Chapter 1: Explosive Confessions
The agency’s distant alarms were a dull, rhythmic throb in the walls, a sound Ochako Uraraka had learned to ignore. It was the scent that preoccupied her now—stale coffee, industrial cleaner, and him. Katsuki Bakugo filled the narrow space of the supply closet completely, his presence as tangible as the stacked crates digging into her back.
“Well?” His voice was low, a rough challenge in the fluorescent hum. “You followed me in here.”
She had. The justification—a missing casefile, a spent capture weapon—had dissolved the moment the latch clicked shut behind them. Now there was only the frantic beat of her own heart and the sharp, handsome lines of his face in the flickering light.
“I didn’t—“
He cut her off not with words, but with a step that eliminated the spare inches between them. His hand came up, not to cup her face, but to press his thumb against the rapid pulse in her throat. “Liar.”
Then his mouth was on hers, and every thought of pretense vanished. It was not a kiss of gentle affection, but of conquest and shared hunger. It was all teeth and demanding pressure, a spark that ignited the kindling of her own neglected wanting. She moaned into him, her hands fisting in the fabric of his hero costume, the material coarse and unyielding under her fingers.
“Bakugo,” she gasped when he broke to trail his lips down her jaw to the sensitive column of her neck.
“Say it again,” he commanded, his breath hot against her skin.
“Katsuki.”
His name, once so foreign, now felt like the only true word in the world. His hands were rough as they pushed the fabric of her costume from her shoulders, his touch imprinted with a startling, thrilling certainty. The shelves rattled behind her with their movement. A forgotten box of expired gauze tumbled to the floor. The single bulb overhead flickered, casting their frantic, tangled shadows like pantomime ghosts on the cinderblock wall.
He was everywhere. The scent of his sweat—sharp, clean, like nitroglycerin and ozone—was in her lungs. The hard planes of his body were against hers, leaving no room for gentleness, nor any desire for it. This was a fire she walked into willingly, time and again, knowing it would burn away everything else. In these breathless, stolen minutes, the cheerful girl who loved Izuku Midoriya did not exist. There was only this aching need, the shocking rightness of his demanding touch, and the blinding, shattering release that left her vision whited-out and her knees buckling, his arm the only iron bar keeping her upright.
After, slumped against the cold metal shelving, the world seeped back in. The buzz of the light. The distant, muffled echo of someone laughing in the corridor. The slow, steady drip of a leaky faucet somewhere. The air felt chilled now on her damp skin.
Bakugo adjusted his gear, his movements efficient, already distant. The vulnerability of moments before was sealed shut behind a familiar, prickly exterior. He shot her a glance, crimson eyes unreadable. “Fix your hair. You look a mess.”
Then he was gone, the door closing with a soft, definitive click, leaving her alone in the tomb of supplies.
Ochako smoothed her uniform with trembling hands. She gathered her brown hair, twisting it back into its habitual half-up style, her fingers methodical. A profound quiet settled in her chest, hollow and echoing. She stared at a watermark on the ceiling, a brownish stain shaped like a vague continent.
Why did his rough hands feel more right than Deku’s gentle smiles?
The thought was a shard of ice in her gut. Izuku’s kindness was her compass, his steadfast admiration a warm hearth she thought she wanted to curl up beside forever. He represented safety, a future bright with shared purpose and soft understanding. His touches were sweet, reverent. They made her feel cherished.
Katsuki made her feel unmade. And in the chaos of that unmaking, she felt terrifyingly, shamefully alive.
She exited the closet, the bright lights of the agency hallway a stark contrast. She moved on autopilot, a pleasant smile already fixed in place for any colleagues she might pass. Her body hummed, a tuned instrument recently played with brutal expertise.
She found Izuku in one of the smaller analysis rooms, bent over a mountain of incident reports. His green hair was a riot of curls from where he’d been running his hands through it, his brow furrowed in endearing concentration. He looked up as she entered, and his whole face transformed with a smile so wide and genuine it felt like a physical blow.
“Ochako! There you are. I was just cross-referencing these witness statements from the Takoba district incident. The patterns are really fascinating, want to see?” His eyes were bright, clear pools of green, holding nothing but open affection and a hint of excitement to share his discovery.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice sounding perfectly normal to her own ears. She slipped into the chair beside him, her shoulder brushing his. A familiar, comfortable warmth. “Show me.”
He launched into an animated explanation, his hands tracing arcs in the air. She nodded, asking questions in all the right places, the model of attentive support. But her skin still remembered the scrape of the shelves, the imprint of calloused hands. The scent of ozone seemed to linger in her sinuses.
As Izuku talked, his hand absently found hers on the desk, his thumb stroking lightly over her knuckles. It was a tender, loving gesture. She curled her fingers around his, squeezing gently.
And all she could think about was the furious, fleeting pressure in a dark closet, and why the memory of it made this dear, gentle touch feel, for one treacherous second, like settling for a shadow.