Name’s Asami Shiden.
I throw lightning, solve problems, and start kitchen slow dances at indecent hours. I choose my people twice and save my softness for the brave. Expect found family, dumb jokes, competence kinks, and the kind of kisses that make the storm behave.
Heat is tagged; tenderness guaranteed.
Quirk: Voltgeist | Static manipulation + kinetic amplification. Lightning made by motion—friction feeds the storm. I turn speed into voltage and chaos into control: calm hands, crisp calls, surgical takedowns. The buzz in the room? That’s me warming up.
Age: 28 (unless otherwise noted)
Birthday: Dec 4 — Sagittarius Sun • Aquarius Moon • Taurus Rising
Height: 5′9″
Hobbies: riding Valkyrie (the bike), sketching/doodling, balcony-rain-book nights, partner sparring, and domestic chaos. Also into volleyball, ice skating, softball/baseball, and hockey. Fair warning: I’m a pool shark.
Languages: sarcasm, Japanese, English, French, Spanish.
Music: Fleetwood Mac, Deftones, Paramore, No Doubt, Fisher, Tyler, the Creator.
Katsuki should have known the minute he smart-mouthed at dinner.
That cocky little quip about how Y/N “couldn’t top shit if it begged.”
The deadpan look she gave him across her wine glass. The way Eijiro choked into his water and then smiled.
Yeah. He should’ve seen it coming.
But here he was.
Face flushed. Arms behind his back, bound, not tightly, just enough that he’d have to ask to move. Knees wide. Chest rising in fast, shaky breaths as Y/N slicked the strap-on with slow, exaggerated strokes behind him.
“Safe word?” she asked softly.
Katsuki gritted his teeth. “Tangerine.”
Eijiro was in front of him already, kneeling between his thighs, calm and smiling. His hands rested on Katsuki’s knees. Warm, solid. The opposite of Y/N's cold control behind him.
“You sure?” Red asked, dipping forward to kiss his cheek. “You’re already panting like you wanna run.”
Katsuki growled. “Fuck you.”
“Manners,” Y/N snapped behind him, tapping the lube bottle against his thigh.
“Fuck you, too.”
Eijiro just chuckled, brushing blond hair from Katsuki’s face. “God, you’re so hot like this.”
Katsuki glared. “Die.”
Y/N pressed the tip of the strap to his rim, not pushing in.Waiting. Her voice was soft but razor-sharp.
“You’ll say please,” she murmured, “or I’ll make you beg for something else first.”
Katsuki’s arms twitched behind him. His mouth opened, then shut.
Eijiro leaned in, mouth by his ear. “Come on, baby. Just say it. You want this.”
“I don’t want—”
Y/N pushed in half an inch.
He gasped.
“Oh,” Eijiro whispered, watching his face. “You love this.”
“I will kill you both.”
“You’ll do it with your ass stuffed full, then,” Y/N said sweetly, pushing in deeper.
Katsuki groaned. Tried not to. His thighs clenched. Shoulders tight.
Eijiro cupped his jaw, coaxed his eyes up. “Hey. Eyes on me. Breathe.”
He obeyed without thinking. His breath shuddered in. Y/N bottomed out.
“Fuck.”
“Reconfirm your safe word, baby,” she asked.
“T-Tangerine,” he gasped. “Just—fuck. Move.”
Eijiro kissed him. Deep and slow, tongue teasing the corner of his mouth, one hand stroking down his chest. Katsuki made a strangled sound that was part growl, part moan, and melted into it for just a second.
Then Y/N started to move.
Not fast. Not gentle. Just in control. Hips grinding in a rhythm that forced Katsuki to feel every inch. His body jerked.
Eijiro slipped two fingers past his lips mid-sentence.
Katsuki froze. Growled.
But didn’t pull away.
“There we go,” Eijiro whispered. “Look at that mouth. Always gotta have something to say.”
Katsuki sucked without thinking.
Y/N's hips snapped forward hard.
He moaned around Eijiro’s fingers.
They both heard it.
Eijiro’s eyes sparkled. “Ohhh, there’s that sound.”
“Shut up.”
“You like being good for us,” Y/N said, voice like silk.
“I’m not—ah—fuck—”
“Not what?” she teased, pounding into him now, hands on his hips. “Not a good boy?”
“I’ll fuckin’ end you—fuck, fffuck—”
Eijiro gently pushed a third finger into his mouth. Katsuki’s eyes fluttered.
“There it is,” he whispered. “That sweet spot. You can fight all you want, baby. We’re not going anywhere.”
Y/N leaned over his back, chest pressing to him. Her voice was velvet.
“Say it,” she whispered in his ear. “Say you like it.”
Katsuki whimpered.
“Say it, and I’ll let you come with Eijiro’s cock in your mouth.”
He bit down—on the moan, on the shame—but it leaked out anyway.
“…I like it.”
Y/N slowed her rhythm. Deep, punishing thrusts now.
Eijiro pulled his fingers free, replaced them with the head of his cock, sliding against Katsuki’s spit-slick tongue.
“You like what, baby?” he asked gently.
“…I like being used,” Katsuki muttered, face burning. “I like being…fucked like this.”
Y/N hummed. “Good. Because I’m not stopping until you melt.”
Katsuki opened wider, taking Eijiro’s cock inch by inch, moaning deep in his throat as Y/N pegged him relentlessly from behind.
“Fuck. You’re so good,” Eijiro praised, hand stroking Katsuki’s flushed cheek. “Taking me so deep. You’re such a good boy, baby.”
Katsuki moaned. Louder. Desperate.
“Ohhh. That’s your trigger, huh?” Y/N purred, watching the way his body trembled. “You like hearing that. You like being called a good boy.”
“Don’t—fuckin’—call me—”
Eijiro thrust gently into his mouth, slow and firm. Katsuki sucked, instinctively, face pink.
“Say it,” Y/N demanded, voice now low and dominant. “Say you’re our good boy and we’ll let you come.”
He held out as long as he could. Five seconds. Ten.
Then he broke.
“I’m your fucking good boy,” he groaned around Eijiro’s cock. “Fuck—please—let me—please—”
Eijiro’s grip tightened in Katsuki’s hair, hips starting to stutter. His voice, always warm even at the edge of wrecked, dropped to a trembling growl.
“Fuck, baby—your mouth—I’m gonna—”
Katsuki moaned around him, deep in his throat, eyes fluttering closed. He sucked harder. Tongue flexing, jaw aching, but he took it. Let Eijiro fuck into his mouth, deeper, slower, controlled even as he trembled.
Eijiro came with a low, shuddering moan, hips buried to the base, the head of his cock pulsing against Katsuki’s tongue.
“'Suki,” he gasped, breath catching, “fuck—good boy—”
Katsuki swallowed, reflexive, needy, and whimpered. The praise hit him like a goddamn trigger. His whole body jerked.
Behind him, Y/N was still grinding into his ass with precise, punishing thrusts. She felt the way he clenched down around her, the helpless shiver through his spine, the heat building to the brink:
“You may come,” she whispered in his ear.
And he did.
Un-touched. No hand, no friction. Just her inside him, and Eijiro’s taste on his tongue, and those two words he would never admit he craved.
His body seized. His spine arching, thighs locking, a broken, guttural sound ripping from his throat as his orgasm hit him like a fucking explosion.
Come streaked across his belly, shot up toward his chest. Pulse after pulse, more than he thought he had, so much he gasped on the comedown like it hurt.
Y/N didn’t stop until she felt him soften, breath hiccupping through the aftershocks.
Eijiro was there in seconds, cupping Katsuki's jaw, kissing his temple, catching the tears he didn’t even realize had slipped out. “You did so fucking good.”
Y/N wrapped arms around his chest, holding him through it.
“We’re so proud of you, baby.”
Katsuki was panting, wrecked. Trembling. But glowing under the praise.
“…Still hate you both,” he muttered hoarsely.
Y/N kissed the back of his neck.
“You’ll say that until tomorrow night,” she said. “And then beg again.”
Katsuki groaned. Eijiro laughed.
And they pulled him between them, safe, praised, and utterly undone.
He didn’t say anything at first.
Just collapsed forward the second Y/N pulled out. Face pressed to the mattress, arms limp, shoulders twitching with every soft pulse of aftershock.
