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catsoupki · 3 days ago

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LOVER ON A LEASH (8.2K) AO3

pairing - katsuki bakugou x reader

synopsis - You feel hot, stuffy. He’s whispering words into your ears that are too filthy to repeat. Closing your eyes, you pull at his shirt, he takes the hint and sheds it. One last time, you think, and never again. (Or, when Bakugou grapples with his blood-stained past, you’re there to help.)

cw - sexual content, fwb dynamic (but not rlly), porn with feelings, insomnia, mentions of dealing with trauma, implied mental illness, codependency, minor manga (post-war) spoilers, angst, hurt/a lil comfort, afab!reader, pro hero katsuki, “are they lovers?” “no, worse.”

a/n - insomniac bakugou inspired by @solarstranger ‘s ward off (this loneliness) ; dynamic heavily influenced by @bkgexe ‘s organic chemistry ; i hope bakugou isn’t ooc in here… im trying to depict his struggles and personality as a grown-up as accurate as possible? i’m making a lot of assumptions here.. i think this might be the start to a multipart series (that can still be read as standalones) because i dont have the patience to write the entire thing in one-go

taglist - @azzo0 @kiwibao @gguksgem @dienamights @xoyuji @lillyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy @katsuisbaby @lipstainedgemini @hatsukeii @staraxiaa

The agency is empty save for the occasional janitor and night-shifters. Most of his sidekicks have already gone home to get a good night’s rest and to return to their families.

Katsuki’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes when he nods past a tired Kirishima, no doubt coming back from a long patrol. He keeps his head down when he mumbles goodbye in hopes that Eijirou won’t notice the bags that drape below his eyes. So he looks at the floor, he thinks about the winks of sleep that have somehow, in the dead of night, leaked from the cracks in between his fingers like sand, he finds that he’s losing himself, a little more than yesterday, every single night.

As if he’s slipping away, as if the colour drains from his hair and from his eyes until pools of ash and red submerge him, until his feet are soaked. When Katsuki lies awake on his cold mattress, oftentimes alone, when sleep eludes him, he’s forced to reconcile with the past. The field that he laid on when he was seventeen (when he wasn’t enough, when he lost) now houses a dozen residential buildings. The blood-tainted dust is buried, but it continues banging on the chambers of his heart to be let out. Much like how he deals with the civilians that need saving, like how he rescues a stray cat that comes baring teeth, he tilts his face away systematically, instinctively, and he deals with his expired trauma the only way he knows how: not at all.

In the wee hours of morning, while his room is sterile like the hospital, white as the moon, the feelings he turns away come back biting like a dog. Sometimes, he admits defeat. He surrenders to the fangs that sink deep into his skin, drawing blood till he’s left empty. Then, the guilt that has tied his career down will be overthrown by muscle memory: his hand will reach for his phone, he’ll squint when the blue light from his screen hits him all at once. It will uproot his ribs and reveal the throbbing ache that was left behind them all those years ago.

And he will call you to soothe it.

“Sir?” His assistant knocks tentatively on the door, briefcase already in clutch, Katsuki then remembers he’s working, he remembers the numbness, his exhaustion. “I saw that on the team calendar—I mean, are you sure you want to pull another shift this Saturday?”

He feels the syllables before he sounds them, “yes, I’m sure.” he says, but the words on his tongue are bitter like poison, a lie, “book me in for next Sunday as well.”

When the justification of his insomnia comes crumbling down, Katsuki tells himself that being a hero means sacrificing yourself for the greater good. He fights like the world expects him to stand back up and to return as the hero that they know, the hero who killed All For One.

Being a hero was never about the awards, it didn’t matter how many plaques or trophies adorned the shelves in his house, much less the weekly rankings published on the HPSC’s website. It had always been about redemption. He fights like his life is on the line each and every single day, as if to say to Edgeshot, to prove to him: my heart was worth it, wasn’t it?

So every time he steps into a fight as Dynamight, it’s done so with violence, he takes punches and throws them back, he spits out blood and grits his teeth and wins. As an act of penance, of atonement, for when he wasn’t enough, for when he lost.

But his lies are picked apart by the voice in the back of his own head, quiet like tonight, small, it screams into the void.

When his assistant pushes on the door, he sees the plate that’s hung on his door, spelling out his pseudonym—but it symbolises less a responsibility as a civil servant and more of a duty to the man who gave up his life for him. For him. That name weighs heavy on his chest because for every step forward, it is pulled back by guilt and obligation with the cold reminder that he wasn’t good enough.

Katsuki sighs.

“Anything else?”

He chooses to resume working, the paperwork he completed earlier today is closed, then reopened again on his computer so he can pretend that he doesn’t see the concern that seeps from his assistant’s eyes.

