venice suarez (you) - lead vocals ng bandang "minumuni"
jace axel (jaehyun) - bass at leader ng "minumuni"
marcus arcangel (mark) - lead guitarist
joaquin alastair (jeno) - drums
"maraming salamat po! once again kami ang bandang "minumuni" sabay sabay kaming nag-bow sa may stage at nagpunta sa may backstage para mag ayos na ng mga gamit namin.
kakatapos lang ng gig namin dito sa may bar sa malate at nag pack up na rin kami ng mga ka-banda ko. nakakapagod pero masaya naman dahil ramdam mo yung enthusiasm ng crowd at talagang sabay kung sabay sila sa bawat tugtog namin.
"ate venice, yung extra drum sticks ko pala nakita mo?!" pagtatanong sa akin ni alas.
"ah parang nakita ko dun sa may stool malapit sa may stage, tignan mo nalang dun di ko rin kase sure"
"sige salamat!"
isa si alas sa itinuturing kong bunso dito sa banda namin bukod sa siya ang pinakabata dito ay siya rin ang huling naisama namin sa banda, nung una nga ay medyo nangangapa pa siya sa pagdudrums pero kinalaunan naman ay nasanay na siya at nagamay niya na rin ang instrumento. ayaw niya rin pala ng natatawag na 'alas' pero dahil ako ang ate niya wala na siyang nagagawa, cute rin kase ng nickname na 'alas' kesa sa 'joaquin' na medyo mahaba ring bigkasin. sunod naman na itinuturing kong bunso ay si marcus, siya ang sumunod kay alas na sumali sa banda namin at talaga namang napabilib niya kami sa galing niyang maggitara. talento niya talaga ito at dati pa man daw ay nasali na siya sa mga pa-contest sa lugar nila sa pagtugtog, dati rin daw ay may banda siya ngunit nabuwag na ito dahil mas napagtuunan ng pansin ang kanilang mga pagaaral.
"asan nga pala si jace?!" pagtatanong ko dun sa dalawa na busy sa kakakalikot ng mga gamit nila.
"ah lumabas ate, sisindi daw muna saglit" sagot ni alas.
ganito ang laging nakagawian ni jace sa tuwing natatapos ang gig namin, pupunta siya sa may smoking area at sisindi minsan ay may hawak pa itong alak sa kabilang kamay, pampatanggal stress daw minsan pero dinadahilan niya na lang yun dahil nahahalata ko naman. pinuntahan ko siya dun sa may smoking area sa may likuran ng bar at nakita ko siyang naka talungko sa may gilid habang humihipak ng sigarilyo na sa tansya ko ay kakasindi niya lang at sa kabilang kamay naman niya ay hawak ang isang bote ng beer, agad ko naman siyang tinabihan at sinamahan habang ako rin ay may hawak na isang bote ng beer.
"pagod?!"
"hindi"
"stressed?!"
"medyo" habang sinasagot niya ang mga tanong ko ay malayo lamang ang mga tingin niya, tila ba ang lalim ng mga iniisip niya.
"ang lalim niyan ah!"
"huh!?"
"ang lalim kako ng iniisip mo, ano ba kase yan?!"
"ah wala ito" tuloy parin sa paghipak sa sigarilyo niya kasabay ang pag tungga niya ng beer. wala naman rin akong hilig sa paninigarilyo dahil naniniwala akong nakakasama ito sa baga natin kaya minsan kapag naninigarilyo itong si jace ay lumalayo ako pero ngayon nanibago ako dahil hindi malaki ang naging agwat namin sa isa't isa habang siya ay bumubuga ng usok na nangagaling sa kanyang sigarilyo.
"naniniwala ka ba na may magtyatiyaga pang magmahal ng isang tulad ko?" nagulat ako sa naging tanong ni jace na bigla na lang kumawala sa bibig niya. hindi naman siya ganito parang ngayon lang siya naging ganito at siguro dahil na rin sa naparami na siya ng inom dahil kita ko sa gilid niya ang limang bote ng beer na wala ng laman.
"oo naman, ikaw pa!" paninigurado ko sakanya.
"sure ka?!" halos pagewang gewang na siya sa pagkaka talungko niya kulang na lang nga ay matumba na siya dahil dito pero nanatili parin matatag ang pagkakatalungko niya, idinantay niya ang ulo niya sa balikat ko dahil ramdam kong hilo na ito.
"oo eh sino naman hindi magtyatiyagang mahalin ka eh mabuti ka namang tao at talentado ka rin"
"sure kang hindi tarantado" pagbibiro niya kasabay ang pag ismid ng mukha niya na kitang kita ang paglitaw ng dalawang dimples sa magkabila niyang pisngi.
"hmm... meron rin pero nevertheless, mabuti kang tao at caring tapos mapagmahal ka sa mga taong nasa paligid mo kahit medyo may pagkatarantado ka nga at talentado"
"talaga ba, venice?!" dahan dahan niyang iniangat ang ulo niya mula sa pagkakandantay sa balikat ko at tsaka niya ako hinawakan sa may pisngi at iniharap niya ang mukha ko sakanya. yung mga mata niya ay nangungusap, maamo ang mga ito at talagang malalim kung ito ay iyong tititigan nang maigi. mamula mula ang kanyang pisngi at yung labi niya... mapula rin, ganito ang itsura ni jace kapag nalalasing.
napalunok ako habang siya naman ay matiyaga lang na nakatitig parin sakin habang nilalagok ang natitirang alak mula sa bote ng beer na kanina pa niya iniinom.
"pa'no kapag sinabi ko sa'yo venice na unti unti na akong nahuhulog.... sa'yo" nakahawak parin siya sa pisngi ko at ang hinlalaki niya ay hinaplos ang mga ito hanggang sa magtungo ang mga ito pababa sa mga labi ko. grabe ang titig ngayon ni jace sa aking mga labi at ganun rin ako sakanya.
"jace..."
ibinuga ni jace ang huling usok na nanggagaling sa sigarilyo niya malapit sa mukha ko bago niya pinagdikit ang labi naming dalawa. sobrang lambot ng mga labi niya at tila ba uhaw na siya sa ganito, lasang lasa ko mula sa kanyang mga labi ang pait ng beer na kanina pa namamalagi sa kanyang bibig. kapit niya ang baba ko at ako naman ay nakapalupot ang mga kamay sa mga balikat niya para mas lalong laliman ang bawat halik niya.
hindi maganda ang lasa kapag naghalo ang beer at sigarilyo sa mga labi ngunit kay jace bakit tila ba ang tamis parin ng mga labi niya kahit naghalo na ang pait ng beer at ang usok ng sigarilyo sa labi niya, it makes you keep wanting more and more of him...
pagkatapos ng naging momol namin ni jace wala akong naging imik sa pagitan namin, andun lang ako nakaupo at magkatabi kami nakayuko at kumuha ako ng candy sa bulsa ko dahil ampait talaga ng beer sa labi ni jace at naipasa niya na sa akin yun kaya para mawala ang lasa ay kumain nalang ako ng candy na nakuha ko sa bulsa ko.
"may candy kapa?!" pagbabasag ni jace ng katahimikan sa pagitan naming dalawa.
"ah eh wala na eh, last na ito"
alam mo yung kapag naninigarilyo syempre mabaho hininga mo nun, amoy usok ng sigarilyo kaya normally after manigarilyo ni jace lagi siyang may baong candy para after niya mag smoke tatapatan niya ng candy para hindi mahalata yung amoy ng hininga na amoy sigarilyo pero ngayon wala siyang baon kaya nanghihingi ngayon siya sa akin.
"gusto mo kuha kita sa loob, marami pa du---" tumayo at pinagpag ko ang pwetan ko para pumasok sa loob ngunit bago pa man ako makalakad papasok ay hinila ni jace ang braso ko dahilan para mapaupo ako sa mga hita niya at ngayo'y nakakandong na ako sakanya.
"hindi, ayoko nun... gusto ko yung sa'yo"
idinikit niya muli ang labi niya sa labi ko at naglakbay ang kanyang mga dila sa bibig ko, the next thing i know wala na yung candy sa bibig ko at naipasa ko na ito sa bibig ni jace. ngisi na lamang ang ginawa ni jace nang malaman niyang matagumpay niyang nakuha ang candy mula sa loob ng bibig ko.
"bwisit ka talaga kahit kailan!"
"easy baby, candy lang 'to" sabay kindat sa akin.
"ewan ko sa'yo"
akma na sana akong tatayo ngunit pinigilan ulit ako ni jace, he tucked a piece of my hair behind my ears.
"venice baby, what i said kanina pala, i'm being serious kahit i'm a bit drunk i know what i'm saying because i sober up so quickly. take all the time you need to think about us, i'll wait for you baby"
he then planted a kiss on my forehead bago niya ako inalalayan na tumayo para pumasok sa loob.
Chapter Summary: Past the threshold of Momo’s home, and beyond. Things change.
Relationship: Bakugou Katsuki/Yaoyorozu Momo; Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku (clarifications about wth happened)
Rating: M (most of you expected this, but pls still take note)
Warnings/Notes: Apart from the thing you’re expecting, there’s scenes that feature CPR. And another, with explosions. Please be careful.
“One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight--”
It’s been a while since Katsuki clearly knows whether he’s truly awake, or in a frighteningly vivid dream.
At times, he opens his eyes and sees the sky from the slick ground of that alley in Musutafu. Sometimes there’s fire and screaming, other times there’s the wail of sirens and the blinking red and blue lights bouncing off the walls. There’s always one or more person crying over him, begging him to wake up.
“-- nine-eleven-twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen--Kacchan, please, wake up, I’m here, okay, I’m here--”
It’s always that shitty fuckin’ Deku. Scrawny, nerdy, weak, ridiculously dressed an oversized gakuran. Weak baby hands pressing down his sternum, high-pitched voice counting to thirty before he blows air into Katsuki’s mouth in between sobs. He’s the most useless person in that entire alleyway, yet he’s the only one who sees Katsuki, the only one who realizes that his heart’s not fucking beating anymore and his lungs are completely empty.
All Might, too… he doesn’t know what happened, but All Might was big one moment, and then he wasn’t. Sludge drips from his mouth, along with blood and vomit. It makes Katsuki sick, but not as sick as seeing the tall man fall like a mannequin on the dirty ground.
That shitty fuckin’ nerd cries, but keeps his hands on Katsuki’s chest. Doesn’t give himself time to wipe his tears or his sweat. He bends down, and Katsuki doesn’t feel his mouth on him as he watches the scene from a weird spot above his body.
“--sixteen-seventeen-eighteen-nineteen-twenty--”
Dreams are weird like that.
The scene dies out, and Katsuki opens his eyes again--he’s in the hospital, he doesn’t remember which one. His head hurts. There’s a line through his hand. Something beeps beside him, and it’s irritating.
He looks for the old hag, but she isn’t there. Dad’s snoring away on the couch, looking older than he should be. He looks too tired, and Katsuki’s voice is too weak, so he doesn’t call him.
Something on his bed stirs, something that irritatingly looks too much like broccoli. The nerd looks up with green-and-red eyes glimmering in the darkness. “Kacchan,” he says, gripping the sheets tightly. Fuckin’ bastard’s crying again, much to his annoyance, but Katsuki’s body in this dream is so heavy, and his hand doesn’t lift or make explosions.
He feels his mouth moving without his consent. “Deku. They told me I can’t be a hero anymore.”
He doesn’t understand--he’s so angry and hurt and weak and full of hate, but his eyes are dry and his mouth is flaccid and all his voice can manage is a whisper. The shit nerd understands him though, and cries some more.
“I’m so sorry, Kacchan,” he blubbers out like a baby. Like it’s his fault somehow. Katsuki thinks he’s just being self-centered. There’s no way in hell that any of this is this asshole’s fault. As if this weak fuckin’ nerd can destroy his life.
He hates that he keeps saying sorry. Hates those simpering eyes, hates the sadness, hates the pity. He shuts it all out, wills it to darkness and quiet and emptiness so that there’s nothing else.
The scene shifts, he wakes up. He’s in the hospital he doesn’t remember which one his head hurts there’s a line through his hand--something beeps beside, no, behind him--he looks for the old hag, but she isn’t there--dad isn’t on the couch but he still looks old and tired--Katsuki’s voice is too weak, so he doesn’t call him--
He sees himself in his mind’s eye, convulsing next to the code cart. Three whole days of work, three days of not taking his medicine or sleeping or even eating anything without caffeine in it. He had a fever at one point, he was in the ER and that shitty nerd was tailing him, telling him to sit down, to go home.
“I’m so sorry, Kacchan,” that fuckin’ Deku says again. He wants to punch him, wants to knock those stupid glasses on his face. He’s wearing the white coat he got on the same day that Katsuki did years ago. It looks wrong on him and his shitty weak tear-stained face.
He remembers the nerd’s stupid pledge to follow Katsuki wherever he goes, to make sure that he won’t be helpless again. And yet here he is again, drugs in his veins, a tube through his mouth, his mind lost in the matrix--
“Twentysix-twentyseven-twentyeight--”
He’s breathing by himself now, at least. Heart remembers to beat. Brain remembers to think, but barely. Katsuki’s mind struggles against the onslaught of reality.
Deku’s standing next to him, broken down and crying like a child whose pet is dying. Katsuki fuckin’ hates it. All he does is cry and say sorry, sorry, sorry, like all of this is his fault. Like somehow the sludge villain that put All Might to sleep was his fault. Katsuki doesn’t understand what the fuck he babbles about when he cries--he’s stopped listening a long, long while ago.
“Twenty nine-thirty--”
*
The scene shifts. He wakes up.
A sun ray streams through a window that isn’t his and illuminates dark hair, silky skin, most of her body snuggling under soft, peach sheets. Eyes roll behind her eyelids as she dreams, like planets lazily turning in their orbits. Quiet breaths escape between slightly parted lips, the ones he greedily claimed for himself mere hours before.
Yaoyorozu Momo is a vision whatever she’s wearing or not wearing, but the sight of her so peaceful with her hair down should be a religion in itself. Katsuki being its founder, its high priest, its sole fuckin’ worshipper and he’ll fight anyone who would say otherwise.
He allows the dream or the blackness or whatever it was that just passed to fade into nothingness, because there’s nothing else in his world at this moment but Momo. He makes himself aware of the feel of her waist under his palm. His thumbs rub semi-consciously over her skin, underneath the blanket. She stirs upon contact.
Eyes flutter open, focus on his. A smile forms on her lips. “Katsuki.”
“Hey.” His face feels stupid. He doesn’t think his mouth or his brows have done whatever they’re doing now--lazily returning her blissed-out smile.
She stretches her arms and those long, creamy legs that kick out from under the sheets. Katsuki can look at them all day, they stretch from here to there to eternity. “So how long have you been staring angrily at me in my sleep?”
“Mhm. Far too long, Princess.” He pulls them closer together. She giggles breathily as their bodies press together, and he feels all her curves and softness all over him once more. “You said you missed me, but here you are snoozin’ on me. What gives, haa?”
She giggles again, presses those soft lips on his, curls her arms around his neck. Yes, this feels just right. The world makes more sense when she’s close like this, when she kisses him like this, when he’s warm in her embrace. “I’m sorry, I’ve only spent the past few weeks chasing you in the early morning and working my backside off the rest of the time.”
He grumbles against her mouth. “You didn’t… have to push your skinny ass that hard... ”
Jesus, is he such a fuckin’ dumbass. He allowed all that anger and that solitude and that shitty pride from ages ago to feed into his fears and push everyone away. He almost pushed her away, this girl with legs longer than his lifespan and tits bigger than his patience and heart and kindness more infinite than his shitty ass universe.
And look at her, after all the shit he put her through. Staring at him with those intoxicating onyx eyes, that devilish smirk on her mouth and fuck who the hell taught her to smile like that anyway, she could kill a man with that look. “Mm? That so?”
He’s underneath her the next moment, kissing him sweetly and deeply, pushing his shoulders down to the mattress and straddling his hips, trapping him. He makes a noise of surprise against her mouth but she doesn’t back down. Instead she rolls hips against his.