Eijiro caught him before he melted completely, wrapping those big arms around him and pulling him up and back into his lap. Katsuki groaned something tiny and wrecked. Boneless. Floating.
Then—
"...Velcro."
The word was barely audible. Muffled into Eijiro’s shoulder.
But they both heard it.
And they moved.
Y/N was on the bed in a flash, wrapping them both in the blanket she’d warmed earlier. She guided Katsuki gently into the middle, her hand cupping the back of his neck. Eijiro curled behind him, big body forming an anchor along his spine.
No one said anything.
Katsuki didn’t need words right now. He needed weight. Skin. Steady breath around him, not above him. No more commands. No jokes. Just… this.
He trembled once, hard. Y/N felt it beneath her palm and whispered immediately:
“You’re safe.”
Another tremble. Less sharp.
“You’re here. We’ve got you,” Eijiro added, nuzzling against the back of his head.
Katsuki’s fingers fisted in the blanket, then in Y/N's shirt.
“Touch?” he rasped.
“Always,” she said instantly, dragging her nails lightly up and down his arm. “Tell us where.”
“Chest. Hair. S’fine.”
Eijiro’s hand smoothed over his chest in slow, grounding circles while Y/N threaded her fingers through his hair, scratching gently at the base of his scalp.
Katsuki made a soft, wrecked keening sound.
“You did so good,” she murmured. “Let us hold you.”
“…You’re not mad?”
She blinked. “Mad?”
“For the fuck-you’s and—y’know, dying and shit,” he mumbled, cheeks still pink. “Might’ve said I’d kill you.”
Eijiro laughed softly, kissing behind his ear.
“Baby, you say that when I steal the last dumpling.”
“And during sex, it’s a compliment,” Y/N added, warm against his chest.
Katsuki huffed small and breathy. Embarrassed, but melting anyway.
He shifted closer. Burrowed. Hands now tugging at her hips, pulling her flush. Eijiro hugged him from behind with full arms, no gaps.
Velcro.
They stayed like that for a long time, just breathing.
“Mm-mm,” Katsuki mumbled into her neck. “You. Him. Blanket. Shut up.”
Eijiro smiled. “That a request or an order?”
“…Yes.”
They both laughed softly.
Katsuki didn’t move. He didn’t want to. He was sandwiched between them, skin to skin, fully seen and not asked to be anything else. No bravado. No bark.
Just held.
A pause. Then, quiet:
“…Say it again.”
Y/N kissed his forehead. “You’re our good boy.”
Katsuki exhaled hard. Shuddered.
Eijiro added, “The best boy.”
Katsuki sighed. Deeper now. Weightless and safe.
They felt it when he dropped fully. No more tension in his shoulders. Face slack. Mouth open on her collarbone, breathing like he’d just remembered how.
They’d clean up later. Water, warmth, a meal waiting.
something sincerely so special about “struggled in canon hero rankings because of his personality” Katsuki Bakugo rounding out the series winning every single popularity poll after the first
Setting: A ruined pavilion at the edge of Heaven • Twilight light • A low altar never meant for this • Heaven listening
Tone: Lyrical, intense, reverent and ruined • Laced with longing, obedience, defiance, and trust
Content: Ritualistic intimacy between an angel and the one he never stopped loving. Wings, halos, and whispered sins. Sacred bodies made unholy by choice. Praise that sounds like prayer. The kind of love that costs everything—again and again.
The ruined pavilion cradles the last of the afternoon like a cupped hand, fingers curled around sunlight. Warm stone, slow dust, and veins of old gold cracked through marble. My robes whisper as they drag over wilted lilies and halo-glass shattered fine as sand, each grain catching the dying light the way a tide gathers stars into its hush. Far below, the mortal valley exhales beneath a quilt of smoke-colored clouds, the sigh of it stirring the cypress grove. Above, the firmament hums not with song, but a command stitched into sky.
He arrives the way thunder does—felt first in the marrow, a pressure under the ribs, long before sound breaks the air.
Katsuki steps out of the cypress shade with his shoulders thrown back in defiance, chin high like a prince without a throne, and something like apology smoldering in his eyes; hot, reluctant, unspoken. His black wings fold tight to his frame, ragged along the edges where feathers never grew back the same, each one a memory of violence. A coil of ember-bright metal hovers near his temple. A warped ring, once a halo, now a brand of exile. It circles him like a dare, or a curse he learned to wear like armor.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whisper, though my pulse betrays me, rising like incense. Every feather at my back flares open, unstoppably, an instinct older than doctrine, a welcome written into bone.
He smiles without humor, teeth bared like a promise or a wound. “You say that every time. You mean it never.”
My mouth betrays me by softening around the word. “Never.”
We meet in the center of the ruined temple, a breath apart, the hush between us vibrating like a taut string. The nearness is blasphemy and sacrament in the same exhale. His calloused, unholy hand rises and finds the clasp at my throat, a delicate tangle of filigree and spellwire. It opens with a click like breaking faith. My robe slackens, falls in soft weight, and the air presses in—cool as a priest’s hand, hot as a secret whispered through lattice. Gooseflesh lifts along my arms.
I reach for the burn at his jaw, the crescent-shaped notch left by Heaven’s first refusal. The skin there is newly healed, too tender for memory. He shudders when I touch it, a low sound blooming in his throat. Not pain, not quite pleasure, but the ache between.
“Tell me to go,” he murmurs, voice thick with the plea he doesn’t mean, the hunger he can’t kill. He crowds closer, the scent of cypress smoke and ozone clinging to him like a second skin.
“Stay,” I answer, without hesitation, because I am the softness he shattered for and the witness who stood at the edge of the sky and watched. I never turned away.
He kisses me like he’s starving at the altar, and I’m the last fruit forbidden to him. He tastes like iron and fig sap, like rain striking stone. Reverence coils in the way his mouth moves against mine. Hungry, yes, but careful too, as if I might break between his teeth. The world narrows to three points of contact; the rasp of his stubble against my cheek, the heat of his tongue, the brush of singed feathers ghosting the backs of my knees.
We stagger to the nearest column, half-cracked and sunwarmed, and I let my wings open fully around him—blinding in their span, a halo broken into fragments. They wrap us in light, a soft shield that dares to cradle a wound made of night.
Katsuki’s hands are rougher than any angel’s should be. They are scarred across the knuckles, blunt-fingered, strong enough to crack altars. It suits him. He never bent to Heaven, never softened, not even for glory. Now, he grips my hips like he’s steadying us both on the edge of something bottomless.
“Y/N,” he says into the hollow of my throat, my name like a litany, like a blasphemy sung sweet. “Say you want me.”
“I want you,” I breathe, and the pavilion hears it. The stones lean in. The air tightens, trembling at the edges, because even the wind loves a tragedy worth telling.
He lifts me in one clean pull, effortless like hefting a relic. I wrap my calves around his waist, feel the hard lines of him through leather and sweat and skin. The harness at his chest scrapes rough against my thighs, and when I rake my nails down the back of his neck, his wings shudder molten black and ember-flecked, trembling as if remembering the fall.
I’m already slick with the kind of want that rewrites scripture. My halo thrums above me, a faint, trembling ring of light, and as it brightens, threads of gold drift down my hair, catching on my skin like blessings I don’t deserve.
He sees it—my glow sparking into being, wild and unwilling, and grins with all his teeth, feral and fond. “Glow for me, angel.”
I do.
Of course I do.
I always have.
He carries me to the low altar, which is a broad slab of dusk-colored stone, veined through with ivory, dusted in fallen petals and time. We’ve never used it for worship before. But there’s a first time for every heresy. He lays me across it like an offering, and kneels, letting his shadow spill long across the marble.
His hands roam from ribs to thighs, reverent and rough, thumbs sinking into the sensitive crease where holiness turns to ache. He stares up the line of my body like he’s memorizing a constellation. When our eyes meet, I flush and arch, breath catching. He doesn’t look away.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he says, voice hoarse with restraint. “You still want me?”
“Moreso,” I whisper, then louder, because he always makes me honest: “I need you.”
He bows his head like a worshipper kneeling before a forbidden altar, and when his mouth finds the inside of my knee, it is with the reverence of a man giving thanks to bone and breath. His lips leave warmth like prophecy; his tongue leaves tremble like thunder. When he finally lowers his mouth to where I burn for him, it’s with the patience of a prayer.