“No sir, not at all.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

It was Tuesday when you first met him. You were seventeen, in a hospital after breaking a leg from falling down a flight of stairs. It’s trivial, and you get a few good laughs out of it. Your friends at school enjoy drawing on the cast around your foot and the time you spend in this building is just a minor inconvenience that will go away with time.

You remember seeing his ash blond hair, matted with blood, on the news when he was laying down his life for the world. It’s weird, you’ve seen the most vulnerable moments of his life broadcasted on live television while you’re just a passerby that he doesn’t really register walking past every Tuesday.

Your usual icebreaker dies on your tongue.

You think his eyes have glazed over your features before. Unremarkable, in the hallways of the hospital. Maybe his hand has brushed against yours when you both reach for the last remaining drink in the fridge. Though, you also think, he won’t remember.

But you are your mother’s daughter and you persist. When you’re sitting in your father’s car, your sister is holding your hand on the way home, you think about that boy. You have a week’s time to think about him, to come up with something to say. What can you tell a boy whose name you don’t know?

He is world famous at seventeen. He is your age but he has seen more death than you could possibly imagine, he’s carried more weight on his shoulders than you ever can, and he is known for the sacrifice he made as Dynamight, society knows him by the hair you see on television because he is significant and his life is right in front of him.

You think about the things you could say. You practice in the bathroom mirror, but the insecurities leak too easily from the gaps of your teeth and you fail. You try to run the syllables through your tongue but they become too rehearsed, mediocre. You try your damndest to create brief windows of time that allow you to speak. While he is waiting at the pharmacy, while he’s watching the news, and as he is queueing behind you at the cafeteria.

But when you’re really next to him, in crutches, the wounds that mar his skin can’t be soothed by the words you speak.

You look into the mirror, everyday you smile and you rinse and repeat till your countenance sits right with you, you rehearse till the rehearsed words sound correctly, but you are in your father’s car, your sister is holding your hand and your heart is in one piece. What can you say to a boy who belongs, already, to the world at seventeen?

“What the hell is your problem!” The words tumble out of your mouth before you can look up. You berate whoever it is that knocked his entire cup of hot chocolate into the back of your shirt until you’re burned and drenched.

This is the first time you regret speaking. The hours you spent standing in front of the mirror, learning to shape your mouth and lips into something palatable, relatable to a god, is reduced into nothing when you look up and see him.

“I...” The boy’s voice is weak. Too weak. It’s quiet and if not for the fact that he is right behind you, maybe you wouldn’t have registered it at all. “I’m sorry.”

He’s so awkward when he says it that you can tell “sorry” isn’t a word that usually exists in his vocabulary. He doesn’t look at you, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and he is anything but the hero that you’ve seen on screen.

You look at his hands, covered in smoking hot chocolate that’s still dripping onto the floor. Now, you think you briefly remember the nurses around you scrambling for the janitor, for the mops. But, then, all that you remember is feeling sadness creep into your bones. This boy who you have spent days thinking about like some hero is weak and twitching in front of you because of a cup he can no longer hold. You look at his hands, the stump that twitches, and his other hand that moves to grab it, to grab the air a few inches above because the spasm of what used to be his right hand is a vulnerability that Dynamight cannot show.

You looked at him like how a man looks at a stray dog—with pity. And he hates that, so he looks down. You realised, then and there, that he was just a boy. He was a boy unaccustomed to the damage that the world chose to give him. He wasn’t a god, he was just thrusted into the middle of it all, forced to see the death that he wasn’t supposed to see, and forced to carry the weight that was unfitted for his shoulders.

You thought he was going to pull away, but you are your mother’s daughter, you persist, and your hand is hooked around his remaining wrist—boney, rough with scars. This is the first of many times in which you say to him, “It’s okay. Things happen.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Katsuki thinks of you when he’s discharged. When he sits in the car with Masaru driving, Mitsuki is next to him and he thinks of the piece of paper that has your number scribbled over it with broken crayons. It sits in his pocket, warm, it tingles his skin.

He forgot what you said, and what you did, but he can’t forget how you made him feel. It’s stupid—he tries to convince himself. It’s stupid to remember a girl he’s talked to a few times here and there at the hospital. He should be focusing on school, on recovery, but he thinks of what you mean, what you can mean. He remembers your grin when you smuggled that piece of crumpled tissue into his pants like an inside joke, he tries to decipher the words you blur between the lines. What audacity, he thinks, and he can’t help but love that.

He sees you again when he’s at a party he’s been dragged to. He’s freshly eighteen, bravery is plastered onto his face but it is embarrassment that nips at his heart when he makes eye contact with you. He never called you, never texted, but the piece of paper lays amidst his books, unforgettable, undeniable.

He was never good at deciphering your words, or your gaze for that matter. He can’t tell whether you remember him just by looking at you. Your eyes pause a little too long on the scar that slashes his cheek for someone who has seen it before, but what does he know? Everyone looks at him like meat. Your eyes hold a certain judgement he’s scared of. Quiet, accepting, but judgement nonetheless.

