MR. BIG SHOT ! — bakugou k.
summary: having already achieved everything you‘ve ever dreamed of: graduating ua with a tragic but good ending, leaving the drama behind, keeping contact with your hero friends, and especially… becoming a pro-hero with your own agency! ,, well, scratch the last part. you still haven’t figured that one out. turns out your pro-hero title doesn’t pay well enough to open an agency just yet. but what it is good for, is attracting an obsessed, male-dominated fan base, right? no. don’t worry, though. your long-time rival ‘mr. king-explosion-murder’ is here to help you out! or is he? because he seems way more interested in flexing his massive wealth on your ass than actually being helpful.
pairing: pro-hero! bakugou katsuki x pro-hero! broke! reader
includes: past rivals to lovers, slow burn-ish(?), mutual pining, reader has a quirk, bakugou is a little shit, suggestive themes/content, afab, swearing, beta read but we still could die idk, yearner! bakugou, no mentions of ‘y/n’ (ew), tiny angst (nothin’ too much), misogyny, flashbacks, toxic behaviour, banter, idiots in love, partners to lovers, kissing, jealousy, childhood friends, reader’s hero name is ‘shockwave’
playing: bubblegum bitch by MARINA
a/n: is it too obvious that I’m an ao3 author? also ts feels rushed idk, bakugou also might be a lil ooc, wrote this on only 2 hours of sleep.. (might write a part 2 lmk)
life was good, life was beautiful, and everything was perfectly fine.
at least, that was the grand, exhausting lie you kept feeding yourself as the blinding glare of the studio lights burned straight into your retinas, rendering the rest of the dark room a blurry haze. you maintained a pristine, polite smile. the exact kind of synthetic, non-threatening mask expected of a respectable pro-hero during a live, prime-time broadcast. but the specific, condescending look the interviewer was giving you across the sleek glass desk? that was definitely not making your blood boil. not at all.
you were, by all accounts, a genuinely nice person. you loved people, you loved the messy, rewarding reality of saving them, and you went out of your way to be kind in an industry that often chewed up empathy and spat it out. but kindness was a conscious choice, not an invitation for weakness. you had long passed the point of letting people walk all over you. if someone decided to be disrespectful, you had absolutely no problem giving that exact same energy right back. no pun intended, given the volatile nature of what slept beneath your skin.
"so, shockwave..." the interviewer started, leaning his tailored elbows onto the glass with a smooth, practiced grin that didn't even come close to reaching his eyes. he adjusted the microscopic wire of his lapel mic, his tone dripping with a fake, sickly sweet admiration that made your stomach turn. "your climb through the hero rankings since graduating UA has been incredibly... interesting to watch. but a lot of critics out there are still scratching their heads. they look at your quirk, kinetic dividend, and they wonder about your actual merit on the battlefield."
you kept your hands folded neatly in your lap, keeping your breathing slow, deep, and perfectly even. despite your efforts, a low, dull hum started vibrating in the marrow of your bones. a minor, frustrating symptom of your quirk naturally reacting to the amplified sound waves bouncing off the studio walls and the heavy, mechanical thrum of the cameras. you forced the vibration down, suppressing it before it could manifest as a physical tremor in your fingers.
"my merit?" you repeated. your voice remained sweet, perfectly smooth, but it carried a subtle, razor-sharp edge, a silent, chilling warning for him not to push his luck on live television. "i think the public safety reports speak for themselves. my absorption rate during active combat keeps structural and environmental damage to an absolute minimum."
"of course, of course," he waved a dismissive, manicured hand, looking down at his cue cards with a small, mocking hum that felt entirely staged. "but let's be realistic for our viewers at home. your power relies entirely on taking what someone else dishes out first. if a villain doesn't strike you, or if a stronger hero isn't on the field to provide that initial impact... aren't you essentially just waiting around? some online hero forums go as far as calling your ranking a byproduct of piggybacking on others' strength."
as the man’s voice faded into a dull, repetitive drone of media buzzwords, you found yourself completely zoning out. your gaze drifted to the tiny, unblinking red recording light on the camera lens closest to your face, and your mind slipped backward into the heavy, frustrating reality of your everyday life.
the double standards were exhausting. if you were a male hero with a quirk that absorbed explosions and raw kinetic force, they wouldn't be questioning your dependency. they would call you an immovable wall. a tactical genius. the ultimate vanguard of defense. but because it was you, the narrative always shifted into something lesser. it was always piggybacking. it was always reactionary. you knew exactly what to blame it on, and it wasn't a lack of effort or skill on your part. it was the quiet, systemic misogyny that still choked the upper echelons of a hero society that ran on optics, no matter how many times women saved the world from turning into ash.
it reflected terribly in your fanbase, too. you had worked yourself to the bone, broken your body, and sacrificed your youth to earn respect, yet your demographic data was a literal nightmare. fifty percent of it consisted of sweet, genuine kids who bought your merchandise and supportive citizens who cheered with relief when you arrived on a scene. the other fifty percent? oh, you didn’t even want to start. thirsty, middle-aged men who flooded your agency's public inbox with deeply unsettling messages and meticulously analyzed the fit of your hero costume on dark internet forums. you weren't seeking them out, you didn't dress for them, and the mere thought of their gaze made your skin crawl. it irked you to your absolute core that your life's work, your literal blood and sweat, was reduced to eye candy for people who couldn't care less about the lives you saved or the burden you carried.
and god, you had bled for them.
your mind twitched, a sudden, cold phantom pain shooting through your shoulder where a ragged piece of shrapnel had torn through your flesh during the final war before graduation. the public loved to talk about the grand, inspiring concept of the "heroic youth," but they easily forgot the sheer, unadulterated horror of being a teenager standing on a battlefield covered in soot, watching the sky fall apart, and genuinely wondering if you'd even live to see twenty. you still couldn't listen to sudden, loud thuds without your muscles locking up in a defensive reflex. you still had raised, pale scars under your clothes that made you shiver whenever the autumn wind hit them just right. you had paid your dues to this society in blood, tears, and a complete loss of innocence.
the only thing that had gotten you through that living hell was your friends. you missed them fiercely. you missed the easy, quiet evenings spent in the dorms or small apartments with izuku, ochako, iida, shoto, and tsuyu, where nobody had to prove their worth or justify their existence because you had all survived the trenches together. you especially missed mina, your absolute best friend, who was probably throwing a shoe at her television screen if she was watching this broadcast live right now. mina would be screaming at the screen, telling you to completely wreck his set.
"...which actually brings us to a very interesting comparison," the interviewer's voice snapped you back to reality, sharp, intrusive, and loud. he leaned in closer over the desk, his grin widening as he prepared to deliver a heavily calculated, devastating blow. "speaking of your old classmates... shoto is currently sitting comfortably at the number two hero spot. you two are known to be quite close friends. tell me, shockwave, how does it feel to see someone you stood shoulder-to-shoulder with in the war climb so high, while you're still struggling to even secure the funding to open your own independent agency? does a bit of resentment ever build up?"
the studio went dead silent. the air in the room suddenly felt incredibly thin, the heavy silence echoing in the spaces between your heartbeats.
he wanted a reaction. he wanted you to look bitter, or jealous, or defensive. he wanted to humiliate a young female pro-hero on live television just to get his ratings up for the evening slot.
you looked at him. you didn't yell, and you didn't snap. instead, your genuine smile slowly faded from your face, replaced by a cold, calculating stillness that made the cameraman visually flinch behind his lens. you weren't oblivious to his game, and you certainly weren't going to play it.
the kinetic energy in the room ,, the low hum of the studio lights, the mechanical vibration of the heavy equipment, the very sound waves of his smug, challenging voice seemed to subtly lean toward you, answering to the quiet, magnetic pull of your quirk. your body was a sponge, and he had just given you a massive amount of negative energy to work with.
you uncrossed your legs and stood up. the movement was fluid, graceful, and entirely unexpected. "shoto earned every single bit of his ranking, and i couldn't be prouder of him," you said, your voice dropping into a quiet, dangerous register that cut right through his smug demeanor like a blade. "but since you seem so entirely convinced that my value relies on someone else providing the impact..."
you unclipped the microphone from your collar. you didn't throw it. instead, you simply let it drop directly out of your hand, allowing gravity to take it. it hit the glass desk with a sharp, amplified thud that violently blew out the studio's audio monitors in a screech of feedback.
"...i'll let you figure out how to finish this broadcast without mine." you turned on your heel and walked right off the set, the heavy studio doors swinging shut behind you, leaving the director screaming into a completely dead microphone.
"yeah, i know! i should’ve done something.. i just thought he’d lay it off.. i tried to give him a chance." you sighed, a heavy, ragged sound that seemed to rattle the quiet walls of your bedroom as you wedged your phone firmly between your jaw and your shoulder.
your fingers were slightly stiff as you rummaged through the dark depths of your closet. the chilly autumn air was still stubbornly clinging to the bare skin of your neck, a residual consequence of the quiet, bitter walk back to your apartment after storming out of the studio. it stood in a cruel, stark contrast to the absolute, boiling frustration still simmering just beneath your ribs.
on the other end of the line, mina’s voice didn't just carry through the speaker; it practically vibrated the plastic shell of your phone, furious, sharp, and fiercely defensive in the way only she could be.
"give him a chance? sweetie, he was actively trying to publically execution your career on live, prime-time television! honestly, when the audio picked up that mic dropping, i screamed so loud my neighbors literally banged on the drywall. you did exactly what you had to do, shockwave. do not let that parasite make you feel like the bad guy."
"it's just... the media is going to have a field day with this by tomorrow morning," you murmured, your voice dropping an octave as you finally pulled a thick, oversized cream-colored knit sweater and a pair of dark jeans from their hangers. you had just scrubbed your skin raw under a scalding hot shower, but the steam had done absolutely nothing to loosen the tight, painful knots of tension locked into your shoulders. you smoothed down the fabric, staring blankly into the dark corner of your wardrobe. "and the worst part is, they aren't entirely wrong about the agency logistics. i'm drowning, mina. the bank officially rejected the secondary small-business loan application this morning. turns out having a shiny pro-hero license and a high public rescue count doesn’t mean a damn thing to corporate landlords in central musutafu if you don't have a multi-million-yen corporate conglomerate backing your name."
There was a brief pause on the line, the heavy, empathetic silence of a friend who had stood in the exact same war zones as you. when mina spoke again, her tone had dropped the defensive bite, softening into that unshakeable, grounding warmth that had kept you anchored since your first year at ua.
"hey. look at me - well, don't look at me, you know what i mean. listen to my voice. you are, pound for pound, one of the most resilient frontline heroes from our graduating class. you literally held the structural foundation of a collapsing high-rise together with your bare hands while civilians evacuated during the final vanguard push. you bled for this city before you were even old enough to buy a drink. the funding will come. but tonight? tonight you are putting the ledger away. no hero talk, no budget sheets, and absolutely no godforsaken talk-show hosts. momo pulled some strings and booked a private, restricted booth at that low-key cedar lounge back behind the main station so the paparazzi won't be able to sniff us out. everyone is already on their way down."
you paused, pulling the thick collar of the sweater over your head, your voice slightly muffled by the wool. "everyone? who exactly is everyone, mina?"
"you know, just the usual group," mina replied, a fraction too quickly. her cadence smoothed over a bit too casually, a subtle, practiced tilt to her words that was completely lost on you over the faint, scratching static of the cellular connection. "ochako, izuku, iida, shoto, tsu, momo, jirou, denki, sero, kirishima... we're all completely burnt out. get dressed, get your keys, and get down here so we can force-feed you expensive drinks. see you in twenty, okay?"