The moment I gasp, he turns merciless.
He licks one long, deliberate stripe up my center, slow as sunrise over ash, and hums low when I shiver—holy sound against unholy flesh. Then he seals his mouth around me, and drinks like he’s tasting dawnlight after exile. The altar beneath me heats, veins of pale gold pulsing faintly, echoing my heartbeat in stone.
I break open on his tongue, undone at the seams of my sanctity. One hand tangles in his hair, tugging at the root like I could anchor myself to something fallen. The other clamps around the altar’s edge, fingers bone-white against duskstone. The first sound that leaves my lips isn’t angelic, it’s primal and wordless, ripped from the deep place where language turns to flame.
He laughs into me, the sound blasphemous and beautiful, and the vibration sends another bolt of sensation skittering up my spine. “That’s it,” he murmurs, voice muffled by wet and want. “Let them hear you praise something they can’t sanctify.”
Above us, the pavilion groans faintly. Beams shift as if the structure itself is listening, scandalized.
I do praise—I plead. I curse in the High Tongue, each syllable glowing on my tongue like script set aflame, bright enough to stain the air with sound. His mouth never falters. He devours me like a starving prophet who found faith in the wasteland, who learned that reverence begins where rules are broken.
He slows when I quake, relentless when I beg, adjusting with terrifying precision. Two fingers slide into me, curling just so, seeking that secret chamber only he ever dared claim. His eyes never leave mine. They burn with the memory of every night he mapped me like constellations fallen into flesh.
A curl of light breaks above us. My halo flickers like a candle in wind, close to losing shape.
“Please,” I choke, and it is not the prayer Heaven taught me. It is older, needier, carved from raw desire and heat. My thighs tremble around him.
“Tell me,” he pants, voice rough as stone under tide, mouth slick with proof of devotion. “Say what you need, angel.”
“I need you inside me,” I manage. Then louder, shameless, trembling: “Now.”
Above us, a gust of wind swirls through the ruined beams, scattering lilies across the stone like thrown offerings.
His jaw flexes like he’s holding back a roar. He rises, grabs my face, and kisses me filthy with his tongue slick with what he just took from me, forcing me to taste the altar of myself. I moan into it, greedy, lit from the inside.
I reach for the buckles crisscrossing his chest, trembling, but he swats my hands away—impatient, possessive. The leather harness loosens and clatters to the floor like fallen armor. He shoves his pants low, and the sight of him, thick, flushed, dark at the tip, glistening with need, makes something molten twist in my belly.
The air around us thickens, charged, as if Heaven is holding its breath.
Katsuki grips the backs of my knees and folds me open with reverent violence like unfurling wings he was never meant to touch. I gasp, fully exposed to him, light blooming at the base of my spine. He drags the head of his cock through my slick, slow and maddening
The sound of it, wet and obscene, echoes in the sacred hush like a cracked bell.
I arch, chasing him with a broken noise. He grits his teeth, and a curse falls from his lips, hoarse and helpless, shaking the cypress shadows outside.
The altar glows faintly beneath me. It feels. It records.
“Almost got caught sneaking back up here,” he mutters, gaze locked to mine like a vow. “Not going to waste another fucking second without you.”
Then he pushes in.
The first stretch steals all air from my lungs with pure sensation and sacred intrusion. The second stretch gives it back with a gasp, sharp as divination. I clench around him, too full too fast, and watch as his composure fractures. His eyes squeeze shut. His throat works like he’s swallowing Heaven’s last warning.
He stops halfway, trembling, jaw clenched.
The halo above me arcs violently, shedding sparks that scatter across the altar like divine cinders.
“More,” I whisper, stroking the sharp edge of his jaw with the pad of my thumb. “All of it.”
He exhales a single, reverent “Fuck,” then drives the rest of himself into me with a groan so raw it feels like it could tilt the firmament.
Outside, the wind tears through the pavilion like a shiver. The lilies scatter. The sky holds its breath.
We stay locked, foreheads pressed, breathing like fugitives caught between judgment and want. I curl my ankles around the small of his back, urging him closer with the same desperation that cracked the sky when he fell.
He begins to move, each thrust a slow and deliberate ruin, as if he’s carving worship into me with every inch.
The altar shifts beneath us, grinding against the marble floor in slow, stunned protest. Light pools beneath my shoulder blades, seeping from skin as if the divine can't decide whether to stay or flee. I arch up to meet him stroke for stroke, and the sound he makes is low, broken, and guttural. That sound reverberates through my chest like thunder given form.
Outside, the cypress bows beneath sudden wind. Leaves scatter like prophecy.
“There she is,” he rasps, lips brushing my cheek. “My holiness.”
“I’m not your anything,” I say, just to test the line, to see what he’ll do when I defy the only thing we both still believe in.
He pulls out slow and slams back in, cruel in his control, deliberate in his depth. The air leaves my lungs in a fractured moan.
“Say it again,” he growls.
I don’t. I can’t. Not when he drags me upright to straddle him, our bodies flush, my thighs trembling around his hips. He cups the back of my head with that impossible gentleness, like I’m made of glass scripture never sanctified. He holds me and ruins me in the same breath. Each thrust punches a bright white starburst behind my eyes, each withdrawal a void scripture never warned me could exist.
The altar heats beneath us, pulsing like a second heart.
He bends his head to my throat, lips brushing the fluttering pulse there. “I fell for you.”
“I know,” I whisper, throat tight with all the things I can’t give him.
“I’d do it again,” he murmurs, voice cracked and raw, like he’s scraping truth out of his own ribs. “I’d do it twice.”
I break on the next thrust, climax crashing through me like a bell toll split open. The world goes narrow, loud. My halo bursts into white light above us. My wings flare wide, trembling, feathers catching starlight and ash. A cough of radiance spills across the altar, a bloom of glory born of sin.
He follows with a choked curse, burying himself deep, shuddering violently as thick, molten heat floods into me, wrong in the way that songs are wrong when sung backward under eclipsed moons. I feel him spill, and the altar drinks it. Accepts it.
Heaven sees it.
We don’t stop. We rock, slow and sticky and too full of meaning. Aftershocks ripple through me like echoes of a quake in holy ground. Our foreheads press together, sweat-slick and trembling, and we whisper nonsense that feels sacred: stay, breathe, here.
He kisses my eyelids like he’s granting absolution I never asked for. I drag my fingers through the softest part of his hair, just above the nape, and he sighs like a man who’s finally laid down his sword.
The altar’s glow fades to a pulse. The lilies around us lean in, blooming faintly in the heat we left behind.
“Again?” he asks, voice low, smug, and tender in equal measure.
I laugh, breathless, raw. “You’re insatiable.”
“Only for this,” he says, and it guts me.
No poetry. Just truth. Just him.
We shift to our sides on the altar, the stone warm beneath us from our shared desecration. He curls behind me, one arm draped heavy across my waist, hand splayed across my ribs to feel the rhythm of my breath. His cock, still hard and slick, nestles against me, waiting.
I nod.
He pushes in with that slow, reverent, and obscene tenderness. We groan together, one sound made of want and homecoming. This time, he moves like a tide, waves rolling gently against a shore too holy to collapse. He reaches between my thighs, and his fingers move in slow, coaxing circles, drawing pleasure like a psalm.
I melt for him. Praise slips from my lips, effortless, sweet and slurred. It feels like worship again. It feels like choosing.
“Go harder?” he murmurs, lips brushing the shell of my ear, already knowing the answer from the pitch of my breath.
“Yes,” I say, smiling into the stone. “Greedy for you.”
He sets a new pace—thicker, deeper, his thrusts reshaping silence. The altar answers him with a hollow thud, then another, then another, a rhythm like a heartbeat we forged together. Outside, the wind climbs into the cypress, branches rattling like bones in an ancient reliquary.
Inside, we make a ruin of sound: breath, impact, the bright little sob I can’t hold in. He holds me together with one arm, palm spread across my belly, even as he drives me further apart with every stroke.
“Look at you,” he rasps behind me, voice reverent and wrecked. “Light leaking everywhere.”
He drags two fingers through where our wet and swollen bodies meet by a new form of holiness, and lifts them to the air, glistening. Gold shimmers faintly on his skin, not divine, but something older.