He debates whether he should come over and strike up a conversation. If he were to talk to you like nothing happened, what would you do?

When he meets your eye again, sweat is condensing in his enclosed palms with the callouses pressing into his flesh like fingertips, it is now that he realises he should’ve called you, texted you, it is now that he comes over.

“Sorry for never reaching out, just—haven’t had the time.” He lies through his teeth like it is second nature.

This is the first time that he tests you.

“No worries. Things happen.” You say, with a tone that makes Katsuki’s jaw tick. He hates how easiness rolls off of you, like waves, because it isn’t fair that he’s spent the past few months remembering your hand around his wrist, your words in his ear, when you haven’t been suffering at all.

The night is young, but even when it goes on, you never ask him why, but it feels like you’re toeing a line that was just established, like you’re rubbing a fresh wound. So you let him have his boundaries even when it involves you. He’ll ghost you, he’ll lash out at you for something that is not your fault, he will treat you like you’re disposable and like you’re garbage. And maybe you already knew that when you snuck your hand into the pockets of his pants with your lover’s grin. Maybe you already knew what you were signing up for.

You let him come back into your life when he’s ready because you feel like you’re doing something good, like you’re doing charity. You don’t ask questions, you never do, because when you look into the mirror, you’re your mother’s daughter, and what you see between the gaps of your teeth isn’t enough to be begging a god for his time.

When he disappears, he usually comes back in a week or two. He will coat his apology and his excuses in sweet words that you’re not sure what the real meaning is—I’ve been busy; you’re still my favourite, he’d say, and you can’t help but laugh when he lies with unblinking eyes.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

He was nineteen when he lost his first kiss. Drunken, he was blushing all the way down to his neck when he shoved against the lips of another girl, albeit a bit off-centred. He doesn’t dare admit to her that it’s his first time, but he thinks she already knows. It’s embarrassing—because the lack of experience is a vulnerability that Dynamight cannot show. So he’s stuck kissing a girl whose name he does not know in the corner of somebody’s house. He’s violent and awkward when he pushes her up against the wall. It’s messy—her spit tastes like a substance that he should not touch, and all that he feels is a burn that numbs his lips.

He forgot how he got here. The faces in the crowd blur together, unremarkable, and Katsuki fails to recognise even a single person in this room.

It’s less magical than what his friends described it to be. Denki framed it as the best moment of his life when he pressed lips with Jirou, and Eijirou claimed that kissing Mina was what made him a man. Maybe it’s the alcohol buzzing in his system, it makes his head warm, fuzzy, and his blood rush, but this girl feels like nothing in his palms. The way she puts her fingers on his cheek, where people look at for a bit too long, is uncomfortable, it makes his face itch. Her lips are cold, he’s already forgotten what she mumbled before he kissed her, let alone what she did, he only remembers the agony. He feels less like a hero and more like a cheap prostitute that got taken advantage of.

(Maybe it’s the alcohol buzzing in his system. Maybe it’s the fact that this girl isn’t you.)

He thinks, beneath the flashing lights and loud music, a snarl is present on this girl’s face. Her lips are pulled taut by her cheeks but his vision is falling and he can’t tell what she’s saying. What a prude, probably.

He leaves the party right after. He was somehow able to sober up before pushing the girl away. He doesn’t glance at her, because he knows he’ll be looked at with judgement, or worse, with pity. He sneaks past the crowd and out the backdoor all without replying to a single person that screams at him. His hand is in his pocket, the one that tingles his skin, and he’s already fishing out his phone. The blue light from the screen hits him all at once when he dials the number he’s memorised by heart.

You were asleep, but the guilt that steeps in his heart from waking you up was quickly drowned out by your voice. The grumbles that resonate in his ear, somehow, for the love of god, cools his head and puts out the fire that is his lips. You tell him to come over, and he isn’t sure what the implications behind those words are, but he shows up anyway, you kiss him and take the pain away.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

It was a Sunday when you two first had sex. The last time he’s talked to you was a month ago. That night, right before the words die on his tongue, he calls you. “I’m lonely.” He says. His voice is grainy over the phone, it’s pressed up against your ear and you can almost feel the hot breath against your skin. He says it like he knows you understand him—and you do. He doesn’t need to spell it out and maybe that’s why he keeps you around. He gets a woman for sex and he gets to keep his pride intact all at once. Your lips will sweep his problems under the rug, you’ll ignore the dark circles under his eyes and you’ll just pretend that he loves you.

He wonders about how long this will go on, how long it can go on. He thinks about your dignity and how he’s held it hostage in a jar. He thinks about your hands, the pity in your eyes, and he doesn’t care.

(He remembers your grin when you smuggled that piece of crumpled tissue into his pants like an inside joke, he tries to decipher the words you blur between the lines.)

