Work Text:
Katsuki hadn’t always been a superstitious person. But sometime after his heart exploded and the shredded shrapnel bits were sewed back together courtesy of Edgeshot, he may or may not have adopted a more . . . cautious approach to life.
Life. Not hero work.
The bombastic blond still exploded across the skies with reckless abandon whether or not the mission called for it. But when it came to the every day, to the mundane, now that’s where he exercised some caution.
Well, more than some. Katsuki did everything full-throttle. Even caution.
Katsuki would never admit it out loud, but he’d be damned before he’d turn his nose up at a chance of mining some good luck. And he wasn’t dense enough to tempt fate by disregarding warnings about inviting bad luck into this life.
So, yeah, Katsuki was a little superstitious.
Whatever.
The way Katsuki saw it, superstitions were basically like warnings passed down from generations past. Clear instruction guides on how to act to not piss off the universe. A cheat sheet, if you will. He had been a star-student back at UA, so he sure as hell wouldn’t fail to follow a simple instruction that could plague him with bad fortune.
If he saw a penny, tails side up, not only would he refrain from pocketing it, but he would punt it clear across the street. Shun the loose change for even trying to seduce him into a lifetime of misery.
If he saw a dumb ass attempting to open an umbrella indoors, the rain shield was vaporized before it even stood at full mast.
He never so much as ignored an e-mail chain letter. Even if it annoyed him to his magma core, he forwarded it along, no questions asked.
Because of his sparkling clean, no, immaculate track record for not tempting fate through asinine actions, he was one lucky son of a bitch.
For one, he was alive fifteen years into a Pro Hero career, much of which spent in the Top 20. That in itself was nothing short of a miracle. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight was notorious for being one of the toughest heroes in the game, but that kind of notoriety placed a massive target on his perfectly chiseled back.
And yet, here he was, surviving. Thriving even.
Katsuki couldn’t attribute that all to skillfully steering clear of every black cat’s path for miles. No, he knew he was thriving because of his gutsy, round-faced wife, Ochako.
She was his foundation. His subflooring. His insulation. His whole damn power-house.
Ochako was everything.
Katsuki’s strict observance of superstitious code rewarded him with the human embodiment of pure sunshine as not just a friend, but a wife. A life partner. She not only put up with his admittedly grouchy ass, but loved him with her whole too-good-to-be-true being. Loved him enough to marry him. To stay with him for the last five years.
To put up with all of his knocking on wood and throwing salt over his shoulder.
He was the luckiest man on this shitty hunk of floating space rock he vowed to protect with his life.
And while the lives of two immensely successful Pro Heroes was incredibly busy and stressful, and frankly, dangerous, they more than made it work. Ochako’s Quirk Counseling program was a resounding success. So successful that she shared her model for the program with the Japanese government and they were rolling out Quirk Counseling programs throughout the country to ensure children and their families were better equipped to understand and handle their quirks.
His agency was kicking ass. Now that he had extra cash since every last god damn penny wasn’t being funneled towards Deku’s suit, he could afford to move to a new building. Expand his team. Actually pay his staff well. Repay all of his staff that stayed with him even when the paychecks were thin and the benefits were laughable.
Now, Murder God felt like Money God around the holidays with how much he made it rain with bonuses.
Life was . . . a cake walk.
But, with all the peace, the love, the immeasurable and incomparable happiness couldn’t ward off the fear that kept Katsuki up at night. The fear that all it would take for his happiness to come crumbling down around him like a decaying cityscape was something as stupid and preventable as walking under some shoddy ladder, or breaking a lousy mirror.
Bakugou Katsuki was not going to give fate the chance to take everything he ever wanted.
Bakugou Ochako, however, was a different story.
Ochako was a blessing from the most powerful god in the heavens, but she was also a clumsy, messy, airhead who had a death drive for bad luck.
Never had he met someone who so often spilled full salt containers and just laughed and dared to not follow that beautiful, chiming laughter with a flick of the salt over the shoulder to undo the curse she inflicted upon herself.
Ochako was an unintentional harbinger of unbridled chaos.
She absent mindedly left shoes on tables, discarded hats on beds without a care, and stabbed her chopsticks straight up into a bowl of rice so she could respond to a text.
Katsuki had to conjure up good luck by the god damn truck load to even hope to cancel out her ever-accumulating bad luck.
