when he slept in the guest room every night.
So now, you coparent quite easily. At least, it seems easy to Bakugou, but really, it’s all a facade.
In all honesty? He thinks he’s a fuck up. An idiot. The stupidest, shittiest person who’s ever existed.
He thought what he was doing was enough, that the words he didn’t say carried across oceans, formulated into titles that he never verbalized. So when you told him you would be happy to coparent, his world felt upended suddenly, as he holds his tiny little baby girl in his arms.
Coparent? How could a couple coparent? Where did he go wrong? (He only slept in the guest room to give you and baby space, only moved you in late because you lived so far away and you were getting so big. He never said I love you because he was too embarrassed to say it out loud. He didn’t know he had to say it out loud to solidify it. He thought you just knew.)
So it’s why his heart breaks when he catches a glimpse of curly blond hair and red eyes in the grocery store. He tries to duck behind an aisle, but his baby would recognize him anywhere. (It’s true; you’ve sent many videos of her recognizing him on billboards and tv commercials and magazines.)
“Bakugou?” You call, ducking around the corner to catch a glimpse of him. He tries to act nonchalant like he’s looking at cans of soup, tries not to cringe at your formal name. He turns when you come into view, eyes drinking in your attire. His heart breaks a little when he recognizes the shirt you took in your second trimester, still has the pic you sent him of you grinning as you show off what you stole.
“Hey.” Bakugou greets gruffly, mouth pulled tight, but it cracks into a grin when his daughter starts squealing. She’s in the front part of the shopping cart, twisting her little chunky body to get out and get to him. She damn near screams when he sets his basket down to pick her up, rubbing his nose to hers.
“How ya doing, squirt?” He asks quietly, pecking at her chubby cheeks as she instantly starts babbling to him. He holds her close to his chest, eyes full of pure love for his baby girl, and it makes your heart squeeze so tight you think it might burst.
“This isn’t your neck of the woods.” You mutter, head tilting to the side as you take in your daughters excited face to see her father. Bakugou’s eyes snap to your own, letting his daughter play with his fingers in the meanwhile. He looks embarrassed, cheeks a dusty pink as he grumbles and looks away.
“I was just picking up some stuff to drop off for her. Was gonna text you and see if you were home,” he replies, and something tells you that it’s a lie. But you don’t pester him about it, just nod a few times, taking in the sight.
He looks so good like that, in his compression shirt and sweats, his hair mussed from your daughters incessant pulling. He’s grinning at her, but looks so bashful when he turns to you, like he’s thinking about things he knows he shouldn’t, like he has a boatload to say but can’t cough up.
And if you were a mind reader, you’d be so fucking right. He can’t help but reminisce on before you got pregnant, the nights spent with you. The day you told him you were having a girl, the tears you cried when you delivered her. He thinks, filled with so much guilt the entire time, that he wants another one. With you.
“‘S it okay if I walk my favorite girls home?” He asks you gruffly, nibbling on your daughters cheeks to hear her giggle again, uncaring of the drool she leaves on his hand. You feel your eyes widen at his term for you, face suddenly flushing. Favorite? You, his favorite?
Something tells you that you shouldn’t fall down the rabbit hole that is Bakugou Katsuki and his suppressed emotions and shitty ego. But there’s another something that tells you to trust it this time, to let things happen organically and without expectation. So you do.
“I’m sure she would love to show her daddy the new toy her grandma just brought her.” You tell him, giggling when he rolls his eyes at the mention of his mother. But he walks with you the entire time you finish up your grocery order, holding your daughter the whole time and pays for your groceries despite repeatedly telling him that he doesn’t have to.
He pushes her in the stroller stored underneath the shopping cart on the way home, making small conversation. And when you’re halfway home, does he reach for your hand. Only to cross the cross walk though, he tells himself, only for your protection. But he doesn’t let go until you’re in your own place, and even then, he’s close by the entire time. He helps you put away groceries, remembers where everything is like he lives here.
And for some reason, the familiarity makes your heart ache a little more than you would like it to.
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When Shiro hears news of his mother’s death, his first thought is good riddance.
His second thought is fuck. Loudly, and repeated many times in his head. And out loud. In the middle of the night, sitting straight up in bed, startling his fiancé awake.
“T’kashi?” he mutters, eye squinted as he blindly pays the bedside table for his glasses. “What’s going on?”
