Bakugou is sent out on a mission that everyone knows is going to be crazy dangerous, in a place where there’s almost no way that he’s going to be able to check in because there’s no phone signal and definitely no internet. Before he goes he gives Ochako a piece of jewellery that he’s worn throughout their entire relationship, asking her to look after it for him, that he’ll get it back from her when he comes home. It’s his way of promising to come back to her. 

Somewhere along the line something goes wrong and the rest of the team come back, but they come back without Bakugou. Teams go out to look for him, most of them refusing to come back into base camp until they find him, but nobody does. 

He’s declared missing in action after a month of not being seen or heard from by anyone on the mission, and a Hero Commission chaplain arrives at Ochako’s door. She slams it in his face, not willing to hear what they want to tell her, her fingers brushing across the piece of jewellery. 

She can’t grieve. Can’t hear the news that they are determined to give her because they made a promise, that he would come home no matter what and she would be right there waiting when he did. 

A year goes by. Then two. No word.

The Commission hold a funeral for Bakugou for his friends and family to say goodbye. But Ochako doesn’t go. Can’t go. Because it’s just an empty box. Katsuki isn’t there. 

Six years later she’s living what most would consider a normal life, she isn’t dating but she is kicking ass in the hero world. She’s one of the best heroes around, everyone knows her name. That piece of Bakugou’s jewellery has become part of her signature look, and the media ask her about it all the time but she refuses to talk about it. 

She gets home from yet another talk show interview and finds her door unlocked. She’s on high alert, pushing through into her apartment and finding a pair of ratty but familiar boots with the rest of her shoes. A jacket that’s seen better days hanging on the peg. 

All of the alert is gone and she’s running around the corner into her kitchen, sure that she’s dreaming, hoping that she’s not. 

And there’s Katsuki. His hair is long and braided down his back, he has a tight beard and scars on his face and one of his eyes is entirely gone. But his smile is still his, and when he holds his arms out to her she runs into them, sobbing into his chest. 

‘They said you’d never come home.’

‘Looked like I wouldn't for a while, Cheeks. But I knew you were waiting, so I kept fighting.’

He keeps the long hair, and the beard, but he doesn’t go back to hero work for a while. He can’t talk about what happened out there on the mission and she doesn't press him, knowing that he will when he’s ready. 

He made it home to her, and that’s all that matters.   

Ochako’s gym has closed and it’s just about the worst thing that could have happened because finding a new gym that doesn’t treat female lifters like crap is a nightmare and she doesn’t want to have to go through it again. 

She liked her gym, she liked that the people there saw her as an equal, liked that she didn’t have to feel like a freak when she walked past the cardio equipment straight into the weights room like she belonged there. 

But the signs were up and she knew that she had no choice but to start looking somewhere else. To find another home even though she wasn’t sure that it was possible. 

Lucky for her some of the other lifters were going through the same thing, and two of her favourite gym floor companions approached her with an idea. 

‘You’re strong as all hell, and hotter than most of the guys that come through here. We want to start a new gym, and we need your help.’

It’s possibly the most insane thing she’s ever heard, that they want to use her - small town round faced Ochako - to be the advertising face of their new space. But they want to make it clear that everyone is welcome, that all strength is celebrated, and they think she’s the perfect spokesperson for that (alongside the both of them, of course.)

So a coffee date later she’s shaking hands with Mr Angry and being clapped on the back by Red, making a note that she was going to have to start learning their names if she was going to be their business partner. She takes a week off of work - all the leave that she can spare - and they get to filming. 

Bakugou (Mr Angry) has bought the space and will handle the business side of things, and Kirishima (Red) will be the main trainer on site. Uraraka will get free membership for every year that she agrees to be their face and well, she needs that extra cash so she’s more than happy to show up at 5am for the first whole day of shooting, being put into workout wear tighter than she would ever dream don herself and photographed whilst Kirishima puts her through the most beastly workout of her life. 

She’s sweating and red, her clothes clinging to her and her hair fallingaround her face and she’s sure that she’s fucked the whole thing up, but Bakugou is blushing behind the camera and Kirishima isn’t fairing much better. 

They show her the shots and she can see a little of what they see. She looks strong, amazingly strong, and even she can admit that it’s maybe a little bit hot. 

Then she looks at the review shots of Bakugou and Kirishima and damn they’re not so bad themselves. 

She’s not sure how it happens, one minute she’s leaning into the back of the camera and the next she’s closed the space between her and Kirishima, licking bead of sweat up from his pecs with a groan, Bakugou’s hands finding her ass in the same instant and pulling her to grind against him. 

It’s hot and sweaty and frantic, blood pumping harder through all of their veins than it had through the workout, and they’re definitely going to have to clean all the equipment afterward. But it’s definitely worth it. 

Uraraka goes back every day to train on the run up to opening night, and the three partners crash together more often than not, making the most of it before the public are allowed in and they can’t have their fun anymore. 

The opening is a huge success, the gym quickly becoming one of the most popular in the area. But even more a success is the relationship between the three owners, as strong as they are and twice as hot. 

Bakugou is a west coast swing dancer waiting for his competition to start, watching the remaining ballroom dancers finish up their final few dances. His mother would have loved for him to take up ballroom dancing but it was always too rigid for him. Which is when he found swing. 

He’s watching the dancers with some interest though – there’s always something to learn after all – when he sees a man go down like a sack of shit in the middle of a waltz. He’s no medical expert but when they pull back it’s obvious even to him that the ankle shouldn't be at the angle that it’s ended up at and his poor pretty partner is left standing alone. Her dance abandoned. 

The next dance she’s not there and he doesn’t know why but he leaves his space in the audience and goes to find her. She’s sitting in a green room, sobbing into a handkerchief, round brown eyes somehow looking all the prettier when full of tears. 

He has no idea what possesses him but he makes her the most outlandish offer in the world. Get out of that ballgown, put on something more comfortable, and come dance with me instead. Swing is improvised after all, and he can promise her (with a wink) that she’d be in amazing hands. 

She has no idea what possesses her when this ridiculously handsome stranger with a devilish smile and a gleam in his eyes basically breaks into her dressing room to proposition her. But he holds out that hand with a wink and she’s up and taking it before she understands why, being led out to the floor that she would have been sharing with her set partner had he not slipped on her skirts and broken something. 

She has no idea about swing dancing, and for the first song she’s so stiff that she’s sure she’s going to knock her partner – whose name she still doesn't know – out of the running. But they make it through to the next stage and the more time goes on the more she’s able to relax. Her partner helps, with a steady hand on the small of her back, whispering to her that she just needs to feel the music and move, put those gorgeous thick hips to good use. 

Before they know it they’re dancing like they’ve been moving together all of their lives, and she’s /laughing/ when he spins her and dips her at the end. 

She’s vaguely aware of a model looking skinny blonde woman staring daggers at her from the crowd, and for a half second she wonders exactly why her new partner was without his usual one, but then she’s being pulled into the next dance and his hips are pressed right up against hers and she lost the ability to care. 

They won’t win, but they have more fun than either have at a dance show for as long as they can remember, and when they finally get back to a seat he tells her he’ll see her around, calling her ‘Cheeks’ and walking away without even telling her his name. 

But it’s there, slipped into the back of her dress when she finally changes, with a phone number scrawled beneath it. 

‘Call me any time, Cheeks. Bakugou.’

She gives it a day, just to be sure that it’s not a dream, but she does call. And though she doesn’t leave the ballroom scene she starts attending swing lessons, too. Pulled into Bakugou’s arms over and over until finally she finds that she wants to stay there. For as long as he’ll let her. 

Lucky for her Bakugou can read her better than she could read herself sometimes, and when he dips her and kisses her at the end of a dance it feels like the most natural thing in the world. 

Uraraka has been counting kisses. It started like any such thing does, the first time Bakugou kissed her she wrote about it in her journal for that day, marking the date with a little heart sticker so that she would never forget. 

And every day after that, when Bakugou kissed her, she would put a single heart sticker by the date for each kiss. It helped full the bullet journal on days when she didn’t have a lot to say, and it was cute to see the hearts slowly swell and grow in number. It was so normal to count the times he pulled her in and pressed his lips to hers, to note the milestones that she wasn’t even sure why she was keeping count of.

Tsu thought it was sweet, Mina rolled her eyes and said that once you got into triple figures it wasn’t worth counting anymore. Deku wondered if there was a formula for kisses increasing incrementally over time according to length and commitment levels of a given relationship – he was useless for a good hour plotting graphs after that, vowing to test his hypothesis with Shoto…just as soon as he worked up the courage to ask him out. 

