Chapter 4: Playing Pretend
The pretense was a thin, brittle shell, and they were both terrible at maintaining it.
Weeks bled into each other, a monotony of routine punctured by sharp, jarring memories. During the day, they were Katsuki and Naomi. Best friends. Rivals. The dynamic was familiar, a well-rehearsed play with all the old lines. They bickered over training regimens, argued about takeout, traded insults that lacked their old, carelessly brutal edge. It was all performed with a frantic, hollow energy.
“Move your feet, Kino, or are you waiting for a written invitation?” Katsuki barked across Gym Gamma, his voice echoing off the high ceiling.
“Worry about your own form, Bakugo,” she shot back, not looking at him as she adjusted the weights on a bar. “Your right hook’s been sloppy all week. Thinking too hard about your hair gel?”
He flipped her off, a reflexive gesture, but his eyes tracked the sweep of her white ponytail as she turned away. That was the problem. He was always tracking her. Noticing the way her leggings clung to the curve of her calf, the faint, almost invisible bruise on her hip from a sparring match that had long since faded. A bruise he hadn’t put there.
The memories didn’t stay politely confined to the night. They ambushed him in the sterile gym light. The feel of her ribs under his palm as she gasped for air. The sound of the sofa scraping the floor. The sight of her wearing his sweatshirt, drowning in it, looking more like his than anything ever had.
Nights were worse. The dark peeled back the pretense. Lying in his own bed, the silence was a vacuum filled with phantom sensations. The scent of pine and her skin. The taste of salt. His own hands felt useless, clumsy. Release was a mechanical, frustrating chore, a pale ghost of the shattering real thing. He’d lie there afterwards, buzzing with unsatisfied energy, hearing Old Man Henderson’s voice: Cabin fever can make people act a little… strange.
He wasn’t strange. He was starving.
The frustration boiled over in unexpected ways. During a mixed-style sparring session, a third-year from the management course, a guy with a loud mouth named Tendo, leaned against the wall watching Naomi run agility drills.
“Man, Kino’s really filled out since first year, huh?” Tendo said to his friend, his voice a carrying stage whisper. “All that combat training. Looks good on her. Real good.”
Katsuki, who had just finished his own match, heard it. A cold, sharp clarity cut through his usual simmering anger. He didn’t yell. He didn’t even look at Tendo.
He just turned, walked to the center of the sparring ring where a bruiser from the strength-enhancement course was waiting for a partner, and nodded. The match began.
It was brutal. Efficient. Katsuki moved with a controlled, punishing ferocity that had his larger opponent on the defensive within seconds. A block here, a jarring parry there. He channeled every ounce of his coiled-up, directionless want into his fists. When he finally locked the guy into a submission hold, it was with a little more torque than necessary, a fraction of a second longer than required before the tap-out.
“The hell, Bakugo?” the guy grunted, rubbing his shoulder as he stood.
“You left an opening,” Katsuki said flatly, his eyes scanning the room. They found Tendo, who quickly looked away and busied himself with his phone. Message received.
Across the gym, Naomi watched it all. She’d heard Tendo’s comment too, a flush of annoyance warming her cheeks. Then she saw Katsuki’s response. Not a word in her defense, but a violence enacted elsewhere, a territorial claim written in the language they both understood best. It should have annoyed her. It didn’t. It sent a dangerous, thrilling heat straight to her core.
Her own retaliation was more subtle, but no less pointed. Later that week, a support course girl with a notorious crush on Katsuki was gawking at him during a weight-lifting demonstration, her clipboard forgotten, her mouth slightly open. Naomi, walking behind her with a tray of cooled metal components for analysis, “stumbled.”
The trip was perfectly executed. Not enough to hurt, just enough to send the girl flailing, her clipboard clattering to the floor, components scattering.
“Oh, goodness, so sorry!” Naomi chirped, not sounding sorry at all. She didn’t offer to help pick anything up. She just kept walking, catching Katsuki’s eye as he looked up from the bench press. He saw the glint in her look, the unapologetic challenge. A ghost of a smirk touched his lips before he wiped it away with his towel.
They were orbiting each other, pulled by a gravity they refused to name, leaving a trail of minor collateral damage in their wake.
The breaking point came on a Thursday, in the most mundane of places: the shared kitchen of their dorm building. It was late. The common area was empty, lit by the dim fluorescent glow over the sink. Katsuki was scrounging for a late-night protein hit. Naomi was there already, leaning against the counter, nursing a cup of tea and staring blankly into the microwave, its hum the only sound.