Shiro’s mouth works on autopilot. “It’s my mother.”
As it always does when she is brought up, which is frequently due to her many life decisions, Adam’s face wrinkles as if he just bit into something very sour.
“Oh. What the fuck is she up to now?”
“Uh, the afterlife.”
Adam’s face freezes. Shiro chokes down hysterical laughter. It doesn’t work, and comes out kind of reedy and strangled.
“Mr. Shirogane,” comes the tinny voice from his phone, and Shiro startles.
“Oh, shit, yes. Sorry. Um. I wanted to ask about my brother. Where is he? When can I pick him up?”
There’s a hesitance from the other end that Shiro doesn’t like. He sits up straighter, if at all possible, and Adam’s face hardens — it has been a four year long fight, with his mother, to try to get Keith over as often as possible for even an ounce of stability, and not a fight they have won very frequently, but it is not one they’re willing to give up. Shiro has no doubt that the state will fight just as hard as his mother did.
Adam and Shiro will simply fight harder.
“The safety of the child is the state’s first concern,” the lawyer says neutrally.
“Great. Give me an address and twenty minutes, then, and I’ll bring him right home.”
The lawyer’s voice is steely. “He is home, with a lovely young couple who are happy to have him.”
“There is a lovely young couple who he is related to and whom he has familiarity with right here,” Shiro grits out. “Tell me where my brother is.”
The lawyer waits a moment. “It might be a difficult transition, you know. It would be nice for Keith to have a mother and a father, for once.”
Before Shiro can even blink, a hand reaches over and snatches the phone right from his face, and Adam throws it open onto the bedspread, presses speaker, and sets off.
“You listen here, you gristly assed motherfucker. Takashi has the right of next of kin. Failing proof of neglect or abuse, which you have tried and failed to invent on our end so many times the court as all but banned you from trying again, Keith is legally required to be placed in our home should Shirogane Saori be found incapable of care. And, as you can imagine, lying on a table in a morgue renders one quite incapable. If you don’t provide an address clearly and concisely in the next fifteen seconds, I will sue not only you and your firm, but you mother, your father, your children, and you dusty tailor, you ugly brown suit wearing hetero. Are we understood?”
There’s another stretch of silence, wherein despite the gravity of the situation Shiro considers proposing to his fiancé again, before the lawyer finally speaks.
“…Group home on 4th and King.”
“Thank you,” Adam says tersely, and slams the phone closed. He scoffs at it. “Fucking jackass. Someone should kill him.”
Shiro snorts. Then he giggles. Then he starts laughing, and then he can’t stop, and he laughs so hard tears come to his eyes, and then they don’t stop, either, and his breath hitches and a lump forms in his throat and his whole face starts to get itchy. Adam pulls him into him immediately, cradling him into his lap like he’s a child, and he goes without resistance because it’s Adam doing to holding, and because he doesn’t know where this sadness is coming from. He has hated his mother for more years than he has loved her. The only time he’s thanked her for anything in the last eight years was one he held Keith in the hospital, skipping his first day of high school to do it. She has been crueler than kind to him for most of his life.
But she was his mother, in many ways. In all ways except the ones that mattered. And apparently that counts for something.
“We need to go,” Shiro whispers, trying to lift his head. Adam gently presses it back into his neck, holding his arms around him.
“It’s four in the morning, starshine. Maybe we wait a few hours?”
“No.” The hoarseness of his own voice makes him wince. “He can’t…Adam, I don’t even like my mother, and look at me. Keith is going to be inconsolable. She carted him around like a baby doll. He loved her.”
Adam winces. He knows it’s true as much as Shiro does. Their mother’s erratic lifestyle has gifted Keith an assortment of attachment issues, as evidenced by the tantrums whenever she dropped him off at their apartment when she was bored.
Not that Keith understands the issue. Because he is four, and because he has gone through more things in his four years of life than many children will before they are even ten, but not enough to stop thinking his mother is the most important person on Earth.
Quickly they dress, shoving in whatever clothes are near without worrying about looking presentable. They don’t bother with much more than brushing their teeth, skipping shaving and breakfast and coffee in favour of speeding to the parking garage.
It only takes them fifteen minutes to get to the group home the lawyer has mentioned, and they waste no time in rushing up the steps, uncaring of social norms or etiquette as they ring the doorbell and stand fidgeting at the front door.