But it made Uraraka smile, so as much as it was silly she kept marking the days, a visual reminder even when everything felt awful that Bakugou loved her enough to want to keep kissing her. 

She didn’t tell him about it, because Mina said that it would come off just a little bit creepy, but as their second year faded into their third she was approaching another big milestone – one thousand kisses – and she decided that that was the time to tell Bakugou, and probably stop noting it, too. 

So when they head back to their dorms the night that she was sure they would get there, and finding herself only one kiss away, she takes matters into her own hands. She keeps her eyes on the grounds and waits for the right moment before floating herself up and over to his balcony, tapping on the window until he lets her in with a sleepy confused frown. 

“I need you to kiss me, Bakugou.”

“Okay but, why?”

“Because after one more you’ll have kissed me a thousand times.”

“Cheeks have you been fucking counting?”

She flushes deep, expecting him to be mad but he just pulls her close, one hand on the back of her neck, his lips ghosting against hers. 

“Bet we can make it two thousand by morning.”

Bakugou isn’t great with grief. He tells people that he’s doing fine and he pushes everything down and down until he’s faking it so well that even his parents think he’s recovering. But late at night he still hears her voice, far off in the distance calling to him. 

In the early mornings he smells her perfume on the air and tears sting his eyes because it’s so easy to forget that she’s not there with him. So easy to turn to smile at her and find only empty space beside him. 

When he dreams it’s always of her. She comes home and apologises for being gone so long and he can feel her in his arms again and he’s so happy that he can hardly breathe. 

But every morning he wakes up alone. 

One night he can’t take it anymore. He gets in the car and just starts driving, not sure where he’s going until suddenly he’s certain. Back to the place that she called home. To the place that they used to go together, where she would run with her feet in cold water laughing, breathing deep the air and telling him that it was like she could feel her soul sighing. Like she belonged there. 

He drives all night, parking just in time to walk onto the beach as the sun is cresting the horizon. For a moment her hands are on his shoulders, her laugh all around him, the splashing of her feet in the icy water. 

But she’s not there. 

She’ll never be there again. 

Ochako is working in the summer as a farm hand on Aizawa’s ranch. There are lots of hands and some are a LOT nicer than others, especially to her as the only female hand. But she’s strong as all hell and knows how to handle herself, so she ignores the comments about ‘painted on jeans’ and a hundred other less pleasant things because frankly she just wants an easy life. 

Until one of the hands pushes it too far. She finds herself cornered in one of the barns, a hand telling her that she should share a little sugar, that it’s not right for her to look the way she does all day long and not go out with one of them. 

Shinsou - son of the ranch owner - hears this exchange from the outside and is heading in to intervene at the exact moment that Uraraka punches the creep square in the nose, shoving him on to the ground and telling him that there was more than that came from if he tried that again. 

She blushes when she realises that she’s being watched, especially when it’s the quiet but gorgeous son of her boss. But he just smiles at her, wandering over to confirm who’s been giving her trouble to make sure that he doesn’t keep his job for an hour longer than necessary. Because he liked Uraraka even before she proved that she was a hell of a lot more than just a pretty girl. 

When the season ends and the job finishes he takes a chance and slips Uraraka his number with a shy smile, clear that there’s no pressure but that he’d love to see her again. 

She accepts it, pulling herself up on tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek before sauntering away, doing her best not to have an excited freak out until /after/ she’s in the car and out of sight. 

Uraraka is working three jobs doing her best to help her parents out of their financial difficulties. She not only works with them on their construction sites, running paperwork and taking calls, booking drivers and making sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible, but she also has a night job monitoring an elderly persons residential home, and when she's not at either of those she has what she calls, at least on her tax return, a small freelance modelling career.

She's so close to being able to get her parents out of debt, if she can just push for another two or three years then she's sure that she'll be able to do it. Maybe sooner if she can find the right client for her adult work. 

Bakugou is a reasonably successful corporate businessman. He manages a small team of designers and models and always manages to come in above his quarterly targets. He's single but that's fine by him, he's too busy to be involved with anyone anyway.

One day whilst looking for new models he comes across a site that he's not used before. OnlyFans. It's marketed as a modelling site and lord knows hes prepared to do whatever it takes to find the best for his agency, so he signs up.

The first person he sees is Uraraka. It takes him a second to get over the horror that is using your work email to sign up to a porn site, but once he's past that he can't take his eyes away from the gorgeous woman on the screen. She's softcore, all round edges over obvious muscle, skin that looks like silk and eyes that draw him in so much he almost forgets where he is.

He has to pay to message her but he doesn't care. She's easily the most gorgeous woman he's every seen and he needs her. Either for his line or himself, he doesn't care which. 

Which is how Uraraka finds herself with a new very charming and very generous patron. He messaged her at first claiming to be an agent but she didn't fall for that. Everyone claimed to be able to make her famous and she never bought it. But he was kind and well spoken even if he swore a lot, and his requests were never unreasonable. 

He wanted to see her in baby blue, then in pink. He asked her to pull her hair up off of her face, to send him a picture totally free of makeup. He payed well, tipped better, and told her she was beautiful in every exchange. 

It went on that way for a year, and that was enough for her to help her parents pay off their debt. She was free of her night work, free of the pressure. She posted one more update for her fans. Closing indefinitely. 

Bakugou saw the notice and couldn't believe it. He'd fallen so hard for the woman behind the screen. For her sharp wit and broad smile. He didn't want to lose the only connection he had. So he sent her a message immediately. His phone number (personal) and his email (work) asking her to please get in touch, for a job or a coffee, whichever she liked. And though it wasn't something they had ever done, he took a picture of himself and sent that too, in his work suit, in front of the company sign, in the hopes that it would show her he was serious about hiring her if she wanted.

Of course she looks him up, realising with some horror that she had been flirting with one of the hiring managers for one of the largest modelling agencies in the country. And he's hot.

She agonises over the decision with her friends but eventually decides to do both. Email him about that job, and text him to see if he's really serious about that coffee when she's got all of her clothes on. 

She's not sure what her life is going to be, but when he sends her a date and a time to meet she gets a feeling like she might be almost there.

It wasn’t often that the Addams’ went away, and it was even less usual for the house to be entirely empty. But that was the situation that Wednesday found herself in. Her mother and father were taking a holiday, and they were taking Grandmama and Lurch and Thing with them for good measure. Wednesday and Matilda had moved out some time before but, well, her mother seemed insistent that there was one member of the family in the house at all times which meant that she was called home. 

So home she and Matilda went. 

The house was the same as ever, and though it was the home that she had always known it didn’t quite feel as hers as the way it once had. The halls were ones that she had walked down as a child, and as an adult, the rooms were the ones that she had known inside and out. It was home, but it wasn’t. 

She didn’t know how to feel about that. 

But of course Matilda, her Artemisia, was there beside her. There to listen to the things that worried her, to the strange settling and shifting in her chest. 

Matilda understood, better than anyone. She’d gone from a home that everyone had told her belonged to her, to one that wasn’t hers but had felt right for a while, to the one that she had built and shared with Wednesday. The one that really was theirs. That was home in a way that nowhere else had been. 

She eased her wife's fears the way she always did, laying nose to nose in the bed that had been Wednesday’s for as long as she could remember.

And little by little Wednesday realised that home was wherever they could lay like that, nose to nose, whispering so low that nobody else could hear. Home wasn’t the house that she’d grown up in. It was wherever her wife was. 

Ochako always knew that her calling was to take orders and join the church. She’s been hearing voices since she was a small child, seeing things that others couldn’t. Signs, she was told by their local mother superior. A summons from a higher power. 

She knew things that she couldn't possibly know, witnessed histories that had never been and futures that the world might never know. She was touched, a prophet the like of which had never been seen before, and so with the blessing of her parents the church took her in and ministry became her life. 

Simple, quiet, dull if she had to put a word to it when she was old enough to have such thoughts, but it was what she was destined for so what could she do? She served and she prayed, prayed and served and over the years the voices became just one voice. Deep and roiling, a crackle of power around the edges that the other nuns told her must be the lord. But the secrets he whispered to her as her hips widened and her chest filled were no heavenly teachings that she could find in the book. 

The stories and tales of her youth had grown with her, and some nights she woke in a fevered sweat, a throbbing between her legs and a confusing desire in her chest. 

