Chapter 4: The Aftermath
The gym air was thick with the smell of rubber mats and old sweat. Kirishima didn’t move, just watched Bakugou stalk over to the rack of Olympic plates. The silence between them wasn’t comfortable; it was a live wire, taut and humming.
Bakugou started loading a barbell, the iron plates clanging together with violent, unnecessary force. Clang. Clang. Clang.
“You wanna talk about it?” Kirishima finally asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“No.”
“Okay.” Kirishima grabbed his water bottle, took a long swig. He leaned against the squat rack, his arms crossed. He didn’t leave. “Saw Uraraka bolt out of the main building like a ghost was chasing her. Then you come in here looking like you’re about to make the equipment explode. And Midoriya’s been MIA since noon. It’s a fun little puzzle.”
Bakugou’s hands flexed, a tiny spark popping at his fingertips. “It’s none of your damn business.”
“It becomes my business when my friend is acting like a walking war crime,” Kirishima shot back, his patience thinning. “What did you do, Bakugou?”
The barbell was overloaded now, a ridiculous amount of weight. Bakugou gripped it, his knuckles white. He didn’t lift it. Just held on. The metal was cool and unforgiving under his palms. He saw the locker room door opening. He saw the look on Round Face’s face. He heard the choked sound Izuku made.
“I made sure he couldn’t pretend,” Bakugou said, the words ground out like gravel. “He keeps… he looks at me with those fucking eyes and then he tries to walk away. He thinks we can just have this… this secret thing in the dark. He’s ashamed of it. Of me.”
Kirishima closed his eyes for a second, a pained understanding dawning. “So you decided to make it public. In the worst way possible. Who saw?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, it does. Because if you torched this thing just to prove a point, then you’re even stupider than I thought.”
Bakugou finally wrenched the barbell off the floor, muscles corded in his neck and back with the strain. He hoisted it, held it at his chest, then slammed it back down with a crash that echoed through the empty gym. The noise was satisfying. It hurt. “He’s not yours to defend,” Bakugou snarled.
“I’m not defending him! I’m trying to defend whatever the hell is left of you in there!” Kirishima pushed off the rack, stepping into his space. “You like him. Fine. It’s messed up and complicated, but fine. But this? This isn’t liking someone. This is you trying to destroy something before it can hurt you. You’re scared.”
Bakugou lunged, getting right in Kirishima’s face. “I’m not scared of anything!”
“You’re terrified!” Kirishima didn’t back down an inch, his own voice rising. “You have this one thing, this fucked-up, real thing with the one person who’s always mattered, and you can’t handle it! So you’re burning it down to ash because that’s easier than admitting it matters! You’d rather be a villain in his story than risk being something he leaves!”
The words landed like a well-aimed punch to the diaphragm. Bakugou couldn’t breathe. The raw, ugly truth of them echoed in the hollow space Kirishima’s accusation carved out. He turned away, a sharp, jerky movement, and drove his fist into the heavy bag dangling nearby. Once. Twice. The chain rattled violently.
“He won’t leave,” Bakugou muttered, more to himself than to Kirishima. It sounded like a curse.
“He might now,” Kirishima said, his voice dropping, losing its heat and leaving only grim reality. “You might have finally given him a reason to.”
Izuku had found the most deserted conference room on the agency’s west side, a place used for storing old filing boxes. The only light came from a single dusty desk lamp he’d switched on, casting a small pool of yellow onto the polished wood. He sat in the dark beyond it, perfectly still, hands flat on the table. If he didn’t move, maybe the feeling would pass. Maybe the memory would dissolve. The cold seep of shame had solidified into a heavy, leaden weight in his stomach.
The door clicked open.
He didn’t need to look up. He knew the soft sound of her footsteps.
Ochaco slipped inside and closed the door behind her. She didn’t turn on the overhead lights. She just stood there for a moment, a silhouette in the dimness, then walked over and sat in the chair opposite him. The lamplight caught the worry in her eyes, hardening their usual warmth into something sharper.