"alright," you breathed, a faint, exhausted smile finally tugging at the corner of your lips. "alright, i'll be there."
hanging up, the silence of the apartment settled back over you like a heavy blanket. you caught your own reflection in the fogged-up glass of the bathroom mirror ,, staring not at some generic, nameless face in a crowd, but at the tired, shadowed eyes of a pro-hero who had spent the last eighteen months trying to carve out a space for herself in a society that preferred its female heroes smiling, compliant, and cheap.
you grabbed your heavy winter coat, checked your wallet with a small, familiar twist of anxiety at the meager balance remaining in your checking account, and stepped out into the damp, autumn night.
the lounge was hidden down a narrow, cobblestone alleyway, entirely unremarkable save for a single, low-wattage amber lantern hanging over a heavy, weathered wooden door. the moment you pushed it open, the sharp, biting chill of the outside air was instantly swallowed by the rich, comforting atmosphere of the interior.
the deep, smoky scent of roasted cedar, expensive malt whiskey, and the low, collective murmur of a high-end establishment. from the far, curtained corner of the back room, a sudden burst of familiar, uninhibited laughter drifted over the partition. the moment you stepped through the velvet drapes of the private booth, the suffocating tension that had been riding your spine since the interview finally began to crack.
the group looked up almost in unison, the ambient chatter breaking off into an immediate, easy wave of familiarity. mina raised her glass over her head with a triumphant grin, while ochako immediately shifted down the length of the plush, deep-crimson velvet bench, aggressively patting the newly cleared space beside her. you offered a small, quiet, but entirely genuine smile, navigating the tight space between the low tables as you walked toward them.
"look who finally decided to join civilization," denki grinned, leaning back with his arms laced behind his head, barely dodging a stray peanut that sero flicked directly at his forehead.
from his side of the crowded table, izuku gave you a warm, intensely supportive nod, his eyes searching your face for any lingering traces of the afternoon's distress. right next to him, shoto simply dipped his chin in an effortless, quiet acknowledgement, his mismatched eyes offering that steady, unblinking presence that always made the room feel a little less chaotic.
you pulled off your heavy coat, letting out a long, slow sigh of relief as you slid into the space next to ochako, your knees bumping gently against hers under the low table. momo immediately pushed a beautifully bound drink menu toward your hands with a soft, comforting murmur, while jirou leaned across the partition, lightly tapping the rim of her glass against your thumb in a silent, unspoken gesture of solidarity.
it was simple. it was low-key. it was the only space in the entire city where you didn't have to defend the nature of your own skin.
until you looked across the table. until your gaze drifted past the broad, shifting shoulders of kirishima, tracking a movement in the deepest, most shadowed corner of the velvet booth.
and suddenly, the air in your lungs went completely cold.
sitting back against the dark leather, a low-ball glass of amber liquor held loosely between his calloused fingers, was a figure you hadn't anticipated in a million years. the dim, overhead lighting caught the sharp, unmistakable gleam of a pair of piercing, crimson eyes staring directly through you.
your mood didn't just drop ,, it plummeted off a cliff, a cold, leaden weight dropping straight into the pit of your stomach.
bakugou had been leaning back against the cushions, a rare, incredibly faint smirk lingering on his lips as he half-listened to whatever animated, loud story kirishima was gesturing about. but the exact, precise millisecond his eyes slammed into yours, that smirk didn't just fade, it vanished entirely. his jaw set into a rigid, hard line, his massive shoulders locking up instantly into that defensive, aggressively territorial posture he instinctively assumed whenever you entered his space.
the silence that materialized between the two of you became a physical, suffocating weight, dropping like a guillotine right through the lively chatter of the table.
childhood friends. that was the hollow, nostalgic term your mothers still used during their weekly phone calls. you and katsuki had grown up with your houses practically sharing a fence line, your families so deeply intertwined that your childhood memories were an endless, blurry montage of shared dinners, loud summer festivals, and scraped knees in the dirt. back then, before the world realized what he was, before the word quirk became a metric of human worth ,, he had actually been nice. he was loud and fiercely competitive, yes, but there had been a raw, protective innocence to him. a strange, quiet soft spot that he only ever extended to a handful of people in his life.
but then his palms started to smoke. the constant, suffocating praise from every adult in a five-mile radius took that natural confidence and twisted it into an ugly, towering arrogance that devoured everything it touched.
you hadn't attended the same primary school, a geographical distance you had been grateful for at the time. but the specific afternoon you found out exactly how ruthlessly, how cruelly he had been treating izuku, the quiet, defenseless boy the two of you used to chase through the woods. something fundamental fractured inside your chest. you couldn't look at him without seeing the cruelty. you cut him off cleanly, refusing to play the part of the doting childhood neighbor to someone who used his power to systematically crush the people beneath him.
and on that day, you saw the look of ‘betrayal’ written in his eyes. as if it was your fault for having human-empathy!
by the time you both passed the ua entrance exam, you had perfected the art of treating him like white noise. but bakugo was a creature who loathed being ignored, especially by you. your personalities clashed like flint and steel from the first day of homeroom, but it was the volatile nature of your respective quirks that truly drove the animosity into something dark and obsessive.
kinetic dividend didn't just absorb environmental impact ,, it craved it. your body was a biological sponge designed to convert kinetic force into pure, amplified compliance. and bakugou? bakugou was a walking, breathing nuclear reactor of pure, unadulterated kinetic energy.
his explosions weren't just attacks ,, they were the ultimate, most volatile fuel your quirk could ever ask for. during the battle trials in school, the moment his palms sparked with that sweet, sulfur-scented nitroglycerin, your entire nervous system would hum, your skin tingling as your body naturally pulled the shockwaves and heat toward your own center like a magnetic anomaly. it was a dangerous, addictive feedback loop. your power reacted to his presence more violently, more intensely, than to any villain you had ever faced on the streets.
and you absolutely loathed how much you relied on that feeling. how much you yearned for it.
because beneath the anger, beneath the year and a half of icy silence and avoided glances, there was a specific ghost you could never quite scrub from your mind. the final war.
standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the ruined, ash-choked streets of a country that was actively tearing itself apart at the seams. you had been bleeding, your clothes torn to shreds, your muscles screaming as you stood against a wave of near-impossible odds. but in that horrific, suffocating chaos, your quirks had synthesized into something godlike.
every destructive, blinding blast he unleashed into the air, you had absorbed from behind him, capturing the concussive back-blast and amplifying it into an unbreachable, massive wall of kinetic defense that kept the vanguard from being overrun. you had never felt so entirely at ease, so profoundly safe in the middle of a slaughterhouse, as you did when you were protecting his back.
but that was a lifetime ago. now, it was almost eighteen months later. he was climbing the pro-hero billboard charts, flush with corporate cash, drowning in government agency funding, and you were sitting here staring at a menu you weren't even sure you could afford.
"hey," mina’s voice dropped to a barely audible thread, the sudden, sharp nudge of her elbow against yours snapping you out of your hard stare. when you blinked, her eyes were already darting frantically between you and the shadowed corner where bakugou sat, a deeply apologetic, guilty wince pulling at her features. "i am so, so sorry. he literally just... invited himself along when he heard kirishima was heading out. honestly, i didn't think he'd actually show up. you know how he usually gets about these kinds of things."
"it's fine," you lied. the words felt hollow and entirely dry as you muttered them, keeping your voice dropped low to ensure they were swallowed completely by the ambient clinking of glassware and laughter surrounding you.
you focused your gaze entirely downward, staring into the amber depth of your drink, refusing to look up. you absolutely refused to let him catch even a fraction of the way his presence had just entirely rattled your composure. your heart was hammering a ragged, uneven rhythm against your ribs, a visceral reaction you couldn't control no matter how hard you gripped the edge of the wooden table.
across the width of the booth, bakugou didn't move an inch.
to the rest of the table, he looked exactly like he always did, stony, detached, a permanent scowl resting over his sharp features as he held his glass loosely between his fingers. but behind that calm, impenetrable exterior, his mind was a chaotic, roaring mess of conflicting impulses.
when you had walked through that heavy wooden door tonight, looking so small but fiercely, stubbornly proud in that oversized cream sweater, something incredibly sharp had hit him right in the center of his chest. it felt like a physical blow. he had seen the broadcast. he had sat in his own silent office earlier that afternoon, watching the live feed on his monitor as you dropped that microphone directly onto the glass desk. it wasn’t like he cared, he swore he didn’t! he was only curious.
he had watched the raw, unyielding fire flashing in your gaze, the exact, terrifyingly stubborn look he knew better than anyone else on the planet.
it had pissed him off. it had made his palms spark against his desk in a burst of genuine, defensive fury. but it wasn't because you had walked off the set. it was because that pathetic excuse of an interviewer had dared to question your worth. bakugou knew exactly how strong you were. he didn't need a public rating chart to tell him what you were capable of. he had felt the sheer, crushing weight of your quirk firsthand back at UA. he knew what it felt like to unleash his absolute maximum blasts only for your body to take that kinetic devastation and turn it into raw, effortless compliance.
but seeing you right now.. looking so painfully distant, so entirely unwilling to even grant him a single glance or acknowledge that he breathed the same air, dragged him violently backward. it pulled him down into the depths of a memory he rarely, if ever, allowed himself to visit.
the flashback hit his consciousness like a sudden, blinding jolt of static shock.
you were kids. barely seven years old. it felt like a completely different lifetime. a world before the dust of the war, before the stiff hero uniforms, and long before this suffocating, bitter silence had settled between the both of you.
it was a suffocatingly hot summer afternoon, the kind where the humidity made your clothes stick to your skin, and you both had walked down to the concrete canal beneath the old railway bridge just to find some shade and escape the sun. izuku was supposed to come with you, but his mother had kept him trapped in bed with a sudden, spiking summer fever.
the water flowing directly in front of you was crystal clear, casting bright, shifting green reflections against the steep concrete banks. the two of you were sitting a few meters apart on the smooth, river-worn stones. bakugou was aggressively skipping flat rocks across the surface, his tiny, unblemished palms giving off small, involuntary puffs of gray smoke that smelled like sharp sulfur and sweet summer air.
there was a rare, awkward childlike innocence between yoy in those days ,, a quiet, grounded peace that only existed when the rest of the neighborhood kids weren't around to inflate his ego and turn him into a monster. younger you had been staring at the ripples in the water, your chin resting heavily on your knees, watching the stones skip before you suddenly broke the silence. "hey... what do you think we’ll be like when we grow up?"
bakugo had frozen mid-motion, a perfectly flat pebble gripped tightly between his small, calloused fingers. he let out a loud, defensive scoff, aggressively puffing his chest out as he glared over at you. "what kind of a sappy, stupid question is that?"
"i'm serious," younger you had mumbled, shifting your face slightly toward him, your eyes wide, bright, and completely genuine in the dim shade of the bridge. "everything is changing so fast. our quirks will be there in no time! do you think we'll still... you know, hang out? when we're big pro-heroes?"
bakugo had stared at you for a long, heavy, unblinking moment. for a single second, the fierce, defensive arrogance completely bled out of his features, leaving behind a rare, incredibly soft vulnerability that he never let anyone else see. he looked down, tossing the pebble into the center of the current, watching the water splash up.
