✺ ─── • 𝐆𝐨𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬

k. bakugou x reader

warnings: medieval au, angst with a somewhat happy ending, childhood friends to lovers (with some hiccups in between), brief mentions of death, morbid jokes, outdoor sex, p in v, fem-bodied reader, bkg calls you his ‘woman’ once

word count: 3k

notes: tbh i do not know where this came from. i had a very vague idea and ran with it, and here we are. hopefully everyone can enjoy it! (´͈ ᵕ `͈ ）

You’ve been traveling for so damn long, legs sore from the never ending trek, heels blistered from the rub of your boots, face chafed from the dry winds.

It could be worse, you suppose. The elements could be harsher. You’re lucky that it’s springtime and you’re not stuck in the dead of summer or winter. Plus, your company is better than most. It’s quiet between the two of you, as it has been for the last couple of years, but there’s no bickering, just a few snide comments borne of exhaustion. Truthfully, both of you are too tired to argue like you used to.

Suddenly, a rough hand shoots out to stop you in your tracks, and you look at Katsuki in alarm.

“Wha-”

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

His crimson eyes are fixed on something on the horizon. It’s nothing more than a glimmer to you, but if you squint…

“Is that…”

“Water.”

A river from the looks of it, beckoning you with open arms.

The two of you take off at a run (or the closest your aching bodies will allow), stumbling over dirt and grass until you’re at the edge of the glimmering stream. It babbles at you happily, splashing over rocks and caressing the earth around it.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” you half-joke. It is magnificent, but it still somehow pales in comparison to the man next to you who’s ripping his boots off. Not even this water could quench the craving you have for him.

“Gonna feel even better,” Katsuki mutters, glancing over at you then urging, “what, you shy? Take your clothes off n’ get in.”

Your cheeks heat at the demand but you end up doing just that. You haven’t bathed in god knows how long. The only water you had before was strictly for drinking no matter how much you had wanted to pour some over your head at times.

Like Katsuki, you pull your boots off first then shrug out of your outer layer of leather hide. Riding pants then your tunic. You hesitate at your undergarments, eyes darting to Katsuki’s already nude form as he drops to the ground and dips his legs in the river. His broad shoulders sag in relief, the wide expanse of his back exposed to the sunlight and glistening gold under the heat. You miss touching it, tracing over every pale scar, counting the stray freckles that dot his spine and ribs…

“Don’t be so awkward about it.” His voice snaps you out of your daydream. “Nothin’ I ain’t seen before.”

He’s right. It’s been a long time, but still. You’ve seen every inch of one another in the past, patching up training wounds then brushing lips over them.

“Don’t be so pushy,” you mumble, finally pushing your underwear down and taking off the wrap around your chest. Taking a deep, unencumbered breath, you let a small smile creep onto your face. The wind feels nice for once, cooling your skin that’s been sticky with sweat for what feels like forever.

Katsuki is standing now, up to his hips in the water, and holds a hand out for you. He doesn’t bother averting his eyes, only ever having been a gentleman when it’s suited him and apparently this is not one of those times.

It’s chilly at first, but after submerging your whole body, wetting your hair, the temperature is more than pleasant.

“Gods, that feels good,” you groan, scratching your nails over your dripping arms to scrub away as much grime as you can.

Katsuki dunks his head under, shakes his hair like a dog when he straightens up and pelts you in the face with stray drops. You splash him in return and initiate a small war, both of you now in a rare giddy mood despite your terrible circumstances.

The village was the only place you’d known. You spent your days like most of the other kids, tending to the land and training. It didn’t matter if you were a boy or a girl or whose house you came from. Everyone had to learn to fight, to brandish sword and shield and be ready to raise both in the event of a raid.

In the end that training hadn’t helped. What’s a few blades against a mountain of fire? How can a shield defend a burning corpse?

When all was lost—your mother, father, and the tiny shack you called home, you were ready to give up. Flames licked at your face, and smoke filled your lungs, but a familiar hand tugged you up from your knees and pulled, dragging you as he ran.

Out of the entire village, you and Katsuki are the only survivors.

You’ve thought about the event since your journey to the kingdom began, but in this moment, as the two of you fling water at each other, you don’t think about it at all. All you see is Katsuki’s sharp smile, the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the lightheartedness displayed on his face.

Even when you were kids Katsuki was a little severe. He was loud and abrasive and always scowling. Most of the other children were scared of him, but you never were. Where others saw rabid animal you saw a lonely boy who needed a friend, and you were more than happy to be that friend.

You were just training buddies at first and then your families began sharing meals, trading eggs for milk, splitting chores. Other families in the village had been doing the same for ages, but it had taken meeting Katsuki and his parents for yours to make the same connection.

Swapping meals turned to swapping stories, playing pretend, exploring the tall grasses and woods, and when both of you grew older it all progressed into something much more. Kisses under the moonlight, wildflowers at your window, nervous hands brushing over bare bodies.

Your parents knew and didn’t mind. The assumption was that you and Katsuki would start a family of your own, raise your own strong, passionate children.

Katsuki had other plans, though. A secret he had kept for years.

You’re going to leave me to fight for a king that doesn't care about us? Who keeps us pressed into the dirt with the toe of his boot?

I’m trying to make sure you’re okay! That everyone’ll be taken care of!

Everyone is fine here! We have land we can farm! We have stock to eat and water to drink!

How’s that enough for you?!

Your voices were raised, echoing through the trees that usually hid your late night escapades. Now they hid the end of them.

There was a town nearby. Small but bigger than the village. It had stone streets and places to shop, shelter that would actually keep you dry during storms and warm during winter. If Katsuki became a soldier, he’d be able to move you and his family there.

His family but not yours.

It simply wasn’t an option. You couldn’t leave them behind, and you were appalled that Katsuki would even suggest it. So that was it. That was your last real conversation. Everything else was about milk or eggs or crops. There was nothing left to say. Even when months passed and Katsuki didn’t leave the village you had no words for him, afraid to get reattached only to lose him.

Now, though, in the cleansing waters, it feels like you have everything to say, words that have been stuck in your throat since he pulled you from the cinders of your ruined village.

You watch him from the corner of your eye as he rubs his palms down his chest, nails reddening the muscles of his abdomen then scratching at the trail of hair that travels from his belly button to the water.

“Enjoying the view?” he chuckles, laugh growing when you whip your head away from him. “S’okay. I’m lookin’ too.”

That only makes you turn all the way around, crossing your arms over your breasts as the place between your legs begins to throb. He’s looking at you like that? After everything?

You take a shuddering breath, squeeze your eyes shut tight when you feel him touch your hip.

“Don’t.”

His thick fingers curl around the curved bone.

“Kat…”

“Why?” His voice is low, right behind you so that you feel the question on the nape of your neck.

“Because,” you sigh, “I don’t want you to just because you don’t have any other options. Just because it’s only us.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

His other hand is on you now, both reaching around your waist to lock right above your pelvis.

“Why’d you stop talkin’ to me? Why didn’t we ever make up?”

“Why didn’t you ever leave?” you counter.

He goes rigid, arms tightening around you. “Didn’t want to.” Then, much quieter, “didn’t wanna leave you.”

The words hit you right in the chest, ricocheting in your ribcage. You wiggle to turn in his grasp, eyes wide as they stare into his.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

Katsuki frowns. One of those deep frowns. “You wouldn’t give me time of day! Any time you saw me you’d turn around. Could barely fuckin’ look at me.”

“Can you blame me?” You pull yourself out of his arms. “You wanted me to leave my parents behind. You wanted me to leave everything behind!”

“I wanted you to be taken care of! I wanted to take care of you!

You scoff. “I can take care of myself, Katsuki.”

“I know you can, but so can I. And I should,” he rasps. He looks more emotional than you’ve ever seen him, hair plastered to his forehead, water streaming into his pleading eyes. “I should be your husband by now.”

Your brain shuts down momentarily, unsure if you actually heard what he just said. He still wants to marry you?

“Of course I still wanna marry you!” Must have said that out loud. “I still wanna do everything with you. I’d walk through hell if I got to do it with you.”

Don’t cry. Do not cry. Do not show that you’ve been waiting to hear those words since that last fight.

He wipes a tear from under your eye with a calloused thumb, expression softening.

“Well,” you clear your throat, “I guess you’re in luck since we’re going through hell right now. Burnt village. Dead families…”

“Probably gonna get thrown in the dungeons when we get to the palace,” he adds casually. “King doesn’t take too kindly to outsiders.”

“Will you still think I’m pretty when rats start nibbling on my toes?” It’s dark to joke about. But life has not been kind to you as of late, and even in the midst of all of your fear and grief, you’re finally able to crack a smile (sad as it may be), and your stomach flips the way it used to.

“I’ll still think you’re pretty when they eat your face,” he tells you, caressing your cheek. It’s so sincere that it makes you laugh.

“That’s absurd.”

“What’s absurd is that I haven’t kissed you in a god damn eternity.”

You nearly tackle him into the water, arms around his neck as he catches you with a small ‘oof’, and even though the entire top half of your body is exposed to the air, it still feels like you’re entirely submerged. Drowning in Katsuki without want for oxygen.

His lips are chapped just like yours, yet they’re the softest thing you’ve ever felt. Gentle even with hungry teeth, tender even with his greedy tongue.

The water, once cool, feels boiling, like your bodies are giving off steam. His hands grab at your ass, fingertips digging into the fat of it before he lifts you to set you on the riverbank.

You immediately lock your legs around him, like you’re scared of him suddenly disappearing, but Katsuki attaches himself to you in the form of his mouth on your skin, nipping down your neck, sucking bruises down your shoulder and collarbone.

Frantic fingers find their way between your legs, grazing the inside of your thighs before softly brushing your sensitive folds.

“Missed you so much,” Katsuki grumbles, lowering himself in order to take one of your nipples into his mouth.

You hold his head tightly, pulling him further into you. “I missed you too, Kat. So much.”

The first finger sinks into your heat, making you whimper in satisfaction. Katsuki continues to suck on your hardened bud, swirling his tongue around it to distract you from the stretch of his second finger and the slight burn that comes with it.

“Fuck,” you gasp.

“I know, I know, I got you.” He uses a thumb to massage your clit, your legs trembling as your body begins to open up for him. “Can’t wait to feel your cunt again.”

“I’m ready,” you tell him. “I want you, please…”

“Not yet, sweetheart. I want you dripping’ before I give you my cock.”

You whine, thighs flexing around his waist. You aren’t giving him much room to work with, but you can’t stand the thought of letting him go. His hand is pressed tightly against you, fingers so deep in your pussy as he pumps and curls them. He finds your spot as if he had just touched you yesterday, always so good at reading you, and kisses your throat when you throw your head back.

He abuses the spongy tissue until you’re leaking into the water below, moaning his name and pulling his hair.

“Please, please, need you, Kat.”

He chuckles, an almost condescending, “shh shh, baby. It’s okay.”

He lines himself up and pushes in slowly—so slowly—his thick cock spreading your gummy walls. He feels impossibly large after so long apart, his tip alone stretching your entrance thin so that you scrunch your eyes shut.

“Feel so good already,” Katsuki groans. He pushes his hips forward, and even through the burn your body sucks him in further, begging for more.

“Takin’ me so well, fuck…”

Once he’s bottomed out, Katsuki stays still for several seconds, and your cunt clenches around him automatically, still trying to adjust to his size.

A slow rhythm to start, steady thrusts that drag along your walls and gently slide over your most sensitive spot. Moans stay caught in your throat, mouth open, and you know that as soon as you start making noise you won’t be able to stop.

Katsuki begins moving his hips faster, making the water splash around you on the bank. The chill of it is a stark contrast from the heat of Katsuki’s body and the affectionate burn in your chest.

His strong hands wrap around your head, holding you as he kisses you fiercely. His rhythm stutters, but his lips move against yours perfectly, forming the words, “I love you,” so desperately that it makes you ache. “I love you, I love you. I never stopped.”

“I love you too,” you breathe heavily into him, muscles tightening with every pointed thrust. Your sticky slickness drips out of you, making the slide of his cock effortless. He feels so good, so deep inside you the way he’s supposed to be. Always supposed to be.

“Squeezin’ me so sweet,” he croons, jaw dropping open as he loses himself in sensation. “Always so sweet to me…”

The feeling of his fingers on your clit again is enough to send you over the edge, your nails digging semi-circles into his back as you cry his name loud enough to echo in the emptiness around you.

The rhythmic pulsing of your orgasm milks the cum from Katsuki’s cock, the warmth of it coating your insides, filling you to the brim. He gasps with every thick string he shoots into you until he’s finally dry.

You let him rest his head on your shoulder for some time, giving you both a chance to catch your breath before you pull him out of the water and topple over into the grass.

The sun is setting, the sky painted orange and pink in the afterglow of yet another day. You admire the way it shines over the treetops, the rays of it bathing you in such a comforting way. Everything will be okay, you think. We can survive as long as we’re together.

“Guess I should go find us some food,” Katsuki eventually muses, adding a smirking, “gotta make sure my woman stays fed.”

You roll your eyes and give him a light shove. “Your woman can feed herself, thank you very much.”

“Don’t I know it,” he grins, wiggling his eyebrows. “Never seen you so cock-hungry.”

“Oh my gods, Katsuki!”

“I’m just sayin’!” he laughs. More like cackles.

Your glare holds no weight, but you still suck your teeth at him and mumble, “think I’d prefer the rats over this.”

“Won’t be nearly as filling as—”

You cut him off by rolling on top of him and covering his mouth with yours. “Stop talking.”

He hums, settling his hands on the small of your back. “Only if you keep doin’ this.”

“I will if you keep your promise to marry me.”

“Second I can, I will.”

2023©️shdo-xplosion. please do not plagiarize, alter, or repost my work to any other platforms.

PAID WITH AFFECTION ┊ TODOROKI SHOUTO

tags: GN reader, no quirk au, cuddling services and cuddle buddies, todoroki shouto is an overworked EMT, reader is a cuddle buddy, fluff, strangers to ‘is it ethical to have a crush on your cuddle buddy??!!’ god knows

wc: 1.7k

As an EMT, it was natural that Shouto be conscious of all the things around him — more so than most. After all, the job required quick thinking, keen eyes, a clear head and practiced hands. But for reasons he can’t touch upon, having you stand idly in his genkan wearing a pair of house slippers and an easy smile has his mind repeating a tedious loop, recalling every single coffee ring stain, stray sock, crease and crumb in his apartment with microscopic detail.

“Come in,” he says, lowering his head into a modest bow by way of habit. His voice is mercifully steady. You’re warm, so inviting that it disarms him. “I… I apologise for any mess. My friends requested you with the intention of surprising me”.

“They did leave a note at the end of the application to warn me,” the corner of your mouth lifts further, and you’re looking at him as if you’ve known him far longer than five minutes. Those kind eyes soften and wrinkle, “It was sweet of them to do this for you. But I do want to remind you that you can end our session at any point. I won’t mind”.

Shouto hears your voice, though the words roll over him in a gentle wave. His thoughts are muddied with fatigue, drifting elsewhere. You’ve moved closer but kept appropriate distance, head tilted in both curiosity and concern. Dipping to meet his gaze bids you to peer through your eyelashes, unintentionally demure as you call out to him.

“Are you sure you’re comfortable with—?”

“I trust them,” he quietly interrupts. A moment of patient silence passes as he collects himself, tongue peeking to wet his bottom lip, to cushion the words before they leave his mouth. “They wouldn’t do this if they thought I’d be uncomfortable”.

“Still,” you pause, fiddling with the sleeve of your sweatshirt. “You have an hour slot with me. Feel free to kick me out at any point”.

Red and white stands fall loose when he nods, resting over the bridge of his nose. Your eyes crinkle, gleaming with far off endearment at his obvious dishevelment. His hair is flat to one side, the impression of his couch cushion pressed pink into his right cheek; pant leg ridden up his calf, the other pooled around his ankles, his once white shirt had stretched in the dryer and now hung below the waist.

There’s the urge to apologise again and explain it away, but he wondered if it would offend you. After all, this was your job — or one of two, according to Midoriya. He’d been far more forthcoming about the whole thing. Shouto wasn’t supposed to find out, but Ochako is not as good at keeping her voice down as she thinks she is.

And Shouto is far nosier than they give him credit for. Slightly obsessive, he admits. If something is out of place, or it doesn’t make sense to him, he will pick at the problem until it bleeds.

Though he wouldn’t call this a problem. Atleast, not yet. The pads of your fingers skim gently over his wrist, squeezing his palm to retain his attention—

This could be the beginning of a big problem.

“This okay?” you apply more pressure and he swallows, overturning his hand so your fingers slide against the shallow of his palm. His heart line is light, curved like a half moon. “Shouto?”

“Sorry,” he tries to conceal a grimace. “I’m not usually like this. It has been a long week”.

“A long month from what I hear,” you add sombrely. Another reassuring squeeze. “But that’s what I’m here to help with”.

Shouto worried his inner lip between his teeth. “I’m not really… sure how these things are supposed to work,” he admits, disliking the uncertainty of it, not knowing how to find his footing.

“Well. How about I go over the fine print?” you hold him properly, knuckles entwined, the heel of your hand tucks against his life line. He can’t quite remember the last time he was shown such… casual affection.

Patients held him all the time — the younger ones, usually. Gripping his forearms, counting his fingers, braiding the colours in his hair. His friends were touchy, but his introverted tendencies often meant boundaries were assumed rather than asked for.

This is different. It feels as if he has missed a step climbing the stairs.

“Erotic or sexual behaviour is not permitted for the client nor the cuddler,” you continue, taking his silence as permission. “No use of tongue or teeth, no touching of genitals or intimate areas. And no nudity”.

“Right,” he rasps. Sex might be less unnerving than this.

“Your body will sometimes react to stimuli on its own. I understand that that alone is not a sign of consent or violation of the rules,” heat thrums under the skin of his cheeks as you level him with a kind look. “Just make sure to talk to me if anything is wrong, okay?”

“That’s a lot of rules for something as simple as cuddling”.

“Guess so. But they’re to keep us both safe,” you step closer. Something swoops in his belly, and his fingers twitch reflexively in your grasp. “We don’t need to jump right into it, either. We can sit and talk, if you like”.

God. The world is awash with colour, all because you’re in it. A sweet stranger. Todoroki Shouto, the loneliest man in the UA emergency unit. What his friends must think of him. He has reached a new low if they’d felt the need to hire someone to hug him.

Midoriya’s gentle voice reached his ears. Apologetic, but without the apology. Sorry that he wasn’t sorry. “I know it’s unorthodox, but you should give it a try, Shou. I mean, cuddles are great for your health!”

To which Ochako had added, “Yeah, Todoroki! Set an example!”

Conceding to his best friends wishes, the pair of you walk over to the couch. The cushions are wide enough for two bodies to lie comfortably. They yield under your shared weight, an embrace in itself. He couldn’t count the many nights spent sleeping here instead of his bed.

Your thighs are pressed together, body heat seeping through the fabric of his sweatpants. You’ve kept your hands locked together where they rest in your lap. Cautiously, he runs his thumb over your knuckles and finds no discomfort, only happiness at his reciprocation.

“Do you do this a lot?” he blurts, followed by a wince. “I mean—”

“I’ve been doing this for half a year,” you tell him amusedly. “Even so, I don't have many clients. I’m a little picky, and most of them only need a session or two if they’re going through something”.

Picky. That tidbit makes him happier than he thinks it should. “I’m glad I passed your vetting process, then,” he says.

“So am I,” you return. Your body shifts to give him your full attention. Eyes, chest, knees turning. A hand smooths over his wrist again, right to the crook of his elbow. “Your friends told me how hard you’ve been working. I’m happy to do this for you”.

Whatever this will be. Is he supposed to lean into you naturally and wrap his own arms around you? Would it be inappropriate to rest his head on your chest? He glances to your lap, a thread of longing woven through his heart as it flutters. It looks comfortable there. The thought pulls on his fatigue until it covers him like a blanket.

Unbeknownst to him, you have followed his line of sight to the spot where your bodies connect. His posture droops, shoulders falling forward. Your smile softens with realisation. “Shall we start off by having you rest in my lap?”

Shouto blinks away the haze, eyes imperceptibly wider. “Is that alright?”

You hum your assent. The sound is low, melodic, a hint of fondness. A beautiful stranger in his home, so at home; something about that relaxes him.

Shouto is anything but graceful when he flops onto your thighs, body draping along the sofa. He mutters a bashful apology that you wave away with a laugh, steadying his head while you recline into the back cushions.

Your thighs are plush, indelibly soft. They’re yours. You smell a little familiar; it prods unhelpfully at an old memory. A faceless silhouette he passed in the street, maybe an old patient. You must use the same scent, he thinks. That reel of film is soon overwritten with images of you, body curled above him as you reach for the throw draped over the back of the couch.

“Sleep, Shouto,” you murmur. “I’ll wake you when the session is over”.

His drawn out sigh of relief feels warm against your abdomen. The tension lessons with every minute that passes, dwindling into contentment as the rigidity seeps from his bones. Sinew becomes wet sand, heavy in his limbs, the muscles in his face falling slack so that his lips part. The corner of his mouth is wet.

Your fingers thread into his hair. They’re tender at his scalp, nails lightly scratching at the roots, combing front to back. A shiver runs through him when you reach the nape of his neck, curling the soft short strands around your fingertip.

Shouto finds himself fighting sleep despite your instruction. His consciousness wanes, reaching the surface for breath before he’s submerged again. He wanted to be awake for this, just a while longer.

That’s the last thing he recalls before the chime of your alarm. He startled in place and shied away from the noise, tucking himself into your stomach without much thought, realising his actions only as you began to shake with laughter. To a sleep addled Shouto, it might be the most pleasant thing he has ever heard.

“I take it you slept well?” you teased.

Shouto takes in the span of his ceiling. The sun has started to set, shadows stretching across the room. Simultaneously, five minutes and five years had passed in the span of a single nap.

That might be the best he has slept all year. And he concludes, perhaps, his brain-to-mouth filter still has yet to reconnect. Midoriya can answer for it later.

“Would it be unethical of me to book your entire calendar?”

💜7 mins in heaven with Dabi: Pt. 5💙

Continuation of Part 4

Walking back to the table, you notice Hitoshi eyeing you suspiciously. Part of you felt guilty towards Hitoshi considering what the two of you did this morning, while the other part of you felt smug that you finally one-uped the most notorious player on campus.

Casually, you sit next to Hitoshi which was Touya's previous spot. Reaching across the table, you grab your bag and open it again to finish eating your donut. Tomura was now diagonal from you and was shooting you a questioning look.

"Where's Touya?"

"I saw him go into the restroom as I came out." The lie rolled off your tongue easily, not even batting an eye as you take a bite of your donut. It tasted even sweeter than before.

Hitoshi shifts next to you, moving slightly closer as you stared back at Tomura innocently. Yo and Keigo were on the other side of Hitoshi and Tomura respectively, lost in their own conversation. Tomura's gaze was calculating, which was starting to make you uncomfortable. You assumed he was the quiet stay-in-my-business type, but now you weren't so sure. Thankfully Keigo noticed you were back and spoke up.

"Hey, (Y/n), are youf doin' anyfin' tonight?" The question was muffled around a mouthful of donut.

"Nope. Just free-loading with this guy." Elbowing Hitoshi playfully, you spare him a glance seeing that he was already staring at you with a gaze you didn't quite understand.

Looking back to Keigo, your answer seemed to trigger his memory of what he walked into this morning. His chewing slowed and Hitoshi shifted next to you again also noticing Keigo's gaze.

"Riigghhttt..." Keigo swallowed, uncertain, "well I was wondering if you wanted to come to a party with us tonight? It's being held at the same place as before."