Back when they were sidekicks, they both found themselves working the New Year’s Eve into New Year’s shift. Which sucked. Katsuki hated working before the Lunar New Year. Not because it was particularly busy, but because the holiday came with a laundry list of superstitions to follow, or risk inviting bad luck into your whole entire year.
And on that list were things that limited his heroics and overall hero-persona..
For starters, it's considered bad luck to say unlucky words, like ‘murder’ or ‘kill’ or ‘die’, use profanity, or even be angry on the holiday. And those were all fundamental cornerstones of his brand. His cocky younger self clearly didn’t consider the repercussions of not being able to use his full hero name on New Years day when picking out a name. But now, Dynamight couldn’t even scream “DIE!” into a villain's face during a take down without swinging open the door and letting bad luck just waltz right into his entire next year.
It was admittedly, kind of lame of him, to let some potential curse influence his actions, but Katuski wasn’t some blasphemous prick. So instead of scouring the streets looking for a villain to pick a fight with, he tried to have a quiet New Year’s morning filled with paperwork. It had been a relatively uneventful New Year’s Eve in the field anyway, so Bakugou expected to finish his field report quickly and then head home.
But the holiday had other plans for him. When he entered the break room, he stumbled upon a bleary-eyed Ochako trying to wrestle open a package of instant oatmeal.
“Oi!”
With an “eep!” she threw the un-opened packet at her would-be assailant before turning to face him.
“Bakugou?! What the f–” The powder kegged f-bomb threatened to fall from her lips and nuke the mochi-faced sidekick’s chance at good year before it even began.
“Happy New Year.” He forcefully interrupted while catching the porridge package mid-air, leaving Ochako sputtering at what she thought was a sleep-deprived hallucination. “And watch your mouth or you’ll hex yourself not even an hour into the New Year.”
Katsuki examined the instant oatmeal in his hands with a mixture of disgust and disappointment.
“Wha-Happy New Year to you too?” Ochako stepped forward, reaching for the offending instant breakfast that was crumpling in the explosion sidekick’s now clenched fist. “Sorry about that – you scared the heck out of me.”
Katsuki hoisted the packet out of her reach to shield her from the jinxed object.
“You can’t eat this.”
Ochako’s little hops, even the quirk-enhanced ones, didn’t get her closer to reclaiming her would-be breakfast. Katsuki guarded the oatmeal with the earnestness of a dog guarding a prized bone, snapping at her finger-padded hand when it got too close.
“Hey!” Her hand recoiled. Confusion and minor annoyance reflected in her moon face. “Why not? It's just porridge.”
Red eyes blinked “are. you. stupid?” in Morse code. When no response beyond a deeper furrowing brow was received, he tsked, his brain finally registering that his very smart and capable former classmate asked such a ridiculous question with full seriousness.
How could he possibly succinctly and tactfully explain this?
“Uraraka, do you like being poor?”
For a moment, Katsuki wondered if the gravity manipulator learned how to increase the force by how hard she stomped her foot at him. But those thoughts were quickly shoved aside as he watched a glass, microwave safe bowl teeter from the counter-top’s edge and plummet towards the breakroom floor.
Bakugou frantically lunged past a red-faced Ochako to save the falling kitchenware from shattering and unleashing a plague upon them.
Didn’t this ditz know that a broken dish on the holiday could mean bad fortune, money loss, or even the demise of a family?! Wasn’t supporting her family the initial reason she became a hero in the first place?
Katsuki, ever the hero, had just saved the hero who saved heroes from her own stupidity or she’d be kissing that goal behind. He raised the unharmed dish triumphantly, waiting to be showered in well-deserved thanks.
Instead, he was met with an ungrateful screech.
“Excuse you?! Just because I forgot to bring in a bento or something for breakfast doesn’t mean you can bully me!”
“Bully you?”
He could feel his blood pressure threatening to rise. He fought against it, warding off the reflexive temptation to flash quickly to anger at his noble intention being so misconstrued. Katsuki wasn’t going to let some angel-faced skeptic lure him into tempting fate to smite him because he dropped a few stray expletives in his response.
“I’m saving your stupid–ly round face from a year of losing money and cursing your whole dang family! Eating this shi– eating porridge on New Year’s day invites a year of money struggles.” He tossed the packet in the trash with a slam, whipping his hands clean of the unlucky food.
Carefully, Katsuki placed the bowl back in the cabinet and away from Uraraka’s thankless, grubby mitts.
