savvy

by andypantsx3

Summary:

You're a business course third year who's good at being bossy, organized, and data-driven. You just want to use your business savvy to help all heroes. Well, all heroes except one.

Chapter 1: a rough start

Notes:

I’m fascinated by the concept of the UA business course, so here’s this. My apologies for some of the lazier aspects of my writing like a tropey female rival and shamelessly blending Americanisms with Japanese characters. I was interested in just getting myself to write and hopefully I will grow as a writer in the future.

Also this is a work of fiction. If a boy ever talks to you like this, kill him and dump his body in a river.

You scanned a critical eye over the auditorium of hero course students in front of you and wished for Ashido Mina.

Pinky was the perfect hero, in your opinion. She was pretty, with soft pink skin, a bright smile, and striking black and gold eyes that visually set her apart from most of the current female heroes in the top one hundred. More importantly, she was open and energetic, with a willingness to try anything that would pair well with your social media strategy.

If only Mr. Aizawa would call pairs, you would know for sure.

The pairs were for the business course’s senior project. Each business course student was to pair up with a hero course student and create a marketing strategy tailored to that individual -- taking into account their image, their strengths, their weaknesses, and their aspirations. It would require multiple weeks of getting to know your hero partner, following them to internships, interviewing them on various aspects of their personalities and future goals.

You pictured gossipy girls’ nights tucked away in the Class 3-A dorms, or early morning brunch dates at your favorite cafe just outside the main campus, getting to know Pinky or Invisible Girl or even Earphone Jack. You practically had your finger on the trigger to a Pinky twitter account, or maybe a Red Riot instagram full of thirst traps. Whoever your hero partner, you were going to befriend them and then social media the shit out of them.

Mr. Aizawa turned to the hero course trainees in front of him, “As all of you know, you will be paired up for the next month in order for Classes I, J, and K to complete their senior thesis - a marketing strategy individually tailored to you. I expect you to be accommodating and helpful, as a portion of your final grade depends on their success as well.”

He fixed his gaze on a knot of students to his left, and you didn’t have to see those spikes of ashy blonde hair to know why. Already well known for his explosive temper and foul mouth, Bakugou Katsuki was the waking nightmare of every business course student. He had already run afoul of the media tens of times as he engaged in more high-level internship operations, and no matter what he made up for in firepower and panty-dropping good looks, he would never be a media favorite.

“Any questions before I begin calling pairs?” Mr. Aizawa asked, his gaze lingering. You watched as Bakugou scowled and rolled a powerful shoulder as though he were gearing up for a fight.

“Fine then, let’s begin. Ashido with Yamanaka--”

You cursed, your top pick already paired off with the least favorite of your classmates. Yamanaka Sawako was smart but manipulative, and well known across campus for her unquenched thirst for several of Class 3-A’s trainees, including a certain hot head blonde. Of all people, she would probably be best suited and happiest to be paired with Bakugou. For her to receive Ashido as a partner was tantamount to handing her a diploma, suma cum laude and a month early.

“--Mezo with Ito--”

You pulled your top ten list to the front of your mind. If you couldn’t have Pinky, Red Riot was definitely second best, almost as equally good looking and friendly. Froppy was another good runner up, already a media favorite for her cute looks and straight-shooter personality. Or maybe Uravity; Ochako was somewhat shy but definitely kind and workable--

“--Todoroki with Abe--”

Or maybe even Midoriya. He’d filled out in recent years and was becoming wildly popular with the thirteen to twenty year old set, and no doubt he would be easy to work with. Or Sato Rikido, he would have some success with a baking instagram side hustle--

“--Bakugou with L/N--”

--or Bakugou with L/N….wait. WAIT. Bakugou with L/N????

Your head whipped up to stare fearfully at the explosive boy across the auditorium from you. He looked agitated as well, a displeased scowl settling across his sharp features, but he seemed not to know who to glare into submission, his eyes darting across the faces of your classmates. Finally his glowering gaze found yours, and a ringing began in your ears, something like a migraine splintering to life at your temples.

Fuck, you had to work with this asshole for an entire month? In what universe could a business student even complete a project like this working with Bakugou Katsuki? It was tantamount to developing a marketing strategy for a rock. Hell, a rock might be even easier to market. One twitterbot queued to reply to any Dwyane Johnson tweets asking him to politely stop stealing their identity and you were looking at at least a couple hundred thousand followers. Bakugou on the other hand had nothing and a twitter account dedicated to him was likelier than not to generate a couple hundred thousand haters if anything.

You worked yourself into circles as Aizawa finished calling names, your gaze locked fearfully on your partner.

“--and finally, Iida with Adachi. Everyone please step forward to meet your assigned partners and discuss next steps for your projects.”

Bakugou’s red-eyed stare burned into you like a glowing coal iron. God, you did not want to walk over there. He looked like a cornered pitbull, ready to tear into the throat of anyone who dared approach him. But your classmates surged forward to find their assigned heroes, and you knew you had to as well.

“The fuck you been staring at?” He ground out as you approached him slowly, as though he might bite.

What was the best way to deal with someone like this? Should you be calm? Forthright? Maybe trying the friendly tack was the best option until you knew him better, maybe you could be--

“I said, what the fuck you been staring at? Are you deaf as well as creepy?” He spat.

Assertive. You were going to teach this dog who was master.

“You, you absolute fucknut,” you said, returning his glare. You hoped it was effective coming from someone who, you were now discovering, only came up to his collarbone. “Or did our partnership announcement somehow shoot straight over your head?”

His pupils snapped to focus on you, narrowing like the scope of a sniper’s rifle. “What did you just say to me?”

You scoffed. “Now who’s deaf? Let’s just figure out the plan for this project so we can stop talking to each other.”

You could see his hackles raising. “Listen, shrimp. You seem to think that you’re in charge here--”

“I am in charge, actually,” you cut him off, “seeing as this is my senior thesis.”

“Fuck you, you’re dependent on me to get any kind of a grade and you’ll learn some respect if you know what’s good for you.” His handsome face twisted in a scowl. He had the kind of face that seemed bred for patrician distaste - a sensuous mouth perpetually curled into a pout, a sharp, aquiline nose to look down. God, up close he was so distractingly pretty but damn if he wasn’t annoying.

“Your grades are also dependent on this and if you don’t want Midoriya or Todoroki to unseat you from the top three then I suggest you cooperate with me,” you growled.

A sudden, loud crackle caused you to jolt and you looked down for the source of the noise only to find his closed palm smoking.

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you, you little fucking nerd?” He smirked, letting a pointed incisor show. “Why don’t you show me your quirk and we’ll settle who’s the top dog here?”

You looked back up at him, feeling your own fist curl. “You think you’re gonna beat the respect out of me? Just chill the fuck out and give me your timetable so I can work out how to complete this project.”

“You need to be put in your place before we go any further,” he said, letting off another round of crackling in his palm.

A mixture of fear and fascination welled up inside you. You’d known of Bakugou's inclination to fight and seen his quirk at the various sports festivals, but to experience it up close was something else, even as contained as it was. You could feel the hot, kinetic energy coming off his palm and smell something sweet and sharp, like gunpowder and sugar.

“I’m not going to fight you, Bakugou,” you huffed, standing your ground.

“Afraid?” He smirked. “You business course losers are all the same, thinking you run the fucking show. You’re nothing but a bunch of wimps in suits.”

Your nails dug into your palms. “I would fight you if I could, asshole. I don’t have a quirk.”

The crackling in his palm stopped, a stillness overtaking his features.

“What?”

“You heard me,” you grit out.

“You’re fucking quirkless? They paired me with some quirkless fucking suit and you still think you’re in charge?” A slow, malicious grin worked its way across his mouth.

“I don’t think it, I know it, and no amount of firepowered punches is going change the fact that we have to complete this project together, so if you could stop being a total douche for five seconds--”

“I’m not working with you.”

You threw your hands up. “You don’t work with anybody!”

Bakugou smiled. “Exactly, you little brat. Glad we understand each other.”

Your headache, forgotten until now, flared to life at your temples again. "Bakugou, if you could just be reasonable we could get this over with."

"I am getting it over with, you damn nerd," he said. "This. Is over. I don't need to be fucking marketed."

You stared at him, heat rising in your cheeks. "Fine. Have it your way. I'll find someone else to do this project with."

The disinterested raise of a pale eyebrow over a baleful gaze was all you got in the way of acknowledgement. Something hot and frustrated twisted in your stomach and you spun on your heel, stomping away from his athletic form. You set a beeline for your marketing teacher Mr. Hanamori, who was stationed in the corner of the auditorium, chatting in low tones with Mr. Aizawa.

"I want another partner!" you all but gasped, coming to a jarring stop in front of the two professors. "I won't work with him."

Mr. Hanamori turned towards you. "Y/N, the pair sets are final."

You blushed at being so firmly dismissed, but held your ground. "He won't work with me and I don't think I can work with him. I couldn't even get his schedule out of him."

Mr. Hanamori regarded you calmly. "In the course of your career, you will come to find yourself working with many hard-to-please heroes. There are difficult characters out there but you must be prepared to work alongside them for the success of your agency and the good of the community."

You gaped at him. "But sir-if I could switch, if Sawako wanted--"

He frowned. "Y/N, I will not hear another word. The partners are final and I expect you to work with Katsuki."

