Chapter 4: The Morning After Pancakes
The scent of burning batter was the first sin of the morning. Ochako smelled it the moment she pushed through the swinging door into the communal kitchen, a bitter note beneath the comforting aromas of coffee and browning butter. It was an offence against Izuku’s typical perfection, and it felt, to her frayed nerves, like an omen.
He stood at the large industrial stove, his back to her, a faded apron tied over his simple sleep clothes. His green hair was a wild tapestry against the steam rising from the griddle. He was humming, a tuneless, happy sound, as he scraped the blackened edge of a pancake onto a growing stack of discards.
“Morning, Ochako!” he called, without turning. His voice was warmth itself, a hearth after the sterile chill of Bakugo’s quarters. “Slight mishap. Got distracted thinking about patrol sectors. The usual butter and brown sugar mix is over there.”
The kindness was a physical weight. It pressed upon the fresh memory of the night—the brutal geometry of the bunk, the shared, shuddering breaths, the way her body still ached with a profound and unfamiliar tenderness. She moved to the vast island counter, her steps careful, as if the tiles might crack beneath the burden of her secrets. She gripped the cool granite edge, needing its solidity.
The swinging door hissed again.
He entered not with a declaration, but with a predator’s silence. Katsuki Bakugo, dressed in loose grey sweats and a tight black tank that left little to imagination, padded to the coffee pot. He poured a mug, black, his movements economical. He did not look at her. He did not greet Izuku. He simply leaned against the doorframe, silhouetted by the hallway’s fluorescent light, and took a slow sip.
Ochako’s breath shallowed. The kitchen, once a sanctuary, became a theater.
Izuku, blissfully stage-blind, chattered on. “I was reviewing the incident maps from the Luzon district,” he said, deftly pouring a fresh circle of batter that hissed satisfyingly on the clean steel. “The pattern suggests the smugglers are using the old drainage canals after midnight. I think if we shifted Hado’s aerial patrol to a later—” He paused, glancing over his shoulder with a smile that could mend broken china. “Syrup? Or are you sticking with the sugar today?”
It was then that she felt it.
A presence at her back, not touching, but close enough to warp the very air. Then, the deliberate, warm weight of a hand settling low on her spine. It slid down, over the soft fabric of her skirt, and grasped the full curve of her backside. His touch was firm, proprietary, a brand through the cotton. A jolt, equal parts panic and thrilling recognition, shot through her.
She froze, her knuckles bleaching white against the counter. Bakugo’s other hand, she saw from the corner of her eye, remained casually wrapped around his coffee mug. He was still looking toward the window, his profile impassive, as if his entire attention was devoted to the view of the agency’s concrete courtyard.
But his fingers began to move. A slow, deliberate kneading, the rhythm at odds with Izuku’s cheerful cadence. He knew every nuance of her response, every secret tremor. His thumb found the sensitive underside of the swell, a press that made her thighs tighten.
“Ochako?” Izuku prompted, his spatula poised. “Syrup?”
“Yes,” she managed, the word strangled. “Yes, please.” It was all she could muster. A performance of normalcy while her world narrowed to the incendiary point of contact beneath her skirt.
Bakugo’s hand shifted. It crept around the line of her hip, his fingers tracing the seam of her thigh through the fabric before sliding beneath the hem of her skirt. The cool air of the kitchen met her skin, followed by the breathtaking heat of his palm splayed across the bare flesh of her rear. His claim was absolute, audacious. Here, in the heart of their shared home, with Izuku six feet away discussing civic duty.
His thumb now stroked higher, a slow, maddening arc along the crease where thigh met buttock. It was a promise, and a reminder. A reminder of the night, of his possession, of the line they had all crossed together. Her cheeks flamed with a humiliation that only fed the coiled heat in her belly. She stared at Izuku’s back, at the dependable set of his shoulders, and felt her betrayal as a sharp stone in her throat.
“You okay?” Izuku asked, his voice tinged with that gentle concern that was his hallmark. He half-turned, his freckled face kind and open. “You look a little flushed.”
Before she could fabricate a lie about the stove’s heat, Bakugo’s thumb made a decisive, circling motion against her clit, through the thin barrier of her underwear. The sensation was so acute, so shockingly direct, that her knees buckled. A sharp, gasped inhale tore from her.