Minutes ticked by. The hum of the fluorescent lights in the hallway was a distant insect buzz.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” she said finally. Her voice was quiet, but it wasn’t gentle.
“I know.”
“I’ve been looking for you for two hours.”
“I’m sorry.”
Another stretch of silence. She leaned forward, the light now illuminating the tight set of her jaw. “Look at me, Izuku.”
He forced his head up. His eyes felt grainy, dry. Her gaze was direct, scanning his face, then dropping. It lingered on the collar of his shirt, on the specific spot where the fabric rubbed against the broken skin underneath.
Without a word, she reached out. Her fingers were careful, but they brushed the edge of the mark, pushing the collar down just a fraction. The dark, vicious bruise of teeth was unmistakable in the low light. Izuku flinched, a full-body shudder he couldn’t suppress.
Ochaco’s hand snapped back as if burned. Her breath left her in a short, pained exhale. All the unasked questions, the horrible assumptions, crystallized in that one gesture.
“He’s hurting you,” she whispered. The words weren’t a question.
Izuku’s vision blurred. He looked down at his hands, gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles were bone-white. The confession, when it came, was wrenched from somewhere deep and broken, a dam giving way under a pressure he could no longer contain.
“I know,” he choked out, his voice thick and raw. “But I keep letting him.”
A tear finally escaped, tracking a hot path down his cheek and splashing onto the wood. Then another. He couldn’t stop them. “He’s all I’ve ever wanted. Since we were kids. And now… now he sees me. But it’s like this. It’s only like this. In the dark, or against a wall, or… or where someone can walk in.” A ragged sob hitched in his chest. “And I let him. Because when he touches me, it’s the only time he doesn’t look at me like I’m a rival. He looks at me like I’m… his. And I’m so stupid, Ochaco. I’m so weak for him.”
Ochaco’s face crumpled. She reached across the table, covering his trembling hands with her own. “You’re not weak. You’re in love with someone who doesn’t know how to love you back without breaking you.”
“What if this is the only way he can?” Izuku’s question was a plea, desperate and hopeless. “What if I ask for more and he just… stops?”
“Then you walk away.” Her voice gained strength, firm with a ferocity that was purely Uraraka. “You are Deku. You are one of the best heroes I know. Your heart is your greatest strength, but you can’t let him use it as a target. This,” she gestured vaguely towards his shoulder, his disheveled state, “this isn’t a relationship. This is a demolition.”
He knew she was right. The logical, analytical part of his brain had been screaming it for weeks. But it was tangled in a visceral knot of memory—the heat of Bakugou’s skin, the intensity of his focus in those moments, the forbidden, addictive taste of having a piece of him, however damaged.
“I don’t know how to walk away,” he admitted, the truth of it hollowing him out further.
Ochaco squeezed his hands. “Then you start by not being alone with him. You start by telling him ‘no.’ You start by treating the wound, Izuku. Not just the one on your shoulder.” She leaned in closer, her eyes blazing in the lamplight. “And if he can’t handle that? Then he doesn’t get to have you at all.”
The finality of it hung in the air between them. It sounded so simple. So impossible.
Down in the gym, Bakugou stood panting before the heavy bag, his fists throbbing. Kirishima’s words echoed. You’d rather be a villain in his story.
The thought of Izuku walking away, truly walking away, didn’t bring the surge of defiant anger he expected. It brought a cold, quiet void. A different kind of fear. One he had no name for and no explosion powerful enough to obliterate.
He looked at his scarred, sweating hands. The hands that held Izuku down. The hands that fought beside him. The hands that might have just thrown away the only thing that had ever made the relentless drive to be number one feel strangely, inconveniently, incomplete.
The hands that might have just thrown away the only thing that had ever made the relentless drive to be number one feel strangely, inconveniently, incomplete. Bakugou stared at them. They were good hands. Strong. Precise. They could dismantle a villain’s support gear in seconds or calibrate the pressure of his sweat glands to a millibar. Yet they seemed to fumble everything that mattered in that dark, locker-room silence.
