Chapter 1: Whispers at the Bar
The noise at the Pro-Hero agency’s year-end party was a physical thing. It pressed against Hitoshi Shinso’s eardrums, a thick soup of congratulations, shop talk, and the clink of bottles. He leaned against a pillar near the balcony door, a glass of something clear and mostly untouched in his hand. His territory was the quiet edge, the shadow just outside the spotlight.
His tired eyes tracked the room. Kirishima and Kaminari were arm-wrestling, a crowd egging them on. Jiroyu watched with a fond, exasperated smile. Over by the buffet, Yaoyorozu was patiently explaining something to a starstruck rookie, her hands gesturing elegantly. It was all so… predictable. So heroically wholesome.
Then his gaze landed on the source of the real noise. Katsuki Bakugo held court near the bar, his voice a serrated bark cutting through the hum. He was arguing about sparring regulations with Iida, who was chopping the air with robotic precision. Bakugo’s posture was a live wire, all coiled aggression and sharp angles. Even in a simple black t-shirt, he seemed to radiate a volatile heat.
A pair of sidekicks from the Thunderbolt Agency stumbled past Shinso’s pillar, leaning heavily on each other. They reeked of cheap beer and cheaper cologne.
“—no, I’m telling you, I heard it from someone at his old support company,” the one with the smudged eyeliner slurred.
“Bullshit. Absolutely no way,” his friend, a guy with a stain on his shirt already, giggled.
“Swear. They said he’s all bark. That the big, bad Ground Zero… has never actually sealed the deal. Like, at all.”
They wobbled away, consumed by their own laughter.
Shinso’s fingers tightened minutely around his glass. The words, stupid and drunken, didn’t dissipate. They lodged. A silly piece of gossip, meaningless. Yet it found a crevice in his mind and stuck there, sharp-side-in.
Never sealed the deal.
His eyes drifted back to Bakugo. To the defiant set of his jaw, the barely-leashed power in his shoulders. The rumor was absurd. Obscene, almost. But psychology was Shinso’s art, and the incongruity was a fascinating puzzle. The most explosively physical presence in the hero scene, a stranger to physical intimacy? The mind, his mind, wanted to pick at that contradiction. To test its shape.
Hours later, the silence of his own apartment was a welcome relief. It was neat, sparse, dominated by a large window looking out over the city’s night-time grid of lights. He toed off his boots, shed his capture weapon with a sigh, and poured two fingers of whiskey.
He sat in the dark, the liquor burning a smooth path down his throat. The rumor tap-danced behind his eyes.
Virgin.
The word was so archaic, so loaded with nonsense. But applied to Bakugo Katsuki, it became something else entirely. A provocation.
His mind, always weaving narratives, began to spin one without his permission. It started clinically. A hypothesis. If it were true, who would have gotten closest? Who could possibly circumvent those formidable defenses?
The image surfaced, fully formed and disconcertingly vivid. Not a dramatic scene. Something quiet, private. A training gym after hours, the air smelling of ozone and burned rubber.
Bakugo, flat on his back on a crash mat, breathing hard. Not pinned by a villain, but by a familiar, freckled weight. Izuku Midoriya. Of course. It would have to be him. The only one who ever got through.
In Shinso’s imagination, Midoriya wasn’t using One for All. His hands, scarred and calloused, were simply pressing Bakugo’s wrists into the mat. Gentle. Unbreakable. There was no violence in it, only a terrible, intimate familiarity. Bakugo would be snarling, of course. “Get the hell off me, Deku!” But the struggle would be perfunctory, a last ritual of defiance.
Shinso saw it in stark detail. The sheen of sweat on Bakugo’s throat. The flutter of a pulse beneath sharp jawline. The way his trademark scowl would falter for a split second, replaced by a confusion so deep it bordered on fear. Midoriya would say something soft, inaudible, his face a landscape of aching concern and something else—something fiercely possessive.
And Bakugo… Bakugo would stop fighting. His head would thump back against the mat, eyes squeezing shut, as if waiting for a blow. But the blow wouldn’t come. Instead, those gentle, powerful hands would relax their grip, would slide slowly, almost apologetically, from wrists to palms. An offer. A question.