"no way you're getting rid of me," he had muttered. his voice was unusually quiet, lacking any of its usual bark, and a sudden, dark blush was creeping onto his sun-tanned cheeks as he refused to look you in the eye. "you and i... we're gonna be the bestest heroes out there. together. well... me as the absolute number one, obviously. but you're gonna be right there next to me. so stop asking stupid questions."
back then, before everything went wrong, he had a soft spot for you. he carried a quiet, unshakeable loyalty in his chest that he simply didn't know how to voice without yelling or pushing people away.
the memory suddenly fractured and faded out, dissolving completely back into the dim, amber-lit reality of the lounge. bakugou took a slow, heavy swallow of his drink, the ice clinking sharply against the glass as his crimson eyes narrowed, watching you from across the table.
you were laughing at some mindless, chaotic comment denki had just made, your face lighting up in a way he hadn't seen in eighteen months. that soft spot was still there, burning a hole through his ribs, buried deep beneath a year and a half of unresolved pride, thick walls, and a massive fortune he didn't know how to offer you without completely breaking the silence.
he looked away sharply, his knuckles turning stark white around the base of his glass, the cold autumn wind rattling the window panes outside as the long night truly began.
the farewells started slowly, trailing off into the crisp, damp autumn night as the group began to fracture one by one. there was a collective, protective tenderness to the way they hugged you, a quiet understanding that didn't need to be voiced.
denki gave you a sloppy, enthusiastic wave, sero knocking a shoulder against yours with a soft chuckle, while iida offered a formal, intensely sincere speech about your structural worth before being gently dragged away by ochako. tsuyu nudged your side with a quiet kero, her big, honest eyes silently wishing you the absolute best.
izuku lingered the longest, his hand hovering over your shoulder with an expression so loaded with unspoken worry that you had to offer him a reassuring nod just to ease his racing mind. shoto simply met your gaze, a low, grounding nod passing between you before he turned into the dark.
mina stayed until the very end, her fingers twisting around the strap of her purse as she squinted out at the rain-slicked pavement. "hey, you sure you don't want a ride? my agency car is parked right around the block. i can drop you off in ten minutes, easy."
"mina, it's fine, really," you murmured, offering her a genuine, tired smile as you pulled your thick knit sweater tighter around your chest. "you've done enough tonight. i'm just going to call an uber. go home, get some sleep. don't be a burden to your driver on my account."
she bit her lip, clearly hesitant, but after another round of soft reassurance, she finally let you go, melting into the shadows of the alleyway.
the moment the drapes of the lounge entrance swung shut behind her, a suffocating, awkward quiet settled over you. you pulled out your phone, the cold air biting at your fingers as you tapped open the app and requested a ride, watching the little digital car icon slowly crawl through the streets toward your location.
you stood completely still beside the dim amber lantern of the bar entrance. you felt exposed. it was an intensely awkward sensation, standing entirely alone on a dark corner after everyone else had vanished, but you stubbornly refused to wander off into the shadows. you were a licensed pro-hero, yes.
you had held buildings together and fought in the trenches of a war. but the city had changed since graduation. the shadows felt longer now, more unpredictable, and if the war had taught you anything, it was that you never truly knew what kind of horrors were waiting to breed in the darkness when the lights went out. when the headlights finally cut through the fog, a sleek car pulled up to the curb with its hazard lights blinking, you let out a small breath of relief. you moved quickly, keeping your chin tucked against the wool of your collar as you rushed through the drizzle.
but as you reached for the door handle, your shoulder slammed directly into a broad, solid frame moving from the opposite direction. the impact sent a small shock of static through your nerves, and your head snapped up, an apology already forming on your tongue ,, until your gaze locked onto the sharp, unmistakable features of katsuki bakugou.
you froze, your lips parting in a collective gasp of pure shock. bakugou looked entirely stunned too, his crimson eyes widening for a fraction of a second before his face hardened. his heavy, goldenblond eyebrows crinkled down into a familiar, vicious scowl, his jaw setting as his chest expanded, clearly gearing up to launch into a full defensive confrontation right there on the sidewalk.
your own mouth twisted into a sharp sneer of pure irritation, the exhaustion of the day instantly catching fire at the mere sight of him.
"look, i don't have all day here," a gruff, deeply annoyed voice barked from the lowered front window of the car. the uber driver was staring back at the two of you through his rearview mirror, his fingers tapping impatiently against the steering wheel. "either get in the car or cancel the ride, you're blocking the lane."
the sudden interruption cut right through the volatile tension. with a mutual, venomous glare, you both pulled open the back door and slid onto the leather seat, aggressively backing into opposite corners of the vehicle. the door slammed shut, and the car ride instantly filled with an absolute, suffocatingly awkward silence.
the space between you felt like an active minefield. outside, the rain began to beat a rhythmic, heavy patter against the glass, while inside, the atmosphere was entirely ruined by the low, tinny sound coming from the dashboard. the driver's radio was playing some incredibly cheesy, terribly corny early 2000s love song. the kind with over-the-top acoustic guitar and whiny, dramatic lyrics that felt like sandpaper against your raw nerves.
"i hate this song," you murmured under your breath, the words slipping out before you could stop them, dripping with pure, unadulterated frustration. the comment immediately earned you a sharp, lingering side glance from bakugou, his eyes flashing in the dim light of the passing streetlamps. from the front seat, the driver’s eyes flicked to the mirror, his forehead tightening into a heavy, defensive frown, but he didn't turn the music down.
for two blocks, the only sound was the rain and the awful radio.
then, out of nowhere, bakugou cleared his throat, a rough, tense sound that felt entirely forced. "the interview," he started, his voice uncharacteristically awkward, rough around the edges as he stared straight ahead at the driver's headrest, refusing to turn his face toward you. "i saw it."
"congratulations." you murmured, your jaw tightening as you kept your gaze fixed on the blurry streetlights outside your window.
"is it true?" he continued, the words coming out in a clipped, tense rhythm. "the financial shit. the agency. heard from mina you’re broke as shit."
"it's none of your business, bakugou," you snapped quietly, the sting of humiliation making your skin flush hot beneath your sweater.
"i'm asking a question, look at me," he grumbled, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register. he was genuinely trying to be nice, or at least, his current version of nice.
he wanted to tell you that he had the resources, that his own agency was drowning in surplus capital, and that he could easily back your lease without a second thought. he tried to justify it to himself by thinking that if his old hag of a mother found out you were struggling while he was thriving, she would literally hang him from the ceiling by his ankles for not helping out a childhood neighbor.
but deep down, in the quietest part of his chest, he knew that wasn't the real reason. he knew he just couldn't stand the thought of you drowning while he held all the lifelines. but katsuki bakugou had never learned how to say things nicely. the words clashed with his stubborn pride, and by the time they left his mouth, they sounded sharp, arrogant, and entirely condescending.
"if you need the funding, i can just throw the cash at the landlord. it's pocket change to me anyway. you don't have to keep playing the martyr on live tv just because your quirk is too slow to pull in corporate sponsors."
the words hit you like a physical slap. you turned your head so fast your neck cracked, your gaze flashing with an instant, whitehot fury. he was making fun of you. of course he was. the golden boy of the billboard charts was sitting in his expensive leather jacket, treating your literal life's struggle like a charity case to flex his success.
"throw the cash at them?" you started to semi-yell, your voice shaking with an intense, volatile mix of anger and hurt that completely drowned out the corny radio. "who the hell do you think you are, bakugou? i don't want your pity money, and i certainly don't need you flexing your massive goddamn ego on my life! i have worked just as hard as you, i bled in the exact same war, and i will not sit here and let you treat me like some pathetic charity case because the system favors flashy explosions over actual defense!"
the moment your tone shifted into that sharp, confrontational register, bakugou’s own self-control snapped. he couldn't resist it. the raw, challenging edge in your voice was a drug to his instincts, dragging him right back into the volatile feedback loop that had always defined the two of you.
"shut the hell up and listen for once in your life!" he roared back, his voice booming in the cramped interior of the car. he wasn't oblivious to his own angry, defensive tone. he knew he was yelling, he knew he was screwing it up, but he just couldn't help himself.
he hadn't seen you in a year and a half. eighteen months of absolute silence, eighteen months of watching your name hover in the middle tier of the rankings while he climbed to the top.
he wouldn't say he had treated you fairly back in their teenage days at UA. he knew he had been a cruel, volatile bastard back then, and he had grown up. he had matured. he wasn't that same stupid kid anymore.
yet, the exact second he was in a room with you, his maturity evaporated, and he couldn't get rid of this aggressive, defensive tone. you seemed so entirely different now ,, so quiet, so professional, so painfully distant from him.
yet the heavy, vivid memory of your younger self, the girl who used to skip rocks with him under the railway bridge, the one with whom he had shared his almost-first-kiss at the age of seven, clung to his conscience like a phantom. the thought warmed his insides.
"i'm trying to give you a legal solution to your pathetic landlord problem, you brat!" he growled, leaning across the seat, his crimson eyes blazing in the dark. "but you're too damn proud to take a simple handout from someone who actually has the numbers to back it up!"
"you are a stuck-up, arrogant prick! you always have been!" you shot right back, leaning forward until your faces were barely inches apart, the air between you thick with the scent of ozone and sweet sulfur.
"you haven't changed at all! you just want to hold it over my head forever!"
"and you're the exact same whiney bitch who can't take a piece of practical advice without turning it into a sovereign crisis!" he yelled, his chest heaving as he glared down into your eyes, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the back of the driver's seat.
between you, the uber driver had gone completely rigid. his eyes were wide, glued straight to the dark road ahead, his hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were purple. poor guy must’ve just now realised who the two of you truly were.
the corny love song was still playing softly on the dashboard, but he was far too terrified to reach out and turn the dial, praying to god that the two pro-heroes in his backseat wouldn't accidentally blow his vehicle to pieces. the bitter, sharp banter continued back and forth, a rapid exchange of old wounds and current frustrations, until the car suddenly groaned to a halt.
outside the window stood a massive, soaring skyscraper, a notoriously luxurious high-rise apartment complex in the most expensive district of the city, the kind of place with a private doorman and tinted glass. bakugou’s apartment.
without breaking eye contact with you, bakugou reached into his jacket, pulled out a thick wad of cash, and aggressively slapped a handful of heavy bills onto the center console between the front seats.
"keep the change," he growled at the trembling driver. he threw himself out of the door, his heavy boots hitting the wet pavement with a loud thud, and before you could even utter another word, he slammed the car door shut with a force that made the entire chassis shake.
you let out a loud, ragged huff of absolute frustration, throwing yourself back against the leather seats, your heart hammering so hard against your ribs you could feel the kinetic pulse of it in your throat. "unbelievable," you muttered, pressing a hand to your forehead. "an absolute, unmitigated asshole." the driver didn't say a single word for the rest of the ride. he simply put the car in drive and accelerated away from the luxury tower, navigation tracking toward the older, cramped residential district where your small apartment was located.
when the car finally pulled up outside your modest building, you took a deep breath, trying to smooth down the lingering adrenaline. you pulled out your phone, unlocking the screen to open the payment app. "hey, sorry about all that. what's your paypal? i'll send over the fare and a tip for the trouble."
the driver slowly turned his head around, looking back at you with a mixture of profound relief and lingering exhaustion. he shook his head quickly. "don't worry about it, lady. that guy from before... he already paid."
you paused, your thumb hovering over the screen. "what do you mean he paid?"