You tried desperately, one more time, "Sir, please--"

"That's enough," he said, and you felt shame coil in your belly at being reprimanded by your mentor. "You will finish this project or you will receive a zero as your grade. Do I make myself clear?"

Something close to tears stung behind your eyes. "Yes, sir."

Your fingers curled into fists behind your back, and you slowly turned again to face the rest of the auditorium. A tall figure lounged with his hip against the seats exactly where you had left him, smirking over the heads of the other partner pairs. Apprehension curled within you--what were you supposed to do now? How could you go back over there and ask him to work with you when it was clear he wanted nothing to do with this project?

You’ll learn some respect if you know what’s good for you.

Ugh. You closed your eyes and steeled yourself for what you were about to try. Picking your way carefully back through the crowd of other students happily comparing schedules and exchanging phone numbers, you stopped in front of Bakugou, avoiding his crimson gaze.

"Ready to behave?" A note of satisfaction bled into his tone.

You took a deep breath and raised your face up to his. It was just one month. One month and then you would never have to see this asshole again.

"Yes, I'm ready to behave."

Notes:

This is the first thing I've written. Constructive feedback is welcome!

Chapter 2: working it out

Summary:

Bakugou spends some time working out, and you spend time working him out.

Bakugou was a nightmare partner. And not just for his irascible attitude or foul mouth, no. Bakugou was a nightmare because he was everywhere, all the damn time. In the auditorium that fateful morning where the business course students had received their partner assignments, you had watched as Bakugou drew out his timetable for you, and immediately resigned yourself to four weeks of hell.

In neat handwriting, he had penciled in things like 5 to 7 AM - gym gamma and 7 to 9 PM - partner training and on the weekends 6 AM - internship.

You had groaned at the thought of waking up so early -- you were just rolling out of bed at seven a.m. on school days and you were definitely not awake until something like eleven on weekends. But Bakugou had also proved extremely unwilling to adjust his schedule for you, meaning that if you did want to follow him to his internship and observe his training time, you would have to brave the cold, dark March mornings to make your way to his appointments.

Which is how you found yourself in gym gamma the Monday morning after your partner assignments, clutching a thermos of coffee and feeling very much like you needn’t have brought it at all.

Bakugou himself was all the wakeup call a girl could need. You discovered that 5 to 7 AM - gym gamma meant one hour general workout before one hour of quirk training. And one hour of general workout this morning meant one hour of Bakugou’s assets on full display.

You’d noted in the auditorium that he was disarmingly handsome up close, but that was his face, with the rest of him tucked safely away inside his school uniform. Bakugou during workouts was something else entirely. His gym clothes left little to the imagination - a black tank top that bared his very defined shoulders and arms, and rode up his washboard abs when he curled into crunches. Even his joggers were unhelpful, cupping closely to his glutes that you could now see were very well trained.

You held still at the side of the room and tried very hard to not look as interested as you were.

“You’re always fucking staring like some little creep,” Bakugou bit out as he raised a weight toward his chest. You tried to ignore the fact that he was curling forties.

“That is what part of the assignment is, no? To observe?” You took an angry sip of your coffee.

Bakugou scoffed. “I’m sorry, I must have missed the part where it said stare wide-eyed like a newborn baby calf. You never seen a person work out before?”

You weren’t a stranger to the business class gym and you’d seen plenty of your classmates working out over the years. The problem was there was a real difference between the bicep definition found in the boys of Class I and the bicep definition currently on display in front of you.

“Bakugou, these are just my eyeballs,” you sighed, fixing your gaze on your thermos instead. What was the point of even being here? You had planned to use this time to informally interview him but talking to him was painful, akin to running your fingers through a cheese grater.

“The fuck they are. You’re staring and you damn well know it.”

God how could one person be so beautiful on the outside, only for the inside to house a fucking gremlin portaled straight from the ninth circle of hell? It was a shame his personality had to come attached to his body.

You rummaged around in your bag for your notebook, paging to the spot where you had detailed some of your interview questions.

“Fine then I won’t look at you even though that’s literally what I came here to do,” you groused, uncapping your pen. “Let me just ask you these questions.”

“This ain’t a talk show,” he huffed.

“Apparently this isn’t a show show either,” you said. “I didn’t get out of bed at ass o’clock just to come back with nothing useful. Just--be helpful, please.”

A grunt came from his general direction and you took that as much assent as you were going to get from him.

“What category of hero are you training to be?” You asked, even though you felt like you already knew the answer. “Rescue, combat? Definitely not a celebrity hero.”

“Combat, obviously,” he answered. His tone did nothing to disguise how useless he found the question.

“What’s your motivation? What kind of a hero do you want to be to people?”

The sound of him reracking his weights came from your right and his voice got further away as he made his way towards where the medicine balls were stashed. “I want to fucking win.”

You noted as much, then stared at the words on the page. “That’s your hero philosophy? You want to win? You could win at anything, why is it important that you be a hero?”

A ball came rolling your way. “So I don’t have to hold back when I do.”

You felt more than saw Bakugou follow the ball, and something smokey and vaguely sweet filled your nose as he came close again, crouching down in front of it.

“So you don’t have to hold back? What does that mean?”

You chanced a look up at him, only to find him staring back at you as he held a plank, palms pressed into the ball. You quickly looked down, but not before catching a flash of white teeth beneath a savage grin.

“I’ll show you what it means, princess. Just let me finish up here.”

You let out a frustrated sound. “Can’t you just tell me?”

He scoffed again. “Won’t mean nothing until you see it.”

You let your head thunk back against the wall. “Shouldn’t I be the judge of that? These are my questions.”

“And these are my answers, you damn whiner. You don’t like it, get another partner.”

You sighed and resigned yourself to nursing your coffee silently as he wrapped up his workout. It took another twenty minutes for him to work his way through what appeared to be his usual circuit and you let yourself fall into a vegitative fugue watching the steam curl out of the open lip of your thermos.

His leg connecting with your side was what awoke you, and a pointed glare from him silenced any of your complaints. Instead, you stood and packed up your bag as you followed him out of the back of gym gamma into the open field behind it.

Mr. Cementoss had clearly been at work here, as towering mountains of concrete interspersed with tall buildings dotted the skyline.

“You might want to stand back, princess.” Bakugou smiled, pulling his arm across the broad length of his chest in a stretch.

“Stop calling me that,” you demanded, though you took a step back as he made his way out into the field.

“Stop acting like such a demanding little brat, then,” he called behind him, and your hands clenched.

If he thought asking a couple of questions was demanding then you shuddered to think of what his actual future manager would have to deal with. How could one possibly build up a brand around someone as abrasive as this, especially if they couldn’t even get answers out of them? You supposed a different avenue was to ask the questions of the public rather than Bakugou, using data mining techniques to draw conclusions about what they wanted to see from him, but even then, what was data worth if you couldn’t use it to influence any of his behavior or decisions?

“Quit thinking so loud, you’re distracting the shit out of me.” Bakugou yelled from deeper within gamma field, and you sighed. You were doing that a lot ever since meeting him.

“You wanted to know what it means for me to not hold back,” he said, and his tone sounded equal parts smug and cautionary. “Well, watch this.”

And that was all the warning you had before a massive explosion lit up the backs of your eyelids.

At once, it was immediately clear what Bakugou meant by not having to hold back. You’d been on scene at the first year sports festival where he had all but destroyed half a stadium, but this was different. It was clear to you now that sixteen year old Bakugou’s firepower paled into comparison to eighteen year old Bakugou.

A deafening sound like thunder at close range rent the air, and the row of buildings in front of Bakugou were swept up in a wall of fire, crumbling under the pressure of the blast. A wave of wind rushed you, knocking you clean off your feet to land heavily on your ass.

You whipped back up, scanning the ground to see if Bakugou had also been kicked around by the force of his own explosion but he was already airborne, channeling trails of fire behind him as he rose higher and higher into the air. He raised a palm and a massive explosion ripped out another row of buildings, concrete cracking and imploding under the force of the blast.

One by one he annihilated the rows of buildings dotting the field, until all that was left was smoking craters and melted, twisting spires of cement. A fine layer of dust drifted on the air like smoke, coating your jacket and hair.

Fuck if that wasn’t super cool. Gamma field was the size of a small downtown district and Bakugou had annihilated it in just under a minute. He’d taken out entire rows of buildings in one shot and melted straight through some of them. What was his blast radius? What even was the melting point of cement - how hot exactly were his explosions?

Bakugou stomped back over, shaking the dust off himself like a golden retriever. “You see, princess?”

You stared up at him, realizing you were still on the ground. “What?”

“Being a hero, winning. If I was anything else, stuffed into some fucking suit like the rest of you nerds, I would have to hold back and play nice even if I’m coming out on top.”

You looked at him, mouth upturned in a predatory grin, dust smudging the points of his high cheekbones, and couldn’t imagine him playing nice with anybody.

Any maybe that was the point, wasn’t it? Bakugou was annoying, sure, in no small part because he was so unabashedly himself. If he was saying what you thought he was saying, he equated being a hero with winning -- winning violently, full-force. And unleashing like that, throwing the entire extent of his power at something, and coming out on top, letting nothing detract from that -- that was when he felt most himself.

Being a hero was a way of stretching and testing himself. And that was at least respectable.

“You want to be a hero because you want free reign to be yourself?” You asked.

He smirked. “Got it in one, nerd.”