Memories from that night flooded your mind and you couldn't help but sigh. That's when this whole mess started.

"Why do I get the feeling all you do is party?" You teased Keigo instead, setting your donut down on the bag as you leaned back into your seat. Your hands found their way to your lap, accidentally brushing against Hitoshi's hand which was resting on his thigh. His other hand was visible on the table, playing with the lid of his coffee cup absently.

Hitoshi subtly moves his hand and brushes against yours again, the two of you having your hands next to each other under the table.

Holding back a shy smile, you bite your lower lip as Keigo rolls his eyes. "We're in college! Partying is part of the learning experience!"

Just then, a body slumps into the seat in front of you. Everyone turns and looks at Touya whose gaze was solely fixated on you.

You tilt your head slightly in question, innocent enough for everyone else at the table but the knowing glint in your eyes had Touya's eyes flashing.

Hitoshi's hand twitches against yours under the table.

A closer look at Touya and you could see the flushed glowing skin on his cheeks. Raising an eyebrow, you lift the hand not next to Hitoshi and break off a piece of your donut, biting into it slowly.

"Are you good?" Hitoshi asks, speaking up for everyone at the table. Touya never breaks his gaze from you.

"Never better."

His words were low and knowing, but you shrug nonchalantly and turn back to Keigo. "Sure, I'll go."

"Yessss!" Keigo pumps the air with his arm.

"Go where?" Touya asks, and you can see him still staring at you in your peripheral.

"Oh, I just invited (Y/n) to the party tonight!" Keigo explains before turning to scold Yo for sneaking two more donuts.

Touya hums from across the table, probably thinking the same thing you did. You couldn't help the blush that found its way to your cheek, but you busied yourself with the donut, not looking up at anyone.

"I'll go too," Hitoshi speaks up suddenly, removing his hand from under the table to lean back and stretch his hands above his head. Keigo gasps harshly and everyone else at the table turns to look at him in surprise.

"You? At a party?!" Yo gaps at Hitoshi, chewed-up donut visible in his mouth. Hitoshi grimaces in disgust and looks down at his coffee before looking to stare at Touya.

"Why not? It seems as though I missed out on these 'learning experiences.'"

Touya didn't say anything in return but met Hitoshi's gaze head-on, his stare cold and unwavering making an uneasy feeling settle in your stomach.

~*~*~*~*

Breakfast ended soon after that as classes were starting for a few people, including you.

You parted ways with Hitoshi after discussing class schedules and deciding on a place to meet so you two could both head back to his dorm before the party.

Class went by in a blur, a few people talking about the dorms that got shut down and the few scandalous roommate situations that had come up as a result.

You tried eavesdropping on a few conversations wondering if your name would come up. Hitoshi was a low-key person, but since he was close friends with some notorious people on campus, you weren't sure what to expect.

"I tried asking Touya if I could stay with him, but he didn't even pay attention to me!" A girl whined to her friends in front of you as you flipped a page in your notebook, pretending to take notes.

A few of her friends 'awed' in pity, trying to console her. "Well, you know what they say about Touya...you should've known he wouldn't go back to you."

One of the friends spoke up truthfully and another shot her a 'shut-up' look. However, the girl whining only sniffed and nodded her head solemnly.

"Yeah...I know. If only I could relive that night again..." she sighs dreamily. This time all of her friends echo her dreamy sign.

"We all do," they say simultaneously.

Yikes.

Your lips curl up in disgust and tune them out, not bothering to listen to whatever details they were going to relive.

Absently, you start doodling on the paper. Little hearts and flowers scattered along the border. Your mind wonders to this morning, before the coffee shop. Sure, discovering you had somehow managed to one-up Touya was surprising, but Hitoshi's coy smirk was lodged in your brain.

The sound of his voice when he called you 'kitten' or just the simple fact he gave up his room for you to sleep in for however long you needed.

Not to mention the almost-kiss you had. Lately, it seemed like you've had a few of those close calls which didn't settle right in your stomach. First with Touya and then with Hitoshi, but out of the two, you felt more drawn to-

Your phone buzzed twice in succession, snapping you out of your daze.

brainwxshed: hey

bvrnt.eros: hey

Are you fucking kidding me?

You look at both messages, torn between who to answer first or if you should even answer them at all. Touya was the troubled one and the one you weren't too happy with at the moment no matter how downright sinful he was.

Hitoshi on the other hand has done nothing wrong to warrant your anger. Putting your pencil down, you slouch lower in your seat and open your phone, tapping on Hitoshi's message.

you: hii

You see him typing, but your fingers itch to tap on Touya's message too.

Should I? What does he have to say? Is he going to talk about this morning? Is he-

brainwxshed: sooo about this party later...what should i expect? fuck that sounds so lame...

You smile fondly.

you: you don't have to go if you're uncomfortable. im not to big on parties either. I just went to one that one time.

And look at my consequences.

brainwxshed: im going if you're going. gotta protect my little kitten.

brainwxshed: *the little kitten.

Your face heats and you drop your phone on your desk, holding in a squeal. Butterflies erupted in your stomach as it did backflips. Asshole. You knew that wasn't a typo and he was teasing you again but you couldn't find it in you to be mad.

Rubbing your face with your hands, you pick your phone up and switch to Touya's message to hopefully calm down.

you: what?

bvrnt.eros: hm...you're cold, (Y/n). i think i should be the one mad at you for what you did to me this morning.

Yep. There it is.

you: not my fault.

bvrnt.eros: oh dollface...but it was. walking off like that and leaving me alone to take care of myself after you made me so fucking hard...

Conflicting emotions shot through you.

you: again...not intentional so it's not my fault.

bvrnt.eros: i don't think you understand the concept of sexting, let me explain-

Gritting your teeth, you go back to Hitoshi's message.

you: protection from...?

brainwxshed: hey, you never know. i've heard stories and one thing i know for sure is that college parties are never good☝🏻...and they're crowded.

you: ahh...is that why you never went to one?

brainwxshed: ...partially. but also, why go when i can watch studio ghibli films in my dorm and draw?

Just then another message popped down from Touya.

bvrnt.eros: so sexting is basically like dirty talk over text. i said you made me hard this morning and i jerked off to the thought of you in the donut shop bathroom and you're supposed to respond with something sexy to keep the conversation going.

Oh my-

Angrily you tap on the message.

you: im not stupid and im not sexting you.

bvrnt.eros: boooo 🍅

You tap back to Hitoshi's message.

you: that sounds nice actually. if you wanna stay in your dorm, i'll stay with you.

brainwxshed: stay with me? careful kitten~ we might end up like this morning~

Your face heats up again.

you: i have no idea what you're talking about.

brainwxshed: 'stay with me' and i can show you later~

Another message from Touya pops down

bvrnt.eros: soo...this party tonight is kinda like our anniversary hm? how should we celebrate 👀

With every message Touya sends, you feel more agitated. He's ruining the mood that keeps building between you and Hitoshi. You swipe his message away and return to Hitoshi's message.

you: are you gonna kiss me for real this time?

Or so you thought.

bvrnt.eros: ...fuck.

bvrnt.eros: dollface i would kiss you all over if you let me.

Fuck.

Your body went ridged seeing Touya respond to the message meant for Hitoshi. Realizing you sent it to the wrong person and adding fuel to the fire that you were so desperately trying to put out.

Do I tell him that wasn't for him? Will he know I meant to send that to Hitoshi? How do I respond to Hitoshi now?

Your fingers twitch over your keypad, panic rising inside of you. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck-

bvrnt.eros: im looking forward to tonight, (Y/n).

Your fingers frantically type out many different forms of 'no' and 'that wasn't for you' but couldn't find one to settle on and send. The fact that Hitoshi was also waiting on a response made you panic even more.

Calm down, (Y/n).

Locking your phone, you set it down and take a deep breath. Deciding not to say anything more and make it worse, you shakily put your phone down and tune back into the professor who was dismissing the class.

You had to meet up with Hitoshi soon anyways and you weren't sure you could even look him in the eyes. Guilt washes over you, not knowing what to do or how to fix this situation. Tonight was not going to be fun.

~*~*~*~*

You met with Hitoshi soon after.

He was smirking at you avoiding him, but you knew he probably thought you were embarrassed from the text conversation when in reality that wasn't the case at all. Maybe under different circumstances you might've been, but because you were so careless-

"I need to stop at my old dorm and get extra clothes," remembering the text from this morning about the repairs not being finished and since you only packed for today, you needed more clothes.

"Sure," Hitoshi nods as the two of you begin to walk to the South dorms. "So..." he starts, looking at you from the corner of his eye.

You gulp.

"So?"

Hitoshi smirks, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"So about earlier..."

"Earlier? What happened earlier?" Panic rose in your chest. Did he find out? Did Touya screenshot your message and send it to him? Oh God what if-

Hitoshi turns and cuts in front of you, a pierced eyebrow raised in concern. "The party. You never told me what to expect."

A heavy breath leaves you in a rush.

"Right. The party." Shouldering past Hitoshi, you try to calm down, opening the door to the South dorms, frigid air hitting you like a ton of bricks.

Cursing lightly, you walk faster to your room and fumble with the door, footsteps cautiously catching up.

"Um..." Throwing open the door, you let Hitoshi in as you go to rummage through your closet. "Well, there's going to be a lot of people and alcohol. Music can be expected too. Just typical college party stuff," you mouth off quickly, still rattled thinking that Hitoshi found out about earlier.

Hitoshi wasn't even paying attention, walking around your dorm room and observing the little trinkets and decorations you had. It's only been one night, but you did miss it here. You turn back to your closet and pack a week's worth of clothes just in case and shove them into a bag.

"I really hope they fix the heater soon. I don't want to overstay or anything," you comment absently, folding a pair of pants.

"I thought you liked staying with me?" Hitoshi's voice was low and closer than expected, making you jump. Well, that certainly didn't take long for him to bring that part of the conversation up.

It felt as though he was right by your ear and you couldn't find the courage to turn around. Shakily, you place the pants in your bag and sidestep before turning and walking to your dresser to pull out undergarments.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Hitoshi still standing there, probably confused, before slowly turning towards you again.

"I do! I mean, thank you, but still. A week is a long time," you explain, counting off a checklist in your brain. Now...what to wear tonight...

You hastily pull open the bottom drawer, finding a short black dress you've only worn once before.

"Okay, I'm finished." Turning to Hitoshi, you shove the dress in the bag and walk back towards the door.

"Let's go, I'm freezing." Smiling innocently, Hitoshi regards you with a thoughtful look, not saying anything as you two leave the room. Locking the door and exiting the building was met with silence.

Hitoshi seemed lost in his thoughts and didn't say a word on the way back to his dorm for the two of you to get ready.

~*~*~*~*

The party was already packed by the time you and Hitoshi showed up. He stuck close to your side, looking uncomfortable at the number of people in such a small space. You didn't blame him, also wanting to get out of here as soon as possible and hopefully avoid Touya.

Of course, fate has other plans for you.

"(Y/n) and Hitoshi, over here!" Keigo calls out loudly over the music. Cursing, you trudge over and avoid looking at the piercing blue eyes already next to Keigo.

A warm flush finds its way to your face anyway and you manage a small smile at Keigo. Tomura and Yo were off to the side talking while drinking some beers. You try to recall if you saw them at the previous party but the only thing you remember is woodsy musk, sandalwood, and cigarette smoke.

I need to get out of here.

"Perfect timing! We were just about to play spin the bottle truth or dare!" Keigo motions to the large group of people surrounding the area and they cheer loudly.

Nope.

You take a large step back holding up your hands. "Have fun!"

"Awh c'mon, (Y/n)," Touya teases across from you. "It'll be fun. Just like last time." After stressing the last part, he glances at Hitoshi smugly and another wave of guilt washes over you.

You grit your teeth and shake your head, anxiety creeping up your spine. To your surprise, Hitoshi only steps forward.

"I'll play."

Keigo cheers excitedly, pumping his fist. "Oh, dude, this is the best day ever!"

Tomura had stopped talking to Yo, who was still talking regardless if Tomura was listening or not, observing the scene in front of him. Uncomfortable wasn't even a strong enough word you'd use to describe the situation.

Touya looked calm and collected as Hitoshi walked to stand next to him, the two of them now staring at you expectantly.

Purple and blue stared at you hotly, warmth spreading across your cheeks as they had looks of longing. Both held heat and memories of almost-kisses, but only one of them had a false knowing of what you said earlier.

"Uh..." Not knowing what to do, the whole group of college students now eagerly waited for you to answer.

"GUESS WHO'S BACK, FUCKERS!" The door slammed open suddenly, a loud voice ringing loud over the music.

Everyone turned to the door and loud cheers rang out, cutting the tension. Your shoulders sag in relief seeing Touya and Hitoshi finally look away from you. You follow their gaze seeing a blonde-haired man wearing black joggers and a black sweatshirt grinning manically at everyone welcoming him back.

"Kat!" Keigo calls out, running up to clap him on the back. "Man, this day really couldn't get any better!"

Well, at least someone is having a good time.

Kat claps Keigo on the back too and walks over to the group in front of you. Yo groans, making Kat roll his eyes and flick him on the forehead.

Yo scowls and rubs his head. Tomura greets Kat with a small smile and nod, offering to get him a beer. Touya grins and steps up, ruffling the spikey blonde hair making Kat snarl as he swats the hand away. Hitoshi was last, dapping up Kat fondly with a muted, "Hey, bro."

Hitoshi turns to you and motions you over.

"Katsuki, this is (Y/n). (Y/n), this is Katsuki." You awkwardly smile, not sure if this was the right time to be meeting Hitoshi's roommate. Brother?

"Hey," Katsuki smirks, giving Hitoshi a look you didn't miss. Or Touya. "Hitoshi told me the situation already. It's cool if you still need a place to stay, but I'll need my room back."

The realization hit you suddenly and you risk a glance at Hitoshi who also had a small blush on his face, avoiding your gaze.

Seeing him blush made you blush more, awkwardly shifting your stance. Katsuki cackles at the sight of you and Hitoshi, but lays off the teasing, turning to Tomura who hands him a beer.

"So what are we doing?" He asks, biting the lid off with his teeth. Your mouth drops open slightly in awe as Keigo happily fills Katsuki in.

"Heh, spin the bottle, 'Toshi? What the hell happened when I was away?" Katsuki asks, shooting you another quick glance.

Hitoshi grumbles something you can't hear, making Katsuki smirk, and the both of them walk back to the circle. You go to follow and notice Touya's seething face once Hitoshi leaves your field of vision.

You quickly move away and go back to your previous spot, Tomura now standing next to you. "Are you okay?"

He whispered the question low, and you let out a huge breath you didn't know you were holding.

"No."

Tomura reaches out a hand, concerned, and you grab it shakily. He squeezes your hand and you squeeze it back, thankful for the reassurance.

"Right! So who wants to start?" Keigo announces to the large group of college students. A lot of cheers and drunken words rang out.

Tomura keeps a hold of your hand, tucking into your side as you stare at the damned bottle on the table. Touya and Hitoshi were back to standing next to each other across from you and if they were staring at you and Tomura holding hands, you couldn't find it in you to care. Though you were sure Tomura was staring right back without a care in the world.

"You're going to have to make a decision sometime." Tomura lays his head on your shoulder, murmuring solemnly. The question doesn't surprise you since you noticed his observation skills, so you were sure he had caught on long ago.

"...I know," you mutter back, still staring at the bottle unblinkingly. It was nice to have someone to talk to. You haven't told anyone of the situation going on and the drama that followed, so finding comfort in Tomura was reassuring and needed. Although unexpected.

"Do you have any clue which one?" Tomura asks, the both of you locked in your own world, watching Katsuki be the first one to spin.

Do I?

Honestly, it felt like you've been debating this question constantly for the past few days. Both made your heart race with excitement. Touya kept you on your toes but had a bad reputation and a cocky attitude to match. Hitoshi was unexpected in the way he welcomed you with open arms, but loved to tease you endlessly.

As of right now, there were no cons with Hitoshi but yet something still prevented you from committing fully.

"Not a clue," you finally admit, leaning your cheek on Tomura's head.

Tomura hums and the two of you watch Katsuki dare Yo to do a keg stand. Yo blanches as the crowd starts chanting his name in encouragement.

"Great. Now I'll have to deal with that later," Tomura sighs, annoyed.

Yo glares at a smirking Katsuki before flipping himself into a handstand, his shirt falling down making the crowd whistle and catcall him jokingly.

"Hm?"

"Yo. He's my roommate and cannot handle anything more than 2 beers," Tomura explains. "Which, Katsuki knows that."

You hum again and watch Yo stumble back down on his feet, looking green. Katsuki throws his arm around Yo's neck, saying something which only had Yo hiccuping in response.

"Your turn to spin, Yo!" Keigo exclaims excitedly.

Yo sways to the table and half-heartedly spins the bottle. It didn't spin very much and slowly made its way to you. You grip Tomura's hand tighter, watching the bottle stop.

Keigo cheers loudly.

"Truth or dare, (Y/n)?" Yo slurs, trying to focus his gaze on you.

"Uh...truth?" You whisper almost shyly, hearing the crowd boo.

Yo holds a hand to his chin to think. "Hm...who do you like more-"

"Dare!" You cut him off, not wanting him to finish that sentence. You were not going to risk that. People cheer at your change of heart.

"Okayyyy," Yo hiccups, "I dare you to do a 7 minutes in heaven with someone."

Yeah, no, that's completely better.

Keigo all but squeals, looking like he just won the lottery with how this night is going and Tomura squeezes your hand again tightly.

"Spin," Yo motions to the bottle, waiting for you.

The air seemed to crackle with electricity as you reached for the bottle, spinning it as hard as you could, praying it'd land on anyone but those two.

Touya and Hitoshi's gaze intensely watched the bottle, as the rest of the group cheered unknowingly at the tension. Your palms felt sweaty as anxiety loomed over you seeing the damned bottle slow as it towards Touya and Hitoshi.

It came to stop and the crowd 'ooh-ed' trying to figure out who it was pointing at.

"Is it...both of them?" Tomura murmured in awe, as Keigo whistled.

"Alright, I'll be the judge!" Keigo walked over to you and squatted down to see who the bottle was lined up with. "Oh wow...I've never seen this before. Ladies and gentlemen, it's split down the middle...we have a tie!" Keigo announces, hopping up.

The crowd gets hyped, all the girls shooting you a dirty look, but you really couldn't care because you were seconds away from passing out.

"Well, (Y/n)? Which one are you going to choose?"

~*~*~*~*

Touya's hitlist taglist:

@spaceisout @deputy-videogamer @magpiesworld @blahblahblahhhhhhhhhhhhhh @mod-hadagile @whokillednyx @ittybittywallflower @bubblewordsofsodapop @poopiepoopie123 @frontier-renegade @windex-princess-ami @yourfavoriteloover @ashash @shamefulwitch @allthingsleviackerman @97britt

𝓐𝓵𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓐𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓨𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓼 — the anthology

desc. collection of heavy angst mini-series, pure hurt no comfort. set in the same universe.

notes. posting date tbd. target to start after sn/sy. only 5 episodes each.

[S1] 𝓑𝓪𝓻𝓮𝓵𝔂 𝓑𝓮𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓭

↳ ryomen sukuna/reader

following a one-night stand with renowned music producer ryomen sukuna, an accidental pregnancy leaves you grappling with the pain of being kept in secrecy as nothing more than an obligation for him. because in his world, the only people he truly cares about are his 4-year old daughter and his ex-fiancée.

[S2] 𝒾𝓃 𝓂𝑒𝓂𝑜𝓇𝓎 𝑜𝒻 𝓎𝑜𝓊

↳ gojo satoru/reader (feat. geto suguru)

when gojo satoru wakes up from a coma with no memories of his own wife, you struggle to reconnect and remind him of the love you once shared. not when all he remembers is having that same love with someone from his past.

'cause i love the way you call me baby—

bakugou x reader

wc: 15.6k+

warnings: 18+, explicit language, spicy situations (no smut), bakugou is like really bad at feelings, kirishima continues to be a well-meaning menace, angst, fluff, pro hero au

< < < part one |

7:32 A

Bakugou is always so subtly punctual.

By the time you gather the will to meet the chilly morning head on, he is already sitting in your parking lot. The black SUV is idling quietly and he isn't rolling down the window, urging you to hurry your ass up or honking like he'd threatened to at work only days ago. His eyes, much brighter than yours this early, are already on you—as they seem to always be, these days—and you swear it is the cold bite in the air that steals the breath from your lungs.

Though the warmth of your apartment is enticing, you give him a small wave (that he doesn’t return) before locking the door behind you. There is a thin layer of ice covering the short walkway in front of the complex and you strain your toes in your fuzzy boots while stepping carefully, though the effort not to make a fool of yourself is wasted; the pro hero waiting safely inside his vehicle laughs, loudly, when your foot slides across the ice, hands going to grip the rail along the sidewalk so tightly, you fear it'll yank loose from the stud.

It's the first thing you hear out of him, so early in the morning, his brash laughter. Despite the offense, the giggle that bubbles out of you, too, can't be helped.

"Thanks so much for the help, sir!" Is the first thing out of you upon yanking open the door and scrambling in, eager to bask in the warmth of his vehicle (and him).

Immediately, the mischievous glint in his eye dissipates. "Don't start with that crap."

Though you're well aware of what he means, you tilt your head curiously; early morning be damned, you can always find the will to tease your boss. "Crap, sir? I'm afraid I don't follow."

Bakugou throws his car in reverse and leans close, putting his arm around your seat as he backs out of the parking lot. The muscle in his cheek is jumping as he grits his teeth, drawing your eyes to the sharp cut of his jaw, and the scent of his cologne almost makes you sigh audibly. It smells expensive, like orchids and spice and comfort, and sleep is still so heavy upon you that it takes genuine effort not to sink forward to bury your face in his chest.

With his arm still around the seat, he glares down at you. "You clock in this morning?"

"No sir, but—"

"Bakugou." He barks, lips pulling back slightly, enough to show his canines, enough to show how serious he is.

A small smile graces you, one that cools the flickering heat in his red eyes, and you say, "Bakugou."

His gaze lingers for another moment, another thud of your heartbeat, before he shifts in his seat and begins to drive. "The hell are we going, anyway?"

Yukiko—the Sports Illustrated representative who will be interviewing Bakugou later—has already sent you the address of the diner she'd like to meet at. The printed out email is folded into the small backpack you'd brought along for the day, but the location has been typed into your phone so many times, it's well ingrained in your memory at this point. The navigation app in his expensive, massive car could easily guide him, but he lets you pull up Google Maps on your phone, let’s you tell him to take a left at the next stop sign, let's you direct him.

(The back up camera on the dash of the SUV could have also helped him get out of the parking lot; turning around, putting an arm behind your seat, leaning close had all been a choice.)

(It's still a young enough morning that you're embarrassed for already falling prey to this giddy, school-girl manner—as you always seem to do, these days—though it's safe to say this isn't anything new, not with Bakugou.)

The route offers a 45 minute drive and this acknowledgement is met with a disgruntled groan as you say it. There's a weighted, guilty part of you that feels bad again that you've dragged him to do this bullshit ass thing, though Bakugou does little more than huff and sigh; days ago, when you'd voiced the penitent nerves gnawing at you, he'd said (with red ears),

"I'm not forcing you, if you don't wanna go, don't."

and that hadn't been what you meant and that's what you told him, to which he replied (eyes on his monitor),

"Then cram it. We're goin'."

It almost feels like he's just waiting for you to say something, because he sends you fleeting little glances everytime he checks his rear view mirror, ready to cut you off at the first chance should you start that crap again. It takes all your strength to bite back a smile, to keep your hands and gaze on the phone.