"yeah," the driver muttered, gesturing to the console where a stack of high-denomination bills was sitting. "he paid the initial fare. and then he dropped enough extra cash on my dash to cover your entire ride home, plus double the amount of a standard top-tier tip."
the app notification on your phone chimed, confirming the ride was officially closed and fully settled. any normal person would have been happy. any broke, struggling pro-hero trying to save every yen for a lease deposit would have taken the free ride as a small victory.
but as you sat there staring at the dashboard, the realization sank in. you weren't happy. you were absolutely, entirely fuming, the rage roaring back into your chest hotter than it had been during the entire argument.
not only had katsuki bakugou forced his way into your ride, but he had paid for your tracking fare. he had paid double. he had literally treated your ride home like a cheap transaction he could handle with his pocket change.
it wasn't a favor. to your furious mind, it felt like the ultimate, final flex on your broke, struggling ass.
you slammed your own door open, stepping out into the cold autumn rain as the sedan quickly sped away into the dark, your teeth grinding so hard your jaw ached.
the morning sun didn't bring any warmth. it just aggressively cut through the thin, frayed curtains of your small apartment, throwing sharp lines of light across a desk piled high with overdue invoices and rejection letters from the bank. you hadn't slept. not really. every time you closed your eyes, you either heard the smug, mocking drone of that talk-show host or the low, furious rumble of katsuki bakugou’s voice vibrating through the cramped leather backseat of an uber. your muscles still felt tight, coiled like a spring that had been compressed way too far.
you were staring blankly into a half-empty mug of lukewarm coffee when your phone shattered the silence of the room. the ringtone sounded obnoxiously loud in the quiet kitchen.
your breath caught when you looked at the screen. it wasn't mina. it wasn't ochako. it was the official, encrypted number of the hero public safety commission’s public relations and logistics division.
your thumb swiped across the glass with a heavy, leaden dread. "this is shockwave."
"representative of the public safety commission, PR management," a crisp, terrifyingly clinical female voice spoke into your ear, lacking even a fraction of human empathy. "we are calling regarding the live broadcast incident from yesterday afternoon. the footage of your premature departure and the subsequent audio equipment malfunction has officially achieved viral status across three major platforms."
you closed your eyes, your knuckles turning white around your coffee mug. "the interviewer was actively violating the standard code of professional conduct by making unsubstantiated claims about-"
"the commission is not interested in the motivation behind your actions, shockwave," the woman cut in smoothly, her voice like ice. "we are interested in the optics. right now, the public narrative is heavily leaning toward the idea that you are volatile, unable to handle mild press critique, and structurally dependent on other heroes to maintain your ranking. your independent agency application has been officially flagged. under section four of the hero stabilization act, funding cannot be allocated to a pro-hero whose current public metrics suggest a high risk of volatile PR collateral."
the words felt like a physical drop in elevation. your stomach bottomed out. your agency. your dream. everything you had spent eighteen months of exhausting, underpaid solo patrols trying to build, completely flushed down the toilet because you refused to let a man humiliate you on live television. a heavy, suffocating wave of defeat washed over you, thick and bitter. you felt so profoundly bummed out, so completely hollowed by the absolute, crushing unfairness of it all, that you couldn't even find the words to argue.
but before you could open your mouth to accept the defeat, the woman continued, her tone shifting slightly into something more calculated.
"however, due to the high volume of supportive public engagement from your younger demographic, the commission is offering an alternative to a formal suspension. a joint-vanguard clause has been enacted for your case. effective immediately, your temporary startup and the dynamight agency are being placed into a mandatory, high-intensity joint task force assignment for the next three months."
you froze, the phone slipping a millimeter against your ear. "the... the what agency?"
"the dynamight agency," she repeated, completely unfazed by the sudden hitch in your breathing. "you will report to their central headquarters in musutafu tomorrow morning at eight sharp. the objective is twofold: first, a specialized combat and quirk-synergy training program overseen by katsuki bakugou to publicly disprove the claims that your kinetic dividend is a purely reactionary, support-type power. second, mandatory co-patrols in high-density villain sectors to showcase your defensive vanguard capabilities on camera. if you decline, your pro-hero license will be placed on administrative hold pending a formal commission review. documentation has been sent to your secure inbox. have a productive day, shockwave."
the line went completely dead.
you sat there for a full five minutes, the silent phone still pressed to your ear, your mind spinning so violently you felt dizzy.
bakugou. katsuki goddamn bakugou.
the commission wasn't just throwing you a lifeline ,, they were forcing you to walk directly into the jaws of the monster you had been fleeing since graduation. they were locking you in a cage with him for three months, forcing you to train with him, fight with him, and let him watch you struggle from the safety of his multi-million-yen throne.
you buried your face in your hands, a long, shaky exhale escaping your lips. it felt like a trap. it felt like the universe was actively laughing at you.
but as the initial shock faded, the nice, genuine core of who you were started to harden into something fiercely stubborn. you weren't going to let them take your license. and you certainly weren't going to let bakugou watch you break.
the next morning, the central headquarters of the dynamight agency loomed over the musutafu skyline like a monument to pure, unadulterated success.
it was a massive, modern tower of black glass and brushed steel, the polished exterior gleaming under the pale autumn sun. stepping through the heavy revolving doors into the lobby felt like entering a different dimension. the air was crisp, smelling faintly of expensive air filtration and ozone, and the massive digital directories on the walls listed dozens of specialized hero divisions, legal departments, and public relations teams. it was everything your tiny, one-room apartment office wasn't.
you swallowed down the bitter lump of insecurity in your throat, smoothing down the edges of your casual hero utility jacket as you walked toward the high-security front desk, clutching your temporary clearance badge.
"shockwave! hey, over here!"
the loud, booming voice shattered the sterile, quiet atmosphere of the lobby, and your head snapped toward the secure elevators. bounding toward you with a massive, jagged grin that instantly lit up the room was eijiro kirishima. he was dressed in his red riot gear, the heavy armor plates shifting with his easy, powerful stride.
the sheer relief of seeing a friendly, familiar face made your entire posture relax. a genuine, incredibly bright smile broke across your face, your gaze softening completely. "kirishima! oh my god, hi!"
before you could even register his speed, he caught you in a brief, heavy bear hug that lifted your feet slightly off the polished marble floor. he smelled like clay and sweat, a familiar comfort that felt like a piece of UA had been dropped right into this intimidating fortress.
"man, it is so awesome to have you here!" he beamed, releasing you but keeping his hands resting on your shoulders, looking down at you with pure, unshakeable enthusiasm. "mina texted me last night before the commission dropped the bomb about the joint task force. i was so stoked! i mean, obviously the interview guy was a total jerk!we were all ready to go bust up his studio, but having you on the vanguard floor with us? it’s gonna be manly as hell!"
you laughed, a soft, real sound that echoed lightly through the high-ceilinged lobby. "thanks, kirishima. honestly, walking into this place was terrifying, but seeing you makes me feel a lot less like i'm marching to my own execution."
"execution? no way, drop that talk!" he chuckled, gently knocking his hardened knuckles against your forearm in a playful gesture. "you're a powerhouse, shockwave. we all know it. come on, let me show you around the primary training floor before the boss man gets out of his morning budget briefing. he’s been in a mood since yesterday, but don't let him get to you."
"he’s always been like that," you murmured, matching his stride as he led you toward the secure, fingerprint-coded elevators.
"yeah, true, although i must say he’s better at handling his anger now," kirishima grinned, leaning against the glass wall of the elevator as it began to rocket upward through the tower. you scoffed at that, yeah right.
"but seriously, how've you been? i know the solo agency stuff has been a grind. if you ever need an extra vanguard to help clear out a sector, you gotta call me, alright? no paperwork, just old school teamwork. i'm always down to back you up."
the sheer, unconditional kindness in his voice made your chest tighten with gratitude. you reached out, lightly bumping your fist against his armored shoulder plate. "i appreciate that more than you know, eijiro. really. the solo grind is lonely, so... having you around is going to save my sanity."
the elevator chimed, the heavy steel doors sliding open to reveal a massive, cavernous training facility that looked more like a military hangar than a gym. the floors were covered in heavy, shock-absorbent dark rubber, and the walls were lined with high-tech kinetic dampeners, industrial-sized weight rigs, and automated combat drones.
but the moment you stepped onto the black floor, the easy, comfortable atmosphere evaporated into thin air.
standing in the exact center of the room, his arms crossed tightly over his broad chest, was bakugou. he was already in full costume, the massive grenade gauntlets resting on his hips, his golden-blond hair falling sharply over a forehead that was heavily knotted into a deep, volatile scowl.
his crimson eyes were fixed entirely on the two of you. or more accurately, on the way you were still smiling at kirishima, your hand still casually resting near his elbow.
the smirk he usually carried was completely absent, replaced by a cold, suffocating stillness that seemed to drop the temperature of the entire room.
he had been standing by the observation window for the last ten minutes, waiting. he had seen the elevator ride up on the security monitors. he had watched through the glass as you greeted kirishima with that blinding, beautiful smile ,, the kind of genuine, relaxed warmth he hadn't received from you since his childhood.
he had heard the soft, easy melody of your laughter echo through the hangar doors, a sound that felt like a direct punch to his throat because he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was the one person in this building who could never make you laugh like that anymore.
and god, he hated how much it made his blood boil.
he watched the way you bumped your fist against kirishima's shoulder, the effortless comfort in your posture, the complete lack of walls or defense. it dragged a bitter, ugly beast out of the dark corners of his chest.
bakugou wasn't stupid. he knew he didn't deserve that kindness from you. he knew he had spent years pushing you away, hiding behind his pride, screaming over his boundaries, and treating your mutual childhood past like something he needed to incinerate to become number one. he knew he had earned every single bit of the cold, defensive sneer you gave him in return.
but knowing he didn't deserve it didn't stop him from wanting it. it didn't stop the raw, territorial selfishness from gripping his heart until his lungs felt compressed. he wanted that smile directed at him. he wanted you to look at him without your defensive hum naturally vibrating in your bones.
as you and kirishima took the final steps across the rubber flooring, bakugou’s crimson eyes narrowed, his palms giving off a sharp, warning pop of sweet, sulfur-scented smoke that cut through the sterile scent of the gym.
"you're three minutes late, shockwave," he barked, his voice gravelly, aggressive, and entirely defensive as he forced his walls back up to hide the ugly jealousy ripping through his ribs. "this isn't a damn high school reunion. drop the baggage and get on the baseline. we have a country to show you aren't completely useless."
the genuine smile on your face vanished instantly, your posture locking up as your gaze hardened into flint. the familiar, volatile tension was back, and the three-month war had officially begun.
“higher, katsuki, higher!”
your voice had cut through the stagnant summer humidity, a bright, uninhibited sound that seemed to chase the cicadas from the low-hanging branches of the trees. your legs swung in a wild, rhythmic motion, heels kicking out at the empty blue sky as the hot breeze danced through your hair, pulling it completely wild across your face.
you couldn't contain the laughter bubbling up from your chest, raw, dizzying, and loud, as you looked back over your shoulder at the boy standing directly behind you, his small, dirt-streaked hands already braced to push the heavy rubber of the swing again.
you smiled back at the young katsuki with such an unfiltered, blinding amazement that the world around the two of you seemed to instantly lose its gravity.
and in that exact microsecond, something strange happened to him. his arms, which had been raised and perfectly poised to catch the small of your back and launch you back into the air the moment the chains swung backward, went completely and utterly rigid. his breath simply vanished into his throat. his small fingers locked up, his focus entirely hijacked by the sheer intensity of the way you were looking at him.
he didn't even have time to process the sudden, violent wave of heat rushing up his neck before reality caught up with him.
before he knew it, his blushing, chaotic mess of a face collided directly with the heavy backside of the returning swing. the impact was loud, a sharp thwack that echoed under the shadow of the bridge, and with a startled yell, katsuki fell straight to the dirt on his butt. the gravel scraped against his palms as he immediately brought his hands up, rubbing his aching, throbbing face with a string of muffled, frustrated noises.
you jumped down from the swing in absolute shock, your feet hitting the packed earth with a heavy thud. you stood over him in an awkward, hesitant stance, your small fingers twitching against the fabric of your shorts. clear worry and deep concern were written all over your features, your mouth slightly open, yet you genuinely didn't know what to do.
katsuki and you weren't alone very often. usually, the neighborhood kids would crowd the area, their loud voices and competing quirks filling the space until the air felt tight. but in rare, quiet moments like these - when the afternoon heat drove everyone else indoors and left just the two of you beneath the cool concrete of the railway bridge, you felt at the most ease you had ever been in your life.
he slowly looked up at you through his fingers, fat, stubborn tears already building up on the edges of his lower, golden-blond lashes. the humiliation was suffocating, burning hot behind his ears. but before a single tear could actually spill over, his brow furrowed together in a sudden, defensive flash of anger.
he scrambled to his feet, his small hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides. "don't look at me that way!" he screamed, his voice cracking slightly under the strain of his own pride.