You considered that. It wasn’t ideal, honestly, but it was something. More marketable heroes were the friendlier ones, the kind who exhorted public service and saving lives. But all top heroes had a message, something like a tenet that drove their actions and united their fans.

If Bakugou was saying what you thought then he at least had a message, a cornerstone to build off of. Something easy like be yourself.

This was going to take a hell of a lot more thought and several late nights sweeping the internet, but it was something you might be able to work with.

“You get lost in there, nerd?” Bakugou’s face swam back into focus and you caught him peering at you intensely.

You scoffed. “I’m fine.”

He scowled. “I didn’t ask if you were fine.”

You rolled your eyes and got to your feet. “Of course you didn’t. Now, what’s next?”

Bakugou smirked and turned back to face ground gamma. “Now, the real work begins.”

You watched his broad back as he swept once more into the field.

Fine. Now the real work begins.

Chapter 3: espionage

Summary:

You attempt some field research and things get unexpectedly spicy.

The next few days of your life were admittedly not the easiest you’d ever lived.

It was hard getting anything else out of Bakugou, no matter how much sucking up you attempted to do, and you were exhausted from tailing him to his various trainings and appointments while keeping up with your own classes. It gave you a newfound respect for the strict regimen he kept himself on - every morning he was in the gym by five a.m. and every evening he paired himself off with another classmate, testing the strength of his quirk against them until well in the night. In between his self-imposed training he kept on top of his homework, even spent time tutoring his small squadron of friends, and he cooked himself disturbingly healthy breakfasts and dinners every single day.

You spent the time you didn’t devote to wheedling information out of him to internet research, plugging into twitter analytics and searching various Bakugou-related phrasings on google trends, trying to get a read on what content was popular, and which items provoked which reactions from the public. You had an inkling of what kind of strategy might be applied to him, but that was the least of your problems.

All your research would be useless in his hands if you couldn’t motivate him to make something of it. And for that, you needed personal information on him. If you couldn’t get that out of him, then you would get it from someone else.

Which is why you turned to plan B: Ashido Mina.

Besides being your top pick for senior project partner, Ashido Mina was one of the few people Bakugou let close to himself. More than that, Mina was open, friendly, and helpful, and you could admit that you were in desperate need of some help at the moment.

Ducking Bakugou’s pair training one evening, you chose to make your way to the Class 3-A dorms instead, seeking out the pink-haired girl. You found her easily enough, spread out in the lounge with her project partner Yamanaka Sawako, your least favorite of your classmates.

This was not your ideal situation, but the doing needed done. Besides, Sawako might prove useful as well. To your knowledge, not one other person had panted after Bakugou Katsuki as hard or for as long as Sawako. She might have some useful information stored away in that annoyingly perceptive mind of hers.

“Hey Mina, hey Sawako” you greeted the two girls as you joined them in the lounge. “Would it be okay if I stole a couple minutes of Mina’s time?”

An expression crossed Sawako’s features like she’d accidentally sucked on a lemon, but Mina perked up. “Sure, what’s up? You’re Y/N, right? Bakugou’s partner?”

You grimaced. “Yeah, about that. I was actually hoping to talk to you about him a little. He’s proving a tough nut to crack.”

Mina’s expression turned sympathetic. “He is. It even took Kirishima months to crack him in first year, and Kirishima’s the best we’ve got!”

You snorted, remembering Kirishima dogging Bakugou’s every step that very first year at U.A. like an overexcited puppy. “Yeah. I don’t have enough months to dedicate to that same kind of effort. I was hoping that you could tell me more about what he’s actually like?”

Over Mina’s shoulder, Sawako’s face took on a look of intense interest.

“Sure thing!” Mina chirped, gesturing you over to the table she and Sawako shared. You could see Mina’s homework and Sawako’s very organized notes spread out across its surface. “What do you want to know?”

You thought a moment, “Well, mostly I’m having trouble figuring out how to communicate with him. He gets irritated when I talk back to him but refuses to work with me even when I manage my tone. How do you get him to acknowledge you at all?”

Mina fixed you with her dark-eyed stare. “What kind of irritated does he get when you talk back to him?”

You could feel your eyebrows raise. “I wasn’t aware there were different kinds.”

Mina shrugged, letting out a small laugh. “Sure there are, especially where Bakugou’s involved. He’s always some kind of annoyed.”

“Uh, the first time we met he told me he wouldn’t work with me unless I showed him some respect? And he’s regularly called me variations of demanding brat. What kind of irritation is that?”

Mina leaned forward, a look of delight crossing her pretty features. “He said he wouldn’t work with you unless you showed him respect?”

You nodded, a flush spreading to your cheeks. It was embarrassing to be so open about the shortcomings of your partnership, particularly in front of Sawako, who looked to be making no effort hiding her enjoyment. You had no doubt that were the roles reversed, Sawako’s partnership with Bakugou would have started on a very different note. While Bakugou would never be able to be kept well in hand, you had no doubt that Sawako would have him wrapped as much around her little finger as someone like Bakugou could be.

Much as you hated to admit it, Sawako was smart and tactical, not unlike Bakugou himself. She was a classic beauty, with delicate features and long glossy hair, and you’d seen her use these as a tool to ride roughshod over men who bristled at the demands of women who looked like you. Her family had money, and she made no secret of the fact that she was accustomed to having her way, and used this attitude to steamroll anyone who disagreed with her.

More than that, she even had the most useful quirk in the business course; the ability to impose an atmosphere of her choosing on a room. In negotiation exercises, you yourself had fallen victim to her imposed feelings of trust and conviction and given her the better part of the deal. She had tools in her toolkit to keep any kind of hero in line, and she would be a perfect manager once she graduated.

“Yeah,” you answered Mina, resigning yourself to telling the whole truth, no matter how much Sawako was clearly enjoying herself. “But then when I play nice, he ignores me. I’ve spent this whole week sucking up to him and I’ve gotten no further in this project than I was on Monday morning.”

Mina laughed and placed a pale pink hand on top of yours. “I think you have nothing to worry about.”

Despite her friendly tone, you felt yourself bristle. “I appreciate you saying that, but I’m having a real problem.”

Mina laughed again, waving you off. “I know you do, but what I’m saying is Bakugou doesn’t.”

You grew even more frustrated at her abstruse phrasing. “He sure seems like he has several problems.”

Mina smiled. “I assume you’ve seen him in the hallways at school?”

“Yeah,” you answered. “What does that have to do with his problem with me?”

“And I assume you’ve seen Monoma from class 3-B attempt to start something with him almost every time they encounter one another?”

“Yeah?” You wondered where she was taking things, as you seemed to be getting wildly off track from the question you had asked.

“And what does Bakugou do when Monoma attempts to get under his skin?” Mina asked slowly, like you were a child in need of leading to an answer.

“These days he usually just stomps away from him.”

Mina smiled again. “And why do you think that is?”

You couldn’t help but look at her like she was crazy. You’d barely even had one effective conversation with the guy and now she was expecting you to psychoanalyze him?

“Because Monoma isn’t worth his time,” Sawako sniffed from next to Mina, inspecting her nails haughtily.

Privately, you agreed, but you hated to encourage her.

Mina, however, had no problem encouraging Sawako. “Bingo! Great job, partner! Bakugou doesn’t give a fuck about Monoma.”

The three of you sat in silence for a moment while the implication of her words settled around your shoulders like a particularly uncomfortable scarf.

“...Excuse me if I’m misreading things here, but are you implying that Bakugou is a douche to me because he somehow gives a fuck about my good opinion?”

“Exactly!” Mina grinned at you. “Bakugou doesn’t give a shit about earning the respect of anyone he thinks is beneath him.”

You blinked at her. “Bakugou thinks everyone is beneath him.”

Mina laughed and raked a hand through her wild pink curls. “That might be true. But there are people he thinks of as less beneath him than others, and he wouldn’t be near so concerned with demanding your respect if he didn’t think you were one of them.”

Sawako’s delicate features twisted into a dismissive look. “Mina, I think you could be misreading the situation. Even when she’s nice to him, Bakugou won’t work with Y/N.”

You felt your nails dig into a palm under the table at being so thoroughly dismissed by your least favorite classmate, but you knew Sawako wasn’t wrong.

Mina waved Sawako off. “That’s just because he doesn’t like it when people are fake! He’s always himself, and he expects other people to be the same way.”

You felt a bolt of hot irritation shoot through you at the thought that all those hours spent sucking up to him had maybe been a waste. “Mina, even if that’s true, he also told me he wouldn’t work with me unless I behaved. If I can’t talk back to him and I can’t be pleasant to him, what the hell else does he mean by that?”

The pink haired girl let a sharp grin creep across her features. With her black eyes and twisted horns, you’d never seen her look more like a predator species before. “He told you to behave?”

“Yeah, like I was a small child throwing a tantrum.”

At this, Mina leaned forward excitedly. “Oh, I don’t think he thinks of you as a child at all.”

Heat crept up the back of your neck and buzz began in your ears. “Mina, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying -- I think we are getting way off base.”

“I don’t think we’re getting off base at all, Y/N.” Mina’s voice dropped low. Sawako fluttered discontentedly next to her.

“Bakugou likes strong-willed people, but he also likes being in control. So what does he do when his pretty little partner strolls up to him and starts mouthing off? The only thing he knows how to do when faced with something he cares enough to be interested in - try to control it.”