She had read the stories of the mother. Was this how the lord had brought his son into the world? Was this what she was to be?

On those nights she prayed harder than any other. Begging whatever being it was that spoke to her to tell her their plan so that she might better be the instrument. But the answers never came, and the older she grew the more she was plagued by feelings that had no business inside a monastery. 

The eve of her thirtieth birthday the whispered depravities and flame within her were so great that she could no longer bear it, she fell to her knees and begged the speaker to appear. To tease her no longer with such things that she could never know. She vowed that she would give anything to the one who had guided her, if they would just appear and soothe the ache in her soul. 

With a boom that shook the simple stone building she called home her calls were answered. But before her stood no god. Cloven hooves led up to thick muscled legs, a simple cloth hanging over whatever lay between them. One blackened hand reached down to her as she trembled on her knees, tilting her chin up and up until she met the burning red eyes and dangerous smile of whatever foul creature she had accidentally called to her. 

His gaze set the flame ever hotter within her, and when he beckoned she stood, taking a step towards him though every teaching she had ever recited told her to run from what must be a creature from the very deepest hells. 

“So you finally called to me, my angel,” the man growled, wrapping a clawed hand around her waist and smiling wider at the whimper that escaped her lips. “All these years you have resisted me, but even in this place you could not stay away. Not when you were destined to be mine.”

That voice…that deep silky smooth voice…

“You-”

“Now you’re catching up. Shall we go?”

“But I-”

“You’re mine,” the demon growled again. “You always have been. If you wish to be free…” he released his hold and her knees buckled, dropping her back to her position of prayer once more. “But if you come with me I can show you every world you have ever dreamed of, and more. All you have to do is ask.”

The second time she stood, it was alone. She took the hand as it extended, and in a second booming flash they were gone. 

It’s nothing new for Hawks to have a bad day. Most of his days are bad days, if he’s going to be really damn honest with himself. He does what he’s told, from the moment he wakes up to the moment that he goes to bed, and as much as he hates it he knows that’s he’s likely never going to gain any semblance of freedom. 

He rebels in his own small ways, but nothing is ever going to be enough.

Still, it’s a worse than normal bad day. He was too slow - something he wasn’t used to being - and he didn’t just lose a civilian he lost a child. A tiny perfect human that didn’t even really understand what was happening when he started to fall. Who was falling for precious seconds before Hawks arrived and started to rocket after him. 

He was too late. By fractions of seconds that could have saved the boy. That could have saved his poor mother from the horror that was not even having enough of your child left to bury. 

So he didn’t go home, he went to the roof of the highest building that he could find and curled his wings around himself, only letting the tears fall and the sobs wrack from his chest when he was so far away from the rest of the world that he was sure that nobody would hear him. 

He didn’t expect there to be someone waiting for him. 

“Hey, Songbird, bad day?”

Hawks snapped his eyes open, looking around to see the speaker and finding him sitting on the other side of the spire, dark hair sticking out at odd angles, legs dangling lazily over the edge, and a cigarette gently resting unlit between his lips. 

“How the hell did you get up here?”

“Asked a favour, you’re not the only one who can fucking fly you know. Figured this is where you’d come.”

“You-”

“Come on, I know everything that happens around here. You want to talk about it?”

He did, but he also really didn’t. He might enjoy drowning his sorrows with the handsome scarred man, might enjoy being pinned and pounded into a mattress by him when the world got a little too much. Another tiny act of rebellion, he supposed. They weren’t talking types. 

But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if he wasn’t looking at him. If he was just, speaking his worries out into the wind. 

So he took a breath and let it all go, the day that had him running from place to place so much that even he was starting to slow down, the call for help, the moment that he arrived and the moment that he realised he was too late. 

The fact that he was going to never get the look on that poor mother’s face out of his eyes. 

Somewhere through his rambling a warm scarred hand closed over his, and a little while after he stopped he felt an arm drape over his shoulders, fingers brushing lightly over his feathers, pulling him close. Holding him whilst the tears continued to fall without a single word. 

It was like the rest of the world didn’t exist, there was just the pair of them and the stars, far enough away from everything below that none of it would ever reach them again.

But eventually the bubble had to burst. 

Eventually someone would know that he was missing. Would activate the tracking chip that they insisted hadn’t been injected between his shoulder blades when he was too young to remember and send a helicopter to retrieve him. 

It seemed that Dabi was thinking the same. 

“Not too late to run away,” he sighed, tangling their fingers together just a little tighter. “Go somewhere where they can’t reach us.”

“You say that like I haven’t tried.”

“You haven’t tried with me.”

“Dabi-”

“I know. Figured it was worth a try.”

Hawks nodded, leaning over to crash their lips together, tasting the salt from his own tears on the other man’s lips. One day, he thought, he might just take Dabi up on his insane suggestion to run. To spread his wings and keep flying until nobody knew his name. 

But it wasn’t that day. 

Not yet. 

So he took a second longer for one last kiss, then stood and spread his wings without another look back, returning to the life that he hated, braced for the next string of bad days. 

Tamaki never would have believed in a million years that someone like Momo would be interested in him. That she would even notice that he existed, for that matter. But then she had told him that she was excited to work with him, that she wanted to know what she could learn from him and he was already blushing so hard he could hardly hear. 

And then she went and said those three words. /Among other things./

He’d been fixated on them ever since. 

What did she mean by among other things? What did he possibly know that he could teach her?

He was embarrassed to admit that in the long late hours of the night his mind wandered, those words ringing in his ears, his imagination running away with itself. To her pressed up against a wall asking to see just how many ways he could use his quirk to please her. To her sucking a long finger into her mouth and watching her cheeks bulge as he stretched and elongated it into a tentacle. 

She was so poised, so graceful and elegant and perfect all the time that he couldn’t help but wonder how she would look when she came undone. 

It was one such night, taking shifts on a stake out with the agency that she surprised him yet again. He was staring at the ceiling, thinking about her the way that he inevitably did when there was a quiet tap at the door, her face appearing around it moments later. 

He was sure that he was imagining it, that he had slipped into a dream and she wasn’t really there at all when she held a finger to her lips with a tiny coy smile. He even pinched himself when she pulled back the blankets and crawled over him, her pupils blown and full of want. 

Her lips were pressed against his ear when she finally spoke, low and husky. 

‘I’m ready for a lesson, leader.’

He missed his watch, and then she missed hers, but nobody came to get them and they were so lost in one another that they didn’t notice the time pass. And in the morning when he rolled over and she was still there, smiling at him, pressing kisses to his knuckles, he finally started to believe. 

And he was both terrified and excited to see what the next lesson would hold. 

Bakugou and Uraraka are both hugely into physical fitness. Bakugou is a weight lifter, he's all about cut muscle and perfect form, doing his best to be as strong as possible whilst being as hot as possible. 

Uraraka dances. She'll take just about any dance class she can get, from Zumba with the older ladies in her local community gym to contemporary classes, but her passion is pole dance.

She loves the way that she feels on the pole, the mixture of strength and flowing movement combining into easily the hardest sport she's ever taken part in. She owns a small studio and runs classes four days a week, to anyone who wants to learn.

One day Bakugou happens to be at her gym, he's been working long hours and his regular place is closed by the time he gets off shift, so he goes to the nearest place with weights that he can find. Which is where he spots Uraraka for the first time, and he can't take his eyes off her. 

She's curvy in all the right places, with bright round eyes and thighs that he immediately wants to bury his face in, and he can't understand for the life of him why she's wasting time with a bunch of blue rinse old ladies when she could be using that gorgeous body for so much better. 

He approaches her when she comes out of her class, sweat beading down his chest and a swagger in his step, leaning his arm against the doorframe as soon as she's in view. 

"You know if you want a real workout I can show you a great time, Cheeks."

She looks him up and down and he starts to preen when she sees the slight scowled upturn of her lip. 

"Something tells me that you couldn't keep up."

And then she's doing something that basically no woman has ever done. She's walking away from him without even a single look back.

He was already fascinated but in that moment he knows he's done for. He needs to know more about this perfect strong sassy woman, and he needs to know it soon. 

Uraraka notices the gruff looking blonde weightlifter at her gym more often. He's there almost every day, pushing some pretty impressive numbers, but doing half of it whilst looking in a mirror, flexing and drawing way more attention to himself than was strictly necessary. She's no fool, she knows that he's trying to get her attention and she has never been happier to ignore someone. 