“Breaking anything can lead to your family breaking up!” The explosive sidekick leaned against the counter, inviting a cool rush of stale office air to flood his nostrils and hopefully calm his frayed nerves. “
And quit yelling. Being angry and picking fights on New Years is bad luck, too.”
The angry pink that previously flushed her cheeks faded as confusion and astonishment fought for dominance on her cherub-like features.
“You believe that? Who knew that the Great Murd–”
Words avalanched out of his mouth. With a windshield whipper motion, he attempted to erase the bad luck word with his fire-hazard hands.
“Dynamight. It’s just ‘Dynamight,’ today.”
Astonishment was winning the fight on her face, effectively pinning down confusion, before the emotions did a fusion dance and morphed into a look of dumbfoundedness. “Oh, so you're super-DUPER-stitutious, huh?”
Before the bruising feeling that bubbled around his ego could settle, he puffed out his chest and turned his back to Ochako. “Quit trying to curse me by saying unlucky words around me, Cheeks.” It came out more grumbled and pathetic than intimidating, like intended.
Sensing that the Baku-walls were building before her very eyes, Ochako decided to parse out this interesting Lunar New Year behavior through a more delicate line of questions, as to not provoke him in this vulnerable state.
Her lip curled into a sly smile before she prodded, “so you go the whole day without cursing?”
“Every year.” He replied, nonchalantly.
Well, as nonchalantly as he could. Katsuki feigned indifference to the conversation. To how Ochako viewed his mythical habits. Her response definitely wouldn’t impact how he viewed himself or anything. It sure wouldn’t make him feel like a dang loser weirdo for irrationally adhering to these holiday rituals. Not at all.
An incredulous scoff smacked him upside the head.
The impact stung right in his ego and Katsuki never had been one to respond to pain in a mild manner. But his drive to adhere to New Year’s Day protocol and not respond with fighting words kicked in at the last minute and cooled his response to neutral.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
The look of dumbfoundedness on her round face had been replaced with one of mild amusement. Katsuki wasn’t sure how he felt at being a source of such an emotion.
“No way,” Dismissing him with a wave of her gravity-wielding hand. “You’re like the f-bomb machine. You’re Mr. Potty mouth extraordinaire!”
He scoffed, preparing to vacate the kitchen entirely. He wasn’t about to start off his year defending himself.
But a violent, carnal stomach growl reverberated throughout the breakroom, welding his feet to the tile floor, ceasing his one-man procession back to his desk. He peered over his shoulder to find a tomato-faced Ochako clutching her belly.
It was his turn to regard her in mild amusement.
“Hungry there, Cheeks?”
“Quit it!” Being regarded in amusement also seemed to bristle her. “You don’t get to make fun of me when you’re the one who threw out my breakfast!”
Any thought of responding with New Year’s appropriate levels of snark evaporated on his tongue when Ochako jutted out her lower lip in a self-pitying pout.
He sighed, hoping this decision didn’t jinx his whole New Year.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Hunger made her wary and mistrusting, like an unfed stray in need of a meal. She eyed him, and questioned, “where?”
Red eyes rolled in his skull like dice across a gameboard.
“Back to my place for breakfast. Your shifts over anyway, what are you still lurking around here for?”
Hot air puffed out of her cheeks with an exasperated sigh as Ochako remembered why she was still even at the office in the first place.
“Well, I may or may not have been trying to dig myself out of a mountain of paperwork before the New Year arrived, but I barely made a dent.”
For a moment, Katsuki stared at the procrastinating mess that stood before him. Slumped shoulders, screaming stomach, and strained scleras were no way to start a New Year. Especially not for Cheeks.
She was normally a very resilient thing, but Bakugou learned very quickly while working together as sidekicks that Uravity, when her blood sugar got too low and her doom pile of paperwork got too high, was known to shed a hangry tear or two.
He had to right this ship before Ochako careened into an iceberg of bad luck and sunk her chances at a decent year. Crying could lead to a year of sadness and frankly Bakugou would rather blast himself in the face than see Cheeks sad.
“Leave it. One more day won’t make a difference and you clearly can’t be trusted not to curse yourself into a black hole if you’re left alone.”
So he grabbed a stuttering Ochako by the wrist and dragged her to his apartment, where they shared the New Year’s breakfast that he prepped the night before. It was taboo to use a knife on New Year’s Day, afterall. And of course he made extra – leftovers ensured that propensity and abundance would fuel his new year. With each spoonful, Uraraka reaped the benefits of Bakugou’s reverence for the holiday’s many rules.