He grunted a acknowledgment, pulling a container of chicken from the fridge. The silence stretched, thick and loaded. He could feel her eyes on his back as he bent over. The memory of her hands on him, in this very posture, flashed with painful clarity.
“You’re out of chicken,” she said, her voice quiet in the hollow room.
“The hell I am. I just bought it.”
“You bought it Sunday. You ate it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. That’s gone. That’s my tofu.”
He straightened up and looked at the container. She was right. The label was hers. He’d been on autopilot. “Whatever. It’s just tofu.”
“It’s my tofu.”
“You want me to go to the goddamn store at midnight?” he snapped, the frustration of the week, of the endless hollow nights, boiling over at this stupid, trivial thing.
“I want you to ask before you take my stuff!” she fired back, setting her mug down with a sharp click. “Just because you’re stomping around in a perpetual pissy mood doesn’t mean you get to bulldoze everything, including my dinner!”
“My mood is fine!”
“Bullshit! You’ve been a bristly, insufferable asshole for weeks! Ever since—” She cut herself off, her cheeks flushing.
The air left the room. The microwave finished its cycle with a loud, definitive beep. Neither of them moved.
“Ever since what, Kino?” His voice was low, dangerous.
She looked away, crossing her arms over her chest, a defensive gesture that only highlighted how small she looked in her oversized sleep shirt. “Since the cabin. We said it was cabin fever. So act like it.”
“I am acting like it,” he growled, taking a step toward her. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He just needed the distance gone. “I’m acting like it never happened. You’re the one tripping girls and giving me that look.”
“What look?”
“The one you’re giving me right now!”
She was giving him a look. It was a storm of anger, embarrassment, and a yearning so deep it mirrored the chasm in his own gut. The pretense was cracking, and they were both standing in the shards.
“Maybe I’m just sick of your face,” she muttered, but her voice trembled.
“Another lie.” He was in front of her now, caging her against the counter. He could see the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat. Smell her tea and the clean scent of her shampoo. It was the same proximity as the cabin, but now there were no snowstorms, no excuses. Just buzzing fluorescent lights and the hum of the fridge.
“What do you want from me, Katsuki?” The question was a whisper, stripped bare of all its usual armor.
He didn’t have an answer. He had a hundred answers, all of them terrifying. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to kiss her until she couldn’t remember why they were fighting. He wanted to go back to before, when the want was a quiet, manageable ache and not this all-consuming fire.
He did none of those things. His hand came up, not to touch her, but to point a finger at her face, his body trembling with the effort of holding still. “You stopped pretending first. With the tripping. With the looks. Don’t put this on me.”
“You broke that guy’s arm over a stupid comment!”
“It was a dislocation. And he’s fine.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “And it wasn’t about the comment. It was about the guy who made it. And you know it.”
Her breath hitched. The defiance in her eyes was melting, turning liquid and hot. She looked from his eyes to his mouth and back again. The charged silence was back, but it was different now. They were both acknowledging the current. They were both standing in the water.
The main door to the dorm hall swung open with a crash, followed by the loud, laughing voices of a group of students returning from a late study session.
The spell shattered. Naomi ducked under his arm, slipping out of his reach with practiced ease. She grabbed her mug and the container of tofu from the counter.
“Just… stay out of my food,” she said, but the edge was gone from her voice. It was just tired.
She walked away, not looking back. Katsuki didn’t turn to watch her go. He stood there, staring at the spot where she’d been, his empty hand still resting on the countertop.
The laughing students passed by the kitchen doorway, their noise fading down the hall. The quiet that returned was no longer comfortable. It was an accusation.
He looked down at the empty fridge shelf. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He was something else entirely. Something had shifted tonight. The pretending was over. They’d drawn a line in the sand of the kitchen floor, and they were both standing on the wrong side of it, staring at each other.
What happened next was no longer a question of if. It was a question of when, and how big the explosion would be.
The silence in the kitchen was a physical weight, pressing down on his shoulders after she left. He stared at the humming microwave, its digital display counting down on the container she’d forgotten. Her meal. Tofu and vegetables, probably. He didn’t care.