That look of satisfaction, when he groans. Fuuuuuuck--
“Katsuki, dearest Katsuki, ” she says, in a mindblowingly husky voice right at his right ear, “I don’t want you running away from me again…”
He inhales sharply when he feels teeth and tongue at the base of his neck. She releases her mouth with a sound and cheerfully looks at the mark she has made. Katsuki just looks up at her in awe.
“... but if you do, I guess I’ll just have to chase after you again, won’t I?”
Oh shit, the feel of her down there, warm and wet and inviting, arouses him instantly. He curses under his breath at the sensation, and again when he realizes that she notices.
Like hell he’d let this dangerous woman take the wheel. He smirks, clamps strong hands on her waist. “What’s with that hot look, Princess? Ya think you can make a bastard like me behave?”
He leans forward, takes one of those amazing breasts in his mouth. He brings one hand up to pay attention to the other, makes a sound of surprise against her flesh when hers comes right after it, guiding his fingers over and around her nipple.
“Y-yes,” she breathes. Her body starts to move, clothed sensitive spots rubbing against his. Katsuki likes the feel of her silk underwear against him, but he wonders when she shimmied into them after their first round. “Y… you’ve been terrible, Katsuki. Absolutely-- hah!-- abysmal--”
He makes a gruff sound, lets her skin go between his teeth to smile smugly against her skin. “You’re sayin’ all that as if ya wanna punish me.” Another big bite to her shoulder, making a sound that sounds like a cry in the beginning and a whine at the end escape from her, when he follows it up with a finger pressed to her mound. “As if I’ll let ya.”
She pouts at him, pushes his shoulders down again and makes his head crash against the pillows. “You aren’t sorry at all, are you?”
He is, he’s been a big dumbass. But watching her crawl backwards over him, stopping until she’s staring cross-eyed at his erection. Shit, he should burn that image in his head, he’d have something to come back to when he’s alone.
“I should keep my eyes on you, Katsuki,” she says, situating her mouth next to him.
“Good. I like ‘em on me.”
“Good.” That devilish smile again, and one or two teasing licks that fires up and electrifies all the nerves in his body. His mind tries its hardest to take in all the sensations, but shuts down immediately when she takes him into her mouth.
Fuck.
The sight of her, the feel of her. Lips and mouth full, small sounds escaping from her and vibrating through the rest of his body. It feels warm, crowded. Her hands, her hair, her eyes... shit. Good, so good. Fuck. His brain can only say so much.
She’s amazing all throughout, but it’s her unwavering gaze that makes him teeter on the edge. Shit, she wasn’t kidding when she says she’ll keep her eyes on him. Everything he feels magnifies a hundred fold when she looks at him like that. He feels like he’s going crazy.
“Momo, fuck, if you keep doing that--” He’s going to come if she keeps going like this. When he manages to blurt that out though, it only seems to egg her on even more, and she hollows out her cheeks even more.
No, that won’t do. He doesn’t want to unravel by himself. It takes a lot out of him, but he manages to pull her off him, and pull her down to kiss her swollen lips hard. “Momo, please,” he moans against her mouth.
She hums against his mouth. “What do you want, Katsuki?”
She grips his length, smiles deviously when he makes another hungry sound. He knows he can push her down and take her anytime he wants, but her face when she’s in control like this, surprisingly makes him weak and boneless. “You. I want you-- fuck--”
She’s making a lot of marks on him today. Getting cheeky and greedy and he loves it. “You’re being awfully vague, dear,” she purrs, licking the sore spot on his neck slowly. “It doesn’t sound like you at all. What do you want?” she repeats, letting her long fingernails graze against the skin of his chest.
He looks at her with half-lidded eyes. “I want you to ride my dick until my brains come outta my ears, what the fuck else? Holy sh--”
He doesn’t even notice her slipping a condom over his hardness. The next thing he knows, she’s already guiding him to her entrance, letting him sink into her agonizingly slow. He feels himself surrounded by her tight heat, steadily, steadily, the sensation making his eyes roll back. His hands grip onto her thighs for dear life.
“Katsuki,” she slurs, when he’s completely inside her. “Be a good boy and keep still. I’ll do the moving this time.”
He doesn’t know what has gotten into this woman so suddenly, but he supposes he should be thankful because it’s so fuckin’ hot. “Tch. You’re pretty bossy today, aintcha Princess?”
She hums coyly, and not giving him a moment to breathe, starts bouncing.
“Oh fuck,” Katsuki grits out eloquently. He watches Momo fuck herself on his cock, fast and sudden and so, so good. He feels her walls all around, sucking him in, drenching him in wetness. The sound they make is more obscene than the words that come flying out his mouth beyond his control.
“Momo, holy shit, this feels good, too good--” And as good as it feels, it’s taking a lot of his self-control to do as she says and not move, and he loses control one or two times, lets his hips snap up when she goes down. She bites her lip to stifle a cry, but at the same time pushes him down on the shoulders, giving him a stern look through flushed cheeks and blown pupils.
“I told you-- hnn --to be good,” she says, as she keeps those godsent hips in motion, teasingly wiggling about and making his groin and his mind want to explode. “I can stop anytime I want to… Make you beg for-- ahh ”
He doesn’t think she can, but he lets her have it anyway. He focuses instead on keeping his hands on her waist, lets her bounce and writhe and rut however she likes, tightening his grip on her so hard she hisses in pleasure and he has to focus on not burning her skin with his sweat.
She finds the most pleasurable angle inside her soon enough, and her movements become faster, more desperate, more erratic. Her breathing is rapid, her cries higher and higher in pitch. “Katsuki, I’m so close, I’m so close--”
He is too, but fuck him if he comes first. He ignores her very stern orders at the last moment by leaning forward and snapping his hips upward and sucking on her breasts as if his life depends on it.
It’s cute how she tries to tell him off then, but only manages to moan in pleasure and to grip and claw his scalp and his back like a wild animal. Soon he feels her walls clench around him rhythmically, and it’s all it takes for him to follow her with a prolonged groan of his own.
“Holy fuck,” he whispers in astonishment.
“Y… yes,” says Momo, kissing him on the mouth through gasps of air. He pulls out of her, and she lets herself collapse on top of him. His arms go around her body automatically. “Holy fuck, Katsuki...”
“Oi, since when have you learned to talk like a fuckin’ delinquent, princess? Bad girl.” He didn’t think it would, but curse words sound good coming from her. He chuckles roughly and slaps her on the ass. She gasps, affronted.
“You’re horrible,” she says with a playful glare. “You truly are a dumbass, like everyone says.”
“And who’s the bigger dumbass for literally fucking with me, haa?”
She pouts, but cuddles into him closer, sighing along with him as their bodies entwine quite naturally in the light and warmth. “Good point, but I refuse to acknowledge it.”
He feels her muscles relax on top of his, feels her breathing slow down. The entire thing just feels so right, so comfortable. The scent of her hair, the softness of her skin, her weight, her shape, her lights and shadows, all in contact with him, making odd feelings arise in his chest that he can’t put a name on. Like, maybe, he found something made just for him. As shitty and sappy as it sounds.
He lets his eyes close, lets himself inhale the scent of her. Life’s a little less fucked up today, and he’s grateful.
*
Momo decides that all her Sundays off from now on should be spent like this, next to Katsuki.
Eventually, all the activities they did in bed catches up to Momo. Katsuki spends some time teasing her for the grumble in her bottomless-pit-of-a-stomach, or so he says. He’d cook for her if he could, he says, but Momo’s kitchen is still miserably devoid of anything edible for his palate.
The pair eventually decide to go to Dagobah Ward for a meal. Momo offers because one of her favorite Southeast Asian restaurants is there, and Katsuki agrees to do so because he’s eager to prove that he can do better than them. She initially plans on driving, but he refuses and instead dares her to take the train like ‘the rest of the commoners’.
She pouts, because she’s sure that a UA graduate who also went to medical school is just as bourgeois as she is. Katsuki retaliates by saying that she’s hardly bourgeois because fuckin’ hell she’s the heiress of the Yaoyorozu Group, one of the biggest fuckin’ industrial giants in this part of Asia.
She remembers Mother, and her declaration from more than a decade ago. Can you imagine you and that vulgar blonde boy getting along? And she remembers all the things that has passed that led to the events of that morning.
You have no idea, Mother, she thinks with a flushed smile, as she takes Katsuki’s strong hand and follows him into the station.
When they get there, Katsuki takes out his commuter card and glances at Momo, who stares at the ticket machines with what she hopes is a sense of foreboding that isn’t too obvious. “Oh my god. A 27 year old Japanese woman’s first time on the commuter train,” he says with a cocky smile. “Ya need help, Princess?”
She frowns. “It’s fine. I know what to do.”
She read about how to work these machines before on the Internet. She knows that in cases of emergency, she ought to be able to rely on public transportation without looking so helpless. It’s irrational to feel so anxious about such a simple thing!
She eventually is able to get a ticket to the correct station on her own, without causing significant delay to the other commuters waiting patiently behind her. When the ticket pops out, she takes it and beams at Katsuki, with a proud little, “See, Katsuki? I did it~”
She hopes she only imagines how the other commuters step back and mutter “ ... bouncy~ ” under their breaths. Katsuki glares at them anyway and throws one arm around her possessively.
“Stop bein’ so fuckin’ cute in front of the other guys, dammit,” he grumbles irately in her ear as they make their way through the crowd.
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” she protests, feeling a little incredulous. He has called her many things before, like sexy and brainy and a fuckin’ hot piece of ass and other vulgar terms that seriously make her feel as such, but this is the first time that he called her cute.
Who knew that Bakugou Katsuki is capable of such terms? The tips of his ears turn pink right as he says it, and it seems that he probably realizes the same thing at the same time.
“You should stop being so cute too, you know,” she says, as he boxes her against the door of the crowded train, shielding her from who he thinks are wolfish men out to get her. “They might take you away first.”
“Shut up. I’ll bite you.”
*
And so her first train ride ends, and their first date begins.
Fully knowing the circumstances between them, she supposes it’s still odd that this is the first time they enjoy each other’s company outside of Hosu. It feels odd, in a sense, that the shyness that ought to be there when he takes her hand and leads the way isn’t there. The feel of him next to her is just as natural as breathing, even as they’re out and about in the crowd and their curious gazes.
And there is quite a handful of them, appraising him and her and the link of their hands between them. She knows how unfairly attractive Katsuki is, but it’s doubly interesting to see males and females alike turn their heads to look at him in awe. He has the type of appearance that captivates, and she can’t help but feel a little giddy as they walk.
She can show him off, right? Right?
He grumbles, disconnects their hands so he could throw his arm behind her instead. “Fuckin’ losers ogling at you--lemme show ‘em who you’re with, hah??”
“Katsuki, you’re so dense…”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
Momo says nothing more, and instead leans in closer to him.
They reach the restaurant, and Momo orders a variety of things--flatbread with peanut sauce, shrimp and squid cooked in chili, green curry with extra chillies, rice fried with all sorts of vegetables and spices. The food is good, and she allows herself to eat more than she has the past few days. To her relief, Katsuki scarfs down almost as much as she does, but with an astonishing amount of extra chillies and sauce.
“Hmph. I can totally do this better. Just you wait, Ponytail.”
Predictable response, but he seems to be enjoying himself. He sees her look, and challenges her to take some of his curry if she’s going to be so fuckin’ smug in her place. She takes him on, as stupid as it may be--Katsuki might put actual lava on his food and think it isn’t spicy enough--and takes a spoonful in her mouth, before she can think too hard about it.
“Well?”
She coughs once--the heat is very, very intense, but somehow it tastes better than her own. “What did you add to this? It’s so good!” she says, taking another bite for good measure.
His jaw slackens as he watches her chew on his food thoughtfully. “... too fuckin’ perfect, what the hell,” he mumbles, almost imperceptibly.
“Excuse me?”
He shakes his head and mutters how ridiculous she is. “You seriously eating my fuckin’ food? You really are a bottomless pit!”
“Well, I never!!”
He’s only teasing, though, and they finish their meals with a sense of satisfaction.
The food isn’t the only good thing about that date. Conversation flows between them quite naturally, but it’s different from before, because Katsuki does more than just ask her questions this time. He answers her questions, or at least makes an effort to. His answers are clipped, and it looks like a lot of effort on his part to give them at all, but he tries, at least. And his answers are honest, from the sounds of them.
They’re walking along the boulevard, the sun beginning to set over the sea. There’s barely any drama when she dares to ask him about him and Midoriya-san, and when he decides to answer.
“That nerd and I go way back. Our relationship ain’t exactly sunshine and rainbows,” he tells her, voice oddly calm. “You sure you up to this?”
“Of course, Katsuki.”
He takes a deep breath, and begins from the very beginning, it seems--how Bakugou Katsuki, the talented little shit who told another little shit to take a swan-dive off a roof, ends up dying and living a second life, where pro-heroism is impossible. How a weird friendship, if it can even be called that, begins one evening in the hospital, days after Best Jeanist cuts his head open and harvests a blood clot from the surface of his brain, sparing him from a coma but leaving an injury that cannot be removed.
It’s then that Katsuki swears that no other brat will suffer as he did, and that fuckin’ Deku swearing to do the same as him, and eventually that Mindfucker and Shitty Hair too, who for some unfathomable reason began hanging around him the entire fuckin’ time they were at school. How they studied their asses off in UA, while prodigies like that half-and-half bastard shone under the spotlights and took their dreams right outta their hands.
(He’s proud of that one festival where he almost showed that IcyHot up--too bad the stress of the battles were too much for him and his shitty brain injury, and he blacked out right before Todoroki could deliver the final blow.)
(Momo wonders if he knows the impact of what he did to all the other kids who watched him, how he entranced the country with his fierceness.)
He says all these things without a hint of braggadocio or any sobbing theatrics. Maybe there’s remorse there somewhere, but he’s more concerned about pulling out all the harsh memories and putting them into plain words, so Momo can finally understand.
“And… yeah. Eventually that nerd and I finished med school. Got our licenses. Got into Musutafu Children’s Hospital. Started workin’ our asses off.” There’s a wistful look in his eyes as he pauses, looks at the ocean and the dimming sky. “Momo… when you do what you do, why do you do it?”
Her goals from the time she sneakily sent those application forms to Shiketsu Medical School are the same as now. “All I want is to help people,” she tells him honestly.
He nods. “Yeah. I figured.” He sighs quietly. She can hear the thoughts running around his head with a deafening sound. “Me? Who the fuck knows. It ended up being less about the kids, and proving that I’m not a helpless little bitch who could lose consciousness in any given moment.”
Momo watches his face carefully, and quietly waits.
“I guess… that’s why I hate that fucking nerd. And why I ended up pushing myself so hard that I had a seizure that lasted a week. And why everyone, except that fabrics bastard, told me to quit medicine altogether.”
His jaw tenses and his hands grip his arms tightly, like he’s about to blow something up. Momo knows he won’t, though. He breathes in deeply, and continues.
“So there. That’s the fucked up history of the nerd and I.” The rage doesn’t dissipate, but hides under the surface. It’ll be a while, before it goes away. “I… tried to keep you away from it, because who the hell needs another person to pity me? Not me. I’ve had enough of shitty bastards thinking they’re better than me, acting like they know what’s good for me. I wouldn’t be able to stand it, if you of all people started to…”
“Katsuki,” she says, taking both hands into hers. She looks right into his eyes and tells him, quite honestly, “I don’t. I never will.”
You’re an amazing person. You’re strong. You’re trying to change.
He smiles at that, and reaches out to hold her hand. She lets him.
It’ll be a while before he sorts things out, but she decides to be there by his side when he does.
*
He takes her back after that. When she reaches home, though, she can’t help but pull him through the door again, her mouth on his, ravenous as if they haven’t just spent the whole day together, just the two of them.
He responds in much the same way too, so she supposes it’s all right. The bedroom is too far away, apparently, as he goes from slamming her against the living room wall to lifting her with her legs wrapped around his torso to the couch. They kiss each other and tear each other’s clothes off as if their lives depended on it, and he fucks her fast and rough until she’s moaning his name over and over, like a mantra.
After they come down from their highs, panting and mildly bewildered, she tells him, “Stay the night.”
“Hah,” he says with a smirk. “Ain’t you spendin’ too much time with a non-elite bastard like me? What will your old hag think?”
She rolls her eyes. “Katsuki, kindly refrain from gloating and calling my mother names while you’re still inside me.”