During their next shift together, he gave her the “Angel-Face’s Guide to Not Cursing Themselves During the Lunar New Year.” It read as follows:
DON’T:
- Clean or do laundry--your lazy ass should have done this on New Year’s Eve
- Showering or washing hair–again, for New Year’s Eve
- No poor people food ESPECIALLY not porridge
- No negative words
- No fighting or getting angry
- No crying – steer clear of cry-baby Deku, he can’t help himself
- No using sharp objects
- No breaking anything, you clutz
DO:
- Wear red
- Eat lucky foods
- Fireworks
- Wish every single person you see a Happy New Year, even if they suck
After that, there was a change in their dynamic. It was as if Bakugou’s dedicated adherence to Lunar New Year tradition prompted the gods above to reward him with the best gift of all: Ochako.
There were feelings. And surprisingly, reciprocation. It snuck up on him. He knew better than to let his guard down around Cheeks. He wasn’t foolish enough to underestimate her on the battlefield, but he was dumb enough to not notice how she floated into every fiber of his life and made herself at home.
Until she did.
And when he looked around and all he could see was Cheeks, he couldn’t even be mad.
Just pleasantly surprised. They hadn’t necessarily been close in high-school, so he and Ochako were unexpected.
Except they weren’t.
No one was surprised. None of his obnoxious friends even really pried when they showed up to a Class A reunion holding hands. Denki just slid Sero a stack of cash. Kirishima bought everyone a round. Deku cried big, wet, congratulatory tears as he screamed “FINALLY!” into their arms.
Ever since he and Ochako got together, Katsuki’s luck blossomed ten-fold. Even if he lived on constant guard against and counter any bad luck his wife managed to accrue.
His therapist called this, “magical thinking.” The belief that Katsuki’s ritualistic actions or thoughts could be enough to keep him and Ochako safe from harm.
Katsuki told his therapist that he’d stop thinking magically when they didn’t live in a world where some douche out there with a superstition quirk could attack him at any moment and Katsuki could be one mis-preformed old wives’ tale from ruining his life.
And maybe that was paranoid thinking, but Katsuki wasn’t going to let some very preventable slip up ruin his fairytale.
Katsuki would be among the first to begrudgingly admit that his need to heed all Lunar New Year superstitions did not typically make him the most . . . enjoyable person to ring in the new year with. But Ochako, his cherub-cheeked angel, didn’t scoff at his compulsions or ridicule him. Instead, she met him with understanding and willingness to try to adhere to the prescribed Lunar New Year Do’s and Don'ts year after year.
This year, they needed all the luck they could get. This was going to be the year Katsuki finally clinched the Number One spot. Now that Deku was back in the game and all too comfortably sitting at Number Two for the better half of last year, while working part-time, he was going to have to blast past him to Number One.
They were supposed to be chasing each other for the rest of their lives and Katsuki had been consistently watching Deku’s back since he debuted.
And more importantly, this was the year that Cheeks was going to make it into the Top Ten. Way overdue, if you asked him.
She busted her ass, year after year, and was never given her flowers. Not this year. Ochako was going to get the whole damn bouquet if Bakugou Katsuki had anything to do with it. He’d conjure up enough good luck to propel her from fourteen well into the Top ten, no problem. And on top of good luck, they’d be doing the absolute most to will their way into the top.
To get a head start on this scheme and get in the best as possible graces with the Hero Commission and the public, they had accepted a high-profile team-up mission on the other side of the country. Some asshat villain had caused a landslide in a small village just off the coast of Japan and then held up a pre-school using innocent little kids as human bartering chips to try to negotiate his way out of an arrest.
Selfish, stupid, amateur.
In no time, Dynamight and Uravity blasted onto the scene and infiltrated the school. Seconds later, the perp was weightless, rendering his touch-based vibration quirk useless as he flailed around in mid air. A few precise AP-shots later, and the baddie was apprehended no problem.
While Dynamight took the cuffed villain to the police, Uravity carefully floated the school children down to their weepy-eyed parents. All were unharmed.
The swiftness of the villain take-down stood in stark contrast to the rescue and then clean-up efforts. With Uravity’s help, they managed to save and provide aid to countless people who were trapped in their homes due to the landslide. Dynamight blasted away debris, clearing roads for ambulances and emergency services. It was a miracle that there were no casualties, but there was plenty of property damage.