For nights like this, his loneliness becomes the excuse that allows him to call you. In the dead of night, when he mumbles words amalgamated with want and sadness, lust is a disguise that reveals itself a little too easily from the gaps of his teeth, but you show up at his door anyway.

You feel his eyes rake over you, he meanders, he takes his time, like it isn’t cold out, like you owe him to be standing here like this. You shudder, half-mooned lids glide over your skin, like honey. You eat with your eyes first—so you show up in your tight skirts, crop tops and eyeliner—a costume, an armour. But you are your mother’s daughter, you persist, and you feel like a prize to be won.

Katsuki doesn’t say much, he never does. He only hooks his hand around your wrist and pulls, until you topple into his house, until you are wrangled in between his sheets and his limbs before you have the chance to ask “why me?”.

It’s almost like he’s doing this intentionally. He shocks you into submission like a fisherman to his prey because he wants you when you’re soft and docile. But you are capable of reading between the lines—you hear the pleas that hide behind lust and gluttony: take the pain away.

So you do.

Even before the words tumble out of your lips, the vowels and fricatives already feel foreign and slimy on your tongue. It's why you don your costume, your armour: of tight skirts, tight tops, and tight eyeliner. They squeeze the fat of your thighs, the meat on your shoulder, and at your tear glands. But you walk in anyway, you let your legs rest on the linen of his bed, your elbows against the pillows. Your costume clings to your skin, your armour cups itself around your dignity. Mold. Mockery.

You don’t ask because you already know the answer. Because you are your mother’s daughter and you persist: because you are here.

You let him mar you with his teeth. Despite the bites that will show up purple the next morning, you lift your head even more. He is ravenous—holding you down to the bed like a ragdoll, you figured that he doesn’t care about what you think nor how you feel. He doesn’t really register what’s beneath his palms, even when he’s cupping your heart in one and choking you with the other, his prosthetic is cold around your neck, it numbs the bruises he’s sucked into your skin, you can’t help but like that.

“Fuck,” he moans, with his chapped lips tickling the hairs on your neck. “Kiss me.” he says, like you are lovers and these rendezvous are anything close to romantic.

He slides into you easily, like it’s meant to be. He does it so painfully slow that you dig your heels into the muscles on his back: hurry up and fuck me—he understands the words you don’t say.

He’s looking down at you, and you like him like this: when he’s above you with his eyebrows slightly furrowed, vermillion eyes piercing, looking at you. His gaze will move from your eyes to your lips, they’re staring at him, he thinks. He’ll lean down and suck on them. He kisses with his teeth, unkind, aggressive—you like it like that, he knows, when he’s in your arms.

“You’re so pretty when you cum.” You blush. Yeah.

He’s breathing hard, his lips break into a smile—a genuine one. He loves it when you pull your kiss-bruised lips between your teeth, when your nails scrape down his back until long red marks appear. He moans even harder, louder.

Against your better judgement, you let this go on. You let him bury himself in you, deep, painful, so he forgets the agony that tortures him everyday. You feel like a martyr—a sacrificial lamb for the pillars of society. You let yourself feel good—charitable—in his arms and in your heart (with his cupping hands), beneath him, you allow yourself the belief that you’re doing something good (your armour, costume). You look at the empty jars in his cabinets and think about your dignity (mold, mockery). You let him hold you by the throat and shudder into your nape (because you are your mother’s daughter and you persist, but no one is there to hold your hand and your heart will be in pieces).

Somehow, you find yourself listening to his snores at dusk. You think he’s gotten better at lying. You’ll smile in his ear and realise a bit too late that you’ve been caught like a deer in headlights.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You’re sitting in front of the television, your head on his shoulder, and Katsuki has his arm wrapped around you. It’s a little cold, but the both of you are too lazy to find a blanket. A show that neither of you care about is playing on screen, it acts as the source of light, and as something to fill up the silences.

You two should both be asleep. He has an early patrol and you have a presentation tomorrow. The show isn’t particularly interesting, but you just can’t find it in you to go home and get onto your bed.

You don’t live here, but you know where things are. You don’t have the access card to his apartment building but somehow the security guard recognises you. There’s a second toothbrush in the sink, your clothes are mixed with his in the laundry basket but your name isn’t put down on paper. It lures—begs—you to have the “what are we?” conversation with him. A part of you wants to know, that part is irrational and wants to be his. That part of you sits down in the shower and imagines what it would be like to hold his hand outside of bed and sex. The rational part of you, though, knows the question will break whatever it is that you have with him. Because you know Katsuki. You know the guilt that pulls on his heart, you’re familiar with the pride that nestles itself into his skull, and you know he won’t let himself have this. And you’d rather have him like this than to not have him at all.