“Ah. My bad.”
He kisses her sweetly after that, tenderly caressing the sides of her face and making her skin burn in the way she really likes. He agrees stays the night.
(Luckily, after some struggle, they make it to bed this time.)
The night comes, and passes by with them in each other’s arms. It’s a nice way to sleep, with him filling in the empty spaces of her bed. He falls asleep ridiculously quickly, still possessive in the way he drapes his arm over her, underneath the duvet. She presses her nose against his as he snoozes away, feeling quite blissful.
The morning comes quietly. Rubbing their eyes in unison and yawning, as the alarm sounds before daybreak, reminding them of the long Monday ahead of them.
Reality is harsh, but the shower they shared that morning isn’t. Momo wonders if this’ll be a problem in the long run, because all the kissing and petting and eventual rough love-making that inevitably occurs will making getting to work on time a real challenge. It’s all his fault, he doesn’t want his hands off her and he tells her as much.
(But apart from a few teasing complaints, she doesn’t make a real effort to stop him. That man is too good with his mouth and his hands. She supposes it’s her fault as well.)
They miraculously make it out of there, with time enough for Momo to create some clean clothes for Katsuki. They’re out the door soon after, Katsuki promising to get them breakfast from the cafe, glowing and ready to face the workday ahead.
*
The sun is almost out when they walk the block and make it to NTG Cafe. Today, Kyoka-san isn’t late, because she’s already outside and talking to Kirishima-san, who looks like he’s about to go home from the midnight shift.
They look at the couple in unison, bewilderment increasing as they see their hands together. “B-B-Baku-bro?!?!?!?!! And Yaomomo?!?!?!?!!?!? In the early morning, holding hands, suspiciously coming from the same place?!” Kirishima cries, hands coming up his hair in exaggerated drama. “Oh my god, Bakubro, Dr. Momo, I can’t--Jirou, this isn’t a hallucination, right? I’m not that sleep-deprived, right? Pinch me now, come on--”
“Shut the fuck up, Shitty Hair, I’ll punch your lights out now, ya don’t even need to ask,” Katsuki grumbles. Momo notices, however, how less the harshness is in his voice, and how he doesn’t let go of her hand.
Kyoka doesn’t pinch Kirishima, but instead prods him in the middle of the forehead with an earjack. She does the same thing to herself, funnily enough, before regarding the two of them with an amused smile. “You can’t blame Kirishima, Baku-boss. Yaomomo, this is awfully bold of you, but I’m still pretty stoked that you guys made up. And… etcetera,” she says, with a teasing grin.
Momo flushes, but gives them a bright smile. “Thank you, Kyoka-san, Kirishima-san! And, um, good morning.”
“Ahh, so bright, Dr. Momo, I think I’m going blind, it’s like I’m staring at the manliest man!”
“Christ, Kirishima, calm the fuck down, I’m seriously this close to kicking your ass--”
“Ahhh and you’re calling me Kirishima today! The heck bro!! I’ve never seen you in such a good mood!” Kirishima looks like he’s on the verge of joyful tears as he takes his phone out and leans in closer to Bakugou. “Come on, bro, I gotta take a picture of the two to commemorate this day! Say cheese~”
“The fuck I’m saying cheese you hedgehog brain!” The limit is reached, and in the next, Katsuki traps the joyful Kirishima in a headlock.
Kyoka looks at them judgmentally, and then at Momo, to mentally tell her to ignore the fools. She holds on to the taller woman’s arm and smiles. “So… I’m guessing you guys are here to grab a bite to eat? Let me open up the cafe for you, I guess.”
There’s warmth and a palpable relief that she feels through her touch. Kyoka is genuinely happy for her, it seems. She nods at her gratefully and follows her in. “Thank you so much, Kyoka, you should eat with us too!”
“Nah, it’s good, I had a bagel before I--”
An ear splitting explosion cuts their conversation short, the accompanying blast almost throwing them off their feet. Kyoka yelps, covering her sensitive ears with her hands. Momo helps her by covering her hands with hers, hoping that it drowns out the next sound.
“What on earth--” She doesn’t even hear herself say it, when another explosion hits, making the ground shake.
The next moment happens fast--Katsuki and Kirishima throw themselves over the two women as another booming sound fills the air, followed by screams and the crash of glass next to them. Katsuki flips the tables around them, to cover them from the onslaught of broken glass and rubble, while Kirishima hardens his body and hovers above them like a shield.
“What the hell was that?!” the redhead screams, looking around desperately, and pales. Momo pales too, when she realizes where he’s looking. “That’s--Hosu Gen--”
“They’re… attacking the hospital?!”
The rumbles dissipate eventually. Katsuki holds his hand out for Momo and Kyoka to keep still, and peers out from behind the fallen table. “A few heroes are responding to the explosions, but I don’t see anyone who looks like a villain,” he tells them in a low voice, eyes glowing dangerously red.
“Oh my god,” Kyoka whispers, fear plain in her dark eyes. “Wh… what do we do? We should be getting out of here as fast as we can, right?”
“Yeah,” the blonde says, training his eyes to the vicinity. Momo follows his gaze, sees all the people running and screaming, crying out for heroes or the police. She can hear his rapidfire thoughts, sharp eyes assessing the situation. They should be running, but he’s holding them back. “Jirou… use your ears against the ground. Now.”
She looks at him oddly, but complies. It must be difficult for her, since the explosions and the ongoing background noise must have numbed her hearing.
There are a few moments where they all wait for her with bated breath. Her eyes, squeezed shut in concentration, suddenly flutter wide open, horror etched on her face. “There’s… something big,” she whispers tensely.
Momo and Kirishima look at each other, even paler than before. Katsuki’s jaw tenses more, but the fire focus remains in his eyes, burning bright. “Where?” he says in a quieter whisper.
Kyoka swallows. “Under… underground.” She chokes, and forces herself to speak. “Really, really close to us…”
She points at the street in front of them, where a police car with blaring sirens screeches to a halt. Two policemen, one with a tail and one with a ridiculously large hat and coat, hop out simultaneously with their weapons in hand.
Seeing the look in her eyes, Katsuki instantly screams at them, “Watch out!!!”
The policemen only have time to whip their heads in their direction, before the ground gives out from under them. Thanks to his warning, they manage to leap to safety, but that might be the only good thing about it.
A large… thing, barely humanoid, crawls out from the hole in the concrete. Its skin is a sick green, a convoluted mass on its head that might be exposed brain glinting under the sunlight. A manner of chainsaws and corkscrews and hammers stick out from the ends of its multiple limbs, making a ruckus of grinding metal as they move.
Its dull eyes look around briefly, dumbly. Searching for something, someone.
Its eyes fall over Momo. Tilts its head in curiosity.
"sama ka?!" andito kami ngayon sa may tambayan dahil break namin.
"saan!?"
"wala kain lang kami after school mamaya"
"i can't, gagawin na namin ni yuta yung school project namin sakanila mamaya" pagdadahilan ko.
"sus! mga dahilanan mo ang sabihin mo nalang gusto mo lang makasama si yuta kase matagal ka ng may gusto d'yan" pangaasar sakin ni haechan.
"tanga!" hinampas ko ang braso niya dahilan para mapainda siya sa sakit.
"aray!"
"hindi kasi ganun para kang baliw baka mamaya may makarinig pa sa'yo dito puro naman kasinungalingan nalabas sa bibig mo"
"oh sige, explain mo nga bakit si yuta kinuha mong partner sa pagkadami dami nating mga kaklase, yung basagulero, babaero, at pala absent pa na lalaki sa klase natin ang pinili mo?!"
"sinabi sa akin ni miss yun pinakisuyo sa akin si yuta since last year na niya as a senior and graduating na rin daw yung tao kaya need niya na makapaghabol, kaya humingi na si miss ng tulong sa akin para tulungan si yuta sa acads niya"
"sige! i'll take nalang one of your nonsense na mga dahilan to hide the fact na may gust ka talaga kay yuta"
inirapan ko na lamang si haechan nang sabihin niya iyon, i mean hindi naman sa may gusto ako kay yuta pero aaminin ko sobrang lakas rin naman kase ng datingan niya, i even heard na he smokes sa may likuran ng gymnasium after ng basketball practice nila. he's so hot for that but i don't like boys who smoke pero kung siya lang rin naman ang bubuga ng usok sa may mukha ko, sure why not haha.
after class namin inintay ko si yuta sa may malapit sa may gate, kasama niya mga tropa niya na sa tingin ko kakatapos lang rin ng basketball practice nila since bitbit niya ang gym bag niya at pawisan rin siya. what a sight.
"ah wait mo nalang ako d'yan, kunin ko lang yung sasakyan" sabi niya sa akin at tsaka ibinato sa akin ang gym bag niya para aking bitbitin.
naghintay ako ng mga 5 minutes bago marinig ang busina ng isang bmw na itim sa aking harapan, ibinaba ni yuta ang bintana ng kanyang kotse at tsaka ako tinawag.
"get in! let's go"
dali dali akong tumakbo papasok sa may likod sa may passenger seat, nakita kong bumaba si yuta mula sa driver's seat at binuksan niya para sa akin ang pintuan papasok sa passenger seat sa may likuran.
"iwan mo nalang d'yan yung bag ko" tsaka ko inilapag yung bag niya sa may likuran, papasok na sana ako at uupo na nang biglang isara ni yuta ang pintuan. he had his right hand pinning me at his car door while he slowly went near me.
"dun ka sa may harap" initiating na umupo ako sa may shotgun seat.
nanlaki ang aking mga mata at lumunok na lamang ako bago pumunta sa may kabilang side ng kotse para buksan ang pintuan patungo sa may shotgun seat. umupo ako at halatang kinakabahan ako ngunit hindi ko na lamang pinahalata kay yuta. nang makabalik na siya sa may driver's seat agad na rin naman siyang nagdrive papunta sa bahay nila. tahimik lang ako buong byahe at siya naman kitang kita ko na focus na focus siya sa pagmamaneho.
"so, ano nga ba ulit yung gagawin natin for the project?" pagbabasag niya ng katahimikan sa pagitan namin.
"uhmm.. gagawa tayo ng drawing dun sa anatomy of the human body, medyo malaki need natin na drawing since need na naka canvas pala siya pero don't worry ako na bahala dun sa pagdadrawing ang coloring"
"eh ako, ano gagawin ko?" pagtataka ni yuta.
"pwede naman ikaw nalang dun sa explanation natin, need mo lang gumawa ng 500-word essay kung bakit ganung model napili natin and ano yung connect niya sa lesson natin"
"ang hirap naman nun" pagrereklamo niya.
"tutulungan naman kita eh"
"ok sige"
nang makarating na kami sa bahay nila sinalubong kami ng kanilang kasambahay nila na sa tingin ko kakatapos lang maglinis.
"nay kaklase ko po, gawa lang kami project sa taas"
"sige 'tuy"
mabait yung kasambahay nila nginitian niya ako bago kami umakyat ni yuta sa kwarto niya. nginitian ko naman pabalik si manang bilang sign ng paggalang. nang marating ko ang kwarto ni yuta kitang kita ko na sobrang kalat ng loob nito halatang burara sa gamit.
"hindi ka ba naglilinis ng kwarto mo?!"
"hindi, obvious ba?"
"sabi ko nga"
nang mapansin niyang walang masyadong mapagpupwestuhan hinawi niya lahat ng mga kalat na nasa sahig at itinabi ito sa isang gilid ng kwarto niya para medyo maluwag kami doon. umupo na lamang ako sa may paanan ng kama niya at tahimik lang na nagmasid sa paligid ng kwarto niya. napansin ko na may naka display na family picture sa may study table niya, nilapitan ko ito at tinignan ko. dalawa pala silang magkapatid at kamukhang kamukha ni yuta ang papa niya samantalang yung nakakatanda naman niyang kapatid ay mas kamukha ng mama niya.
"asa states na si papa, yung kapatid ko naman kasama niya dun samantalang ako naiwan dito kasama mama ko" nakita kong nakalabas na pala si yuta sa may cr at dahan dahan siyang lumapit sa gawi ko. kinuha niya yung picture frame na yun at ibinagsak nang patalikod sa may desk niya. nagulat ako sa ginawa niya dahil seryosong seryoso ang mukha niya at nakatitig lamang siya sa akin.
"s-sorry hindi ko naman sinasadyang tignan ito" hindi naman mukhang galit si yuta pero dahil sa aura niya nakakaintimidate siya tignan at kinabahan rin ako kaya naman bumalik na ako sa pagkakaupo sa may kama.
sinet up ko na rin yung canvas na pagdadrawingan ko at pati yung laptop ko para sa gagamitin namin mamaya sa paghahanap ng gayahan nung idadrawing ko. sabi sa amin ng prof namin free naman daw kami gumamit ng paggagayahan at kahit anong template ang magamit namin basta dapat unique yung model namin at kailangan rin connect ito sa topic namin. naghanap ako nang naghanap nang mga model sa google at pwedeng paggayahan ngunit puro common na ang nakikita ko. saglit akong nagpahinga while massaging my temples.
samantalang si yuta naman andun lang sa may kama niya nakahiga habang nagcecellphone. napakamot na lamang ako ng ulo at napasapo sa noo ko.
"gusto mo ba makakita ng butterfly?!" rinig kong bulong sa akin ni yuta mula sa aking likuran, that whisper sent shivers down my spine at tila ba nanlamig buong katawan ko nang marinig ko ang malalim na boses nito. nasa may baba lang rin kase ako ng kama niya samantalang siya ay dumungaw sa may edge ng bed niya at bumulong sa akin, konti na lamang ang agwat ng mukha namin sa isa't isa nagulat ako kaya naman napalayo ako sakanya.
"ano namang butterfly 'yan?" pagtataka ko.
he signaled me to sit dun sa may edge ng bed niya. kanina pa pala niya suot yung jersey niya at agad niya itong hinubad sa harapan ko sabay bato sa akin nung jersey niya, infairness ang bango parin nito kahit napawisan na. napatakip na lamang ako ng mga mata ko nang gawin niya iyon gamit ang kanyang jersey.
"ano ba yan mr. nakamoto, hindi kasi ako nakikipagbiruan"
"i thought you wanted to see a butterfly?, i wanna show you my butterfly tattoo kase" dahan dahan kong inalis ang jersey niya na pinantakip ko sa may mata ko. nakita ko ang kanyang abs na nakabalandra sa harapan ko pat rin yung butterfly tattoo niya at yung isa pa niyang tattoo at ang kanyang navel piercing, nakapwesto ang dalawa niyang tattoo along his v-line sa magkabilang side nito at nang maka glimpse ako sa katawan niya agad ko namang iniwas ang tingin ko.
"nice tattoo siguro" sabi ko habang nakaiwas ng tingin sa katawan niya. natatawa na lamang si yuta sa ginawa ko.
"i'll let you trace it" nanlaki ang aking mga mata nang marinig ko iyon at agad akong pinawisan dahil sa nerbyos.
"h-huh?!" pagtataka ko.
"i can be your model nalang since nakita ko kanina ka pa nahihirapan humanap ng model for your drawing eh" nilingon mo na siya at nakita mong mukha namang seryoso si yuta sa mga sinasabi niya. you went near his side and you slowly shifted your gaze sa kanyang tattoo. you gulped before you slowly traced the butterfly tattoo near his v-line it mesmerized you kase ngayon ka lang nakakita ng ganun kagandang butterfly tattoo from a guy and the details of it was very precise and unique, yuta felt every bit of your touch on his skin.
"ahh~~" he hissed under his breath which made you flustered. you got snapped back to reality and quickly got up and went to the balcony of his room. you needed some fresh air because the air inside there was too heated and suffocating for you.
yuta followed you sa may balcony, syempre shirtless parin siya and to your surprise he has a cigarette on his hands. he lit it up and started to smoke, naka dungaw lang rin siya sa may railings ng balcony katulad mo and you can feel from your peripheral vision na he was looking at you while you avert your gaze sa may view dun sa balcony nila.