It takes a long time for the door to open. Shiro can’t help feeling like that is intentional.
“What,” barks the man at the door, as if their intent isn’t expressly obvious given the circumstance.
“I’m here to pick up my brother,” Shiro says as politely as he can manage. “Keith?”
“He’s sleeping,” says the man, who Shiro presumes is one of the foster parents running the home. “Come back tomorrow.” He tries to slam the door shut, but before he can register his own movement Shiro is slamming his hand against the door. The wood cracks under his palm.
He doesn’t bother saying anything. He doesn’t have it in him. He simply shoves the door open, sending the man stumbling, and strides in, remembering at the last second to try and keep quiet so as to not wake any other sleeping children. It takes him three tries to find the right room, but when he finally swings open the right door he knows, from the very second he sees the lump of blankets on the bottom bunk in the far right corner. He stands frozen for a moment at the door, watching his baby brother breathe, seeing the dried tear tracks on his face, the stutter of his breaths and shake of his chest. His thumb is firmly in his mouth, a habit he’s had broken for two years.
Shiro’s eyes begin to leak again. He feels Adam squeeze his bicep once in comfort, then wordlessly he walks off, gathering the messy scattering of Keith’s things into a large backpack. Trusting him to know or guess what belongs to his brother — all largely things they’ve bought him — Shiro approaches the bed, kneeling carefully at the edge of it. He reaches out and brushes Keith’s hair out of his face, gliding his thumb across his forehead. It wrinkles as Keith wakes, squinting his eyes up at Shiro in grogginess and confusion. It takes him a moment to register what’s going on, but Shiro knows the exact second it does, because his indigo eyes go blank the way they do when Keith is so far overwhelmed he can’t even come close to starting to process how he feels. Shiro braces himself for whatever vitriol, likely directly quoted from their mother, is about to come out of his mouth.
“I don’t want you,” Keith cries. He makes a sound in the back of his throat, cracked and strained; a long, keening cry. His face twists up and he glares at Shiro in what can only be described as betrayal, as if it’s Shiro’s fault their mother is gone, as if it was Shiro’s evil plan to take her away forever so he can never go back.
He wouldn’t even be surprised if that’s what their mother has told him. It hurts anyway.
“I know,” he chokes out, hushed. He brushes his thumb over Keith’s forehead again, slow, from temple to temple, and to his surprise his brother leans into it slightly as his breaths hitch with sobs. “I know, baby.”
He exchanges a look with Adam, who, God Shiro loves him so much, understands immediately: they have ten minutes.
Two years ago, when their mother dropped Keith off at his doorstep one day and fucked off to Atlanta for a week, Shiro decided enough was enough. Keith was convinced she was coming back to get him every morning and was devastated when she didn’t. It was an endless, sisyphian cycle. Shiro took the day off school, took his limited funds, and brought Keith to a paediatric specialist. It was of course not the most thorough evaluation, as that was something that could only be done with time, but there was almost definitely some valuable input. Shiro learned, in harried, layman’s terms, that their mother’s flakiness meant Keith always believed he was about to be left behind. Her babying of him lead him to believe that he was at fault when that happened. When he was actually happened, he was prone to tears and affection, trying to win back his mother, trying to prove that he was a good enough baby doll for her, basically.
And if that doesn’t work…well. Then the hurt and the anger start, and God knows how long it will last.
“Ten minutes,” Adam mutters, stuffing one last thing into the backpack and shoving it over his shoulders. “Let’s go.”
Taking the blanket with him, because fuck these guys, Shiro lifts his baby brother up, holding him tightly to himself, pressing his face into his neck. He starts to powerwalk down the hallway back to the front door, Adam close behind him. He vaguely hears the same man who opened the door start to argue with them, start to try to stop them, and he trusts Adam to handle it, because all he can hear in his head is a countdown. If they don’t make it to the car in time and Keith starts really wailing, they are going to take him away, and Shiro knows he will never get fucking visiting rights because the family court system is the most broken thing in America, and Keith will be shoved into some random group home that doesn’t care about him and won’t care about him and he’ll be treated like shit or worse not treated like anything at all, and he will grow up thinking that there is no one who loves him and no one to turn to and Shiro will never forgive himself or his mother or the world.
He needs to get his brother to the car.