The buzzing in your head seemed to get louder and you could feel your face redden at being called his pretty little partner. You weren’t anything unfortunate to look at and you kept a neat appearance, but you weren’t stupid. Bakugou was a walking wet dream--if you didn’t take his personality into account--and he had a long history of girls who looked like Sawako straggling after him. He had plenty of nice things to look at if he wanted, and you knew you drew up short in comparison.

Mina was nice, maybe too nice, and it seemed like on this account, she had gotten her friend wrong.

“Listen, Mina. I--I appreciate you saying all that, but I think we could be a little off beam here. Bakugou’s got like, probably a zillion other things on his mind, and I think that--”

“Oi, shrimp!” A loud crash came as the door to the dorm entrance slammed close, and you froze at the familiar growl. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing cozying up to the raccoon?”

The racoon? You looked to Mina for guidance and she pointed to herself with no small amount of cheer. Oh, the eyes.

“Spit it out, nerd. What are you doing here?”

You hesitated. Definitely nothing suspicious. Definitely not talking about you. Definitely not inventing conspiracy theories about your taste in business students.

“Uh--I had project questions for Mina and Sawako!” You gasped out, turning quickly in your chair to face him.

He eyed you suspiciously from the doorway, standing tall and imposing, his blonde spikes drooping a little with sweat from his partner training. “I’m your project, dweeb.”

Your heart leapt into your throat. “Um, I meant like logistics questions. Nothing you’d care much about.”

Red eyes narrowed. “Nothing I’d care much about, huh? Smells like a cover up to me.”

The bottom of your stomach dropped out as he took a menacing step towards you, and you looked to Sawako and Mina for help. Both girls paid you no mind, though, Sawako eyeing Bakugou with something like hunger, and Mina eyeing him with something distressingly like amusement.

A large hand closed around your upper arm and dragged you out of your chair. You stumbled over your own feet, grasping desperately at the edge of the table for balance, but your nails only just raked the edge as you were yanked off your feet and thrown over one broad shoulder. The scent of smoke and sweat and something sugary sweet pressed in on you as a large hand came up to anchor you against him.

“Bakugou!” You yelped, “Fucking gross, you’re all sweaty! Put me down.”

“Quit whining, nerd,” he rumbled, and you watched in horror as the floor moved underneath you as he turned away and began making his way out of the lounge.

“I swear I will end you if you don’t put me down right now,” you fumed, absolutely not in the right headspace for this. You had never been this close to him before and Mina had put all those crazy thoughts in your head. More than that, you knew he was gearing up for a massive fight that would put all her theories to rest.

“You and what quirk, princess?” he grit out, quickly tearing up a flight of stairs and into a brightly lit hallway. He kicked open the first door he came across and you were unceremoniously deposited before him. You registered a firm mattress beneath you, orderly stacks of books on a tidy desk, and a framed All Might poster before an angry face filled your vision.

“You ready to tell me what you were really doing with raccoon eyes?” Bakugou demanded.

You froze, his face only spare inches from your own. You felt the mattress dip on either side of you and realized he was caging you in with both arms.

“I really was asking them project questions,” you opined, backing up as much as you could.

Bakugou followed you. “Bullshit. You were fucking spying on me.”

Your elbow went out from beneath you as you pressed back again, and Bakugou was over you before you could get back up.

“I think this is escalating a little quickly,” you said, staring fearfully up at his handsome face. He fixed you with a flat look.

“You think you can just use my friends as tools to dig around in my fucking life don’t you, you little brat?”

You gaped. “I swear I--that’s not what I’m doing! I’m just trying to figure out how to talk to you!”

A sneer crossed his face. “You’ve been doing nothing but fucking talking since I got saddled with you!”

You growled. “But you haven’t been talking to me! How the hell am I supposed to complete this project if I know nothing about you? My marketing strategy is supposed to take into account your goals and aspirations, Bakugou. I can analyze your image, your strengths and your weaknesses from afar if I have to but I can’t fucking guess at what’s in your brain!”

His face dropped nearer to yours, the neck of his loose shirt dipping low enough to touch your chest, and you felt your breathing shallow.

“You want something, you ask me for it, princess.”

You let out a frustrated grunt. “I’ve been asking, Bakugou.”

He snorted. “You haven’t been asking anything. Ever since the gym on Monday you’ve been too busy kissing my ass.”

You couldn’t deny it. You’d been playing as nice as you could trying to get him to engage with you but clearly that hadn’t worked.

“I don’t know what you want from me!” you cried, pushing at one solid shoulder.

His hand shot out to grab your wrist, trapping it back against his mattress. “Want you to stop bullshitting me, you damn nerd.”

“You told me to behave,” you whined. God, this was all hurting your head. For someone so absolutely forthright about everything, Bakugou was proving to be an incredibly frustrating puzzle.

A predatory grin curled the sides of his mouth and you found yourself a little transfixed. “Putting you in your place isn’t as satisfying if you’re good for me all the time.”

A hot shiver went up your spine. Did he even know what he sounded like? He sounded like he’d eaten a bowl full of Mina’s crazy theories for breakfast and was spitting them back out with little regard for any hapless business majors who just needed a decent final grade.

“Bakugou, I really don’t understand what you’re saying,” you stared up at him.

He leveled you with an unamused look. “I’m saying you go back to being that mouthy little shit you were the first couple of days, princess, and I’ll put you in your place when I damn well want to.”

You held his gaze for what felt like a short eternity, before he sighed and backed off from over you, sitting back on his haunches.

“You mean it?” you asked, sitting up after him.

“You think I fucking say things I don’t mean?” he demanded, leaning forward again, and you held your hands up in front of you in the universal gesture for peace.

“Wait, wait, okay I get it. I was just making sure.” You drew a long breath and fixed him with your most confident look.

Mouthy little shit? You could absolutely do that.

Chapter 4: business major / major business

Summary:

After a patrol gone wrong, your project becomes the least of your worries.

Notes:

*slaps roof of fic* turns out this bad boy can fit seven or eight chapters in it.

This is going to be about double the length I originally thought it was, but I now know where I'm going with it. Thank you for your patience with me.

Things had settled somewhat between you two, but knowing that Bakugou liked you mouthy didn’t make digging info out of him any easier. The next two weeks you spent trailing him back and forth between his internship and training like a baby duckling after its very ripped and very intimidating mother, but you’d not made as much of a dent in your plan as you had hoped.

All your background research had been completed, all the social media statistics charted and analyzed within an inch of their lives, but gathering information about his goals beyond I want to win had been impossible.

What you did have was a very rough outline of a marketing strategy that you had no idea how to motivate him to engage with. Bakugou’s strengths were clear enough to anyone with eyeballs or ears - he was good at blowing shit up, he was good at telling it straight, and he was good at winning. His weaknesses were similarly plain - he was bad at sitting still, he was bad at talking to people, and whoever had coined the term no chill had somehow failed to take into account that people could have negative amounts of chill such that they sucked all the chill straight out of the people around them.

But his vision for his future was as cloudy as the air after one of his explosions.

On the bright side, Bakugou had begun to open up on a variety of other topics that he clearly didn’t find as private. And by open up, you meant complain about.

“You’re gonna die early, princess,” Bakugou grumbled one Saturday morning, eyeing your coffee and granola bar with obvious distaste as you trotted up to meet him at the campus gate.

“If you keep making me wake up this early, yeah,” you yawned. A cold wind blew straight through you and you resisted the urge to tuck yourself behind one of his lean shoulders. “Studies show coffee drinkers live longer.”

“Studies show that you’re a fucking idiot if you think observational trials are conclusive,” he growled. “I thought you were supposed to be a statistics nerd.”

“The only thing I’m supposed to be is asleep right now,” you whined. “Can we please just get on the train so I can be warm again?”

He scoffed and turned away, leading the way to the station near U.A.’s main campus.

You hated getting up early, but you did enjoy accompanying Bakugou to his internship. Bakugou’s senior internship was with Miruko’s new agency, and the place was incredibly well run for a hero who’d not believed in agencies only two years prior. The marketing executives you’d spoken to were organized and insightful, and it was a testament to their skills that Miruko’s bad girl image had recently begun to reshape.

More importantly, nothing brightened your morning like watching Miruko steamroll Bakugou into submission.

“Don’t look so happy over there,” Bakugou griped, ushering you back against the wall as you boarded the train. He stationed himself in front of you, forming a prickly blonde barrier between you and the rest of the early morning commuters.

You ignored him, content to nurse your coffee and sway sleepily as the train carried you into downtown.

At the station, he pushed you in front of him, keeping close on your heels as you headed up into the bright sunlight of downtown. He’d been notably handsier with you since that evening in his bedroom, and you were equal parts annoyed and pleased with it. It was hard not to want a guy who looked like Bakugou to put his hands all over you, no matter what he sounded like when he opened his damn mouth.

“Morning, brats,” Miruko greeted you as you made your way into the agency offices. “You think you can handle a light patrol this morning?”

You nodded, having discovered that patrols were something you could easily accompany Bakugou on. Patrols were mostly a mechanism to keep a hero presence visible within the community and not intended to accomplish much more than that. On your first patrol with Bakugou, the most action you’d seen was him sourly ushering an old woman across the street and roughing up a convenience store thief.

“Great, get changed.”