Things with your boss have changed—subtly. There's this air that settles between the two of you now—different than before, when every thought you had ended in a question mark—and it's almost a little awkward, like at any moment something could come forth from either one of you and it would be somehow both unexpected and yet not entirely.

The lock on Red Riot’s door has been replaced, it's no longer a hassle to open (one less struggle in your morning); administrator privileges have been granted to you in order to change the schedule easier, quicker ("might as well have 'em, since you bother me about it all the damn time"); a single cup coffee maker appeared on your desk overnight.

Bakugou has asked you to lunch one time—"you hungry or what?"—and if you hadn't already eaten with Reverse, you would have indulged him (and yourself). That snub—and the unreadable look on his face—has haunted you more than once late at night, springing your eyes open as your brain worked through all the things he might have said during a meal with a friend and not under the guise of a work related afternoon.

Maybe he would have complimented you, trying to remain indifferent while admitting he thought you looked nice, or maybe the afternoon wouldn't have ended, extending into the evening, the two of you unable to fall back into a routine that—somewhere along the way—began to feel limited.

"Oi!" He snaps, and you jerk your eyes from your reverie, away from the window and back down to your phone.

"Oh, um, oh, shit," the heat of Bakugou's glare is scorching the skin of your face, "you need to change lanes, like, now."

"Are you fucking kidding me—" He leans completely away (another choice, one that has you grimacing to yourself) while looking behind him, probably breaking several traffic laws because of your absent-mindedness. "Gimme that!" One of his hands completely encompasses your own, warm fingers sliding between yours and the phone before he snatches it away.

"Sorry." The sheepish smile you send him goes wholly ignored. "Am I fired, sir, from navigating?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely," Bakugou spits, "you're the worst."

Maybe he would have held your hand or paid for your meal, but maybe he would have swatted at you for trying to steal from his plate. Maybe he would have insulted your taste in food, or chastised your less-than-healthy meal option.

You would have enjoyed it all the same.

—

8:36 A

There's a handful of things you know about the interview:

The topic at hand is hero life after graduating

Absolutely no questions about any past, present or future cases

Absolutely no personal questions, such as religious views, political opinions, or the intimate details of Dynamight's notoriously private love life

The whole interview will be video recorded and released on YouTube later—along with a few behind-the-scenes questions—in a few months

The photo shoot will take place at a separate location

The diner the company rented out is nice, decorated with neon lights and posters of American icons: Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King Jr., and the like. It's a little tacky, you think, but cute.

Bakugou thinks it doesn't make any damn sense to have the interview here, considering it has nothing to do with hero work—his or any other in Japan. It’s a valid point; while you agree with the argument, there is a pink and white jukebox near the entrance that is just waiting for you to start throwing your paycheck its way.

"Would you rather it be at your apartment, or the office?"

It's gloomy out, skies a sleepy mixture of blue and gray, and the dim glow filtering through the windows compliments him; it's Bakugou in a different light, a tranquil one, as if the weather is any indication of his change in attitude from those feral U.A days.

"Fuck no," he grumbles, ever unrefined, slouching into the table as if it will swallow him up and deliver him from this personal hell of your own making.

Yukiko is a few minutes late—despite the two of you being a few minutes late—so you're sitting across from him, leaning forward so that neither of you have to speak loud or disrupt the morning lingering in the empty restaurant. There's a waitress behind the counter brewing a pot of coffee and you're tempted to ask for a cup.

"Then cram it, sir." The unstoppable smile that blooms is hidden behind your fist, trying in earnest to press your mouth against your palm so he won't detonate.

"Think you're real fucking funny, don't ya'?" His carmine eyes are impossibly small and, though the sight might have scared you at one point, all it does is roll your eyes to the window. When you look back at him, he's staring hard at your face; the annoyance is undeniable, but there's something lingering between the clench of his teeth.

His hands are resting on the table, only inches from yours, and the urge to reach out and touch him fills you so abruptly that even he notices the motion of your fingers.

But—like always, these days—the doors to the diner swing open and the sounds of technical equipment and cameras flashing tell you all you need to know without ever turning around.

"My hero!" Yukiko beams, though your boss visibly recoils.

The first thing you notice about her is how professionally stunning she is—and the second is the quick up-and-down scan Bakugou gives her.

With a poreless face and smile so bright you nearly need to squint, she greets the both of you in such a charming way, any frustration you'd held at her for being late is immediately soothed. Her hair is long and dark, thick, curled in a way that is meant to look effortless (and it does), falling near her collarbones where two dainty necklaces ornament her. The pantsuit she's wearing does wonders for her skin tone and you are reminded of your own slightly damp clothes, outfitted in a jacket that probably makes you look puffer than usual.

When she calls him Dynamight, he has the decency to nod once and grit out, "Bakugou."

Then she turns to you in the plastic, pink booth across from him and asks, "Mind if I sit here for the cameras? You look like you would enjoy a milkshake!"

Life isn't a competition, and Yukiko's overwhelming beauty and professionalism (and charm and fashion sense and cute laugh and manicured nails and fit figure) doesn't mean that you are any less than her, but the insecurity rising within you while sliding from the booth is remorseless. She looks like the type of person that's been cut from the pages of a magazine with a perfectly scripted personality and has been pasted over your own face in the image of you and Bakugou in the diner.

It's so ridiculous, you tell yourself over and over again, because it is, but she's known him all of seven minutes and already she's calling him by his name. You attempt to remind yourself that the seven months it had taken you were all by choice, but then Yukiko laughs when he insists his entire hero moniker be in the magazine and you’re pouting.

It's nine in the morning and you are drinking a milkshake at the counter, far out of the way of the camera, far out of the way of Dynamight and his little bubble.

Last night, as you were scrutinizing the directions to the diner fervently, you'd thought of a few different ways this day might go; feeling pitiful and drowning yourself in milk and ice cream was not a scenario you had considered.

Yukiko starts by asking him questions about the area, if he's familiar with it at all, and this dissolves into a small discussion about where he was born—Atami, near the sea (a fact you were unaware of)—though he moved to Musutafu when he was very young, due in part to his father's career.

Of course, nothing is as easy as your boss up and giving this information away; the representative is already beginning to look a little flustered at the thirty minutes it takes in order to obtain that much.

(An image is born into your imagination of baby Bakugou, diapered Dynamight, in tiny swim trunks by the ocean with a little, chubby tummy. It earns you a sharp glance when you laugh quietly at it, ruby eyes narrowed as if he knows.)

"I'll go where I'm needed." Is what he spits out, arms crossed, when Yukiko asks if he plans to stay in Musutafu for the rest of his life. The question takes a slight turn towards plans for a family and if he'll raise any children here, but his stubborn silence is enough of an answer.

That certainly wasn't an approved subject.

Another surge of guilt rises at how awkward he looks, more than uncomfortable with his shoulders up around his ears. You think he’d rather be at home, catching up on some rest—he surely deserves it—and the pit in your stomach deepens until she brings up the topic of that one day, with the sludge villain, and you think maybe not, afterall. Maybe he likes it this way, so far from the child he once was, so much stronger and different.

"I’m not worried about shit from way back then," he grunts, leaning a little further back in the booth, grasping for distance. "Thought you were supposed to be asking me about the present, how much 'm dominating the hero board right now."

Yukiko laughs—musical, pleasant, rehearsed—but Bakugou isn't joking. She spares the cameraman another look, something she's been doing frequently, and you assume it's an indication on where they'll need to cut certain footage.

One of the crewmen holding the lights pins you with an expectant look, as if you should perhaps be sheepish for his gruffness, but you just send the man a simple smile. You're not his handler; if Bakugou wants his own milkshake, you'll get him one, but you aren't here to school him on how to act, nor to ask for forgiveness either.

It makes you wonder if you've grown used to it all, being so close to the warmth of him. Nothing that he's said so far has taken you off guard or made you flinch, and you've even found yourself surprised at the look on the representative's face when her sculpted mask cracks. Maybe he's calloused you, gotten you used to the heat in which he constantly burns.

Something about that is comforting.

"It's almost intimidating, how fierce you are against competition, even when that competition is made up of heroes you graduated with—"

"My assist rate is nearly triple what it was last year."

"Hey," it’s not difficult to tell where she was going with her question and you definitely should not be hissing at him, but you can't help yourself. He looks at you almost instantly. "Stop interrupting."

The scowl he sends burns your face as if he'd touched it with his own hands, but he only grumbles to himself before turning his attention back to Yukiko. You may not apologize for him, but you'll definitely encourage him to mind his manners. Whatever surprise you think you might have seen on Yukiko's face is gone when you look at her, and she nods once in thanks.

If you let him walk all over you, he will, and you wonder if you should have warned her of that earlier. It's not like he means to, but he has the kind of innate confidence most people don't and sometimes it manifests as arrogance, but they should have known that, surely? Bakugou commands the attention of everyone when he steps into the room because his presence is massive, authoritative, the kind that villains cower in.

The kind that says I am here.

(or, I am here, you fucking bastard.)

"Does it ever bother you to hear that you are being likened to heroes like Endeavor or Snipe? The kind of men that leave certain people divided when it comes to their approach to heroism?"

“I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. They shouldn’t be comparin’ me in the first place.” Bakugou tightens his arms around his chest (you’re thankful he’s wearing a long-sleeve shirt, though it only masks the tension in his biceps in the most minute way) and casts you a quick glance, anticipating your reaction to what he says next. “You worry about the crap people say about you?”

Yukiko sits back a little in her seat and smiles—practiced, restrained—before clearing her throat. She doesn’t answer, only asks, "Does it ever bother you to be compared to Deku, who is projected to be the next Symbol of Peace?"

The diner goes so silent that everyone can hear Yukiko's jewelry clink as she shifts. So silent that everyone can hear you choke on your milkshake (you aren't spared a glance, though, because you are still outside the bubble).

All you can think is that if Bakugou was going to blow the place to hell, he would have done so by now. At a different time in his life, you assume he might have gone berserk and shit talked Deku until people were having to hold him down in the booth—but now he just stares across the table, thinking.

The representative seems unable to look away and shudders; you're glad you can't see the exact expression on his face, though one you have seen comes to mind: in the bright lights of the conference room, footage you shouldn’t have been privy to still casting a faded picture on the wall, an unpleasant, clammy hand on your lower back. The memory heats you, almost the same way it had that day, though it’s less embarrassed now and more fond as you take in the jut of his chin, the line of his sharp nose in the downcast morning light.

("My hero!")

"I ain't gonna talk about that damn Deku."

Even if she wanted more from him, even if she meant to rile him up for some kind of sales-boosting answer, Yukiko only nods and takes a long pause before turning to the cameraman. Her beaming smile is wavering the tiniest bit—something obvious to you because you’ve been obsessing over her this entire time. "Quick break?"

Bakugou is up and out of the booth, stalking towards the door before her face has time to flatten, and you take that as your cue. The sky is still the same dismal shade, even though you've been at the interview for nearly an hour, and it dampens one of the sunny scenarios you'd imagined for today.

The warpath doesn’t end once he’s outside, nearly ripping the car door off its hinges so he can climb in and slam it shut behind him. The silence is so tense that you try your best to follow quietly, closing your door gently just in case it will reignite him somehow. Bakugou doesn't say anything, just throws his head back against the seat and tries in earnest to glare a hole through the ceiling of the car.

You go through a number of different ways to ask if he’s alright (“are you okay?” or “you good, man?” or “is there anything I can do, sir?”) but you can already tell that all of them would just be met with grunted, ‘m fine. So you try to approach him a different way, the kind of way you would a friend that was upset, saying weightless things just to steal their mind from anything stressful.

“I didn’t know you were born in Atami.” Rain starts to lightly fall against the SUV. “That sounds nice—do you ever go back there?”

“You askin’ questions now too?” Bakugou shoots, but it leads without malice, without bite as he keeps his eyes fixed.

Turning your head to watch the rain, you murmur out a quiet “sorry”, pressing your lips together to stop them from betraying you by frowning. He’s upset, and you would be too; constantly shadowed by other heroes, even when the topic of Dynamight only—Bakugou himself—is assured; triggers written down, buttons pressed, waiting just outside the blast zone for a response that will provoke the stereotypical headlines that readers go berserk for. It’s not his fault. At the sound of your voice, his hair shifts against the headrest as he turns to look at you, quick, before sighing.

“We used to go a lot during the summer, but I haven’t been back in years.” His voice is mild, extinguished for the moment. “Don’t have the time.”

“We should go,” you say it urgently, without thinking, trying to cling to something that will lighten the mood. “In the summer when it’s nice. If we plan it out right, we can maybe write it off as a work thing.” The grin on your face is probably embarrassing, but you wiggle your eyebrows playfully.

Bakugou huffs out a laugh, unsmiling, before his own brows pull down as the words, and their meaning, settle in his ears. “Doesn’t hafta’ be a work thing.”

Neither of you have spoken about what happened that day. Neither of you have spoken about what would have happened if Kirishima hadn’t shown up.

For a nerve-wracking, paralyzing moment, as your sweaty toes begin to curl in their boots, it almost looks like he’s going to.

“Look, I don't know—fuck—this is so fucking—” Bakugou’s hands go to the steering wheel and he grips it, the leather making an audible noise as his fingers tighten. He refuses to face you—mouth slightly open, surprised even though you thought you wouldn’t be—and instead glares forward at the diner, as if it’s somehow Yukiko’s fault neither of you know how to talk about this, about It.

After a moment of prolonged silence, you swallow thickly and realize he isn’t continuing because Yukiko is, in fact, standing in the window, waving the both of you back inside. When you nod at her, she crosses her arms but walks away, and Bakugou sighs.

“I’m sorry.” It blurts out before it can be stopped. A little bit of anger is left in his eyes and he directs it straight at you. “I’m sorry you have to come here on your day off and do this thing that you can't stand.”

He’s certainly tired of hearing your guilt about this, that much you’re sure of, but the expression that washes over him still surprises you; completely unhappy, even more so by what you’ve said, and almost—hurt that you keep apologizing.

“You’re so—” with a grunt, he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, clearing it, before glaring at you. No, not glaring, not quite. Something softer. “You think I’m the kinda guy that does shit he doesn’t want to, idiot?”

“Bakugou, you hate this kind of stuff,” it sounds like you’re asking for absolution and it only makes things worse.

Bakugou just shakes his head again as if you aren’t understanding what he’s saying. Maybe you aren’t.

—

11:12 A

The first thing Yukiko says when the interview finally concludes is, “the company has already set up lunch at the arena, if we could all make our way there!”

And the first thing Bakugou says in response to this is, “as fucking if.”

But by this point, after struggling for two hours with him, she must be hardening up to his bark and bite, because she doesn’t say anything or try to stop him as he beelines for the exit. Which leaves you scrambling behind him, giving a half-bow to every disgruntled person you pass while muttering, “thank you, thank you so much, we had a great time, can’t wait to see the article”.

It’s finally stopped raining, but the sun is still hidden behind a wintery haze; there’s a chill inside his car, the kind that settles in unoccupied spaces (the kind that exists when Bakugou isn’t around). It seems to calm down your boss instantly—that, and the fact that all the questions are finally done.

“That wasn’t so bad!"

Near the end, Yukiko asked if Bakugou had any other plans for his future, if being a hero didn't work out somehow, and he looked between you and her, and then her and the camera, and then you and then her and then you and—

Then he said, "What kind of stupid fucking question is that?"

He's giving you that same look right now (bewildered, disbelieving, hassled). Still, you try to charm the expression off his face by smiling and telling him,

"You did great Bakugou, I'm proud of you!" It earns you a soft snort and relaxed, avoidant eyes. "Now, to the arena!"

"'m not eatin' at that place. Who knows what type'a tasteless shit they catered." He’s quick to catch you taking out your phone and snatches it away before you can unlock it. "I know where 'm going, I don't need you trying to kill us again."

An exaggerated pout works its way to your lips. "Aw, come on Bakugou, don't you trust me?"

He huffs but the use of his name doesn’t deter him, "I'm not gettin' a traffic ticket just because you've got your head up your ass."

Though you loathe to admit it, sighing comes easier now that the SUV is putting miles of distance between you and Yukiko. You're feeling a little more playful again, like the day is falling back into its usual routine, gearing up for one of the many scenarios you've imagined. The image of her figure in the pantsuit is still at the forefront of your mind, however, so you shuffle around until you can wiggle out of your puffy jacket. What you’re wearing isn’t anything as fashionable as her no-doubt expensive ensemble, but at least you’re less of a shapeless blob.

"I'll be good this time, promise." Impishly, you extend your pinky out towards him but he only grunts in response, shifting forward in his seat as he swallows—audibly. The movement allows his collarbones to peek out above the top of his shirt, growing your unfounded need to drag your fingers along them, maybe even your breath, maybe even your mouth.

The threat he mumbles goes unheard by you, but the baritone of his voice stops you from drooling like a pervert any longer.

Even he looks a bit more calm—jaw unclenched, shoulders back and rested, nostrils unflared—and his hand goes from the wheel to the gear shift between you. Long fingers cup it loosely, drumming against it as an afterthought, though the music he once had playing has been turned down low; on the ride over, you’d passed a towering, verdant dragon statue that could be seen from the highway and promptly squealed about it, reaching to tap his shoulder with urgency. The radio had quieted, his attention momentarily snapping to you before muttering “‘m driving,”.

Watching him now, Bakugou’s face relaxes further—the permanent crease between his eyebrows softens—and you wonder if he feels it, too, this effortless comfort that shrouds you.

From what you can tell, he's heading back towards Musutafu and it's only after about 20 minutes that you begin to genuinely wonder if he's decided to blow the whole day off, if he's sick of the questions and antagonizing, if he's speeding back to your icy parking lot to be rid of you—but then he's taking an exit, grumbling about slow drivers and old people, and turning down a street that definitely isn't yours.

It's a part of the outer city-skirts that you aren't all too familiar with, where the buildings are set too close together and the parking lots are too small, fitting six cars at most. Apartments look over thin alleys, fire escapes nearly creating a bridge between bedrooms. You pass a man sleeping next to the garbage, a family of stray cats, a blue rolling cart holding brown plants, a woman selling homemade crepes—everything about the area is intimate, and that realization has your stomach flipping.

Lunch with your boss, with Bakugou, for the second time; you find yourself both anxious and willing, for whatever comes next.

Bakugou circles a block twice before parking in a stray lot, grunting something about anyone daring to say shit to him while tucking the side mirrors of his car closer to the windows. No explanation is offered as to where the two of you are eating, but you don't miss the quick glance he gives your top, which makes you feel suddenly exposed and silly, as if he could read what you were thinking when you tossed your jacket to his backseat. There is a strange crease in the fabric near your tummy due to the seatbelt, and you throw it off and yourself out of the car so that he'll stop looking.

Before you can ask where he's going, he's turning down a thin alley ahead of you. It's nearly noon, but the day is so overcast, white-golden lanterns are still lit to guide the way past an izakaya that’s closed, a gentleman outside stacking empty Kirin cases on top of one another. There are two abandoned bikes, a sign leaning against a rusty ladder that advertises a shop for refurbished furniture and hand-stitched clothes. You can’t take a step without landing on a manhole, but the sewage smell is nearly drowned out by the fresh crepes—and something salty, too.

It's silent between the two of you, save for the rustling of a beaded curtain strung up in the middle of the alley as you pass through it. Bakugou holds it open for you to step under and then keeps a hand on your back, urging you forward, though you have no idea where.

Electrical wires criss-cross into a spider-web above your head, a strange sense of seclusion emanating from their disjointed design; other than the gentleman, you are the only two between the bricks. It feels like you are the only two in the world—far from Musutafu, far from Dynamight and Yukiko. Just you and Bakugou.

When you glance back up at him, he’s already watching you—as he always seems to be, these days—and his eyes are nearly orange in the lantern light, made up of something so entirely different than they had been in the diner.

"Kirishima Eijirou was your fellow classmate, is the co-owner of your agency, and has been a Pro Hero Partner of yours for sometime." Yukiko seemed to have a talent for not only segueing into question after question, but also wording them in a way that stoked Bakugou’s aggravation. "Would you say you have a hard time trusting other heroes, or even getting along with them?"

It's no secret that Dynamight has been controversial in the past, that people still look at him and see the wild beast of a child he once was, and though there is nothing you can do about it, it still gets under your skin to see him and his intricacies boiled down to misconceptions. Patience, understanding, you wanted to tell Yukiko, that’s all you need, though you can’t exactly imagine Bakugou would have appreciated you coming to his defense. More than likely, he would have protested you getting involved or making excuses: that much you know already, because you’re used to him.

You wonder if Yukiko, or anyone, would believe the way Dynamight—the explosion hero, number 5 on the hero board—looks in fond, untroubled moments like this one (half-lidded, citrine, peaceful).

Perhaps the only thing that can be done is be thankful, that they are reserved for you.

"Move it, dumbass," he murmurs, and the soft rasp of his voice makes you smile, draws his eyes—unashamed—to your lips.

(You want to tell him to finish it, what he started that day in his office. You want to tell him to kiss you.)

(You don't.)

There is a white neon sign that is lit up just ahead, though there isn't a name, only gyudon in black. It's the source of the salty smell and, when Bakugou reaches in front of you to shove the creaky door open, no one bats an eye at either of you. No one looks up as he comes in and no one says anything until he's chosen a booth at the back, near a large window that looks out into another cramped section of a street.

Winter peonies are hanging from a window box, blushing pink against the gray painted bricks of its apartment. You can see a stray shopping cart from a market out of sight, a handful of brightly colored signs (red, orange, black) advertising all manner of baked goods and beer, ready for the day to darken just a little more before coming to life. A woman carries her baby down a flight of stairs; a stack of books on the ground appear heavy, water-logged and forgotten near three tied trash bags; two boys in university sweaters take turns looking through a magazine, a half naked woman splayed across the cover.

(Just you and Bakugou.)

An older woman comes to the table offering water and tea, though she doesn't ask if or what type either of you would like before the clay pot in her hand thuds onto the wood. She leaves while muttering, “try the Jasmine Pearl”; your boss looks so unbothered by this, by her, that you come to the conclusion he must have come here before, maybe many times.

And maybe Bakugou knows you, too, because he says, “The owner’s kid almost died in a train crash a few years back, before I was—” he trails off while gesturing to himself sarcastically, but you know what he means: before he was Dynamight. It’s all said without looking at you, eyes on the flowers, the books, snorting when he sees the magazine. “I wasn’t looking for anything in return, that ain’t the point of this shit, but the old hag wouldn’t leave me alone until I ate at her place. Food's decent.”

A grin works its way onto your face, earning a glance from the corner of his eye. “So, you took me out for a free meal, huh? Cheap date.”

Bakugou’s eyes zero in on you as a smirk tugs at the corners of his lips, and you realize too late where you've gone horribly wrong. "Date?" He asks, hands clasping together atop the table as he leans across it, closer to you, "Who said this was a date?"

Now it's your turn to look elsewhere: the ceiling, the teapot, the signs (red, orange, black). "Well, um, lunch date, as in, just having lunch together. Like—you know, between colleagues, sir."

"Colleagues, huh?" The curl of his lips is sinister, too-sharp, has tea slipping down the wrong pipe in your throat and heating your entire body to a similar, boiling temperature. Some jealous part of you sings; Yukiko witnessed quite a few looks from your boss today, but she hadn't been graced with this one. "'s'that why you got all pouty about whatshername?"

Pouty?

"Pouty?" You gasp, jaw falling slack as your hands curl into fists on the table. It's as if he can see right through you, can read what you're thinking, as if you’re not the only one paying too much attention in all this time at the agency. "I was not pouty."