The clean up extended their assignment…multiple times…planting their asses clear across Japan two days before the New Year’s Day.
Katsuki’s plans for doing everything within his power to prepare them for the luckiest year in their lives were thoroughly fucked. Unless he could borrow Shoji’s quirk for the day and grow about twenty more arms, there’s no way he could conquer the mountain of cooking and cleaning that awaited them back at home. He could kiss Number One goodbye. Hell, he could probably kiss the Top Five goodbye. God dam–
The slam of the hotel door pulled him off the edge of his downward spiral and back into their rented room-ette.
“Dinner is here!” Ochako declared with a puffed out chest as she waved a takeout bag in front of his glum face.
“You dork.” Katsuki relieved her of the bag, plucking the containers from its shell. She handed him two white bowls from the hotel room’s tiny and sorry excuse for a kitchen for him to plate their noodles. “Thanks, Cheeks.”
Ochako settled across from him at the desk-turned-dining room table that was nestled between the mini fridge and their Queen sized bed. After breaking her chopsticks, she coaxed him to begin his meal, saying, “You better eat up quick and then get that butt in bed. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
With a snap, Bakugou separated his chopsticks and stirred his noodles to evenly distribute the chili oil. “The first train home isn’t until 10 in the morning.”
“As if we’re going home by train.” Red eyes beamed an incredulous look at the smug woman across from him. “We’d never get there in time for you to do all of your New Year’s Eve things!”
That much, Katsuki knew. Even if the train was on time, they’d be screwed out of the extravagant dinner he prepared for his parent’s annual Lunar New Year’s Eve party. He’d be lucky to get a quarter of the dishes he wanted to prepare done on time for the event. Let alone do all the chores that they couldn’t do on New Year’s Day. Katsuki had already resigned himself to living in disarray to avoid tempting the fates by cleaning on the first day of the new year.
This scheming woman, who was currently shoveling an ungodly amount of noodles into her gullet, was up to something.
“How the hell are we getting home in time then?”
With her cheeks stuffed to capacity, Ochako sloppily replied, “At dawn, we ride.”
Katsuki grimaced, trying to hide his mild amusement at his wife’s horrific table manners that left her looking more chipmunk than human. “Chew and then explain.”
After nearly a minute of mastication, Ochako finally swallowed. She daintily wiped her mouth and set her chopsticks to the side, as if the sudden display of manners would erase her obscene display.
“We’re rocketing home, Blasty.” She sipped her water, looking over the brim at him with mischievous brown eyes. “I’m riding my own personal Great Fire Horse, Dynamight, all the way home.”
“What the hell are you on about?” He asked, finally helping himself to his first bite of his dinner.
“It’s the year of the Great Fire Horse, Katsuki.” She chided, knowing that’s not what he was asking. Being at the receiving end of a ruby-red glare did nothing but make her chuckle before continuing to press on and press his buttons. “You heard me. At the butt-crack of dawn, we’re flying home. It’s the fastest way back.”
His eyebrow quirked up. Was little-goody-two-shoes-Bakugou-Ochako seriously suggesting that they engage in unauthorized quirk use? “You expect me to illegally use my quirk to get us home?”
“You think I would have agreed to all of these extensions without requesting a favor?”
She leaned back in her chair, a smirk so smug it felt like looking in a mirror. Japan’s Sweetheart, his ass. How so many people failed to look past Uravity’s bubble gum persona and actually see Ochako for the cunning woman she was was truly astonishing.
“Uh yeah, you’re a hero, not a hustler. Who’d you blackmail?”
Ochako huffed indignantly, as if she took personal offense to the suggestion that she would stoop to such lows, when they both knew she was more than fine with fighting dirty. “I’m a hero and I figured out a way for us to save all these people and our New Year without having to resort to extortion!"
“Explain. And finish your noodles before they get gross and cold.”
Ochako scooched forward in her seat and re-armed herself with her chopsticks. As she twirled her noodles, she finally elaborated on how she pulled off this ruse.
“When it started looking like the clean up efforts were going to take longer than expected, I called Hawks and asked if he would sign off on us flying home.”
His heart gave an appreciative squeeze. “What did it cost ya?”
“Ah nothing crazy,” She dismissed. “Just some international meetings to help other countries establish Quirk Counseling programs in their own countries.”