He grabbed her heated meal from the microwave and devoured it. Anything to distract how badly he wanted to stalk her down and take her wherever he found her. The food was bland, tasteless, but he shoveled it in, standing over the sink like an animal. He considers it for a moment, nearly getting a boner imagining it in front of every extra in the building. The common room, the gym mats, right up against that damn kitchen counter. Then he breathes out, a harsh, controlled exhale through his nose, and slammed the empty container into the recycling bin.
It didn’t help. The phantom taste of her was stronger than the food.
She was just as crazed on the walk back to her dorm, thinking of riding him again, right in front of the support course girl and any other that dare desire him. Her fingers clenched around the forgotten container of cold tofu, her knuckles white. The memory wasn’t gentle; it was a furious, possessive replay—the strain in his neck, the brutal grip of his hands, the way he’d looked at her like she was the only real thing in a world of shadows. She’s breathes out a groan as she slams her door to her room and eats her meal aggressively, the cold tofu tasting like nothing, like absence, fueling a different, sharper hunger entirely.
A week passed. The tension didn’t break; it crystallized, forming a new, precarious layer over their every interaction. They were icily, excessively polite in public. It was worse than the arguing.
“Your left guard is still down,” he said flatly during a partnered drill, his voice devoid of its usual taunting heat. He corrected her stance with two fingers on her elbow, a clinical touch that burned.
“Noted,” she replied, her tone equally detached, not meeting his eyes. She then proceeded to flawlessly execute the next five sequences, a silent, vicious rebuttal.
They were masters of this new, terrible distance. It was a mutual punishment. He threw himself into extra training, pushing until his muscles screamed and his mind went blessedly blank. She buried herself in tactical simulations, analyzing data streams until her vision blurred. Both were trying to outrun the same thing.
It worked until Friday night.
The dorm’s common area was unusually full, a low-energy crowd scattered around watching a movie. Katsuki was coming from the showers, his hair damp, a towel around his neck, intending to just grab a water and retreat. Naomi was there, tucked into the corner of a large sofa, arguing quietly with Kaminari and Sero about the film’s physics. She had her knees drawn up, looking small and absorbed.
He moved to the kitchenette, his back to the room. He could hear her laugh at something stupid Kaminari said—a short, real sound that hooked itself under his ribs. He fumbled with the fridge door.
“Hey, Bakugo! Come settle this,” Sero called out. “Could that spaceship actually make that turn with those thrusters, or is it total crap?”
Katsuki grunted, not turning. “It’s all crap.”
“Helpful,” Naomi said, and he could hear the eye-roll in her voice. A normal sound. A friend sound. It felt like a shiv twisting in a wound that hadn’t closed.
He grabbed his water and finally turned, leaning against the counter to watch the screen, putting himself on the periphery of the group. He wasn’t watching the movie. He was tracking her reflection in the dark window. The way she tucked a strand of white hair behind her ear. The way she chewed her thumbnail when she was thinking.
A guy from General Studies, someone Katsuki barely recognized, slid onto the sofa near Naomi. Too near. He said something to her, leaning in. Katsuki saw her polite, closed-lipped smile, the one she used for strangers. She gave a short answer and looked back at the screen. The guy didn’t take the hint. He gestured animatedly, talking over the movie, inching closer.
Katsuki’s grip on his water bottle creaked. The room’s noise faded into a dull buzz. Every cell in his body went preternaturally still, focused on that point on the sofa. He saw her subtle shift away, the tightening of her shoulder.
Before he could even decide to move, she handled it. She turned her head slowly toward the guy, her sweet, innocent face a perfect mask. Her voice, clear and cutting, sliced through the movie’s soundtrack.
“I said it’s not a good theory. And you’re in my personal space. If your next sentence isn’t an apology for both, I’m going to demonstrate why my close-combat score is higher than yours. Loudly.”
The guy blinked, stunned. A few people snickered. He mumbled something and retreated to another chair.
Katsuki let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. A fierce, proud heat bloomed in his chest, immediately followed by a darker, more desperate wave. She didn’t need him. She never did. That was the problem, and the addiction.
She didn’t look at him after, but he saw the faint, satisfied curve of her mouth before she hid it in her knees. She’d felt him watching. She’d known.
The movie ended. People began to drift. Naomi uncurled herself and stood, heading for the hallway. As she passed his spot by the kitchen, her arm brushed his. It was an accident. It had to be.
But her steps faltered, just for a microsecond. And his hand, of its own volition, shot out and caught her wrist.