A low heat, sudden and insistent, coiled in Shinso’s gut. His breath hitched. The fantasy wasn’t about Midoriya. It was about the surrender. About the vulnerability so absolute it was almost violent. Seeing the unbreakable hero break, not in battle, but in silence. Under a trusted touch.
His cock stirred, thickening against the fabric of his pants. The physical response was a shock, a jolt of static up his spine. He was amused by the direction of his own thoughts, and undeniably, viscerally aroused by them. The power wasn’t in the act, but in the revelation. The knowledge.
He took a slow swallow of whiskey, the liquid warmth doing nothing to dispel the other, more intimate heat spreading through him. His mind, now fully embarked, skipped to another possibility. What if it wasn’t gentle? What if it was a match of equals?
Eijiro Kirishima. Hardening. The clash would be spectacular. Two untamable forces. It wouldn’t be about surrender then, but about conquest. A brutal, grinning battle for dominance against unyielding surfaces. The sound of it in his head was all grating friction and labored breath.
And then, a darker, more curious thread. What if the key wasn’t familiarity or matched strength, but its opposite? What if it was someone who offered nothing to push against? Someone cool, detached, observational.
Someone like himself.
The idea was a live wire. Shinso pictured Bakugo here, in this quiet apartment. Confused by the lack of a fight. Disarmed by silence. Shinso’s own hands, careful and deliberate, not pinning, but guiding. Unraveling that famous control not with force, but with relentless, quiet patience. Watching the frustration build into something else entirely. Hearing that rough voice crack on something that wasn’t a shout.
A sharp, sudden throb between his legs made him shift in his chair. He was fully hard now, the fabric of his pants uncomfortably tight. The arousal was a blunt, hungry thing, mingling with the intellectual fascination. He let the fantasy play out—the shock in those red eyes, the proud mouth going slack—before forcibly reining it in.
This was ridiculous. He was getting worked up over a drunk sidekick’s fairytale. Bakugo was probably with someone right now, fucking with his usual relentless efficiency, blissfully unaware he was the star of Shinso’s private, pornographic theater.
He finished the whiskey, the glass clicking softly on the table. The pleasant, aching thrum persisted in his blood. The rumor had taken root. It wasn’t about truth anymore; it was about potential. About the haunting, erotic possibility of a secret weakness in the strongest fortress.
As he stood to head to the shower, a cold, pragmatic thought cut through the haze. If there was even a seed of truth to it… that kind of secret was a form of power. And power, in any form, was always worth understanding.
His phone buzzed on the table. A notification from the agency network. A mission briefing for tomorrow. A coordinated raid. His assigned partner for reconnaissance and extraction: Ground Zero.
Shinso stared at the name on the screen. A slow, uncharacteristic smile touched his lips, not quite reaching his tired eyes. The city lights twinkled outside, indifferent. The game, entirely of his own making, had just acquired a real-world player.
He picked up the phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. The fantasy was one thing. Testing the hypothesis in the field would be something else entirely. The momentum of the night, of the thought, carried him forward. He typed a single, professional line in reply.
‘Acknowledged. See you at 0600.’
The reply was sent. The phone screen went dark, reflecting the weary planes of his own face for a second before he set it down. The quiet of the apartment seemed to deepen, becoming charged. The mission briefing was a fact. The fantasy was a ghost, and it wasn’t done with him yet.
It unspooled again, not as a hypothesis this time, but as a directed reverie. He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, and let it come.
It wouldn’t be in a gym. Too impersonal. It would be in a place that meant something. Midoriya’s apartment, probably. Cluttered with All Might memorabilia and analysis notebooks. The irony would be part of the texture.
Bakugo would be there because of some stupid, engineered reason—a broken lock, a missed last train, a rainstorm. Something mundane that trapped them in the soft, yellow light of a living room lamp. The argument would be their usual soundtrack, Bakugo’s voice like gravel, Midoriya’s a steady, frustrating stream.
