Chapter 12: Progress report
The therapist’s office had always felt like a sterile box to Katsuki. The beige walls, the single abstract painting that looked like a sad bruise, the too-plush chair that threatened to swallow him whole—it was a stage for uncomfortable honesty. But today, stepping out of the elevator into the soft-lit hallway, he didn’t feel the usual corrosive resentment. The world felt… different. The sun cutting across the polished floor seemed warmer, the conditioned air tasted cleaner, lighter. It was unnerving.
Dr. Saito looked up from her notes as he entered, her eyes sharp behind her glasses. “Katsuki. You seem…” She tilted her head, observing. “Lighter.”
“Don’t start,” he grumbled, slumping into his usual chair. But the bite wasn’t there. He ran a hand through his hair, staring at the geometric pattern on the rug.
“How was your week?”
A long pause. The old instinct was to deflect, to talk about work, about training, about anything but the churning mess inside. He’d spent years building fortresses around that mess. But the foundations felt sandy now.
“It was… fuck.” He let out a sharp breath, the curse hanging in the quiet room. “Complicated. Good. Shitty. I don’t know.”
“Start with ‘good’.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at his palms. The hands that could detonate buildings, that had pinned Izuku to a counter just hours ago. “The… thing. With Deku. It’s not just… fucking anymore.” The admission was gravel in his throat. “It’s something else. And I don’t know what to call it, and it pisses me off, but it’s… there.”
Dr. Saito nodded, writing nothing. “What does ‘something else’ feel like?”
“It feels like I’m gonna ruin it,” he said, the words coming faster now, pulled from a deep, guarded well. “I get these… flashes. Of seeing him hurt. Of someone else touching him. And it’s not just competitive. It’s fucking volcanic. I lose all sense. This morning I…” He trailed off, the memory of shattered ceramic and choked moans vivid behind his eyes. He couldn’t voice it. The shame was too fresh.
“You felt possessive. Fearful.”
“I felt insane,” he corrected, his voice low. “I hurt him. Not… not to be cruel, but because I couldn’t hold it in. The thought of those vultures with their cameras, their headlines, talking about him like he’s some… some public fucking monument… it makes me want to burn the whole city down.” He finally looked up, his red eyes blazing with confessed truth. “And then, after… I had to fix it. I had to… take care of it. Of him. It was the only thing that made sense.”
“That’s a significant pattern, Katsuki. The eruption, followed by immediate reparation. The urge to ‘fix’ the damage your emotions cause.” Dr. Saito set her pen down. “The progress is that you’re recognizing the pattern. You’re naming the fear. That’s the first, hardest step. But the work is in creating a space between the feeling and the action. A breath. A choice.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” he admitted, and the vulnerability in the statement didn’t feel like weakness. It felt like a fact.
“You’re learning. And it sounds like you have a powerful motivator.” She offered a small, genuine smile. “You said this ‘something else’ is good. Tell me about that part.”
A different tension left his shoulders. This one was warmer. “He… stays. Even when I’m a nightmare. He sees through it. He doesn’t fight my fire; he just… contains it. Lets it burn out. And then he’s just there.” He looked away, out the window at the distant city skyline. “It’s fucking terrifying. But it’s… it’s the only thing that’s ever made me want to be better. Not stronger. Better.”
“That,” Dr. Saito said softly, “is perhaps the clearest sign of growth I’ve heard from you. Acknowledging that ‘better’ is a different goal than ‘strongest’. A lot of this progress is yours, Katsuki. You’ve done the hard work of showing up here, week after week.”
He shook his head. “Don’t give me all the credit. I wouldn’t have fucking started if it wasn’t for him. I wouldn’t have seen the point.” He said it plainly, a stark confession. It was thanks to Deku. The damn nerd was his anchor, his catalyst, his reason.
“That’s a valid source of motivation,” she acknowledged. “But you’re the one walking the path. He can’t do the work for you. And from what you’ve shared today, you still have work to do. Managing that possessive fear, communicating before you reach the breaking point… these are your next mountains. But you’re no longer trying to climb them alone, and you’re no longer denying they exist. That’s everything.”
The session ended with that, the words settling in him not as a burden, but as a map. Flawed, incomplete, but a map nonetheless.