"huh?" you muttered, your head tilting in genuine confusion. you were completely oblivious to the absolute whirlwind of complicated emotions currently ripping through his small chest.
katsuki bakugou hated it when people saw him as weak. he loathed it with every fiber of his developing being. he didn't even want the word weak to exist in the same universe as his name. he was going to be the number one hero. he was going to be invincible, a force that everyone looked up to, and he would never, ever allow anyone to catch him slipping.
but deep down, in the quietest pocket of his heart during this exact moment, it was something entirely different. it was the specific way you were looking down at him. he didn't ever want to see that look of pity on your face ever again. he didn't want you, especially you, out of everyone in the entire world ,, to think of him as someone who could be easily broken, someone who needed to be minded.
but before katsuki had the opportunity to turn on his heel and run away from his own burning embarrassment, your hand shot forward. your fingers closed around his bare forearm, gripping him with a sudden, surprisingly strong force that anchored him directly to the gravel. "hey, don't worry about it," you said softly, your honeyed gaze holding his steady. "it was my fault. i looked back."
"hmpf, you’re right, it was!" he barked, aggressively pulling his arm out of your grasp. he turned his entire body away from you, his chin jutting out in a sharp, defensive pout, his chest heaving. in his desperate rush to shield his dignity, he didn't comprehend that his sudden movement gave you a full, unhindered view of his left cheek, where a dull, red bruise was already beginning to bloom against his skin.
without thinking, your soft hand reached out, the tips of your fingers gently grazing the side of his sharp jawline. your mouth formed a small, worried 'o' shape as you inspected the mark. "does it hurt?"
"o-of course not! take your hands off m—" the aggressive command died directly in his throat. you had inched your face closer to his, dangerously, terrifyingly close. your wide, innocent eyes focusing entirely on the red skin near his jaw.
he felt every single drop of air slip completely out of his lungs. it felt as though that one tiny, uncalculated action had set his entire insides on fire, a strange, suffocating heat expanding through his chest until his ears were ringing. and before his seven-year-old brain could even formulate a single thought, your soft, completely innocent lips pressed gently against his bruised cheek, lingering just a hair’s breadth away from his own rosy, trembling lips.
"my mom said that kisses make the pain go away," you murmured under your breath, pulling back shyly, your cheeks carrying a faint pink glow of your own. you were entirely oblivious to the absolute, catastrophic chaos you had just unleashed in both his mind and his heart.
after that hot summer day under the bridge, you had been rather nice to him. it wasn't like you weren't ever nice before, but you were noticeably nicer. softer. and he probably wouldn't have noticed the subtle shift quite as much if it hadn't been for the lingering phantom sensation of your lips brushing against his skin.
looking back on those times now, in the freezing reality of the present, bakugou felt his face pull into a harsh, bitter grimace.
the memory shattered, dissolving instantly back into the stark, unforgiving light of the dynamight agency’s central training facility. the digital clock on the reinforced wall blared a precise, glowing red 08:00 AM.
you were late today, again. he wondered if it was because of shitty hair this time too, or if you just loved to mess with him that much. he scoffed to himself.
the morning air inside the cavernous hangar was crisp, smelling faintly of clean ozone and industrial floor wax. you were now, already on the black rubber mats, your body moving through a series of routine, low-intensity warm-up stretches to loosen the tight muscles in your hamstrings and shoulders. you kept your eyes fixed firmly on the ground beneath your sneakers, your jaw set, your entire aura radiating a cold, unyielding distance.
neither of you had said a single word since walking through the heavy steel doors. the absolute fury of last night’s uber ride, the yelling, the slamming door, the humiliating double-fare tip he had left on the dashboard - hung between you like a physical wall of glass. you weren't childhood friends anymore. you weren't even rivals anymore. you were semi-strangers carrying fifteen years of volatile baggage, forced into the same room by a government public relations mandate. bakugou felt a sense of deja vu.
he stood a few meters away, aggressively wrapping his wrists with heavy, dark supportive athletic tape. his jaw was working, his teeth grinding together so hard the muscle at his temple twitched rhythmically. his crimson eyes tracked the fluid, intentional movement of your stretches, the memory of that childhood bridge still souring the back of his throat.
"you're moving too slow," he barked suddenly, his voice a rough, gravelly rasp that tore through the quiet of the gym like sandpaper. he finished the wrap with a sharp snap, not even looking at you as he stepped onto the baseline. "if you stretch your hip flexors like a lazy amateur, the absorption from a high-impact blast is going to tear your groin muscle before we even reach the second drill. pick up the pace."
you paused mid-stretch, your fingers lingering near your ankle as your gaze snapped up, flashing with an instant irritation. you slowly stood up to your full height, dusting off your palms, refusing to let him see an ounce of weakness.
"my pace is perfectly fine, bakugou," you shot back, your voice sweet but dangerously level, matching the exact frosty temperature of the room. "and i don't need a lecture on muscle anatomy from a man whose only solution to a disagreement is throwing a tantrum and overpaying an uber driver to assert dominance."
across the mat, bakugou’s posture locked up instantly, his crimson eyes narrowing into slits as his bare palms gave off a sudden, vicious pop of sulfur-scented smoke. "the driver was an incompetent idiot who wasn’t minding his own business," he grumbled defensively, taking a slow, heavy step toward you, the air between you turning thick with an volatile tension. "and i don't give handouts to people who can't even afford to keep their own mouth shut on live television. you want to talk about dominance? show me you can actually hold a baseline today without whining about the structural damage."
"try me, mr. big shot," you sneered softly, sliding your left boot back into a perfect, low combat stance, your forearms rising to form an unbreachable guard. your quirk was already waking up deep in your chest, humming a low, magnetic vibration that naturally craved the explosive force sleeping beneath his skin. "unleash whatever you want. i've got plenty of room to store your explosions today."
the sight of his lips moving upwards into that familiar, infuriatingly smug smirk was the single thing you saw before the space between you completely collapsed.
and then, you were syncing.
well, it wasn't the kind of seamless, telepathic synchronization shared by people who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the ashy ruins of the final war. that old, haunting rhythm was buried too deep under eighteen months of silence. this was different. this was a highstakes, breathless choreography of pure friction, a challenging, volatile fight where neither of you was willing to yield a single inch of the rubber mat.
where he struck, you barely managed to dodge. the air pressure from his movements whipped violently past your skin, but even when his knuckles missed their mark, you didn't let the effort go to waste. the sheer, concussive force he emitted with every explosive punch and heavy, sweeping kick was instantly intercepted by your guard.
you swallowed it whole, drawing the raw kinetic back-blast into your chest like your literal life depended on it, your muscles expanding and humming as they tightly locked the stolen energy down into your core.
he certainly wasn’t as recklessly aggressive as he had been back in your UA days. the raw, unguided fury had been replaced by a terrifyingly precise, lethal calculation. but you couldn’t say his fighting stance had changed all that much. not that it needed any changing anyway. bakugou katsuki was a natural born combat prodigy, and his form had always been flawless like that.
on the receiving end of the feedback loop, bakugou felt every single pull of energy you drew from him. it was a heavy sensation that had settled straight into his chest from the exact moment you had stepped into that private lounge from a night before.
dynamight couldn't bring himself to hate the feeling of your quirk copying him, taking in the volatile momentum he released. he especially loved the way the little sparks of sweat and nitroglycerin lit up inside the palms of his heavily bandaged hands whenever you got close enough to siphon the heat.
it was entirely the opposite of hatred, actually. your quirk ,, or you, he honestly couldn't tell the difference anymore - was doing something impossible to his nervous system. it was making him feel almost peaceful. it felt as if the magnetic pull of your hands, the sharp, defensive rhythm of your strikes, was actively unraveling every other ugly emotion inside him, leaving nothing behind but the necessary, pure adrenaline needed for this 'training' session. except the training was slowly turning into something entirely else.
the tempo shifted in an instant. bakugou faked a heavy right hook, the air snapping with a deliberate, loud pop that drew your forearms upward to absorb the phantom blow. but before you could lock your heels into the rubber, his low center of gravity shifted. his sweep was devastatingly fast, his heavy boot catching the back of your ankle with a calculated hook that completely stripped away your balance.
with a sharp gasp, you hit the dark rubber flooring, the wind knocked clean out of your lungs as you landed flat on your back.
a shadow instantly loomed over you. bakugou was already coming down, his knee dropping to pin you to the mat, his face set in a victorious, breathless sneer. but he underestimated the sheer volume of his own kinetic force still screaming inside your veins. before he could fully secure his weight, your hands shot upward, wrapping tightly around the thick, reinforced collar of his hero suit. with a fierce, guttural growl of your own, you utilized his forward momentum against him, using every ounce of stored energy to violently drag him down to the floor with you.
the roll was messy, raw, and entirely unscripted. you fought like animals on the floor, your limbs tangling as you aggressively wrestled for dominance against the heavy friction of the rubber mats. you threw your weight into his side, your nails catching the fabric of his gear as he grunted, his massive hands grabbing your shoulders to flip you over. for a chaotic three seconds, the lines between hero training and a desperate, breathless struggle completely blurred.
then, with a sudden, overwhelming show of brute physical strength, bakugou effectively shut you down.
before you could throw your hip out to reverse the pin, he forced you flat onto your stomach. his heavy, muscle bound frame settled directly over your lower back, his sheer weight effectively paralyzing your movement and anchoring you to the floor. in a flash of terrifyingly efficient combat discipline, his calloused hands grabbed both of your wrists, pulling them behind your lower back and securing them in a tight, unyielding grip with a single hand.
the physical restraint was absolute, leaving you completely trapped beneath him, your cheek pressed hard against the cool, dark rubber of the mat.
"you pull a dirty tactic like that again on the field," bakugou rasped, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent an immediate, involuntary shiver straight down your spine. "and a real villain isn't gonna give you the luxury of a restart."
the proximity was suffocating. he was breathing incredibly hard, his chest expanding heavily against your back with every ragged inhalation, his body radiating a terrifying, sweet heat that felt like an active current. he leaned down, his face dropping until his lips were hovering a mere hair's breadth away from your earlobe, his hot breath fanning against the sensitive skin of your neck as he whispered directly into your ear. "fucking think you can just borrow my momentum to cheat your way out of a pin, shockwave? tch, look at me."
the low, intimate rumble of his words stirred a sudden, long-forgotten feeling deep inside your chest, a sharp, dizzying ache that had absolutely nothing to do with the physical exhaustion of the drill. it felt dangerous. it felt entirely too close to the phantom sensation of that summer afternoon beneath the railway bridge, back when his lips had been dangerously close to yours.
