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ms0milk · 4 months

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𝟏𝟒 | 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"He does not notice because you are a distraction, the tumult stirring in the castle behind you. He cannot understand his heart’s frustration at your warm fingers against his own."

no cw talking never works for the two of you, will a sparring match? bruises, grappling, unsubtle admiration (with a live studio audience). heartstopping smiles. the arrival of a new and dreadful ghost that reader tries to kill on instinct. 4.5k

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The Queen of Takoba cracks open her bedroom door just as early as you suspected. Threats and growling stop in the face of her beauty, gulps and pulses start up when she yawns. You lower your head to the floor. You kneel beside her chamber door with three glaives pressed sharp to the back of your neck and three dull guards insistent on spoiling your apology.

“Go play,” she murmurs and turns back inside, disinterested.

“It was cute.”

“It was unnecessary,” Bakugou growls.

Princess Fuyumi hikes up her skirts in her floury fists and jogs to keep pace beside her sous chef, “You’re chronic Katsuki, this is ridiculous,” and smiles when he bares his teeth.

“She should be resting.”

“She is not your soldier.”

“She’s a soldier! She is ridiculous, not me!” The two twist in sync through frosty hallways towards Aizawa’s training pit. The castle is teeming with staff and lords this morning so they take back passageways. Morning meetings be dammed– party planning, flower arranging, appetizer testing, inseam measuring get fucked.

You have spent your morning hunting down queens and princesses and completely disregarding the one thing asked of you. You are not so dense as you pretend and as Bakugou storms to find you, he can’t help but be impressed by your dedication to being an uncontainable menace– finding all the places he might hide in Takoba not for his protection, but so you can avoid him when it serves you.

You should have been more careful, Bakugou sneers as he erupts onto the gallery, because where he underestimated you, you underestimated Half n’half and his propensity to be a fucking airhead.

“She looked well this morning.” Todoroki sat on a bench in the kitchen, eyes bleary and nursing a tankard of coffee. His sister and friend hunched over their latest attempt to recreate Alderan biscuits and both jolted when he spoke. Fuyumi sent every telepathic message she could to her brother who just kept talking. Bakugou’s stare melted holes in the table.

“She’s looking for you too Fumi,” the hotandcold prince yawned. Deku was wandering around somewhere with eye bags just like his and they both looked exactly like a stubborn guard had woken them up at dawn, “said she had an errand in the soldiers’ quarters so I gave her the address of your dressfitting in town tonight.”

Bakugou grips the gallery railing above the training pit and the metal in his fist starts to squeal as his magic slips out, because of course you’re there. Striking the training sword your opponent holds over their head desperately, over and over until it cracks and your weapon thunks their shoulder. Of course you’re smiling.

“Kirishima’’ll worry,” Fuyumi wheezes and plants a hand on Bakugou’s back to steady herself. Bakugou doesn’t take his eyes off the ring.

“Let him.”

You’ve overpowered two guisarmier by the time your prince winds through back passageways onto the floor of the pit because you are an Alderan halberdier and Takoba does not train much in polearms. You have also just cracked a middle-ranked sabreur over the head because you are a decorated fencer and your opponent didn’t prepare for melee combat before agreeing to duel.

Your cheeks are red with exertion and excitement. Half-armored soldiers lounge at the edges of the area laughing and hydrating. Some play cards. Uraraka is among them eating snacks and she nudges Shinsou forward with her foot, “You promised.”

“You promised,” you parrot and bounce a few paces into the center of the room because apparently you are well enough to fight Takoba’s future Armorer. Uraraka, the beast of melee and master-in-the-making, snorts and reclines on a pile of pads.

Bakugou steps forward before truly thinking and then Aizawa booms from the office above, “Halberds!” The doom spreading in your prince’s gut doesn’t know whether to multiply or dissipate. You still do not see him. You grin.

Two soldiers pass you the weapons their master ordered and you take your place eagerly while Shinsou finishes dusting himself off. The weapon twirls like a dancer between your hands.