“Fine!” she chirped, the sound impossibly bright and brittle. “Just… hungry. They smell wonderful, Izuku.”
She gripped the counter until her fingers throbbed, her entire being focused on remaining upright, on keeping her expression a placid mask. Bakugo’s hand worked with a horrifying, leisurely precision. He varied his touch—a grinding pressure, then a light, teasing stroke, then a focused rub that made stars dance at the edges of her vision. Each movement was a sentence in a silent, vulgar conversation only they understood.
Izuku, satisfied, turned back to his griddle. “Great! Almost done this batch. I figured we could all have a proper team breakfast before the briefing. Build some morale.”
The hypocrisy of it was exquisite. Morale. Ochako bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper. Bakugo’s finger hooked the edge of her underwear, tugging it aside. The direct contact was an electric shock. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for control, for the floor to open.
“Where’s Hado?” Bakugo spoke for the first time, his voice a gravelly, normal pitch. He addressed Izuku, but his hand continued its devastating work. “Overslept again?”
“I think so,” Izuku replied, blissfully conversational. “I knocked on her door but no answer. She must have been up late studying those quirk resonance reports.”
A sound, perilously close to a whimper, escaped Ochako’s lips. She disguised it as a cough. Bakugo’s finger dipped, not inside, but along her slick, swollen folds, collecting the undeniable evidence of her complicity. He brought his hand, the one that had been on his coffee mug, up to his mouth. She saw him, in her peripheral vision, deliberately lick his finger.
The gesture was so blatantly obscene, so shockingly possessive, that a wave of dizziness washed over her. It was a declaration. You are mine, even here. Especially here.
“Pancakes are up,” Izuku announced, triumphantly sliding a golden stack onto a plate. He turned, beaming, plate in hand.
In that instant, Bakugo’s hand withdrew from beneath her skirt. It returned, with insolent leisure, to its former position over the fabric, a simple, seemingly casual touch. The absence of that direct contact felt almost as shocking as its presence. Ochako’s body throbbed with unfinished sensation, a scream trapped in her sinews.
Izuku placed the plate before her, his green eyes bright. “Dig in! I’ll go see if I can rouse Nejire. We shouldn’t start without her.”
He wiped his hands on his apron and moved toward the door. As he passed Bakugo, he clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “You want some, Kacchan? There’s plenty.”
Bakugo’s hand finally left her body. He pushed off the doorframe. “Yeah, whatever,” he grunted, moving to the counter to take a plate. As he reached past her for the syrup, his hip pressed into hers—a brief, solid contact that echoed through her.
The door swung shut behind Izuku, his humming fading down the hall.
Silence descended, thick and charged. The only sounds were the drip of the coffee pot and the sizzle of the forgotten griddle. Ochako stared at the perfect pancakes, fluffy and golden, a masterpiece of Izuku’s nurturing nature. They looked like ashes in her mouth.
Bakugo stood beside her, loading his plate with a ruthless efficiency. He did not look at her. He spoke to the syrup bottle. “Eat. You’ll need your strength.”
The mundane cruelty of it broke her. A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path through the powder on her cheek. She did not wipe it away.
Before she could formulate a thought, the kitchen door opened again. It was not Izuku.
Nejire Hado floated in, her long blue hair tied in a messy, elegant knot, her turquoise eyes still soft with sleep. She wore an oversized shirt that slipped off one shoulder. She saw them, standing together at the counter, and paused. Her gaze flicked from Ochako’s tear-streaked face to Bakugo’s impassive one, down to the space between them where his hand had so recently been.
A profound, knowing silence passed between the three of them. It was the silence of the bunk, of shared degradation, of a secret that had grown too large for the dark.
Nejire’s lips, still slightly swollen from the night’s activities, curved into a small, complicated smile. It held no victory, only a deep, weary recognition. She drifted to the coffee pot, her movements languid. “Something smells burnt,” she said, her voice morning-rough.
Ochako looked down at the pancakes, the symbol of everything pure she was betraying. Then she looked at Nejire, her accomplice. Then at Bakugo, her conqueror.
She picked up her fork. The metal felt cold and heavy in her hand. The first bite, when she took it, tasted of nothing at all.