“Mine,” he whispers, not like a claim, but a marvel, like he still can’t believe I let him have any part of me at all.
I turn, kiss him with everything I still have.
“Yours,” I breathe, because truth belongs in holy places, and this is the holiest we’ve ever been.
We fall again, a slower and softer collapse that blends into breath and heat and borrowed quiet. He groans into my mouth, trembling with the last wave of it, his hands framing my face like I’m something fragile and unrepeatable.
When he slips from me, he moves with careful devotion, all instinct and worship disguised as ritual. He tugs the edge of my robe beneath me, blotting away the mess like he might save the altar from further stain. He fetches the clay jar—my small, sacred precaution—and wets the hem to clean between my thighs. His touch is absurdly gentle, almost reverent.
I reach for the ragged edge of his wing, fingers brushing the place where feathers broke and never regrew. He flinches, but then exhales long and shaken, leaning into the contact with a helpless noise, like even that pain has become part of his prayer.
“You always do that,” he mutters, eyes slitted, mouth curling in something that pretends to be irritation. “Touch me like you’re blessing a mistake.”
“I’m blessing a choice,” I answer, tracing the seam where burnt feather meets scar. “Yours. Mine.”
He huffs a half-laugh, bitter and fond. “You were born too brave for their rules.”
I look at him, halo flickering above me like a dying star. “I was born to break them with you.”
He laughs with a sound that’s almost grief. Brief. Aching. “Don’t make promises we can’t keep.”
The wind shifts, colder now. A hush spreads through the pavilion, heavy and watching. On the horizon, the first sentinel stars push through the last veil of blue, sharp as pinpricks in divine cloth.
Night in Heaven is short.
Judgment is not.
His breath stills. “It’s time.”
I sit up slowly, gathering my robe around me like armor I no longer deserve. My hands find the pale silk ribbon that once draped from my halo—a token of my rank, my purity, my vow—and I tie it around his hair instead. A quiet, impossible claim. A thing no angel should ever dare.
He doesn’t stop me.
He kneels before me, a fallen thing brought low not by shame, but by something more dangerous: love. I cup his face, fingertips trembling. We never touch like this in front of Heaven. Not where they can see.
The carved words along the altar’s edge warm faintly under my palm: What is holy is what you return to.
I choose to believe that includes him.
“Run with me,” he says suddenly, like a dam cracking. His voice is fierce, trembling with withheld desperation. “Drop the ring. Burn the robes. Fly until the sky forgets our names. I’ll build you a church in a ditch and call it paradise.”
I want.
I want so badly it burns behind my eyes, in my gums, in my spine like new wings are trying to tear free from skin.
But the firmament hums now—louder, harsher, no longer distant. A grip around the marrow of me. The weight of Heaven asserting itself, reminding me of the orchard they threatened, the valley they swore to drown in salt.
If I fall now, they’ll close the door we cracked with our bodies. Slam it so hard the echo will last for generations.
I can’t let that happen.
“I can’t,” I say, barely audible, because sometimes love isn’t flight; it’s staying, bleeding, obeying the most brutal necessity.
He doesn’t argue. He only nods, once, tight and resigned like a man taking a blade in a place he knows won’t kill him, but might never fully heal.
He leans in, touches his brow to mine. The contact is silent, reverent, final. “Then meet me where we said.”
“The river mouth,” I breathe. “Three nights from now.”
“If I’m not there—”
“You will be,” I interrupt, and for once, I don’t doubt.
The stars above blink brighter. Watching. Waiting.
He kisses me like they’ll strip him of every memory tomorrow. I kiss him back like I can carve his name into lightning, like I can teach thunder to remember.
When we separate, the world feels thinner, stretched. He steps off the altar, back straight, buckling his harness with practiced hands. His wings rise behind him in a sweep of black fire, feather-tips catching stray pieces of my glow and sparking.
For a heartbeat, he becomes every myth I was taught to fear. Every story of a god who loved wrong and learned hunger.
“(Y/N),” he says. Not a question, not a plea. A vow.
“Katsuki,” I answer, and the name rings in the air like a struck bell.
Then he steps off the pavilion’s edge and the sky opens to catch him.
I watch him fall, not in sin nor in shame, but in flight.
I watch until the cypress swallows him, until the valley folds him in shadow, until even my stubborn heart admits: he’s gone, for now.
Then I gather my robe, the clay jar, and the impossible nerve it takes to walk home through holy halls under Heaven’s gaze.
The lilies still glow faintly where our heat kissed the stone, soft and defiant. My halo floats above me again. Re-formed, steadied, and obedient. But I can feel the mark on my throat where his mouth lingered. It will fade by dawn.
Katsuki should have known the minute he smart-mouthed at dinner.
That cocky little quip about how Y/N “couldn’t top shit if it begged.”
The deadpan look she gave him across her wine glass. The way Eijiro choked into his water and then smiled.
Yeah. He should’ve seen it coming.
But here he was.
Face flushed. Arms behind his back, bound, not tightly, just enough that he’d have to ask to move. Knees wide. Chest rising in fast, shaky breaths as Y/N slicked the strap-on with slow, exaggerated strokes behind him.
“Safe word?” she asked softly.
Katsuki gritted his teeth. “Tangerine.”
Eijiro was in front of him already, kneeling between his thighs, calm and smiling. His hands rested on Katsuki’s knees. Warm, solid. The opposite of Y/N's cold control behind him.
“You sure?” Red asked, dipping forward to kiss his cheek. “You’re already panting like you wanna run.”
Katsuki growled. “Fuck you.”
“Manners,” Y/N snapped behind him, tapping the lube bottle against his thigh.
“Fuck you, too.”
Eijiro just chuckled, brushing blond hair from Katsuki’s face. “God, you’re so hot like this.”
Katsuki glared. “Die.”
Y/N pressed the tip of the strap to his rim, not pushing in.Waiting. Her voice was soft but razor-sharp.
“You’ll say please,” she murmured, “or I’ll make you beg for something else first.”
Katsuki’s arms twitched behind him. His mouth opened, then shut.
Eijiro leaned in, mouth by his ear. “Come on, baby. Just say it. You want this.”
“I don’t want—”
Y/N pushed in half an inch.
He gasped.
“Oh,” Eijiro whispered, watching his face. “You love this.”
“I will kill you both.”
“You’ll do it with your ass stuffed full, then,” Y/N said sweetly, pushing in deeper.
Katsuki groaned. Tried not to. His thighs clenched. Shoulders tight.
Eijiro cupped his jaw, coaxed his eyes up. “Hey. Eyes on me. Breathe.”
He obeyed without thinking. His breath shuddered in. Y/N bottomed out.
“Fuck.”
“Reconfirm your safe word, baby,” she asked.
“T-Tangerine,” he gasped. “Just—fuck. Move.”
Eijiro kissed him. Deep and slow, tongue teasing the corner of his mouth, one hand stroking down his chest. Katsuki made a strangled sound that was part growl, part moan, and melted into it for just a second.
Then Y/N started to move.
Not fast. Not gentle. Just in control. Hips grinding in a rhythm that forced Katsuki to feel every inch. His body jerked.
Eijiro slipped two fingers past his lips mid-sentence.
Katsuki froze. Growled.
But didn’t pull away.
“There we go,” Eijiro whispered. “Look at that mouth. Always gotta have something to say.”
Katsuki sucked without thinking.
Y/N's hips snapped forward hard.
He moaned around Eijiro’s fingers.
They both heard it.
Eijiro’s eyes sparkled. “Ohhh, there’s that sound.”
“Shut up.”
“You like being good for us,” Y/N said, voice like silk.
“I’m not—ah—fuck—”
“Not what?” she teased, pounding into him now, hands on his hips. “Not a good boy?”
“I’ll fuckin’ end you—fuck, fffuck—”
Eijiro gently pushed a third finger into his mouth. Katsuki’s eyes fluttered.
“There it is,” he whispered. “That sweet spot. You can fight all you want, baby. We’re not going anywhere.”
Y/N leaned over his back, chest pressing to him. Her voice was velvet.
“Say it,” she whispered in his ear. “Say you like it.”
Katsuki whimpered.
“Say it, and I’ll let you come with Eijiro’s cock in your mouth.”
He bit down—on the moan, on the shame—but it leaked out anyway.