As much as he berates him for it, Bakugou thinks just as much as Deku does.

Did Master Aizawa give you halberds for your advantage or Shinsou’s? Was it meant to embolden you– trick you? Did he predict how cocky you get when you think you have the advantage? Is Shinsou proficient? Is this to humble you?

He is thinking until the second the match bell rings and then gawks. Shinsou readies his weapon gracefully and crouches in position. You flourish the polearm once more in a figure-8 around your chest and shoulders and then abandon it entirely, spear thrust into the ground, to launch and tackle your opponent.

Aizawa wasn’t trying to embarrass you. It wasn't revenge for defeating his soldiers or discharging your weapon into a crowd of dinner guests. Shinsou grunts. He doesn’t drop his weapon but you are obviously too close to use it and his shoulders are already flat on the ground in defeat, “Shiny toys only help if you’re faster than me, weaponmaster.”

Shinsou erupts into laughter underneath you and nods in concession. Aizawa rumbles from his office, “You will learn creativity from Aldera or she will kill you,” clearly smiling as he speaks. Dread evaporates. It looks like they’re running a pin-drill, non-lethal, adaptive, against an unfamiliar fighting style. It’s just training. You’re not being held hostage by an army with a grudge. Takoba is not afraid to demean guests and it wouldn’t be the first time Bakugou picked a fight to defend the dignity of an Alderan. At home you are well respected and intimidating, but everywhere you are odd.

“s’not like we’re going to war,” Shinsou grumbles as you help him to his feet and dust off your knees.

The sabreur cackles under his bag of ice on the sideline, “Lucky us.”

“Royal contender!” Uraraka suddenly sings because she’s bored and has spotted entertainment from across the room, “An exotic prince wishes to challenge our victor.”

Your eyes shift from shared apprentice smiles to the place Uraraka gestures with her chin, the place where Bakugou has forgotten, momentarily, that he has a body.

He shakes his head without taking his eyes off of you.

“What? Does the prince not spar with his soldiers in Aldera?” Uraraka stops short of booing. He only knows she is mocking him because he has known her so long. Your face goes slack like his. “Todoroki trains with us all the time.”

“I’m not fighting an outpatient.”

“Right, of course. Worried three days of coma made her too strong?”

Bakugou scowls knives in her direction. When Master Aizawa descends from his office there is obviously no way out of his apprentice’s instigation.

“Would you consider showing my recruits an Alderan combat exercise?”

He knows you well enough, he has known you all your lives, and when Bakugou looks to you for a response he knows what you’re going to say before your lips part.

“Yes sir.”

“Weapon?”

“Unarmed sir.”

Aizawa nods, “Alderan hand-to-hand then. Takoba relies too much on magic anyway.”

Warmth drains first from Bakugou’s fingers and then his feet as the Master disables his magic and tips his head toward you, standing sure in the center of the arena under sunshine.

“Good morning, Highness” you murmur as your prince skulks into the light and takes his begrudging place in front of you.

“You’ve been fucking busy.”

He is skilled enough not to hurt you, and so this show will be simple. That’s all it is. A performance for the incompetence of Takoba. Aizawa takes a seat beside his apprentices to keep dust far away from his eyes, “Learn something, the lot of you.” His battalion falls silent.

Aldera excels in two things, combat and cultivation. Fruits richer than any on the planet. Warriors fiercer than you could find in hell. Bakugou is a culmination of his parents’ perfect magic and his mother’s aptitude for violence. He can speak the languages of the continent, he has trained under her men and has chosen his own Champion. What are you made of?

Right now it’s something like apprehension as he extends his fist towards you and your open palm to him. Jeanist’s defensive stance, a wide open hand ready to swing, grab, or close. You assume he’ll attack first. Your eyes are bright and focused, muscles warm, and usual braids tied back high with a length ribbon Fuyumi snuck into your dressers. Of course you would recover from a three-day coma overnight. Worry falls from him like a bucket with a hole.

He steps forward in a crouch. Your wrists cross.