(You definitely were and you know it, which makes the accusation all the more worse.)

"Sure thing, sweetheart," he smirks, gently flicking one of your knuckles as you narrow your eyes at him. "Never seen you give me that look before."

You pause in the middle of sipping your water to stick your tongue out at him, unable to stop from grinning when he snickers. Amusement is an unseen string tying you together; it's impossible not to smile when he does.

He continues, though you aren't sure where he's leading the conversation, eyes flicking to the door, out the window, at his fingers brushing yours. If you didn't know any better you would say he almost looks— "and you've given me plenty in the last eight months."

Looks, he means, and it takes a moment to recover. Plenty of looks? No, if anyone is giving looks, it's him, not you. It's Bakugou with those eyes, orange and fox-like, watching you squirm like he's caught you in his trap, ripe for the taking.

(That analogy does little to settle your still flipping stomach.)

"What do you mean by that?"

It's a talent, how quickly his eyes can change, how they can go from desirous to unreadable in an instant. A part of you wonders if that's all Dynamight, a skill he's acquired since being forced into the public eye—but a part of you believes that's him, Bakugou, too accustomed to shielding his emotions.

"I mean they aren't the kind y'give a colleague."

An air duct rattles brokenly; birds land near the window; a group of school girls laugh without regard, standing together to peer at something on a phone (too close, you and Bakugou, anxious and willing, for whatever comes next).

"And what do they look like?" There are warning sirens going off in your head, vigilant in their duty to remind you of the line you’re knowingly crossing. Regardless, you unwind your fist, curl a finger around his. "Why don't you show me?"

Bakugou's eyebrows draw down, making him look pinched and offended—though you're used to that look, to him, and you know that's not how he really feels—and then the two of you are in the car outside the diner all over again, ready to talk about It.

But a shadow comes over the window, two palms flattening against the glass as the birds—and your intertwined fingers—scatter. It's the shadow of a man too large, too friendly, too red.

"You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

"Red Riot!" The sight of him is so unexpected that the grin that paints you is entirely genuine, and you wave at him, laughing too loud for this compact, secret place when he presses his nose up against the glass. He waves back at you, then Bakugou, before dashing around the corner.

The door kicks open so fast that it bounces off the wall, jingling all the while, and that does earn Kirishima a few glares, which he meets with a sheepish wave. When his eyes land on you in the back corner, an expression so utterly smug and satisfied comes across his face that Bakugou lets out an incensed sound, signaling his impending implosion.

"Well, well, well, what do we have—"

"What. The fuck. Are you doing here." It sounds less like a question and more like a demand, as if Bakugou isn't really worried about the how or the why; he just wants Kirishima to answer so the response will stoke the fire currently flaring to life.

"I could ask you the same thing." Red Riot beams, trying to squeeze into the booth beside his partner, though the blonde doesn't budge. He almost looks like a feral cat, arching his back the closer his colleague gets. "C'mon man, this is the spot, we eat here all the time."

"Oh, do you?" At the sound of your question, Kirishima flashes you a knowing grin, though you aren’t sure what he’s so certain of: that Dynamight would bring you to this pace, or that he’d been jumpy about it. Bakugou’s neck turns the color of his eyes—which are far from orange and back to their usual blood-red hue.

The realization that he’s brought you here, to the spot, softens you considerably; allowing you into this cramped little space, behind a beaded curtain, across from a dingy apartment complex twenty minutes out of town, nestled into a web of privacy. It means something to him and Kirishima, which means something to you.

At the sight of him now, there in front of you, you're reminded of your previous conversation with the red head, how you'd argued that they didn't need your friendship, had never asked for it—and they still haven't, just placed you inside the bubble quietly, tenderly, without so much as a second thought.

"Kirishima," Bakugou grits out, and the sound of his actual name and not Shitty Hair surprises you (and the man in question), "you're supposed to be on patrol."

"I am!" Red Riot's voice goes up a defensive octave, holding out his arms and gesturing to his hero outfit. The look he sends you resembles one Dynamight had in the diner—like he doesn’t understand the charge against him—and your heart tightens without warning; they’ve been together so long, Pro Hero Partners for some time, and it shows in the finer details.

"Then why the fuck. Are you—"

"I was in the area, man, thought I'd scope this place out before lunch. Then I saw you two," he grins again, which is always the worst thing he could do in this situation, "and thought I would check on how things are going, you know, between you lovebirds—"

"Don't even—this is just a stupid fucking work thing." The finger he points is menacing; you're surprised he's not sparking. "Don't fucking say shit like that."

(And then your bubble pops.)

Bakugou is downright snarling, less like a hungry fox or feral cat and more like a rabid dog, and you can't stop the embarrassment flooding you as it comes crashing down that this abrupt change of pace is simply because Kirishima thought you two were on a—

—date—

—together as anything other than colleagues.

An instinctive voice inside your head pipes up to defend him from, well, yourself, that he's only being so vehement in his denial because he's embarrassed at falling prey to his partner’s teasing, but the immediate part of you, the emotional part, bites her lip to stop from frowning. You do the opposite—smile casually—though you can feel how forced it must be, like it doesn't fit on the curve of your lips in the moment. It must be obvious, you think, it must be.

"It's a work thing," you echo, nodding once (and you don't miss the hot look Dynamight slices you with).

Doesn't matter; Kirishima laughs slowly and winks, as if the three of you are all in on some secret joke, as if he knows Bakugou too well. "Of course, definitely! Work thing. I'll make sure to mention that to Mina later when I—"

"You aren't gonna say shit about this, unless you want me to tear you a new one." Bakugou's eyes widen a frightening amount, palm slapping against the table as he nearly upends it. Kirishima remains unphased and it makes you think of Yukiko again, of how indifferent you were to some of his answers.

(“In the past, it’s taken more than a little elbow grease to obtain an interview with you, despite being a household name. Do you find you struggle with the newfound fame of being such a public, top-ten hero? I don’t think it’s a secret that Dynamight likes his privacy.”

“I don’t have time for shit like this because I’m busy doing my job. I don’t know what else anyone wants from me, why they care how long I spend at the gym or what my beer of choice is. I save the fucking day and then I go home, what I do there isn’t their business.”

“...so you do struggle with being in the spotlight so frequently?”

“I don’t struggle with anything, because I ain't the one that’s bothered!”

Yukiko had, in fact, looked bothered, especially when you snorted and rolled your eyes at him, especially when he peered back to make an exasperated face at you, shaking his head like he didn’t understand how he wasn’t making sense.)

And that hurts, you can't lie, with how mortified your boss is at the prospect of anyone knowing you two are together, even during a work thing. It's ridiculous, but you have to blink once, and then twice suddenly, because you can't stop thinking about the up-and-down look he gave Yukiko, how well put together she seemed.

It's not as if you are neurotic enough to believe it was love at first sight, or that he's even minimally interested in her—by the end of morning, actually, you were almost certain he wouldn't have offered her a glass of water were she to spontaneously combust—but she was so chic and elegant. She probably knew 6 different languages and drove a car priced in the same range as his SUV, she had innate charm and structure, business aptitude, she was wildly impressive.

If even she couldn't entice him, then who could?

It's ridiculous. You're being ridiculous because he's your boss.

Before you're forced to try and interrupt the unhinged hissing going back and forth between your employers, the older woman returns and quiets both of them with a single look. Kirishima gives a shy smile and steps out of the way, far out of her way, and Bakugou sits back down, muttering out to her that yes, he would like two bowls of gyudon with kimchi (like always). There’s a story here, maybe many; suddenly bitter, you wonder if you could ever be authorized to hear them.

(You haven't even had time to think about what you want, but there's a yellowed, dimly lit menu on the wall and your eyes catch on chicken curry, so you repeat that and she's off again.)

The first thing Bakugou says to his partner then is, "would you get. The hell. Out of here."

(Again—it's not so much a question.)

"Alright, alright, I can take a hint—" (Dynamight growls his disagreement) "—don't wanna interrupt you two like last time, so feel free to start the smooching once—"

Kirishima cracks up when Bakugou shoots from the table, though a flash of something like panic smears out his smile. Even when he puts his hands up and starts backing towards the door, babbling all the while, your boss doesn't stop following him, palms curled the way they are when he's gonna blow something straight to hell, and he doesn't refrain from advancing until Kirishima is bumping into the door, scrambling to get it open.

And he still doesn't stop until they are both back out in the alley, for a long time.

The food arrives, the woman looking at you for the first time as she asks, "he ditch you?" When you tell her he hasn't—that you know of; maybe he did?—she mutters, "little punk" before stalking away. You wish she would have stayed to hear you agree, but you dig into the food to stop the pit deepening in your stomach.

Quietly, you go to war with yourself, arguing that it was Bakugou who had his hand on your neck and it was Bakugou with his eyes on your lips and it was your boss who insisted you call him Bakugou.

And it was Bakugou who was embarrassed by this, by you and your stupid little work thing.

You miss the jingle of the door when he returns, only offering your attention as he slumps back into the booth, red-faced. He doesn’t acknowledge you, only splits his chopsticks and stares at the still simmering bowls of food while holding his breath, before tossing the utensils on the table, wood clattering lowly as he shoves his fingers in his eyes. They dig forcefully into the muscles, as if he’s trying to stop a headache that won’t quit.

“Everything okay, sir?”

He looks stressed, more-than; another wave of guilt wracks you, though it’s hard to determine where it’s building from this time. The truth is out: he does hate this bullshit ass type of thing, and you wonder why he tried to insist he doesn’t; he should know that you know by now.

Bakugou's hand drops from his eyes to his mouth, where he pulls at his lips absentmindedly. Underneath the table, his knee won't stop jerking, just like how the fingers on his other hand won't stop drumming against the table; he's thinking, too hard.

If life were a scenario of your brain’s creation, you think he would lean across the table and take your hand fully, but instead he just kicks you lightly to get your attention. It’s so on brand for him, so Bakugou, that you realize instantly where your imagination was wrong and dare to smile, tucking your chin down to hide it.

Your boss is not smiling. "You—he's a fucking—" his struggle is almost painful, and you can feel the tug and pull of the words he wants to say and the words that are leaving his mouth. "Y’know what I meant, right?"

And it's not so much a question as it is a plea.

Yukiko calls three times before Bakugou digs into his second bowl.

—

12:24 P

The first two attempts go ignored, mainly due to the horrendous glare he gives both the phone and your hand, frozen mid-air, before he snatches it from you during the third call. He doesn't even bother with a greeting, just grunts "yeah, yeah, we're comin'," and then proceeds to eat faster than you've ever seen a human eat anything.

Some inane side of you has half a mind to bring your chopsticks together near your mouth and ask, "How many calories do you consume in a single day, Dynamight? Fans everywhere want to know," but things are still intensely awkward, made even worse now that you’re pressed for time, so you store that little funny away for later.

Later; all of your exciting scenarios have washed away with the returning rain and you'd like nothing more than to go back to the office, to return to the space with Bakugou, with Dynamight, that you know best. The ground is too unstable, shaking as easily as your breath every time he meets your eyes. It's a lot to handle, more than you expected, and that—like all things, these days—only brings back the guilt.

The entire drive back is quiet, save for a few vexed sighs, and he listens to the navigation guide in his car as you pick mindlessly at your cuticles; it feels like something's been ruined, and the silence makes you sadder than you expected, puts something in your throat that’s hard to swallow.

Sports Illustrated has rented out a stadium, one that's equipped to deal with any stray explosions that could bring about the savage cover shot they're looking for. It has a sleek and shiny gym, one prepared for an entire rugby team—which may or may not equal Bakugou and his immense presence—, a locker room, and even a small conference area that's been set up to look like a U.A classroom.

("Thought this was supposed to be about me now, not back then."

"It is," you said, standing in his office, reading from the itinerary Yukiko had forwarded. "How different you are.")

Freshly powdered and matte, she's waiting just inside the doors, looking appropriately in place against the gray-slate tiles and smile-white walls. "Welcome back to high school!"

Ahead of you, Bakugou grumbles, "fucking great."

"The makeup trailer is just down in the hall, so we can head that way! We'll start with the gym first, and then move to the 'classroom'." Just as you begin to follow him, she produces a lanyard with a plain white badge reading visitor and extends it out to you. "Just in case anyone says anything." She assures, back to beaming.

Bakugou rears his head as if she's attempted to slap him. "Who's sayin' something? She's with me."

"Oh, no, no!" Yukiko waves her hands urgently, trying to put out the fire before it starts. "Just in case!"

"Just in case what—"

"It's fine." You say, Miss Customer Service™, "I get it, it's fine." Bakugou is frowning when you look up at him, though you slip the cord over your head and flash him your best reassuring smile. Yukiko is given a warning glance, one that says this isn’t over with just his eyes before he’s stalking away.

You hope she’s not able to read that look.

It looks strange so empty, the arena, and your brain likens it to a carcass: the walls feel hollow and massive, the concrete echoing back every noise you tentatively make; you’re afraid to think too hard in case that, too, will reverberate. It’s entire design was born with thousands of people in mind, but it is just you three under a never-ending stream of LED screens, banners of sports teams COMING SOON!, closed coiling doors, blocking the advertisement of takoyaki, yakisoba and cold beer, syrupy kakigori. Bakugou eyes the portraits lining the walls, black and white candid shots of fans cheering wildly, and you don’t realize he’s slowing down until he’s right beside you.

Very vaguely, you remember the U.A Sports Festival, maybe had it on as background noise at a friend's house while chatting amongst yourselves, oblivious and uncaring to the quirk-blessed people that were using their talents to the fullest. It dawns on you how strange it is to be here, beside Bakugou, how far both of you have come. Any clear images from the three festivals he had been in are all recent, only replayed on your laptop after he'd become a household name, after he became your boss, after he started meaning something.

In an eight minute video you'd watched titled dynamight being dynamight, you remember his sixteen-year-old self standing at the microphone, saying something about winning that made every one of his peers furious, and it's just so him that you're forced to throw an elbow, smile and shake your head when he asks what your deal is

Hands shoved into the pockets of his loose, dark jeans, he elbows you back lightly. "Don't fuckin' laugh at me."

"Don't be so funny."

"Don't be so easy to amuse."

"Don't be such a child."

"Me?" The look he gives you is bewildered, though the rigidness of his eyes has melted. Muttering another threat under his breath, he leans against your arm like he's going to push you again, but he doesn't, he just stays. One of his hands comes out to gently flick the plastic badge, making a face at it like its very existence is an insult, and he looks away when it lands back against your chest, when you snort at his impudence.

"Nobody will question you," Yukiko affirms, smiling softly when you both glance back. You’d almost forgotten about her, embarrassingly enough, and she looks between you two and the lanyard before rolling her eyes, waving her hand like the idea of it is silly—even if she’d been the one to produce it. "Trust me."

The expression on her face reminds you so frighteningly of Kirishima’s, like she knows something you don't, and it only winds you up even further as Bakugou is ushered away into another exclusive bubble. Her heels click pleasantly against the concrete, between just the two of you, leading the way through a small twist of tunnels impossible to navigate without her. The floral scent of her perfume is intoxicating, filling up every cramped area she enters, and you’re ashamed that you can’t stop inhaling through your nose.

"It's nice to finally meet you," she says suddenly and offense is a reflex that rips through you, wanting to remind her that you two met hours ago, but you become distracted by the texture of her skin, more obvious now that she’s so close to you. How human; gorgeous, stunning, daunting—but perhaps not as high on the pedestal as you had placed her. "We've been emailing for a few months now."

"Oh," you blink, dumbfounded, "yeah, I guess we have."

"I meant what I said,” Yukiko stops and holds her hand out, letting you go ahead of her in the direction she's leading you. "It's easier to outrun Ingenium than it is to get an interview with Dynamight, so we have you to thank for setting this up."

"Oh," you parrot, then, quickly, before she thinks it's all you know how to say, "no, I mean, I was just as surprised that he agreed. Dynamight, uh—" she laughs at the sheepish smile you give her, "he hates these things."

"Does he? I couldn't tell." She makes such a cute face that you might have been jealous if you weren't laughing with her. It's less awkward than you might have expected it to be hours ago, less forced, and a feminist, eat-the-patriarchy side of you is immensely disappointed in yourself. "Well, we, the company, are blessed he has you to influence him."

Another dumb blink; you make a disbelieving face to yourself before looking down at your fingers. "I wouldn't say I influence him, maybe know how to wear him down, but,” you trail off as she laughs again, shrugging.

Of course you do, know exactly how to bother him, how to bug him and push every button that will set him alight; you almost want to tell her it’s in your job description to understand exactly how to get away with harassing Dynamight—and keeping your head.

Yukiko leans against your shoulder with the same sentiment Bakugou had, though you can feel the stark differences between her arm and his. “I think he’s lucky to have someone that understands him to such an extent. It’s very rare to have assistants that can accept people as they are, behind their hero persona. I'm sure you might be aware of that, though, working with others in the business.”

Around the corner is a set of large glass doors that she steps up to open, once again gesturing for you to enter, and you want to tell her to back-up, to rewind a minute or two. The gym is just as you imagined: spacious, set up for industrial sized workouts, stock full of equipment and weights that look as if they could snap your back in half, were you unable to work with them properly. The fluorescence—and the light boxes and white sheets and reflective umbrellas—confound you long enough that Yukiko whisks away further into the room, up to the cameramen from the diner and a new gentleman, one you easily conclude will be the photographer for the day.

By the time you regain your composure—and close your mouth—Bakugou is entering, cementing you to your spot, withdrawn from the attention behind a treadmill that sits taller than your head. Nerves begin to take flight in your stomach at the sight of him; upon first glance, he doesn’t seem any different than usual, handsome as ever, but then you notice how dark and long his eyelashes look, the light contour under his cheekbones erasing what little roundness there is to his rarely-seen stoic face. He looks all Dynamight: sharp angles and jutting edges, dangerously keen, ineffable.

With all the attentiveness of an enlisted serviceman, he scans each corner of the room until he lands on you, small and out of the way, and you give him a small wave (one he doesn’t return). It looks like he’s got something to say, something serious, something important, judging by the sincere expression on his face. It’s tired, worn-down, though not in the way you imagine it is when he’s had a long day of hero-ing; it reminds you of the look on his face that day in his office, when the both of you had finally let go of whatever was keeping you back, when you’d finally crossed a boundary together.

It’s longing, you realize, that look.

“—so, I think it will be best to get a few warm up shots, maybe just doing some light stretching.”

Shamefully, you realize you’ve missed the photographer’s name and are somewhat relieved he hasn’t acknowledged you outside the bubble; the idea of having to ask him to repeat it makes you want to sink into the floor, to be dragged down by the weights the size of your head.

Bakugou jumps on his feet a few times—sporting a pair of bright orange kicks—before extending his arms to the ceiling, bending them behind his back, rotating his shoulders in some deliberate way that looks almost painful. Yukiko comes to stand beside you then, unnerving you with that look on her face, and she only grins before asking, loudly,

“He looks great, don’t you think?”

He glances back at you lazily, eyes—which have darkened—trained on your face, and you begin to realize that he does, he does look great.

He looks—immaculate.

The pair of compression tights he’s wearing only highlight how strong his thighs must be and his legs seem unending, long and powerful underneath the black fabric. A loose, orange tank is covering his torso and, though you hadn’t thought much of it at first, it becomes apparent to you why it seems so slack on him: in all the places it would hug the average man, Bakugou’s body is tight, muscular, rigid. His shoulders are capped and you can see the curve of his traps due to how thin the straps of his top are, the tension in his biceps as he just stands, relaxed.

Oh my god, you think, horrified. You’ll have to wait there for the next two hours—maybe three—watching as he builds up a sweat, as he works out and grunts with effort and pants and—

“Uh, y-yeah,” the attempt to clear your throat only makes you choke, has your voice coming out as a pathetic squeak, “he—you look, yeah, great.”

The hungry sheen that will gloss over his eyes; the curve of his cheek with the smirk that rattles your knees; the poorly disguised want in his voice as he teases and taunts your revealing choice of words; any minute now he’ll spark to life, sweetheart on his tongue, taking note of the sweaty palms you run across your thighs—

But it never comes.

Instead his eyebrows pull down in that Bakugou way, jaw and fist clenching in tandem as his breathing changes, deepens, giving you that same up-and-down look that bothered you earlier. Now that it’s directed at you and not Yukiko, however, it has a different meaning, riles you up in an eager, impure way. Nothing else is said as he turns towards the weight rack, but the muscle in his cheek doesn’t release and his leg doesn’t stop bouncing until the photographer is kneeling on the floor to get a shot of him curling a dumbbell.

The ceiling becomes extremely interesting then and you spend the camera flashes and the “ooooh, great shot, just like that,”’s admiring the tiles above everyone, all 27, 28, 29, 30 of them. There aren’t any cuticles left on either of your hands by the time Bakugou sniffs, drops the weights to the floor with a sound that demands your attention—unfortunately; the photographer, bless him, whatever his name is, gets a wonderful shot of your boss’s abs as he uses the bottom of the tank to wipe the perspiration above his lip, over his eyebrows, down his neck.

You’re sure there’s a great shot of the white-blonde trail of hair leading from his belly button down into his shorts, because that becomes all too visible, too.

Oh my god, you think, horrified.

Or you think, you think; you actually say it, feeling sweat pool in all the uncomfortable spots against your skin when you realize everyone is looking at you, everyone; Bakugou’s eyebrows are raised expectantly, waiting for you to continue as he works his jaw.

“I have your headphones,” you say idiotically, as if that warrants the carnal thoughts digging through your brain, swiveling your backpack to hang in front of you for emphasis. “I—can he—does he want them? Or—I mean, do you, sir?”

Yukiko frowns apologetically, “I’m sorry, that would be like product placement and only certain brands were approved for the shoot.”

His eyes—dark, deep and dark—bounce between the two of you before he shrugs, “whatever, s’fine.”

“‘kay!” Synapses momentarily defecting, you give him a thumbs-up, smiling so hard that it hurts, until he snorts and turns around to rack the barbell.

Once again, Yukiko leans into you, flowery and smiling, and when she winks, you’re astounded by the sharp turn this situation has suddenly taken. It feels like only minutes ago you and Bakugou were eating in tense silence, too self-conscious to even look up from the designs of your plate. It feels like only minutes ago he was glaring at the badge around your neck, averting his eyes from your chest, elbowing you.

It feels like only minutes ago Yukiko was implying you were intertwined with Bakugou in some way no one else was.

I think he’s lucky to have someone that understands him to such an extent.

Understands him? No, you can hardly say that you do, why he works 100 hours a week, why he comes to the office early and stays late, why he won’t call Deku back, why he doesn’t find the time to go to Atami anymore.

Why going with you doesn’t have to be a work thing, but this does.

You don’t understand why he wants you to call him Bakugou, or why he cares if you still want to go to Backdraft’s charity event, why he tells you not to take the late train or why he gets mad if you work through lunch. You don’t understand what the hell any of this is, why he knows the kind of looks you give him and leans against you and says things like, “she’s with me”.

But you think he might understand you, to some extent.

Since you’ve known him, he’s always been too clever for his own good, too perceptive; he knows why you’re being pouty about Yukiko, notices when you shuck your jacket off, he had the locks changed on Kirishima’s door, though you’d never spoken a word to him about the effort it took to get inside, Bakugou knows—in the dark, lights off, during a meeting—when some cop has their hands around your wrist or resting on your back.

And he must know what you’re thinking, then, here, now, because he’s sitting on the bench, sweating, chest heaving, looking at you like—

—like he’s had enough, like he’s fed up with all the back and forth, the tug and pull. The looks, dancing around It, Kirishima and his hero sense, his precise timing. And you think you’ve had enough, too. You think you're anxious and willing, for whatever comes next.

