Chapter 2: Dryer Hums and Devouring Sounds
The smell of cheap laundry detergent and fabric softener was a thick, cloying cloud in the hallway. Sophia shuffled back from the machine, her arms full of warm, tangled clothes, the basket digging into her hip. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, flickering once and casting a sickly pulse over the scratched lockers lining the wall. Someone had drawn a crude explosion symbol next to Kirishima’s name in sharpie. She smiled, adjusting her grip.
Then she heard it.
A low, rhythmic thump. Not the dryer. Something else. Solid. Relentless.
It was coming from behind the door to the small, rarely-used equipment storage room next to the laundry. The room was supposed to be for mops and broken vacuums. The thump was followed by a sharp, bitten-off gasp. A voice.
“K—Kacchan… wait, I’m not—”
“Shut up. You’re fine. Take it.”
Bakugou’s voice. It was sandpaper and gravel, but stripped of its usual aggressive bark. This was lower. A guttural, private tone she’d never heard. It was a command, but one layered with a heat that made the hairs on her arms rise.
Her feet rooted to the linoleum. The basket in her arms felt suddenly irrelevant. Her heart, a traitorous drum, began to pound in her throat, syncing with the heavy, driving thumps from the other side of the door.
Another sound. A wet, obscene slap of skin on skin. Then a broken, shuddering moan that could only be Izuku.
“Fuck,” Bakugou growled, the word vibrating through the thin door. “Look at you. So fucking greedy for it. Can’t even wait.”
Sophia’s breath hitched. Her mind, usually so chatty, went blank and white. She knew she should leave. This was a violation. This was private. But her body refused the command. The warmth from the laundry in her arms seemed to seep into her skin, pooling low in her stomach.
Izuku’s voice came again, wrecked and pleading. “Please… harder, please, I need—”
“You get what I give you, Deku.” Another slap, sharper. Another choked-off cry. “And you fucking love it. Tell me.”
“I love it.” The admission was a desperate, sobbing whisper. “I love it, Kacchan, I love you, please—”
The sounds became a brutal symphony. The relentless, pounding rhythm. The slick, wet noise of penetration. Bakugou’s ragged breaths punctuated by filthy, praising growls. “That’s it. Take me. All of it. Your fucking hole is clenching so tight, you perfect slut.”
Sophia’s free hand, acting on its own, drifted under her oversized Sleepy Hollow t-shirt. Her fingertips found her nipple through the thin cotton of her sleep bra. It was already a tight, aching peak. She rolled it between her fingers, a sharp bolt of pleasure jolting down to her core. She bit down on her lower lip, the coppery tang of blood blooming in her mouth.
In her mind, the door wasn’t there. She saw it. Bakugou, shirtless and shining with sweat like in the kitchen, his powerful hips pistoning forward, his abdomen tight with strain. Izuku, bent over some piece of storage, his back arched, his face a mask of ecstatic ruin. Bakugou’s hand, the one with the callouses she’d felt, would be fisted in Izuku’s green curls, yanking his head back.
But her imagination shifted, twisted. The hand in the hair was pulling her head back. The body under Bakugou’s was hers. She imagined the feel of him, the brutal, perfect stretch, the way his grunts would feel against the skin of her neck.
“Gonna come,” Izuku whimpered, his voice breaking. “Kacchan, I’m gonna—”
“Do it.” Bakugou’s command was absolute. “Come all over yourself. Do it now.”
A sharp, animal cry was torn from Izuku, followed by a series of shuddering gasps. The pounding rhythm became erratic, frantic. Bakugou let out a raw, unrestrained snarl. “Fuck! Yes. Take it. Take every fucking drop.”
A final, solid thud, then silence. Heavy, panting breaths. The creak of weight shifting.
Sophia realized she was holding her own breath, her hand still under her shirt, her body humming with a tension she had no idea how to release. She was soaked, aching, trembling where she stood.
The doorknob turned.
She stumbled back, the laundry basket tumbling from her arms, spilling warm sweats and socks across the dirty floor. She stared, mortified, as the door opened.
Bakugou stood there. He was pulling a clean black t-shirt over his head, his hair damp with sweat at the temples. His face was flushed, his eyes dangerously bright. He looked at the spilled laundry, then at her. His gaze was a physical scan. It took in her wide eyes, her swollen lip, the way her hand was still caught in the hem of her shirt. He knew. He saw everything.