“She’s not made of glass, Kats!”

There’s a grunt and he can only assume Aizawa thwacked his apprentice over the head but it’s enough for him to harden his stance because any warrior would dream of the opportunity to catch him in disorganized anger, even for a moment. You don’t flinch.

He wasn’t wasn’t wrong, apprehension fills you and now his worry drips higher. You are no blank unreadable foe and your own worry is written all across your eyes. Jeanist taught a terrible poker face.

“Any day,” Aizawa grumbles this time. You have spent the morning cracking the skulls of Takoba’s guards and now Bakugou is the one who appears apprehensive to a room full of strangers. He looks to you one more time and ducks forward to strike with his fist.

He meant to hit a rib, durable, flexible, and send you to the ground without the danger of a drawn out grapple but you step carefully out of his way. You’re fast, which he knew, but when he readies himself for retaliation you take the beat to solidify your footing and don’t make a single move towards him. It’s just your open palm and a crouch in his direction. The crowd hums.

Fine, one more. This time Bakugou skips forward with his arms drawn high at his side and dips in close to feign a strike to your chest. His kick to your ankles is well timed and serves to surprise onlookers but you only pounce with your feet together, then land beside him where you should have had every instinct to knock him prone. Instead you slip back two more steps out of range and ready yourself again.

Oh, Bakugou rolls his eyes as he stands again on two feet. He’s overcomplicating the obvious, “You’re permitted to fight me.”

Your ears perk like hound.

“Wouldn’t you like a real opponent after a morning of,” he gestures to the lounging soldiers, “this?” They suck their teeth but do not clamor. Your eyebrows raise in thought because you really do have a terrible poker face. Was that it? Apprehension at hurting your prince? “Cmon then.”

You do not make him wait when, lightfooted, you prance back into striking range. He plants one foot and swings forward to leave an obvious opening, it’s simple and always has been. You will dive into his fake opening and he will pin both your elbows in one arm to drop you on your back with the other.

You do not take the bait or a strike against him. You jump and tuck your head close to your chest to roll across his shoulders when he is still stuck in the motion of his faux swing. Bakugou growls and reaches behind himself to catch you where you land, which you somehow do not, hooking one leg around his waist to sling yourself back where you started. His heart pumps a little faster.

Where he punches, you duck, where he knees, you dodge, where he reaches, you redirect until you have danced your way around the ring a full rotation and still not exchanged a blow.

Are you really this useless without a weapon? Only able to defend? Bakugou spits and dives for your stomach in a full body attack. His heart pumps faster. You fall to your knees and bend far enough to slip under him and back upright on the other side.

He’s seen you fight and knows you’re capable of more than just taunting. Why will you spar with these useless fucks in a foreign kingdom and not him? Prince Bakugou does train with his soldiers at home but never with Jeanist’s precious Second. Everything but gratuitous hardships, a waste of time. Beneath you.

“Does this coward serve my kingdom?!” He roars, heart snapping, and spins when he lands on his palms like a cat to charge. Still like a hound, your ears pull back with his words.

“Take note,” Aizawa mutters.

Now your poker face– a bronze mirror really, channeled through your heart– blazes white hot, perfect. Two more steps. Bakugou was trained by Jeanist too and so you cannot hide from him.

Not that you’re trying to. Not that anything Jeanist taught would help him anticipate your dropped shoulder and open palms coming for him in a head on collision. You’re just as hot-headed as he is if a little shit talk riled you up this much.

Before Bakugou can tackle, you have dove flat underneath of him and grabbed his bicep with those ever-ready fists Jeanist tried to teach him to use. He’s thrown through the air with his own momentum and over your head faster than his heart can beat again. With your fists you pull, with your knees you push, and with two feet planted firm you sling him over your shoulder and sprawled onto the ground a few paces away. You are at his throat before he can blink.

“I am not a coward,” you hiss and hold a hand across his neck in clear victory.

Your prince watches the shape your lips make when you’re biting your cheek like he’s never seen anyone do it before. And the forest fire behind dark lashes. “No,” he breathes.