“…I like it.”
Y/N slowed her rhythm. Deep, punishing thrusts now.
Eijiro pulled his fingers free, replaced them with the head of his cock, sliding against Katsuki’s spit-slick tongue.
“You like what, baby?” he asked gently.
“…I like being used,” Katsuki muttered, face burning. “I like being…fucked like this.”
Y/N hummed. “Good. Because I’m not stopping until you melt.”
Katsuki opened wider, taking Eijiro’s cock inch by inch, moaning deep in his throat as Y/N pegged him relentlessly from behind.
“Fuck. You’re so good,” Eijiro praised, hand stroking Katsuki’s flushed cheek. “Taking me so deep. You’re such a good boy, baby.”
Katsuki moaned. Louder. Desperate.
“Ohhh. That’s your trigger, huh?” Y/N purred, watching the way his body trembled. “You like hearing that. You like being called a good boy.”
“Don’t—fuckin’—call me—”
Eijiro thrust gently into his mouth, slow and firm. Katsuki sucked, instinctively, face pink.
“Say it,” Y/N demanded, voice now low and dominant. “Say you’re our good boy and we’ll let you come.”
He held out as long as he could. Five seconds. Ten.
Then he broke.
“I’m your fucking good boy,” he groaned around Eijiro’s cock. “Fuck—please—let me—please—”
Eijiro’s grip tightened in Katsuki’s hair, hips starting to stutter. His voice, always warm even at the edge of wrecked, dropped to a trembling growl.
“Fuck, baby—your mouth—I’m gonna—”
Katsuki moaned around him, deep in his throat, eyes fluttering closed. He sucked harder. Tongue flexing, jaw aching, but he took it. Let Eijiro fuck into his mouth, deeper, slower, controlled even as he trembled.
Eijiro came with a low, shuddering moan, hips buried to the base, the head of his cock pulsing against Katsuki’s tongue.
“'Suki,” he gasped, breath catching, “fuck—good boy—”
Katsuki swallowed, reflexive, needy, and whimpered. The praise hit him like a goddamn trigger. His whole body jerked.
Behind him, Y/N was still grinding into his ass with precise, punishing thrusts. She felt the way he clenched down around her, the helpless shiver through his spine, the heat building to the brink:
“You may come,” she whispered in his ear.
And he did.
Un-touched. No hand, no friction. Just her inside him, and Eijiro’s taste on his tongue, and those two words he would never admit he craved.
His body seized. His spine arching, thighs locking, a broken, guttural sound ripping from his throat as his orgasm hit him like a fucking explosion.
Come streaked across his belly, shot up toward his chest. Pulse after pulse, more than he thought he had, so much he gasped on the comedown like it hurt.
Y/N didn’t stop until she felt him soften, breath hiccupping through the aftershocks.
Eijiro was there in seconds, cupping Katsuki's jaw, kissing his temple, catching the tears he didn’t even realize had slipped out. “You did so fucking good.”
Y/N wrapped arms around his chest, holding him through it.
“We’re so proud of you, baby.”
Katsuki was panting, wrecked. Trembling. But glowing under the praise.
“…Still hate you both,” he muttered hoarsely.
Y/N kissed the back of his neck.
“You’ll say that until tomorrow night,” she said. “And then beg again.”
Katsuki groaned. Eijiro laughed.
And they pulled him between them, safe, praised, and utterly undone.
He didn’t say anything at first.
Just collapsed forward the second Y/N pulled out. Face pressed to the mattress, arms limp, shoulders twitching with every soft pulse of aftershock.
Eijiro caught him before he melted completely, wrapping those big arms around him and pulling him up and back into his lap. Katsuki groaned something tiny and wrecked. Boneless. Floating.
Then—
"...Velcro."
The word was barely audible. Muffled into Eijiro’s shoulder.
But they both heard it.
And they moved.
Y/N was on the bed in a flash, wrapping them both in the blanket she’d warmed earlier. She guided Katsuki gently into the middle, her hand cupping the back of his neck. Eijiro curled behind him, big body forming an anchor along his spine.
No one said anything.
Katsuki didn’t need words right now. He needed weight. Skin. Steady breath around him, not above him. No more commands. No jokes. Just… this.
He trembled once, hard. Y/N felt it beneath her palm and whispered immediately:
“You’re safe.”
Another tremble. Less sharp.
“You’re here. We’ve got you,” Eijiro added, nuzzling against the back of his head.
Katsuki’s fingers fisted in the blanket, then in Y/N's shirt.
“Touch?” he rasped.
“Always,” she said instantly, dragging her nails lightly up and down his arm. “Tell us where.”
“Chest. Hair. S’fine.”
Eijiro’s hand smoothed over his chest in slow, grounding circles while Y/N threaded her fingers through his hair, scratching gently at the base of his scalp.
Katsuki made a soft, wrecked keening sound.
“You did so good,” she murmured. “Let us hold you.”
“…You’re not mad?”
She blinked. “Mad?”
“For the fuck-you’s and—y’know, dying and shit,” he mumbled, cheeks still pink. “Might’ve said I’d kill you.”
Eijiro laughed softly, kissing behind his ear.
“Baby, you say that when I steal the last dumpling.”
“And during sex, it’s a compliment,” Y/N added, warm against his chest.
Katsuki huffed small and breathy. Embarrassed, but melting anyway.
He shifted closer. Burrowed. Hands now tugging at her hips, pulling her flush. Eijiro hugged him from behind with full arms, no gaps.
Velcro.
They stayed like that for a long time, just breathing.
“Mm-mm,” Katsuki mumbled into her neck. “You. Him. Blanket. Shut up.”
Eijiro smiled. “That a request or an order?”
“…Yes.”
They both laughed softly.
Katsuki didn’t move. He didn’t want to. He was sandwiched between them, skin to skin, fully seen and not asked to be anything else. No bravado. No bark.
Just held.
A pause. Then, quiet:
“…Say it again.”
Y/N kissed his forehead. “You’re our good boy.”
Katsuki exhaled hard. Shuddered.
Eijiro added, “The best boy.”
Katsuki sighed. Deeper now. Weightless and safe.
They felt it when he dropped fully. No more tension in his shoulders. Face slack. Mouth open on her collarbone, breathing like he’d just remembered how.
They’d clean up later. Water, warmth, a meal waiting.
(SFW Teaser • Full Story Will Include NSFW • 18+ • Minors DNI)
Themes: F1 rivals-to-lovers • Slow burn, high heat • Found family pit crew • Love under pressure • Tuning bodies and engines • Soft under steel
Pairing: Rookie F1 driver Katsuki Bakugo (gruff, gifted, doesn’t do crushes) × Car model!Y/N (sharp, grease-slicked, refuses to fangirl) — both 20+
Setting: Paddock-side tension, warehouse trysts, press gauntlets, and the roar between laps. The track is the stage. The garage is the sanctuary.
Tone: Fast-paced, emotionally loaded, hard-driving and tender • Teasing, grounded, a little dirty with a lot of heart
Content:
The teaser chapter is SFW, focused on character tension and set-up. Future chapters will explore NSFW themes with emotional depth and physical intimacy, including late-night warehouse scenes, post-race hookups, and high-stakes vulnerability behind closed garage doors.
When rising F1 phenom Katsuki Bakugo meets a car model who knows spark plugs better than PR smiles, things don’t combust—they smolder. One bouquet of blunt honesty, one late-night engine tune, and suddenly they’re learning torque curves and trust. Their chemistry builds like boost pressure: slow at first, then impossible to contain.
From secret drives to pit-wall strategy, from grease-streaked kisses to podium promises, they fight for something real in a world that edits everything. He learns softness without slowing down. She learns how to be seen without surrendering anything real.
High heat. Higher stakes. Every inch earned.
ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ
Lap One
ᯓ★ (Y/N POV) ★ᯓ
Engines shouldn't purr this pretty indoors, but the expo floor hums like a hive. Polished hoods reflect a thousand lights; cameras click like teeth. Models in glossy bodysuits lean against metal dreams with practiced smiles. I adjust my stance beside a cherry-red beast, one palm flat on the fender, the other on my hip, and breathe past the sweet-chemical perfume of tire shine.
Two more expos and I can afford the night classes at Tōdai's mech lab. One apprentice slot opens in the spring. I'm not missing it.
