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It was a secluded spot. She had specifically chosen it because it was off the beaten path. All she wanted was a little bit of time to lick her wounds.
Then a familiar blond crashed around the bend of the overgrown path and she didn’t even have the opportunity to wipe her tears before he spotted her.
“Oi. I’ve been looking all ov—”
Her reaction was immediate.
Ochako put her hands on her chest to negate her gravity because there was no way she’d beat him in a foot race away from this clearly no-longer-secluded place. But he gripped her ankle and yanked her back down as if she was an errant carnival balloon before she’d even reached the boughs of the trees overhead.
Of all the people.
Her gravity released and she let herself fall on top of the abrasive tank of a man, pleased to hear an ‘oof’ as they toppled to the grass. She quickly rolled off of him and onto her side. She absolutely, positively, did not want to let him see.
“What the fuck happened to evening practice? Not even a fucking text to let me know you’d rather mope in the fucking woods? And for what?”
Oh, she did not have the emotional capacity for this.
“Not now, Bakugou.”
“No,” he growled. “Not ‘not now, Bakugou.’ You owe me an evening practice.” He stood, then bent to grab at her arm. She resisted.
“Let it go, Bakugou,” she snapped.
“We were making fucking progress, Cheeks! Come try to beat it out of me. I don’t care. But we are going.”
He hauled her up so fast that it made her head snap and he overcompensated his yank by catching her in a half hug.
On the side that she didn’t want him to see.
She froze. He froze.
Something about the way he was breathing changed. It became something… animal.
He lifted fingers to trace the air over her blackened eye, cheekbone swollen and already a motley of colors as it bruised. She felt it ripple through his body when he noticed the finger imprints around her neck.
Low, so low that it sounded sub-human, he rasped, “Who did this to you?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Gently, moreso than she was aware he was capable of, he turned her in his arms and lifted her chin with his thumb and forefinger. His eyes began to trace her injuries as if memorizing them now that he could see all of her.
“Who?” he asked again. A deceptive calm had settled into his tone.
Ochako swallowed thickly.
“I handled it,” she said, though she didn’t know why she had softened her voice.
“A villain? Another student?” He asked conversationally, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. He paused and his jaw flexed. “A teacher?”
With far less heat than her words would have otherwise conveyed she said, “I’m allowed to be sad and hurt even if I kicked the person’s ass who did this to me, Bakugou.”
He didn’t like that answer. It was written in every line of his face and his bigger, unbearably attractive body.
Ochako was tired. She was sore and emotionally wrung-out and she just needed—
Bakugou folded her into a hug.
His corded arms wrapped around her and one hand sunk into her hair to guide the uninjured side of her face to his chest. He was wearing the U.A. training uniform, nothing special, but it felt so good to lay her head right there. Like the fabric was extra soft.
She loved his sweet scent with that hard, charred edge. She loved how warm he was. She loved the sound of his heart thump-thumping beneath her ear.
She just…
She loved. Him.
When she didn’t move for a moment, he maneuvered her arms until they wrapped around his back. It would have been stupid for her to let them fall so she grabbed handfuls of his shirt to hold him to her.
Koala Ochako mode: activated.
“Act as if you’ve never fucking hugged someone before,” he grunted, nuzzling into the top of her hair.
The warmth of his presence opened up those floodgates again and she started crying into his shirt, tugging harder and harder on the fabric at his back as if daring him to step away.
He didn’t.
The thumb of the hand in her hair began to slowly sweep back and forth over her scalp and his chest expanded in more exaggerated inhales followed by slower exhales. She couldn’t help that she started mirroring that cycle of breaths.
She couldn’t help that she was falling more in love with him. He was so unfair.
“So, who was it?” he whispered softly.
Trying another approach. Why was she not surprised?
She shook her head into the space between his pecs and gave a little watery laugh.
He pulled her back from his chest, hands cradling her jaw on either side. “I’d kill for you.”
She rolled her eyes despite the headache that lingered post-fight and -injury. “Right. Very hero-like.”
“Ochako.”
Her eyes flew to his. He’d just said her—
“I would kill for you.”
She heard it. She felt it. This was a defining moment in both of their lives, right now. The pivotal point in the backstory of a hero… or a villain.
She released her grip on his shirt and lifted her own palms to his face.
“No, you won’t.”
They stared at each other for several tense moments before Ochako slowly inched him down until their foreheads touched. Together, they shared several more cycles of Bakugou’s breathing rhythm.
“You won’t,” she said again. “Say it.”
She was met with terse silence and she knew she had to push a little more.
“So you think I can’t handle my own attackers? You think I’m frail?”
His head whipped up at that so that he could meet her gaze. “Never.”
“Then say it.”
“I will only greatly injure someone out of spite for you,” he said instead.
Not great. But they could work on that.
“Can I just have more hugs right now?” she asked.
Bakugou looked at her with those considering red eyes. Then he kissed her forehead. Her temple. Her ear. He coasted from one side of her jaw to the other, careful to avoid that area of obvious trauma. But then he stopped, his mouth hovering over hers, letting her make the decision.
She rocked up on her toes and pressed a firm kiss to his lips. He kissed her back, firm, if chaste, assurances of things yet unspoken.
Then he tucked her back against his chest.
“Yeah, you can have some more fucking hugs.”