Getting changed for you meant abandoning your warm coat for an agency-issued jumpsuit. You’d been warned that Bakugou would look like he was messing around on patrol if he was accompanied by a rando in jeans and a puffer jacket, so for the sake of professionalism you had agreed. The jumpsuit was not your favorite piece of apparel, but it did well enough to keep you covered up, and the dark color and cut didn’t look heinous, as things sometimes did on you when you hadn’t picked them for yourself.

As a bonus, the jumpsuit boasted basic support items which you had taken to smuggling into your purse at the end of every day. If Miruko’s team noticed all the band-aids and pepper spray in constant need of replacing, they were keeping their comments to themselves.

Getting changed for Bakugou meant donning his ‘winter uniform’ which did not accurately detail the full effect of his outfit. Though it was built with long sleeves and a wide cowl to protect him from the cold, the suit did not protect onlookers from the sight of his athletic build. The suit hugged closely to his defined abs, and cupped lovingly to the swell of his biceps, the orange X emblazoned across his chest only emphasizing the broadness of his shoulders.

In short, it was very distracting to be around.

“Ready to go, nerd?” Bakugou intoned from the entryway as you emerged from the locker room. He didn’t wait for an answer though, grabbing a fistful of your jumpsuit where it darted in at your waist and pulling you out the door, back into the cold morning air.

“Where are we patrolling today?” you asked as you fell into step beside him.

“Just a loop around downtown. If we’re lucky we’ll get to break up a couple train station fights.”

You scoffed. “You shouldn’t wish for that.”

He threw you a disinterested look. “Save your whining for someone else, princess.”

You huffed. “Don’t try to start that shit with me this early.”

“It’s six thirty,” he said, and you gave him a dry look.

“Exactly my point.”

“Not my fault that you need more beauty sleep,” he chuckled.

You rolled your eyes. “You might want to try it some time.”

A sharp grin curling the edges of his mouth was all the warning you had before he pounced. “I think you think I’m plenty beautiful, princess. You do enough staring at the gym.”

Suddenly, your heart leapt into your throat. This was not a conversation you wanted to start with him, especially after the events in his bedroom. It was clear that Bakugou had a particular thing about putting you in your place, but you weren’t dumb enough to mistake that inclination for actual interest. “Where I’m looking is none of your business.”

He grinned. “It is if it’s directly at my ass.”

You dropped your gaze to the sidewalk in front of you. “You make me sound like a subway pervert.”

“I call ‘em like I see ‘em,” he laughed.

“God, please just howitzer me into the next dimension so I can stop having this conversation.”

Bakugou let out a loud bark of genuine laughter at that, and the pair of you rounded a block of buildings leading into the downtown park.

“You’re awful shy for someone so demanding, princess.”

“Why did I ever wish that you would talk to me more,” you moaned. “I was having such an easy life before this.”

You made the mistake of looking up at him and caught his expression shifting into an intense look. “I don’t think you like things easy, do you, princess?”

You raised an eyebrow in query, thrown by his question.

“In fact, I think you like things...rough.”

Your brain short-circuited and an entire conservatory of butterflies erupted in your stomach. He had to know what he was saying, didn’t he? There was no way someone as clever and tactical as Bakugou wouldn’t know what he was saying, even if his social graces left something (read: everything) to be desired.

But even if he knew what he was saying, then why? Was the pleasure of seeing you so in knots worth the ridiculousness of sounding flirty?

What the fuck was Bakugou’s game here?

You opened your mouth to respond, and you might have gasped out something incredibly embarrassing, but you were cut off by the block ahead of you tearing wide open.

For a small moment you were relieved. And then you registered the air above the intersection ripping open like fabric along a seam, accompanied by a horrific rending noise that sent all your hair standing on end. A black void pooled into the spaces where the air had been wrenched apart, and a sudden, suffocating silence pressed down on you.

A car slid to screeching halt before the void, and just for a moment all held still. Then, with a violent pull, the car flipped on its side, and began dragging along the pavement straight up into the black hole.

The next thing you knew, the world upended and you were on your back, feeling like a weight was crushing every inch of you into the concrete with excruciating force, but you were moving. You could feel your jumpsuit shredding at your back as you too were wrenched along the ground, pulled inexplicably towards the void. All around you, signs began to pull themselves free from the concrete, bending towards the dark air in the middle of the intersection.

You tried to gasp out Bakugou’s name, but your very breath was sucked from your throat.

You scrabbled at the pavement beneath you, trying to find purchase, but your fingertips were scraped raw by the rough grooving and the sheer force with which you were being wrenched along. Horrified, you felt your whole body begin to lift off the ground.

Abruptly, you were tackled by a comet of heat and fire, driving you across thousands of feet in an instant. The crushing weight left you, and air pushed furiously back into your lungs, choking you.

“Fuck. You okay, nerd?” Bakugou’s lean form pressed you into the ground and you registered the gate to the downtown park digging into your side. Only seconds before, you had been hundreds of feet away. How did you get here?

“Talk to me, princess.” Bakugou’s concerned face filled your vision. A calloused hand came up to tilt your face up to him.

“What just happened?” You coughed out, and he shifted off of you.

“I don’t know what the fuck that is,” he said. “Some kind of black hole. Caught you before you were dragged in.”

You looked up in horror as a billboard prised itself from the ground and tore into the void.

“What do we do?” you gasped out.

“We do nothing,” he said, and suddenly you were jerked to your feet. “You run back to the agency and get help. Stay out of its path,” he indicated the street in front of the void where signs and street fixtures were straining towards its face. “I’m going to find out what’s causing this.”

You looked at him fearfully. “You think a villain is behind this?”

His red gaze met yours. “I’ll bet. Now get running, nerd, we’re losing time.”

You didn’t waste a second.

Your mind went blank as you ran, tearing down side streets back towards the agency. The next thing you knew, you were falling through the agency doors, screaming for help. In an instant, Miruko was beside you, her sidekicks hovering nervously. You must have gasped out something comprehensible, then, because moments more and they were gone.

What felt like an hour passed as you sat there, sprawled out on the floor, but could only have been mere moments. Eventually, a careful hand wrapped around your upper arm and helped you over to the reception waiting room. The receptionist pressed you down into a chair, leaning over you.

“Hey, Y/N. You with me?”

You blinked up at her, taking in her kindly expression. “...y-yeah. Sorry.”

She clicked her tongue. “Good. I’m going to need you to stay here, okay? I’m going to send out the alert and contact the police. Stay right here for me, alright?”

You nodded, and she bustled off. You stared after her.

What the actual fuck had happened? A black hole opening in the middle of downtown, right in the path of a typical hero patrol route? Just past six thirty in the morning?

It clearly had to be the work of someone’s quirk, but the question was why? What purpose did someone have for attacking downtown when no people were really around? The only people who had been on the street that early had been you and Bakugou.

A swell of sirens reached your ears, and police cars flashed past out on the street.

Bakugou. You had left him by himself. Had Miruko and her sidekicks already made it? Had they located the person responsible yet?

You settled back in your chair, your foot tapping nervously. Should you go back out there? You were a business major who sometimes (okay, most of the time) got winded after just ten minutes on a treadmill. You wouldn’t be helpful, but it felt wrong to just sit here, knowing the whole agency was out there, not knowing what was going on. If only villains were vulnerable to charts and graphs, you would have them on the back foot in no time.

You were fidgeting in your seat, warring with yourself like that, when a figure stepped through the main doors. A dark hood shielded their hair and most of their face, and they walked slowly, deliberately, as though with purpose.

A small thrill of foreboding went through you.

They lifted their head like they were scenting the air, calmly but surely turning to face the reception area where you sat.

“So this is Miruko’s agency,” the figure’s voice, hoarse like it had been years since properly used, met your ears. “Nice place.”

All your limbs locked up as a spike of fear shot through you. Who was this? What were they doing here?

“And you -- you must be Bakugou’s new little girlfriend.”

Under their hood, you could see a smile lift the corner of a thin lip.

“You’re coming with me.”

Chapter 5: savage

Summary:

The villain finds out you can be a little savage. Bakugou does too.

Notes:

Thank you to everyone who has left kudos or comments on this fic. Everything you've said has been really motivating to me and I've enjoyed reading every single comment!

Nothing in your life had prepared you for this.

Even as a business course student, you’d been made to suffer through the basics of self defense and rudimentary first aid. But nothing you could recall from your years in these gen eds detailed what to do in a situation like this.

The situation being an apparent abduction in broad daylight in the middle of a hero agency.

“Um, going with you where?” you asked, getting to your feet and edging around your chair. You wondered somewhat wildly if anything from that one hostage negotiation seminar might be applicable -- should you try to get them talking? It was disconcerting to think of the hostage as being you.

The hooded figure straightened. They were of middling height and a slim build, and it was hard to discern their gender from their appearance, particularly with the hood masking their facial features.

“Somewhere where we can talk,” They crooned. Their tone did little to distinguish their gender either, soft and medial.

You backed up a step. Ask open ended questions, mirror their language.

“Somewhere we can talk? What about?” You asked.

“Aren’t you a curious little thing?” They asked, prowling towards you. Your heart beat frantically in your chest. They weren’t cooperating.

“P-Please,” you cast about wildly for something, anything to help you out. Why couldn’t this jumpsuit have a fucking panic button? Or a missile. “L-let’s talk here.”

The person made a gentle clucking noise. “I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to be interrupted.”

You highly doubted you had anything to talk about worth interrupting. What were you going to do, braid each other’s hair and gab about boys?