He's clearly too full of himself to bother with. She has bigger things to worry about. 

A few weeks into their cat and mouse relationship, Bakugou trying to talk to Uraraka, Uraraka blowing him off, he starts to wonder if he's lost his edge. In the time it would usually take for him to bed a cute girl and forget her he hasn't even managed to learn her name. 

So he changes his approach, coming to stand next to her in the next Zumba class he can make.

"So you think I can't keep up, Cheeks, why don't we test that theory?"

She only laughs at him, stretching and sharing a look with the others in the class that he can't interpret. But it's just a stupid aerobics class, how hard could it be?

Ten minutes in he has a stitch, and her smile hasn't lessened. 15 minutes in, without a single rest break he's starting to hurt all over, sweat pouring off him and his muscles and lungs screaming at him to stop. He was no stranger to cardio but this shit was insane. 

By the end of the 30 minute session he can barely breathe, collapsing onto a bench at the side of the room and drinking his water in huge gulps. She saunters up to him, laughing and shaking her head and holding out a small shimmery card

"When you think you're ready for the big leagues, you let me know."

He takes the card with what he hopes is a confident smile, looking at it whilst she walks away. 

Gravity Pole: Exceed Your Limits 

There was a class list on the back, and as just to add insult to injury she has circled the beginners class. 

But Bakugou was never one to back down from a challenge. So the Zumba class has been harder than he expected. There was no way that he wasn't going to nail pole dance. 

So the next chance he got, he went. 

Uraraka had to admit she was surprised to see him, standing in line with the rest of her beginners, scowling so hard that nobody would get close to him. But she was pleased too. He thought he was so strong, so hot. They would show him.

"Everyone!" She called, silencing the group with a smile. "We have a new classmate today. I hope everyone makes him feel welcome. Fall in, time to warm up. Oh and new guy-"

"Bakugou."

"Bakugou," she gave him her sweetest smile. "Try to keep up."

By the end of the dance warmup Bakugou was sweating, heart pounding in his chest. How did they do it with a smile and a laugh, chatting whilst they ran through a complex dance routine with more steps than he could count? Uraraka – he had learned her name from the card – then had the class start their climbs. They all went to work, pulling themselves up the pole like it was nothing, arm over arm. 

That at least he was sure he could do. 

"I see you deciding if you can just muscle up there," Uraraka said as she approached. "Keep your shoulders down. Push with your knees and your feet. Go."

That, too, was harder than it looked. He was plenty strong enough to climb a rope hand over hand, but pushing through his bare feet hurt and getting his knees in position made them burn too. 

He slid down once he reached the top, landing heavy with a grin.

"Not so hard."

But Uraraka did not look impressed.

"Again. Three each side. Try not to land so hard."

The rest of the class went much the same, Uraraka set the rest of the attendees to working on some more or another and then wandered over to Bakugou to show him how it was done. She was incredible, pulling herself up and into moves like it was nothing at all, moves that had him sweating and grunting, some that he couldn't even pull off. 

He was strong as hell, but half of what she was doing looked like it should be impossible. Especially when combined with a slightly slippery pole that span every time he tried to get purchase on it. 

By the end of the session he had bruises all over his legs and feet, his forearms were pumped and almost every part of him hurt. She'd shown him up yet again, and he couldn't help but enjoy it. 

He lingered behind when the rest of the class left, shouting their goodbyes to Uraraka, promising to be back next time. She was busy cleaning up and for a moment didn't acknowledge him. But finally she looked up, leaning against the broom with a smile. 

"Well you didn't suck," she said, as though it was a compliment. 

"Shits fucking hard," Bakugou grumbled. 

"Yup. If you want to keep coming I reckon you could get good pretty quick. Maybe get some real strength behind those rippling abs."

"Oh so you did notice my abs," Bakugou grinned. 

"Well I'm not blind."

She went back to her cleaning, and Bakugou beamed, pulling his bag over his shoulder. 

"You know what Cheeks, you're on. I'll be back."

And as the door clicked closed Uraraka finally let herself smile. She wouldn't be sorry to see Bakugou return to her classes. Not one bit. 

He’s been smitten from the first second he saw her, but he’s sure that he could never be good enough to be near her. Certain that’s she’s going to end up with his little brother because let’s be honest he’s everything that anyone could want in a partner for their daughter. If he had a kid he would pick someone like Shoto over him, too. But he can’t help letting his eyes linger on her when she comes over for soba nights. 

Can’t help but wonder what it would be like if she would look his way for a little while.  

She’s secretly always had a thing for her best friend’s older brother. Shoto is nice, sure, but he’s about as gay as they come and though he’s in the closet to his family (for no reason because she’s pretty sure that they know) it’s clear to her that she has absolutely nothing that he wants. 

Touya on the other hand? He has dyed black hair and piercings that made her want to run her tongue over his lips to see what they felt like. She stays over at least once a month and she’s always tempted to sneak through the house to his room, push the doors open and wake him up to see just how far those piercings go. 

But she’s scared he’ll reject her. 

One night whilst she’s there she wakes up thirsty, Shoto is gently snoring and there’s no sense waking him up when she knows where the kitchen is, so she pads downstairs to get a glass of water and stops dead when she sees a familiar silhouette already there. Touya is standing at the open fridge, eating leftovers illuminated by the pale yellow light. In just a pair of boxers. There’s a cigarette behind his ear and Ochako is determined to back away when he stretches one arm over his head yawning and his muscles ripple. She’s frozen, a tiny whine escaping her lips before she can swallow it, snapping his attention to her. 

His lazy smile spreads across his face, setting the bowl back in the fridge and closing it gently. But the look in his eyes is pure fiery desire, and she’s moving before she can talk herself out of it. Crossing the kitchen in five long strides and tugging him towards her by the waistband of his boxers, one hand landing on his chest, the other reaching up to wind around his neck. She’s up on her tiptoes, holding her breath waiting to see if he will close the space between them. 

And he does. 

He tastes like cigarettes and hot sauce, and she’s sure that his hands are burning a path across her skin when he slips them around her waist and under her pyjamas, turning to lift her and set her on the counter like she weighed nothing at all. 

In the morning her hair is more ruffled than usual, and she blushes every time that she looks at the counter, remembering the feel of him sliding into her, the path of his kisses at her throat and down her chest. Lucky for her Shoto is about as oblivious as ever, but when Touya finally appears she can tell that he’s having the same thoughts. 

The next time she’s invited for soba night she doesn’t hesitate to slip into Touya’s room as soon as Shoto is asleep. And the time after that. 

He’s still not sure that he’s good enough for her, but when he’s basking in her afterglow he’s not sure that he really cares. 

Bakugou is generally doing better when it comes to not blowing up his fellow students and getting into trouble. But better isn’t perfect, and UA has a three strike policy. 

He’s on his second strike by the end of their third year, which means that one more large incident and he will be expelled. His boyfriend, and class rep, isn’t about to let that happen. After all, losing a member of class 1A would tarnish his perfect record. Bakugou just needs a little discipline, and that is something that Iida knows a thing or two about. 

So one evening after a long day when Bakugou has been in a particularly foul mood Iida asks him to attend a study session in his dorm. 8pm sharp. Don’t be late. He’s not honestly certain that Bakugou will turn up – sometimes after a hard day he just wants to wind down and rest – but usually when Tenya makes a request of him it’s followed. But at 8pm sharp there’s a knock on his door and Tenya can’t help but smile. 

At least he was starting the evening out being good. 

They start as they always do, running through the homework for Present Mic, working on their grammar forms, Iida checking that Bakugou’s work was neat enough for his standards, overlooking the man’s bad language, a few tender touches here, a few chaste kisses there. Nothing to show what Tenya has planned, he’s biding his time. 

But finally the work is done, and Bakugou is packing up to leave, clearly not intending to curl up in his partner's arms as he sometimes did. But Tenya catches him by the wrist as he stands.

“Hold on a moment, Katsuki.” 

Something about the firm deep shift in Iida’s voice makes Bakugou stop. He’s never heard his class president sound like that before and it makes him shudder, heat pooling in his stomach.

“What?”

“We need to talk about your behaviour this week.”

“Ten-”

“Quiet.” There was that deep rumble again, a hint of something dangerous behind the command when Iida ran his hand up to take Bakugou by the chin, ensuring that their eyes were locked together. “I think it’s rather time that we teach you to listen, Katsuki. Perhaps I should have done so a while ago but I was so hoping you would learn to behave on your own.”