"alam mo nakakasunog kaya ng baga 'yang paninigarilyo" you said since hate na hate mo ang mga taong naninigarilyo and it is very unhealthy rin na makasagap ng usok mula sa mga naninigarilyo.
yuta heard it and he quickly went near you nagulat ka and the next thing you knew you were locking eyes with him with a cigarette on his lips. he inhaled one last smoke of his cigar before he threw it on the ground, you felt his lips on yours and he was kissing you passionately, his hands on your nape while he gently tucked in one of your hair that was on your face. sa sobrang gulat mo sa ginawa niya napapikit ka nalang and when he pulled away from the kiss he then blew the last smoke of his cigarette on your face. you felt his hot breath on your face and you slowly opened your eyes to meet his.
fuck! nakamoto yuta why do you need to be this hot?!
never in your life na inakala mo ay mahahalikan ka ng isang nakamoto yuta, magsisinungaling ka sa sarili mo kung sasabihin mo na hindi mo naenjoy ang nangyari. may gusto ka rin kase kay yuta, nagsisinungaling ka lang sa sarili mo sa tuwing sinasabi mo na hindi mo siya gusto dahil na rin sa bad reputation niya pero you like bad boys, right?! so... and also the reason why napapayag kang kunin si yuta for this project is solely because bukod sa gusto mo siyang tulungan, may gusto ka nga rin sakanya and i may sound like a fool pero willing akong gawing ang kahit ano para sakanya.
"hate boys who smoke all you want but i know you'll never ever resist it when it comes to me"
this time you were the one who had your lips on his, you put your hands around his neck to deepen the kiss. he lifted you up and you felt his hands under your skirt, he sat on his bed while you were on top of him sitting on his lap. he was caressing your thighs and you let out a soft moan near his ears which automatically turned him on.
kinuha ni nakamoto ang ping pong ball mula kay johnny na tumira sa beer pong na kanina pa nila nilalarong magtotropa. agad na tumira si yuta at umasinta sa pangatlong red cup ng kabilang panig.
"shoot!" sigaw ni yuta ngunit kabaliktaran nito ang nangyari dahil hindi shumoot ang ibinato niyang bola dun sa loob ng red cup na nakalatag sa kabilang side ng mesa.
"fuck! ang hina kasi ng tira ko" singhal niya
"ok lang yan atuy! bawi ka nalang next time haha" pangaasar ni johnny na nakaupo mula sa kabilang mesa.
tumayo si johnny mula sa kanyang pagkakaupo dahil siya na naman ang titira ngunit pinigilan siya ni jaehyun.
"pre mukhang naparami ka na ng inom, ako naman" hindi na nakapalag pa si johnny dahil kanina pa nga may tama ito at medyo hilo na rin sa dami ng nainom na beer kaya ibinigay na lamang niya kay jaehyun ang bola para ito ang tumira.
"babe, watch this!" bulong sakin ni jaehyun sabay kindat.
i'm not gonna lie, that whisper sent shivers down my spine kaya naman umayos ako ng upo at agad na pinanood ang bawat kilos ni jaehyun. magaling pa naman siyang umasinta at kitang kita mo na sobrang focused siya sa pagtira sa baso ng kabilang panig.
- 5 minutes earlier-
"kapag nakapasok ako ng isang bola sa baso nila, you need to kiss me"
my eyes widened with what jaehyun had whispered to me, nakakandong ako ngayon sakanya and i am sitting on his lap watching them play beer pong. inimbita kasi siya ng mga tropa niya sa basketball team since they've won kanina sa game nila and they wanna throw a party, niyaya rin ako ni jae since i have nothing to do naman and besides it's almost our sembreak so why not enjoy it nalang.
nahalata niya na nagulat ako sa sinabi niya sa akin dahil napatingin at napalingon ako sakanya. he just planted a smirk on his face at nag lean back sa pagkakaupo niya. nang napansin niyang medyo pagewang gewang na si johnny agad siyang nagpresinta na siya nalang muna ang maglalaro para sakanila na agad namang sinang ayunan ni johnny. ibinigay niya dito ang bola at agad na tumayo si jaehyun mula sa pagkakaupo, nauna na akong tumayo dahil nakakandong ako sakanya kanina at dun pumwesto sa kabilang upuan upang panoorin siya.
"babe, watch this!" na may kasama pang kindat na aking ikinakaba.
it's not that I don't want to kiss my boyfriend but because I was nervous to do it in front of his friends and schoolmates. but since I remembered he won the game I decided to just go with the flow.
he aimed for the 2nd to the last cup of the opponent and with just a swift of his hand, the ball went inside the red cup, saktong sakto. sigaw ang umalingawngaw sa paligid nang magawa ni jaehyun yun at agad na niyakap at chinest bump siya ng kanyang mga kaibigan. isang cup nalang at tiyak na panalo na sila once na ma-shoot muli ni jaehyun ang isa pang bola.
"halimaw talaga tumira si jeong!" sigaw ni johnny.
"nice one, jae! ganyan ba kapag mvp ng laro?!" pagdadagdag ni taeyong
napangiti na lamang si jaehyun sa pagcocompliment ng kanyang mga kaibigan. agad naman na ibinaling sa akin ni jaehyun ang tingin from across the room. yung tibok ng puso ko sing bilis ng kabayong tumatakbo at ramdam ko ang palad ko na nanlalamig ngunit binalewala ko na lamang ito at may kung anong ideya ang pumasok sa isipan ko. nang matapos na mainom ni jaehyun ang beer mula dun sa baso at agad akong tumayo para pumunta sa pwesto niya.
kinuha ko ang maliit na ping pong ball mula sa baso at umupo sa may table kung saan nakatayo siya ngayon para magkaharap kami, he looked down on me while i was grabbing the ball, i put it inside my mouth and i grabbed his nape for him to be able to meet the level of my face. i kissed him and put the ball that was once inside my mouth to his mouth, i can feel na he was shocked with what i did he grabbed my thighs and massaged it while i was doing it, hiya ng kanyang mga kaibigan at pati na rin ng mga tao sa paligid ang aking narinig nang gawin ko iyon, at first i was hesitant to do it but i grabbed all of my courage to do it since i know he did his best for the game and i kinda thought of it as a gift for him na rin, after that i then whispered to his ear.
"make it two" initiating for him to finish the game and make it not just one kiss, after that, I hovered down and left the table. on my way back I smirked to myself because I can't believe I did that in front of his friends and schoolmates.
as usual, he did shoot the ball on the cup making them win the game.
"mga pre, excuse lang muna kami samahan ko lang 'toh mag-cr" pagpapaalm ni jae sa kanyang mga tropa.
after that, he went to me and grabbed me by the wrist and we went inside the bathroom. he locked the door behind us and he smirked.
"what was that for?!"
"what?" I answered brattily back to him.
"the thing you did back there"
"what thing?!" i was acting all innocent to him but i was getting nervous since his aura was so serious. palapit nang palapit sa akin si jaehyun ngunit nacorner niya na ako sa may lababo, he placed his hands dun sa may sink which is enough para hindi ako makakawala.
"I know you're teasing and you know I hate being teased right?!"
"why?! i thought you wanted to be kissed once na makatira ka, there! i kissed you naman ah"
"that's not a kiss"
"yeah, it is."
"I'll show you what a kiss really is"
he then grabbed my neck and started to kiss me passionately, i kissed him back since i would lie to myself if i say that i don't want him right now, that kiss back there was just to tease him and say that i want more. my arms are wrapped around his neck to deepen the kiss and he was grabbing both of my thighs and massaging it while he was busy kissing me. his hands travel from my thighs up to my waist then to my back making sure that it won't hit the faucet.
Warnings/Notes: Steam. Sry in advance if u screm
Special thanks to Tasia for helping me write this!!!
“Creati, the Everything Hero,” the blonde repeats with an inelegant snort.
Momo giggles and takes another sip of the Cabernet Sauvignon in her glass. Her third or her fourth, probably. She isn’t too sure of it, not at this hour. All she’s sure of is that the air is nice and cool around them, that Mssrs. Monoma and Aoyama are singing a fluent, yet off-key version La Vie En Rose inside the cafe, and that she has Bakugou Katsuki’s company, all to herself, for the past hour or so, and she’s enjoying him. Extremely.
“You think it’s too kitschy?”
Katsuki shakes his head slightly. He’s cradling his head in one hand as he always does, piercing eyes on her and nothing else. “Nah. Suits you. I ain’t sure about that skimpy shit you were planning to traipse around in, though.”
“You know the nature of my quirk! I need as much skin exposure as I could,” she argues. “Although, that’s one of the main concerns of my mother, when I was considering which career track to take…”
“Yeah. Pro Hero, Professional Pianist, Ballerina, Materials Engineer.” Katsuki chortles again. “Woulda been interesting if you decided to do ‘em all. You’d be the literal Everything Hero. Fighting a villain at 1 then giving a concerto at 3 in your little red bathing suit.”
The smile he gives her reminds her of how lightheaded she is. Oh. The wine is very, very good. She slaps him playfully on the arm, but it does nothing to stop his gleeful laughter.
“You know that’s impossible,” she says with a flush of her cheeks. “But that’s the story of how I ended up in Shiketsu High’s general studies.” It’s her turn to stare him down with her hand under her chin, as she asks slyly, “So what’s your middle school pro-hero fantasy, Katsuki?”
He hums with a sly smile of his own. “Who says I got one, huh?”
She scoffs. “You just told me everyone fantasizes about being a pro during middle school!”
“What if I’m not like the rest of the extras?”
She puffs her chest in annoyance. “Is this your attempt at a dark and mysterious persona, Katsuki? Because you’re just being unfair. You rarely tell me anything about yourself--all I know is that you own a cafe, you went to UA with Kirishima-san, you like explosives, and you have the smarts of an encyclopedia and the vocabulary of a pirate, and--”
He gives her a wink. “Maybe that’s all ya need to know about me.”
She pouts. “No. Come on. Pro-hero fantasy stories. Now.”
Her glass is jarringly empty suddenly. She reaches for the bottle, but Katsuki stops her by holding her hand.
Fingers entwine, trapping her. His hands are large, and rough, and so, so warm. She holds her breath as his callused fingertips rub against the back of her hand.
“That’s enough, Momo.” The bottle is placed just out of her reach. “I change my mind about letting you get shit-faced.”
She pouts. “It’s very good wine, Katsuki. You wouldn’t know because you don’t drink, but--”
When she tries to let his hand go to reach for the bottle, he stops her again. This time, both hands capture hers and pin them down on the table. She realizes, with minimal alarm, that the lightheadedness has extended to her alcohol-numbed fingers. Try as she might to struggle against his searing iron grip, there’s no escape. Eventually she gives up and collapses in a fit of giggles over the table.
Another smile, and she feels a little weaker. “Drink your fucking water, doc. Seriously, you doctors are shit at taking care of your damn selves…”
“Fine,” she says, and obediently takes a drink from Katsuki’s glass of water. She drains about half a glass in one go, and unsteadily places it on the surface. She gives him a proud little look when she doesn’t spill a drop. He laughs.
“Hey, Baku-bro! Dr. Momo! There you are!”
Kirishima and Satou come out of the party. As the door closes behind them, Momo catches a glimpse of Mina leading everyone in an impromptu Zumba routine. The redhead gives them both a knowing grin as he ambles behind a suddenly irritated Katsuki. “You two look like you’re enjoying each other’s company, eh?”
“The fuck is it, Shitty Hair?” Katsuki grits, as Kirishima’s arm goes around him quite naturally, almost like it’s muscle memory at this point. Momo is relieved to see that Katsuki just takes it, despite his abrasive reaction to it.
“Nothing! I’m not implying anything! Just stating the obvious!”
“Go state the obvious somewhere else, Hedgehog-head! Preferably the bathroom, so you could start chipping that hair gel off your head.”
Momo giggles a little too much at that, making Satou look to her with concern.
“You okay there, Dr. Momo?” the chef says carefully. He has a bottle of water in one hand, and he refills the water-glass in front of her. “You seem kinda… more giggly than usual.”
She giggles again. “I… may be a little inebriated,” she admits, holding her face with two hands. The numbness isn’t getting worse, but she feels how warm her cheeks are, and guesses that she’s likely a little redder than usual.
Tch, goes Katsuki’s mouth, as it always does. “She finished off this bottle of Cabernet by herself, Diabetes. And she woulda downed another bottle if I didn’t stop her, so… Yeah, she’s fuckin’ more than just a little inebriated. ”
“Katsuki!”
“What, Momo? Mad that I snitched, and Diabetes knows how shit-faced you really are?”
Satou and Kirishima stare at each other questioningly. A second later, they’re grinning at each other, and it is only then that Momo realizes that they heard them call each other by their first names.
“Hm, Katsuki, eh~?” Kirishima says teasingly, earning him a hard shove at the face. “Oh my gosh, you two are so cute, why didn’t you tell me? Ain’t I your best friend? And can I just say, congratulations? Dr. Momo, I ain’t sayin’ your taste in men is somethin’ else, but I can vouch for this guy, he’ll take care of you so good you won’t even know--”
“Shut up!” Katsuki grits out, and the face-shoving progresses into a headlock. Momo is alarmed, but Satou regards this as if it’s an entirely normal thing to happen, and does nothing to stop it.
“W-well, whatever it is, you two,” the chef says, clearing his throat. He looks at Momo with concern and says, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I think it’s time to call it a night, Doc? You got work tomorrow, right?”
How late is it, anyway? She fishes out her phone and gasps. “Oh my, it’s two in the morning! You’re right, Satou-san! I must be getting home…”
She stands up straight and takes a step. She thinks it isn’t too unsteady. But she takes another and her vision wobbles, and in the next instant she’s flanked at both sides by Katsuki and Satou, and Kirishima is in front of her with his hands out.
“Whoa, careful there,” Satou says with a nervous laugh. “You really need to get home. I should get you a cab--”
“No,” Katsuki says. Momo feels a strong hand on her arm, making all the blood rush to her face. “I know where she lives. I’ll take her home.”
Satou and Kirishima look at each other again worriedly. “You sure, Baku-bro?” asks the red-head. “Mina and I have a car, we can drive you guys home…”
“Nah. The walk will sober her up,” Katsuki says, pulling on her arm and forcing her into another step. “You can manage it, right Momo?”
She doesn’t stumble, thankfully, and she’s able to resume walking in her normal charm-school trained gait and posture without any further trouble. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Kirishima doesn’t look very sure when he says, “I guess, but… you gonna be okay, Bakugou? It’s… late and all.”
Where has Momo heard this type of careful, concerned tone before? Next to her, Katsuki bristles slightly, but only grits out, “Yeah, it’s fine. I can take care of Ponytail.”
“Yeah, but you--”
The explosive blonde makes a sound of exasperation. “Fuckin’--if it gets your fuckin’ panties in a twist, shitty mom, I’ll text ya when I get this brainiac home. Heck, I’ll even send a video of me throwing her through her front door, if that’s what gets yer shitty hair-for-brains to stop worrying about me--”
Oh Momo you did not just feel weak in the knees thinking about Katsuki throwing you through your front door with those strong arms of his and slamming you against the wall in the hallway--
“Baku-bro, I’m just lookin’ out for ya, all right? I mean, I know that--”
But seriously, this argument is getting strange. The red-head has a true look of concern on his face, strangely prophetic in a way, as if he expects the blonde to keel over in the next moment. Or turn into a werewolf. Kirishima softly holds on to Katsuki, as if he’s holding something fragile. Before he could finish his sentence, Katsuki rolls his shoulder in annoyance, shaking it off.
“--fucking hell, everyone’s such a fucking worrywart it’s fucking annoying-- ”
“All right you two. We get it, your bromance transcends other dimensions and all, but it’s getting really late and your argument ain’t makin’ it any less late.” Satou towers over them and pulls them apart, slapping Katsuki at the back decidedly as he does so. “Anyway, you guys live ridiculously close by, and this is a safe area, so it should be okay. Bakugou, take the doc home and send us a message once you’re home, okay?”
Katsuki grumbles in affirmation. He pulls on the stunned Momo’s arm in an oddly careful way, and she holds onto his as she steps in time with him.
Kirishima is looking at them, still plainly worried. Momo turns to him and says, “We’ll be okay, Kirishima-san. I’ll take care of Katsuki.”
He brightens considerably at this, even though Katsuki scoffs. “Okay, Dr. Momo. Please take care of my bro.”
She gives them a small wave of the hand, and with that, they leave the still-noisy cafe and enter the quiet and chill of Hosu in the early morning.