I learned to love engines in a place that smelled like rain on aluminum. My uncle's shop sat behind a ramen place where the broth steamed the alley windows and the delivery boys leaned their mopeds like dogs at a door.
On weekends, he'd prop open the bay and say, "You can look, kid, but keep your hands honest."
"Honest, how?" I'd ask, and he'd press my fingers to a brake rotor, show me the tiny lip that meant someone had cheaped out on a skim.
"Honest means the part does the work it says it does," he'd say. "Not more. Not less."
I learned how to listen. A straight-four that ticked when it should've purred. A V6 that sounded loud but felt thin in the pull. Once, a guy came in with an exhaust that had been drilled to fake a growl. Uncle took one lap around the block, came back, and handed the keys back through the window.
"Why won't you fix it?" I asked.
"Because he doesn't want it fixed," Uncle said. "He wants applause. Those are different customers."
He let me change oil on shop beaters if I could name every tool I touched. He made me do the torque wrench song until it lived in my bones. When he died, the landlord flipped the shop into a craft brewery with Edison bulbs and reclaimed wood tables that still smelled like brake cleaner on hot days. I kept the torque wrench. The alley looks the same if you stand in the right shadow.
"Clean wins," he said once, hooking a thumb toward the pit lane on TV. "Dirty wins don't stay won."
So, yes. Night classes. An apprenticeship slot. A door I'll pry open if I have to.
"Chin up. Shoulders open. Less ice, more sexy," the brand rep says without looking at me. His badge reads Owen – Partnerships. He smells like cologne and mild condescension.
"Less patronizing, more correct specs," I murmur, still smiling for the camera in front of me. "If the press asks about power, it's six-fifty at the crank, not seven. Marketing rounded up."
Owen blinks. "That's... not important."
"To the people who actually care, it is." I angle my body three degrees, catching the overhead strip lights so the car's curve looks like a single brushstroke.
The photographer drops his camera a fraction and grins. "Hold that. Chin tilt. Eyes to me. Beautiful. Give me serious. Now give me the I-know-something-you-don't look."
I let the corner of my mouth lift. Shutter chatter. He laughs. "There it is."
Another rep hustles over with a tablet. "(Y/N), after this set we'll rotate you to the white coupe. Executive walk-through at eleven."
Owen lowers his voice. "Please don't freeload your opinions on spec. We lost a sponsor last month."
"Copy," I say, even though I'd rather keep this car. She's honest: her panel gaps are tight, her intake scoops aren't fake, and someone tuned her idle so she doesn't sound like a pretender. On throttle lift she sighs twice, a soft ba-dum in the exhaust that feels like a heartbeat.
The photog leans in. "You really like this one."
"She likes the truth," I say. "Most of these showroom queens wear horsepower like false lashes. This one earned it."
Rina glides over during a lighting reset, pearls at her throat and a laugh that makes men tell truths. She's five years older and six times smarter than any brief they hand us.
"You're making Owen sweat," she murmurs, accepting a lint roller like a scepter.
"I like the engineers more than the execs," I say.
"Of course you do. Engineers build things. Execs build decks." She plucks a stray thread from my sleeve. "Rule one. Never fight the chaos head-on. Redirect. Like airflow."
"Rina," the makeup artist calls. "Lip refresh."
Rina smiles without teeth. "And rule two. The camera is a tame animal if you feed it exactly what you want it to see. Let it eat from your hand."
"You sound like my uncle talking about torque."
"Torque moves the world, sweetheart. Marketing just puts a bow on it." She leans closer. "Also, if Owen threatens you with sponsors, send him to me first. I like swatting flies."
"Hey sweetheart!" a guy in a lanyard yells from behind the velvet rope. "Smile like you mean it!"
I keep my smile and tilt his way. "I'll save that for anyone who knows the difference between torque and torque steer."
His friend snorts. Lanyard goes pink. "Torque's just like... the fast thing, right?"
"Close," I say. "It's the twist thing. The fast thing is what embarrasses you at the light."
"Okay, professor," Lanyard says, trying to salvage his pride. "So what's zero to sixty on that thing?"
"Depends who's driving," I say.
His friend barks a laugh. The photographer coughs to hide his. Lanyard squints at the placard like numbers will defend him. They never do.
"Here's a better question," I add. "How's your braking distance? Because if you only chase speed, you'll run out of road."
"Damn," someone says, soft. It lands. He shuts up.
The crowd shifts sudden and tidal. A thousand badges turn in sync, a servo of necks rotating to a single input. Heads turn toward the entrance. The hum becomes a thrum.
"Bakugo's here," someone breathes.
The room resizes around Katsuki Bakugo, shoulders and intention first, hair spiked like gravity took a step back. He walks like a fuse heading for tinder, handlers tight, PR already angling a marker into his hand.
People move with him, orbiting. Flashbulbs pop. A girl near the barrier puts a hand to her chest like she caught a bouquet at a wedding.
I look once. Then I look away, back to my car. Fame doesn't make a ninety-degree corner any less sharp.
The photographer notices my non-reaction and laughs under his breath. "You're the first person in this room not staring."
"Some of us are working."
"Some of us are racing," comes a voice made of gravel and late nights. Close. Too close.
I turn. Katsuki's already on my side of the velvet rope, his handler two steps behind, whisper-hissing about schedule. Up close, the press-kit angles soften into something human; sweat at the temple from whatever appearance he just powered through, a faint oil smear near his wrist that doesn't fit the suit. His cuticle is torn on one thumb, half-healed. Track rash, not vanity.
Good, a voice in me says before I can stop it. He touches his own car sometimes.
"You're not gonna ask for an autograph?" he asks, mouth hooked in a smirk. His eyes are... red is the wrong word. Vermillion. Not kind, not cruel, but hungry. I've seen that look in the mirror before a timed run. It means no one else is in the room.
"Why would I?" I shift my weight against the fender, unbothered. "You're not the car."
For a heartbeat he just stares. Then he laughs, sharp and uncontained, honest enough that PR flinches. A few heads whip our way because the sound doesn't match the careful media polish everyone expects from him.
"Finally," he says, licking his teeth like I just served him a fun problem. "Someone who doesn't kiss the hype."
"Ego burns fuel," I say. "Talent saves it."
Owen materializes between us, a little breathless. "Mr. Bakugo! Huge fan, sir. (Y/N), let's get you positioned with the coupe now, we're due on the other stage and the VP would love a photo with—"
Katsuki doesn't take his eyes off me. "I'm talking."
Owen wilts. The handler winces. PR slides in and blocks a camera with her body.
A kid slips under the rope like opportunity on tiny sneakers. "Bakugo, can you sign?"
PR inhales disaster. Katsuki takes the cap, flips it to the inside brim, and signs there. "Ink bleeds in rain," he says to the kid. "This way it lasts."
The kid beams like he's been handed a detonator. PR recalculates her angle by the centimeter. I pretend not to enjoy it.
Katsuki nods at the red car. "Which is your favorite here? And don't say the one you're paid to touch."
I tap the fender under my palm. "This one. She's lighter than she looks. Someone bothered to keep the unsprung mass down. Forged control arms, aluminum knuckles, braided lines. Someone fought finance for every gram. And they didn't fake the grille. Air goes somewhere real."
He tips his chin, amused. "You do know what you're leaning on."
"I model cars because it pays better than being ignored behind a desk," I say. "Between the two of us, I'd rather be under a lift than in lashes."
His attention narrows. The expo blur falls away from his face and leaves focus. I recognize it. I've seen it in the mirror, shoulders squared over an open engine, jaw set like a socket on a stubborn bolt.
"Name?" he asks.
"(Y/N)." My smile is polite. "And you're late to your next thing."
PR seizes the opening. "Yes, perfect, media line in Hall B. Katsuki, we really have to move."
He holds up a finger without looking. PR freezes. The handler tries a different tack. "Two minutes to the stage, sir."
Katsuki leans, elbows on the fender beside my hand, close enough that the metal warms under our combined heat. Up close he smells like heat and something metallic, the same way air tastes near a track wall.
"Keep watching," he says, voice low. "I'll make it worth your time."
"Win clean," I counter. "Then we'll talk."
"Define clean," he says.