He left the gym without another word to Kirishima, the echo of his own footsteps his only company.
The sterile hallway air felt thin, insufficient. He didn’t go looking for Izuku. The urge was a physical pull in his chest, a magnetic north he had to consciously resist. He went to the one place that demanded order: his own agency office. He shut the door and tried to focus on the incident reports glowing on his screen. The words blurred into meaningless shapes. All he saw was the violent red mark on pale skin, the look of utter devastation in green eyes as the door swung open.
Ochaco was a silent, steadfast shadow.
When Izuku finally left the storeroom conference room, she walked with him, her shoulder just inches from his. She didn’t ask where he was going. She just followed. To the supply closet for a fresh roll of bandages. To the break room for a glass of water he didn’t really want. She positioned herself in the doorway each time, her back to the room, her eyes scanning the hall.
Izuku didn’t mind. He felt grateful.
The simple presence of her body in the threshold was a barrier, a breather. He knew he couldn’t face Bakugou again. Not alone. Not in some empty corridor or a flickering stairwell. He’d be torn to putty, and that wasn’t something that could happen right now. He needed to solidify. He needed to remember how to be Deku, not just the thing Bakugou broke in private.
“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured as she leaned against the doorframe of the men’s room. He needed to splash water on his face.
“Yeah, I do,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She kept her gaze fixed down the hall, a sentry in a pink tracksuit. “Iida’s catching an earlier flight back. He’ll be here tonight.”
A fresh wave of shame washed over Izuku. “You called Iida?”
“I called a friend,” Ochaco corrected, finally glancing back at him. Her expression was soft but unwavering. “Because this is a situation. And Tenya Iida is very good at situations.”
The thought of Iida’s stern, logical concern was both comforting and terrifying. It made the mess feel official, real in a way the hiding couldn’t sustain. Izuku turned the cold tap on full, cupping his hands under the stream. The water was a shock, a brief, clean pain.
As he dried his face, a familiar, aggressive cadence of footsteps echoed down the tiled hallway. Izuku froze, the paper towel crumpling in his fist. Ochaco’s posture shifted instantly, from leaning to standing fully upright, blocking the entrance.
Bakugou rounded the corner and stopped short. His eyes, bloodshot and intense, locked not on Izuku, but on Ochaco standing guard. He took in the scene: her deliberate stance, Izuku visible but shielded behind her in the bright bathroom light. His jaw tightened. A muscle flickered in his cheek.
He didn’t speak. He just stared, a silent, charged challenge hanging in the air between him and Ochaco. The hallway felt like it was compressing, the oxygen thinning.
Ochaco didn’t flinch. She met his gaze, her chin tilted up just a fraction. It wasn’t a hero facing a rival. It was one friend protecting another from a storm. She didn’t say “you can’t come in.” She didn’t have to. Her body was the sentence.
Bakugou’s red eyes flickered past her shoulder, just for a second, meeting Izuku’s. What Izuku saw there wasn’t the usual predatory heat or anger. It was something more complicated, a frustrated, trapped acknowledgment. Of the barrier. Of the new rules.
With a low, dismissive scoff that sounded forced even to his own ears, Bakugou turned on his heel. He walked away, the sharp sound of his retreat a punctuation mark in the tense quiet.
Izuku let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. His knees felt weak.
“See?” Ochaco said softly, not turning around, still watching the now-empty hallway. Her voice was a gentle anchor. “You just have to not be alone.”
The echo of Bakugou’s footsteps faded, leaving a fragile quiet in the bathroom. Izuku’s shoulders slumped, the paper towel a damp ball in his hand. He stared at the drain, watching the last of the water spiral away.
“He listened,” Izuku whispered, the concept foreign.
“He saw a boundary,” Ochaco corrected gently, finally turning to face him. Her expression was weary but resolved. “He knows I won’t just stand aside. That changes the calculus.”