Izuku appeared behind him, hair a wild mess, his own shirt on but inside-out. He was blinking, soft and dazed, until he saw Sophia. A deep, crimson blush flooded his face, from his neck to the roots of his hair. “S-Sophia! Oh my god, we… I…”
Bakugou didn’t flinch. He stepped over the threshold, his movements loose and satisfied. He bent down, not to help her, but to pick up a single sock that had landed near his boot. He held it out to her.
“Eavesdropping’s a shitty habit, Round Face.”
She took the sock, her fingers numb. “I wasn’t… I was doing laundry.”
“Yeah.” His voice was back to its normal, rough cadence, but it was softer around the edges. His eyes dropped to her mouth, to the tiny bead of blood on her lip where she’d bitten it. A slow, knowing smirk touched his lips. It wasn’t cruel. It was carnivorous. “How’s that working out for you?”
Izuku made a small, distressed noise behind him. “Kacchan, don’t…”
“She’s fine,” Bakugou said, not looking away from Sophia. “Aren’t you?”
She couldn’t speak. She just nodded, her face burning.
He nodded back, once. That same checkpoint acknowledgment from the simulation morning. Then he turned, slinging an arm around Izuku’s shoulders, pulling him close. “C’mon. You’re wobbly. Need food.”
He led Izuku away down the hall. Izuku glanced back over his shoulder, his expression a chaos of apology and lingering pleasure and shame.
Sophia stood alone in the fluorescent hum. The smell of sex and sweat still lingered in the air, mixing with the laundry detergent. She slowly gathered her clothes, her body still throbbing with unmet need. Her mind replayed his smirk, the heat in his eyes. He’d seen her arousal. He’d recognized it. And he hadn’t judged it.
He’d just… noted it.
As she shoved the last of her clothes into the basket, her fingers brushed the Japanese script for “courage” on her thigh. She took a deep, shaky breath. The hallway was empty now. But the silence felt different. It was charged, waiting. It felt like the space after a lightning strike, the ozone heavy in the air, promising another storm.
It felt like the space after a lightning strike, the ozone heavy in the air, promising another storm.
Sophia avoided them for a full week.
She took her meals at odd hours, haunting the kitchen only when it was empty of everything but the hum of the fridge. She rearranged her training schedule to use the auxiliary gym on the east wing, a longer walk but guaranteed isolation. She became a ghost in the shared spaces, her presence reduced to the faint scent of hibiscus shampoo in a recently vacated bathroom, a cooled mug left by the sink.
The small scar on her lip, a pale ridge of healing skin, was her only evidence.
It pulsed sometimes when she thought of that night.
Which was often. Too often. In the quiet dark of her room, her hand would drift down her stomach, her mind replaying the sounds—the slap, the groan, Bakugou’s growled commands. She’d touch herself, quickly and with a frustrated shame, biting the same lip to stifle her own sounds, the slight sting a masochistic anchor to the memory.
The release was never enough. It just left her emptier.
Izuku tried, once.
He cornered her by the mailboxes, his eyes wide and anxious. “Sophia, about last week… I’m so, so sorry you had to… we didn’t know anyone was…”. He floundered, his hands fluttering. “It was totally inappropriate. We feel terrible.”
She forced a bright, brittle smile. “It’s fine! Really. I was just in the wrong place.” She brushed past him, the lie sour on her tongue. “Forgotten already!”
He called after her, a soft “Wait—”, but she was already around the corner, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Bakugou didn’t try.
He watched. She’d feel his gaze on her back in the communal hallway, a physical weight. During a joint first-aid seminar, she caught his reflection in a polished cabinet door. He was staring directly at her, his expression unreadable. His eyes dropped to her mouth, lingered on the healed bite mark for a second too long, then flicked away as if she were a problem already solved.
He said nothing. The silence from him was louder than any apology.
Her isolation became a cage of her own making.
The cheerful, bubbly persona felt like a costume she’d forgotten how to wear properly. Her jokes in class fell flat. She stopped lingering after lectures. The “courage” tattoo on her thigh seemed like a joke. Her dreams were fractured, soundless replays of that fluorescent-lit hallway, ending always with Bakugou’s knowing smirk and Izuku’s shattered, pleasured expression.
She was an intruder in her own life, haunted by a scene she’d never meant to witness.
The breaking point came on a rainy Thursday.
She was in the laundry room again, this time during broad daylight. The industrial dryer churned with her bedding. The door to the storage room was ajar, just a crack, a dark slash in the wall. She stared at it, her hands clenched at her sides.