Get them to engage with you. Keep your tone calm.

“What would be interrupted? What do we have to talk about?” Your hand crept behind your back, rooting around carefully in your suit for anything helpful. Your fingers brushed a small cylinder, and you paused. You’d smuggled enough of these home in your purse to know what you were holding onto.

The person rounded the chair you'd been sitting in. “Let’s have a little chat about your time at U.A. I’d like to talk about your teachers. Such bad form, leaving their students so unprotected.”

So this was about U.A. Probably another hero detractor, though why they’d chosen to target a business student was beyond you.

“W-what about my time at U.A.?” You asked, slowly uncapping the top of the cylinder. You hoped this person was the wielder of the black hole quirk. You hoped desperately that they didn’t have some kind of invulnerability power. You only had one shot to make your escape.

“So many questions,” they tutted as they crossed the floor. In the next moment, they were on you.

You whipped the pepper spray out from behind your back, catching them directly in the face at close range. You felt your own eyes tear up and a peppery taste coated the back of your throat. A scream split your eardrums, and you stumbled awkwardly out of their grasp as they clawed savagely at their face.

“YOU LITTLE BITCH,” They spat and you tripped over your own feet, scrambling to get out of range.

Their yelling had brought the receptionist running, and you crashed into her as she came careening around the corner.

“Wh--?” she choked out, but you were already shoving her in front of you.

“Go, go!” you shouted, pushing her out onto the street, close on her heels, “We're going to die, just run!”

“Who--?”

“I don’t know, but we need to move now!” you yelled, grabbing her arm and pulling her into a full out run.

“Not so fast, you fucking bitch!” The person tore out into the street. In their furor, they’d pushed the hood of their jacket back and you could make out pale skin and red-rimmed eyes, watering from your pepper spray.

Another sound like tearing split the air, and that horrible black void swirled into life in front of you.

Without thinking, you grabbed the back of her jacket and threw the receptionist into the street, where she went rolling into the side of an SUV with a painful thump, but well out of range as the vacuum formed. Your hand shot out and grabbed a parking sign, not a moment too soon, as your feet were wrenched out from underneath you.

Your pepper spray was instantly sucked from your hand and went rolling into the yawning chasm along with all the loose gravel on the pavement. A nearby bike ripped out of its lock and came wheeling towards you, catching you full in the ankle. You swore, flexing your grip on the signpost.

“Thought you’d get away from me?” The person stalked towards you, looking to be unaffected by the overwhelming force of their own quirk. “I’ll teach you to play nicely.”

A thundering boom was all the warning you had before what looked like a fireball rocketed with unrestrained fury straight into the villain.

“The nerd doesn’t know how to play nice.”

A massive explosion split the street, and the villain was thrown head with incredible force back into the agency doors, shattering the panes of glass. Bakugou straightened from a crouch, tossing you a quick look, then leapt into the agency after them.

Relief swept through you for a moment, until the concrete beneath your parking sign gave an ominous crack. Your fingers tightened on the metal and you went as still as you could, muscles straining.

Miruko’s agency lit up from within like rolling lightning, and several more glass panes exploded outward. Another ripping sound filtered out from within the office, and the shattered bits of glass began to pick themselves off the ground, shooting back into the building.

Sirens sounded, and several police vehicles screeched onto the street, just behind the black hole. Over the booms issuing from the agency, you could hear a megaphone crackle to life.

“Miss! Hold on, we’re going to get you out of there!”

You gripped fearfully at your sign post as it gave another cracking lurch. You tried to yell back, but your voice was ripped from your throat by the power of the black hole.

The wall just behind the black hole blew out, the hooded villain flying out of it. They hit the ground with a sickening crunch, blood pooling around their lank hair. They did not get up.

Seconds later, Bakugou leapt through the rubble, casting about desperately.

“Grab them!” he shouted towards the police, then ran to the edge of the black hole’s face. “Fuck. Y/N -- you have to let go!”

Was he absolutely batshit insane? This signpost was the only thing separating you from being an in memoriam slideshow at graduation. You were not letting go -- you tightened your hold.

Bakugou looked vexed, pacing impatiently. “Let go, you fucking nerd! Just trust me.”

You shook your head. He was out of his damn mind.

“Listen--” he shouted, scraping a hand wildly through his disheveled blonde locks. “What will it take for you to listen to me?”

A miracle.

“Nerd!” He yelled again, drawing your attention. “Fucking--! Just--I’ll do--whatever you want on that damn fucking project! I’ll stop calling you a nerd. Just listen to me and fucking let go! Angle your body to the left.”

You hesitated. He looked desperate, his red eyes wider than you’d ever seen him, his teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. You knew he wouldn’t ask you to straight up kill yourself. He had to have some kind of a plan.

With as deep a breath as you could manage, you closed your eyes and unhooked your fingers from the sign post.

Instantly, you were wrenched towards the void. You let out a scream, voiceless in the pull of the black hole.

But no sooner you had shouted as you were slammed into by Bakugou, rocketing straight out of range of the black hole. With one arm wrapped around you, he had trouble controlling his trajectory and you both went careening over the roof of a car to land heavily on the pavement, your already injured ankle crunching underneath you.

“Fuck,” you swore, “fucking, ow.”

A heavy arm pressed you up into his hard body. “You okay, princess?”

You looked up at him where he lay over you, breathing heavily, ashy blonde spikes plastered to his face with sweat. A long, thin scratch parted the skin at his left temple and dirt and ash shadowed the hollows of his cheeks. You'd never seen such a beautiful, welcome sight.

“...You’re always sweating on me, you damn pig,” you complained and he let out a chuckle.

“Knew you didn’t know how to play nice.”

You huffed, though you burrowed further into his hold, feeling your heartbeat begin to slow to a normal rate.

There was a scuffle of feet and a pair of EMTs came around the side of the car, running to kneel beside the two of you. “Is anyone hurt?”

Bakugou rolled off of you, and you told them about your ankle.

They wrapped your swollen ankle carefully as more sirens sounded and additional forces arrived. In mere minutes, the area around the street was roped off and the edges of the black hole's pull were marked with orange cones. The void itself looked to be closing already, shrinking slowly and gingerly into itself, and you caught the unconscious villain being packed away into an ambulance. The street began to swell with onlookers and cable news vans.

In the wake of the chaos, Bakugou set himself to the immediate task of becoming an annoyance. He refused to be looked over, and made a big show of carrying you over to the ambulette, letting you dangle from his arms like a stunned fish on the end of a hook. He also made a nuisance of himself while the EMTs checked you over, hovering nearby and scowling at any police or news media who attempted to get close.

He only finally made himself useful when Miruko showed up on scene and bullied him into roping off the immediate area. She shot an apologetic look over her shoulder as the EMTs swaddled you in a foil shock blanket, tucking you in like a baked potato ready for roasting.

You watched his broad back absently as he blocked off the crowds beginning to form, enjoying the way the news reporters shrank away from him in fear, parting for him like nervous tides before Moses. It was kind of fun to watch others be on the receiving end of his ire for once.

When he returned, he came bearing a small carton full of apple juice and a hard cookie.

“I thought these are what they give people after they’ve donated blood,” you teased, shifting over to let him sit on the back of the medical van with you. The black fabric of his pants brushed against your thigh where your blanket lay open.

He grunted. “They do. Raises your blood sugar to prevent shock.”

You chuckled. “The only real shock was you promising to do whatever I wanted on the project.”

Bakugou sat up straight, then whirled to face you. “You little shit. I saved your life!”

You sucked on your apple juice idly. “That was your first mistake.”

He groaned, scrubbing a large hand over one ridiculously high cheekbone. “You’re a damn monster.”

You let a smile creep across your face. “Takes one to know one.”

A small silence fell between the two of you, and you looked on as a clean up crew arrived on scene, men in yellow hazmat clothes climbing out of the back of a grey van. A wind blew small shards of glass across the entry of Miruko's agency like leaves in the fall.

After a while, you felt eyes on the side of your face. You turned to find Bakugou carefully considering you, something like a smirk playing about his mouth. The morning light glinted off his fair hair, burnishing it gold.

"What?" you asked, fidgeting a little.

"Can't believe you fucking pepper sprayed them."

You laughed. "That's nothing compared to what'll happen if you try to back out of your promise."

“You know, you’re going to regret crossing me.” He said, eyeing you indignantly. He crossed his arms in front of himself, and you tried not to pay attention to the way his biceps bulged through the dark fabric of his costume.

“My grades won’t.”

The corner of his mouth pulled into a sly smile. “I seem to remember you like it rough anyway.”

Heat shot up your spine so fast you felt like you were scalded. “Bakugou! I don’t like--you just--you can’t--!”

He let out a rough bark of laughter and ran a gloved hand through his hair. “I think I’m going to enjoy the rest of this project, princess.”

Your hands clenched into nervous fists beneath your blanket, and he leaned into your space. He smelled, as always, sweet and smokey, a little like a s’more. His ruby red gaze caught yours and you stared at him, feeling a little mesmerized.

“Tell you what, princess. Be a good girl for me, and I’ll make sure you enjoy it too.”

Chapter 6: shell-shocked

Summary:

You experience the fall out from your rescue. Just, not the way you thought you would.

The days after your rescue were unbearable.

The villain's motives, as it turned out, were to create havoc around U.A. They needn't have bothered, though, as everyone else seemed to be doing their work for them.