Bakugou didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t the gentle whine that rose in his throat when the hand tightened on his chin, the tiny nod that followed. His heart was racing, hammering in his chest like it was trying to beat free. Tenya was always handsome, caring and collected, a perfect partner in many ways. But with the fire in his eyes and the knowing smile on his face he was suddenly sinful, and Katsuki wanted so much more.

“Good boy,” Iida crooned, stroking Bakugou’s face with one hand and loosening his tie with another. “I knew you needed this as much as I do. Why don’t we find out just how good you can be?”

Uraraka is having one of /those days/.The days when nothing goes quite right, and everything is either making her life harder or pissing her off, of both. 

She bungles a rescue and ends up hurting someone. They’re still /technically/ rescued but they apparently aren’t happy with that, yelling at her even as the paramedics are taking them away that she’ll be hearing from their lawyer. That she can’t just get away with hurting random people because she’s a hero. 

Worse it’s all over the news. She huffs as her phone starts to blow up with messages from her PR team, some from her friends, and one that manages to make her smile cutting through all the rest. 

Katsuki: Should have let the building crush him. Ungrateful fuck. 

That makes her laugh, and she goes about the rest of her day. Not that it gets much better. By the time she’s home she’s aching and miserable. She’d cut herself pulling someone out of the rubble and her fingers were still tingling even after the medics had patched her up. She’d spilled her lunch ramen all over herself - ruining her favourite pair of trousers in the process. A coffee delivered by a sidekick had been hazelnut (which she was allergic to) so she’d had to gift it to Shoto even though it was exactly what she wanted in that moment. 

All she wanted was to flop onto the couch and cry. 

Her door was unlocked, and she stopped. That would be just her luck, someone breaking into her stupid crummy apartment just to top off her terrible day. 

She pushed in slowly, on guard even after she heard the low music, saw the warm glow of candle light and smelled something that made her mouth water. She rounded the corner, hands still raised, and the tears started to fall when she saw Bakugou. Standing in her kitchen, wearing her apron and swaying his hips to the music that she knew he had put on just for her. He was cooking, had set up a romantic table setting and there was steam riding from the door of her bathroom, the spell of her favourite bubble bath wafting through. 

With a sob she stamped her foot a few times, knowing the vibrations through the floor would get his attention, signing a hello with a question the moment he turned around. 

/Figured you deserved some spoiling/ he replied. /After your shitty day./

She ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck and sobbing her thanks into his neck. His arms wound around her, pulling her into a tight embrace that immediately helped melt away some of the stress of the day. After a few minutes he pulled back, thumbing away her tears with a /tch/. 

/Go and get in the bath, you’ve got rubble in your hair/ he sighed, kissing her nose lightly. /I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready./

“Thank you, Katsuki.”

He nodded, shoving her off with a blush. She was almost at the bathroom when the sound of him clapping his hands together called her attention, she turned just in time to catch a few hurried signs, the blush on his face and neck threatening to set him alight. 

/I love you, Ochako./

/Love you too, Katsuki./

She knew that there would be a lot of bad days in the years to come, but if she was lucky enough to have someone as amazing as Bakugou with her, loving her through them all, she thought she might just make it. 

He doesn't know when or why he was given his calling. There are vague memories of a fire, something white and hot and terrible, but when he woke up two great red wings stretched out of his back and he could feel the power of the universe thrumming to him. 

His charge was connected to him by a golden chain. They couldn't see it but he always felt the tether there, keeping him close, never letting him stray too far away from the child he was tasked to protect. And protect he did. 

He was the strength that helped them stand when someone pushed them roughly to the ground. The presence that stopped a late night approach that could have turned into a terrible fight. The protective drape of his wings shielded his charge when the world was too much, an embrace that they couldn't see but felt in their darkest moments.

For the first time in his life Hawks was proud to be who and what he was.

And then the fire returned.. 

He knew that he needed to get his charge out, but the flames were so hot and his body wouldn’t move even as the flames that he shouldn’t be able to feel lapped around his feet. He had to protect, had to move, had to get the sleeping boy out. But he couldn’t. The best he could do was shatter a window and hope that someone would see the blaze. Hope that someone would come. 

They didn’t get there in time.

Hawks threw himself on the bed but the fire was once again too strong for him, taking his feathers, burning his skin. He could feel himself tumbling. Falling down and down until-

“There you are.”

The voice was somehow familiar, the arms wrapping around him a ghost of a memory. 

“I’ve been waiting a long time for you. Sorry I couldn’t protect you before, funny how these things work out, eh.”

When he was able to open his eyes the wings that had once been plush and red were charred, one all but completely gone, the feathers on the other slowly fading into inky black. 

“Where?”

“Hate to be the one to tell you Songbird, but this is the place after the after. You’re not dead, but you’re not really a guardian anymore either.”

He looked at the man standing before him. Wingless, one curling horn and one broken one stretching up from his hairline. His body covered in years old burn scars. 

“So I’m in hell?”

“Nah, they save that for the real assholes. You’ve just been demoted. Guardian angel to…well I guess you could think of us as guardians…of a sort.”

The voice tugged somewhere deep inside him, familiar but he couldn't place it.

“You want to know how you know me, right?” The man said, grinning at him, lopsided and wonderful. 

“Yeah.”

“Couldn’t save you last time, not for lack of trying,” he pointed to the scars. “That fire was something else. Sucks that it happened twice.”

“You were-”

“An angel, just like you. Yup. But I failed and I fell, and now you’re here with me again.” He stepped forwards, one hand running through the remainder of the feathers with a sad smile. “My one winged angel. I’ll never let a single thing hurt you again.”

“I don’t-”

“You will. Come on, we need to meet our new charge. You’ve been an angel for so long, time to learn the ways of the other side.”

And though he wasn’t sure why, he took the scarred hand that was held out to him, feeling safer in that small embrace than he ever had. 

Feeling for the first time that he was finally home. 

Dabi looked up at the ceiling, listening to the slow calm breathing of the woman next to him, trying to remember just how the hell he'd ended up there. On a mattress that was too soft in a home that he hadn't had to break into. Dry and warm and…happy?

Fuck how long had it been since he'd felt /that/?

He rolled over, trying not to smile and failing when he saw Uraraka crinkle her nose in her sleep, grumbling something and rolling over herself to snuggle back into him. 

He brushed his fingers through her hair, sliding one arm under her head and pulling her into him until her back was pressed against his chest, smiling again at the little satisfied sighs that followed.

The first time it had happened he was sure that it was a mistake, that come the morning when she sobered up she would realise that the man who had bought all six of her fruity pink drinks, who she had danced and laughed with until she could hardly stand, was a lowlife. Would regret everything that had passed between them. Would kick him out.

Instead she had made him breakfast. Kissed him on the cheek with a blush when she made her way out the door to work, telling him just to drop the spare key in her mailbox on his way out.

He was so stunned he forgot to even /think/ about stealing her shit before he left, locking up and dropping the key off like she'd said.

That should have been the end of it. But the next night she was back at the dive bar he frequented, drinking like she had something to prove. Mouthing off to some huge asshole like she was trying to start a fight. 

So he'd stepped in. He'd bought her /fewer/ drinks, but when she'd looked up at him with huge brown eyes, lips that he so desperately wanted to drown in … well he could only be so strong. 

A few weeks in she gave him her number. 

A few weeks after that she'd invited him over for dinner. 

And somehow, somewhere along the line he'd ended up being there with her more than he was anywhere else. Losing himself in the softness of her skin, the tenderness of her touch. The way that she came apart below him every chance he gave her.

She was everything that he could never be. 

Everything he'd thought he didn't need. 

And though he knew it wasn't forever, when she looked into his eyes and whispered that she needed him, called him /baby/ and asked him to stay, he could say no.

Because it felt so fucking good to be happy, even if it was just for a little while. 

There were a lot of things that Shinsou expected to see on the field. He knew that quirks could come in any shape or size, he knew that he had to be three steps ahead all the time. He was pretty good at getting in and out of places without drawing attention of the villains until it was too late. 

And maybe he’d gotten sloppy, too used to looking for quirks that he didn’t look for something that was nearly forgotten in the world that he’s gotten to know. 

Which is why, when a villain he was following led him into an alleyway and pulled out a neat black pistol – turning and levelling it at him with a smile – he was actually shocked. That short second of being caught off guard were enough to give the villain the upper hand. 