*
The walk home, in the beginning, is quiet and uneventful. Katsuki leads them through familiar streets and stoplights to Momo’s condominium, not speaking a single word along the way.
Her heels clacking on the pavement is the only noise between them. They echo all over empty streets and bounce off the alley walls. Momo doesn’t mind the quiet very much. It’s comfortable. Peaceful, yes, but it makes her aware of their proximity, and causes her heart to beat wildly as she takes in each and every sensation: the glow of city lights crawling on their skin and clothes with each step; the chill causing thin puffs of fog to form on their breaths; the feel of his arm, hooked around hers, where it’s warmest on her body at that moment. Where it belongs.
The distinct scent of him, subtle in the cold but unmistakable from their distance. She finds it pleasant. Addicting, even.
The rush of blood through her veins. The steady beating of her heart.
Her head is swimming, dangerously so. Katsuki told everyone that the walk will sober her up, but she isn’t sure that being hyper-aware of all these sensations is doing anything good for her sobriety, if it exists at all even transiently at this hour. She tries to use her voice, just to see if it still works. “We’re close to home.”
She doesn’t slur, which is a good sign. Katsuki hums in agreement beside her, a rasp that vibrates through him and magnifies the throb in her chest.
“You still drunk?” he asks at a stoplight.
She hums, a noncommittal sound. Stares up at him. A smile is on her face. She thinks that she might look a little more foolish than usual. She knows she’s acting batty, but she can’t stop it.
He stares at her with an eyebrow raised, and makes an odd sound through his nostrils. “Guess that answers my fuckin’ question.”
His irises are really red, she thinks. Like the stoplight glowing in front of them. Like the wine she apparently haphazardly ingested just a while ago. Like the costume she designed for herself, back when she indulged in her middle school fantasies of pro-heroism. Like the blood flowing through her veins.
It’s a good colour, she thinks again, for the umpteenth time. Her favourite, in fact.
“The fuck you starin’ at?”
She hums again, a little playfully this time, the corners of her mouth involuntarily curling upwards. “You, of course.”
Katsuki swears again, but with the rough laugh-snort that can only belong to him. “I am telling Diabetes to never fucking get you near that shit wine again.”
“It’s good wine ,” she mumbles, as red lights become green. The blonde pulls her forward.
The air around them becomes cooler. She leans in closer to him instinctively for warmth.
Three more blocks to go, and their walk will end with her drunk and alone and empty in her condominium. She racks her brain for something intelligent to say, or just something else, something to change the course of the night. Make it special and memorable, because she doesn’t want this night to end. Not like that.
Still, the good wine is making it hard for her to form any good words to say.
A spot of cold, concentrated and damp, lands on her nose. She blinks and stares upwards, where little darts of rain begin to fall sparsely.
“Shit,” Katsuki grumbles under his breath. As rain often does, in the next moment it falls all at once, covering both of them in a sheet of cold water as they make a run for it.
Through the torrent of rain, she struggles with her heels. The sound of it jars some sense into her drunken self, at least, and she manages to form a crimson golf umbrella in the middle of her chest.
“Here,” she says, covering them both under its shade, for the little good it does--the winds are unexpectedly strong, and even though the umbrella helps, they’re still damp. Cars pass by, splashing her jersey dress and bare legs in grey mud. Water gets in their shoes, and she feels one of her heels bend and break as it gets caught in between a gap in the concrete.
She almost falls, but Katsuki catches her before her face makes contact with flooded concrete. “Fuckin’ rain, this better not be somebody’s quirk or else I’m fuckin’ killing someone…”
“I’m okay. I don’t think I have a sprain,” she tells him as she struggles momentarily with her shoes. Sobriety slaps her, like the dirty cold water on her bare feet. “Give me a moment to make something for my feet…”
“Fuck that.” He turns her back to her and crouches low, his arms bent oddly behind him.
Momo stares at him incredulously, unsure of what he wants to happen before he spits out, “Just get the fuck on, princess. Before we fuckin’ drown. ”
“Oh--” she says quite intelligently. The rain is falling around them even more mercilessly. No time for her to hesitate.
Holding her breath, she ‘gets the fuck on,’ as Katsuki so eloquently put it. She feels herself lifted easily off the ground by two solid arms. He isn’t unsteady at all, but she wraps one arm tightly around his shoulders all the same.
“You good?”
“Good,” she tells him. Holds him closer, smells him along with the cold air. He’s so close, she almost can’t stand it.
Without another word, Katsuki rushes through the streets. He runs as if the streets aren’t dangerously slick, and as if Momo isn’t hanging off of him like a possessive spirit carrying a ridiculously large umbrella.
They make a different turn. As Momo makes a questioning sound, Katsuki cuts her off. “My apartment is right there,” he growls, motioning to a complex at the other end of the side street they just ducked in.
His… his apartment, she thinks with a squeak as Katsuki practically flies across the remaining stretch of concrete. It’s more practical, indeed, rather than to brave three more blocks of rain to her place, but…
A man’s apartment. A single man’s apartment. No… Bakugou Katsuki’s apartment , the private, intimate confines owned by the man she’s been ridiculously pining for, for the past few weeks. This is going far, farther than she ever expected. Her brain is a stuttering mess by the time they’re at the gate.
When they make it into the apartment and Katsuki lets her down, both of them are soaked to the bone, clothes clinging uncomfortably to their cold skin, their breaths thicker than ever. She leaves the silly, unhelpful umbrella out in the hall to dry, and patiently waits for Katsuki to struggle with his keys and the doorknob.
The door opens, revealing a tidy, modest space. From her vantage point, Momo sees bookshelves, a single low table, a television set, a sizeable kitchenette. There is a hardback novel on the table, next to a notepad with scribbles. A closed door at a distance, probably leading to his bedroom.
It’s his, all his. Bakugou Katsuki’s home. Something in the back of her mind swirls like a siren, daring her to take one step onto the wooden tile, to go past the point of no return.
He stares as she hesitates. “You comin’ or what?”
She nods. Clutches her broken heels tightly, to brace herself. One barefoot crosses the threshold carefully, then two.
It’s warm inside, and bright, and smells like fresh linen. Her heart throbs, taking in all the details, inhaling all the scent. Her face warms when she smells him as he hovers close and reaches behind her.
Katsuki closes the door with a gentle click, echoing much louder in her head than it’s supposed to.
“Pardon the intrusion,” she says softly, her voice a meek whisper that escapes from the chill of her body.
She walks quietly inside, a little ashamed of the trail of water-drops that follow her into the middle of the living room. She stands there awkwardly as Katsuki relieves her of her belongings, disappears momentarily in his room, and comes out with fluffy towels. He places one over her head like a cowl. The other one he rubs into his face and his hair, rougher than what’s needed, in an attempt to bring himself to his senses, if Momo were to make an educated guess.
“Right,” he rasps out. His skin, pale against the cold, recovers its color as they stare at each other, as the warmth begins to seep through. “You’re going to catch a fucking cold if you don’t warm up soon.”
“Y-yes. We both are,” she agrees. All the headiness from the Cabernet disappears, replaced by an entirely new sensation that sends little tremors in her hands, her chest, her feet.
She lets him push her around the living room and into a modest, clean bathroom. He reaches out and turns on the shower, and nods in satisfaction when steam begins to rise.
“In. Now,” he says threateningly. “I’ll get you some clothes. Unless ya wanna make some with your quirk?”
She shakes her head. “N-no… I’d rather avoid it, if I can. The--”
“The economy. I know.” He gives her a little smirk and disappears behind the door, leaving her to stare dumbly at her reflection in his mirror.
Her hair is disheveled, skin bright against the cold, except for her cheeks, which are turning pinker every second. She’s still a little lightheaded, her forehead a little warm, and she’s worried that all the traipsing in the rain might lead to a fever.
The shower is warm and inviting. Carefully she steps in, letting the skin of her feet adjust to the heat. The door opens behind her, and she hears Katsuki’s amused snort amidst the steady sound of falling water.
“So,” he says, his voice teasing, his eyes doing something else entirely. He places dry clothes on the counter, stares her down with an eyebrow raised. “Are you getting out of that fucked-up dress anytime soon, or am I gonna have to do it for ya?”
He says it sarcastically rather than perversely, in his normal mocking tone, the one he uses when he does his little acts of charity like she’s a stray he’s responsible for. Momo catches the subtle little swallow he makes before he speaks, though.
She’s aware of how she must look--the off-shoulder dress she’s wearing is heavy with rain water and mud, the cut now lower than it ought to be because of gravity. The steam continues to rise around her, moistening her skin, the steady heat making it flush pink. She isn’t ashamed, oddly enough, even when she sees his eyes hover and linger over bare skin, before focusing on her mouth.
“Do you think I need help?” she starts, teasingly, then freezing all at once when he steps closer to her.
She takes a step back, stopping when she feels the glass of the stall behind her. He’s right in front of her, not moving, ruby red piercing through black.
Hesitant, nervous silence. Katsuki is so close, Momo is sure that she hears the rush of his blood through him, emanating from the pulse point at his right hand as he lifts it up to the side of her face. He tucks a soggy lock of her hair behind her ear and looks right into her eyes.
She exhales as quietly as her quivering mouth allows. Her hands are reaching out for his shirt, undoes the buttons gently and deftly until she’s able to push the fabric, stubbornly clinging on his skin, off, and she’s able to expose the skin of his chest, his abs.
She lets her hands run over them once, slowly. She hears him exhale a little too loudly, feels the rapid throb of his heart under her right hand, under her touch.
“Hey… you’re cold, too.”
She moves her hands to do it again, to appreciate the feel of those muscles move with his breath under her hands. But his warm hands capture hers, and push them back into her sides, where they can do no harm.
“Momo,” he breathes, voice ragged, eyes hooded. “You’re still drunk.”
She shakes her head. “The walk sobered me up, like you said.” She raises her hand and rests it on his face, fingers curling over the warmth of his face. “As did the rain. I’m fine.”
He doesn’t push her hand away. “You’re still fuckin’ drunk. You can’t just--”
Whatever words he’s about to say stops in their tracks, as she moves her face closer and catches his mouth with hers, stunning him into silence.
She hasn’t kissed anyone in a long while, and a tiny portion of her is frightened that the way their teeth and noses collide and the clumsy way she pushes her mouth against his makes it obvious. But most of her mind, the parts that are blindingly sober and aware and decided is ravenous and tells her that she’s waited too long for this.
When has she been this forward, this shameless? Why is she enjoying the way she hears Katsuki’s breath catches in his throat, the stunned look in his eyes, the sweet moment she actually renders him speechless?
She opens her mouth for a short inhale, and so does he. He closes the gap between them immediately, as if the milliseconds they’re apart is too long, making up for the absence by letting his tongue dance inside her mouth, tasting the traces of wine within, making enticing sounds as he does so.
He pushes her through the stall, and water rushes over their heads, past their ears, covering them in steam and sound. The shock of the rapid temperature change makes her gasp, but she doesn’t let him go.
Still, she feels him tighten his grip on her shoulders, feels him push them apart with whatever dregs of self-control there is between them.
Swollen lips, eyes in an obvious haze, water dripping over his face, his eyelashes, he slurs, “Momo... if you want me to stop at any time--”
She shakes her head. “Don’t…”
He stares at her. He is stunned, obviously thrown off, but doesn’t move.
She moves forward, closes the gap between them once more. His lips are so soft. She feels the burn of his hands over her bare skin, despite the water that runs between them, and it feels so good . She moves down, hears the delicious moan that escapes from him, as she tastes the side of his neck and feels the salt and the burning sweetness flood her mouth.
“Don’t stop, Katsuki,” she breathes against his skin. Pleads. Her hands reach out to run through his damp hair.
So he doesn’t.
He kisses her sweetly, roughly--she knows with each sharp inhale and dig of his fingernails on damp flesh that he’s waited for her too, that he wants her as much as she does. The gravity of his want throws her in a paradox of a boldness that she didn’t know lingered in her, as well as an overwhelming weakness that leaves her knees weak.
His hands run all over the ridiculously soaked fabric of her jersey dress. She guides one of them over one shoulder, to push it down. Another one to her back, where she guides her fingers to the zipper that he tugs down impatiently, sending the doused cloth to drop in a messy heap on the bathroom tile around her.
“Fuck,” he breathes against her mouth, hands running over her sides, feverishly appreciating all her curves with pressure and heat from his callused, explosive skin. “You’re so fuckin’ perfect --so beautiful, all mine, you’re all mine--”
She shudders as his words vibrate through her. In turn, she finally him of the silly soaked shirt, leaving her hands free to roam over those arms she’s spent an eternity admiring from a distance.
“Get this shit off of you,” he grumbles in frustration, slippery hands working on her black satin undergarment set. She laughs when he growls like an animal practically tears the heavy garment off her body, and gasps when his bare hand runs over her fully naked body for the first time.
She whines in the next moment, her clumsy fingers working on the buttons of his slacks. “You have to get rid of this too.”
He laughs and pulls her hands off of him. “Patience, princess.” He reaches out for a bottle of shower gel, works a handful of it into foam. “You’re dirty. Literally. I gotta take care of you.”
She makes a sound of mock-protest--he looks at her, asking her with his eyes if he should stop. She responds by grabbing those soapy hands and letting them roam over her shoulders, her chest, her stomach. She giggles when he moans appreciatively when he reaches behind her to squeeze her bottom. Eventually, he’s bending over to scrub the mud off her legs, carefully lifting her feet one at a time to really get to the stubborn spots of dirt there.
He looks ridiculous, half-clothed in soaked slacks and soapy from all his efforts cleaning her, so she returns the favor. She gets a handful of soap and rubs it over spots of his bare skin he allows her to reach--his neck, shoulders, abs. She finally gets those silly pants off, and they fall in a mess on the tile with her dress.
“Fuck.” He hisses, as she works on his thighs, the tense area over his boxers straining with his arousal. “I gotta--I gotta get you in the bedroom, fuck--”
He rinses them off in the speed of light and dries them off with a towel even faster than that. She can’t help but laugh at all the sounds of frustration he makes with each movement.
Their mouths barely leaving each other, he finally, finally lifts her in his arms, and after a brief clumsy stumble out the bathroom and across the living room, he shoves her roughly against a different door and presses her against it.
The slam knocks the wind out of her, a surprised sound escaping her. He freezes, momentarily regretful that he might have overdone it, but she holds on to him tighter, kissing him more ferociously than ever.
“You like that, princess?” he asks in between, equal parts incredulous and aroused. His fingers tighten around her hips to the point of bruising.
She whimpers at the pressure and at the way she feels him grin against her skin. “Since the first cup of coffee--”
“Fuck yeah,” He hisses and dips his head down.
“I--” she gasps, as she feels teeth against her collar bone, the base of her neck. She moans as he leaves a mark there. “--like you, Katsuki,” she breathes as she struggles for some semblance of clear thought. “I have for some time now--”
Since I saw you, she wants to say. Realizes for herself, at the same time. She doesn’t speak, though. Can’t speak. Can hardly think, with the sound of blood rushing through her ears--
The door gives way behind them, and she finds herself crossing the threshold into his bedroom. She feels herself breathless and hopelessly aroused once more when he disconnects her mouth from her to lift her in his strong arms, again, to throw her onto his bed.
(She’s played this scene shamelessly over and over in her mind, but nothing compares to the reality, to the giddiness of being overpowered so easily like this. Staring up at him rather helplessly, half-naked and weak, as he hovers over her, able to do all that he wants to her--)
Nothing but the moonlight through the window, to illuminate his ridiculously strong silhouette, the hunger in those ruby eyes. For a few moments, both too long and too short, he stands at the foot of his own bed.
“Katsuki,” she whispers, his name reverent on her tongue. He’s beautiful, more beautiful than she ever imagined. She’s shameless when she looks at his muscled thighs, the bulge in his underwear, his chiseled abs and chest, his face as he stares her down just as shamelessly.
Fiery eyes dart over the skin of her legs, her belly, her breasts. He stares at her swollen lips a fraction too long before moving on to her eyes.
She’s frozen in place as he crawls over her and places a gentle hand over her cheek.
“Momo.” His voice is rough and intoxicating, his eyes even more so. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” she breathes, and pulls him closer. She makes her own mark on him, and his hands wander down once more to the curve of her breasts, to her sides, to the side of her hip.