"No hero laps," I say. "If the telemetry says brake earlier, you brake earlier even if the crowd wants smoke. No shoulder checks you can pretend were 'light taps.' If something fails, you own the numbers and you own the fix. Cameras are hungry, but they don't get fed first."
He considers. "And if someone dives late on me."
"You leave them room if you can. If you can't, you don't write a poem on social about being 'disrespected.' You take the footage to your crew chief and you learn the line that makes you untouchable next time."
"Untouchable," he repeats, like he's tasting a bolt head to see if it's iron or chrome. "You talk like you've driven."
I shrug. "I listen."
A slow grin spreads across his face, not for cameras, not for anyone except whoever stands close enough to hear him breathe. "Deal."
"Mr. Bakugo," PR says through a smile that's ninety percent teeth. "Now."
He peels himself away with a last look, then turns and lets the tide carry him. It's like watching a storm exit a bay. Everyone exhales when it passes and pretends they didn't brace.
"Wow," the photographer mutters. "You're either incredibly brave or allergic to money."
"Both," I say. "And a little addicted to torque."
He snorts. "I'm stealing that for a caption."
"Spell torque right."
ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ
The morning runs on rails; rotate to the white coupe, hold a gaze, lower a shoulder, swallow an eye roll when a VP tells me to give the grille some love. I do. Because I'm a professional. Because rent is rude. Because this is temporary and the engine rooms I want are waiting on the other side of every shift I can stomach.
On my ten-minute break, I escape to a service corridor that smells like electrical closets and coffee. My feet throb in twelve-centimeter lies. I slide one heel off for the bliss of a single minute of unpretending and scroll my phone.
Two missed calls from Kaori, my roommate. Subject lines are always unhelpful. One says BRO in all caps. Another says Answer your phone you glamorous gremlin. One text from Mom, a photo of her new pothos thriving in filtered light. And a headline shoved into my feed by the algorithm:
ROOKIE FIREBRAND BAKUGO MELTS MEDIA LINE AGAIN.
Win clean, I'd said. He either heard me or he wants to prove I'm wrong.
I snort. I don't click. Somewhere in Hall B, PR's polishing his edges. Good luck.
A janitor pushes past with a mop bucket. "You folks and your shoes," he says, friendly enough. "I hear the click and think it's thunder."
"That's the point," I say. "We fake the weather."
He laughs and keeps rolling.
I slide my heel back on and re-enter the floor. A cluster of fans near our booth are replaying a clip on a phone held too high. I catch a flash of blond spikes and hear Katsuki saying something like I don't owe you clean answers, I owe my team clean laps. It's cocky. It's true. It's a sentence that would get me fired in most offices and applauded on a grid.
"(Y/N)!" Owen waves me toward the cherry-red again. "VP wants you back on the signature vehicle. We've got a micro-panel in fifteen, press and influencers. Smile like you believe in the brand."
The green room is a rented smile. Ring lights glow like captive suns. Three influencers in matching neoprene dresses practice poses with their tongues on their molars for cheekbones. One of them, pastel-pink hair and a voice like bubble wrap, eyes me top to bottom.
"You're the spec girl," she says. "The one who fact-checked the deck."
"Deck had feelings, not numbers," I say.
She giggles like we're joking. "Babe, numbers are a vibe."
A man in a navy blazer with a press badge that says Minagawa, AutoBeat Weekly, offers me water. "I liked your answer about unsprung mass," he says. "Most reps dodge that."
"I'm not a rep," I say.
He writes that down like I said something important. "Can I ask what you'd change on the production model?"
"Thicker brake pads stock. Slightly wider contact patch on the rear. Keep the aero functional and the price honest."
"Alley doctorate," I say. "Adjunct professor at the School of Rain and Rotors."
She blinks and nods. We're speaking different dialects.
"(Y/N)," Owen calls from the door. "Two minutes."
Minagawa taps his pen. "One more. What's the appeal with Bakugo? Media says he's... combustible."
"Media likes combustibles," I say. "So do engines. The trick is containment."
He grins. "I'm stealing that."
"Spell containment right."
Owen doesn't dignify that with a response. Two fingers tap his wrist like a watch. Move.
I hit my mark, lift my chin, and let the show burn around me. This work is choreography. You never show the strain. You don't flinch when strangers aim their lens at your mouth and say, Open a little. You don't correct the man who calls the calipers fins. You spin, gracefully, out of hands that wander too close.
The moderator beams. "We love this energy. Tell us what makes this model special."
I keep it sugar and steel. "Balanced weight distribution, functional aero, an engine tune that respects longevity as much as launch. She isn't pretending to be something she's not."
"Final question," the moderator chirps into a mic. "(Y/N), what do you say to people who think car models are just... props?"
I should give the safe answer. We're part of the experience. I don't.
"I say most props don't know compression ratios," I reply, voice sweet as I can make it without choking. "And the ones who do? You should pay them like you pay the guys who memorize taglines."
A murmur rolls across the front row. A blogger's eyebrows jump. The VP's smile tightens like a belt.
My phone buzzes in the hip pocket of a dress with no real pockets before I step off the dais.
Owen:
HR wants a word tomorrow morning.
Me:
Copy: consequences.
"Ha. Well. On that note," the moderator says, brittle as spun sugar. "Thank you for your insights."
From the rope, a low whistle. Katsuki. He mouths, "Nice."
I don't look at him again. I won't give him the win.
The stage lights flatten everyone into glossy paper dolls. The moderator's teeth look sponsored. "Welcome to the micro-panel," she trills. "Let's talk passion."
They lob softballs first. "What's your favorite color on a performance car?"
"Whatever hue the brakes glow after a perfect stop," I say, and they "ooh" like I delivered a lifestyle quote.
Then a man in a branded polo stands up with a mic. "How do you respond to critics who say women on the floor are there to decorate, not educate?"
I could smile and say the line. I don't.
"I'd say they haven't asked very good questions yet," I say. "Decorations don't get under the hood. Education does."
A ripple moves through the room. The moderator coughs a laugh that sounds thin. "Spicy! Okay, over there."
A woman with a local news badge asks about sustainability and rare earths. I give her the best answer a non-engineer can give without lying. Minagawa tosses me a lifeline follow-up that lets me pivot to repairability and right-to-repair. The VP's smile tightens one notch.
Then the landmine.
"Is it true you corrected a team driver during a private press line this morning?" A blogger in a neon hoodie points his mic like a spear. "Do you think it's appropriate for... a model to challenge a pro about racing strategy?"
The air snaps three degrees colder. Owen shakes his head the tiniest amount. PR turns to stone.
"I corrected a press deck," I say. "And I didn't challenge a driver. I answered one."
"That's not what my source said," the blogger says, thrilled by the phrase my source. "They said you told him to 'win clean.' Sounds like a challenge."
"Then your source has good ears," I say. "And I'd tell any driver to win clean. Dirty wins don't stay won."
The blogger opens his mouth for another spear. Minagawa cuts in. "Seems like a call for accountability, not a strategy lecture. Next question?"
Bless Minagawa. The moderator pounces. "Yes, next. Over there!"
By the time we break, my cheeks hurt from diplomacy and sugar. Backstage, Owen exhales like he's been underwater.
"You're trending," he says. "Please trend for something legal."
"I answered questions."
"You answered them like you were angling for a union."
"I answered them like I wasn't a prop." I sip water and let it cool the hand that's been holding microphones all day. "That was the assignment, right? Smile like I believe in the brand?"
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I need a snack."
"Get the chili chips," I say. "You always want the chili chips."
He does. He always does.
The service corridor is still my favorite room in the building. Concrete, humming light, the coffee machine that lies about being gourmet. I lean against the wall and leave Kaori a voice note.
"Hey menace. Yes, I saw your BRO. I'm fine. I annoyed a blogger. I might annoy HR. I'm drinking brown water that claims it's coffee. If I send you a pin later just pretend you're in Mission Control and say 'copy' so I feel dangerous."
I end it with the little rocket emoji because we always do. Kaori replies immediately with a sixteen-second monologue about how she'll hot-wire a forklift if I go missing.
Kaori:
Text me a safe word. Not peaches. You wore that one out.
Me:
Wrench.
She hearts it.
Two voices drift from behind a black curtain where the stage crew stacks cases.
"I told them the rear bushings would squeak at high temp," one says. "They said customers won't notice."