“Alright, we have some good shots in here. Back to the makeup trailer, and then we can revisit U.A!”

It’s all been undone wordlessly, the ties holding you back, the wall you’ve both tried to build, and Bakugou stalks by you, eyeing you like the fox he is, like you’re the mouse caught in his trap. Before he’s fully out into the hall, he’s already pulling the tank up and over the expanse of his back and you have to wonder if he’s doing it on purpose, because he knows; broader than you ever realized, embellished with pale scars, shoulders steady enough to hold the weight of Japan.

“Come on,” there’s a light hand at your elbow, manicured nails digging lightly into your sleeve as Yukiko tugs you from your trance. “I think you’ll enjoy the classroom set up.”

The corridors twist and turn again, your floral guide leading the way as she talks aimlessly about how many reps Bakugou can do—a secret she will keep to herself and away from the public, she promises with another wink. She’s kind and funny, easy to socialize with, good at making conversation; these recognitions are met with more compassion, more relief than jealousy.

As pointed as some of her questions may have seemed during the interview, it feels as if Bakugou is in good hands, that she won’t twist his words to make him out to be a jackass or a villain or someone the people shouldn’t look up to. All of her little glances to the cameraman; hopefully those footage cuts will be handled with care. You want to trust they will.

“He’s a natural, I’m surprised.” She comments, “He photographs very well.”

Not that you’ve spent any certain amount of time looking at Dynamight promo shots, but you’ve no reason to believe anything otherwise. “He’s beautiful, I think anyone would be hard pressed to get a bad photo from him.” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you’re clapping a hand over it, trying belatedly to slap them back between your lips.

This little confession is met uneventfully, Yukiko only sparing you a glance at the sound before continuing down the concrete. She’s an angel, you realize, a god-send. “I suppose that’s a good point, Nakano has to spend at least 20 minutes with me in order to get a good headshot.” Another admission that makes her seem less superior. “It helps that he’s confident. Anyone would be, with a body like that.”

“Yeah,” you hum, noncommittal, eager to get as far away from this topic as possible.

The doors she opens are steel, painted white, and—though you’ve never been in a U.A classroom—it looks exactly as you would expect. Desks organized in four rows of five, cupboard at the back, a green sheet on the wall that Yukiko says will be edited to look like the field outside the school, a wide chalkboard that has DYNAMIGHT in an explosive font that’s meant to look hand-written.

(You want to tell Yukiko, and the others entering the room, that Bakugou has nice penmanship, better than what’s displayed on the board, if that’s meant to be “his”. It’s not any kind of cursive calligraphy, but his is neat, clean, professional.)

(Suddenly you want to tell Yukiko a few things, that Bakugou is confident, that he’ll walk all over you if you let him, but you want her to understand that he’s considerate, thoughtful in a way that the public could never comprehend. You want to tell her that he means well, that he tries in all the ways he knows how, that he asks questions that aren’t so much questions as they are pleas, you want her to understand he doesn’t do shit he doesn’t want to do.

You want to tell her that he’s made you accustomed to the heat in which he constantly burns, that his fingertips have left marks on the back of your neck, that he’s calloused you.)

And it must be written all over your face, these unsaid things that are bursting at your seams, because she smiles the same soft smile she had before you and Bakugou parted, like she understands, like she knows. A manicured hand squeezes your shoulder and then she’s exposing to you the purposeful look she gives the cameraman from the diner, a look so familiar, so pained and open you have to gasp. There’s a ring around his finger, you realize, but not around hers.

“Yukiko,—” you breathe, though there isn’t anything else that comes from you, there isn’t anything else you know how to say.

A sheen of tears fills her eyes as she shrugs, powdered mask never betraying her as she smiles complacently. “He looks great, don’t you think?”

This unspoken thing that has been laid out before you has you so shaken, so surprised that you don’t even realize she’s talking about Bakugou, that he’s arrived for class until she gestures to him with the hand that has led you here.

(He does, he does look great, you realize, he always looks great.)

They’ve dressed him in a school uniform, one that must be an oversized twin to whatever he wore in highschool—or was supposed to wear; already, he’s tugging so hard at the red tie around his neck, you fear he’ll yank his own head off.

An instinctive side of you, Miss Customer Service™, is meeting him in the middle of the classroom, waving his hands away so you can release him from his leash. “Stop thrashing,” you chide, receiving a grunt in response as he peers down at you. The starched shirt he’s wearing underneath his blazer is only buttoned up to the middle of his chest, giving you another view of his collarbones, of his clavicle, of the tendons in his throat.

When he swallows, his Adam’s apple absorbs your attention, hands halting in their movements as his own come down between you. You feel his fingers lightly brushing against your stomach, deftly working to undo the belt around his pants and all the blood in your veins stops—

—because what the fuck is he—

“Didn’t wear this stupid thing, either.” Bakugou mutters, eyes black in the studio lights surrounding you both. The clinking of the pin against the frame has you looking down, forehead just barely grazing the white-blonde hair lightly dusting his chest as he pulls the leather from around his waist in such a provocative fashion that you’re forced to—

You have to step away from him, the loose ends of his tie falling against his shirt as one of the desks digs into your back. It must look like he’s shoved you or startled you somehow, it must. Dynamight, your boss, Bakugou—he’s a sight, with his shirt half-open, tie undone, holding a belt in his hands as his pants sag down around his hips the way they always do, the way he prefers.

(It’s longing, you realize, that look.)

(It’s want.)

The photographer, Maybe-Named-Nakano—or is that the name of the diner cameraman?—steps in, a reminder that you two aren’t the only ones in the world, you and Bakugou, by instructing him to lean against the chalkboard lazily. Next to his name, which he insists ain’t really mine because it’s missing the “Lord” and “Explosion” and “Murder God”; just as you expected, just as you feared, his blood-lust gaze never leaves your face.

For some reason, you want to tell him about Yukiko, about what she’s shown you, about what she’s implied. The urge fills you so suddenly that you think you’ll explode if you don’t tell him right now, if you don’t grab him by the free collar of his shirt and shake him, meet the wistful eyes that have been ripping you to shreds all day, all week, for the past few months, longer than you can remember.

It feels like a warning somehow, this thing she has given you, that if the feeling inside you doesn’t find its way out of you and into him, you’ll be the assistant in the puffy coat, sitting off to the side, drinking a milkshake as Dynamight gets interviewed, as he twirls a silver ring on his finger because you didn’t have the fucking guts to just say—

“Fuck this,” Bakugou snaps, breathless, arms winding back to tear the gray blazer off. It makes you blink, this outburst, and you look at him as he looks at you, as he looks at Maybe-Nakano, at Yukiko, before tossing the jacket on the teacher’s desk in front of him. “I’m fuckin’ done,” he spits, already half-way out of the room.

Uh oh.

“Wait,” you call, though it’s too late, “You—I—,” instead, you just face all the raised eyebrows and the few fed up frowns (and those instantly put you on the offensive). “Sorry, I just—give me a minute! Be right back!” Miss Customer Service™ goes scrambling out into the hall, head whipping left and right as she tries to discern where her Hero(!) could have stormed off too. The only thing you see lingering in the carcass of the arena is the makeup trailer, though you hadn’t heard his feet on the steps or the slam of the door.

The berating doesn’t stop as you hurry across the lobby; what the hell is wrong with you? Clearly something has upset Bakugou, your boss, and you were too busy with your head up your ass to realize what’s ignited him. The day has been stressful enough for him, that much you managed to stay aware of, but somewhere in the costume change and makeup retouch, his mood has taken a downward spiral.

There are several jumbled apologies swirling around in your mouth as you bound up to the trailer, knocking once, then twice, before yanking open the door; if he’s that pissed, he wouldn’t have opened it for you anyway.

“Bakugou?” Empty; your voice bounces around the vacant space. It’s nothing particularly spectacular: a few vanities set up, one on the end near a sink in the event they need to wash or style his hair. The floor is carpeted and the lean-back chair looks comfortable, there’s a muted television in the ceiling corner playing videos from the Sports Illustrated YouTube channel.

God, you can’t imagine how you look, burdened by the emotional rollercoaster you can’t seem to dismount from. When you step up to the mirror, you see the bags under your eyes, not as well hidden by your concealer as you thought at 6 this morning, and only growing darker since then. However you’d attempted to style your hair is alright, not perfect, but it looks like you at least put some effort into it. All at once you are reminded of Yukiko, insecurity rising without your permission, but the shine in her professional eyes fights it off.

The door yanks open all too obviously, the same way he does his office door, his car door, and Bakugou stops on the steps as he stares at you.

Waiting, for you to say something, for him to say something, for either of you to crack.

“Hey,” you breathe, the tension in your shoulders dispersing at the sight of him. The two of you have been together all day, but it feels as if it’s been a while, too long, since you’ve talked to him, just him (just you and Bakugou). “Is everything okay?”

He’s still standing on the steps, hand on the door, glaring at you. The closer you look, you realize his teeth are tearing up the skin inside his mouth, the tie is still clenched tight in his hand, leg bouncing just enough. He’s thinking, too hard.

“Bakugou?”

The slam of the door echoes off the concrete in the lobby, making you jump as he crosses the few steps between you and him (his legs, unending, long and powerful beneath his loose slacks). A myriad of words splutters out of you, none of them quite formed or making sense, when he grabs the front of your top, forcing you back against the vanity, forcing you closer as he crowds against you. The smell of his cologne is exhilarating—expensive, like orchids and spice and comfort—and it just barely masks the lingering sweet smell he’s never without.

“What’rey’do—”

“You’re driving me fucking insane!” It’s like he’s had enough, like he’s fed up with all the back and forth, the tug and pull.

(You think you’ve had enough, too. You think you're anxious and willing, for whatever comes next.)

And then you both erupt, all at once; he presses his mouth to yours (hot, chaste, close-lipped), one hand moving from your shirt to the back of your neck to keep you flush against him. A small sound of surprise and sudden want has him curling into you, pushing you further into the edge of the table until you have to wince out a whiny “ow”.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he grunts and it does something to you, has you scrambling to sit back on the vanity, opening your thighs wide, allowing him to crash so close that he chokes on his gasp. You aren’t sure if he’s aware of it, but his hips are knocking against the wood, straining to grind in tandem with yours.

Back against the mirror, you do your best to shift so that a hand can go up your shirt, splaying out against your ribs, just under your bra, but the table shakes with how aggressive he’s becoming, how unhinged now that the line has been crossed, and things clatter to the floor. Miss Customer Service™ is an idiot, one that turns her head to see bottles spilling onto the carpet, cotton pads and Q-tips strewn out amongst makeup wipes and brushes—a wet bite to your neck has you squealing, unintentionally rutting against the hard length of him as you return your attention back to the man between your thighs.

“—fucking damn it,” Bakugou groans, slanting his head so his mouth can capture yours entirely, parting your lips, tongue stroking yours in a way that has a moan slipping from you. “You’re—”

You’ve no idea what he means to say, but you’re too dizzy to care, agreeing with a breathy, “yeah” that sounds so pornographic, it has you freezing, silently fighting off the embarrassment that threatens to ruin the mood. It seems to spur him on, to ignite him, teeth meeting teeth as he growls like it isn’t enough, like it isn’t close enough, like he’s not getting what he needs.

One of his hands leaves your face to work on the buttons of his shirt, furiously trying to undo them while kissing you so deep, so hungry, but he pulls back to look down at his chest when he barely manages to get one open, “fuck!”

The sight of him so flushed, lips spit-slick and chest heaving like he’d just finished 27, 28, 29, 30 curls has you tightening your thighs around him, a hand going to the table to inch you forward to where you need the pressure of him the most. The look he sends you is threatening, lips curling back to bare his canines like the feral brute that he is, that you need in this moment, but it only eggs you on. You want him to give you that look and many more, new ones, heady ones, the kind that will sear into your eyelids.

“‘m gonna fuckin’ lose it,” he warns, buttons clinking against the mirror as he yanks the fabric apart, tearing the seams and tossing it to the ground.

“What does that look like?” It’s a little humiliating, how out of breath you are just from kissing him; you can’t imagine how it would be if the two of you actually— “Why don’t you show—me!”

Bakugou’s hands cup around the backs of your knees before you can finish, drawing you as close to the edge of the table as he can while rutting against you, hard. A sigh of bliss spills from his mouth into yours as he reconnects his lips, and one of your hands goes to his stomach, shuddering at how tightly it tenses under your touch. After spying it earlier, you can’t help it; he huffs through his nose when you follow the trail of hair underneath his bellybutton to the top of his briefs.

“You’re—oh, fuck—” He’s coming undone in the best way, hand shaking as it slips back into place behind your neck (his fingers are searing, leaving prints on your skin that burn down to your muscle and bone, that brand you), and you can’t believe this is happening, you can’t believe this is actually, finally, happening.

The two of you have put it off for too long, tried too hard to avoid this thing that’s been threatening to carbonize you and now the flame is wild, out of control, consuming you both.

“Bakugou—”

“Katsuki,” he rasps, he pleads, “jus’—you can call me by my name,” his nose nudges yours softly, taking you back to his office, your fingers stroking over his eyelids, him nodding urgently as you said what he wanted—needed—to hear.

You arch forward into him, chest to chest, sternum to sternum, bone to bone, and travel your hands up to his neck, to scratch against his scalp. It draws a groan from deep within his chest and he succumbs, leaning against you so that he can kiss you with significance, with purpose; it’s slow but deliberate, desperate, saying all the things he’s unable to.

“Katsuki,” you say, you yield, and you don’t care that the two of you are in a makeup trailer in a stadium rented out to Sports Illustrated; you don’t care if he’s your boss and you’re his assistant; you don’t care if Kirishima knows, or Mina, or Yukiko or Maybe-Nakano or the old woman from the gyudon place; if he burns, so will you.

Because he’s gotten you accustomed to the heat, because he’s calloused you.

“I don’t want to be Yukiko,” it’s whispered against his lips and he slows down the tiniest bit, trying to listen to whatever you’re saying, “watching you from the sidelines because I couldn’t say it when I needed to.”

Katsuki can’t know what you’re talking about, has no idea of what was revealed to you, but he shakes his head slightly, nipping your lip. “What sidelines? There ain’t any sidelines.”

When he tugs at your visitor badge—the horrible, rotten, loathsome thing—you grin so hard it hurts. “I’m with you?”

His hips rock into yours unhurried, as if you have all the time in the world (just you and Katsuki), and a breath stutters out in the space between you. “‘s’right.”

And then the bubble pops.

“Is everything alright in there?” Comes a voice outside the trailer, and you strain your ears desperately, pleading to the universe that it is not, somehow, Kirishima Eijirou. “We heard some crashing.”

Yukiko—the grin in her voice translates through the door.

Oh my god, you think, you say, horrified. Your hand slaps over your mouth as Katsuki rolls his eyes, stilling his hips but not yet leaning from you. When she knocks again, he grits his teeth and barks,

“We’re come—we’ll be out in a minute, damn it!”

The fit of laughter you devolve into has him scowling, fingers pinching your sides as he grumbles at you to shaddup, though his words are laced with fatigue; neither of you have the strength not to fall into whatever this is.

“‘m never doing this interview shit again, got it?” he groans, grabbing a stray button from the vanity to scrutinize.

Giving a playful salute, you say, “sir, yes, sir.”

Katsuki glowers, rolling his shoulders in that way that looks like it hurts, in that way that looks mouthwatering—and he knows it, by the smirk growing on his face. “If you keep that sir shit up, we’re gonna be in here longer than a minute.”

In your fuzzy boots, you sweaty toes curl, biting your lip to keep from smiling as he retrieves his ruined shirt from the ground—oh, god, how were you gonna explain that to Maybe-Nakano? “Is that a promise?”

His eyes widen furiously and he pinches you again, trapping you back against the mirror as his nose bumps yours, “are you. Trying. To drive me. Crazy.”

And it’s not so much a question as it is a confession.

—

8:13 A

The photos of Dynamight are, as expected, impeccable.

Yukiko had forwarded you a few of the unedited shots through her official email address—and she had also sent several winking emojis through her personal, which she had given to you not long after the shoot.

There are only three sample photos, stamped with an embossed, Sports Illustrated watermark that takes up the majority of the picture, but you’ve been peeking at them whenever Kirishima isn’t incidentally prowling past your office. He looks amazing, changed, grown, in the untouched versions, with scars peeking out on his chest and across his nose, the stubble he refused to let them shave shadowing his chin, the deep, permanent crease between his eyebrows—it’s all him, Dynamight, Katsuki, exactly as he is.

The wooden blinds in his office are pulled open, flooding your office with the fluorescent light burning through his, and when you look up to give him a wave (that he won’t return), his eyes are already on you—as they always seem to be, these days.

Alright already, he means, get your ass in here.

The low heels you're wearing today don’t require a clasp, so slipping them on is all too easy, and you peer out of your office warily—your clipboard and the folder with the photos hugged tight to your chest—while searching for any pesky redheads. When the coast seems clear, you hurry to round the corner from your office into his, leaning back against the door—which you realize has a bright green sticky note that says FUCK OFF, SHITTY HAIR—holding your breath until it’s safely shut.

Your boss is waiting, chin in hand, one ash eyebrow raised.

“Good morning,” you beam, waving the manila folder like a prize before setting it on his desk. “I can’t wait to show you these, they turned out great—”

It’s flicked back across the desk at you, “Not interested.”

“Aww, c’mon!” You whine, shoulders slumping, “don’t you want to see the fruits of your labor?”

“Decline.”

Tapping a pen against your lips, you narrow your eyes at him, biting back a smile when he frowns. “I’ll find a way to show you, somehow, anyway! Deku called at 2:37 yesterday—”

“Decline.”

“And he did not ask you to lunch, y’old grouch.” You smirk when his lip twitches. “I just wanted to gloat that he called and asked to speak to me—”

“What the hell did he say?”

Katsuki looks bewildered; you’re in the elevator, you’re raising the sack.

“Uh, sir, are you asking about my personal conversations with your fellow—”

“I’m not fuckin’ around, what did he say?”

He’s in the corner, hissing and spitting, but you’ve still got him in your sights.

The pen taps against your lips again and you hum, “I don’t really think it’s appropriate that I divulge that information to you, sir, but if you’d like to call him—”

“I know what you’re doing, y’little brat.” His chair flies into the file cabinet behind him with how quick he rises to his feet. “And it ain’t gonna work. When I want to call him, I will.”

Shit, eluded you again. Sorry Deku, you think, maybe next time.

“Okay,” you shrug, checking the box on your clipboard, “Best Jeanist called, he wanted to congratulate you on hitting the number four spot.”

He stands straighter, suddenly looking awkward, out of place, that he’s been acknowledged. “Well, it’s about fuckin’ time.”

Clearing your throat, you lean a little more into the door, keeping your eyes trained on a not-entirely-real to do on your list. “And your romantic partner, she would like to congratulate you also.”

“Hah? My—” Katsuki’s eyes narrow suspiciously at you as he comes around the front of his desk, taking measured, predatory steps as he looms closer. “Better be something other than—”

“Tuna-mayo, I know,” you pretend to read another Post-It before dropping the act, smiling up at him as his eyes dart down to your lips. “It definitely is.”

“When ‘m I gettin’ this congratulations?”

“Later, when certain heroes aren’t in the same—”

But Katsuki doesn’t care, relying on the note tacked to the front of his door as he captures your lips with his own. The hoodie he’s wearing is making him entirely too warm, spreading to you when his hands come up to hold your face, thumbs stroking your cheeks in such an affectionate way, you think to hell with Kirishima knowing.

The clipboard clatters lightly to the floor as you wrap your arms around his waist, hands coming up to rest in the comfort of his back (broad, scarred, steady enough to hold the weight of Japan). He groans lowly when you scratch him through the fabric, though it is more a sound of contentment than lust, and you giggle against him as he pulls back to peck you once, twice, three times.

“Sir,” you try to pout, but your lips don’t listen, “this is entirely inappropriate for—”

“Cut the sir shit, or else.”

“I am never, ever going to cut the sir shit, I’m sorry, I just can’t.” Your arms tighten around him when he tries to pull away, scowling down at you.

“Then you’re gonna get fucking railed in here one day, and I don’t want to hear shit about—and don’t you ask me if that’s a goddamn promise, ‘cause it is!” Katsuki goes to kiss you again, just to shut you up since you can’t stop giggling into the fabric of his chest. “Don’t fuckin’ laugh at—”

There is a wild banging on the glass window of your office, where the blinds are still open and revealing.

Where Kirishima stands, grin lighting up his smug face brighter than you think you’ve ever seen it. Just as he gives a giant, rewarding thumbs up to the both of you, Katsuki tears the door of his own office open, shouting out a raging—

“That’s it!”

—before Eijirou’s wild laughter can be heard echoing off the high-vaulted ceilings of the agency. The sound makes you laugh, feeling so full in your chest at the familiarity of it—Red Riot’s sunshine, Dynamight’s inferno—and it has you wondering if maybe you’ve been inside this bubble a lot longer than you realized, if maybe you’ve been inside it all along.

⌕ pairing: dad alpha!toji fushiguro x daughter omega!reader

⌕ warnings: BLOODCEST, reader goes into heat, piv sex, use of dad/daddy/papa, kind of subspace-ish but just bc of heat, knotting, toji is guilty as hell, a/b/o stuff like pheromones/scent/slick, toji is a dominant alpha, crying. dead dove do not eat! MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS DNI YOU WILL BE BLOCKED

⌕ word count: 2.7k

MORE A/B/O-TOBER HERE!

This was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. You and your beloved father had planned this vacation months ago, with the hopes of finally having a full two weeks of father-daughter alone time you two had so desperately been craving recently. Between both of your demanding jobs, respective social lives, and other various responsibilities, you barely even got to see each other anymore, outside of when you both came home at night. It had been a rule that you were to eat dinner together every night, and you had upheld that for a long time, but it had gotten to the point where it was no longer feasible.

So, the solution to missing each other? A two weeklong trip to the beach town of your dreams, at an all-inclusive resort that your wonderful dad had spent months saving every last cent to pay for. He had said it wasn’t right to force his beautiful daughter to pay even a single dime for this trip. It was his gift to you. Your gift to him? Just your presence and love.

To be quite honest, you and your dad had a… less than conventional relationship. Your friends found it odd that you still lived with him even though you were plenty financially stable enough to go out into the world on your own, and would surely have much more freedom in doing so. But you just couldn’t leave your beloved dad. Not when he loved you the way he did, cherished you and pampered and spoiled you at every turn. Who in their right mind would ever give that up? Certainly not you. You made it a point to never mention to others that you still slept in his bed every night, put to sleep by his strong arms wrapped tightly around you as you breathed in each other’s familiar scents.

When planning the vacation, you had made sure to schedule it in a timeframe where you would not be in your heat. They had always been fairly regular, so you had just done the math and planned it for when you’d be in the clear. Toji was more than happy to do so, as he wanted you to enjoy this trip completely uninhibited, especially from something so debilitating as a heat. Toji himself wasn’t too worried – in his older age, his ruts had slowed down pretty significantly, and even then, they weren’t ever severe enough to truly hinder his day-to-day life too much.

To say the vacation was much needed would be a vast understatement. The stress of busy lives had melted off both of your shoulders as you basked in the sun on white sand beaches, calmed by the sound of the waves lapping against the shore and sipping fruity cocktails served in coconuts. At night you’d go out dancing, grinding against each other in a drunken haze amongst people who didn’t know your familial relations. Sure, the age difference was apparent, but they didn’t know Toji was your dad. It was so freeing. And if he had kissed you soft and sweet on the dance floor? That secret would go with you to your graves.