His head moves down, to explore her further. She feels his hands and his mouth worship her in places that don’t see the light of day. She shudders and moans as he feels her tongue on her and inside her. All she’s able to do is to pull on his hair desperately. This goads him on further, becomes more merciless with his ministrations.
Mine, his voice echoes in her head, as she lets him have his way with her. Or perhaps it’s her voice now, she isn’t too sure. She’s been waiting for this for too long.
She cries out his name, shamelessly, more than once. He crawls on top of her, places a burning kiss on her mouth, pressing his entire body on to her. Her nails go down his back, and he feels his sharp inhale against her. She feels his arousal against hers.
“Momo,” he growls again, his eyes burning embers despite the darkness. “Do you want--”
“Don’t stop,” she growls right back, pulling his head down to kiss him further.
He hums against her mouth gratefully, and reaches out for a foil in his bedside drawer.
She watches as he tears it open, his eyes never leaving her. She wants to catch her breath as he prepares himself, but he isn’t letting her. One hand is on himself, while the other keeps itself busy below her, inside her, teasing the sensitive areas he discovered with his mouth awhile ago. Her head is still spinning from her last release, and spins still when he bends over to kiss her on the neck, and aligns himself against her.
“Momo,” he rumbles into her ear, in a low and sensual purr. “What do you want?”
“Katsuki, please,” she whispers. She shifts herself so she can feel their point of contact, feels herself shudder in anticipation.
“I asked you a question, princess.” His tongue licks a neat stripe against the column of her neck.
“Please,” she whimpers when his hands press her hips against the bed, trapping her under his grasp. “Please, Katsuki--”
“What?”
She closes her eyes, feels the sting of her cheeks reddening. “I… want you,” she pleads, raven eyes burning into his. “To go all the way. Please.”
That’s all it takes. A frayed thread snaps between them. Katsuki swears. In the next moment Momo is gasping, feeling the sweet pressure as he pushes himself in slowly, deeper and deeper until all of him is inside.
They sigh in unison as they connect. Momo reaches over and kisses him on the mouth.
“Fuck, Momo,” he growls, catching his breath. She takes a second to relish the feeling of him inside her.
And then he starts to move.
Her thoughts scramble and reorganize all at once. She is suddenly incapable of any coherent thought, other than the pleasure flooding all her senses, the incapacitating desire for more, the breathtaking knowledge that Katsuki’s here, so close to her, one with her, breathing the same air, and she’s his, all his.
Mine, she thinks, as her arms go around his back and her nails trail hot searing lines all over.
“Mhm, Katsuki,” she moans over and over, in various combinations. She isn’t usually this vocal during sex, and she’s a little worried of the noise she’s making. The noise they’re making, the wet sounds, the slap of his pelvis against hers, his ragged breathing, the little sounds of pleasure escaping from her throat.
But--fuck all that. She feels the coil tightening inside her, more and more with each rock of his pelvis. Her moans get louder and louder, and when she covers her mouth for some modicum of modesty, Katsuki glares at her.
He pulls her hands off, pins them down above her head. His eyes are on hers, on her mouth, her breasts. His hands are strong, his mouth is eager, nibbling over all the skin he can reach.
It doesn’t take long before she unravels underneath him--stars fill her vision, a sweet throbbing ache fills her head and a strangled cry escapes from her throat. He follows her soon after with a groan.
They catch their breaths simultaneously. He pulls out, reaches over to kiss her once more and stroke her hair. She purrs under his touch and looks up at him with a blissful smile.
“Good?”
She hums. “Good.”
He smiles at her, uncharacteristically gentle and heartwarming, and leaves her to clean up. He returns in a short while with dry clothes on, tosses hers over her haphazardly, and collapses next to her in a heap.
She stares at him in amazement as his eyes flutter closed, his breathing instantly slowing down, muscles relaxing. In the short moment she pulls on his dark shirt over her and pulls on a pair of his boxers, he’s already snoring next to her, practically dead to the world.
Amazing, she thinks, with a fond smile. He’s really out like a light. He must have been so exhausted.
She strokes his hair gently, feeling her heart slow down in tandem with his as he breathes peacefully. She covers them both with a blanket, faces him, and closes her eyes.
A peaceful sleep falls over her consciousness rapidly, quiet and content and warm.
The rain continues to fall.
*
She wakes up from a dreamless sleep when light leaks from the window and gets in her eyes.
She inhales deeply, letting the slightly chilly air fill her lungs and quietly nudge her into wakefulness. When her hand moves up to rub her eyes, she slightly moves an arm resting on top of her, lazily curled around her neck, heavy with sleep.
Seeing Bakugou Katsuki’s sleeping face, without an ounce of its usual tension or ill temper, must be a blessing not many gets to experience. His face is smooth and peaceful. Angelic, even, if she remains blissfully ignorant of his normal disposition, and the ways he had with her last night--
She blushes, and corrects herself. No, that’s probably her doing. She’s the one who made the first move, the one who begged, the one who told her that she thought of him that way since the first cup of coffee. Her cheeks feel warmer for it.
But, she thinks to herself, as she leans in close enough to make the tips of their noses touch, I’m so happy…
That’s all she feels, pure and simple. One hand clutches the fabric over her chest--warmth fills it when she remembers whose shirt she’s wearing, whose scent it is that she’s covered in. She smiles giddily once more.
Ah, but it’s sunrise. She turns, and gropes blindly for her phone, which she finds neatly placed on the bedside table. (Who knows how it got there.) The time on the clock reads 5:59 AM, and she has a number of missed messages from Kirishima-san.
Dr Momo did u make it home? Bkg isnt answerin his phone
Lemme know once he goes home pls
She blushes again. She completely forgot about him, and Satou-san too, who specifically asked her to message them.
Sorry for the late reply, she types thoughtfully. Of course she isn’t going to tell either of them the details of last night, but she supposes it’s sufficient to say, We both made it home safe last night.
The :) she adds, then removes when it feels a little too… evocative.
She presses send, and decides that it must be time for her to go home. The skies are sunny, the streets aren’t that damp, and there isn’t much traffic yet. It’ll be a short walk, with time to shower and dress-up and make it to work by seven.
She carefully peels Katsuki’s arm off of her and quietly walks to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. She sighs when she sees their mess on the tile.
Momo, you naughty woman, she thinks to herself, biting her lip as she picks up the soggy clothes off the floor. She supposes she owes it to him to clean up. She finds the laundry room soon enough and gets the machines going. She’d have to send him a message then…
She hears someone grumble behind her. “Oh, Katsuki, good morning,” she says with a bright smile.
“Hrm,” he says eloquently. His hands are on her before she can say anything. “You’re up early. Were you gonna leave without saying goodbye?”
She giggles and puts her arms around his neck. “I need to leave for work, and I didn’t want to wake you. You seemed so exhausted, Katsuki.”
“Whose fuckin’ fault is that, huh?” Her point is evidenced by the huskiness in his voice, lowering it down an entire octave. Still, his mouth is on hers in the next moment, and she melts into it quite naturally.
Momo thinks that she can get used to these types of mornings. “I’m sorry,” she says, with a bounce that says she isn’t sorry at all.
“Right.” He tries to smile back, but instead he grimaces. He pauses, blinks a couple of times, and mumbles a few choice expletives to himself.
Momo blinks in worry when he begins to step back, one hand on his head, his face grimacing more and more each second. “Katsuki? Are you okay?”
“Fuck, shit,” he hisses, and turns to her, eyes unfocused and pained. “Momo, get the fuck away, get--”
Her veins have never felt as cold as it did then. “Katsuki, what are you--”
That’s all she manages to say, before he blacks out and falls to the ground.
Peony Pink and Cherry Blossom Tea Ch 8: Are You Doing What You Have To Do
Summary: Ochako needs to take a long, hard look at herself. (Shouto too, while we’re at it).
Relationship(s): Todoroki Shouto/Uraraka Ochako; Shindo Yo and Uraraka Ochako
Rating: M (take noooooote)
Warnings/Notes: Look at the rating. As hard as I’m looking at my life right now. I’m so sorry for being late and I’m sorry for this chapter
She remembers how the warm vending machine coffee tin in her hand steadily cools and freezes in her hand, against the chill of the night air. A full moon, and Saturn above it. She sits on the curb, a heavy book bag filled with nursing references next to her.
He stands behind her at an arm’s length, leaning against the lamp post with his hands stuffed in his pockets. She feels his stare, light and unaffected, feels the usual lazy smile on his face burning on the skin of the nape of her neck.
What a waste of a beautiful night.
“Chako-chan, come on, don’t look like that.” He sounds the same, infuriatingly the same as always. Like he didn’t just ruin all their plans and humiliate her and break her heart.
Like he did absolutely nothing. “We were going to split up eventually.” She knows he’s shrugging, knows that not even a single muscle on his face twitches as he speaks. “I thought it was stupid to prolong the agony."
She’d laugh, but her eyes are stinging and she knew that she’d bawl if she opened her mouth without bracing herself. “Yocchan, what’s stupid is you not even trying to stay with me.”
For a person who’s so good at fighting, he isn’t very good at fighting to keep her at his side.
He exhales in frustration. “We talked about this over and over--” He uses that tone again, they’re going to argue about the same shitty thing again and neither of them will listen to each other and Ochako’s tired before it even begins. “It’s impossible for us to stay together if we want to chase after what we want! I mean, I’m a sidekick now, Chako, you know how hard it is to make time for myself as it is--”
She wouldn’t know, because he doesn’t answer her calls, texts, emails, nothing. She sees him more on TV with reporters and fans who assume that he’s single. He talks a lot, but they don’t talk anymore.
“--and I see you work so hard to help so many people one day. I can’t get in the way of that…”
She fuckin’ knows it, she knows how hard she works, how she’s stretched thin from studying and doing part-time work to pay her own tuition and living expenses. She hates like he says it like she doesn’t. She went in this field because she thought she wanted to give her parents a comfortable life. But it’s more than that now. She genuinely wants to help people, like he does.
They want the same thing, but he thinks that they’re on different pages entirely. It’s frustrating. “So do you think we’re holding each other back?”
Am I holding you back?
He doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t need to. She concentrates on keeping her breathing even.
She hears him move behind her. He falls next to her on that dirty curb. She feels his eyes on her as she keeps hers away from his, concentrates on the cool glow of Saturn overhead. Her mouth quivers when he turns her head to face him.
Has his smile always looked like this? Warm and dashing, but doesn’t quite reach his dark eyes? Has he always looked this… far away?
“Ochako,” he says in a low voice she barely hears from her orbit. “I’ll… love you forever, okay? I really will.”
He probably kisses her for the last time. Or he doesn’t. It’s entirely possible that he stands and leaves her on that curb, in the cold night with cold coffee in her hands, quietly and without another glance. It’s a memory from far too long ago, and it’s highly likely that a lot of it happened differently. Ochako could do to forget about it a little more.
But it’s too hard to forget the hollow in her heart that she feels that night despite the anger and emptiness, precisely because she thinks the same--she’ll probably love him forever too.
She isn’t always angry and bitter after that--there are pretty girls and pretty boys that helped her forget, good people who made her genuinely smile and frown and laugh and cry, many memories that she wouldn’t trade for the world.
Yet, she doesn’t ever remember trying to fill that hollow in her chest in the years that follow.
*
She sees Saturn again from her cold and lonely seat in the park bench that night, and briefly through Shouto’s window when he allows her to push him through the door with her hungry mouth on his.
There’s no words left to speak when she tugs off his coat in haste and sneaks her hands underneath his shirt to feel his skin. She feels the cold on his right, the warmth over his left and the thrum of his heart underneath. The contrast makes her dizzy, the broadness and hardness of his torso even more so. She can’t help but run her fingers appreciatively over him, can’t help but giggle when he gasps at the scratch of her fingernails.
Her hands curl around him, run all over his back where the dragons are. Fierce, powerful. She can trace the outlines of the flame and glaciers and the scales as her fingerpads trace his skin.
His eyes flutter closed as he allows her to trace them. His muscles move under her hands, the sensation very enticing.
Ah, she really wants her hands all over him. It’s a struggle to keep her pinky up when her body screams at all of her to make as much contact as possible.
She starts unbuttoning his shirt in a haze, pulling it off him so impatiently that she might have sent buttons flying all over the tatami. He also somehow works her hoodie and scrub top off of her, through grunts and gasps and hurried motions that might seem funny if they weren’t so delirious.
When his hands are on her again, she hisses at the sting of both hot and cold on the bare skin of her waist.
He lets her go. The air between his palms and her skin is too far. “Is this too much? I’m--”
“No,” she breathes. Places both hands on her--so big, she thinks, he’s so much bigger than her, even her waist feels small in his hands. “Keep your hands on me. I like it.”
He looks at her with heavy-lidded eyes, and descends on her mouth with much more fervor than she thinks is possible. She moans against his mouth when he activates his quirk on her a little more gently this time. She doesn’t know what her body wants to feel, when half of it is covered in goosebumps and the other screams red.
But at least the overload of sensations is just enough to numb the feeling inside.
She’s lifted in the next moment. Her arms go around his neck and her legs go around his torso. She feels how strong the former pro hero is as he barely struggles with all her weight on him, as he carries her across his apartment and into his bedroom.
He lays her down gently on a messy futon that he probably left unrolled from a busy morning. She sinks in its softness and his scent, although she wishes that he were a little rougher on her. Her blood aches for a lot of pressure, pain even. She bites his lower lip to goad him on, earning her a surprised moan.
“Ochako.” His voice is so deep she feels like drowning. “I…”
She swallows his words down with another kiss. No more words. “You can do whatever you want,” she breathes, looking right into his eyes.
His Adam’s apple bobs with a thoughtful swallow. “Are you sure?”
She nods and nibbles at his collarbone. She’s going to do whatever she wants too, and she hopes he understands.
Carefully, his hands trail up her stomach, her chest, her bare shoulders. She shudders at the lines of warmth and cold that he traces under nimble finger tips, that curl around her back to unhook her bra and pull it down. He peppers kisses along her jaw, the side of her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast. Her breath shallows and hastens as he goes lower and lower, stopping at the waistband of her pants.
“Tell me to stop anytime and I will,” he whispers clearly, with eyes that are both searing and soft and careful.
His cold hand remains over her left breast, squeezes it appreciatively. All she’s able to manage is an affirmative whimper.
He smiles, and pulls her pants and underwear down in one go.
The cool air hits her nakedness all at once. She doesn’t have a lot of mindfulness left to be embarrassed to be completely undressed in front of Todoroki Shouto for the first time. Still, the weight of his gaze on her-- all of her, including the parts of her carefully tucked away and shaped and hidden underneath her clothing--she swears there’s a palpable heat where his eyes land on her skin.
“Beautiful,” she hears him whisper from above her.
That single word causes a spike of heat in her bloodstream. She blushes furiously, muttering, “N… no, don’t say stuff like…”
“Hm?” His hum comes out as a purr when he leans down to nuzzle into her neck again. She feels his lips curl against her skin. “Why not?”
“Because-- hm-- ” It’s hard to go on a body conscious rant when that pretty mouth of his is on her, all over her, the trail going lower, lower. “You’re the pretty one between us, Shouto, and I’m just-- ahh-- ”
He bit her, oh my god. He suckles on the offended spot on her chest, eyes on her and glinting excitedly. “Just…?”
“Just…” God, what is she saying again? Words are suddenly meaningless, not when his warm hand snakes down between them, below her, hovering over her core. Another ahh escapes her as he traces a line up and down her entrance, palm pressing over her sensitive nub.
“I don’t understand, Ochako.” She knows by now that he knows how to tease, but it always catches her off-guard when he does. “Everything about you is beautiful. Your eyes. Your cheeks. Your neck. Your breasts, your belly… your thighs… this little astronaut here--you got me ever since I saw this--”
He presses soft kisses over those places as he says them, and oh god she won’t have enough oxygen in her lungs to listen to him list down all her body parts. He pays extra attention to the little tattoo, nibbles it a little even, as if paying tribute to the pesky thing that spurred all of this on.
She giggles, then groans when his mouth continues to explore her skin.