He lets you stay the night.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

It’s winter. The colleagues you entertain get braver and they’ll somehow get you to go out with them. Bar-hopping like you’re in college, sure, you’ll continue entertaining them. You’ll be in your short skirts, tight tops, with your eyeliner smudged. You down the drinks like water while your colleagues holler, you’ll pretend that you don’t notice your supervisor’s gaze on your chest. You’re having fun, you really are.

It’s the group’s third stop of the night, sweat has accumulated on your back with how crowded this bar is. It seems that everyone is here—out on the dance floor while the swaying bodies spill the drinks that leave a sticky residue on your skin.

The group of seven you arrived in have already split into groups of two or three. Your coworkers are nowhere to be seen, maybe they’re throwing up in the bathroom, maybe they’ve ended up on someone’s bed. You don’t really care.

Everyone’s dancing, and this guy nudges your arm with his, you flinch. “You here alone?”

“No.” You say, regret is already pooling in your stomach. Why did you ever agree to come? You know you don’t like going out.

“You should join us for a few, we promise you a fun time,” he winks, and you think you throw up a little in your mouth. You feel the shape of rejection before you sound it, but the words die on your tongue.

“Sure.”

You don’t drink anything more. There’s enough alcohol in your body for you to continue lying to yourself. His arm that started behind your seat slowly inches down, closer, they’re testing you. You entertain him, you let him ghost his sweaty palms over your exposed back, then your thighs.

He drags you to the dance floor, then off, all before the song ends. You know where this is going. He’s pulling you to the walls, he continues looking at your body, he doesn’t even try to pretend he’s here for anything else, and you think this feels worse than your supervisor’s eyes on your chest.

When he kisses you, his breath is an unfortunate mix of alcohols that don’t work well. You wonder how many drinks he’s had when his teeth knock against yours.

He tried to be smooth, you can tell. He’s selfish but he pretends he’s not, and it reflects in how he kisses you. He’ll push you to the edge of the bathroom, his hands will be on your waist, then your thighs again, and you’ll pretend you don’t know where this is going. He’s not as clingy as what you’re used to, he doesn’t grip the back of your neck like you’re going to run away like he does.

The man whose name you do not know is slipping his tongue into your mouth when he’s suddenly pulled away. “What the fuck is your issue?”

Your vision may be swirling, your face feels hot and you’re slightly out of breath. But there’s no confusing ash blond hair and the vermillion eyes that you’ve seen a thousand times when they’ve been on you, above you, crying.

“Fuck off.” Katsuki says with no room for argument. He takes your hand and pulls you behind him. It’s winter, and you can’t help but lean into his warmth.

“Ohhh, I see how it is! Nasty ex?” Laughing, his speech is slurred. Before Katsuki can say anything, though, you speak first. “He’s not my ex.”

He doesn’t seem to register any of that. The statement was useless, but Katsuki grips your hand tighter. Then, for a reason you can’t understand, the man tries to pull you back into his arms.

You feel it before you see it, Katsuki’s eyes flare up with anger, it’s dangerous. It flows and seeps and you already know this isn’t ending well.

There’s a nasty crack—you think the man’s nose is broken. Maybe it’s the trashy bar, because the music just gets louder and people shift away and pretend they see nothing. You’re the one who pulls a heaving Katsuki off the floor. You don’t look at the man who’s still left twitching on the floor, you don’t wish to see the bruises and blood that no doubt line his face. You pay attention to ash blond hair and vermillion eyes instead.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You raise your voice so he hears you over the music. He’s silent, he’s still seething, you think. You wait, because that’s all that you do.

He clicks his tongue and you see the conflict through his eyes. You know his pride is weighing heavy on his shoulders when the anger in his eyes melt into something more vulnerable. It’s something Dynamight can’t possibly show. His eyebrows are downturned, he’s completely sober, you realise. You let yourself imagine what he could’ve said, if things were different. If he was something more than the boy you recognised on television, maybe you wouldn’t have needed to sneak a piece of crumpled tissue into his pants like an inside joke. Maybe, you would’ve been able to walk into this room with his hand around your waist instead.

The smell of smoke and sugar is inundating you when you see the sweat that forms a light sheen on his forehead. Then, you’re pulling him by the hem of his shirt and kissing him.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You wish you never said anything.

“That can’t be healthy..” Mina is holding your hand like she’s preparing you for the blow. She looks at you like how people look at stray dogs, with pity in her eyes. She’s understanding, she’s nice, it’s why you’re friends with her. But she’s too kind, she’s a hero—and she’s meddling in your business.

You wish you never told her anything.

“It’s, like, a friends with benefits situation?” Your justification is crumbling right beneath your feet. You can’t meet her eyes when these words escape your lips, bitter, like poison.

“He’s using you—!”

“I know.”