"let go of me, dynamight," you breathed out, your voice dropping its sharp edge, sounding entirely too breathless, too genuine in the quiet space of the hangar.
"not until you admit your stance was sloppy," he murmured back, his grip on your wrists tightening just enough to emphasize his control, though he didn't apply a single ounce of real pain. his heartbeat was a heavy, frantic thudding against your shoulder blades, revealing the exact, chaotic state of his own internal monologue. he was trapping you down, playing the part of the harsh, unyielding instructor, but his fingers were trembling slightly against your skin, his body completely paralyzed by the sheer, unadulterated closeness of you beneath him.
the tension stretched out between you like a taut wire, the silence of the hangar entirely heavy as the training session completely lost its original goal.
it was a shiny, suffocatingly hot summer day at UA, and you were quite literally sweating your life out. the air in the cafeteria was thick and stagnant, heavy with the ambient chatter of the afternoon rush and the overwhelming hum of the industrial air conditioning units struggling to keep up with the sun. you slumped low in your plastic seat, your chin propped lazily on the palm of your hand as you tried your absolute best to visually track whatever it was that mina was aggressively rambling about across the table.
was it something about a new slumber party with all the girls of class 2a? some weekend trip to the malls in the city? you had completely, utterly lost track. your mind was spinning in circles, heavy with the weight of the afternoon heat and the residual exhaustion of morning heroics training.
"hey! are you even listening to me right now?!" the sudden, sharp bark of the pink-haired girl made her shoot up from her seat, her dark eyes narrowing with a dramatic pout the absolute second she clocked the completely distant look in your eyes.
you sat up in a heartbeat, your spine snapping straight as if you had just been caught red-handed stealing candy from the teacher's lounge. "o-of course i am!" you stammered, your voice pitching slightly higher in your panic.
your best friend gave you a completely unimpressed, flat look, her arms crossing over her chest. "… alright, then what was i talking about?"
"uh... something about... a pillow fight?" you chuckled sheepishly, your hand moving up to nervously rub the side of your warm cheek.
before mina could launch into a full, righteous lecture about the past twenty minutes of her life that you had casually ignored, the sharp, shrill vibration of your phone cut through the space, muffled from inside the deep pockets of your backpack. it was incredibly unusual for someone to call you, at least during this specific hour of the day when everyone was supposed to be trapped in classes or lunch periods. but you knew the protocol. if someone was calling your cellular device while you were actively at school, it was definitely, without a doubt, your mother.
apologizing to the still glaring pink girl across the table, you quickly excused yourself, slipping out of the crowded, noisy cafeteria and into the quiet, relatively cool safety of the concrete hallway.
checking the glowing screen, you let out a dry breath. you had guessed it perfectly.
the caller ID read mom. you swiped your thumb across the screen and brought the phone to your ear, bracing your shoulders. but instead of the usually sweet, doting voice of the woman who raised you, a literal raging monster exploded directly through the tiny speaker.
she yelled your name down the line like it was a curse, the sheer volume making you instinctively pull the phone an inch away from your ear. "what have you done to poor katsuki, huh?! is this the goddamn manners i’ve been teaching you all these years? are you even ashamed of yourself right now?!"
you gulped, the absolute, unadulterated confusion making your stomach twist into a hard knot. "wh-what are you even talking about?"
there was absolutely nothing scarier in this world than your mother when she was angry, especially when that anger involved the persistent, agonizing pain-in-your-ass neighbor known to the world as the infamous katsuki bakugou. at this point in your life, you were entirely convinced that your mother might have actually loved the explosive blonde more than she loved her own flesh and blood.
“mitsuki called me this morning!” your mother raged on, her breath hitching with a burning, dramatic frustration. “she said katsuki came home over the weekend in the most horrible, sour mood she’s ever seen him in! and after a lot of pestering and digging - that poor boy - he finally spilled that it was your fault! that you did something to him!”
bless her heart, and bless mitsuki’s too, because whatever that literal rascal had told them, it was absolutely nothing you were actively responsible for. at least, you couldn't remember doing a single thing to him out of the ordinary. and more than that, you couldn’t even imagine bakugou katsuki ratting you out to his mother like a crying child. it wasn't in his nature. it was completely outside of his character. nothing ever got through his thick skull, let alone made him care so much that he’d go home and whine to his mother about a classmate. he would rather die a thousand agonizing deaths than do that, you were absolutely sure of it.
you leaned your back against the cool concrete wall, letting out an exhausted, heavy sigh that practically dragged your shoulders down. "again, i genuinely have no idea what you're talking about, mom. we haven't even spoken outside of combat drills."
“you purposely slowed him down on the training grounds last week, is that right?!” the woman on the other end sighed, her voice dripping with a deep, disappointed anger.
so that was what this was about. your quirk. kinetic dividend.
it wasn't like you could just shut it off or control the passive intake of your own biology. you hadn't even interacted with him on that specific afternoon. he had just pulled up on your training area, like he always did, purely to annoy the absolute shit out of you, like he always did!
it wasn't your fault your body naturally picked up on every single ounce of kinetic energy he released into the atmosphere. it wasn't your fault his nervous system couldn't handle the passive feedback loop of your presence. and it wasn't like he was even actively training with you. you just - ugh, you couldn't even begin to explain the mechanics of it to your mother without sounding like you were insane.
your quirk was a demanding thing. it picked up on any kind of moving, kinetic force in your immediate vicinity, transforming that raw energy into a heavy, intense concussive force that you could manifest from the palms of your hands. you could pull objects down, lift them up, push them away, or violently drag them toward your own center.
it was like a localized gravity well, a strong, perfectly controlled force of compliance.
and it was incredibly simple to manage around people like izuku, or iida, or ochako. their energy was predictable. but with bakugou? with bakugou, it was a completely different story.
in class, you always somehow found yourselves paired together for combat exercises because the sheer volume of energy he spat out whenever you were near was unlike anything else on the planet. his explosions put a strange, terrifying ease into your heart, making your kinetic observation and output more powerful than you could ever imagine. he was like a literal battery charger to your nervous system. you loaded his picked-up energy, spared it, stabilized it, and then shot it back as strongly as you possibly could.
it was seamless. he was... perfect. for your quirk, that is.
and you absolutely hated admitting that truth to yourself.
yet sometimes, when you tried to transform or redirect that specific energy, it had a severe, unpredictable backlash effect on him.
see, normally, you had hypothesized that your quirk made your allies focus more during a fight, since you essentially vacuumed up all the unnecessary, heavy tension and stray vibrations in the air, leaving everyone else feeling more at ease. the exact same thing happened with bakugou.
yet, when you accidentally picked up on negative, intensely emotional energy alongside his raw explosiveness... it led to an immediate biological outbreak. it was as if all that stored, heavy tension traveled directly back down the connection to him, physically slowing his nervous system down and making his muscles feel like lead.
it was normally a dirty, tactical trick of yours to use on real villains during simulation trials, but with bakugou, it had been a complete accident. because the negative energy he had given off on that specific day hadn't even been directed at you.
you guessed, looking back, that it had been directed more at kaminari. the poor guy had just innocently asked you to 'spot' him during his agility training. you had been doing it as a favor, using your quirk to gently store denki's unnecessary, frantic movements to help him focus his electricity better. and sometimes, when you were helping someone balance their center of gravity, things could get a bit touchy. a hand on a hip, a shoulder stabilized.
and when bakugou had pulled up to the baseline that day, his eyes trained on you with that overconfident, arrogant smugness he always carried, you had braced yourself for another standard verbal fight. that was, until he actually approached the mat and caught sight of how close you were leaning into denki's space.
your mother wouldn't understand the sudden way his face had completely morphed into a heavy, dark frown. his eyebrows had knitted together into a violent line, and the corners of his rosy lips had pulled down in absolute disgust.
the kinetic energy you had siphoned from him in that exact second was unlike anything you had ever picked up from him before. it wasn't combat focus. it was a burning, volatile desire mixed with a raw, ugly jealousy.
now, you didn't want to assume anything crazy ,, you had just guessed at the time that he was being his typical, controlling self and didn't want you messing around with one of his close friends.
however, bakugou remembered that day as something entirely else.
it was completely usual for the two of you to cross paths on the training grounds or the local campus gym. and it was entirely coincidental, really. it was absolutely, definitely not the fact that katsuki had meticulously memorized the exact days and specific times you arrived at the facility. no. not at all.
and whenever you two did happen to see each other, he’d tease you, poke some fun at your form, and you’d get instantly riled up like always, challenging him to a match. and whenever kirishima was too busy spending his free time with mina, meaning you couldn't train with your best friend, the two of you would unintentionally (although bakugou would always be the one to actively seek out your baseline first) become gym partners.
training with you was maybe even more productive, more intense, than training with kirishima. but on that specific afternoon, seeing you replace his spot on the mat with sparky... it had felt like a sudden, clean stab into a heart that was still desperately trying to recover from you.
because he still remembered the other incident. the real turning point from your joined childhood. the specific day you had broken off every single ounce of contact with him after you found out from deku that katsuki used to... well, bully him. although deku would never in a million years formulate the words that way, you knew better. you could read between the lines.
see, bakugou had always been nice to you. or at least, as nice as a boy like him could possibly get. of course he was arrogant, and smug, and loud, but he had never been cruel or hurtful to your face. yet you had been entirely oblivious to how he treated the rest of the world, since you hadn't attended the same primary school as him and izuku.
yet the exact moment you found out the truth, you had texted him. you had confronted him sharply, demanding an explanation, and when he showed absolutely no signs of understanding the weight of the issue or why you were angry, you had blocked his number cleanly.
that had katsuki pulling up in front of your house within an hour. your mother, entirely oblivious, had let him right through the front door with a smile, and he had stormed up the stairs to your bedroom, knocking aggressively on the wood until you opened it just enough to shoo him off.
but he wouldn't have it. he had slammed his palm against the surface, widening the door gap with a force that made your knuckles ache as you tried to hold it shut.
“what the hell is your problem-” you had started to yell, but he had cut you off entirely, his face flushed, his chest heaving as he tried to reason with you. he had tried so hard to keep the friendship, the only childhood friendship he genuinely, deeply adored - from falling apart.
yet you had refused to listen to his excuses. you had looked at him with that cold, unforgiving disappointment, and so, he had finally let loose. his face had morphed into a completely emotionless, stony mask, and he was out your front door in a second.
your mother had wondered for days what had happened between you, and for another set of weeks, she had actively lamented how you could ruin her favorite ship.
you sighed loudly, rubbing the bridge of your nose as you pulled yourself back into the present hallway. “look, i don't know why he’s being a whiney, dramatic-”
"oh, don't you dare insult him and make it look like it was his fault!" your mother cut you off entirely, her voice rising an octave. "you are to go to him, right this instant, and apologize! promise him that it'll never happen again on the field. i don't care what kind of silly teenage drama is going on between the two of you, but i am not going to let such disrespectful behavior sit. you know exactly what kind of an intense outcome your quirk has on his stamina, and you used it out of spite!"
you let out one final, defeated sigh, your shoulders slumping against the concrete. "alright, alright. damn it, mom. i’ll handle it."
hanging up the phone, you stared at the dark screen for a long moment, the irritation building hot in your throat. you weren't going to let this sit. if he wanted to run to his mother like a child because his muscles felt heavy for an hour, you were going to give him a piece of your mind face-to-face.
you turned on your heel, bypassing the cafeteria entirely, and marched straight toward the 2a training lockers where you knew he’d be throwing his gear together before the afternoon session.
the heavy steel door of the locker room was cracked open, the faint scent of sulfur and sweat drifting into the hallway. you didn't even knock. you pushed the door open with a sharp click, stepping onto the tile flooring with your arms crossed tightly over your chest.
bakugou was sitting on the bench, his back to you, pulling a clean black shirt over his broad shoulders. the exact second the door swung open, his head snapped back, his crimson eyes narrowing into immediate slits as he caught your reflection in the metal lockers.