She guided him out, her hand a light, steadying pressure on his elbow. They didn’t go back to the main floors. Instead, she led him to a small, infrequently used medical alcove, a place for patching up minor scrapes without the drama of the full infirmary. The air smelled of antiseptic and dust.
“Sit,” she instructed, pulling out a stool. She found a clean kit and unwrapped a sterile pad. “Let me see it. Really see it.”
Izuku hesitated, his fingers trembling at the collar of his shirt. The act of showing her felt like another confession, more intimate than his tears in the dark room. He slowly pulled the fabric aside.
Ochaco’s breath caught. In the bright clinical light, the mark was apocalyptic. A brutal constellation of purple and black, the clear indentation of teeth breaking skin at the center. It was a claim written in violence.
“Izuku,” she breathed out, the name heavy with a sadness that tipped into anger. She dabbed gently at the broken skin with antiseptic. He flinched but didn’t pull away. “This isn’t a love bite. This is an assault report waiting to happen.”
“It’s not—” he started, the old denial automatic.
“Stop.” Her voice was firm, brooking no argument. She applied a clean bandage with precise, efficient motions. “Just stop. You can love someone and still acknowledge they’re hurting you. The two things can exist at the same time. That’s what makes it so hard.”
He had no answer for that. The truth of it settled into his bones, cold and final. She was right. He loved Katsuki Bakugou with a depth that had shaped his entire life. And Bakugou was systematically destroying him, piece by piece.
The door to the alcove hissed open. Tenya Iida stood there, still in his travel coat, a small suitcase at his feet. His glasses gleamed under the lights, obscuring his eyes for a moment. He took in the scene: Izuku on the stool, shirt pulled open, Ochaco finishing the bandage.
His posture, usually so rigidly perfect, seemed to deflate by a single, controlled degree. A deep disappointment, not in Izuku, but in the reality of the situation, washed over his features.
“Uraraka,” Iida said, his voice a low, measured baritone. He gave a short, sharp nod. “Midoriya.” He stepped inside and let the door close. “My flight was earlier than anticipated. I came directly.”
“Thanks for coming, Tenya,” Ochaco said, sealing the bandage’s edge.
Iida set his suitcase down carefully. He approached, his eyes scanning the bandaged injury, the pallor of Izuku’s face, the red-rimmed eyes. “I will not ask for details you are not prepared to give,” he stated, his hands chopping the air in a small, restrained gesture. “Uraraka’s summary was… sufficient to convey the severity. My primary question is this: are you safe right now?”
Izuku looked at his hands. “He just walked away. Ochaco was there.”
“That is not what I asked,” Iida pressed, his tone leaving no room for evasion. “If she were not there, at this moment, would you be safe? From him. From yourself.”
The question hung, stark and unavoidable. Izuku thought of the magnetic pull he felt, the terrifying desire to seek out the very source of his pain for some twisted form of solace. He thought of his own whispered confession: I keep letting him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, the words hollow.
Iida nodded, as if this was the only honest answer he’d expected. “Then you are not safe. Effective immediately, you will not be alone in this building. We will implement a rotating escort. Myself, Uraraka, Kirishima, Todoroki—who is on patrol but has been alerted. You will not go to your apartment alone. You will either stay with one of us or we will stay with you.”
“Iida, you can’t just—” Izuku began, overwhelmed.
“I can,” Iida interrupted, his voice rising slightly. “As your friend and as a fellow pro hero who is duty-bound to protect, I can and I will. This is a hostile situation. We are treating it with appropriate protocol.” He adjusted his glasses, a familiar gesture that meant his mind was made up. “Bakugou has escalated beyond rivalry, beyond… whatever this personal entanglement is. He has created a professional hazard. And he will be dealt with.”
A cold dread pooled in Izuku’s stomach. “Dealt with? What does that mean?”
“It means,” Iida said, his gaze steely, “that his conduct is no longer a private matter. It is affecting agency cohesion and, by extension, public safety. There will be consequences. They are already in motion.”