Maybe it’s because she can sense the tension, but she leaves soon after that. The wine she brought lays unopened on the table, you try to numb the guilt with shows, music. You can’t, because the truth leaves a gaping hole in your heart.

Some time after Mina left, maybe it’s been a few hours, you’re sitting alone when he phones you. “Hey,” he says, like foreplay, like the both of you don’t know why he’s calling. “Hi.”

“How are you?” he then asks, voice quiet. You’re sitting next to the window, the glass cold against your arm. You want to scream at him, you want to admit that you’re not doing well, but that’s not what Dynamight wants. You look out the window, onto the street, the world that owns him. He says your name, and it makes your breath stutter. You sigh, “I’ll be there.”

He must be feeling particularly lonely tonight, because when you knock on his door, he opens it immediately, like he was standing beside it waiting for you. “Eager?” You whisper. He smiles.

Tugging you by your sleeve, you two fall into his bed, his linen sheets. You feel at home, maybe you’ve spent more nights here than your own bed.

His mouth is over yours already.

You feel hot, stuffy. He’s whispering words into your ears that are too filthy to repeat. Closing your eyes, you pull at his shirt, he takes the hint and sheds it. One last time, you think, and never again.

He kisses you on your lips, he tugs on them before moving downwards. You’re unravelled like a present, clothes fall off your shoulders till he’s down between your thighs. He wraps them around his head, “I love it when you moan my name.” So you do. “Katsuki,” you say, like a prayer, when he licks your clit, fingers scissoring deep, pressing on your g-spot. “Fuck,” you’re pulling his hair, it makes him moan into your cunt. “Make me cum.”

You look down when you finally orgasm, it wracks through your body, until you’re left twitching. He’s pulling his fingers out of you when he puts down your legs, and while holding direct eye contact with you, he puts them into his mouth, as if there’s something more than just lust and gluttony in his eyes, as if to say: I love you.

Then he’s slipping into you again, slowly. The fingers on his prosthetic hand wrap around your throat, it makes your head dizzy. You taste yourself on his lips when he finally begins moving. Kissing, pumping, deep and agonising. He doesn’t last long. His moans get louder in your ear, his hands become desperate, pressing into your thighs until bruises are left behind. “Baby, please. Kiss me.” He comes with a shudder.

It’s quiet, the silence feels fragile.

You’re sweaty when you lay next to him. His movement is languid when he pulls you closer, you let him. His hand is around your waist, yours on his chest. Mina’s right. Your heart is in your throat when you say, “I can’t do this anymore.” A few syllables muttered is enough to make him cold, completely frozen in your grasp. “What?” He furrows his brows, disbelief evident in the way he frowns.

The look you give him makes him want to cry. Sadness pools in your eyes, so he holds you tighter. He cradles your head, but it’s too late. Your mind is set, both of you know that.

It is now that he realises he is holding a person with a soul. When he calls you up, while you’re something less than a bad habit, you’re something more than a porcelain doll in the palm of calloused hands—you are the prettiest girl he’s ever seen since the age of seventeen. You’re the air that he breathes, and it is now that he realises he has ruined you with his maw.

Mina visits you the next day. She comes in with the extra key you gave her with food in her hands, as if she knew before you told her that this has destroyed you.

I broke it off.

Your apartment is a mess. Takeout bags are everywhere and your living room looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a few weeks. Mina smiles with something you don’t want to know about, pity maybe, sympathy maybe. You’re too tired to feel guilty when she begins cleaning. Packing away metal cans and dirtied plastic boxes, she helps you take out the trash, vacuum, while you stay glued next to the window. Maybe you should’ve never said anything, maybe life would be better if things just continued the way they were.

“You did the right thing.”

She comes again the next day. Then again. She comes over for at least an hour everyday for a week straight. You begin feeling bad for how much of her time you’re taking up, but she insists. She visits just to spend time with you. She makes sure you eat, she makes sure your apartment isn’t a complete mess.

She starts talking about it when two weeks have passed. Gentle prompts that give you the reins to open up however much you wish, and you realise it now just why she has so many friends. But she still looks at you with the same smile, pity and sympathy.

“I think I was okay with letting him use me because I guess I just always felt like—well—like I deserved it. What he gave me actually felt like something more than what I deserve. I’m just normal, you know? And—he’s a god.” She’d hum and let you continue. The silences aren’t awkward like you had feared, but she turns on the television to fill them in anyway.

It takes roughly one more week for her to start giving her opinion.

“You’re not any inferior, okay? He’s just a hero. Just a hero.”

No one really notices, maybe your parents ask once more about “the boy you always mention”, Mina asks whether you want to talk a few more times, you nod sometimes, and shake your head other times. You don't really notice how it gets better, it just does. You smile more at work, your apartment gets tidier and you can look at things without immediately thinking of him.