Pride overwhelmed him and came out in the form of a soft small. Leave it to Uravity to make such a bold, frivolous ask and be rewarded. “That’s some real diplomat shit right there, Cheeks.”
“Yeah it seems more like a double favor but who am I to look a gift bird in the mouth.” Katsuki rolled his eyes at the mangled expression, especially because the standard ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’ pun would have played just fine considering it was going to be the year of the horse.
As he mulled over whether or not to make fun of her godawful comedy routine, he felt his wife’s padded fingers reassuringly cup his un-occupied hand.
“Katsuki, it's going to be fine. I’ve been studying your cheat sheet for years. and I’m going to make sure that we gain all the luck possible for the new year. The year of the horse is going to be our year!”
Katsuki used the excuse of his mouth being full to simply nod in response, finding himself at a loss for words to appropriately express his gratitude.
Ochako, the love of his damn life, was always finding ways to lessen the burdens of everyone around her. Including him. She knew, more than anyone, how much this holiday put him on edge. How he found comfort in control. And she bartered with the head honchos just to make sure he had more time to perform his rituals.
“Besides, fireworks blast away evil spirits, you know.” Ochako said, mouth again, packed full of noodles. “Exploding home is the luckiest way to travel.”
“You’re damn right, Cheeks.”
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☽◯☾⋆⁺₊⋆
At dawn, they did, in fact, ride. The sun was barely peaking out from over the horizon when the pair trudged up to the roof top. Ochako shouldered their now-weightless luggage as Katsuki stretched out his forearms to prepare his limbs for their trip home.
It wasn’t a short trip by any means, but it was direct. With their flight path cleared, at least they wouldn’t have to worry about air traffic.
Ochako nudged him with a playful hip bump as she secured her helmet on her head. “Bet we can make it with no pit stops.”
With one final shake of his arms, he popped off a few mini-explosions to ensure his engines were firmly warmed up and ready for travel.
“Pit stops are for the weak-willed. And last time I checked, my wife wasn’t weak.”
She shot him a cheeky grin before canceling out her gravity and mounting his back. She rested her helmetted head on his shoulder.
“All set back there? Katsuki asked, testing their inner ear communications devices.
“Yup!” Her voice reverberated in his inner-ear just as Katsuki felt himself begin to hover above the ground. “Now, giddy up, Fire Horse! We’ve got a New Year's Eve to win!”
He barked out a laugh that reverberated off the buildings, snuffing out the last seconds of silence the New Year’s Eve morning had to offer this small, recovering village. Sparks began to fly and an explosion launched them sky-high.
Despite the ungodly hour, villagers rushed out to the streets to wave goodbye to the heroes that saved their town. Dynamight set off a few more explosions, coloring the sky with nitroglycerin-induced fireworks for the audience below. Hopefully warding off any other evilness from invading this normally peaceful town. They all deserved a happy, safe, year. The heroes’ send off confirmed to Dynamight that the trip out here was more than worth it.
“HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Uravity screamed, the wind likely swallowing her words as soon as they left her mouth.
“No way they heard you.” He chuckled into his inner-ear comm.
“Ah, oh well. The rule book doesn’t say they have to hear you wish them Happy New Year.”
But Katsuki heard it.
And despite the chill from the whipping winds, his heart was warmed by his star-student clearly demonstrating her deep understanding of his superstitious subject matter.
Their flight home was quick and relatively uneventful. It was under two hours from one side of the country to another when you’re flying first class on Zero-G Airlines on the Explosion Express.
But honestly, they made it not a moment too soon. As Katsuki's weight returned to him on the roof top, it took tremendous effort to fight against the urge to crumple on the concrete. Two hours of continuous blasting left his arms cramping and strained. Ochako, never the one to care about maintaining outward appearances, unceremoniously dismounted and flopped to the concrete with a grown.
“Boy,” she said, removing her helmet to reveal a teasing smirk on her sweaty face. “Are your arms tired? You know, from flying down from heaven and all that.”
Exhaustion must have been catching up with him, because Katsuki didn’t manage to block the snort that escaped him and showed amusement at her bad joke.
“You’re lucky it's New Year’s Eve and I can’t make fun of you for your mediocre comedy hour.”
“Ha!” A victorious fist raised into the air, despite Ochako remaining sprawled out on the ground. “Lucky me, I suppose.”