Getting plucked from jaws of certain death apparently gave everyone license to rinse, mince, and roast you. Had you known, then you might have just let the black hole swallow you and save yourself the trouble. You couldn’t turn a corner without a TV screen blaring that embarrassing footage of you hanging from Bakugou’s arms like an actual fucking princess, and your negotiation exercise partners routinely acted as if you would pepperspray them when you didn’t like their conditions.

Worse than that, there was twitter. You’d known there were fan accounts dedicated to heroes, and more than that you knew there were accounts singularly dedicated to hero memes. What you hadn’t accounted for was your proximity to Bakugou during the rescue leading to you featuring in those memes.

Your entire feed in the days following the incident was filled with images of you and Bakugou. There was you cradled in his arms, inscribed with actual footage of me carrying the team. There was a solo shot of you on the back of the medical van, captioned get u a man who looks at u the way this girl looks at juice. Worst of all, there was shot of Bakugou hovering over you, angrily eyeing the paramedics, retweeted with when somebody toucha my spaghet.

If you heard one more suspiciously Italian whisper in the hallways, you were going to snap.

The one thing that stopped you from ending it all was the project. Specifically, the implications that this crush of twitter activity was having on your project. Bakugou was being humanized in a way that you hadn’t foreseen, and it was boding very, very well for your marketing strategy.

The last key piece to your project, of course, was getting Bakugou to deliver on his promise to take part in that strategy.

Which would be easy, maybe, if you could just figure out what the fuck he thought he was doing.

“You look like you’re gonna pass out, nerd,” Bakugou said from beside you, shifting the arm he had behind you.

You were currently curled up in the 3-A dorms, pressed up against the arm of the couch. Which gave you no room to escape where you were also currently pressed up against the entirety of Bakugou’s left side. He’d demanded you meet him after dinner to work on your project, then sauntered into the room late, hair wet from the shower and looking soft in a tee and sweatpants. And then, he’d dropped down straight into your personal space, despite the fact that there was more than enough room on the other side of the couch.

From the other loveseat, Kirishima Eijirou and Kaminari Denki had gaped, mouths open and fingers stilling on their xbox controls.

Mina had smirked knowingly from the table in the corner.

“If I pass out it’s only because you’re suffocating me,” you complained, tips of your ears feeling hot.

A bulky arm trapped you in a headlock. “Then die.”

You got an elbow into his ribs and hooked a foot against his thigh. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m trying to work on this damn project,” he grunted. His voice rumbled in your ear where it was crushed against his chest. “Relax, princess.”

You gave up struggling, resigned to death by suffocation. Sensing your defeat, Bakugou released you quickly.

As you straightened, you tried to look unaffected, but you could sense the eyes of his classmates on you. What game was he trying to play here? “We actually do need to talk about the project.”

Bakugou stretched, his lean form sprawling against you. “ ‘S why I called you here. Tell me what bullshit you’re going to torture me with.”

You cleared your throat. Keeping your eyes on your bag, you pulled out a folder and your notebook, unclipping a paperclip where it held your research together. “Okay, so there are several components to the strategy I want to go over with you, and we'll still have to talk about your goals. There are two components in particular that you would need to actually engage with to help strengthen your brand identity.”

He snorted. “You sound like a fucking suit.”

You side-eyed him. “I am a fucking suit, Bakugou.”

He shifted. You tried to ignore how warm his strong thigh was through the fabric of his dark sweatpants.

“Spit it out, then, nerd. Tell me your big plan.”

You took a deep breath. “So the first thing I think is easy enough, but I want you to make it clear that you have a message.”

He pinned you with his crimson gaze, but said nothing.

You continued, “All the top heroes have messages or ideas that they stand for. After the gym on the first day we talked, you got me thinking. Being a hero to you is the freedom to be yourself. People might not identify with your philosophy of winning, but they will identify with a message like be yourself.”

He regarded you calmly. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Not much more than you already do,” you answered. “Everyone knows that you’re already very much yourself. What you’d need to do is be more intentional with how you talk about it in the media. Instead of telling people that you want to win, say you want to stretch yourself, see what you can do.”

He picked at a stray thread on his pants. “What else?”

“Slowly, you can apply the message to others. If someone else is talking, acknowledge when they’re being straightforward. Call things out when they’re different but you like them. Eventually, everyone will catch on to the fact that you like when people are real and that you hold the same standards for everyone else that you do for yourself.”

His fingers abandoned the stray thread, barely brushing the outside of your thigh as they moved. You stilled, your breath catching a little in your lungs.

“So you want me to be me. Just...more deliberate.”

You nodded. “Yes. Marketing, when done effectively, isn’t about changing something. It’s about spinning that something -- making it more accessible and desirable.”

His fingers pressed more firmly against your thigh, and he smirked. “Desirable, huh?”

Instantly, your mouth felt like it was filled with cotton and your chest felt tight.

“Y-yeah. The goal is to make people like you.”

His hand moved to fully rest on top of your thigh. “And do you, princess?”

You faltered. “Do I what?”

He leaned closer to you, “Like me?”

You stared at him, bewildered beyond belief. Did you like him? What kind of question was that?

Honestly, you thought, anyone would be foolish not to. After all these weeks, you thought you finally understood the appeal. He was annoying as hell, sure, but he was charismatic, brave and bold. You thought of those images of him standing over you, glowering at the paramedics. Under all that aggression, there was someone watchful and attentive -- he’d saved your life, and he made you laugh.

You liked that he was so unabashedly himself, but conscientious at the same time. You thought of all the time he put into his school work and tutoring his friends, the care he put into the meals he cooked. You liked that he was so straightforward and so capable.

Besides that, he was stupid attractive. You often felt like your IQ lowered a hundred points just by looking at him.

But what did he mean by asking?

Before you had a chance to question him, the door to the dorms blew open, carrying Yamanaka Sawako inside. She’d shed her school uniform and was dressed in a light peacoat, looking pink-cheeked and adorably ruffled from the cold. Her glossy hair fell over her shoulder in a thick curtain.

“Hey Mina! Sorry I’m late,” she called, shedding her shoes in the doorway.

Bakugou’s gaze left yours and you saw an eyebrow raise as Sawako approached. His hand moved off your thigh, and all at once, you felt your animation leave you.

There it was.

Sawako was beautiful, and it was dumb of you to have forgotten. She’d been chasing Bakugou--among others--since her first day at U.A., and it was readily apparent to anyone with eyes that Sawako was an attractive option. You’d long thought the pair of them, Bakugou and Sawako, would make something like an ultimate power couple, given their good looks and off-the-charts intelligence.

Nevermind that Sawako was a little bit spoiled and manipulative -- you knew things like that didn’t bother Bakugou, who was so wholly self-possessed.

Bakugou had options like this. When he asked do you like me, he was absolutely fucking with you, like always. He’d already demonstrated that he liked playing with you, and it was so stupid of you to read anything into it.

Sawako padded lightly into the lounge, stopping in front of where you and Bakugou were splayed out on the couch. You curled self-consciously into the arm of the couch, trying to create space between the two of you, feeling your face begin to flame. To your eternal embarrassment, Bakugou kept his arm stubbornly around your shoulder, unbudging.

“Y/N,” she greeted you, eyeing you somewhat sourly, though her expression cleared when she turned to your partner. “Hi, Katsuki.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, “Mina, who the fuck is this extra?”

Your brain went offline.

What.

WHAT???

You looked up, shell-shocked, to see an equally stunned expression make its way across Sawako’s face.

Mina came dashing over, schooling her features into a placid expression. Behind her, Kirishima and Kaminari looked absolutely floored. Their game played on, lights flickering on the screen, but neither of them were paying attention.

“Blasty, this is Sawako. She’s in the business course.” Mina said cheerily, taking ahold of Sawako’s petite shoulder. She seemed to not know what to do with her face, jumping between an expression of concern and something disturbingly like thinly-disguised glee.

“Never heard of her,” Bakugou shrugged. He turned to you, “You know this extra?”

You stared at him. What the fuck did he think he was doing? Did he really not know her? If he didn’t, what game was he playing? This was the hottest girl in your year, maybe at all of U.A., come to call, and all he had to say was who is this extra??

“Uh, yeah we’re classmates together,” you offered, glancing up at Sawako. “She’s at the top of the class with me.”

Bakugou grunted. “Well we’re gonna fucking crush her with this project. Raccoon eyes, disappear. We’ve got work to do.”

Mina gave him a reproachful look but grasped Sawako gently and tugged her from the room, disappearing up the staircase to the girls’ dorms. A door shut gently from some floor above.

You stared after them a moment, before turning to Bakugou and hissing, “What the fuck was that?”

His eyes burned into yours like a brand hot from the fire. “We’re working on something.”

“That was Yamanaka fucking Sawako.”

He scoffed, his blond eyebrows furrowing. “Could be the damn prime minister, I don’t give a shit. Now put your eyes back in their sockets, nerd. You’ve got a project to finish.”

“I--okay. Uh--”

“I said now.” His hand, inexplicably, was on your thigh again. You could feel the heat from his rough palm searing through your jeans, almost like he had lit off one of his explosions against your skin.

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

He tugged your folder from your lap, rustling through some of your printed sheets. “Now, tell me about--the fuck is the loveable grouch archetype?”

He pinned you with an accusing glare. God he looked so good in that worn tee shirt, even if he was pinning you with a glare that could make a grown man shrivel in fear.