You’re not over it, you’re nowhere close to that. And when you’re alone in bed, maybe during the nights you can’t sleep, you ask yourself what even is there to get over. You two were never a thing, you existed between boundaries, your lives don’t really cross paths. The only reason you’re friends with Mina was by pure coincidence. He never invited you to hangouts, to events, and your coworkers don’t know about him. He called you when he needed you, and you gave him what he wanted. Only one of your colleagues figured there was something off, but even then, it’s easier to say “oh it’s nothing” than to explain the limbo that you were in. Life continues as if nothing is out of place. You get a promotion at work, you install a dating app then delete it a few weeks later. You go drinking and have sex.

You find out he has a girlfriend three months later. It was involuntary. You find out at work, from people who know nothing about your life gossiping about heroes because they’re far away, because they’re not real people with real souls.

“Dynamight got a girlfriend, you know.” Your coworker says it casually, like it’s the weather, and maybe to her it is.

You should’ve been able to hum and nod like a normal person, but instead you clench up and act like you’ve been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to.

“Oh.” is what you manage, but you straighten up and try your best to act normal. “Really. Who is it?”

“I think it’s Illus-o-Camie, like, the Glamour hero.”

You remember seeing her name on his phone once. You were laying next to him after sex when a notification pops up on screen, she was thanking him for something. You don’t try to hide your gaze back then, Katsuki just rolled over and swiped it away. “Work stuff.” He said.

“That’s nice.” You say, the words bitter on your tongue—a lie. “They look cute together.”

“I know right!”

You text Mina that night, it’s a Friday so you ask her to come over. When she walks in, you get deja vu from how she looks—the pity-sympathy smile—it’s almost like she already knew, and just didn’t tell you. Against your better judgement, you ask, “How long have they been together?”

“A month.”

You feel your heart break. But you’re your mother’s daughter, you persist. You nod and you hum.

“I’ll be okay.”

“You’ll be okay.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

He wasn’t supposed to be here. It’s Thursday, it’s cold, but he couldn’t really say no when his friends asked him to go out. The atmosphere isn’t bad, everything’s buzzing and kinda fun. He isn’t drinking because he has something to do early in the morning, he’s also the designated driver. He thinks it’s going to take one or two more hours before everyone heads home, he sighs. Mina is slung over Eijirou’s arm, Denki is in a bathroom stall with Sero, vomiting up the alcohol he’s ingested in the past hour. So now he’s alone. This bar is pretty shit from what he’s seen, but it’s exactly how heroes like them can drop in and not have anyone notice.

He’s waiting outside of the bathroom when he thinks he’s hallucinating.

You don’t like going out. You always tell him that. You dislike the feeling that alcohol gives you and you hate crowds, so he didn’t believe it when he saw you, just—there. On the dancefloor, with a man he couldn’t recognise.

He thinks about what you mean to him. You’re not his girlfriend, maybe not even a friend. So he weighs his options, it seems that no one realises his true identity. Kirishima is too busy with his girlfriend and the other two are nowhere to be seen. No one’s gonna stop him, no one can.

He looks at you, your skin is smooth even under the strobe lights, with a light sheen, probably of sweat. He wonders whether you’re having fun, if the frown on your lips are anything to come by, you aren’t. Your body is still against his, though, a little too close for his liking. How the man touches you leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but he isn’t someone to you. He has no right to do anything, really. He isn’t important enough to go over there and rip him away from you.

He briefly remembers jealousy gripping at his nerves, his entire body is hot and—and then that douche is kissing you, so all that he just thought about goes flying out the window. He’s too much like a tunnel-visioned racehorse when he all but rips the man away from you by his hair. He’s sober, he’s a hero and he’s a god, yet, he’s standing in some trashy bar with words in his heart that can’t be admitted, punching a man’s face in all because of a girl.

He has no idea how you managed to pull him off of the poor excuse of a man that’s laying on the floor, bleeding and twitching. Your lips are moving, they’re still slightly wet from what’s presumably that guy’s spit. They’re bruised, swollen, and he wants to kiss them better. He can’t decipher what you’re saying, but you’re looking at him expectantly, waiting.

He’s frustrated. How dare you. You mean nothing to him. You can’t. You shouldn’t.

But then you pull him by the hem of his shirt, and the rest is history.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

When Camie first brushed his face, he wanted to grimace and cry. He made sure that never showed on his face, because his manager insisted that this was a necessary publicity stunt for his plummeting popularity. It’s partly your fault, for calling your whatever off right before the HPSC check-in.

(He lies, he revels in his delusions, each and every day, each and every passing second, to convince himself that you wouldn’t have stayed.)

There’s nothing wrong with Camie. She’s hot. She’s pretty. She’s got a model body and face, her acrylic nails that are always done tingle the botched bit of skin on his face, while she looks at him with makeup that’s never smudged.

(He schools his face into a non-grimace.)