But the argument would run out of road. It would just… stop. And in that sudden silence, thick enough to choke on, Midoriya would look at him. Not with anger, but with that unbearable, bottomless empathy. He’d see right through the bluster to the tense, lonely shape underneath.
“Kacchan,” he’d say, and the old nickname would sound like a key in a lock.
“Don’t,” Bakugo would warn, but it would lack its usual fire. It would sound brittle.
Shinso, in his mind’s eye, painted the next moves with a slow, deliberate brush. Midoriya wouldn’t pounce. He’d approach like he was disarming a bomb. Which, in a way, he would be. A hand, lifting slowly, would cup the side of Bakugo’s face. A thumb would stroke the high, sharp arch of a cheekbone, smudging the perpetual frown.
Bakugo would flinch. Actually flinch. His eyes would be wide, pupils blown, tracking Midoriya’s face for mockery, for a trick. Finding only that terrible, focused kindness.
“You don’t have to be,” Midoriya would murmur, so quiet the words were almost lost. You don’t have to be so angry. You don’t have to be so alone. The sentence would hang, unfinished.
The first kiss would be a shock. Bakugo would be utterly still, rigid, as if struck by a paralysis quirk. Midoriya’s lips would be soft, insistent, asking a question Bakugo didn’t know how to answer. Shinso imagined the internal collapse—the furious, scrambling denial in Bakugo’s mind meeting a wall of simple, persistent sensation. The warmth. The slight catch of breath. The scent of clean cotton and ozone.
And then, the break. A tiny, punched-out sound in the back of Bakugo’s throat. Not a sob. Something more primitive. The moment his body decided to bypass his furious mind. His hands, clenched into fists at his sides, would uncurl. One would come up to fist desperately in the front of Midoriya’s shirt, not to push away, but to anchor himself. To keep from floating off into the terrifying unknown.
It would be clumsy after that. Fumbling. A mess of too-hard grips and awkward shifts on the couch. Midoriya guiding, always guiding, murmuring “here” and “like this” and “is this okay?” until the questions would make Bakugo growl “just shut up and do it, Deku,” which would be his only way to beg.
Shinso’s breathing had shallowed. He could feel the phantom texture of it—the shocking softness of Bakugo’s hair between Midoriya’s fingers, the heat of his skin under those rough palms, the absolute stillness that would come over him at the final, inevitable moment. Not a stillness of peace, but of profound shock. As if his entire world-view had been cracked open and something new, bright, and terrifying was pouring in.
Midoriya would hold him through it. Whisper something useless and kind into his sweat-damp hair. And Bakugo, in the aftermath, would be utterly wrecked. Not physically, but existentially. All his defenses would be in ruins around him. He wouldn’t know what to do with his hands, his face, his own skin. He’d just lie there, exposed, staring at the ceiling of an apartment filled with symbols of a rival he could never truly defeat, now in a way he’d never even considered.
The fantasy dissolved, leaving a hollow, aching heat in its wake. Shinso realized he was fully hard again, a persistent, uncomfortable pressure. He was also smiling, a thin, private curve of his lips. It wasn’t a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who had glimpsed a fundamental, humiliating truth.
The power of that image wasn’t in the act, but in the aftermath. The great Bakugo Katsuki, rendered wordless and vulnerable by his own oldest friend
The power of that image wasn’t in the act, but in the aftermath. The great Bakugo Katsuki, rendered wordless and vulnerable by his own oldest friend.But that was one version. A gentle apocalypse.Shinso’s mind, ever probing, flipped the script. What if Bakugo, faced with that impossible closeness, didn’t break quietly? What if his instincts commanded him to fight the vulnerability by claiming it?
The scene shifted in his head, the focus narrowing, sharpening.
He imagined Bakugo, after that first seismic kiss, shoving Midoriya back against the couch cushions.Not to escape.To dominate the narrative. His breathing would be ragged, his face a mask of conflicting fury and desperate want. “You think you’re so fucking good at everything, Deku?” he’d snarl, the words scraped raw.