The contact was electric. They both froze. The last of the stragglers were leaving, paying them no mind. He could feel her pulse hammering against his fingers, a wild bird trapped. She didn’t pull away. She turned her head, and her eyes in the dim light were not angry, not guarded. They were wide, open, and full of the same exhausting, undeniable truth.
He didn’t speak. He just held her wrist, his thumb pressing into the frantic rhythm beneath her skin, a silent question. The air between them thickened, charged with everything unsaid from the kitchen, from the cabin, from every night spent alone in the dark.
She looked down at his hand, then back up at him. Her free hand came up, not to remove his, but to rest lightly, tentatively, over his knuckles. A silent answer.
The hallway was empty now. The only sound was the hum of the vending machine down the hall.
The hum of the vending machine was the only sound in the empty common room. His fingers were a burning brand around her wrist. Her eyes were wide, pupils swallowing the irises, reflecting the frantic beat of his own heart back at him. She didn’t pull away.
Instead, her fingers tightened over his knuckles. Then she moved.
Naomi took his wrist and yanked him into the kitchen, the door closing behind them with a soft, final click. The sudden darkness was broken only by the dim glow of the stove’s digital clock. She didn’t stop, pulling him past the island to the other side of the counter, a blind spot hidden from the doorway if someone walked in.
She pushed him back against the cabinets. Her hands went to the waistband of his sweats. The look on her face wasn’t playful or teasing. It was pure, unvarnished desperation, a crack in the world that finally showed the real fire underneath.
She fell to her knees and started to pull him free. The cool air of the kitchen hit his skin, then the warmer cage of her fingers. He sucked in a sharp breath, his head thudding back against the cabinet door. He couldn’t speak. He could only watch, his own need a roaring in his ears.
Her eyes locked on his as she pulled him into her mouth with a soft, shuddering moan. The sound vibrated through him, a live wire of pleasure that snapped his spine straight. Heat, wetness, pressure. Her mouth was an impossible heaven, and her technique was clumsy, urgent, all hungry suction and frantic rhythm.
It was the most honest thing she’d done in weeks.
“Fuck,” he hissed, the word torn from him. His hands found her head, fingers tangling in the silk of her white hair. He didn’t guide her, didn’t force her. He just held on, anchors in a storm of sensation. Every swipe of her tongue, every hollow of her cheeks, was an answer to every silent, frustrated night alone in his bed.
She looked up at him, her gaze blurred with a sheen of tears from the effort. The sight of her on her knees, the innocent face doing something so blatantly not, undid him completely. His hips jerked involuntarily. A ragged groan ripped from his throat.
“Naomi—I’m gonna—” he choked out, a warning and a plea.
She didn’t stop. She took him deeper, her throat working, a muffled sound of encouragement vibrating against him. It was permission. It was a demand.
The climax hit him like a structural collapse, wave after wave of blinding release tearing through him. He saw white behind his eyelids, his grip in her hair tightening as he shuddered against the cabinets. She took it, taking everything he gave until he was spent, gasping, hollowed out.
Slowly, she pulled back, swallowing. She rested her forehead against his thigh, her breathing harsh and uneven in the silent kitchen. The digital clock read 11:47 PM. The world outside was ordinary. What had just happened was not.
The reality of their position crashed down. Her on the linoleum floor. Him leaning against the cupboard, exposed. The desperate, silent act hanging between them like a bomb that had already detonated.
He gently pulled her up by her shoulders. Her lips were swollen, her face flushed. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. The desperation was gone, replaced by a shell-shocked vulnerability that made his chest ache.
He tucked himself away, his hands clumsy. He cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. Her eyes were wide, almost scared.
“Talk,” he said, his voice rough.
She shook her head, a tiny movement. “I can’t.”
“You just did.” His thumb brushed her lower lip. “That wasn’t cabin fever.”
A tremor went through her. She leaned into his touch for a second, then pulled back, wrapping her arms around herself. “What does it change, Katsuki? What does this actually change?”
He had no answer. The empty satisfaction was already fading, leaving the same old hunger, now sharper and more complicated. It changed everything. It changed nothing.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, moving past the kitchen door. They both froze, a perfect tableau of guilt. The footsteps faded.
“My room,” he said, the decision a gut punch. “Now. Before someone comes in for a fucking snack.”
She nodded, once. He took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, and led her out of the kitchen into the dark, sleeping hall.