Aizawa’s knees crack when he stands and normally a few men would giggle, but every eye is on the foreign prince and his secret weapon. “Most deaths on the battlefield happen through carelessness.” The Master is probably pointing and lecturing but all Bakugou hears is the pulse in your chest and the crackle sand makes when sweat drips from the soft parts of your body. You blink to the crowd for a second.

“You should all remember your lessons from Aldera today on the element of surprise.”

“Rematch,” your prince grins. His arms fly above his head and he brings them down faster than you can get away, trapping your limbs against you and flipping you onto your back, much to the entertainment of the audience who, along with startled Aizawa, have forgone the lesson.

He pins your wrists above your head to keep them from gouging his eyes out and pushes hard on your thighs with his hips. A full body hold.

“Cheater!” Uraraka boos.

You think so too because you send a knees straight between his legs. With your speed he can only dodge one strike at a time so when he shifts to block, you pull your arms back in tight. He’s lost fights before, spars against Kirishima and the rest, but he’s only lost to unmatched brute force or poor magic pairings.

When he falls forward, you bow away and wrap an arm around his neck to trap him flat against you with a grunt. Cradle his back with your hips. Lock your arms tight around his throat and taunt him with easy breath over the shell of his ear. It’s been an awfully long time since he’s had to think in a fight. If either of you could hear over the blood in your heads you’d be charmed by the excitement of Aizawa’s men.

“Three out of five,” your prince wheezes and before you can utter your huh, he leverages his weight to roll onto his knees and without any of the gentleness he cautioned before, jerks forward to throw you over his head.

Your grip does soften but not because he’s caught you by surprise. It’s so you can lock your legs around his neck instead of your arms and twist him, writhing, back onto the ground beneath you. His weight won’t help him here. Magic might not make a difference either.

Bakugou has tucked a hand beside his neck to keep you from knocking him out and grunts with two squeezed cheeks between your thighs. The tighter you squeeze, the slower he moves because you’re not the only one with tricks. Think about the body like armor. He snakes his hand through the sand to hide the noise and grabs at the crease where your thigh meets your hip with thick vicegrip fingers. You shudder around him instead of yelping and his heart swells, half at the sound, and half at the opening he’s made.

Slipping out of your hold and back onto his feet where you no longer have the advantage in flexibility or wrestling, he spits sand and gravel. “Ticklish?”

You’re already on your feet just two strikes’ distance away and Bakugou’s heart does something different than beat this time, because you wipe the blood from your split lip and grin. Big and cheesy. Your eyes crinkle like he always imagined they might.

“Four out of seven?”

“Count to ten,” his mother instructed fifteen years ago. “Katsuki, don’t let go of her.”

“Mm.”

She hoisted her beautiful cape over your shoulders beside one another and promised to be right back with clean clothes. The King and Jeanist had scattered in search of the doctor.

“What’s your name?”

You didn’t answer. A gash in your eyebrow had started to swell.

He squeezed your little hand tighter, “You’re at my house.”

“is my mother okay?”

He never could have guessed what the bloodsoaked puppy in his autumn carriage would turn into. That your eyes would go as big as the moon under his magic or that you would love his library and chat with the wind through open windows instead of eating with everyone in the Hall.

This time he is flat on chest and you have both his arms bent behind him tight at the elbow. Aldera doesn’t excel in shit, you excel, in everything. You protect his kingdom on a whim like a brooding dragon.

“I’m unarmed,” Bakugou winces, smiling.

You huff lightheartedly, “me too,” and thumb over the callouses magic made in his palms.

He does not notice because you are a distraction, the tumult stirring in the castle behind you. He cannot understand his heart’s frustration at your warm fingers against his own.

Others notice before he does. You certainly beat him to it.

“What was that?”

“What? Tired already?” He coos and snaps his biceps away from you like he probably could have done this whole time. Your prince is too distracted by everything that makes you– his odd little dragon– neatly trimmed nails and shiny scars like lace sprinkled across every part of your body. The thin line in your eyebrow. The cursed smell of the sea that still clings to your hair and the sweet sour of sparring all morning. He rolls back and bursts to his feet to coax you into another round.