"what the hell do you want?" he grunted your name out, like it hurt him. his voice dropping into that low, gravelly bark. "the girls' lockers are down the hall."
"did you seriously run home and tell your mother that i sabotaged your training?" you demanded, walking straight up to the edge of his bench, your gaze flashing with pure, unadulterated annoyance. "are you actually kidding me right now, katsuki? my mom just screamed at me for ten minutes because you're throwing a tantrum over a routine drill backlash!"
bakugou froze mid motion, his fingers tightening around the hem of his shirt. for a fraction of a second, a look of genuine, utter confusion crossed his sharp features, a rare crack in his armor before his face hardened into a massive, defensive scowl. he stood up to his full height, towering over you, his broad shoulders blocking out the locker room lights.
"what the fuck are you babbling about?" he roared back, his chest expanding as he glared down into your face. "i didn't tell my old hag a damn thing about you! i haven't even said your name in that house since you blocked my number!"
"don't lie to me!" you shot right back, leaning forward until your face was barely inches from his chest, the familiar, volatile tension igniting between you like a physical current. "mitsuki called my house this morning! she said you went home in a horrible mood and specifically blamed me for your metrics dropping last week on the vanguard ground!"
bakugou’s jaw worked, his teeth grinding together so hard you could see the muscle twitch in his cheek. he let out a loud, frustrated growl, his palms giving off a tiny, involuntary pop of smoke as he turned his face away from you, aggressively rubbing the back of his neck.
"i didn't tell her you did it on purpose, you idiot!" he barked, his voice uncharacteristically awkward as his ears turned a slight, furious shade of pink. "she was nagging the shit out of me about why my speed scores were down by two percent on the weekly report. i just... i told her you were on the baseline with kaminari and the feedback from your damn kinetic dividend slowed my system down for an hour. that's it! i didn't think the old hag was gonna write a federal case about it and call your house!"
the sudden admission left you blinking in shock, the wind completely taken out of your sails as you stared up at him. "you... you only said it slowed you down?"
"that's what i fucking said!" he yelled back, his crimson eyes snapping back to yours, flashing with a raw, intense mix of anger and that long-suppressed, heavy frustration he always carried around you. he stepped closer, invading your space entirely, his breath hot against your face. "i don't need my mother to fight my battles, and i certainly don't need you coming in here accusing me of ratting you out. your quirk is a magnet for my energy. we both know it. so if you're gonna use it to spot other extras right in front of my face, don't look surprised when the back-blast ruins my day too."
the week that followed that high-intensity sparring match on the black rubber mats had melted into a blur of overlapping patrols, bruised muscles, and an unacknowledged, razor-sharp tension that seemed to hum in the very air whenever you and bakugou shared a room. you hadn't spoken about the floor pin.
you hadn't spoken about the way his ragged breath had felt against the sensitive skin of your neck, or how entirely too close his lips had been to yours in the dim amber lighting of the hangar. instead, you had both thrown yourselves into the work, using the mandatory co-patrols under the joint clause to channel all that unresolved, heavy chaos into the pavement of musutafu.
it was exactly 8:30 on a brisk, rain-slicked morning, and you were currently sitting at a sleek glass desk on the main operations floor of the dynamight agency, a fresh cup of tea steam rising in front of you. your utility boots were resting ankle-crossed as you calmly organized the logistical data sheets from the previous night's sector sweep.
the sharp, high-pitched chime of the desk phone shattered the quiet hum of the room, the glowing caller ID instantly displaying the secure, encrypted seal of the hero public safety commission’s PR and logistics management.
your chest tightened with a familiar, instinctive knot of anxiety as you swiped your thumb across the screen. "this is shockwave."
"shockwave," the clinical, female voice on the other end didn't carry its usual freezing, dismissive bite. instead, there was a sudden, tightly controlled undercurrent of professional urgency that made your spine immediately snap straight. "turn on the main network monitor on the vanguard floor. right now."
"is there a civilian emergency in progress? an active threat tracking through the sector—"
"just look at the news feed," she cut in, her tone oddly breathless before the line went completely dead with a sharp, electronic click.
your brows knitted together in deep confusion. you grabbed the sleek remote from the edge of the desk, aiming it at the massive, floor-to-ceiling digital monitor that dominated the front wall of the operations room. the screen flickered to life, the bright, saturated colors of the national hero broadcasting network instantly illuminating the dark corners of the office.
your breath completely left your lungs.
across the banner of the screen, flashing in bold, shimmering text, read the headline: A NEW PILLAR OF DEFENCE: SHOCKWAVE'S MASTERCLASS IN THE VANGUARD SECTOR.
it was an extensive, prime-time analytical breakdown of the brutal vanguard clash from the previous afternoon. the footage on the screen was crisp, captured by multiple high-definition hovering media drones that had tracked the entire incident. the news anchor, a notoriously harsh hero critic who usually spent his segments tearing down independent agencies, was currently standing in front of a digital green screen, gesticulating wildly toward a specific, looped video segment.
the recording replayed the exact, terrifying millisecond a massive kinetic force user-villain had unleashed a devastating concussive shockwave directly into the center of the pedestrian plaza. the screen zoomed in closer, frame by frame, inspecting the absolute precision of your form. you watched yourself drop into a low, unyielding stance, your arms crossing firmly over your face as you took the full, explosive weight of the villain's attack. but you didn't fly backward. you didn't look reactionary. the news reporters actively pointed out, with slow-motion tracing lines, the exact moment the kinetic dividend opened beneath your skin, absorbing the devastation on your own accord and instantly converting the force.
with a fluid, terrifyingly powerful motion, the video showed you stepping forward through the dissipating dust cloud, your bare palms extending as you fired back a perfectly controlled, independent shockwave that slammed into the villain's center of gravity, dropping him flat onto the asphalt for an immediate, clean compliance takedown.
"what we are witnessing here," the anchor’s voice boomed through the studio speakers, dripping with a rare, unadulterated admiration, "is a profound, independent mastery of environmental compliance. for months, online forums have falsely labeled the hero shockwave as a support-type asset who relies on the piggybacking of stronger heroes. but this footage completely dismantles the narrative. on her own accord, without a single frontline powerhouse providing the initial impact, she handled a high-tier kinetic threat with zero structural collateral damage to the city grid. her independent agency funding is no longer a question of risk.. it is a question of necessity."
you sat there, the plastic remote slipping loosely from your fingers, your gaze wide and completely unblinking as the studio replayed your takedown for the fourth time in a row. a sudden, massive rush of pure, golden warmth flooded your chest, so intense and overwhelming it felt like your own quirk was turning inside out with joy.
the validation was intoxicating. the eighteen months of underpaid patrols, the systemic misogyny, the humiliating talk-show interview ,, everything was washed away in an instant by the absolute recognition you had broken your body to deserve.
and then, you noticed the most incredible part of the footage.
your eyes scanned the background of the screen, tracking the rain-slicked alleyways behind the plaza. bakugou had been on patrol with you. he had been right there, his massive frame positioned in the shadows, ready to launch his own explosions if the vanguard line broke. but the media drones hadn't even captured his silhouette. the cameras completely cut him out of the primary frame, leaving the news anchor to offer nothing more than a passing, subtle mention of the dynamight agency providing standard sector perimeter support.
he had given you the entire field. he had deliberately stayed in the dark, suppressing his own explosive presence to ensure that every single camera lens in the area was fixed entirely on your independent strength. you had gotten the full, unadulterated credit.
"oh my god," you whispered, a breathless, giddy laugh bubbling right out of your throat.
the sheer, uncontainable thrill of the moment completely took over. you shot out of your desk chair, your chair clattering backward against the floorboards as you literally started jumping up and down, your laughter echoing wildly through the quiet operations room. you couldn't control the joyous, chaotic energy buzzing in your veins. without a single thought for professional decorum, you lunged toward the nearest workstation, throwing your arms around the startled lead secretary in a heavy, exuberant hug, spinning her slightly before releasing her to lunge toward the data analysts, high fiving everyone within arm's reach.
"i got it! did you see that?! they gave me the full credit!" you cheered, your face lighting up with a blinding, genuine smile that hadn't surfaced since your primary school days under the railway bridge.
the glass security doors of the main office suddenly slid open with a sharp, heavy electronic click.
you didn't even pause your celebratory momentum. your body was moving entirely on pure adrenaline and unfiltered happiness as you spun around toward the entrance, and instantly ran headfirst into a broad, rock solid chest.
he had just walked into the room, looking completely, utterly exhausted from the brutal afternoon and night shifts of the previous day. his heavy winter hero coat was unzipped, the collar slightly frayed, and his golden-blond hair was a messy, flat disaster, completely lacking its usual sharp, gravity defying spikes. dark, heavy shadows hung beneath his crimson eyes, his jaw set in a tired, dull line as he carried a stack of heavily redacted paperwork under his arm.
you didn't think about the eighteen months of silence. you didn’t think about the years of teasing and avoidance of your teenage years. you didn't think about the bitter car ride or the boundaries of his elite agency. you were just so profoundly, beautifully happy.
with a breathless laugh, you jumped straight at him, your arms flying upward to wrap securely around his broad, rigid shoulders, squeezing his neck with an intense, suffocating tightness that pulled your body flush against his chest.
katsuki froze instantly, his entire massive frame turning as stiff as a marble column beneath your touch. the stack of paperwork under his arm slipped, a few sheets fluttering harmlessly down to the polished floorboards as his crimson eyes widened into complete, utter shock. he stood entirely paralyzed, his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides, his brain completely short-circuiting at the sudden, overwhelming sensation of your warmth, your laughter, and the scent of your hair invading his space at eight in the morning.
"thank you, thank you, thank you!" you murmured into the fabric of his sweater, your fingers digging into the knit of his shoulders as you squeezed him tighter, oblivious to the absolute, catastrophic meltdown occurring inside his chest.
"what the fuck-" he started, his voice a rough, gravelly rasp that cracked slightly under the sudden weight of you. his jaw worked frantically, a dark, furious blush violently creeping up his neck and flooding his ears as he struggled to find his footing.
he looked around the room like a trapped animal, completely startled and utterly clueless as to how to handle a nice, affectionate gesture without yelling.
slowly, with an agonizing, awkward hesitation that defied his usual explosive movement, his massive, calloused hand came up. his fingers hovered over the small of your back for a painful three seconds before he finally let his palm settle flat against your sweater, giving you two rigid, remarkably awkward reassurances pats that felt entirely unpracticed.
"get off me, you idiot," he grumbled, his voice dropping into that familiar, defensive bark, though the aggressive bite was completely missing, replaced by a strange, quiet softness he couldn't hide. he cleared his throat roughly, his eyes darting toward the massive monitor where your face was still smiling on the news feed. "i didn't do a damn thing for you yesterday. the drones caught you because your stance wasn't sloppy for once. it was all your own godgoddamn doings, so stop acting like i handed you a trophy."
he was trying so hard to maintain his usual, unyielding attitude. his stubborn, defensive walls rising back up to shield his burning embarrassment, but he was noticeably nicer about it, his hand remaining resting against your back just a hair's breadth longer than necessary before you finally stepped down, your face still flushing with that brilliant, joyful glow.