People like to ship them together. He has a verified fan account that’s dedicated to this very duo. But Camie has always been just a friend, an acquaintance, if anything.

Bakugou isn’t sure why he didn’t push her away. Or make a slightly unpleasant face when they weren’t under the scrutiny of the public. Camie’s smart, she’s good with people. There’s no doubt she’d pick up on his hesitance—unwillingness.

Camie is an accessory on his arm at the annual hero awards. He questions the meaning of this. What does this matter, in the grand scheme of things? Will his image of being a good boyfriend to a fellow hero save more lives? Will it deter any villains from attacking the city? What does his personal life have to do with anything?

(He feels less like a hero and more like a cheap prostitute that got taken advantage of.)

Everything, someone would say. His manager, Camie, you. His mental well-being affects his performance and subsequently the people he saves, the buildings he destroys. But he’s fared alright—well, even—in the worst times. Right after the Great War, after you whispered those bone-chilling words in his ears.

He realises that, somehow, when he tries his best to fulfil a duty he promised a dead man, he loses the very essence that made him a hero, a god. He strips himself of meaning, of purpose, to slowly let himself go. He sheds them off Dynamight like clothes for the public to see, so he is palatable, so he is malleable. He does something that his younger self would have insulted and dismantled with ease—he lets society swallow him with the definition they’ve assigned to the word heroics, and the indignity that is dredged with it.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Camie is not your friend. She’s a fake bitch who just got caught in the crossfire.

Serves her right, you think. She deserves it for the times she’s brought Katsuki to crowded bars, the times she’s forced him to wear matching necklaces that erode with sweat. It isn’t fair. She was labelled with a title you’ve fought tooth and nail for. By the press, by Katsuki. You can’t possibly fathom what she could have done that gave her the right. It feels stolen, as if she came as a thief, and for all the sleep and dignity and face that were confiscated from you, you laid barren on his linen sheets while the identity girlfriend was nicked, like an heirloom, right in the dead of night from your fingertips.

When you see her face, perched against his, it’s like you’ve got vomit on your tongue that water can’t wash off. So you stop flipping through magazines, you don’t use the television and social media has been wiped completely from your phone. You cut yourself off from the world of heroics and all that’s in it. Uprooted and replanted so you can focus on your boring job and boring friends. Work, drink, have sex, cry, and rinse and repeat. This routine is rehearsed until it becomes ingrained into your habits, into every twitch of a finger. You stop seeing Mina, and all of her hero friends too. You dye your hair, pierce your ears and sign up for a gym membership. You become another person.

In a year, you’ve gone from the sheep that lays bleeding in a wolf’s maw to the butcher himself.

(But sometimes, when the skin of hatred slips off, at dawn, with the windowsill cold against your arm, the teeth marks reopen. And despite the desperation with which you pull on the costume of a hunter, your armour, it collapses until you drown in spools of ash and red all over again.)

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

“What are you doing here?”

“Camie and I broke up.”

You look at him—really look at him. He’s meeting your eye with not a hint of waver, he isn’t frowning, but not exactly smiling either. Guilt is the guise that’s on his face but you know Katsuki.

“Let me rephrase the question: what do you want me to do?”

“To take the pain away.”

While you stand at the doorway, he’s the one that’s banished to your windy corridor. He stands there because he knows he owes you something. He lets you weigh your options, but he wants you to open your arms and welcome him home. It’d be so easy to just close your eyes and let him ravage you. But—

“You never liked Camie, not like that.” You remember her acrylic nails, her flawless makeup. Some armour, some costume.

“Shit, was I that obvious?”

You think about what you could say.

Camie didn’t—doesn’t deserve that. No one should be used and disposed of, not even by a god.

“No, I just know you well enough.”

He really doesn’t look guilty, not at all.

“I missed you.” He says.

So you think of his empty words, the promises that were not made to last. You think of the nights he calls you, the times he left you alone.

(“He’s using you—!” “I know.”)

You didn’t deserve that.

“Do you? Or do you just miss what I gave you?”

“That’s not—fuck. I’m sorry.” His voice is quiet. The word “sorry” still isn’t something that comes by his vocabulary regularly. “I don’t know.”

You sigh. It’s Sunday. You have work early in the morning. You’re cold. You haven’t showered.

“What do you want from me?”

“Just—let me try again. I missed you. I really did.” He gulps. “I do. I’ll treat you right.”

When he looks at you with glassy eyes tonight, he’s just a boy you met at the hospital. When you were seventeen, when you wanted to be wanted. He was a god then, and he is a god now.

Will you be able to notice his crocodile tears when all that you see in the reflection of his eyes is mud tangled with your bloodied roots?

You don’t know what to say to him.

When a plant is uprooted, the old pot is left behind to rot. The soil will be depleted of its nutrients, it decays because the plant is nowhere to be found.

“I don’t think you can.”

#i miss this…………….

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