He descends and crouches in front of her, arms hooked around her thighs. He takes his time kissing the soft, inner surface, squeezes the muscles there appreciatively. She gasps for the nth time, amazed at the sight of him kneeling before her like he’s praying in church, worshiping her body.
“Sh-Shou--”
She doesn’t finish saying his name when she feels his tongue on her.
“Oh god,” she gasps. The feel of his tongue is insanely good. She feels him play with the temperature of his mouth and his breath as he eats her out. Sometimes searing hot, with puffs of cold, and the shock of all the sensations drive her mad. She can’t help but grind her hips against his face. At this rate it won’t take too long before she unravels--she bites her fingers, tries to keep herself in control--
She isn’t able to, and soon her body shudders and she’s seeing stars and she’s moaning his name over and over. She’s been eaten out before, but she’s sure it doesn’t feel as good as it did just then. She breathes like she held her breath the entire time. “Shouto, that was good, so good…”
He smiles in satisfaction, crawls forward and kisses her full on the mouth. She tastes herself in his mouth--an odd sensation she doesn’t usually like, but she craves his mouth, craves the sting of heat and cold, craves that sensory onslaught--
Make it numb--
Her head is going down from the high, and already she’s craving for the next one. She gives in to the surge of courage and desperation. She rolls them over so that he’s flat on his back and she’s straddling his hips. With a surprised gasp, Shouto looks up at her with wide eyes.
“Ochako--”
She drowns his words again with another kiss. “I want you to feel good too…”
He chuckles beneath her as she unbuttons his fly. “You’re impatient tonight.” He kisses her back sweetly all the same and allows her to pull off his pants all the same.
He has no idea. She’s terrible for using him like this. When she draws out a sound of pleasure from him with the touch of her hand, a very small twinge in her chest makes itself known. She ignores it and lets it fade, because she’s good at that, and instead focuses on giving Todoroki Shouto head, because she knows she’s also good at that.
It’s so easy to forget those feelings of guilt when she watches his beautiful face contort in pleasure, watch urgent breaths and gasps flow and fall within that talented mouth. Her tongue swirls around the head, making him groan out her name.
“You’re beautiful,” he repeats, making her heart throb wildly in her chest. “So beautiful taking me in your mouth, damn--”
She hums. Never has a word--a profanity, of all things--hit her veins like a bullet, make her entire body shudder in excitement. And he says it so quietly, like he stumbles over the word and the debauched part of him that enjoys it.
She loves the way it sounds. She’s surprised by it, because who would have thought that hearing Todoroki Shouto, this absolute demigod descended upon the earth, curse like a heathen just from the play of her tongue--
“Fuck, that’s so good--” A little louder now. A little more wrecked. More, Ochako wants to hear more of that.
It goads her on even further, not meaning to stop until he comes, but soon he stops her with his hands on her cheeks and motions for her to go up to him.
She obliges, kisses him on the mouth again. He returns it languidly at first, stutters against her mouth when she presses and slides her dripping core against his length. She lifts her head and smiles smugly at the way his eyes roll upward.
“Do you like that?” The sweet pressure against her entrance is simultaneously too much and not enough. Gods, isn’t it about time to go all the way? She begins to align her hips to his hardness almost mindlessly. She feels Shouto’s burning grip on her hips and she loves how she’s sure of the marks that’ll be there in the morning.
“Wait,” he says. His cold hand leaves her to reach out for a drawer, almost out of his reach. It’s a struggle, but he eventually finds what he’s looking for. “If you do that, I might not be able to stop myself, so…”
Ah, did she really almost let him in without a condom? How starved is she that she would be so careless?
The moments when he covers himself is short, but it’s enough to make her aware of that twinge in her chest, and it’s unbearable. It’s so that when he’s done, she moves in immediately. They gasp in unison as she sinks to the hilt slowly, steadily.
Oh, god, she didn’t think he’d fit--she feels filled past her limit, she feels like she’s about to split open. Her mouth hangs open as she catches her breath, and barely feels Shouto’s hands on her shoulders, steadying her.
“Are you all right?”
Sapphire and onyx focus on her, brows furrowed in concern.
It hurts. Just a little, but she needs this. She nods, gives him a smile and another kiss, as a response. “I’m all right, dear… it feels good, it does, it does--”
She lifts as she slurs out the words. Shouto moans a little louder--she isn’t sure if it’s with the way her body rises and sinks down, over and over, or if it’s how the word dear slips out of her mouth.
A rhythm is soon set in place. The sounds of their mouths and tongues colliding is absolutely lewd, the sound of her wetness moving up and down his length even more so. His head falls on her shoulder. (Is this really him holding onto her body for dear life?) His hands are back on her waist, assisting her, goading her to move faster, faster--
“Ochako-- fuck, it’s so good… so tight--”
She never imagined Shouto to be so vocal, so fuckin’ vulgar. She moves her hips a certain way, and she’s treated to the sound of this perfect and poised and composed man cursing over and over, on the verge of losing control. Seeing him gripping his inhibitions so loosely spurs her on and on. She wants to give him all that she can just to see how far he would let go.
(It makes her feel a little worse--she’s such a user , she shouldn’t, she really shouldn’t, but…)
His voice fills her head like a mantra, hypnotizing her, urging her closer and closer and closer--
“I never thought you would--with me-- fuck, you’re so good, you feel so good--”
That worship and that slip of the tongue feels so right, even though she doesn’t deserve it. It doesn’t take long before her body clenches around him, and his name escapes from her in a strangled cry. She feels him stiffen inside her soon after, thrusting up at her erratically as he moans her name.
He kisses her again as if he’ll never get sick of it, hands cupping her cheeks tenderly. He pulls out soon after, letting her roll to the futon.
The bed feels unbearably empty when he excuses himself to throw the condom away. It isn’t even that long, and Ochako feels stupid that she feels so sad, so cold when his weight isn’t on the futon.
He comes back eventually with mittens from the kitchen, which makes her snort indignantly. When he puts his arms around her and spoons her, she doesn’t feel as sad or as stupid, but…
“Ochako,” Shouto mutters low in her ear. “You can stay the night, if you want to.”
“I could?”
He hums--ah, she loves the sound of that, loves the rumble that goes all over her body. “... not just tonight either. Just say the word. I’ll get you all the mittens you want.”
She can’t help the dumb smile on her face. She turns to face him, meets the tiny, genuine smile on his face. What a sight. “I’d like that.”
“Mm.” The blanket that covers them is warm. Shouto is warm. He’s all around her, as he should be. It feels like heaven. His eyes close as he holds her closer.
But...
The sound of his quiet breath isn’t loud enough to calm the turmoil in her heart.
*
Past midnight, Shouto’s eyes are wide open.
Ochako snoozes beside him, snoring softly. Chestnut hair falling over her face, one round cheek squished against his pillows. Hands in his comically oversized mittens sprawled above her head. At some point, she turned away from him, her back pressing against his chest.
He stares at the creamy expanse of her back. The mole he found ages ago is still there, amongst the sparse smattering of freckles, in the shallow valley along her spine right where he remembers it would be.
Without thinking about it, he bends over to press his lips over it.
She sighs in her sleep upon the contact.
He smiles. This is nice. Sleeping in one futon is nice. As is being able to kiss Uraraka Ochako as much as this.
It’s strange. He hasn’t dated anyone seriously before for many reasons, but this isn’t the first time he was intimate with anyone. Those warm bodies and messy one-night stands are regrettably forgettable though. He doesn’t remember feeling elated or the opposite about them.
But this… he knows that he’ll remember this night for a long time.
(He convinces himself that it’s not a bad thing.)
He wants to kiss her again. He knows he’s never felt that way about another person before. He wants to hold her close, have his mouth on hers, wants to drown in the cherry blossom scent of her hair. Wants to look in those warm brown eyes, looking up at him and all over him.
(Her eyes.)
Something beats in his chest like a warning. He remembers clearly when he thinks about Ochako’s eyes--how turbulent and cloudy they were, how anxious, how impatient. Like she can’t keep her hands off him because she can’t stand not using her body like she did.
It’s… concerning. But she didn’t seem interested in talking about it, and he didn’t have the will or the power to keep her away anymore. It’s probably illogical to feel like this new closeness of theirs actually pushed them farther apart.
It’s even more illogical how afraid he feels suddenly that he’ll lose her like this.
No… he won’t lose her. Why would he? They wanted each other equally. The moment called for them to be closer. All of it felt right.
(Except, that look in her eyes, didn’t that feel wrong?)
He wonders if he should have stopped it.
(He wonders again, if he could have. He’s dreamed of having her in his arms for some time now, he realizes, and not only because she’s obliged to do it for other people.)
Maybe he’s worrying for nothing. Maybe he’s looking too much into it while things are falling neatly in place for them. Maybe, just this once, things are working out of them both.
Well. All he knows he should still ask her about it, when she wakes up.
Just in case he’s wrong, though, he ought to keep her close to him. Let himself memorize the way her small body presses against his, with all its enticing curves and slopes and warmth and sweetness.
He knows that he’ll miss all this in the morning, when they need to wake up.
*
And he does, when the sun rises and hits him in the eye, and the incessant buzzing of a phone cuts into his dream like the edge of a blunt knife.
Not removing himself from Ochako’s side, he gropes blindly for the offensive device on the tatami above their heads. His hand lands on it as it vibrates, and with bleary eyes he tries to process what he’s seeing.
First thing he realizes is that it’s not his phone. It’s a particularly old model, one that does not need fingerprint recognition to be unlocked.
Next thing is that it’s probably Ochako’s phone, because logically there’s no-one else who could own it, and also because the lock screen features her swollen arm with a partially-coloured Saturn tattooed on it.
And finally, the last thing he learns, as his bleary eyes adjust to the brightness of the phone and his mind partially lifts from its fog: It’s 0601H, and the phone has been buzzing since 0530H, when the first of five messages came in.
All of them from one person.
Shindo Yo (0530H): morning sleepyhead ヾ(￣0￣ )ノ
Shindo Yo (0533H): Hope u rly wake up soon, said u got a morning shift today (read more)
Shindo Yo (0542H): u didn’t message me lst nite T_T is it because i said u looked like a squirrel and (read more)
Shindo Yo (0545H): i remembered u last night during my patrol!!! i helped out a granny with round cheeks like… (read more)
Shindo Yo (0600H): ill tell u all about it when u wake up ＼(o￣∇￣o)/❀ヅ❤♫
He rubs his eyes, trying to make sense of the messages, and not only because of all the shortcuts.
Shindo Yo. Shindo Yo. It takes him a while, but when it does, the messy dark hair and smug face and sneaky dark eyes come to surface, and his morning is immediately ruined.
The phone buzzes again with a chime, as another message comes in-- wake up already ur gonna be l8 for work again-- and this time Ochako stirs with the sound, one mittened hand blindly groping the floor around her.
“Hnn… shut up, I’m awake you noisy idiot,” she mutters, as her mitten keeps meeting empty floor.
He stares at her, and the phone in his hand, still in danger of freezing over in his palm. Without another word, he places it on the floor above her quietly, facedown.
Eventually, one mitten finds it. She takes the phone clumsily, tries to unlock the phone before she realizes that the touch screen can’t recognize her mittened thumb. Awfully, unfairly cute. Shouto would have teased her for it, if he weren’t so irritated.
She is awfully silent, staring at her phone and focusing on those annoying messages, like it takes her a while to decipher them as well. Over her shoulder, Shouto sees more cutesy kaomoji littering the screen. How anyone understands anything like that without having a headache from sensory overload is beyond him.
Still… Ochako thinks about it, and types a message back.
And all at once, Shouto remembers his place.
She isn’t supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be at her apartment, waking up in a bed alone. Or… someone else who isn’t him. Not him. Not like this, vulnerable and confused and conflicted.
He’s wrong about everything.
The message is too small and brief for him to read. He wonders what she tells him. Did she tell him good morning back? Tell him thanks for waking her up? Ask about that granny with round cheeks, tell him that they should talk about it face-to-face? Did she say where he was, that she’s actually in his apartment, or is it too unimportant a fact to say to that guy?
He looks away, because fundamentally it’s wrong to read someone else’s correspondences like this. Also, if he thinks about the two of them any more than this…
“Brrr… you’re getting cold,” Ochako says, as she places her phone face-down on the futon. “You okay?”
He catches himself right before he gets any colder. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
She blinks at him, a little more awake now, a little concerned. “You… don’t look okay. Is there anything on your mind?”
Is she ready to talk now? That’ll be difficult, because he suddenly doesn’t feel that he is.
“Nothing’s on my mind.”
She tilts her head up on his pillow, pink cheeks glowing and little eyebrows furrowing together. “W… well… if you say so…”
A silence bears down on them, heavy and incompatible with the warm light of the sun streaming in the room. Steadily suffocating, like a hand around his neck. He needs to stand up, to think a little clearer, to get away from that intoxicating cherry blossom scent--
“Shouto…”
He stands before she can say anything more, pulling out a shirt and a pair of boxers for her and dropping them next to her without another word. He pulls on a pair of sweats as well, and without thinking too much about it, begins to move about the room as if it’s just another Wednesday morning.
He crosses the room to move to the bathroom when he feels her tugging on his pants leg. He meets her confused gaze quietly, tilting his head and letting her do the talking.
(He really cannot talk right now.)
“Can we, you know… just talk for a second,” she says, patting the space next to her. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”
He regards the space next to her briefly, and opts to sit on the tatami in front of her. She gives him another odd look, but says nothing more about it. She doesn’t put on his shirt, and instead uses it to cover her front in a gesture of modesty.
The silence falls over them again, more unforgiving. Shouto gives her a few moments to form the words in her head.
“I mean, um. About what we did last night.” She rubs her arm self consciously, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. The warmth of last night, the quiet he felt inside staring at her back suddenly seems so far away.
When the silence becomes too much to bear, he says, even though he’s quite unready to speak: “If it was a mistake, I’m sorry.”
She looks up at him with a sheen in his eyes. “A… mistake?”
Her voice wavers. It’s a little unfair how hurt she appears over his words, when he felt just as awful in her silence a while ago.
He exhales quietly. “You seemed uneasy with me this morning… so I wasn’t sure.”
She bites her lip. “Oh… yeah, I mean if you aren’t sure…”
It seems that none of the words they’re using are working.
He tries again. “If you don’t want things to change between us, it’s all right. We don’t have to do this again.”
She swallows and looks away even farther. “I… I mean, if you don’t want to… I’m sorry, I must have pushed myself on you last night… I didn’t mean to, and…”
She didn’t mean to do any of those things with him last night.
“... I’m sorry if I got carried away, Shouto.” She bows her head, looking at the growing space between them. “I thought that you wanted to. And I wanted to, I definitely wanted to, so…”
She looks up with her shiny doe eyes, confused and vulnerable. Little globules of tears at the corners of her eyes. He really wants to hold her close again, but he wonders what for.
He needs her to be honest this time. He will be too, when he figures out the correct words to say. “Am I holding you back from anything?”
She stares at him with a hint of bewilderment in her eyes. “... why would you ask that?”
He sighs. “Because I feel like I am.”
She looks at him like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “No… isn’t it the opposite?” she says, with sudden heat behind her words. “I thought it was me all along… because aren’t you and Yui-san--”
Kodai? What does she have to do with this?
“Don’t look at me like that, Shouto,” she says in frustration. “I didn’t mean to see it, okay? You two holding hands in the cafe, in plain sight--”
Shouto’s jaw drops, if only for the incredulousness of the situation.
“--and, to be honest, I know there’s nothing wrong with it, because… there was nothing between us. Not really.” The tears begin to flow, and damn they look so wrong flowing down those cheeks. “And you never said anything about it, and it’s okay, I’ll respect you, but it’s stupid, isn’t it? I dunno why I feel screwed up, why… why I’m like this, why I need to be with someone, when...”
He wants to hold her, to rub his hands over her back, tell her that it’s okay to feel whatever she feels. But he doesn’t. Everything feels wrong today, somehow...
“There’s nothing between me and Kodai,” he tells her instead.
She stares at him. “What do you mean?”
He probably shouldn’t tell her about the investigation. It seems to be told to him in confidence. “It’s… work-related. The conversation, the hand-holding. They were things that she needed to do.”