He rushes down the beaten down concrete steps as fast as he can while still being careful in the dark. The car is half a block away, the only place they could find parking, and he starts to jog, ignoring the ache in his arms. He’s held Keith for longer. At the seven minute mark, he registers yelling voices and a door slam and Adam’s rapid footsteps behind him, and by the ninth they make it to their beat up piece of shit fourth-hand car, throwing open the back door, setting Keith down gently, bucking the kid in as quickly as they can manage.
Shiro has lost count of how much time they have, if they have any at all. His heart pounds so rapidly he can feel it everywhere in his body. He’s bitten the inside of his cheek so harshly he can taste blood. He feels like he’s gonna throw up.
He’s barely thrown a seatbelt on by the time Adam shifts into gear and tears out onto the busy street, cars honking at him. Shiro meets his eyes in the rearview mirror, trying to find strength in his look, in his support. He tries to tell himself that the worst part is over, now; Keith is with him, beside him in the back seat, Keith is going to stay with him forever, now, he is going to make his baby brother’s life stable from now on. They are starting to swim their way out of the deep end.
And then the wailing starts.
It’s loud. Keith takes a huge, deep breath, then lets out a noise that Shiro can only describe as agonised, so big and heavy that it pulls on his little body, straining against the seatbelt. His face is bright red from the force of it, and Shiro can count his teeth with how wide open his mouth is. Bizarrely, Shiro wonders if he’s loud enough for the windows to break, or their eardrums. He’s not sure if his own pain comes from his ears or his heart.
“I want my mama!” Keith sobs, shouts, screams, cries. “I want my mama! I want my mama!”
“I know,” Shiro whispers again, for what feels like the millionth time that night. Between Keith’s stuttering breaths Shiro hears Adam’s soft cries, looks up to see tears streaming down his face. He’s surprised to find his own face dry as a bone, the lump in his throat he’d felt earlier completely disintegrated. He feels hollowed out. “I know, Akira. I know. I know.”
Shiro wonders if this is what it feels like to drown.
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“Why is my stomach in knots?” you grumble to yourself as you look in the mirror, quickly blending in your makeup. your hands move faster than they should, your nerves already shot to shit and the stiff, hard to blend blush is really starting to irk you. you frown when Bakugou pops in behind you, his face next to yours as he takes you in.
“Whaddya so nervous for?” he asks you, dipping down to kiss the curve of your neck. he’s learned to avoid your face until you powder yourself up, and then he can go crazy. but you’re still blending something wet on your cheeks, and he doesn’t wanna upset you more than you already are.
“What if our date isn’t perfect?” you whisper, finally setting down your brush, your hands wringing in your lap. but bakugou reaches over your shoulders, grabs your palms in his, brings them to his face to kiss and kiss at, despite the barely dried concealer you had swiped on them. he hugs you to his chest, careful still of your face, frowns at the way you try to hide your blooming smile at his affection.
“‘Course it’s gonna be perfect.” He reassures you quietly, pecking the side of your neck. “You’re gonna be there with me; that’s all that matters.” You pout at him through the mirror despite your smile, watching his own face soften as he takes in your almost ready face.
“But what if my date tries to order for me, and won’t let me finish a sentence?” You sigh all melancholy, rolling your eyes into your head. You giggle when he bites at the curve of your shoulder, trying to get away but he holds you tight against his chest.
“Then I’ll beat his fucking ass.” Bakugou mutters into your skin, feeling brave enough to steal a kiss on your cheek. Him being brave—the thought makes you laugh to yourself. Bakugou afraid of scaring you, the love of his life, and being afraid of your wrath from fucked up makeup when he battles villains all day. You turn in your seat, wrapping your arms around his neck when he kneels on the floor behind your stool. He almost looks like he’s praising you, with the way his chin tilts up and his gaze is hyper focused on you and you only.
“You’re such a nerd.” You tease, tucking your chin to your neck when he squeezes your thighs in his hands. He leans forward to steal another kiss, despite the way you lean away and try to push his face from yours.
“Shuddup,” he murmurs, bypassing your hand to peck your lips. He stands when you swat at him, kissing the top of your head this time as he makes his way out of the room to start getting ready. As he leaves, he speaks over his shoulder with a huff,
“And finish your face already. Stop depriving me ‘n shit.” He grumbles. You don’t comment on how red his ears are, his admittance of wanting to kiss you again and again, how he always does. You only blow him a kiss, laugh at the way his shoulders hike and his huffing under his breath, and finally finish getting ready.
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