“Alright, quit stalling.” He presented her a calloused hand and yanked her up to her feet. They made their way to the stairs that lead from their building’s rooftop to the internal staircase. “We’ve got a lot to get done.”
“The battle has just begun, but don’t worry. I’ve called in reinforcements!” Ochako dodged the questioning look Katsuki lobbed at her and skipped down the hall, seemingly recovered from the exhaustion she displayed mere seconds before on the rooftop.
In front of their door sat an insulated take out delivery bag. Ochako cracked open the bag and was met with a puff of steam, signifying that the contents were still warm.
How in the fu–
“I ordered us breakfast buns! While we fuel up, let’s talk battle strategy.”
Did Ochako always glow like that, or did the building manager finally replace the hall light? Katsuki shook his head, still finding Ochako glowing like an angel from above, even when they were seated at their kitchen island.
Between chomps of her steamed breakfast bun, Ochako dished out their plan of attack:
“While you cook, I’ll start the laundry and the cleaning. And then we’ll get all snazzy looking for the party.”
Katsuki blew on his bun in an effort to cool the molten center before his next bite. “You don’t like cleaning.”
“Sure do, but I love you.”
At that moment, Katsuki knew there was an angel sitting before him.
This was the same woman he had to bribe with a weekly batch of homemade mochi to ensure that her dirty clothes would at least make it into the hamper for him to do laundry. Now she was offering to relieve him from the mountain of new year cleaning tasks? Katsuki was one lucky man.
“Plus, I can vacuum the ceiling and it's not like I’d offer to do that any other time of year.”
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☽◯☾⋆⁺₊⋆
The day was spent cooking and cleaning. Every spot of their flat rendered spotless. Every corner scrubbed, linen laundered, pillow fluffed. Not one spec of dust that had previously invaded their home was safe. All germs and grime were annihilated. Any reminisce of bad luck banished from their home. With the bad exiled, the good could now be welcomed by red-paper lanterns and paper cuttings that tastefully decorated their walls.
While Ochako absolutely demolished their chore list, Katsuki busied himself with preparing their food for tomorrow, and even more the daunting task of preparing Osechi for the party. His Osechi consisted of twenty-five separate dishes that each held a special meaning and wish for the New Year.
Katsuki expertly plated the dishes directly into a bright red, ceramic, multi-tiered jūbako, which was adorned with a delicate gold hand painted design. The tower of delish food was topped with a lid.
Their jūbako was beautiful, elegant, and opulent – the perfect vessel for storing, delivering, and displaying a New Year’s Eve feast. It wasn’t some ordinary bento for takeaway lunch. No, it was something Katsuki had been eyeing for years, but never would have bought himself. Such frivolous spending would have instantly K-O’ed Ochako. But for a wedding gift? Ochako happily accepted the set with outstretched hands, padded fingers and all.
With their pre-party tasks complete, Ochako gave Katsuki’s undercut a much-needed freshening up before they jumped into a hot shower to scrub themselves clean of the travel grime. It was bad luck to get a haircut in the first month of the New Year, after all. And while he would have sported a shaggier mop of blonde unruly spikes, Katsuki was grateful Ochako made sure there was time for his haircut so he could look his best while they rang in the new year.
Decked out in their finest red ensembles, they took a moment to bask in their immaculate home. They were heading into the year of the horse on tremendous footing, despite their exhaustion.
All they had to do was get through this party and they’d basically be riding off into the sunrise on the back of the Great Fire Horse.
At Katsuki’s parent’s house, members of the extended Bakugou-family universe began to trickle in. Little cousins making their rounds to receive their red envelopes stuffed with cash, flashing cheeky smiles at their elders before they compared bounties with one another.
It was perfect.
The dinner was delicious. An appropriate amount of leftovers remained and packed away for relatives to take with them as they departed well after midnight. The festivities were guaranteed to continue until dawn. The Bakugou's were not going to just see off the year of the snake, but they were going to stand guard and welcome in the year of the horse.
Despite being saddled with the exhaustion, Katsuki was determined to trot onwards.
So that trot may or may not have led him away from a conversation Ochako was having with his boozed-up aunt about when they were going to have kids and into the peace and quiet of the kitchen. They still had some time before Katsuki could light the fireworks and high-tail it home. To ensure that they could have the most efficient exit possible, he wanted to pack up his prized jūbako. Dawn was on the precipice of tickling the horizon.
And at dawn, they were riding home to their sanctuary in his stylish sportscar.