The first shot echoed around the alleyway, and Shinsou was damned lucky that the villain was apparently a terrible shot. He felt the bullet graze over the top of his shoulder, heard it thunk into the wall behind him. In seconds he was up and moving, but the villain was moving too and his second shot would have been right on target. 

Had something not put itself between Shinsou and the man. 

“That,” he heard a growl that he almost thought sounded like Kirishima, “hurt.”

The hulking monster in front of him flexed his shoulder, and the tiny squashed bullet dropped tinkling to the ground. Then the man was growling, surging towards towards the wide eyed villain with clawed hands extended, a shout rumbling up through his jagged mouth that didn’t even sound human. 

Shinsou swung himself up onto a rooftop out of the way, still not sure what was happening until he saw the mask, the shock of red hair atop the man who had grabbed the villain by his head and thrown him down the alleyway in a single swift movement. 

“Riot?”

“Cowardly,” Kirishima growled. “Pathetic, to draw a man out and shoot him like an animal.”

He was too far gone, Shinsou could see it from the dark look in his eyes. Someone had done the one thing that would set him off and if he didn’t do something and fast there would be more than one villain in the streets by the time the sun went down.

“Dynamight, come in. Immediate assistance request. My coordinates. Riots losing it.”

“What?

“Someone tried to shoot me. Come fucking fast.

He landed hard, one knee buckling under him but he didn’t have time to slow down, turning the tumble into a run, throwing out his capture weapon and wrapping it around Kirishima’s raised hand to slow the huge strike that was being aimed at the apparently unconscious villain. 

“Ei!” He shouted, not bothering with the comms as he pulled himself up and onto Kirishima’s shoulders. “Eijirou, baby I’m here and I’m not hurt. You gotta come back to me.”

“He could have-” Kirishima shuddered, the unbreakable form rippling as he breathed. “You could have-”

“He missed me, Ei. He missed me and I’m okay. So you gotta calm down and let Dynamight and team B take over now, okay?”

“Nobody touches you.”

“I know,” Shinsou cooed, running his hands over Kirishima’s face, sliding down to the ground and doing his best to pull the huge man down with him when he heard Bakugou come up behind them and pick up the slowly bleeding villain. “I need you to let go now though. You got the bad guy, I’m safe. You don’t need to be Bulletproof anymore.”

“I thought-” Kirishima started to soften with a huge sob, pulling Shinsou into a crushing hug. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“He’d have to have tried a lot harder than that,” Shinsou whispered, running his fingers through the mane of red hair. “You know I’m not leaving you that easily.”

“‘Toshi-”

“Come on,” Shinsou said, pulling back and pressing a kiss lightly to Kirishima’s lips. “Let’s finish up here and go home, Ei. I think we’ve done enough good for one day.”

He didn’t let Kirishima argue, tangling their fingers together and pulling him along, nodding to Bakugou as they passed. He would owe the fiery blond a favour for covering for him, but he didn’t care. 

His boyfriend had literally taken a bullet for him, and he was going to take him home and thank him properly, reassuring him that they were both okay was an added bonus. 

Bakugou was used to taking hits in the field that would render a weaker man useless, laughing as a villains most powerful blows proved no match for him after years of training with Kirishima.

But there were some things that even the Great Explosion Murder God couldn't resist. And one of them, was the flu.

"Doctors orders Katsuki," Uraraka said through the closed front door of their apartment. "You're contagious and I can't afford to come down with it too. So I'm going to stay at Tsu's place until you're better."

"S'fucking stupid," he sniffed from the other side of the door. "Just a cold."

"Its not a cold, and you /are/ going to stay in there. I'll drop groceries off tomorrow, and if you get too sick to cook I can float meals up to the balcony, okay?"

"M'gonna miss you."

He sounded so miserable that she almost relented, but she was entering the pro hero games that month; she had to stay in top shape to compete. And that meant she had to stay away.

"I know, I'll miss you too. But it won't be for too long."

"Better not be."

She chuckled, pressing her palm flat to the door one last time before turning and making for the stairs with her bag over her shoulder. The doctor had told her to stay away for two weeks. It wasn't that long, Bakugou would be fine.

Bakugou was not fine.

It wasn't that he didn't like being alone – if you asked him he would have said that he wished people would piss off more often – but the reality was it that he had never actually been completely on his own. 

As a kid there had always been people in his house, his parents were socialites who worked from home, and when he moved to UA there was always the comforting sound of someone else nearby even when he was shut up in his room. In their apartment Uraraka was always chattering away about this and that, or singing, or playing music. Anything. 

But with her gone, and him knowing that she wouldn't be back until he was given a clean bill of health it was quickly uncomfortably quiet. 

He put on the TV but couldn't get comfortable, so he changed over to the music channel with the intention of working out only to find his body clammy and sore before he had even warmed up. He had a shower and made his lunch and read a few chapters of a book and somehow there were still do many hours left in the day.

K: This is shitty

O: If you're feeling sick you should rest

K: Not feeling that sick. Just /bored/

O: That's because you're not well enough to focus on anything. Rest, Katsuki. Don't make me call your mother.

K: what's she gonna do? I'm in a damn quarantine, remember?

O: If you're bored I'm sure there's an older relative just dying to hear from their pro hero grandson.

K: Don't you fucking dare

O: Then. Rest. 

He dropped his phone onto the couch, looking up at the clock with a snarl. What did people /do/ when they were stuck like this?

Finally he picked up the phone again, searching for a barely used contact and clicking dial. 

"Kacchan?"

"Tch yeah its me. You had no friends when we were kids right? Spent all your time alone or whatever?"

"Sure, thanks so much for reminding me."

"What the fuck did you do to fill your time? Weren't you bored as hell?"

"If you remember," Dekus voice was suddenly much firmer, "I put all of my time into researching heroes and collating notebooks, which you delighted in destroying. Enjoy your quarantine Bakugou."

The phone line went dead and Bakugou was back to flopping with a huff on the couch.

He supposed a bit of research on the new and upcoming heroes couldn't hurt.

The next few hours passed much faster, Bakugou lost himself in the huge hero registry, reading about any advice every pro who had come up through UA since his own graduation year. He noted names of those that he might want to look into hiring at the DynaRiot agency, checking their sports festival scores and grades and appearances since.

But after a while the joy of that wore off, too. His stomach was rumbling so he made dinner, finding that he had very little appetite and putting most of it into tupperware for the next day.

It was a welcome relief when his phone rang 

"So," Ochako asked, "how are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"You sure? Not going too crazy there on your own?"

"I'm a grown fucking man Cheeks, I can handle being on my own for a week or two."

"Alright, I don't ask any more. Want to hear about my day?"

He did, and the more she talked the better he felt, letting the soothing sound of her voice wash over him, closing his eyes and picturing her in his mind, her hands moving animatedly when she got too excited, her smile wide when she talked about the best parts of the day.

He didn't know then it happened, but at some point the phone slid out of his hands, and if he'd still been awake he would have heard Ochako chuckle and whisper goodnight. 

The next two weeks were torture. Bakugou had never in his life felt more unlike himself. The days when the sickness was stronger, leaving him only able to sip water and sleep were almost the better days. Because when he was feeling reasonable he had to deal with being alone.

And he had to start to acknowledge that he was terrible at it.

Kirishima had offered to play video games with him, saying they would play online with voice chat and it would be just like they were in the same room. Todoroki dropped off jigsaw puzzles for one and Denki offered to play guess who with him through his closed front door. Ochako called him every morning and every night.

But there was just no substitute for real company.

By the time the doctor arrived to test him for contagion he was climbing the walls, so desperate to go out and see another human being that he had considered climbing up onto his own roof to see if the hero commission would send someone to get him down. 

He felt like he was going insane, little by little losing his mind inside those four walls. But finally – at the end of the third week – good news came in the form of a key turning in the door.

"Katsuki-"

He was there so fast Ochako wondered if he had been holding himself up on the ceiling waiting to drop on her. He pulled her into a bruising hug, not even taking the time to let her close the door.

"It's nice to see you too," she wheezed. "You feeling okay?"

"Perfect now you're home."

"I wasn't even gone that long."

"Any time away from you is too fucking long "

"Well," she said, pulling back to press a featherlight kiss to his lips before turning and sauntering towards their bedroom. "Why don't we see if I can't make it up to you?"

He closed the front door and followed, a smile spreading on his face for the first time in weeks. He had missed her for a lot of reasons, but he was only human, and there was no way he could say no to a look like that.