He left the building feeling strangely untethered, the therapeutic honesty leaving him raw but clean. The city noise was louder, the colors brighter. He needed to move, to process.
He was two blocks away, heading aimlessly towards the river, when a familiar voice cut through his reverie.
“Bakugou! No way, dude!”
He turned to see Kirishima and Kaminari spilling out of a convenience store, clutching oversized sodas and bags of chips. Kirishima’s face split into a gleaming grin. Kaminari’s eyes went comically wide.
“Whoa, you’re out in the daylight without scowling at children. You feeling okay?” Kaminari quipped, dodging the half-hearted swipe Bakugou aimed at his head.
“Shut it, Dunce Face.”
“Nah, he’s right, man,” Kirishima said, his red eyes scanning Bakugou’s face. “You look… good. Like, relaxed good. Not ‘I just murdered a villain’ good. Therapy must be going awesome.”
Bakugou shoved his hands in his pockets, a non-committal grunt his only reply. He wasn’t about to get into it on the sidewalk.
Kaminari, emboldened by the lack of immediate explosion, leaned in. “So, spill. Rumor is you and a certain green-haired Symbol of Peace have been… collaborating off-duty. Heavily.”
The old fury, the possessive snap, sparked in his gut. But he breathed. He heard Dr. Saito’s voice: A space between the feeling and the action. He didn’t shove Kaminari into a wall. Instead, he fixed him with a glare that was only 70% lethal. “What the fuck business is it of yours?”
“So it’s true!” Kaminari crowed, oblivious to the nuanced control Bakugou was exhibiting. “Dude, that’s huge! I mean, we all saw it coming since, like, forever, but still. Are you guys, like, a thing? Going on dates? Sharing milkshakes?”
“We’re not sharing fucking milkshakes,” Bakugou snarled, but the edge was blunted by the sheer absurdity. “It’s… complicated. Private. And if you breathe a word of this to any of those tabloid fucks, I will weld your mouth shut.”
Kirishima, ever the peacemaker, clapped a hand on Bakugou’s shoulder. “He’s just happy for you, man. We both are. It’s cool. Really.” His expression turned more serious. “And if you ever need to, y’know, talk about complicated guy stuff… we’re here. Bros before… complicated, emotionally fraught relationships.”
The offer was so earnest, so Kirishima, that Bakugou couldn’t even muster a proper insult. He just shrugged the hand off, but without heat. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t you two have patrol or something useless to do?”
“Our shift just ended!” Kaminari said, bouncing on his heels. “We’re gonna go play video games and eat junk food until we pass out. You should come! De-stress! Unless you have… other plans.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
For a fleeting second, Bakugou considered it. The normalcy of it. But his skin was humming with a different need. The vulnerability of the therapy session, the confession, the care he’d shown that morning—it had opened a floodgate. And now he needed the counterpoint. He needed the claiming, the raw physical truth that made the confusing emotions solid.
“Can’t,” he said, already turning away. “I’ve got shit to do.”
He left them on the sidewalk, Kirishima’s knowing smile and Kaminari’s disappointed whine fading behind him. His footsteps quickened. He pulled out his phone, thumbs flying over the screen.
To: Deku
Stay where you are. Don’t move. I’m coming home.
He didn’t wait for a reply. He broke into a run, not a hero’s sprint, but something urgent and personal. The city blurred around him. The session’s insights, his friends’ teasing, it all coalesced into a single, driving need.
He took the stairs to his apartment two at a time, fumbling with his keys. He shoved the door open.
Izuku was right there, in the middle of the living room, having apparently just gotten up from the couch. He was wearing one of Bakugou’s old gym shirts, soft and faded, and a pair of loose shorts. He looked soft, sleep-rumpled, and his eyes were wide with a mixture of concern and anticipation.
“Kacchan? Is everything—”
Bakugou kicked the door shut, crossed the room in three strides, and captured Izuku’s mouth in a searing, devouring kiss. It wasn’t gentle. It was a reclamation. He poured every unsaid thing from the therapy session into it—the fear, the gratitude, the terrifying admission of need. Izuku gasped into his mouth, hands coming up to fist in Bakugou’s shirt, holding on.
Bakugou broke the kiss, breathing harshly. “On the floor. Now.”
“W-what?”