Of course, with your luck, the magic couldn’t last forever. In the afternoon of the fifth day, you had started to feel… odd. Twitchy. A little foggy. Your skin felt hotter than normal, but you chalked it up to too much time in the tropical sun. The strange tingling between your legs was just because of… something. Whatever. Nothing was to ruin the vacation of your dreams, so you’ll ignore, ignore, ignore. No need to pay attention to such silly things.

Until it got worse. You had uncharacteristically asked Toji not to cuddle you to sleep that night, which he found profoundly odd, but your skin felt like it was on fire. The thought of anyone else touching you, even your dad, sounded like hell.

And then… even worse. In the wee hours of the night, you woke up gasping and whining. You felt hot all over, a sheen of sweat coating your body. Everything ached, your head felt fuzzy and sharp at the same time, and you could barely breathe. The worst, though? You were so painfully horny, your cunt throbbing and leaking, it was pure misery. There was no denying it anymore – you were in heat. Immediately, you began to panic. This was not supposed to happen.

The only thing you could think to do in your haze was shake the man next to you awake.

“Dad, daddy, please wake up,” you whined, shaking him by his arm.

“Wha- what it is it, sweetheart? Everything okay?” Toji mumbled gruffly, eyes still closed and clearly still mostly asleep.

“I’m in heat.”You could barely get the words out, speaking suddenly feeling impossible.

That woke him up quickly, lurching up. What? W-what do you mean?”

“Heat,” you repeated. “I-I’m in heat,” you damn near cried.

The heat pooling between your legs was getting more unbearable by the second, groaning as you cupped your hand over your throbbing pussy.

“Why? How? We-we planned around it!” he stuttered, staring at you with wide eyes. It was unmistakable, the presentation – despite never seeing you in one for long, he had witnessed the beginning phase of it multiple times.

What really tipped him off, though was your scent. The whole suite reeked of your sickly-sweet scent, pheromones emanating off your shivering body in droves. To say Toji wasn’t affected by it would be a lie. In fact, he scooted back in the bed to try and escape the potent yet divine odor, but there truly was no escape.

Toji wants to panic, unsure of what to do in this shocking moment, but it’s clear you’d beaten him to it. Hyperventilating and scratching at your skin, the panic of an incident so interruptive really settling in. He had to comfort you, and fast.

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, calm down,” he attempts, gathering you in a tight hug to try and soothe you. “It’s okay, I promise. Daddy’s here.” That was the problem. Only daddy was here – no heat partner in sight. While you had no real partner, you had a few alpha friends who didn’t mind helping you out during your heats to ease the pain. Of course, those same friends were a plane ride away, and it’s not like you could ask the alpha next door if they could knot you.

As his eyes trailed down your body, he gulped when he saw the crotch of your sleep shorts was soaked in slick. Fuck.

Fat crocodile tears ran down your burning cheeks as you sobbed in his arms, and all Toji could do was hug you close and rock you side to side. With you so close to him, he had no choice but to inhale your bleeding scent, and he wishes he could rip his nose off. This is not good.

Resigning himself to the situation at hand, Toji sighed. There’s only one way out of this – unless he just locked you in the suite to suffer through your miserable heat alone.

“Calm down, baby, daddy’s gonna help you, okay? Daddy will help you.”

“R-really?” you sniffled, pulling back to look your dad in the eyes, gauging his sincerity.

“Of course, baby. Daddy’s gonna make you feel all better, okay? No need to worry anymore.”

Saying that Toji had never had thoughts like these about you before would be far, far, from the truth. In fact, he’d lost count of the times he’d jerked off in the shower to the thought of burying his cock so deep inside you, you couldn’t breathe, but he always watched the cum swirl down the drain in shame. And you, the same. Your fingers never felt as good as you’d imagined Toji’s would. Even though you were closer than the average father-daughter duo, the two of you had never crossed that line. At least, not yet.

But now, your brain was so addled by this primal state that the implications of what your father was promising you meant nothing. All you could think about was relief.

Toji gulped. There’s no going back now.

“Lay on your back, baby.”

You quickly do as your told, movements far from graceful as you fell from his arms and stumbled back on the bed. Maybe he could just get away with a quick fingering – maybe that would put you back to sleep for now.

Slithering a hand down your sleep shorts, Toji shivered when he felt how soaking wet you were. Pressing the tip of his ring finger just at the rim of your hole had you whimpering, head falling back against the pillow and gripping his arm tight.

“More, please,” you groaned, eyes screwed shut.

“Okay, sweetheart.”

His ring finger slipped into your hole with shocking ease, absolutely no resistance. Clearly your body was well beyond desperate. The gasp and groan you let out was one of pure desperation and distress. The thick finger inside you surely felt nice, but it was still only one – you needed much more.

“More, more,” you whined, gripping his wrist and attempting to force him further inside you.

Toji’s heart pounded in his chest, dread filling his entire body and chilling his blood as the realization that his fingers would almost certainly not be enough. Even worse, the lethal combination of your scent, slick, and whines sent blood rushing south. Fuck.

A second finger dipped inside you, and he began slowly pumping them in and out of your hole, scissoring his fingers apart in a hopeless attempt filling you up enough to beget enough relief. It was simply futile.

Whines and whimpers filled the suite as you bore down on his fingers, taking it into your own hands to push him further inside you. The arousal churning through your veins was intolerable and it just wasn’t enough.

Throwing your arms around his neck, you yanked him towards you, making him stumble and almost collapse on top of you. Hot, frantic breaths fanned across his face as you pressed your forehead against his, involuntary guttural groans escaping your throat.

“Dad, please,” you begged. “P-put it in.”

His heart stopped, blood running cold at your desperate request. Once you crossed that line, you could never go back. Hearing your pained moans though, was addling Toji’s judgement.

“Honey, I…” he started, fingers still pumping in and out of you in hopes of keeping you slightly satiated. “I don’t know…”

Toji fought hard to maintain his composure, but the fact of the matter was, he was still an alpha - and a dominant one at that. Though middle age had relieved him of some of the more undesirable, undeniable traits of such a label, he was only human. One could only fight biology and primal instinct for so long.

“Fuck it.”

Pulling away his fingers despite your protests, he roughly yanked off your shorts and panties, flinging them off the side of the bed before throwing your legs over his shoulders. Tugging his boxers down just enough to pull out his aching cock, wasting no time at all as he forcefully thrusts into you, bottoming out immediately. Your cries were almost certainly loud enough to be heard outside your room, but neither of you could give less of a fuck.

Guttural groans tumbled out of Toji’s mouth as he basks in the feeling of your tight, wet heat clenching hard around his length, thrashing underneath him. Despite his considerable endowment, you had not a single complaint, your pussy clearly frantic to be filled.

“Daddy!” you cried out, throwing your arms around his neck and panting deeply, chest heaving.

“It’s okay sweetheart,” Toji assured, resting his forehead against yours. “Dad’s got you. It’ll be okay.”

It’s not long before he’s building up a considerable rhythm, fucking you hard and deep as you keened underneath him with a constant stream of whimpers and cries. The wet, sticky sound of skin on skin was sweet music to Toji’s ears, encouraging him to pick up the pace – something you were more than happy about.

The primal alpha instincts in him had him digging his nose deep into your neck just over your scent gland, huffing your potent scent like the sweetest drug, soaking up your pheromones that emanated from you. He wasn’t even aware of the way his own pheromones had mixed with yours, the musky odor clouding your senses. It was like you were made just for him, and he just for you. Your pheromones swirled together and encased the both of you in a blissful bubble of primitive desire and ecstasy.

The sex was messy, sloppy, and uncoordinated, having lost any sort of real rhythm in favor of frantically rutting into you, heavy balls slapping against your ass with every desperate thrust. A tiny voice in the back of Toji’s head, what was left of his rational mind, wondered if maybe your heat had catapulted him into rut, but that was no concern to him in the moment.

All you needed, all he wanted was to satiate your burning desire and arousal, to curb your instinctual need to fuck and be fucked, if only for a little bit.

Wanting to feel you deeper, Toji leaned forward to press your knees to your shoulders, allowing him to bury himself deep in your pussy, his tip kissing your cervix. So caught up in the ecstasy, a familiar yet bygone word escaped your lips.

“Papa!” you exclaimed, throwing your head back and gasping.

Papa. A term you had given up well over a decade ago, indicative of how far gone you were. How you had reverted to nothing but pure instinct, recognizing the man fucking you as what he once, and always would be, to you.

Toji almost came right on the spot. A strangled moan came from his throat, his arousal increasing tenfold.

“Say it again,” he demanded, voice deep and gruff.

There was no need to tell you twice. “Papa! Papa! Papa!” you chanted like a perverted spell, entirely unaware of what you were saying, much less the implications.

And Toji does something he swore he wouldn’t do – without halting his movements, he cupped your cheek and crashed his lips against yours. It was messy, all teeth and tongue and spit, but he could no longer keep himself from kissing his sweet, sweet daughter.

“Papa’s got you, baby,” Toji mutters against your lips, punctuating his words with hard thrusts. “Papa’s gonna make you feel so much better.”

The overstimulation of pheromones, messy kisses, and the hardest fuck you’ve ever had, had you hurtling closer and closer to what you so badly needed.

“Gonna come,” you whined, gripping his cheeks and pulling him in for a sloppy kiss.

That had Toji’s heart racing even faster, scared he’d go into cardiac arrest at this point.

“Come for me, baby,” he encourages, kissing you back. “Come for Papa.”

Your next words yet again brutally took him by surprise.

“Knot me, daddy, please.”

Fuck. How is he supposed to deny that?

As your own orgasm crashed over you like a suffocating wave, screams and moans piercing Toji’s ears, he continued to fuck into your oversensitive pussy deeper and deeper until he began to feel the familiar swelling at the base of his cock. And soon enough, he’s damn near howling as he spills hot, sticky cum into your welcoming cunt, balls spasming as they empty themselves inside you. Neither of you were in the right mind to reckon with the potential consequences of that.

Toji’s thick knot had swelled to full size, stretching to a point that had you whimpering, hugging your dad close.

“Hurts Papa, it hurts,” you whined, tears gathering in your glossy eyes.

Toji quickly kisses the tears away, cradling you as best he could. “I know, sweetheart, I know. It’ll go down soon, okay? And we can get some rest, you and me.”

The alpha was far from prepared for how many more of his knots were in your future.

Izuku wants another baby

currently, my tiktok fyp is trying to bring my baby fever back full force and in honor of me shedding an actual tear at the video i sent the chaos squad group chat.. i bring forth pathetic daydreams of broccoli top ૮>ﻌ < აﾉ”

tw: talk of pregnancy, breeding kink

"i miss your waddle," izu hummed randomly from his spot at the breakfast bar, busy taking a small screw driver to the back of your two year old’s motorized toy.

you give him a glance over your shoulder, brows furrowing cutely in question, “my what?”

“that adorable waddle you had when you were pregnant with aika, i miss it.”

you were met with a boyish grin, dimpled and cheeky, perhaps a little rosy as he seemed to be reminiscing about it. izuku had always been a touchy lover, never knowing when to keep his hands off of you, but the moment you announced you were carrying his child it became that much worse. he never wanted to leave your side, fussed over every little thing you did, catering to you as if you were first generation royalty. in his eyes you were golden, a gift from heaven that deserved to be worshipped until he was no longer capable of breathing. pregnancy had given him a hunger for you, much like a lion during a feeding frenzy. you’d think he was held hostage by a love spell, struck in the heart by cupid then had the arrow twisted for good measure.

“i did not waddle. i walked just as normal as i am now,” you wagged a finger at him, biting back a smile as you moved towards him in nothing but an old, ratty shirt and a pair of sleep shorts.

he thought you looked the most gorgeous like this, messy-haired and domesticated, still wearing the smell of the bedsheets from a well needed sleep in. his hands extended to touch you as soon as you were in his reach, rough palms pulling you in and sliding right down to cup your ass, fingers brushing under the hem of your shorts. emerald eyes seemed to grow hearts as he peered at you from his seat, a dopey grin splitting his lips.

“you waddled. you so did, and it was the most sexiest thing i’ve ever seen,” he pursed his lips for a kiss, to which you granted him without much thought. once, twice, before giggling as he nipped at your bottom lip.

“you got a thing for pregnant women now?,” you raised your brow.

“i have a thing for seeing my wife carrying my child, yes,” he hummed, turning you so you were now sat partially in his lap, your hands scrambling to brace yourself with his knees. he slid warm hands under your shirt, thumbing at your deep stretch marks that lined your stomach, massaging at the velvety, looser skin there.

“you’re insufferable, ‘zu,” you huff without much bite, trying not to simply melt into a puddle under his touch.

“and you’re so beautiful,” he purred, “so strong and perfect. gave me the best thing i could have ever asked for. is it that surprising that i miss the months that led up to it?”

izuku was a menace by design, he knew what made you tick, whispering against your neck the way that he was, raising every hair along your scruff as he nipped at your ear. when you faltered in response he continued to speak.

“…wrong that i miss how round and full you used to be, hm? couldn’t bend over, couldn’t even tie your shoes. used to call my name so sweetly when you needed me to massage those pesky pains away.”

his thumbs were pressing into your lower back now, massaging at the base of your spine the way he knew you liked.

“what’s gotten into you, ‘zu?” you chuckle, swatting him away before you let him fold you over in the midst of the kitchen, you could still hear the babbling of your daughter in the next room, could hear the clinking of plastic toys slamming together. you spin back around to face him, taking in his blush and his lust blown eyes.

“i just love you so much, you drive me crazy.” the hero had the nerve to pout at you.

“i love you too.”

“and aika could use a playmate….”

you narrowed your eyes playfully, “am i being guilt tripped right now?”

“no, of course not. i’m looking out for her.” he shot back with a grin, “unless it’s working?”

“think about all those three in the morning feedings..”

“i miss taking shifts with you, my love.”

“that will be double the diaper changes, aika just entered the pull up phase.”

he grasped your hand between both of his own, “nothing you say right now would change my mind unless you didn’t want another one, and i know you do. you still linger in the newborn section…just yesterday you cried over her first onesie-“

“she used to be so small,” you whined, bottom lip wobbling at the thought before you caught yourself and how easily you were eating out of his palm. that bastard, he knew how to play you like a harp.

“all i’m saying is…if you still want that big family, i really want it too.”

☆

a startled gasp left your lips as izuku pinned both of your arms behind your back, locking them folded over one another with his hand. he seemed to use it for leverage in arching your back that much deeper but also to aid in holding you in place as he plunged his cock repeatedly into you. your noises were choked and muffled as you bit down on the fabric of the blanket that was strewn messily over the bed. your husband had one foot pressing into the mattress, his other planted onto the floor as he took his time with impaling you, shaping your insides into the perfect sleeve for him. he insisted on a slow pace, making you feel every throbbing inch of him, every pulsing vein as he thrusted in and out of your drooling cunt. a steady rhythm of him pulling all the way out before pushing right back in to the hilt, left you teary eyed and dizzy, trembling underneath him every time you felt his cock head kiss your cervix.

your toes were curling, popping as they strained from pleasure, the dainty anklet with his initials tickling your skin each time he rocked you. he himself was breathing shakily through his nose, deep grunts and pained whines escaping him every time you clenched around his shaft, pussy creamy and milky just the way he liked. his green curls were sweat soaked, stuck to his forehead as he watched the ring of white froth around the base of his dick, sticky wetness from you smeared along his jade pubes and happy trail.

“such a pretty girl..fuck- you take cock so well,” he praised, tugging you backward sharply, stomach tightening at the way you buried your face to wail.

he’d do anything to hear you scream for him properly, but you two’s little one was sound asleep in the other room. he’d have to get a babysitter soon, or at least finally get around to sound proofing the room. he hunched over you now, releasing your arms so you could grip at the bed below you. his chest pressed against your back, damp and heaving as he helped you lower to your stomach. he trapped you in like this, grinding himself that much deeper, his heavy balls rubbing against your throbbing clit.

“fu- please, ‘zu.”

he shushed you easily, sliding his middle fingers onto your tongue, groaning as you sucked the digits dumbly. he twitched at the sight of your watery eyes meeting his, the fucked out look on your face bringing him that much closer to release as you drooled right over his wedding band.

“atta girl…want me to make you a mama again, hm?”

you keened, eyes fluttering as his other hand searching for your clit under you, fingers flicking at the way-too-slippery bud as you panted.

“i know angel, i got ya’, just worry about feeling good for me.”

which wasn’t much of a difficult task. soon you were tensing up, babbling his name around his fingers as your vision went white. your cunt pulsed and clenched around him as you came, effectively getting him to spill his own cum where your body craved it most. it felt hot within you, coating your sensitive insides and seeping around izu’s shaft from the sheer amount of it. it wasn’t exactly his first load of the night.

he was serious when he said he missed your waddle, he’d be damned if he didn’t get to see it again soon.

fruit bats : @neon-gothicc @bakubunny @bookcluberror @kunigamisgirl @dizazter-dragoon @jazzafayesworld @cherriluvs35 @dreamcastgirl99 @pastelbakugou @ladybirdk @i-literally-cant-with-this @darkstarlight82 @maddietries

fbi open up // my hero academia (social media au) [completed]

amongst search histories and private youtube videos

bakugo katsuki x fem!reader

genre: university/college au, fluff, crack, angst

warnings: swearing, sexual themes, adult stuff in general, jokes about dying, bakugo, slow burn, violence

disc: all pictures i used were found on pinterest and belong to their respective artists! i’ve only watermarked edits i’ve made!

taglist closed! thank you for your interest ;3

part one: todoroki shoto step on me

part two: squash me with your biceps

part three: this isn't about you anymore

part four: you can't threaten me with a good time

part five: we don't ice our drinks like pussies

part six: say sike rn

part seven: they're not so nice anymore

part eight: i'll do anything for a spicy man

part nine: payback for puking on my shoes

part ten: teasing and threatening

part eleven: i'll cut you

part twelve: how is he hotter when i'm sober

part thirteen: like some eboy

part fourteen: i don't really care if you're into turtle porn

part fifteen: "what i want shinsou hitoshi for"

part sixteen: bakugo this is not a drill

part seventeen: everybody press the red button

part eighteen: please put the baby aside

part nineteen: you're a menace to society, cupcake

part twenty: i haven't invited you yet babe

part twenty-one: oh

part twenty-two: you don't mean anything to me

part twenty-three: can't a girl crave some ramen

part twenty-four: being a bitch for bitch's sake

part twenty-five: hiding in your rooms like pussies

part twenty-six: what, no cupcake?

part twenty-seven: i’ll break all your teeth

part twenty-eight: i’m not whipped

part twenty-nine: it’s not very baby of you

part thirty: be my girlfriend

part thirty-one: who do you want?

part thirty-two: he says he doesn’t care

part thirty-three: a knife in my bedside drawer

part thirty-four: bubbly fun wheat juice

part thirty-five: can't cut carrots for shit though

part thirty-six: i'm going on a bird hunt

part thirty-seven: get in line bakuhoe (written)

part thirty-eight: don't be the dumbass now, love

part thirty-nine: i think my boyfriend's been kidnapped

bonus part forty: love you too babe

thanks for reading!

main masterlist

and yes, now i'm here with you and i would like to think that you would stick around—

dabi x reader

wc: 11k+

warnings: 18+, explicit language, angst, dabi is really bad at feelings, referenced sexual content, referenced alcohol and substance use, dabi is just a bully, reader has a quirk

< < < part one | HOME PAGE

The first thing you need to know about Dabi, not Touya, is that he isn't your friend.

Okay, so yeah, you know he's alive. Doesn’t mean he’s gonna pop in and out of your apartment, joining you for dinner or bringing you flowers or something equally as humiliating. Not that you ever say anything about it, but he knows you want him to come around more, can tell by the little frown on your face whenever he insists he has to leave. The towel in your linen closet practically has his name on it, the couch always made up with a suspicious amount of pillows and a casual throw blanket (which is embarrassing—you couldn’t be more obvious). It makes him uncomfortable, seriously.

That's why he’s been such a good little boy and hasn’t come around that often (doesn’t even follow you anymore), maybe has stopped by when seeing you was an itch he just had to scratch. Dabi can count the number of times he’s knocked on your front door on one, scarred hand of his because it’s awkward now, you knowing his death was a ruse. Those beady little eyes of yours, always fixed on him, running over the ridges of his face like you were cementing the sight of him to the inside of your lids, like you were trying to peek through the gaps in his skin.

Gross.

It’s been six weeks since he’d seen you last, in the dark of your apartment as you moved around, cleaning up the mess he’d made. Sometime after 3:23 in the morning, he’d conveniently showed up, just as you were microwaving food you ended up offering him (even if it had been for yourself), and he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the painfully uninteresting recount of your shift. With his mouth all open, drool dripping down the side of his lips, head thrown back against the couch—the simple sound of you must have woken him up only a handful of minutes later. The lights had been turned off, that blanket over his lap, and you were in the kitchen, washing out his cup and plugging your laptop into its charger.

It had been a little nostalgic, him getting to watch you through lidded eyes, without you knowing.

When the light from your bathroom flashed in the hallway, just before the lavender smell of your body wash overwhelmed the entire place, he’d finally slipped away. Nearly busted his ass jumping out the window.

The second thing you need to understand about Dabi, not Touya, is that he’s a big fucking liar.

And if you keep asking him stupid questions, (where do you live? what do you do for a living? are you busy tomorrow? how’s your mom doing? ), he’s gonna get real fucking mad, and he’s gonna keep lying. For some reason, you don’t seem to believe he’s a door-to-door vacuum salesman—fuck knows why you can’t buy that—or that his mom changed her name and moved out of the country, works as a prostitute in Germany.

“That’s the last I heard of her, swear.”

The look you’d given him had been laughable, the deadpan expression on your little sunshine face. “I’m serious.”

Yeah, he knows, you always are. But, get this smarty-pants, he ain’t gonna fucking tell you, so stop asking.

The only questions you don’t ask him are the important ones, the ones he can tell you really wanna know, and that pisses him off even more somehow. Come on, sweetheart, just fucking ask already, why do you look like that now? why aren’t you a hero, like you wanted to be? since when did you become such a fucking asshole? That look in your eyes, the one you always fix him with, must be disgust or something, because it makes his rugged, burnt flesh crawl.

Sometimes you sit across from him at your kitchen table, as he tries not to devour the leftovers in your fridge like the starved animal he is, and tell him all about the stupid shit he already knows. Your brainless friends, why you work at the hospital, how many classes you’re taking online in the spring, what your favorite movies are—Dabi just grunts in response like this is all news to him and, if he’s feeling really soft, he’ll even ask a few pointed questions to keep you rambling.

“We should go to the cinema together, on my next day off.” With your chin in your palm, you’d said it under the dim light of your kitchen, smiling a little when he started choking. Water sloshed out of your glass when you slid it to him.

“Sounds great, doll, I’ll make sure to wear my Sunday best.”

“I’m serious—tsk, Dabi.” The free hand, the one not holding your head, reached across the table to slap lightly at his unmarked skin when he’d made a face and mocked you. “You don’t wanna go out with me?”

Whatever way you’d meant it, why you phrased it like that, and the little puppy dog look in your eyes: it all made him just start choking again. Stupid questions, all the damn time—which is why he needs you to understand he’s not your friend, which is why he can’t keep coming around your apartment. Awkward. Gross.

Don’t imply shit like that.

Another thing you need to know about DabiNotTouya, is that he’s not going to talk about it. In fact, don’t even bring up that day in the motel. As far as he’s concerned, it never happened. The little scar on your head has always been there, he would know.