It wouldn't make the weeks apart worth it, but it was a pretty good start at making it better.

Uraraka looked at herself in the mirror several times, trying to find an angle that the press wouldn't have a field day with. Trying to find a way to stand where they wouldn’t talk about her wide hips or thick legs or any of the other things that they liked to write about her. 

“What are you looking at, Cheeks?”

“I just don’t want them to hate me. For once.”

“Why do you let it bother you?” he asked, sliding his hands over the hips that he loved no matter what the media said about them. “You know how sexy I think you are, how much of an amazing hero you are. Why does the rest of it matter?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” she huffed, sniffing back a tear. “When you punch out a reporter the rest just write about how good your arms looked doing it. They never see a single good thing in me.”

“How about this,” he pulled her in for a tight hug, resting his head on top of hers. “A single one of them asks to speak to you about anything, this dress, your hair, your makeup, any of it, you let me handle them?”

She nodded, hating that she was giving up a little by letting him take the lead, but secretly glad that she wouldn’t have to smile through it all alone for once. She let him help her step into shoes that would make her feet ache inside the first hour of the night, brushing a stray piece of hair out of her face and press a last gentle kiss to her lips. 

“We got this, Cheeks. You and me, ‘kay?”

“Okay.”

“Now let’s go show them how hot you look in my mothers new line.”

They walked the red carpet amid the shouts of photographers, Bakugou taking it all in his stride, smiling and standing strong, pulling her close to him, one hand always on her hip, as though reminding everyone that she was the one that he had chosen without having to say a single word. 

But eventually they made it to the door, where the real vultures were waiting. 

“Dynamight! Dynamight over here!”

“Uravity! Tell us, who made your dress tonight?”

“Uravity over here tell us did you have to have that dress especially fitted?”

“Dynamight, we understand that Illus-o-Camie has been suggesting that you might prefer a more feminine partner and that she’ll be waiting for your call whenever you’re ready, how do you respond to claims that you might be planning to leave your wife?”

Uraraka tried to hide the shock on her face, but Bakugou didn’t bother hiding the anger on his. He grabbed the microphone out of the reporter’s hand, shoving him back into the line with a growl. 

“Everyone fucking listen, I want to get one thing straight right now. Uravity is my wife and she is also one of the most beautiful women I have ever had the pleasure of standing beside. I have absolutely no desire to look at anyone else, and if Camie wants to suggest otherwise that’s on her.”

He looked over at Uraraka, sliding his hand around her waist and tugging her close. 

“I don’t fucking care what any of you think. What you choose to write about her or say about her. This woman is my whole damn world. The most beautiful and the strongest and the most impressive damn hero you’re ever going to see. So you can all pull your heads out of your collective asses and start realising that or we’re going to have to find out just how many of you I can punch out before someone calls Endeavour to see if he can stop me.”

He didn’t let them say a single word, blowing up the microphone in his hand, flipping off a camera and leading Uraraka away with a smile. 

“Katsuki-”

“Been wanting to say it since the first time someone wrote that you’d crush me with your thighs first time you sat on my face.”

“KATSUKI!”

“All I’m saying is,” he pulled her into a long kiss, grinning when he pulled back. “It would be a hell of a way to go.”

That had her laughing for the first time that she could remember at one of those terrible events. And in the morning the only news was that the Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight had threatened half of the guests and destroyed more than one piece of expensive media equipment. 

For the first time there was no mention of Uraraka at all.

Deku had noticed a lot of changes in his boyfriend over the years, the way that he had come out of his shell at UA once the moved into the dorms, the subtle changes in confidence when he accepted his power as his own and then again when he learned how to truly wield it in a way that made him even stronger than his father. 

But the biggest change came in the years after the war ended, when they went back to their lives and returned to the things that had once been their normal day to day. 

As though overnight, Shoto Todoroki became an /optimist/. It started small, he would accept half a cup of coffee from the machine with a shrug and a small smile rather than the huff that would have once followed. He agreed to more group outings, he actually asked Deku out on a date which came as a shock to everyone – the chosen target most of all. 

Where the war had made so many of them cynical, fearful even, it had made Todoroki grateful in a way that made Deku fall even harder for him. 

“Sho,” he said one evening whilst they lay on their couch, snuggled together after a long day of work. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“Okay, something else.”

“Of course.”

“What changed? When we all came back to UA after the war you were…different. And I’ve thought about it for years without being able to answer what it was that had changed for you and nobody else.”

Shoto chuckled, turning to pull his boyfriend into a kiss with a smile spreading easily across his face. 

“That’s easy. I realised that we can’t guarantee even a single day. So many people were hurt, so many died, that I realised that every day that we /don’t/ die is a good day.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. I wake up every day, and I’m here and healthy and you’re here and healthy and I think, it’s a great day to be alive. And that’s all I need.”

“Hey old man,” Katsuki huffed, kicking the dirt near the grave, not able to bring himself to look at the headstone that marked the resting place of his mentor. “Ochako said I should bring flowers, but that felt fucking stupid. So here,” he pulled a small bundle of cedar needles out of his pocket, kneeling to lay them gently against the stone. “You always loved those damn cedars.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, a reassuring squeeze telling him that it was okay, that he could keep going and for a moment he almost stood up again, but then Uraraka kneeled next to him, lighting a stick of incense and setting it next to his cedar needles. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to, she’d already said her goodbyes. 

“It’s been seven years since our wedding,” Bakugou carried on. “Aizawa thinks that the pictures of you dancing with Chako might be some of the last ones of you laughing.” He felt a lump in his throat, a burning in his eyes that he hated so much. “Why the hell did you hide how sick you were from us? Maybe we could have-”

The anger that coursed through him when he remembered the rapid decline did him no good, he knew that, but it was hard to put it aside. Hard to think that the man who he’d looked up to all of his life had, in the end, not even turned to them for help. Right to the last moment he’d been alone, and if Bakugou was honest with himself he was angry that he’d been too wrapped up in his own life to see it. 

“The nerd hit number two last week. I’m sure he was here the same day, telling you. You must get a lot of visitors, symbol of fucking peace and all that. The title might be /his/ now but it’s not the same. He’s not /you/.

He didn’t know what else to say, so for a while he just knelt there, Uraraka at his side squeezing his hand, watching the incense burn down. It was supposed to be therapeutic to finally say all the things that he wanted to say, but the man he so desperately wanted to speak to wasn’t there. 

His hero had been gone so long that there were children in the world aspiring to be /them/ when they should have wanted to be /him/. 

“I miss you, old man,” he whispered finally, leaning forwards to rest his palm against the headstone. “You weren’t a great teacher, but you still made us who we are. Made /me/ who I am. You were my hero.”

With a long deep breath he reached into his pocket, pulling out a slightly bent, blood stained trading card. The beaming face of the man he’d always looked up to looking up at him from his lap. 

“I never did get you to sign this. Feels so fucking stupid to regret that now. Seven years and I still wish I’d been brave enough to ask you.” With trembling hands he reached forwards, setting the card against the incense stick. “Maybe you can hang onto it for me.”

They waited until the incense burned down and out before they moved to stand, Uraraka wiping a small tear from her face, Bakugou grinding his teeth and making sure that the wetness in his eyes didn’t spread any further. 

Saying goodbye was supposed to help, but as he stood and started to walk away from the grave he missed the man he left behind more than ever. 

“See you next year, All Might.”

Ochako sat in the quiet country pub, looking out at the landscape that she had come to think of almost as fondly as that of her home. She had been stationed in England since graduation, the only hero for miles around, moving from town to sleepy town, responding to calls anywhere that she was needed. 

It wasn’t the high energy life that she had planned for herself in the first year of UA, but a lot of things had changed for her since then. The only thing that she was sad to have left in Japan – other than her parents –  was Bakugou Katsuki. The man who had stolen her heart with a single fight in their first year at UA. He had been her first love, her first kiss, her first everything. 

But his work had taken him to America, as hers had taken her to England, and though she hadn’t seen him in what was fast approaching a decade she still thought of him almost every day. Of what their lives might have been if she had been brave enough to ask him to stay with her, to try to make it work despite the distance. 

“I’ll be closing soon, Uraraka,” the barman said from behind her, startling her out of the reminiscing. 

“Of course, sorry, John I’ll finish up.”

“Don’t hurry yourself, just letting you know.”

She drained her drink, standing up and setting it on the bar with enough cash to cover it when the door behind her banged open. 

“You’re too late for last orders,” John called back. 