No dilly-dally. Just cut and run so that he could get some dang sleep on his well-deserved day off.
He stacked the jūbako, taking the now-empty tower to the kitchen. But just as he turned, one of his cousin’s brats smacked right into his legs with such force that the tiered-boxes launched from his sweat-slicked palms and into the air.
A hush befell the party.
All eyes on the pricey four-piece set that was careening towards the ground.
The world slowed.
Even he propelled himself forward with a blast that would surely scorch his parent’s flooring and earn him at brutal tongue-lashing from his mother, he wouldn’t be able to save each piece from shattering on the tile. All he could do was watch helplessly as the jūbako plummeted before it surely smashed itself into smithereens.
He fought back against welling tears. Dread flooded his system and his vision blurred.
This was it. In the pit of his gut, Katsuki knew that even wrapping the shards of his destroyed jūbako in red cloth and chucking it into the garbage on the fifth day of the new year wouldn’t remedy the situation. The damage would be done.
Irreparable.
There was going to be a splintering in the family. And breaking such an important object clearly symbolized that he was about to experience the most unlucky thing that could possibly happen to him:
He was going to lose to Ochako.
Gasps erupted from a chorus of Bakugou’s, drawing Katsuki’s attention to an airborne Ochako. She had moon jumped across the room, vaulting over the dining table like a show pony jumping in hopes of a gold medal.
Her outstretched hands smacked the lid, then batted at the top and middle tiers, instantly stopping their descent. Her body twisted mid-air as she positioned herself under the rapidly failing bottom tier. Padded fingers managed to touch the bottom tier, setting it like a volley ball into the air just as she landed on the floor with a thud.
Before anyone could even react, Ochako bounded back to her feet to collect the levitating boxes. Completely unphased by the stunt she just pulled-off. With each layer in its rightful position, she gradually returned their gravity, and the tower was rebuilt.
“Phew!” She exclaimed, cheeks dusted with pink from the effort of her heroic save. Never mind the fact that her hair, once neatly placed in a sleek updo was now wildly free, and her beautiful red dress wrinkled into oblivion. Ochako was unkempt, powerful, and beautiful, like a wild mustang.
His wife may have been an unintentional harbinger of unbridled chaos, but she was the embodiment of chaotic good. She funneled all of her frenetic energy into saving the day. Their year. Their life together.
“Crisis averted! Let me go pack this up so we stop tempting fate with such beautiful shiny objects to break!” And like that, his cherub-cheeked angel pranced out of the dining room and into the kitchen.
Katsuki’s knee kissed the tile as the last ounce of strength left his body. The genuflection resulted from the overwhelming need to thank every god that ever existed for blessing him Ochako and not smiting him by taking her away.
No ritual was too silly.
No -stition too super.
Bakugo Katsuki would adhere to them all with the utmost respect if it meant protecting their relationship.
“What’cha doing down here, Katsuki?” Ochako joined him on the tile, meeting him with understanding. Just like how she met all of his neuroses. With unconditional love. With an open-heart and a willingness to help.
As dawn’s beams shone through the Bakugou household and illuminated his angel from behind, it dawned on him that he was the luckiest man on earth.
And for the first time in a long time, looking up at the angel who saved their new year from disaster, he wasn’t sure if that luck had anything to do with his strict adherence to Lunar New Year’s etiquette. After saving her from bad luck that first New Year's day they spent together at the agency, Katsuki had convinced himself that some higher power rewarded him with Ochako. That she had fallen for him under the influence of some magical Lunar New Year’s spell. And that he had to keep mining good luck by the buckets to satisfy the omnipotent being granted him such fortune in order to keep them together.
But, no. No higher power sent him Ochako as a reward for not stepping on cracks or walking under ladders. There was no spell that could be broken with the shattering of their finest dinnerware.
There was nothing more powerful than Ochako. The woman who loved him so much that she’d kick fate right in its dumb throat to make sure he was happy.
Her thousand-watt smile shone brighter than any New Year’s Day dawn. It nearly blinded him, but he couldn’t look away. It was like staring into the sun. No matter how much his eyes watered, he dare blink. Katsuki couldn't miss a moment of her.
“Happy New Year, Katsuki!”
She was ethereal. Ochako was a being of absolute goodness bathed red in the fiery first light of the new year. And he was the luckiest man on earth to be loved by her.
“Happy New Year, Ochako.”