From inside, a soft chuckle. Then Izuku’s voice, warm and fond. “You’re impossible. You got powder all over your shirt.”
“Shut it. It’s your fucking detergent.”
“You used too much! See? It’s puffed out everywhere.”
A grunt. “Whatever. Come here. You’ve got some on your face.”
A beat of silence. Sophia couldn’t move. She imagined Bakugou brushing a thumb over Izuku’s cheekbone, a gesture so ordinary and intimate it felt more invasive than the sex.
Her chest ached.
She fled, leaving her sheets to overheat in the dryer.
That night, sprawled on her bare mattress, the irony choked her. She was punishing herself for an accident, starving herself of their company, all while her mind feasted on the voyeuristic banquet she’d stumbled upon.
The guilt was real, but so was the gnawing want. It was a live wire in her gut.
She traced the star tattoo on her wrist. Avoidance wasn’t courage. It was just cowardice wearing a different mask.
On the eighth day, she went to the main gym after hours.
She needed to move, to exhaust the nervous energy circling inside her like a trapped bird. The cavernous space was dim, only every third light bank illuminated. The air smelled of rubber mats and stale sweat.
And him.
She heard him before she saw him: the sharp, percussive pop-pop-crack of his Quirk, a sound like gunfire in the quiet. He was at the far end, working a heavy bag reinforced with steel plates. He wasn’t wearing his hero gear, just grey sweatpants and a tight black tank top.
Every muscle in his back and arms corded and released with explosive, controlled violence.
Sophia stopped, her own water bottle dangling from her fingers.
She should leave. This was the exact scenario she’d been avoiding. But her feet were nailed to the floor. She watched the brutal, beautiful efficiency of him. Sweat darkened the fabric between his shoulder blades. His breath came in sharp, controlled bursts.
He landed a final, shattering blow that made the entire bag shiver on its chain. Then he went still, head bowed, hands braced on the scarred leather.
“You gonna stand there all night, or you gonna train?”
He didn’t turn around. His voice, rough from exertion, echoed in the empty gym.
He’d known she was there the whole time. Of course he had.
Her face flushed hot. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said, her own voice sounding small.
He turned then. Sweat tracked through the dust on his cheeks. His eyes were dark, intense. “You’re not.” He gestured with his chin toward a rack of free weights. “If you’re here, work. Stop fucking hovering.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was an order.
But it was an opening. A crack in the wall of silence she’d built. She nodded, mutely, and moved toward the weights. She felt his eyes on her, a brand between her shoulder blades, as she selected a set of dumbbells. The familiar weight in her hands was a comfort.
They trained in parallel for twenty minutes, the only sounds their breathing, the clank of weights, and the creak of equipment.
The tension wasn’t gone. It was just channeled, metabolized into the burn of her muscles, the focus of his reps.
Finally, he dropped his weights with a final-sounding thud.
He grabbed his towel, wiped his face, and started walking toward the exit. He passed close to her where she sat on a bench, breathing hard. He stopped.
She looked up, her heart pounding from more than the exercise.
He was staring at her mouth again. At the faint, silvery line on her lip.
“It healed,” he stated.
Her hand flew to it self-consciously. “Yeah. It wasn’t deep.”
A beat of silence stretched, taut and uncomfortable. He shifted his weight. “Deku thinks you’re pissed.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.” He said it simply, as if stating the sky was blue. “You were just embarrassed.”
She swallowed. “Maybe.”
“Don’t be.” He slung his towel over his shoulder. “It happens. We didn’t lock the door. Our fault.”
It was the closest to an acknowledgment they would get. It wasn’t forgiveness; it was a tactical assessment of blame.
He began to walk away again, then paused. “You’re avoiding the joint strategy sessions. Your evac team is missing your input on the perimeter routes.”
It was a clinical observation, not a reprimand.
“I’ve been busy,” she lied.
“Bullshit.” He didn’t even look back. “Be there tomorrow. 0700. Deku misses your shitty jokes.”
And then he was gone, the gym door swinging shut behind him with a soft hydraulic hiss.
Sophia sat on the bench, the dumbbells cold in her hands.
He’d seen right through her week of hiding, dismissed it as irrelevant, and issued a direct order to rejoin the living. The storm hadn’t hit. It had just changed the atmospheric pressure.
She touched her lip again, the scar now feeling less like a brand of shame and more like a piece of shrapnel from a blast she’d survived.
She’d be there at 0700.