“You heard me. On the fucking floor. On your knees.” His voice was a rough command, but his eyes were asking a different question.
Izuku understood. He always did. He sank to his knees on the hardwood, looking up, his green eyes dark and trusting.
Bakugou unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding free with a harsh rasp. He pushed his jeans and briefs down just enough to free his cock, already fully hard, thick and flushed. He gripped himself at the base, the tip brushing Izuku’s lips.
“Open.”
Izuku obeyed, parting his lips, his tongue darting out to taste the salty pre-come already beading there. Bakugou groaned, a deep, ragged sound. He didn’t wait, didn’t tease. He pushed forward, sliding into the wet heat of Izuku’s mouth in one slow, relentless glide until the head hit the back of his throat.
“Yeah, just like that,” Bakugou hissed, his hands tangling in the green curls. “Take it. All of it.”
He began to fuck Izuku’s mouth in earnest, not with brutal haste, but with a focused, possessive rhythm. Each thrust was deep, measured, claiming the space. He watched himself disappear between those lips, watched Izuku’s eyes water, watched his throat work to accommodate him. The obscene, wet sounds filled the quiet apartment.
“This is what I need,” Bakugou grunted, his hips pumping. “This right here. Your mouth on me. Your throat stretched around my cock. This is real. This is mine.” He was voicing the chaos, trying to ground the morning’s vulnerability in physical proof.
Izuku moaned around him, the vibration shooting straight up Bakugou’s spine. His own hands were on his thighs, clutching desperately. He was hard, a visible bulge in his shorts.
Bakugou pulled out abruptly, a string of saliva connecting Izuku’s swollen lips to his glistening tip. “Turn around. Hands and knees.”
Izuku scrambled to comply, his back arching, presenting himself. Bakugou didn’t bother with shorts or shirt. He yanked the fabric aside, exposing him. He spat into his hand, slicking himself roughly before pressing the broad head against Izuku’s entrance.
He didn’t ask. He pushed.
Izuku cried out as Bakugou sheathed himself in one deep, burning thrust. It was still tight, still a stretch, but the raw urgency from the morning was gone, replaced by a consuming, deliberate heat. Bakugou bottomed out and stayed there, buried to the hilt, his body curved over Izuku’s back.
“I talked about you today,” Bakugou whispered, his lips against the shell of Izuku’s ear. He began to move, a slow, grinding roll of his hips. “In that fucking office. I told her you make me want to be better.”
Izuku shuddered beneath him, a broken sob escaping him. “K-Kacchan…”
“Shut up. Just feel it.” Bakugou’s pace increased, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper. The slap of their bodies was a steady, driving beat. “I’m never gonna be good with words. I’m never gonna be… easy. But this…” He hammered into him, the force driving Izuku forward on his knees. “This I can do. This is how I tell you. Every time I’m inside you, that’s me telling you.”
It was filthy, it was raw, it was the only lexicon he had mastered. He gripped Izuku’s hips, his fingers pressing into the fading bruises from that morning, and pounded into him, over and over. The room filled with the sounds of their animalistic coupling: skin on skin, ragged pants, the creak of the floorboards, Bakugou’s guttural curses.
“You’re mine, Deku. My reason. My fucking problem. My only goddamn peace.” His rhythm broke, becoming frantic, desperate. “Come for me. Now.”
Izuku screamed, his body seizing as his climax ripped through him, painting the floor beneath them. The clenching, pulsating heat was too much. Bakugou followed, driving in one last, final time as he emptied himself with a roar, his release flooding deep inside, a hot, claiming rush.
They collapsed together onto the floor, a heap of tangled limbs and sweat-slicked skin. Bakugou’s weight pinned Izuku down, his face buried in the nape of his neck, his breathing a storm in the quiet.
Slowly, Izuku turned his head. His voice was a wrecked whisper. “You… you told your therapist about me?”
Bakugou didn’t lift his head. “Yeah. So what?”
A long silence. Then Izuku’s hand found Bakugou’s where it lay splayed on the floor beside him. He laced their fingers together, squeezing tight. It was answer enough.
They lay there on the hard floor, in the fading afternoon light, not fixed, not healed, but bound. The work wasn’t done. But for now, in the silent language of intertwined fingers and slowing heartbeats, it was enough.