"Customers won't, reviewers will," the other says.
I poke my head in. "You could move to a slightly different compound and save the warranty mail."
They turn. Grease under the nails, three pens in one shirt pocket, lanyards that say ENGINEERING, not PR.
"Who are you?" Pocket Pens asks, not unkind.
"Temporary face," I say. "Permanent ears."
The taller one grins. "She's the compression ratio girl."
"Guilty," I say. "Also the unsprung mass girl."
Pocket Pens offers a hand. "Sato."
I shake. "(Y/N)."
He hesitates, then digs out a card that looks like it was printed on a machine that needed coaxing. "We've got a little test day next month. No promises, but if you want to see telemetry in the wild..."
I try to accept it like this happens to me all the time and not like my heart is a dog that just heard the word walk. "I'd like to see telemetry in any weather."
"Good answer," he says. "Bring earplugs."
A junior staffer with glitter eyeliner catches me at the water station. She looks like courage with a lanyard. "I'm not supposed to say anything but... thanks for the compression ratios thing."
"You're supposed to say things," I tell her. "That's how the air moves."
She bites back a smile. "My dad thinks cars aren't for girls. He also thinks the internet is emails."
"Show him a timing sheet," I say. "Print it so he trusts it."
She laughs. "Okay."
ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ★ᯓ
End of day tastes like dust. My cheeks ache from smiling. I trade heels for sneakers in the back hallway like a thief divesting jewels. A junior staffer passes with a box of branded hats and whispers, "You were savage up there," like it's a prayer.
"Tell HR that," I say, but I smile.
When I push into the dressing room, I stop so fast the door bumps my hip.
Something bright sits on my vanity. Orange lilies and blue hydrangeas punch color into cheap fluorescent light. A note is tucked under twine.
Owen sticks his head in behind me. "Who sent you flowers?"
"Someone who knows better than to put roses in a room full of engines," I say, already reaching.
The card is plain and thick and shows no interest in being cute.
Warehouse 47. 8:30 PM. – K.B.
My heartbeat does a stupid thing. I hate it for that. I press the corner of the card against my thumb until it hurts.
Owen tries to peek. I snap the card closed and shoot him a look. "Boundaries."
He surrenders with his hands up. "If it's a sponsor, don't be alone."
"If it's a sponsor," I say, tucking the note into my bag, "I'll invoice him."
He lingers. "HR really did message."
"I know." I lift the bouquet. "So did opportunity."
He leaves with a sigh that sounds like failure practice.
When I'm alone again, I sit. The lilies smell like heat. The hydrangeas smell like water.
Orange for combustion, blue for cooling. Engine and radiator in a bow.
It's a ridiculous bouquet, loud and honest and a little wrong in a way I weirdly love. Too much. Like someone who floors it two meters later than everyone else and still makes the corner.
I tell myself a dozen reasonable things. I list them like lug nuts. It could be a joke. It could be a trap. It could be exactly what it says: an address, a time, and a man with a talent for ignoring PR advice.
The mirror catches me smiling like I've already decided.
Win clean, I told him.
He sent me an empty room with a car and a clock. If I hear that double sigh on lift, I'll know he listened.
"Fine," I breathe, standing. "Show me something worth my time, Bakugo."
I lace my sneakers tight until the aglets click. I lift the bouquet, and an orange petal flutters to the floor; bright as a warning, or a flag.
Either way, it means go.
I change into black jeans and a jacket that looks like nothing but has pockets everywhere. I throw a spare phone charger in one, gloves in another, a tiny flashlight in a third. I re-tie my sneakers until the aglets click. I fold the bouquet paper and tuck it into the trash with the lilies on top, orange flashing at me like a hazard triangle.
Superstition says don't keep the card. I keep the card.
The expo empties in waves. Crews stack trusses. Vacuum lines crisscross the floor like fresh tire marks. Outside, the night smells like hot rubber and the river. I find my car in a new continent of rental vans and press the map pin into the dash with a knuckle.
Warehouse 47 lives on the edge of the port where cranes bend like prayer. I know it. Tires used to sit there in dark stacks that creaked when you walked past. Rain collects in a metal dish by the side door. When wind runs through the seam, it sings.
I put the car in gear and let the streetlights count me off. One. Two. Three.
Green.
ᯓ★ (Katsuki POV) ★ᯓ
I hate expo air. It tastes like lacquer and hot plastic, a film that sits on my tongue and makes every breath feel secondhand. The lights hum like cheap transformers. Somewhere a DJ is trying to bully a bassline into sounding like adrenaline.
My handler talks schedule like prayer, "Green room at ten-twenty. Meet and greet at ten-forty. Photos at eleven."
I nod the way you nod when someone's reading you weather you already drove through. I stop listening right around the time the girl says talent saves fuel.
Girl. Woman. Whatever.
Labels are lazy. The right words are the ones that hold under load.
I clock her hands first. One on the fender like it's alive, not a prop. She rolls her wrist to catch the light for the camera, then flattens it again like she's feeling resonance through the skin. Her voice is sugar wrapped around steel.
Then she says win clean and the corner of my mouth pulls up, the way it does when a setup lap lands perfect and the tires whisper yes.
"Define clean," I ask her because I want to hear the edges.
Too many people talk in slogans.
Edges tell you what breaks.
She's got them. Good edges, not brittle.
Brake earlier if the data says so. No shoulder checks you can hide under a shrug.
Own the failure, own the fix.
It's the kind of answer that makes a crew chief breathe easier and a marketer shift in their shoes.
I watch her panel from the rope the way I watch a car I plan to pass. Angle, throttle, where the nerves live. She declines to be a prop and I smile for real. I don't do that for cameras. I do it when engines sound right and people do too.
A kid slides under the rope with a cap. PR sucks air through her teeth like a cracked gasket. I take the cap, sign the inside brim. Ink lasts there. The kid grins like I handed him a detonator. PR recalculates by the centimeter. I enjoy that more than I should.
Later, PR drifts over with a tablet hugged like a rulebook. "Warehouse 47?" she says, skimming my calendar like a stern aunt. "What is that."
"Homework," I say. I pocket a marker I never used and think about how many caps I've signed inside the brim this year so they'd survive rain.
I hate expo air, but I like the way hers cut through it. Clean.
I thumb Takeru in Logistics:
Need 47 cleared by 20:00.
Lights on, doors secure, fuel cell at safe minimum.
No press. No leaks.
He sends back a thumbs up and a skull, our shorthand for quiet.
I add a second message:
Bring the red. The one with the honest idle.
I can hear it already, that double sigh on lift.
Ba-dum. The little heartbeat you only get when a person tunes it, not a committee.
My handler tries again. "We still have the Hall B line. If you could keep the answers less... combative."
"They asked," I say, and keep moving. The floor smells like tire shine and warm glue.
I want brake dust and cold air that bites my teeth. I want numbers that don't lie and a room that doesn't beg for a performance from people who wouldn't know a late apex if it kissed their shoes.
I palm the marker, flip it, catch it. Habit. My thumb stings where a torn cuticle isn't finished healing. I like the sting. It reminds me I still put a hand where it doesn't belong when I'm impatient.
I think about telemetry traces, the green and yellow lines that argue like siblings until you give them a better story to tell.
I think about her saying containment like it's a promise, not a cage.
"Do you want security at the warehouse?" PR asks, tapping the glass like she can pin me to a time slot.
"I want the door to open when I push it," I say. "And I want the lights to stay out till I turn them on."
"That's not how facilities—"
"It is tonight."
She blinks, recalibrates, nods. She'll make it happen. She always does when I use that voice.
I step off carpet and onto plain concrete. The air thins just enough I can taste metal instead of perfume. Better. I roll my shoulders. Presence follows me whether I ask for it or not, but what I want most right now is absence.
No crowd. No script. Just a clock, a car, and someone who said the one thing that matters.
Win clean.
I shoot Minagawa a look as I pass. He's press, but not useless. He'll write about repairability and right-to-repair and people will pretend they care for twelve hours.
Fine. That's not my lane tonight.
Out in the loading bay it's diesel and night and the faint salt of the river. The lacquer stink falls away. I breathe once, properly. Homework, then.
If she's listening, she'll hear it. If she knows what she says she knows, she'll know why I picked 47. And if she doesn't show, the car will still sing.