You’re not quite paying attention. For the first time this morning you take your eyes off of him and pebbles drop in his chest because maybe not even a dragon can heal overnight, but you are not in the same daze as yesterday. Your fingers twitch like you’re remembering how to hold something as you rise to face him again– facing but glaring at something through him.

“Down Highness,”

Which is, all in all, a terrible omen because you only look the way you do now when you’re preparing to kill someone you are certainly not supposed to.

Bakugou snaps around when the doors of the soldier’s quarters explode from their hinges in hellfire.

If the flames had been blue, they might not have been able to stop you. An intruder looms in the smoke of his destruction in the seconds before charging but you are already between Bakugou’s legs and out the other side before he can finish the syllables of your name, diving for a discarded handaxe from earlier duels and leaping– arms crossed over your face to shield from fire– as guard and executioner.

“Wait!”

“Majesty?!”

“Y/n!” With her half suit of armor and two biceps braced at her shoulder, Uraraka crashes into you and destroys your momentum before you can get one good step off the ground. Two guards collide. One is smashed flat across the training room floor.

The intruder does not stop and wouldn’t have flinched if you took his head; he is the most despicable man after all, undeterred by evil or the stench of death.

“Attention whore,” Bakugou spits as Enji Todoroki clears the floor in a wake of screaming flames his soldiers can barely escape. Magic from Aizawa doesn’t refill your prince’s veins fast enough to stop the immolating man from knocking him four good lengths and picking him up again by the front of his tunic in his giant stride. He’s huge. And he’s set himself on fire in his fury.

“Majesty, stand down!”

“Which Alderan rat set fire in the North Wing?” He roars as the prince shakes sand from his hair.

Bakugou bares his teeth so sharp the crowd worries he might bite. He’s close enough to. “Can’t even do absentee father right.”

You are struggling in a poor match between Aldera’s strongest soldier and Takoba’s lightest. No matter what hold or jerk you attempt, trying to escape from Uraraka is like screaming underwater. “I’m sorry!” She groans, mostly at the pin she uses to hold you but also at the fire that hops just out of reach of her greaves. No one remembers the might of the mellow apprentice until she stops smiling. Before you hit the ground your ax soared into the air with a life of its own– it’s still there now. It spins rapidly in its trapped momentum but still floats, harmless, up towards the glass ceiling.

“Highness!” You grunt and Uraraka apologizes again, and again after you try to break her nose with a weightless headbutt.

“I’ll put down your yapping dog and light up every rat infesting my castle,” the King is almost foaming. Bakugou itches at the prospect of a fight.

“Declaration of war, old man?”

“Enough!”

It’s not an accident that you escape– that Uraraka softens– as the princess appears in the arena. The intruder tosses your prince away before sparks can ignite his hellish beard and swings hard at the new voice. You barrel into her. You like a shield and poised in seconds to take his arrogant hand with a shortsword.

You couldn’t possibly know who this is. No one could have guessed he would return, today or at all. Bakugou could only pray that he died at sea long ago.

Mountains of soldiers ready at your back, archers trained on the new man’s neck, hesitant faces twisted with contradiction in every flow of movement– drawing weapons, dashing to the scene, racing to protect their princess and still somehow hesitating– before the giant hand freezes, and you with it, before your sword can cleave it off at the wrist. The flames disappear.

“She said, enough,” Aizawa barks. It’s not a shout, it’s something much more terrible, something like poison. It’s horrible enough to back away with the princess kept tight between your shoulders as the Master approaches. The intruder is not less intimidating without fire. They both glare. Four dozen soldiers watch.

Fuyumi hollers, “I gave the North Wing order!” over your arm when you won’t let her push forward and then your skin prickles at the grating of a voice you hoped was knocked unconscious, safe but out of the way, on the other side of the room.

