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#he doesnt want any ol' shiny thing 🥺 you are his shiny thing 🥺
willowser · 1 year
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i've never really put much thought into actual dragon dragon-king bakugou, but — what if —
you meet him for the first time in king todoroki's arena — on what you assume to be the last day of your life. over something menial like stealing a porkbun or something, and now his grace has decided that a trial-by-combat is a fitting punishment for you crimes.
only your opponent is a massive, hulking, fire-red dragon.
and you're not the only one thrown in there; a few other vagrants and miscreants, too, and they — stupidly — rush off to meet their own deaths as they try to strike him down with the blunt swords and dented shields you'd been thrown by the guards before they sealed you to your fate.
the dragon is chained up, of course, like a prized possession for the king. a large collar with inward curving spikes around his neck, which have worn scars into his scales, as well as some metal contraption around his maw to keep it shut. it doesn't hinder him useless, though, and when he tries to fly up and away from the amphitheater, the force of his wings sends you all rolling backward.
despite the fact that he's maiming people with the spines on his tail and bashing them into mush with the weight of his head — you can't help but to feel bad for him, trapped in an arena, put on display for people to taunt and laugh at. the chains look heavy, the muzzle tight; you wonder if his wings could even carry him anymore.
so you decide that the only way for you to live through this, if at all, is if you can manage to get this big boy off the ground.
while the other competitors fight the dragon for their lives, you instead rush for the chains that are nailed into the walls of the arena and smash at them with the rounded end of a shield. every time he jerks his head this way and that, or rears back on his legs, wings flapping wildly, the wall he's nailed to becomes looser and looser, starts to crumble and fall away.
and just as he turns to you — his last foe — it breaks free, and you swear, you swear, those big, red eyes of his narrow, brow furrowing, before he's jerking the chain twice. tugging it noisly, almost to get your attention.
you grab onto it just before he takes to the sky.
the rush of air is so cold and stinging that your eyes water, and you hold onto the lifeline as you're carried up and away from the kingdom, over the entirety of it, far enough that he can land safely without getting charged by the guards.
when you both hit ground, you think you're going to puke, especially as he stands tall and stretches his wings like he hasn't been able to for years — but instead of smashing you, too, to a clump in the grass, he only leans his head down to you, nudges you hard enough that you topple over.
you're still clinging to the shield and you use the edge on the nails of his muzzle, too, twisting them loose so that the iron falls away and he can stretch his jaw. show off his long, very sharp teeth that could easily tear you to bits.
and yet he doesn't. doesn't even try.
it'll be harder to get the collar off his neck, but he watches you with his slit eyes, brow arched menacingly, and nudges you to the long length of his neck. huffs until you're grabbing the spines and hauling yourself up onto him, like some kind of impossibly large horse.
and you continue on like that, for a bit; he finds a field of wild bulls and eats nearly all of them, maiming one for you before setting it aflame; you try to gather little shiny things for him, because you've heard dragons like treasure and you want to keep him, but he doesn't seem too interested; you have no family to return to, having grown up alone on the king's streets, and he becomes all you have.
you begin to feel like some chosen one from the fairytales you've heard spoken by firelight. the dragon bakugou stays with you, and the only reason you can fathom is that, maybe, he feels indebted to you — but you've saved one another, and that's what matters.
the night everything changes is when you're deep in the forest, camped up near the edge of a clear-water spring. the dragon bakugou grows lazy, curled around the perimeter of the water with his long neck and — he's a male dragon, you know, but you've got to wash yourself eventually.
you do feel a bit odd, undressing yourself as he watches, but you assume it's only out of plain and simple curiosity that he does; you assume that's why he does anything, for you, like allowing you to lay near his head when you sleep or huffing in your face until you laugh when you try to wrap your arms around his nose.
you try to pay him — an animal, a creature of fantasy — no mind as you dive below the surface, enjoying the refreshing rush of water over your skin. when you reach the bottom, tangle your hands in the gentle weeds, you feel a pang of sadness, that he might never experience such a feeling.
but when you return to the surface — he's gone.
in place at the water's edge is the collar you've never been able to loosen. rusted and creaking, looking much larger off his neck and alone in the grass, and your stomach lurches with a thousand horrible possibilities of what could have happened until —
"oi."
until you turn around and there is a massive, hulking man, naked as the day he came, with eyes the color of the scales that are dotted along his skin in stray patches. crowned in a mess of ashen hair, scars along his neck and face and arms—one of which is inked in some symbol you may have seen once. on those travellers, from the southern clans.
he, the man bakugou, you realize, has no concept of personal space — or the fact that he's totally naked and so are you — and he wastes no time in crowding into you. even rushing, a little, when you squeal and try to clamber back up the bank for your clothes.
like a stubborn boy, he pushes you into the dirt and even grins, evil and mischievous, with human teeth. you have no idea what to expect of him; men have never been too kind to you, afterall, someone without a home or family and easy to be rid of.
but he, the man bakugou, only nudges his face into yours, huffs against your cheek when you squirm, and you think, you think, you can hear some kind of quiet rumbling purr coming from the deep center of his chest.
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