Now he really wishes you’d give the sweatshirt back, though, because the first time he’d come to your apartment after the whole ordeal, you’d opened the door with messy hair and it draped over your body. What the fuck you were thinking, answering the door in such tiny shorts, is totally beyond him, but everytime he thinks about you rolling around in your bed, the fabric of his clothes rubbing against your tits, it gives him a really unfortunate boner.

It had that day, also, which is why he'd slipped out your bathroom window after starting the shower, leaving that fucking towel on your sink. Embarrassing, the reactions of the male body (because it didn't really have anything to do with you in particular—men get hard all the time).

There is still a little knot on your head, one that probably won’t ever go away, and—apparently—another blow to your brains like that could be instantly fatal. Dabi doesn’t really care, honestly, because if you get whacked in the middle of the night again, you deserve it—for walking home so late. If he had any money, he’d probably buy you a pink, sparkly little helmet just to rub it in your face. Maybe even dress you in some elbow pads, shin guards, give you some idiot-proof armor.

But then you might think the two of you are friends, so it’s a good thing he doesn’t have a cent to his name.

It’s been six weeks since he’d seen you last, since the smell of lavender made him shudder and ache, and he knows by now that you’ve seen the broadcast.

For some goddamn, stupid, motherfucking reason, you keep trying to get in contact with him—on his burner phone. Of all those movies you chatter about, none of them must be crime documentaries or gang related, because you call him by his stupid name in the fleeting little texts you send him, probably have Touya with little emojis saved to your contact list. Three times he’s screened a call from you—once in the middle of the day, another early in the morning (probably after you finished your shift), and the last, right before he’d started fucking celebrating.

By the time he realizes that it really is you, standing near the bar of the club he’s been in, almost 48 hours have passed since he’d hit ‘ignore’. Dabi has no idea how much alcohol he’s downed at this point, no idea what substances are making his bloodstream fucking sing, so when he thinks he sees your little sunshine face looking at him, he just assumes it’s an illusion.

(Here’s something Dabi doesn’t want you to know: sometimes he thinks about you. In the dead of night, when he showers, in the middle of conversations with Spinner—he thinks about what you must be doing at that exact moment. Somewhere, out there in the city, scrunching up your nose because you’re frustrated or smiling so wide because you’re laughing, doing your damndest to be a hero at work, sweating with all your effort. Thinking about him in return, wondering what he’s doing, worrying about it. Smiling and getting all hot, thinking about his hands on your body under that shitty water.)

(That last part is bullshit; you don’t remember anything from that day, had told him as much, just that the motel room seemed familiar and that’s why you’d shown up there after the hospital. Because something about it promised the sight of a kid you used to know, one from your class.)

There is a tight, little cat girl on his lap and she has been for hours, blowing smoke in his mouth, whispering filthy shit in his ear, but he’s been thinking about you—again—and pretending it’s your fingers popping the button on his jeans. It’s been relatively easy; the club is packed and so fucking loud, even though his head is pounding, he can close his eyes and pretend anything he wants.

That the blaring noise reverberating in his skull is just sounds from the movie on the screen, that the theater is empty—just the two of you sitting in it, somewhere at the back—and the weight on his lap is from you. You must be a little kinky, licking the hoop in his ear like that, and you giggle when his hips jerk as you slide your hand down the front of his pants. It’s so fucking hot, to be with you like this in an empty movie theater, because he’s wanted it for what feels like a goddamn eternity and now he can drop the act and sigh your name as you—

“What?”

The cat girl keeps purring, even keeps her tail wrapped around his leg when she pulls back to look down at him. It’s clear the name has been lost to her, because she doesn’t look pissed, just confused—as if she genuinely didn’t understand what he said—which only kills the new high he’d been chasing. Dabi is drunk as shit and he can feel his dick go limp under her hand, just as the rush of disappointment and reality rise up in him like a stomachache.

He can still see your face though, as if it’s watching on a couple feet from him, but all the sunshine has set on it. There isn’t a pout on your lips, but they’re open just a bit, brows furrowed and, oh fuck, your eyes. There is no puppy dog look in them, not even the kind you send him in the quiet of your apartment—they’re just wide and big and sad. Like you’re the one with the gaps in your skin, like they’ve been ripped open.

It makes his body cold all at once (which is fucking weird), this feeling like he’s a piece of shit boyfriend that’s ghosted the woman of his dreams for days, and now she’s caught him with a cat girl on his lap. As if she’s been trying to get ahold of him after the demons of his past had been revealed to the entire world—probably because she genuinely cares or something—and she’s even gone so far as to track him down in the dingiest of places. And she’s looking at him like she’s put her heart on a platter and given it to him, just for her ugly motherfucker, sorry goddamn excuse of a boyfriend to throw it on the ground and stomp it to bits, because he doesn’t know how to do anything but ruin.

The woman of his dreams knows she doesn’t deserve that shit, which is why she turns on her heel and begins to leave.

“Gettha’ fuck off’a me.”

By the time he manages to get to his feet, the girl is on the floor and hissing at him, but Dabi doesn’t care, because he’s busy doing what he’s always done—chasing you down, too many steps behind. Every one he takes is unsteady and he’s blinking rapidly with how hard he’s trying to focus, on the sight of your yellow dress, on the shine of your hair in the neon lights, of the curl of your little fist. It seems like all the substances in his system surge in his bloodstream, come up his throat (and go back down, as he stops and leans against someone so he can swallow), and nauseate him with every body he pushes through.

It all gets drowned out, though, by the anger he’s inherited from the man he despises most in this world—when someone grabs you by the arm and halts you in your tracks.

Of course it’s some big fucking guy, a tree trunk of a man that could crunch you in his fingers if he wanted to, pick his teeth with your bones.

(Look, Dabi totally has an eight pack—and he could show you, if you don’t believe him—but he’s not even half as wide as Enji. Fucking Natsuo has broader shoulders than him, and every muscle in Touya’s body is lean, probably a little malnourished. He’s never come across a fight that required his fists alone and that, coupled with the fact that you’re standing in the middle of a crowded club, when he can’t decide which vision of you is the real one, makes for a big fucking problem.)

Something comes out of his mouth, something completely unintelligible, but it’s lost along the music as he tries to close the distance between the two of you. Just as he starts to shout something again, you completely stun him; that fist uncurls, flattens out into a firm palm, and it slaps across the face of the man grabbing onto you. It actually gives Dabi a bit of a chub, makes him smirk as he sways back into the body behind him and mutters something that sounds like “fuck yeah”.

But then you’re getting backhanded into the floor and Dabi is launching his wiry body through the air before red finishes settling in front of his eyes.

If the two of you will ever stop getting into situations like this, when your precious, stupid little life is on the line, he doesn’t know—but he sure as fuck would like to. This is different than the time in the alley, because he’s the one on the ground, getting the shit knocked out of him, but he’s batshit insane anyway, so he just laughs the whole time. It’s like armor, this sick craziness he can wield, and though it’s dented and broken and dull, it still makes that tree fucker look nervous. Somehow he manages to get the upper hand once, manages to maneuver his lithe body on top of the guy, but then he realizes you’re screaming his name and grabbing for him.

It stuns him again, when his elbow rockets back and hits you square in the nose, when he watches with wide eyes as tears well up in yours, as blood starts spurting down over your lips.

And then staples are coming loose in his face as knuckles crack across his cheek.

Maybe you already know this about Dabi and Touya, maybe you don’t: sometimes, that fire of his burns so hot, it makes his skin peel away from his bones. The burning pain and sting of it all is starting, welling up in him like an ugly vice when he’s finally had enough of this little game, but then something pricks in his neck and it’s like a bucket of water has been dumped over him.

The flames die out in his hand so fast, it makes his head spin, and Dabi somehow manages a breath before he looks back at you, before a cold panic sobers him up when he sees the club owner with a gun pointed at your chest. It almost makes him piss himself, but a little tack just comes out the end of the barrel and he watches your lips form around an 'ow’ before you tug it out of your skin. A loud groan of relief is released from his mouth at the realization you haven’t been shot to death before his eyes and it even makes him forget about the fight, until a heavy hand is twisting in his hair and his feet are dragging across the dance floor.

The quiet night air almost hurts his ears with its silence, the cold nips at his sweaty face as the concrete rushes up to meet him. More staples come loose with the bust of his head against the ground and he can’t tell what on him is blood or perspiration, maybe some of it is even alcohol or his vomit. It makes him think of how disgusting you’d been in that motel room, almost makes him laugh at the irony of it all—how the two of you always end up like this. The night sky is empty, much plainer than the walls of the club had been, but that somehow just hurts his head as a myriad of colors and shapes swirl in his vision.

The only thing he’s sure of is your face leaning over his, that the look in your eye isn’t as sad as it once had been. It’s a good thing he’s already on the ground, because it might have knocked him to his knees, and he says something questionable that only makes you shake your head.

“Touya,” When you sigh, a bead of blood drips from your nose, down your chin, and onto his lips.

The trek back to you apartment is fucking awful and damn near impossible.

At one point in time, during his youth, Touya had been shorter than you. Not by a lot, but it didn’t matter, it was just as embarrassing, and there is some kind of juvenile glee he gets now that his frame is towering over yours (even if he's still not as tall as his younger brother). Despite the blow to his skull and the fear you were gonna get blasted to Hell, there is still so much crap swimming in his head, he doesn’t care that the two of you are touching; your arm is wrapped around his thin waist, his is draped over your shoulders as you help him stumble down the sidewalk.

Blood is staining your little dress, turning the white flowers red, but you hug him close regardless. Sometimes he steps too wide or unsteady and it takes all your effort to keep the two of you upright, him on the inside of the sidewalk, away from the streetlamps, and it makes him laugh as you grunt his name.

Out there, in the night, it feels like the two of you are the only ones in the world, like the only ones in a dark theater. Something warm spreads in his chest at that thought, that maybe this is even romantic, but then he just starts sputtering out a cackle again because holy fuck, is that embarrassing.

Dabi doesn’t even realize you’ve stopped and are standing a little in the street, that his mouth is against your hair as he mutters, “I’m tall, huh?”

“Yes, Dabi, you are tall.” You sound a little annoyed with him, but it doesn’t bother him as much as it should. At least not for the moment.

When you raise your hand a little and wave it around, he thinks you’re trying to get his attention and he grunts at you, slouching down further, breathing in the smell of your shampoo, and it’s only then that he realizes a car is pulling up in front of the two of you. Dabi whips his head back so fast, his stomach lurches.

“Come on, get in.”

“What’re ya’ doing?”

With a huff, you try to usher him into the cab. “I can’t carry you all the way home.”

“’m not gettin’ in that fucking thing.”

The driver swivels around in his seat, glancing between the two of you, probably wondering what the hold up is. Even drunker than shit, Dabi wants to ask what the fuck you’re thinking, if you’re even thinking at all, as he instinctively tries to slink back into the dark. That feisty hand of yours latches onto his at lightning speed to stop him.

This is something he thought you already knew about him, that he can’t just go waltzing around in public, as if his face hadn’t been blasted all over the television, as if he wasn't a known and wanted criminal. There are a lot of choice words forming on his tongue, ones that he wants to say because he knows they’ll hurt your feelings, but you’re already slipping in the leather seats, tugging him hard enough that he nearly hits his head on the roof of the car.

The minute you can, you buckle his seatbelt and give the driver your address, even lean all up against him as his entire body goes rigid.

“Relax,” You try to tell him, but he absolutely does not do that.

First of all, Dabi hates seeing the streetlights pass him by like that, especially with his head reeling, and it makes him feel sicker than he already does. Yellow and black, yellow and black, yellow and black, lights and then darkness; it’s a damn nightmare for his headache. Second of all, why the hell are you so cramped up on him, anyway? Blocking him in, shoving your shoulder against his chest, trapping him like the cab is speeding to the hospital, so you can check his crazy ass into the nut house.

Fucking traitor.

For a brief moment, he looks down at your face, tries to read the tired sheen in your eyes, watches the gentle way you dab at your nose, to see if he can find any truth to this theory. There is a small bead of sweat at your temple and his eyes narrow at it suspiciously. If his heart wasn't beating out of his chest at the fear of being in a public cab, a lot of accusations would start flying, but if he opens his mouth, vomit will probably come out and get all in your fucking hair. If he needs to use that to distract you so he can escape in the near future, then he better hold onto his guts.

The glare he's sending you must be burning a hole in the side of your face, because you angle it up at him, get even more in his personal space, blow your minty breath on his lips as you ask him if he's alright.

And then things start spinning again, start making him feel warm like before. As if the darkness of this backseat and the flash of the streetlights are all just scenes in the movie, the ambiance in the theater, and the two of you are the only ones that exist. Only two tickets got sold for the showing of this crap—something girly and cheesy, something about a witch and her broomstick and a cat—and the whole room is dark enough that you can’t see the burns on his skin, the gaps in his face.

Dabi is such a fucking pussy, so he slurs something like, "oh, shit," as you stare at him like that.

But then the cab driver flips around in his seat with a surprised gasp and you’re shoving yourself even further into him, pressing the back of your head into his face and holding up your hands.

“Please keep driving.”

All Touya smells is lavender, all he feels is the warmth of your back against his chest. It’s too warm. When he shifts his head, the tip of his nose bumps against the shell of your ear and he thinks about you in that shower again. The copper of your breath, the faraway look in your eyes. How easily you'd let him hold you like that, even looking like he does, even after so much time. For some crazy reason, the muscles in Dabi's hands twitch and his fingers tighten on the fabric of your ruined dress.

“I know what you’re thinking, but please keep driving and I’ll pay you extra not to say anything to anyone.”

You stay like that for the remainder of the ride, only looking back at his face once, nose brushing against his as you check his eyes to make sure he’s alright—and the whole action sends his stomach into his fucking throat. One of your hands pats his, the one fisted in your dress, and your fingers even run over his knuckles softly, in a way that makes him want to lean his head back and pass out in this cab.

Or die. The plushy, sick softness of it all makes him want to just fucking die.

Another thing: Dabi can only do this like this, if you're wondering at all. Can only be quiet like this, can only touch you like this, when he can't feel your eyes on his face. If you're not looking at him, maybe you don't know. Maybe it's like before, when he could sit in the dark of your bedroom and count your quiet breaths as you slept, when he could close his eyes and pretend that it would be normal for him to crawl in with you, if he wanted to.

When you fish a (probably) outrageous amount of money out of your purse and toss it to the driver, he just keeps his head down, partially in shame, because his anger had come and gone so fast after you'd just looked at him, and partially because his neck is fucking tired. After you push him out of the cab does he realize the two of you are not in front of your apartment building, that you lied about your address just in case.

The walk up the block is a little less painful and Dabi doesn’t let you touch his hands this time, just wobbles around on his own.

It takes longer than it should for him to get up the stairs; every time he starts to fall, a reflexive laugh comes out of him as he throws his arms in the air, and you have to plant your feet into the ground, push your back up against his in order to further him along.

On the second floor landing, you say the line, you say, “Dabi, I’m serious,” when he pushes back against you, which only expels an exaggerated, exasperated groan from his throat, and then he lets you lean him against the wall while you unlock your front door. The couch isn’t made up and that surprises him, almost makes him a little mad, makes him instantly come to the conclusion you’d had company over, but he slumps down on it all the same. He starts to make a half-hearted inquiry about who you fucked on the cushions he’s sitting on when he realizes you’re not even next to him, that you’re piddling around in your kitchen. The absence of you gives him a small bit of reprieve and he tries to get himself the fuck together.

“Are you hot?”

When he opens his eyes—that he hadn’t realized he’d closed—you are holding an ice pack against his forehead, using some of the wetness to wipe at the blood there. There are two dried, crimson rings around your nostrils and a small, budding bruise right at your cupid’s bow, one that is just a little indigo in the shitty light of your apartment. The skin of his jaw is rough and he’s so caught up in looking at your swollen lip that he doesn’t realize you’re touching him there, doesn’t register the pressure of your fingers right away, but he smacks your hand away when he finally does.

“‘m fine, don’t touch me.”

The look you send him is surprisingly irritated and, now that the stillness of your apartment is shrouding him in peace, he can feel the laxity in his cheek when he grins. The staples are still in his face, just stretched out too far, so he tries to dig his fingers into his mouth to pinch them back together, but you stop him.

“Your hands are dirty!” You cry, like a little bit of bacteria is gonna kill him.

Get this, smarty-pants, a lot of things have tried to kill him, it ain’t gonna be some germs that take him out.

"Don' touch me."

With a sigh, the ice pack drops to your lap, eyes traveling over his face in that too-studious way you always do. Dabi has this urge, to grab the loose part of his cheek and pull at it so you can see his skin stretch, see all his ugliness up close, but the look in your big, Bambi eyes tells him you can already see it, without even trying. Your tongue comes out to lightly run over the puffiness of your lip, which grabs his attention (and you totally do that shit on purpose), and the absence of the ice on his forehead makes him realize just how hot he's running, like the heat is on in your apartment or something.

"You mad at me?" He doesn't know why he asks, maybe because some part of him thinks it's funny—he's seen your face for 11 years and none of your weak anger has ever been directed at him—and because some part of him really wants to know. If it's this easy to get under your skin, then you're in for a rough ride, princess.

Almost instantly, you open your mouth and start shaking your head, but, after a moment of looking at him, you close it and sigh—as if you actually might be. It makes him sputter out a silent laugh.

"No, Touya, I'm not mad at you." Is what you say, and it's so soft and distracting that he doesn't care when you put that ice pack on his forehead again. “I just—” It looks like you’re sad, ashamed even, the way you stare down at the couch cushions. “I wish I knew, that—I just wonder if there was something I could have said or done to—”

The broadcast, him, you’re talking about him; Dabi is drunker than shit, but it’s still sitting at the forefront of his mind, that fucking hilarious look on Enji’s face, how Shouto’s voice had gone hoarse from yelling so hard. All the dirty laundry in the Todoroki family, aired out for the world—you included—to see.

Whatever the hell you’re trying to say pisses him off.

“My bad,” Dabi rolls his eyes and knocks your hand away again, because you apparently don’t know anything about personal space. “Sorry I didn’t stop during our games of pretend to tell you my dad was a total fuckstick.”

The ice pack goes to your lip as you slump into the couch, looking defeated (which is funny), and you bring it away from your mouth two times like you’ve got some kind of rebuttal, but it just ends with a shake of your head. When you look at him again, Dabi realizes you’ve seen him without a shirt on, over the television, which is what he’d wanted, but you’re looking at his neck and his ears and his hands, and you must be envisioning what you saw then, wherever you were when it came across the screen.

“Say something,” he mutters, feeling perspiration drip down the back of his neck, “don’t just stare at me all stupid like that.”

A flat, unamused look flashes over your face just before you shift your body completely in his direction, laying your head on the couch to look straight at him. It makes his lips curl, especially the little smile on your annoying face. “Do you remember that game of tag we used to play? When I would touch you—”

And Touya would have to stand stone still, wherever he was, only could start moving freely again—out of your Mind Freeze—if he successfully completed a dare of your choice (and they were all stupid: "do a cartwheel” or “hang upside down in the tree” or “run three times around the playground”). If he caught up to you during the game, touched your arm or leg, you were forbidden from using it for one full round, because it was “burned”.

Embarrassing.

“No.” His eyes are on the hole in his jeans, the small one right above his knee. “I don’t ‘member any’a that shit.”

“Hmm,” There is a smile on your face, he can tell without even looking at you, because you’re always so fucking obvious. “I remember—always winning, of course.”

It’s bait and he’s not that stupid. Nice try, smarty-pants.

“Doesn’t really sound like the you I ‘member.” Dabi risks a glance out of the corner of his eye, sees the lump on your lip darkening a bit, sees the way your cheek squishes against your hand when you tuck it between your face and the couch. “Couldn’t even use your quirk without losing your guts.”

The small kick against his shin isn’t accidental.

When you shift a little closer to him, he sits back, further into the cushions. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing you don’t remember, then.” You make a teasing sound as you stick your tongue out at him.

The long-sleeve he’s wearing is sticking to him, clinging to the textured skin of his back. Sweat drips down behind his ears and it’s not from the ice pack—which has melted down to water—like he had originally thought. It’s fucking burning up in this apartment of yours, what the fuck? If he closes his eyes, he can almost envision it’s crawling all over his skin, that blue fire, peeling back all the layers of his stapled face.

It’s almost like you’re waiting to see it, looking at him like that. Like you’re waiting to see what hides in all the ugliness, in the meat of his muscles and the char of his bones.

“You know,”

Maybe if Dabi didn’t feel like he was melting into a puddle of human goo, he would feel a bit cold as you start saying this soft bullshit.

“You were the first boy I ever had a crush on.”

A sick fucking freak, that’s what you are. Waiting on his reaction, trying to dissect the way sweat is drenching him, watching every breath he tries to pant out. It must be why you’ve got the heat on—it must be—trying to trap him and force him to come out of his skin, to see all the hatred that’s kept him burning all these years. What you want with it, what you want him to say to that, he has no clue.

It’s like you’re using that loser, piece of crap quirk of yours, digging your fingers into the staples just to pull them out, just to see him unfurl into pieces.

Dabi feels hot, like really hot. Hot like he does when his skin burns, hot like he had hugging Shouto, hot like he had at Sekoto. Hot like he had under that tree.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” You sigh, finally turning your face away to close your eyes, furrowing your eyebrows as you run your tongue over that swollen bruise on your lip again. “I lit incense for you, too, at the grave.” The words come out a little stuttered, a little different, like you’re the embarrassed one. “One thing I realized about death is that—well, of course it’s never easy, it always hurts, but there’s something about being a kid and—and one day your friend just stops showing up to play.”

There is a faraway look on your face, staring absentmindedly at the television, as if you’re remembering. The little version of you he’d known comes to his mind, the one he tagged, the one he kissed (or kissed him, really), and he tries to imagine you on the playground alone.

It’s never been something he’s thought about, never something he had the luxury of thinking about. A few weeks had passed before he screwed his head back on right, before he found you again, and you must have figured it out by then.

Maybe if Dabi cared about anything other than himself, maybe if he could cry, his eyes would be a little swollen right about now.

“At school, they never told us, you know, no one. Even after the paper came out, even after we asked about it, no one would say anything. It was—” One of your hands goes into your hair and you tug at it, like the memory still stresses you out or something. “—frustrating. And the entire time, we’re all just waiting, stuck as kids no one listens to, just trying to find out what happened to our friend and if—”

To his absolute horror, your voice cracks.

“I just wanted to know if you were coming back.”

Out of the corner of his eye—because he’s sure as fuck not going to look at you—he can see you wipe your tears, hears you sniff up a bunch of snot. The spot beneath his palm on the couch has gone dark with his sweat, he can feel what’s gathered in the collar of his shirt. If he still dyed his hair, it would be running down his face, the way your mascara is.

“It had a monumental impact on my life, being young and losing you like it.”

There’s one last thing you need to understand about Touya. If you peeled back the layers of his skin, took all his staples out, dug through all the ugliness—

“It still does have a monumental impact on me, you did in the alleyway that day. You do now.”

—there’d be a little version of you, standing under a tree, blood on your lips.

It’s buried so far in there, in the tendons and hot blood of him, you’ll probably be stuck there forever. Not even his own hands could dig it out, no matter how hard he tries, or has tried. It’s a curse, a terrible, sweaty sickness. A chink in the crazy armor he thought he’d forged.

It’s his only weakness, the only thing that could ruin him. Maybe it already has.

There’s a question simmering on his tongue, one he’s always had, and Dabi can feel himself fucking losing it, so he tries to cling onto the only emotion that makes sense. “Then how did you find out?”

When you swivel your head to finally look at him, you see the mess he’s melted into and sit up in a hurry. “Touya, you’re—I think you should get in the shower.”