“Not what I came for,” a gruff, familiar voice replied. 

Uraraka spun on the spot, wide eyes and mouth hanging open, finding herself looking straight into the face of the last man she had ever expected to see there, leaning nonchalantly against a table, a bag slung over his shoulder. 

“Katsuki?”

“Hey, Cheeks.”

She ran to him before she knew what she was doing, throwing herself into his arms and being swept up into a huge back cracking hug, his face nestled into her shoulder and hers pressing into his neck, tears rising in her eyes whens he breathed in a smell that she’d almost forgotten. Woodsy and sweet and him. 

“I’ve missed you too,” he mumbled into her hair, holding her tighter. “So fucking much.”

“What are you doing here?” she breathed pulling back to look at him, half convened that she was dreaming. 

“Took some time off,” he shrugged, setting her down but keeping his hands ghosting her waist. “Decided that it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and come find you.”

“You…you came all the way here for me?”

“No, Chako, I came for the lively fucking atmosphere.”

She snorted, looking around the very empty pub. Still not quite sure that she could believe what she was seeing or hearing. 

“Well…it’s closing here but if you wanted to walk me home?”

“I’d fucking love to, Cheeks.”

They spent the rest of the night talking, catching up and carrying on like no time at all had passed between them. Hands brushing against one another, long glances saying things that neither of them quite had the courage to say. The sky darkened and brightened again in the time that they sat in her small living room, sharing a bottle of whiskey that she didn’t even remember buying. 

But finally, Bakugou pulled her close again, slipping one hand around her waist and tipping her chin with the other, looking at her with molton carmine eyes that she lost herself in all over again. 

“I never stopped loving you,” he whispered. “Not for a single day, even after you left.”

“We left,” she muttered, drifting closer, feeling his lips ghost against hers. 

“All these years,” he carried on, “all I’ve wanted is you.”

“I’ve never been anyone else's, Katsuki.”

He closed the space between them, pulling her into a hungry kiss. Ten years worth of aching poured into that one touch. 

The day was lost to remembering the feel of one another, the way that their bodies moved together in a perfect song that was every bit as perfect as the day they’d lost it. Finally, when night fell again they found themselves laying tangled, satiated, looking long into each other's eyes. 

“Come home with me, Ochako,” Bakugou whispered, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. “Don’t make me miss you for another decade.”

“My life is here now, Katsuki. I can’t just-”

“Then let me stay here with you. Please, Ochako. I can transfer to London or… I don’t know there’s got to be a city around here fucking somewhere. But don’t tell me to go. Please. I’m not strong enough to live without you again.”

Tears that had been threatening to fall from the first moment she saw him finally broke free and rolled down her face, a sob stealing the words that she wanted to say leaving her only able to nod, pulling him closer with a choked laugh. 

“Of course you can stay, idiot,” she breathed when she was finally able to trust her voice again. “I don’t think I could bear to see you go now I remember what it’s like to have you with me.”

He pulled her back into another long kiss, smiling against her lips. A kiss that vowed never to part from her again. 

It started like any other day. Uravity was called out to an emergency with a group of other heroes, to take on a villain who had managed to break out of a high security facility during a transfer for medical testing and checking. 

She knew it was going to be nasty when she saw the assembled heroes. Most of her graduating class there in full gear, spreading and sweeping looking for the lost villain. 

It was just her luck that she found him first. 

Or rather, he found her. 

One minute she was checking in on her comms, reporting that she’d found nothing and was moving to sweep the next street, and the next there was a hot hand around her wrist yanking into an alleyway, one hand over her mouth, the other on her throat and a knee between her legs pressing her against the wall before she even had time to shout for help. 

Pale blue eyes stared into hers, a face that was scarred beyond belief but still recognisable, a lopsided grin that made her heart flutter almost as much as the easy strength of the single leg that was all but lifting her off the ground. 

Her hands were free, she /could/ grab him and float him away from her, but she remembered the fights she’d seen him in all too clearly. She knew just how much firepower he had in his fingertips, and she really didn’t want to test his reaction timings against her own without backup. She would just have to stall, and hope that someone found her before she got too hurt. 

His gaze flicked down, roaming her body in the skintight suit, the smile widening just a little before he leaned in to whisper in her ear. Close enough that she could feel his hot breath on her.

“I had hoped it would be you.”

His lips were chapped and rough against her skin, that knee grinding up ever so slightly into her. He was /toying/ with her, could kill her in a second and be gone again before anyone knew about it. She knew it. /He/ knew it. But it seemed there was something else on his mind, and for all that it made her feel like a traitor, it was on hers too. 

Because the villain Dabi was hot in more than just his quirk. Rough around the edges, sure, but there was something about him that had always caught her attention. Roguish and handsome despite the scars — or perhaps because of them — and when his gaze was fixed on her she knew she would find it hard to breathe, even without his hand around her throat. 

“If I move my hand will you shout? Or will you stand there quietly like a good girl and let me look at you?”

The words sent a zing of anticipation down her spine, and then she felt his grip loosen, the smile growing on his face again when she remained silent, held there by his presence alone, keeping her eyes locked on his. 

“Well well. Look at you being so good for me right away. Not going to fight me, Hero?” 

He trailed a gently smouldering finger down the side of her throat — between her breasts — burning away her suit just enough to reveal her to him, a groan of appreciation rising from his chest when he ran a nail back up over soft plump skin.

She stayed silent, not trusting herself to speak. 

“You know I’m the bad guy, don’t you,” he whispered, pressing a forearm next to her head, caging her against the wall. “You know that you’re supposed to be arresting me right now.”

Uraraka swallowed, nodding slowly. 

“Then why aren’t you, princess?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was low, thick and husky. 

“I think I do.” He leaned closer, lips brushing her neck drawing a whimper out of her, that knee grinding up higher until she was forced onto her tiptoes. “I think you want to play on the dark side. Uravity, Japan’s sweetheart, wants to get a little rough. Doesn’t she?”

“I-”

“It’s okay, princess. I can give you what you need. What none of those stuck up hero boys can.”

He seized her mouth with such fervour that her knees buckled, leaving his strength to catch her and slam her back against the wall, large hands under her ass lifting her until she could wrap her legs around his waist with a growl that shot straight to her core. 

His kiss was rough and possessive, and Uraraka melted into him, hands in his hair, finding herself grinding against him without even /thinking/ about what she was doing. What it would mean. 

Dabi rutted up against her, lips anywhere that he could find, nipping and kissing and biting. He whispered filthy things into her ear whilst grinding his clothed cock into her core over and over, pulling her towards an edge that she had never reached with anyone else. Her breath was ragged, the voices in her comms sounding somehow far away with Dabi surrounding her. 

“You’re shaking, Uravity,” he said, his own voice husked and low. “Going to make a pretty mess in your suit for me?”

It was all she could do to moan in response, her fingernails digging into his shoulders so hard she was sure that she would have left her own marks on him. 

“Don’t hold back on me, princess. Let me hear that pretty voice of yours.”

“I-” it was more a whine than a word. “Close.”

“Fuck, look at you. Trembling like a whore before I’ve even thought about fucking you properly. Imagine how good it would feel if my dick was stretching that pretty cunt and giving you something to squeeze against.”

He bought a single hand between them, pressing a hot thumb against her, pinching and rubbing against her, almost burning but not quite. It was all she needed, her head falling back against the wall, her eyes screwing shut as her legs started to shake. He brought his lips to hers to swallow the sound that rose from her chest, a sloppy wet kiss that slowed with his movements as she came down. 

Dabi was surprisingly gentle as he set her back on the ground, smirking at her when he stepped back wiping the side of his mouth with a thumb. 

“If you want to know what a really good time is,” he said, turning on his heels and starting to walk away down the alley, “come back here tonight. Alone. I’ll be waiting.”

He didn’t look back at her, didn’t even consider that she might arrest him as he walked away. 

As though he knew that she was still panting, still trying to collect herself from the staggering orgasm that he had rubbed her through. 

As though he knew that she would be back for more. 

She watched him walk away, slipping into another side street and vanishing just as her comms crackled to life again. 

“Uravity, check in. Any sign?”

“Nothing,” she replied, her voice still shaking. “I’m not feeling well, Ingenium, going to head home and I’ll come back out for a night patrol.”

“Roger that. Ingenium out.”

Shaky legs carried her home, her mind racing with every step. 

When night fell — she knew — she would return to the alley. Out of uniform and alone. 

As many times as he asked her to.