Midoriya, lips swollen, eyes wide with surprise and dawning understanding, would just nod, a soft, challenging light in his gaze.“Show me, Kacchan.”
And Bakugo would. He’d fumble with belts and zippers, all clumsy, rough hands, his usual precise control shattered by the adrenaline flooding his system.He wouldn’t be gentle. This would be a contest, a brutal negotiation of power. He’d get Midoriya’s cock out, thick and hard, and stare at it for a second with a kind of terrified fascination.
Shinso’s own breath hitched in the quiet of his apartment.He could see it so clearly.
Bakugo would spit into his own palm, a crude, dismissive gesture that couldn’t hide the shaking in his fingers. He’d slick Midoriya up, his grip too tight, his movements jerky. Then, with a muttered curse that sounded more like a plea, he’d straddle him.
The moment of penetration would be a battlefield.Bakugo wouldn’t ease down. He’d force it, baring his teeth against the burn, the impossible stretch. His back would arch, every muscle corded tight, a symphony of tension. A sharp, guttural sound would be ripped from his throat—not pain, not pleasure, but pure, undiluted sensation so intense it bypassed all categories.
Midoriya would gasp, hands flying to Bakugo’s hips to steady him, to try and slow him down. “K-Kacchan, wait, you need to—”
“Shut up,” Bakugo would choke out, sinking lower, taking more, his body convulsing with the effort to accommodate.Sweat would gleam on his collarbones. “I’ve got this. I always… fuck… I always win.”
And then he’d be seated fully, impaled, his body rigid with shock. For a long second, there’d be nothing but the sound of their ragged breathing. Bakugo’s eyes would be slammed shut, his lashes dark against his pale, flushed cheeks. He’d be trembling, visibly trembling, from the overwhelming foreignness of it, the sheer violation of his own boundaries by his own will.
Then, he’d move.
It would be brutal, inelegant, a piston-like rhythm driven by pure, furious need to master this, too. To conquer the unfamiliar ache, to transform it into a victory.Each drop onto Midoriya’s cock would be a jagged, punishing impact. Bakugo’s head would fall back, his throat working as he gritted his teeth, chasing a feeling he had no map for.
Midoriya, beneath him, would be transfixed, hands gripping the firm muscle of Bakugo’s thighs, feeling them work. He’d watch the play of agony and ecstasy on that familiar, proud face, and he’d understand. This wasn’t sex.This was a war for self-definition. Every grunt, every strained gasp from Bakugo was a surrendered piece of armor.
Shinso leaned forward in his chair, a phantom tightness coiling in his own gut. He imagined the slap of skin, the wet, filthy sound of Bakugo taking him, really taking him, all pride burned away by raw physiological response. Bakugo would come untouched, probably with a broken shout, his body seizing up as the unexpected wave tore through him, his rhythm faltering into helpless convulsions. He’d collapse forward afterward, forehead against Midoriya’s shoulder, hiding his face, utterly spent and exposed in a way no villain had ever managed.Silence would pool around them, heavy with the smell of sex and sweat and shattered assumptions.
That was the image Shinso held onto: Bakugo, physically victorious, spiritually unraveled, quietly falling apart on top of the one person who knew every piece of him. The virgin, not deflowered, but defiantly fucking his way through his own mystery, and getting utterly lost in the process.It was infinitely more captivating than any gentle seduction.
The fantasy faded, leaving a hollow, resonant ache in its wake.Shinso stood, his body humming with a restless energy. The clock read 2:17 AM.The mission was in a few hours. He looked at his dark phone screen, then out at the city.The rumor wasn’t just gossip anymore. It was a lens. And through it, Katsuki Bakugo looked less like an impregnable fortress and more like a dormant volcano, the kind that, if it ever blew, would do so with catastrophic, self-immolating force.Shinso wanted to be there to see it. To watch the eruption, to chart the fallout. To know if the blast pattern matched the one currently scorching the back of his own mind.
He turned and walked toward the shower, the ghost of a name on his tongue, unspoken.
Katsuki.