Bakugou stormed back to his room, the slam of his door echoing down the agency’s residential hallway. He braced his hands on his desk, head hanging, trying to steady his ragged breathing. The image of Round Face standing guard, of Deku hiding behind her, fueled a fresh, impotent rage.
“So?”
The voice, dry and utterly devoid of surprise, came from the corner. Bakugou’s head snapped up. Shota Aizawa sat slumped in the room’s single armchair, wrapped in his capture weapon, looking as tired and perpetually unimpressed as ever. He had a file folder open on his lap.
Bakugou straightened, his guard slamming up. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“Waiting,” Aizawa said, flipping a page. “You’re predictable. You stir up a Category Five emotional hurricane and then retreat to your nest to sulk. Saves me time tracking you down.”
“Get out.”
“No.” Aizawa looked up, his dark eyes boring into Bakugou. “We had an appointment in my office two hours ago. You missed it. So I brought the meeting to you. Sit down.”
It wasn’t a request. It was an eraser-quirk level of command that stripped the oxygen from the room. Bakugou, bristling, slowly sank onto the edge of his bed, facing his old teacher.
Aizawa held up the file. “Damage report from the incident on 14th Street. The utility pole you ‘redirected’ through a storefront during your little villain apprehension last week. The monitor’s review cites ‘excessive collateral damage stemming from volatile focus.’ The city is sending the bill to the agency. It’s five figures.”
Bakugou’s jaw worked. “The villain had a hostage. I made a call. It was the fastest solution.”
“It was the messiest solution,” Aizawa corrected, his voice flat. “It’s the third such report this month. Your precision is slipping. Your threat assessment is skewed toward overkill. You’re starting fights with allied heroes during coordinated operations over perceived slights. Your incident paperwork is either late or looks like it was written during a seizure.” He dropped the file on the small desk. “You’re a liability.”
The word was a slap. “I’m a top-ten ranked hero.”
“You’re a grenade with the pin halfway out, and everyone in a ten-meter radius is waiting for the bang.” Aizawa leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “This isn’t about your skill, Bakugou. It’s about your head. And something is very clearly wrong with it.”
Bakugou looked away, his throat tight. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Aizawa’s voice dropped, losing its bureaucratic edge and gaining the grim tone of a man who’d seen too many good heroes break. “Whatever is going on with you and Midoriya is bleeding out. It’s contaminating your work. It’s in your eyes right now. It was in your eyes when Uraraka walked into that locker room today.”
Bakugou went very still. “How do you—”
“Security footage has audio, unfortunately. The review panel saw it. I saw it.” Aizawa’s expression was unreadable. “They wanted to suspend you on the spot. I argued for a conditional warning. You’re on the thinnest possible ice.”
He let that hang, a sentence more effective than any explosion. Bakugou felt the world narrowing, the walls of his cramped room pressing in. His career, the only thing he’d ever been certain of, was suddenly a fragile thing in this man’s hands.
“Here is your warning,” Aizawa continued, each word deliberate. “Fix it. Whatever this is, this toxic, destructive thing between you two, you fix it. You end it, you transform it, you get a handle on it—I don’t care how. But it stops affecting your judgment. It stops playing out in agency hallways. It stops now.”
“Or what?” Bakugou challenged, the defiance automatic but hollow.
Aizawa stood up, looking down at him with a pity that was worse than contempt. “Or you face a suspended hero license. Indefinitely. You will not put on that costume again until a board-certified psychiatrist approves you for duty. You will be benched. You will be nothing.”
He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. He didn’t look back.
“You have one week, Bakugou. Get your house in order. Before it burns down with you inside it.”
The door clicked shut.
Bakugou sat alone in the ringing silence. The cost of the utility pole meant nothing. The threat of suspension was a thundercloud on the horizon. All he could see was the bandage on Deku’s shoulder, applied by someone else. All he could hear was his own growl in the locker room, and the devastating silence that followed. Fix it.
He had no idea where to even begin.