“Wait…” She rubs her forehead rapidly. “So… she needed to talk to you in that private, intimate setting… needed to hold your hand in public…? Needed to have all those fake rumors about the two of you, for what? Work?”
He nods, because it’s the truth.
She scoffs. “How many women do you have to fake-date to get out of things?”
What? Shouto shakes his head. “No, that’s… we aren’t dating, not in any shape of form… she’s different from you.”
Her eyes snap open, and he knows he said something wrong again.
Irritation courses through her, raw and hot, and he feels it from his seat. “That’s a really funny thing to say, Shouto.” She stands, not giving a damn about how she’s still undressed. She bends over to collect her scrub pants from the floor, leaving Shouto’s clothes untouched. “I mean--you can just tell me that you don’t want to tell me anything and I’ll be okay with it, I’ll still pretend to be your girlfriend--”
“Ochako--”
“--but lying to me? To my face?” The tears feel different now. Instead of the quiet free fall over her cheeks, they’re boiling hot and fly from the corners of her eyes with the swift turn of her head. “I… I thought we were friends. I thought--”
“We are,” he says. “I just… can’t tell you everything right now, but--”
No, she isn't supposed to go away like this. They're supposed to talk, to clear the tangle of confusing emotions between them. He's supposed to finally know where he stood with her--if he's in the right place next to her, or in the wrong one, in between the two of them.
He tries to hold on to her wrist. She struggles against his grip briefly before she pulls away. Her skin screams red when she does.
She inhales sharply. He sees her mouth move silently, counting to ten, before she faces him again. “Sorry. I… I just can’t. Not right now. Maybe later? When we’re both calm.”
She finds her discarded clothes, starts shoving them on her body one by one without a single word uttered between them. Soon they’re at the door. Ochako is tying her shoelaces as quickly as she can, pointedly facing away from him.
He gathers his courage. “Ochako.”
“Yeah?” She doesn’t look up at him.
The air is suddenly cold in his lungs when he lets it go. “We… don’t have to keep on dating.”
That makes her turn her head to look over her shoulder.
He can’t meet her eyes, though. “If you have other things on your mind.” Other people. “I understand. We can call this off.”
She puts a hand over the doorknob, pausing thoughtfully.
He wants so badly to hold her, to keep her within the threshold. It’s painful being alone, and even more painful now that he’s aware of how his apartment will feel without her in it.
Instead, he tells her, “It’s about time I faced my problems on my own, anyway.”
Another pregnant pause, one where he’s too aware of how the room grows colder with every passing second. She turns her head, chestnut hair swishing in a way that he won’t see again.
“We’ll talk later,” is all she says, before disappearing behind the closed door.
*
Ochako plows through the two weeks that follow that morning in the best way she can--working herself to the bone until she has nothing to do but collapse on a heap on the floor and snooze away until her next shift.
They… don’t talk.
She stares at her phone and at the blinking cursor of the LINE App. Shouto’s last good night message stares back at her like a cold relic. The weeks of silence stretch out to infinity. Whoever said that time makes anything better was fuckin’ wrong.
She still doesn’t know what to say. She missed her chance. If they didn't get carried away--if she wasn't so desperate to feel anything else--
But he’s silent on his end as well. In the hospital, when they see each other, they lock eyes and it’s always heavy but always quiet. They don’t try to eat together anymore or even converse in public. Shouto has stopped offering her rides to her apartment. She volunteers for procedures every chance she gets, as long as it isn’t neurosurgery, and the other nurses have noticed.
They say nothing about it except exchange smug, knowing glances with each other. Mina frequently alternates between giving those people death glares and giving Ochako concerned ones. She doesn’t say anything though, because Ochako doesn’t say anything.
She seems to know enough, though. Her and Eijirou, because no matter what her shift is one or the other is always there to take her home, looking both ways to see if anyone is following them. Ochako wonders if Shouto has told them anything, and how much if he did, but she’s too ashamed to ask anything.
Her phone chimes incessantly, but she knows it isn’t him. They need to talk, but it isn’t like before. There’s an impassable wall between their hearts and their mouths.
Her apartment is cold.
Nothing changes.
*
Shindo Yo (1843H): hey Uraraka-san? Are you free right now?
Shindo Yo (1911H): ah, i dont mean anything bad i promise~
Shindo Yo (1911H): u n Todoroki-san got nothhn 2 worry bout
Shindo Yo (1912H): i promise im not bein creepy
Shindo Yo (1913H): i just noticed… ur rly stressed lately arent u (๑•﹏•)
Shindo Yo (1914H): if ur not busy! Come with me for drinks Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ
Shindo Yo (1916H): i know u arent good at drinking so its ok if u just have a milkshake or sth i’ll take care of all the beers n shit σ(≧ε≦ｏ)
Me (1916H): ok
Shindo Yo (1917H): and ill treat u of course, theres good burgers in the place im thinkin of and a mochi place nearby itll be awesome Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ
Shindo Yo (1919H): wait
Shindo Yo (1919H): ok?
Shindo Yo (1920H): （＊〇□〇）……！
Me (1921H): yep
Me (1922H): where?
Shindo Yo (1923H): ah wait gimme a moment
Me (1928H): …. Senpai?
Me (1930H): u were kidding werent u
Me (1932H): i knew it. Can u not make jokes like that if u wont do good on em.
Me (1934H): whatever im goin to bed
Shindo Yo (1938H): NOOO dont
Shindo Yo (1938H): sorry for not replying i was all messed up from patrol so i took a shower right here in the agency!!! Am putting on pants rn!
Shindo Yo (1939H): ten minutes! Ill pick u up in ten minutes!!!
Me (1942H): um, ,,,,ok
Me (1943H): we can just meet wherever u know
Me (1943H): just let me know where
Shindo Yo (1945H): well… i wanted to pick u up but if u like that better
Me (1946H): yep
Shindo Yo (1948H): ok then :)
Shindo Yo (1949H): Meathead Bar, near Kiyashi Ward, 30 mins!!!!
Me (1951H): eh
Shindo Yo (1952H): Too far? Like i said i can pick u up
Me (1953H): no its ok. Just… havent been to that place in a while, isnt that near the red light district
Shindo Yo (1955H): haha nah its fine
Shindo Yo (1956H): i know the owner. And ur gonna be with a pro so dont worry bout sleazebags
Me (1958H):...
Me (2000H): ok
Shindo Yo (2001H): yay!!! Ill see u chako-chan!
Shindo Yo (2002H): dont be late ok or else ill cry •(◐﹏◐)•
Me (2005H): ok ill see u soon yo-senpai
Shindo Yo (2006H): !!!!! (●♡∀♡)
Shindo Yo (2007H): ok!!! See u! omw!!!
*
She enters the Meathead Bar exactly thirty minutes later. The place only has a few people scattered about, maybe because it’s so early. It’s easy to spot Shindo speaking to a sour-faced purple-haired bartender at one end of the bar. The moment she enters, he catches her eye and waves her over.
“Hey, you,” he says with a big smile. “Don’t you clean up nice.”
She didn’t want to put so much effort into dressing up nicely tonight and had almost decided on wearing Kyoka’s band shirt underneath a plaid shirt and jeans… until she realized that the last time she made an effort was to meet the Todorokis. Somehow that was enough to ditch that outfit in favor of a pink dress that showed off her arms and the curve of her hips, and put a leather jacket over that.
She shrugs and takes note of his outfit too--a dark button-down, two buttons undone at the top and sleeves rolled up to show off his toned arms; skinny jeans and sneakers; glimmering silver on one ear, around his neck, on his watch.
He looks as flashy as ever. She sees people looking over their shoulder to drink in the sight of him--whether for his looks or because he’s the rising pro-hero Seismic remains to be known. “You look pretty awful yourself, senpai.”
“Ouch.” He makes a show of being hurt. “Ah, wait, let me introduce you to Meathead’s owner! So this is Shishikura Seiji, a meat specialist and all-around nice guy--”
He doesn’t look that nice based on the way his eyes look down on her, but okay--
“And this is Uraraka Ochako,” he says, his eyes darkening a little, “my ex-girlfriend from a decade or so ago.”
“Hrm,” grumbles Shishikura, with a sardonic twist of his mouth. “This isn’t one of those corny things where you’re actually introducing your wife, you bastard?”
“Oh no, he really is my ex,” Ochako says before Shindo can get another word in. “I totally hate this guy.”
Shindo makes another shot-to-the-heart gesture, while Shishikura snorts. “Good for you. So, Shindo, let me leave this potentially awkward situation now so I can get you your food and alcohol.”
“Right. Thanks Shishkabob.”
“Say that again and I’ll kick you out of the premises,” the purple-haired man says without humor, before disappearing from plain sight.
“So… that wasn’t too awkward, I hope,” Shindo laughs, as he gestures for Ochako to take a seat.
“Nope, just awkward enough.” She obliges and arranges herself on the seat. Her hands go to her phone almost on instinct to check her messages.
He notices and raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, I guess you have to tell your boyfriend that you got here safe, huh?”
There’s a message from Mina, asking her if she got home safe, plus a selfie of her puckering up. Another from Aoyama, who texted something in French that she needs Google Translate to decode.
There isn’t anything from Shouto, but she expected that.
“... yeah, I should,” she says, sending a heart emoji to Mina. After which, she locks her phone and puts it face-down at the bottom of her bag, where she won’t reach it so easily.
When she looks up, Shindo has his hand under his chin, staring at her with a knowing twinkle in his eye. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he says, as Shishikura silently gives them two shots of whiskey on the rocks. “So… Nurse Uraraka, how have you been? Has life-work balance been any easier for you?”
There isn’t any life-work balance to begin with. Ochako reckons that the components of her life have fallen off the scale ages ago. “It’s not bad. I’m sure it isn’t as bad as yours, with the upsurge of villains and all.”
He laughs. “You said it. I worked another double shift again today, you know. Been on the job since five in the morning.”
She whistles low. “Insane.”
And here he is, having drinks with her, with more energy than he knew what to do with. “Hey, it’s a calling, just like yours. We both just gotta do what we gotta do, right?” He sips the whiskey without wincing and leans forward. “So, Uraraka, have you been doing what you have to do?”
Besides running away from her stupid feelings?
There’s a gleam of curiosity in his eyes, and something underneath. Ochako knows him too well to sense that he’s digging for something else.
So she takes a thoughtful sip of her whiskey, also without wincing, and looks at him in the eyes. “I do what I can, senpai. But there’s not a lot of excitement on my end, so I’d much rather hear you talk tonight.”
The attempt at deflection registers with him, if the shine in his eyes is anything to go by. Still, he laughs it off. “Well, if you say so~ you know, today they asked for back-up in the Naruhata ward--man, that place is messed up, maybe there’s something in the water there…”
Soon, Shindo fills the air between them with his interesting stories. He’s really good at engaging the audience, and even Ochako allows herself to be genuinely interested in the things he’s saying.
When Shishikura comes back with meatballs, she asks for five shots of vodka.
*
The night goes on, and so does Ochako. By this time she’s finished the first glass of whiskey and the vodka. Shindo has ordered a shitty bottle of rum for them to finish. They’re halfway there when she tries to stand to leave for the restroom.
Tries, being the keyword, because she couldn’t figure out how to get down from the barstool. Does she go left, or right? Which foot goes down first? Where does she put her hands to support herself? She probably can’t do it on the table because it’ll float all the way to the ceiling and they’d have to pay for damages--
“Chako-chan!” Shindo’s guffaw is louder than necessary. He’s probably had one shot too many too. “You’re not okay anymore, aren’t you?”
“I’m good,” she says. She experimentally tries to put her left foot down. When it’s on solid ground, she puts the right one after, and stands up--
And stumbles, face-first, into something solid.
“Whoa there,” Shindo says, wrapping his arms around her, pressing her closer to his chest. “Chako, come on, you can barely stand, I don’t know what you’re trynna do but you’re gonna hurt yourself like this--”
He smells like pepper and spice, and it should smell good. She can’t help but inhale the scent of him as her fingers curl over the fabric of his shirt, struggles to keep herself upright.
“S--senpai--”
Stupidly though, all she’s able to think of is how different it smells from Shouto.
Ugh, where the hell did that come from? Why does her mind work like this, why does he randomly rise in her memory when she should be focused on her balance and stepping away from Shindo and not destroying Shishikura-san’s property--
“Chako-chan?”
The fabric in front of her face is suddenly damp. She wonders if it’s just his sweat or if she accidentally spilled his drink on him, or--
“Hey.” He pulls her face off of him and stares into her eyes. Gosh, his eyes are so dark, it’s so hard to read them, they’re so different, different, and fuck don’t go there, he’s telling you something important, “... wrong? Tell me, okay? Talk to me…”
Her head spins when she wills the words to get out. “No… it’s okay…”
“Huh?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. The alcohol is all over her head now. She should stop this shit, hasn’t this happened before, getting ass-faced in front of the wrong fuckin’ person and having to rely on someone else to take her home--can’t she do something right, for once? If she wasn’t such a weak-willed coward and told Shouto how she really felt, then--
“What?”
Her mouth closes, and she realizes from the croak of her voice that she just finished speaking.
“The wrong fuckin’ person, huh.” Shindo sighs. He pushes her at a distance from him, but doesn’t let her go. “Right. Well… this just got way past awkward enough.”
“... yeah. Sorry.”
All the words die in her throat. Somehow the two of them gain enough sobriety from that, and climb up back in their seats. An unbearable silence stretches between the two of them, before Shindo speaks up again.
“That stings a lot, Uraraka-san, but it’s not like I didn’t deserve it.” He pushes a glass of cold water to her and urges her to drink it before continuing. “I mean, from the way things ended between us, ‘the wrong fuckin’ person’ is probably the nicest thing you can call me.”
Another bout of silence. Her head’s hazy, but she doesn’t miss the visible struggle in Shindo’s usually unreadable eyes. One of his hands moves as if to seek hers, but he stops it midway.
“... Chako,” he inhales, uncharacteristically despondent. “I didn’t fight for you. I’m really sorry.”
The apology she’s been waiting for, ten years in the making. Her eyes widen in disbelief.
“... I didn’t think I’d regret letting you go as much as I did. So when I saw you again, after all this time, I thought I’d regret it if I didn’t at least try to get you back, you know? Even if I had to play dirty, even if you already had--I mean, have Todoroki. Am I wrong?”
But why doesn’t she feel as vindicated as she should?
She isn’t able to answer, though, and it gets him interested. He sits up a little straighter, forcing some clarity in his gaze. “This is why I thought I had a chance. I wasn’t sure where you and Todoroki stood.”
She swallows down a gulp of water. That makes two of them.
“Yikes, you two. You aren’t big talkers, aren’t you. I know, I got that vibe from the one time he wanted to ice me in a public hospital lobby just for talking to you.”
She chokes on her water. “Wh… what? You’re kidding!”
Despite herself, a smile is forming on her lips. He groans in frustration, because really, that’s what it takes for her to laugh again? “Just for tonight, I’m giving up on you, okay? But tomorrow, fuck Todoroki, I’ll keep on bugging you ‘til you’re sure of what you want for yourself.”
She… doesn’t know how to feel about that. But she agrees that she needs to have a good talk with herself before she even thinks about another person.
Thanks to the glass of water, it’s easier to stand up. She’s woozy, but at least she’s got enough sobriety to walk unassisted across the bar and out to the street, where Shindo hails a cab for her.
“How about you?” she asks, when he closes the door after her with the window rolled down.
He pokes her nose with a finger in response. “Let me get wasted a little more here, yeah? I mean, you just broke this innocent hero’s heart.”
“Idiot.”
“Agreed.” He signals the driver to go. Soon, the car lurches forward, and Ochako watches as Shindo’s silhouette gets smaller and smaller and eventually, disappears behind the doors.
Thankfully, she gets to her tiny apartment complex safely, and is sober enough to walk the short distance to her door. When she stumbles in, shoes kicked off and body flopped on the couch, she allows herself to stare at the ceiling, in a beat. Two beats.
So, Uraraka, have you been doing what you have to do?
She takes a deep breath to steady herself. She fishes out her phone, taps a message in it without thinking too hard on it for once, and presses send.
Her phone lights up with a message as soon as the message is delivered.
Me (0032H): hey, so about last time, im sorry. if ur not busy lets talk for real this time
Todoroki Shouto (0032H): Can we see each other soon?
