Chapter 2: The Garden of Earthly Delights
The moon was a cold, polished coin in the sky, and its light turned the agency's rooftop garden into a theatre of shadows and silver. Ochako could not bear the confines of her quarters, the walls still seeming to pulse with a phantom rhythm. The night air, cool and scented with jasmine, was a welcome chastisement.
She was not, however, alone.
Nejire Hado was a silhouette against the parapet, her long, wavy blue hair appearing almost ethereal, a cloud of cerulean in the monochrome night. She did not turn as Ochako’s footsteps crunched on the gravel path.
“He talks in his sleep, you know,” Nejire said, her voice carrying a musical lilt that felt out of place in the tense quiet. “Izuku. Mumbles about quirks and tactics. It’s terribly endearing.”
Ochako stopped a few feet away, the admission feeling like a key turned in a lock. “He is,” she agreed, her own voice soft. “Everything about him is.”
A beat of silence passed, filled only by the whisper of leaves.
“And yet, here we both are,” Nejire mused, finally turning. Her turquoise eyes were wide, inquisitive, but in the moonlight Ochako could detect a familiar, haunted restlessness. “Not down there, tucked into our kind, predictable beds.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“A common affliction lately, I find.” Nejire drifted from the edge, settling on the worn stone bench. She patted the space beside her. The gesture was not entirely friendly; it was a challenge.
Ochako sat, the ancient stone cold through her thin sleep shorts. The distance between them was careful, deliberate.
“He’s oblivious,” Ochako said after a moment, the words escaping like a sigh. “Wonderfully, painfully oblivious.”
“To everything but the greater good,” Nejire finished, a wry smile touching her lips. “It is one of his finest qualities. And one of our greatest curses.” She leaned back, gazing at the stars. “Do you ever wonder what would happen if he knew? Not just about you, or about me… but about the both of us? With him?”
The pronoun hung in the air, potent and unmistakable. There was no need to say the name Bakugo. His presence was a third entity on the bench, a heat between them in the cool night.
“I try not to,” Ochako confessed, her fingers twisting in her lap. “It feels like… like spilling something that can’t be cleaned up.”
“But you think about it,” Nejire pressed, her curiosity now sharp, pointed. “The… the contrast. Izuku’s hands are so gentle. Like he’s handling rare porcelain.” Her gaze slid to Ochako, luminous and knowing. “Katsuki’s are not.”
Ochako felt a flush that had nothing to do with the chill. The memory was immediate: the hard grip on her hip, the commanding, possessive squeeze of her backside in the stifling closet, a claim that left bruises of spirit if not of skin. A shiver ran through her, one of profound, unwanted recognition.
“No,” Ochako whispered, the truth dragged from her. “They are not.”
“He does it to me too, you know,” Nejire said, her tone deceptively light, as if discussing the weather. “Grabs me. Like he’s asserting a fact. And the most wretched part is…” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that was raw with confession. “I like it. I crave it. I find myself engineering situations just to feel that specific, outrageous grasp. It’s the only thing that makes my mind go quiet.”
The confession was a mirror held up, and Ochako stared into her own reflection. The careful walls she maintained crumbled. “Yes,” she breathed, the word a release of pressure. “It’s like he… he decides you, and for a moment, you don’t have to. All the choices, all the pretending, it just stops.”
Their eyes locked. In Nejire’s, Ochako saw not a rival, but an accomplice. The jealousy she occasionally felt toward the other woman—for her ease, her confidence, the very fact that she also knew the secret—morphed into something far more dangerous: a shared, feral understanding.
“It’s madness,” Ochako said, a desperate laugh catching in her throat.
“It is,” Nejire agreed. And then she was closer, her knee brushing Ochako’s. The scent of jasmine was overpowered by something warmer, the clean, sweet smell of Nejire’s skin. “Do you hate me for it?”
“I should.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
The admission was their undoing. It was Nejire who closed the final distance, but Ochako met her halfway. The kiss was nothing like Bakugo’s. It was not conquest, but collision. A frantic, searching melding of mouths born of shared frustration and a terrifying loneliness that gentle smiles could not touch. It tasted of stolen chamomile tea and salt, of jealousy curdled into a desperate kind of need.
Ochako’s hands came up, tangling in that astonishing blue hair, pulling her closer. Nejire’s grip was just as fierce, one hand splayed against Ochako’s back, the other cupping her jaw with an urgency that mimicked, yet fundamentally differed from, the roughness they both secretly worshipped. This was exploration, not domination. A hungry mapping of the forbidden territory of their own rivalry.
They kissed with a fervor that bordered on violence, a silent scream against their circumstances. It was confusion made physical. Ochako could feel the strong curve of Nejire’s body, so different from Bakugo’s hard angles, yet the feverish intensity was a haunting echo. They were, in this twisted garden, attempting to consume the phantom that haunted them both by consuming each other.
A sharp crunch of gravel on the path below.
They flew apart as if scalded, breathing ragged, lips swollen and gleaming in the moonlight. The world rushed back in—the hum of the city, the drip of a distant irrigation hose, the terrifying exposure. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, two ghosts caught in the act of remembering they had bodies.
Footsteps. Casual, unhurried, ascending the metal staircase to the roof.
Nejire smoothed her hair with trembling hands, her usual effervescent composure utterly shattered. Ochako stood, her legs unsteady, mechanically brushing nonexistent lint from her shorts. The scent of jasmine was now cloying, the moon’s gaze accusatory.
They did not speak. They could not. The understanding that passed between them was now freighted with a new, more profound layer of complication. The footsteps grew nearer, a steady, innocent tap-tap on the final steps.
They were, both of them, breathless. And utterly, completely exposed.