"man, look at the boss man acting all soft!" a loud, teasing chuckle boomed from the security gate, and you looked over to see kirishima leaning against the metal partition. the red riot hero was grinning at bakugou with a massive, knowing smirk, his arms crossed over his chest as his eyes darted pointedly to the blushing, chaotic state of his best friend's face.
bakugou’s head snapped toward him, his crimson eyes narrowing into lethal slits as his scowl returned with a vengeance. without moving an inch from your side, he aggressively lifted his bare hand and flipped kirishima off with a sharp, rigid middle finger, his teeth grinding together.
"shut the fuck up, shitty hair, or i'll incinerate your logistics budget for the next three quarters." bakugou roared. the sharp gesture and his furious, blushing defense didn't intimidate anyone. across the operations floor, the head secretary quickly lowered her face behind her monitor to hide her grin, while the data analysts and the rest of the office workers let out a collective, soft chuckle at the absolute normalcy of his tantrum.
bakugou let out one final, frustrated growl, aggressively kicking a stray piece of fallen paperwork across the floor as he turned his back on the room, stomping toward his private office down the hall. but as he reached the door, his hand lingered on the handle, his crimson eyes cutting back through the glass to steal one final, lingering look at the way you were still smiling at the screen. the soft spot in his chest was burning hotter than ever, the heavy weight of his fifteen-year yearning finally starting to feel like something he might actually survive.
pale, silver moonlight of the late autumn evening cut cleanly through the massive, floor to ceiling glass windows of the brand-new office tower, throwing long, skeletal shadows across the polished hardwood.
the rich scent of fresh white paint, expensive leather furniture, and the lingering traces of champagne hung heavily in the stagnant, quiet air. down on the main entrance doors, the brass plaque gleamed under the streetlamps outside, engraved with the official, prestigious title you had bled fifteen years to earn: THE SHOCKWAVE AGENCY.
you had finally done it. that also meant no middle aged, married men thirsting over you in your inbox. yay!
the three months under the joint-vanguard clause had completely shattered the media's toxic narrative, turning your independent status into an absolute, unbreachable necessity. the massive launch party had lasted for hours. mina had quite literally cried tears of pure, uninhibited joy into the crook of your neck. ochako and izuku had nearly broken your hands with proud, trembling handshakes. and shoto had given you a quiet, knowing nod before the group finally filed out into the chilly night, leaving you completely alone in your own kingdom. and so it was with everyone else.
you were standing by the glass window, looking out at the glittering, vast expanse of musutafu, a half empty glass of champagne held loosely between your fingers. your feet ached, your shoulders were heavy with a profound exhaustion, but the suffocating anxiety in your chest was gone.
the heavy, electronic click of the security door behind you shattered the silence.
you didn't flinch. you didn't even have to turn around. the low, rhythmic, and incredibly heavy thud of a specific pair of boots on the hardwood flooring was a sound engraved directly into your central nervous system.
"the celebration's over, bakugou," you murmured into the dark glass, watching his reflection materialize in the window pane. you didn't call him dynamight. you didn't need to. you turned around slowly, leaning your lower back against the glass, crossing your arms over your chest as your gaze locked onto him. he looked entirely different from his usual bombastic self. he wasn't in his explosive hero gear.
he was just wearing a faded black hoodie and a pair of dark, loose athletic pants. the thick hood was pushed back, letting his sharp, golden-blond hair fall naturally messy across his forehead, casting deep shadows over a pair of piercing, surprisingly quiet crimson eyes. his hands were shoved deep into his front pocket, his massive shoulders slightly slouched from sheer fatigue.
"i know," he grunted, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that seemed to vibrate the quiet air of the empty room.
you offered a small, sheepish smile, a faint huff of laughter escaping your lips as you looked down at his casual clothes. "then why are you so late? the corporate cameras left an hour ago. mina and the others wanted to drag you out for a toast."
"i didn't want to deal with the damn press parasites," he muttered, taking a slow, heavy step forward, the scent of sharp winter sulfur and sweet nitroglycerin instantly melting the autumn chill around you. he stopped a few feet away, his jaw tightening as he stared down at you. "and i wanted you to have the room to yourself to enjoy it. without an extra crowd stifling your space."
you tilted your head, your brows knitting together in genuine confusion as you swirled the remaining champagne in your glass. "what makes you think i wouldn't enjoy it if you were here?"
the question hung between you like a taut wire, the sudden, heavy silence dropping like a guillotine through the room. bakugou’s eyes narrowed into slight slits, his chest expanding heavily beneath the black fabric of his hoodie.
"because you haven't willingly shared a room with me without a combat drill blueprint in five goddamn years," he rasped, his voice dropping into a rough, defensive register that carried the unmistakable weight of half a decade of repressed, aching bitterness. "don't act like you didn't spend the entirety of UA treating me like white noise." he mumbled your name like it was sacred. "the second you found out about what happened in primary school... you cut me out like a malignant tumor. you wouldn't even let me clear the gap at your bedroom door."
the sudden mention of that day, the text message, the blocked number, the furious knocking on your bedroom door. made your throat go completely dry. the phantom memory of his angry, desperate face from your teenage days rushed back, making your heart hammer a frantic, uneven rhythm against your ribs. you were surprised he even remembered that day, you certainly would never forget it.
"you didn't even try to understand why i was angry, katsuki," you whispered, the old given name slipping past your lips, fragile and thick with a long forgotten hurt. "you just came to my house, tried to widen the door with your brute force, and when i didn't immediately forgive you, you turned into an emotionless stone and walked out. my mother whinied at me for weeks about how i ruined her almost-sailing ship."
a sudden, incredibly faint trace of a smirk pulled at the corner of his lips, a fleeting flash of his usual teasing before his face softened into something entirely raw, vulnerable, and terrifyingly intense.
"your old hag was always a dramatic pain in the ass," he murmured, his gravelly voice dropping an octave as he took another deliberate step closer, completely invading your personal space. the immense heat radiating from his broad frame was suffocating. "but i didn't walk out because i didn't care. i walked out because looking at that cold, unforgiving look of disappointment on your face was making me sick to my stomach. it was the exact same look you gave me when i fell on my ass, and i loathed it. i loathed the idea of you seeing me as something weak and fragile."
he slowly pulled his right hand out of his hoodie pocket. your breath hitched when you realized he was holding a small, weathered wooden box, the surface scratched and faded with age.
he thrust it toward your chest with an awkward, tense jerk of his wrist. "take it," he grumbled, his ears turning a furious, dark shade of pink in the moonlight.
you set your glass down on the window sill, your trembling fingers reaching out to take the box from his calloused hand. when you flipped the small brass latch open, your eyes widened, a sudden wave of intense, nostalgic warmth hitting your chest.
lying inside the velvet lining was a perfectly smooth, crimson crystal stone. the exact crystal stone you two had found fifteen years ago under the bridge, retrieved and kept in the dark of his bedroom drawer through every single year of the war, graduation, and silence.
"you kept it?" you breathed out, your eyes snapping up to his face, wide and completely stunned.
"i kept everything," bakugou confessed, his voice cracking slightly under the sudden, violent eruption of years of repressed yearning and suffocating pride. he didn't back away. instead, his massive hands reached out, his fingers gripping the fabric of your sweater, pinning your back gently but firmly against the cool glass of the window pane.
"you think i wanted to spend eighteen months watching your name hover in the middle tier of the charts? you think i enjoyed watching you drown in a system that prefers you cheap while i held all the corporate funding? it drove me fucking insane." the physical proximity between you completely vanished, the air turning thick and heavy with a visible, electrical tension.
his chest was heaving against yours with every ragged, desperate breath, the raw scent of sweet sulfur completely dominating your senses. "i tried to let you go," he whispered, his head dropping, his forehead coming to rest gently against your shoulder, his golden hair brushing against the sensitive skin of your neck.
the towering, arrogant dynamight had completely disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but a boy who was utterly consumed by the girl in front of him. "i told myself i was becoming number one, that i didn't need the extra baggage. but the exact second you walked into that private lounge three months ago, looking so small and fiercely proud in that oversized sweater... i knew i was entirely full of shit. i didn't give a damn about the commission's viral video. i forced you onto my training floor because it was the only legal way i could wrap my hands around your wrists and feel your quirk hum against my skin again. i needed to feel you close. i- i need you." he gulped down the urge to press your soft lips to his. "i am selfish. i have always been a selfish bastard when it came to you."
a deep, dizzying ache bloomed behind your ribs, a mixture of old childhood attachment, raw empathy, and the terrifying, breathtaking realization of your own buried feelings.
you had spent years building walls against his dominance, convincing yourself that you hated his arrogance, but standing here in the dark, feeling the frantic, heavy thudding of his heart against your own chest, you knew the truth. your quirk wasn't the only thing that craves his kinetic force. you had been yearning for his touch just as deeply as he had been starving for yours.
"katsuki..." you murmured into his hair, your hands slowly coming up to lock around his broad shoulders, your fingers digging into the thick black cotton of his hoodie. "i don't want you to let me go either."
he let out a low, ragged groan at the sound of his given name, his head snapping up as his crimson eyes blazed with a fierce, possessive passion that made your lungs feel entirely empty.
"admit it," he rasped, his face barely an inch from yours, his lips brushing dangerously close to the corner of your mouth. "tell me you aren't gonna walk out again."
"i'm right here," you gasped out, your face flushing hot under his intense stare. "i've always been right here, you arrogant prick."
the teasing insult was a spark to a powder keg. with a sudden, breathless growl,katsuki closed the final fraction of an inch between you, his soft, intense lips crashing down onto yours in a kiss that completely shattered the tension of the past fifteen years.
it wasn't a soft, delicate kiss.. it was a raw, deep, and a hungry claim.
his mouth moved against yours with an aggressive, desperate tenderness, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips until you parted for him, letting out a soft, breathless gasp as he pulled your body flush against his massive frame.
your hands slid up from his shoulders, your fingers tangling wildly into the sharp, soft strands of his blond hair, pulling him down deeper into the embrace. your quirk was screaming inside your chest, drinking in the kinetic friction of his mouth against yours, converting the raw adrenaline into a heavy, intoxicating wave of pure, comforting peace that flooded both of your entire nervous system.
he groaned into the kiss, his calloused, bare hands sliding down from your shoulders, tracking the curve of your waist beneath your sweater before his fingers hooked firmly into the belt loops of your jeans, aggressively pulling your hips directly against his own.
the physical contact was hot, and entirely electric, the thick fabric of his hoodie doing nothing to hide the rock-solid, trembling structure of his muscles.
he pulled back by a mere hair's breadth, both of you completely out of breath, your rosy lips wet and slightly swollen from the intensity of the exchange. his hot breath fanned across your cheekbone as his lips migrated down to the crook of your neck, his jaw nipping lightly at the sensitive skin near your shoulder, earning a soft, involuntary whimper from your throat that made his grip on your waist tighten until it was borderline possessive.
"your stance is still sloppy, shockwave," he murmured against your skin, his gravelly voice dropping into a low whisper that sent a delicious shiver straight down your spine.
you let out a soft, breathless chuckle, your hands sliding down his chest to lightly push against his hoodie, your gaze flashing with a brilliant, playful fire. "shut up, dynamight. my stance is perfect. you're just using your mass to cheat your way into my space."
"damn right i am," he growled softly, a genuine, beautiful smirk finally returning to his features as he leaned down to capture your lips once more.
outside, the cold autumn wind continued to rattle the massive window panes of the skyscraper, but inside the empty office, the long, lonely separation had finally come to a beautiful, permanent end.
then they had two beautiful kids, one dog and a cat and they all lived happily ever after.