Before you can spring to your feet, he’s beaten you. Fists clenched, the answer he already knows, all the emotions he’s tried to bury—all thrumming in him like the headache behind his eyes. “How did you find out what happened?”

“We can have this conversation later, after you cool off.” You step toward him and he steps back, until he’s slipping against the wall. “Take your shirt off, it’s soaked, Touya, we—”

This time, when you reach for him, he grabs your hands in his and squeezes, wants to turn your fingers to ash under his palms with how pissed off you’re making him. Rage is twisting his face the way it always does, the way he hadn’t wanted you to see once. “Answer my fucking question. Now.”

“I asked Enji.” It’s obvious that you’re saying the wrong thing, he can see the way awkward regret is blooming on your face (there’s a bitter part of him that is giddy about that—welcome to his world, where saying the wrong thing is only natural). “They wouldn’t tell us what happened, I had no choice! I cared about you, I deserved to—”

“You’re crazy!” Dabi shoves you—hard, because you fucking deserve it—and his hands fly to his damp hair. “What the hell is wrong with you? Asking him? Why the fuck would you do that?” The tone of his voice is hysterical, almost two octaves higher than it usually is, and panic makes you sweat. Another wave of heat rolls over him and almost makes him heave.

“You were my friend, Touya, what else was I supposed—”

“Fuck! You’re nothing but’a huge problem for me, you know that?”

Everything Dabi has ever needed to be, everything he has the chance to be, comes crashing down at the simplest bat of your stupid fucking eyelashes, and it’s finally driven him insane.

Did that mean Enji knew? Or Shouto?

Only days ago, when he’d shown them the man he’d become—how heartless and bitter, how strong and unbreakable—did they watch on with that stupid look, knowing what had happened underneath that tree? Did they know the fucking weakling, the fucking coward, he had once been in your mere prescence?

Wrapped around your stupid finger, turning red and dreaming about you at night, imagining himself—fuck—imagining all the things the two of you would be when you were older.

Rei had to keep popping out kids for a man that forced her into a fake, bullshit marriage; Touya didn’t know what love was, wouldn’t know it if it slapped him in his stupid, chubby face, but there was something he had felt at school, when he saw a girl, when she played tag and talked about their future as heroes—there was something that felt real good about that.

It was distracting, you were (still fucking are), and the last thing he needed during all his training was a damn girl to steal his mind to other possibilities, to other futures—but you had regardless.

And Enji wasn’t supposed to know. Not then, not now, not ever.

“We weren’t friends! We were never friends, I—I hated your annoying ass.”

Finally, he hurts your stupid feelings; your nostrils flare and another flat look tries to shine over the sadness in your eyes. “You don’t need to talk to me like this.”

“Fuck, you were pathetic!” The laugh he lets out is all Dabi, all crazy and furious and fire. “I should have killed you, just like I wanted to!”

“Touya, stop.”

Dabi takes a step towards you, another one when you back up from him, and grabs the front of your shirt. Any minute now, it’s going to burst into flames and maybe, if he’s lucky, you’ll fuck out of his life forever. “I wanted to dig your eyes out with a spoon while your parents were sleeping. I wanted you to scream and cry and—”

“No, you didn’t.”

“—while you asked me why, why, why me? so I could finally tell you how much I hated you.”

It only infuriates him more, the look on your face, which isn’t as scared as he wants it to be. Which isn’t really scared at all.

“I daydreamed about it every day, I fucking jacked it to the thought of your dead, rotting body laying six feet—”

“I’ve been inside your head.” Your hands come to wrap around his, which prompts him to yank them back. “In the alleyway, trying to find out who you were. I know, Touya, I know that you’re lying, so please,” with a sigh, you squeeze your eyes shut, “stop talking to me like that.”

Every part of you is sick and soft and quiet, from the look on your pinched face to the shaking hands that reach for him again, and Dabi realizes it is something he has never known. What does all of it even mean, anyway? The tone of your laugh when he makes an ugly face at you, when he mocks the stupid questions you ask, when he rolls his eyes at your fucking implications. All of you, every last piece of you, has always been a mystery to him, one he wasn’t able to leave unsolved.

When he yells at you like this, you’re supposed to turn away and you are supposed to cry. When he raises his hands to strike you, to burn you into fucking nothing, you are supposed to be afraid, you are supposed to fear the scorch of his flames against your skin, the ones that will turn you into him. When he ignores your calls and doesn’t come around as often as you want him to, you are supposed to get it. You are supposed to know you’ve been replaced—by a cat girl, one that is more talented than you, one that fucks better—and he is supposed to turn away and forget you existed.

But none of that ever seems to fucking happen.

“What?” His voice has gone hoarse, “You don’t know anything.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Though he’s the one with the fist raised, though he’s the one with sweat slicking his hair to his neck, though he’s the one that’s put that bruise on your lip, an apology is evident in every word you speak. “I just wanted to know who you were, I didn’t mean to see it all.”

The only response he gives you is the thunderous beat of his heart in his chest, the wide-eyed look on his ugly mug.

“I wanted to tell you and talk to you about it, but you come around so rarely and you never answer when I—” You shake your head, “I’m not blaming you, I’m sorry. But then everything happened and—” In the black screen of the television, he sees how trapped he looks when you gesture to it. How small he looks. How Touya-like he looks. “—and I just never got the chance to, before now.”

Every thought he’s ever had about you makes him sway on his feet. Every lustful thought, every remembrance of the jokes you’d told him as kids, of the games you played, of the looks you’d given him. Every horrible thought he’s ever had about you—sincere and in an attempt to stuff his feelings back down his throat. All the wanting he’d ever done, for the future, for the past, for now. It’s all laying out in front of him, between the space on the carpet between the two of you. Like he’d vomited it all up. Like you’d peeled back the layers of his skin and dug it all out of him.

“You’re full of shit.”

“No, Touya, I’m—” Frustration flashes over your face again and you rub at the crease between your eyebrows, dab at your nose, tongue the bruise on your lip. “I would never lie to you, I need you to know that.”

“Yes you are,” Pressing himself further into the wall behind him, he whispers, “Yes, you are lying. I know you are.”

“What makes you think I’m lying about this?”

“In the alleyway, that wasn’t the first time you’ve ever put your fingers inside my brain.” The first time he’d met you, at that fucking private school, when you told him about your quirk, he hadn’t believed you. Some kind of mind game bullshit? How was that fair? A nobody-girl, one that wasn’t even from a prominent family, like Touya was, would rise through the ranks as a Pro in no time flat, with an OP quirk like that.

When he asked you to tell him what he was thinking, to prove it, you’d gone quiet, flinched a little, and told him that the burns on his shoulders were hurting him. It was the first day he’d met you, wearing a school uniform, one that covered him up in a way that hid it all—from his teacher, from Enji, from a nobody, smarty-pants girls like you; there was no way for you to know that kinda shit.

Whatever he wants to say next doesn’t come out, not even when he opens his mouth and gasps like a dying, stinking fish. Maybe if Dabi could cry, he would be.

If you could read his mind in half a second, in the alleyway, to know, then how did you not know then? In the classroom, peeking inside his mind, knowing about the burns and somehow not knowing about it all. About Enji. About the Hell he was living.

It all seems to dawn on you, all your petty, stupid fucking lies, and you take a step forward. “I didn’t know back then because I didn’t know how to use it yet. I—I still don’t! Because I can’t, Touya!”

“It doesn’t make sense, no matter what you say. Because you’re lying.”

“If I had known what you were going through, don’t you think I would have—” For some reason, you start crying, like you’re the victim here. Like you’re the one with the gaps in your skin and the burns on your body and the hate in your stomach. Like you’re the one that fucking lost it. “I didn’t know how to use my quirk back then, in order to see more than what you were thinking. I cared about you, I still do! If I had known—”

“Shut up!” Dabi raises his hands, curls them in the way he does when he wants to burn everything around him. He grabs you then and he doesn’t care about the gentle way you’re touching him, doesn’t care about the hands on his or the breath on his face when he drags you closer. “You’re a liar!”

“You’re burning up, you have to calm down!” Still, you aren’t scared of him, just trying to wipe the sweat pooling all over his face and neck. Pleading and crying, just like he wants, but the worry dancing in your eyes isn’t for yourself.

“I’m going to kill you, right now!”

You can’t know. You can’t know all the things he’s thought about you. You can’t know him like that because no one does, not even Dabi knows all the things about Touya like that.

“If you don’t calm down, you’re going to roast yourself alive, Touya, you’re overheating!”

“Right now, I’m going to do it! Just like I’ve always wanted!” He’s going to shove his thumbs in your eyes, he’s going to snap your pretty little neck, he’s gonna cut you up—just like you’ve done to him. Hands on your jaw, fingers cradling your face: he’s ready.

Any minute now.

Any second, he’s going to finally do it.

They’ll close that movie theater down. No one will ever go there again. It will all be reduced to ashes.

“Touya, please.”

Any moment now. He can do it, no problem. Absolutely no problem.

But your fingers cradle his face, and then you push them up his nose and in his ears and everything gets cool, just for a little while. Just enough that he can finally lean his head back against the couch you’ve made up for him, just enough so that he can finally sleep.

The first thing Dabi knows when he wakes up is that he’s in your bed (it takes him a long time to figure this out—what with the migraine and sour taste in his mouth and all that), and he knows this because the mattress is way too soft to be his, there are too many pillows all around him, and your smell is invading every piece of him.

The second thing he knows is that he’s wearing the sweater again—and that you must have put it on him, which means you’d seen—and then that the sheets are a little damp from all the towel-wrapped bags of ice near his neck, his hands, his thighs. It all comes painfully flashing back to him, the night before, and it’s a testament to how tired he is—seriously—because he doesn’t really do anything, just lays there like a dead, stinking fish.

There are two piles of sheets balled up on your floor, stained with blood, stained with (what is obviously) his vomit, and he can faintly hear your washer banging across the apartment. For a minute, he wonders if this is how you felt, laying for 30 minutes in that bathtub—somehow alive, but feeling like death—fading in and out from the world around you, thoughts coming and going like the breeze from the ceiling fan above him.

Today, whatever time it is (late afternoon, maybe?), Touya is too exhausted to put up the act.

It’s embarrassing, the way he wraps his arms over his face and breathes you in, the soft little groan he lets out when the smell of lavender subdues his headache for a moment. His tight jeans are still on, though they’ve been unbuttoned, zipper down, and—with all the wiggling he’d done in his sleep—they’ve come down uncomfortably around his ass. It takes a long time before he moves his arms, before he pulls them back on right and rolls out of bed.

The idea of you makes his stomach hurt, so he doesn’t go there just yet.

Peeking out of your room, there is no sign of anyone else in the apartment, and Touya quickly pads across the hall and into your bathroom, leans against the door when he closes it and holds his breath, just in case you’re gonna pop out somewhere.

It’s hard to meet himself in the mirror, always is.

Somehow, the burns under his eyes look worse, darker, and two of the staples in his cheek are more crooked than usual. Part of his hair is flattened against his head and the other parts are wild, a little crimped and folded, and running a hand through it all doesn’t do a fucking thing, which makes him snort. It’s strangely domestic, the rugged sight of him in your bathroom, wearing a sweater that was originally his, that he’d seen on you, that you’d put back on him.

The bristles on your toothbrush are stained pink, but he brushes the sour taste of puke out of his mouth anyway—no, he’s not gonna tell you about that.

When there’s nothing left to do but face you, Touya wonders what else you’ve seen in this crazy head of his. In between the time since you’d read his mind in the alleyway and last night, he’d worried about you, thought about the future the two of you were supposed to have. He’s wanted you, and a date at the cinema, jacked off to the thought of your tits under his sweater (and a bunch of other things, honestly), cursed himself for being such an asshole by ignoring you, and hated you. Every part of you he couldn’t understand, every part of you he wanted to.

That laptop of yours is open, the headset around your neck as something dull and boring drones on quietly, and you look at him for a long time before hitting your spacebar, before taking off the headphones and standing up to approach him.

The bruise on your lip has fully settled and it’s ugly.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” You’re whispering, which is nice for his headache. When he shrugs, you turn back to the table and grab a piece of buttered toast from your plate, the piece that isn’t bitten, and offer it to him.

And he’s too tired to fight, so he just takes it and moves around you, away from the way you’re looking at him—soft, like fucking always—and slumps down on your couch. It’s been made up, with the blanket and the pillows; you must have slept on it last night.

The toast crunches real loud, gets crumbs all over him that he swipes onto the carpet, and some are clinging to your cheek when you eventually come to sit beside him. Dabi thinks it’s too close, Touya thinks it’s too far away, and all three of you just stare at the empty television screen. Out of the corner of his eye, you’re opening and closing your mouth, sighing quietly, and it almost makes him laugh, it would if it didn’t require so much effort.

Then the apologies start.

“I’m sorry for knocking you out like that.” All the words are still whispered. “I don’t know if you remember,”—he does—“but they shot us with suppressants, at the bar, and you were overheating.”

Suppressants. That Yakuza fuck.

It makes you sound real small and sad, with your Bambi eyes and sunset face. “I was afraid you were gonna cook yourself alive, so I—”

“‘s’fine.” Touya grunts, and you just nod in response.

“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it earlier, I should have made time to find you.” The huff you let out is a little bitter, too harsh for someone like you. “I did it just fine yesterday, I should have tried harder before then.”

None of this really means anything to him, so he shifts a little bit—cringes—and looks at you. “How did you find that place?”

“You’ve been there before,” Even though it’s all out in the open, you seem shy about admitting it, which is real fucking hilarious. “It’s the second place I looked.”

The image of you, in that yellow dress, wandering down streets and sidewalks, looking in the places he hangs around, makes him want to throw up. What the fuck are you thinking? Another blow to the head will kill you, stupid, so why are you walking around like a ripe little peach, around people that would love to take a bite?

(There is a small, uncaged part of him that feels warm about it, that makes Touya feel like he did at school with you; the idea that you had searched high and low, slapped guys that grabbed you, tried to talk to him about his embarrassing fucking feelings—it all makes you seem like a mystery again.)

You’re quiet after that, thoughts flashing over your face as you lightly touch the bruise on your lip, and it pisses him off suddenly. All of his memories and daydreams, all of his fears and wants and desires, all of his plans and secrets have all been strewn out before him like a disemboweled pig, and you get to sit quietly with all your own feelings.

“Tell me what you’re thinking. Now.” When you raise your eyebrows at him, his face scrunches up like that of a child, like it probably did back then. “I deserve to know.”

Because you’re an annoying little goody-goody, you just shrug.

“I think that’s fair.” You shift to face him, the way you had last night. “I’m thinking that I’m still worried about you overheating. I’m thinking that I’m tired, that I’m upset with myself.” A frown pulls on your lips. “I’m thinking that...you’re going to leave, and I’m worried you won’t come back this time.”

Not in some you’re-gonna-die-out-there kinda way, but in some you’ll-never-talk-to-me-again kinda way. It’s as plain as day on your face and he, Dabi, thinks it’s good that you feel that way, that you should. Because he, Dabi, shouldn’t ever speak to you again because he’s been compromised, he’s been found out. All the secret inside shit you aren’t supposed to know has come to the surface—in fact, you dived into that water to find it yourself—and, by the rules of the street, he shouldn’t come around you again. He should kill you, actually, to prevent anything from happening to him or his mission.

“I’m thinking that I regret not trying to find you sooner, when we were kids. I maybe could have done it, I don’t know,” You shrug again and it becomes obvious how tired you are. It must have been a long night, for the both of you, after you’d finally shut him up. “But I’m also thinking there is no use regretting, because it won’t change the past. I’m thinking that,” Bambi eyes, big and worried and sad and gentle. “I just have to keep trying, for the future.”

For once, he doesn’t know what to say. Or think. Or do.

Because nobody has ever tried for him, for Touya, not like you have.

A little chuckle comes out of you, brings his eyes back to your face, and he’s surprised to find it a little shy. “I’m also thinking that it’s a little silly for me to be sad, because I should have known there were other women in your life, after all this time.”

And that confuses the hell out of him, makes him roll his eyes and shake his head—painfully—as he tries to figure out what the fuck you’re talking about.

“What?” It’s absurd, really, this idea that he’s the kinda guy worried about other women, that he’s the kinda guy that has a multitude of them stored in his back fucking pocket or something. Toga? He wouldn’t call her a woman, more like a noisy little brat that could go to Hell, for all he cared. “What other women?”

The smile on your face wavers, like you want to drop it into a frown, but you hold it steady. “I don’t know, just, whoever. Like the one from last night.”

Are you kidding?

Your stupid ass quirk has reached into the recesses of his mind and broken open that seal, spilled his guts all over the floor of your apartment and cleaned it up with your sheets, and you still think—

“The cat girl? I don’t even—I couldn’t tell you her name if my life depended on it.”

“Oh,” The laugh you let out is a little surprised, but your face still looks pinched and upset. “I don’t—uh—I don’t know if that’s better or worse, actually.”

“There are no 'other women', smarty-pants.” Touya scoffs and leans closer to you, sneers in your face so you fucking get the point. “Use that brain of yours, Miss College Classes, there ain’t no one else, just—”

When he cuts himself off, you raise your eyebrows, lean closer to him in response—which sends him back to the other end of the couch. “Just?”

This is so stupid, makes him cross his arms in annoyance as a wave of embarrassment heats up his whole body. “If you wanna know so damn bad, just read my mind again. You seem to have a real affinity for that!”

“Touya,” You chide, “I’m serious. Just—?”

Here’s one last thing to know: he isn’t going to say it. Absolutely not. If you wanna cough up blood and dig through the gaps of him to find out, be his fucking guest, but he is not going to say it. Not even if you scoot closer, not even if you put your hand on his—not even if he lets you—and certainly, not even if you run your tongue over that bruise on your lip.

You do that shit on purpose and he knows it.

“Get out of my face.”

But you don’t.

It makes his head crane back, the way your minty breath hits his lips again, the way your nose nudges his like it had in the cab, and—even though any and all thoughts from last night are painful—it has the same fucking effect. Everything about you is soft and touchy, your fingers over his cheekbone, your eyes watching him, your lips on his.

Touya hasn’t ever done anything softly, doesn’t even know how to, but he tries. Because he’s too exhausted to put up the act anymore, too eager for this to finally happen, too distracted to care about the gaps in his skin. He tries because he’s been ready to cross this boundary with you for a long time, too long, maybe because the two of you did that day in the motel. Touya tries for you because you’re the only one that tries for him.

When he pushes his lips back in response, a little breath comes out of your nose and fans across his face, makes him stop pulling his head away from you so he can move his chapped lips against yours, so he can nip lightly at your bottom lip and so he can dig one of his hands into your hair. A little sigh of relief is exhaled between the two of you and he moves in closer, presses his lips a little harder, so he can lick into your mouth, the hand on the back of your neck pulling you into him. The metal in his tongue must surprise you, because a little sound squeaks out of you; it isn’t one of arousal or pleasure, but just the mere fact that your lips are slotted together, that you’re making little noises against him, finally gives him the energy to nearly push you back into the couch.

“Ow,” The word murmurs around his lips and he pulls back instantly, eyes wide and zero-ing in on the purple bruise marring your face.

It’s fucking hilarious; he’s finally getting the chance to kiss you, for the second time in his pitiful life, and—of course—your lips would be too tender for him, with the injury he gave you. Fucking great. So fucking funny, in retrospect.

If he backs out now, he might lose his wits and jump through your window again, so Touya just adjusts his head and presses another kiss into the corner of your mouth. It makes you laugh, how hard he tries not to smash into that bruise, and he keeps pressing his lips to yours, keeps licking into them, digging his fingers into your scalp, even as you say his name.

“What?” He grunts, finally pulling away from you when you laugh again. Your hands follow him, lay gently on his cheeks—and he lets you, even if it makes him sweat a little—and settle your forehead against his.

You press another soft kiss to him, just to be a fucking tease and pull back when he chases you. “No other women?”

“Does it look like I’m—”

“Touya!”

“No, damn it!” As annoyed as he’s trying to sound, one of his arms is wrapping around you, pulling you closer to him as one of yours goes behind his neck. It makes him a little tense, the unfamiliarity of it all, like you’re gonna dig your nails into him or choke him out when you get the chance. But your eyes are big and wide and shining with something that embarrasses him, shining the way they always do when you look at him.

And you better not fucking tell anyone about the little kiss he gives your bruise.

“Ain’t no one else but you.”

The smile you give him makes him pull back his head, or he tries to, but you keep your forehead against his, and give his nose a little kiss in return. It makes him groan—in embarrassment and not because he likes it—so he presses another kiss against your lips, lets it get a little passionate and heavy, hands running from your back to your thighs, from his hair to his chest, before he purposely nips at your lip again. All this cutesy shit makes him queasy, but it’s the first time he’s seen you really smile since he’d been in your apartment, since before last night, since six weeks ago, when you let him fall asleep on your couch.

And for some reason, you look just about as happy touching him.

“You aren’t gonna leave and never come back?” Even through all the sugary sweet kissing, he can hear the concern in your voice, can feel the heat from the burn in your eyes against his own.

It makes him laugh, actually; get this, smarty-pants, he tried that shit for 11 years. It didn’t work then and it sure as Hell isn’t gonna work now, not when he’s touched you like this, not when you’ve seen the inside of his skin the way you have.

And, come on, you should know better than to ask a stupid question like that.

Unfinished Business- Chapter 1

Summary: You never imagined Bakugou would fall in love with you, and you certainly never imagined you’d break up with him. But he did. And you do. And now there’s too many pieces for one person to pick up. 

Genre: angst, possible smut in further chapters

Word Count: 2,430

Chapter warnings: cussing, reader has a quirk (can produce a neurotoxin that can temporarily paralyze enemies or temporarily take away pain; cannot produce both types at the same time; does not work on self)

A/N- song I listened to while writing: At Least by Jessica Baio; this chapter is formatted a bit differently, as it’s mostly a precursor to the main story, and I kinda got carried away creating a basis for the relationship with Bakugou. Oops? Reblogs/comments greatly appreciated! <3

When you first met Pro-Hero Dynamight, it had been pure chance. He’d been on his way to starting his own agency but still putting in hours as one of his old mentor’s best heroes.

You weren’t sure what made Jeanist think you’d be a promising duo, but he was insistent on pairing the two of you up on patrol, despite the large gap in experience.

And it wasn’t that you weren’t a good hero, with a quirk suited for both attack and rescue; you were lucky you’d gotten so much time in the field. But despite all this, Bakugou still felt miles ahead of you in experience, something he was sure to remind you of when you went on your first patrol together.

It wasn’t a secret that the blonde was prickly and had a temper, and as much as he respected his mentor, he clearly wasn’t happy about being partnered up. He’d insisted for the first hour that he worked better alone because ‘he didn’t have to worry about anyone keeping up with him.

The irony that he was trailing behind you the whole time wasn’t lost on you as you pretended to listen, scanning the dark streets for any disturbances while he grumbled, strutting like he owned the entire city.

He was insufferable, tugging on a strand of your hair every time he felt like maybe you weren’t paying attention to his bragging. He was so caught up in pestering you that you almost missed the black-clad figure crawling out of an upper apartment window with a backpack slung over their shoulder.

You’d taken off first, Bakugou cursing behind you, and after a brief chase, you couldn’t help but laugh, panting with the robber incapacitated beneath your knee.

“I thought no one could keep up with you, Dynamight,” you’d teased when he stopped next to you, puffing. He’d froze, and for a moment, you were sure he was gonna blow you up right then and there, and then he’d laughed.

Full-on laughed like the sound had started in his toes and worked its way up, and you’d been so startled that he only laughed harder.

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