“No she fucking didn’t,” Bakugou growls, and it’s everything you can manage to keep a hotheaded princess and a live grenade behind the cover of your back. Your prince presses forward, “I’ll burn down this whole fuckass seashell to keep my people warm.”

“Not helping!” Uraraka hisses with a group of her men racing to pat out pockets of flame before they catch on piles of padding. It wasn’t meant to.

The pit is an echo of heartbeats and rapid breathing. Half of the soldiers frozen in their attempt to stop you from killing their King and the other half frozen, now with fear, in their attempt to help. Fuyumi stares at her father through the adjoined shoulders of the Alderan prince and his Captain.

The King looms over the Master with his hands set in fists. No matter how intimidating he tries to be, he is still extinguished. “It was your job to protect my kingdom.”

Aizawa bristles at the insinuation.

“I have been rotting at sea for the sake of this kingdom and you can’t keep a single rat away from–”

“We weren’t expecting you, Majesty.”

“Would you have done a better job if I penned you a letter? Like a yearning fucking maiden.”

“It’s been eleven years.”

Bakugou knows what he’s doing. Keeping the King from exploding again, but it’s everything he can do to stay beside you on the sidelines and listen without exploding himself. Enji Todoroki looks like shit now that the fire has died down. Expensive shit. A thousand yards of now-ruined silk wrapped and spooled around and over his open chest. Blue and silver as far as the eye can see. What has he been doing for a decade? The belt at his hips drools with obscene wealth. A decorative sword Bakugou would like to see buried in his guts.

What do you think of him? This King. He’s half-giant and half-sea mad already, a waste of muscle and trimmed always in fire. His hair and beard, the ridges of his fingertips that singed round shapes into the collar of his tunic. Bakugou makes a note to ask you about it later, if not just for an excuse to poison another Alderan against him. Not that it would take much push. When he looks down at you, the torchlight behind your eyes flickers furiously with thought.

The King takes one more look around the room when he decides he can’t win in a staring match with Aizawa. “Your Masters never taught you to kneel?” He seeths at his jumbled soldiers and the room immediately scrambles to the ground. You don’t flinch. Shinsou crosses his arms beside his master and Uraraka lays flat on her back in exhaustion some ways off. The King takes his satisfaction with a suck of his teeth and storms back across the room through the doors he destroyed. Fires still hop in the hallway beyond.

You don’t take your eyes off his shape even after it’s gone, “Was that..”

“My father,” Fuyumi answers quickly and equally as distant as you.

“Forgive me, princess.”

“Better luck next time.”

Bakugou watches you both somewhat frozen together, staring after fire, and moves before he’s thought out the action. Your knuckles are white on the sword you still raise.

“Stand down,” he murmurs as his hand wraps around yours. You are so strange. You both know too much. At his touch your weapon drops immediately through your fingers to the floor.

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tagged angels ✧.* @nnubee @nonomesupposedto @kotarousproperty @strawberry-mentos69 @sveetnn @lunrai @km7474 @cathwritestragediesnotsins @idimmadontgiveashit @kooromin @k1tk4tkatsuki @litiri @kiwibao @sarcasticlittlebook @condy-wants-a-cookie @mysticalfridge @falling4fandoms @katanaski @romiinlove @cherripunch26 @acid-rain27 @bakugouswh0r3 @zukowantshishonourback @ultracrii @chandiewashere @screechingdreameater @when-you-are-just-done @levisbae2 @flyhighinthesky @1astr0id1 @thebluespacecow @mizzfizz @butterscotch-ripple-icecream @phoenix-draws77 @ltadoriyuujl @dreamingoftomorrow @optimisticprime3 @misscaller06 @the-omnipotent-phlowr @king-dynamight @sky-angel101 @rosiejacklyn

could not tag for some reason :,(

#ch 15 will be out soon as well <3 sister chapters #it just got too long to publish as one and the content of each section was too different to try and keep together #a hymn to black water #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #bnha fantasy au #mha fantasy au #bnha #mha #fantasy bakugou #fantasy bakugo

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