You took a deep breath. “I-it’s something I was thinking of, when I was trying to figure out how to make people relate to you. There’s a bunch of celebrity types who fill it. Like, Gordon Ramsay is always yelling kind of like you. There’s a whole list of others in there…”

He flicked through the stack of papers. “The fuck am I supposed to do with this?”

You shook yourself out of your stupor. Right, work. Work was normal, you could talk about the project. “Um, well, that was the second component of my strategy that I wanted to talk to you about. Twitter lately has been giving me ideas.”

He gave you a blank look.

“You’re um...you’re not going to like it.”

He rolled his shoulders like he was gearing up for a fight. Then he turned to you.

“Well, princess. What did you have in mind?”

Notes:

And there it is. I'm finishing up the last chapter now and I'm really excited to share it with you guys! Thank you for all your kind words and encouragement over the past week -- I've written everything way faster than I thought I would just because I've been so excited to learn what you think of it!

Chapter 7: projections

Summary:

You wrap up things with your project. Things with Bakugou, however...

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading my first ever fic! This story has been such a learning opportunity for me. I still have a lot of growth areas, but I had such a fun time writing this.

Thank you especially to those who left kind words and encouragement - I certainly would not have finished this without them.

The morning of your project presentation dawned bright and sunny, though you couldn’t enjoy it.

Nerves fluttered in your stomach all morning, and you pushed your granola around mindlessly at the breakfast table, staring vacantly into the bowl. All around you, your fellow business students looked to be suffering the same unease, huddled in small groups, putting together their breakfasts with a zombie-like mien. No one was talking to each other, and the dorm was unnaturally quiet.

It was this acute silence that allowed you to hear the heavy stomps leading up to the Class 3-I dorms well before the door burst open in a whirlwind of blonde hair and black bomber jacket. Bakugou’s powerful figure filled the entryway, and several nearby students jumped back in terror. His red eyes scanned dismissively over them before jumping to the kitchen, locking in on you like a missile onto a target.

“Knew you’d be eating this stupid shit,” he groused as he stomped over. He swept his arm behind your bowl of uneaten granola, knocking it from your grasp. Before you could protest, something heavy and warm was pushed unceremoniously into your chest, briefly winding you.

You looked down at the weapon he was using to crush your windpipe and found yourself staring at a carefully-wrapped bundle of tupperware.

You looked up at him in confusion but he just glared passively until you looked down again.

Taking the parcel from his calloused hands, you carefully unwrapped it. Tucked inside were several containers, which upon closer inspection contained perfectly cooked rice that looked to be seasoned with wakame, a container of miso soup, and a bright yellow rolled omelette garnished with tomato and a sprig of parsley.

Heat bloomed in your cheeks. He’d made you a full Japanese breakfast.

“B-Bakugou. I--this is. I--Thank you.”

Bakugou scoffed, then rustled around in the inner pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a steel grey thermos and thrust it at you as well. “This too.”

You took it from his hands and flipped the lid. The scent of freshly brewed coffee hit your nose and you tipped your head back up in shock.

“I thought you said I’d die early if I drank this.”

He smirked. “You’re off the hook for today. Besides, this is good quality shit. None of that instant crap that I know you’ve been mainlining.”

You laughed. “I appreciate it.”

He considered you. “You have to eat it all. I don’t give a shit if you’re nervous.”

You considered arguing just for the sake of it, but in truth you were too overwhelmed by the kindness of the gesture. You nodded instead.

He flashed an incisor. “Good girl.”

Instantly, all thought fled your brain. Your senior project was wiped entirely from your mind like evidence from a hard drive. You couldn’t have even given your name, had anyone asked you.

You looked up at him with wide eyes.

A wicked grin made its way across his mouth. “Oh, you like that.”

In a feat of incredible willpower, you summoned the good sense to be offended. “Oh my god, Bakugou, it’s like seven a.m." you whined, "I have to present my thesis in an hour, you can’t just say shit like that.”

You got to your feet and pushed him to the door. “You have to leave before I actually combust from embarrassment.”

Bakugou huffed, but he let you push him along. “Fine. But on one condition, princess.”

“Literally anything if you just leave.”

He turned back to crowd you into the entryway, hand coming up to grasp the door frame near your face. Your breathing shallowed.

“It’s Katsuki.”

You stared at him. “What?”

“My name, princess.” He smirked down at you. “You’ll call me Katsuki.”

You stared up at him for what felt like hours but most have only been moments. You heard yourself make a noise, and it must have been something he took for assent, for in the next moment he was gone, trudging down the path that led back to the main campus.

After that, time felt like it ran together. You vaguely remembered sitting back down and tucking into the breakfast he’d brought, registering that it was very good, but you couldn’t recall anything more. Everything became something like a hazily swirl of sensations - cool water as you washed up, the dry brush of your thesis papers as you tucked them into your bag, the sun warm on your face as you made your way towards campus - but if asked to recall, you couldn’t give more detail than that.

Katsuki.

You even forgot to feel nervous as you made your way into the exam room where the projects were being scored. Over the course of the next half hour, you barely registered the events that unfolded. You knew you’d presented - you could remember the bright blue lines of the bar charts as you explained your twitter analysis, remembered the low hum of voices from the teacher panel, remembered things like archetypes and data mining and CRM issuing from your lips. You remember answering questions, the clack of your laptop keys as you pulled up another graph, a smile from the matronly head of the business department.

But the next thing you knew, you were exiting the exam room, laptop and papers clenched tightly to your chest.

The rest of the school day was sheer hell. You wished you could remember more about what had taken place during your presentation, but you were so hopped up on a combination of adrenaline and whatever the fuck Bakugou’s request had done to your brain.

Katsuki.

So you went about the rest of the day as best you could, trying to focus on your notes in your lectures, the conversations with your classmates at lunchtime, and your last ever homework assignment as you wrestled with it in free period. After classes ended, you made your way to the gym to burn off steam, and then stayed long in the shower after.

After that, you looked for other things to do to get your mind off of your project results. You spied Bakugou’s tupperware resting in the drying rack. You didn’t feel like you would ever be prepared to look him in the face again, but now was as good a time as any. You really needed a distraction.

You shrugged on your jacket and stowed his containers carefully in your bag, then let yourself out of the building, making your way to the 3-A dorms.

Bakugou was mercifully in the lounge when you arrived, a controller clutched in his hands, swearing heartily at Kaminari as the latter annihilated his character on screen. You laughed under your breath, but Bakugou caught the sound anyway, his flaxen head whipping in your direction.

“Princess,” he greeted you, getting to his feet. He was wearing another soft tee shirt, and the sight of him short-circuited your brain a little.

You dug his tupperware out of your bag and held it out like an offering. “I, uh, brought this back. Thank you for breakfast, it was incredible.”

He smirked. “Of course it was.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. God he was so full of himself.

He gestured at the couch. “You want to play a round?”

You shrugged. “Sure, I could use the distraction.”

At that, he scowled. “You’ll do fucking fine. You were up my ass for four whole fucking weeks. I agreed to make a damn twitter for you.”

You allowed yourself a grimace. It was true. In retrospect, Bakugou had shouldered your attentions admirably. For someone so foul-tempered and private, he’d opened up about a lot for you, and made concessions you’d never dreamed he would all those weeks ago. Not to mention the fact that he’d manfully borne an uncomfortable amount of indiscrete staring.

“All the same, I don’t even want to think about it right now.” You said, taking a seat on the couch. Bakugou stationed himself next to you, his thick shoulder pressing close.

It was several infuriating rounds of Mario Kart later that it happened. You’d been getting red-shelled left and right for what felt thirty minutes straight when your phone pinged. You picked it up absently, swiping on the email notification to open.

In bold font, it stared back at you. A+.

You gasped, sitting straight up in your seat, heart pounding. Bakugou whirled on you in concern, peering at you closely as you read further.

Incredibly sound and modern approach. Your projections for Katsuki’s twitter engagement given trending content and similar celebrity archetypes were well-grounded in the data. Considering his written commitment to retweet posts of a related nature, and in combination with a simplified and humanizing personal message, your method is estimated to net him a 4% more positive brand identity and 13% more overall merchandising revenue than the class average. Congratulations on an incredible senior project.

You made a choked noise.

“What is it?” Bakugou asked, and you pushed your phone at him.

As his eyes scanned the email, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smug smile. “Told you it’d be fine. You did good, nerd.”

You laughed, feeling like a weight had been lifted from your chest. You felt electric, like you could break apart and shoot off into a million directions at once. You had passed, and you were going to graduate, top of your class.

A rush of elation poured through you and you found yourself grinning helplessly at Bakugou. His mouth twisted into a real smile, and all you could think of was god he looks so handsome. In the forgiving light of the lounge, his hair was again burnished gold, and his gaze burned into yours like a glowing ember.

Before you knew what you were doing, you leaned forward and pressed your mouth to his.

For a moment, you felt the softness of his mouth beneath yours, noting the subtle flavor of sugar and spearmint.

Then, your awareness rushed back to you, and you realized with a growing sense of horror that Bakugou was entirely still beneath you. You leapt back, pressing your hand to your lips.

“Oh my god, Bakugou. I’m so sorry!”

You sprang to your feet, babbling nonsense as you backpeddled away from the lounge. “I don’t--it just came over me, I don’t know what happened. Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

Bakugou was still frozen, scarlet gaze pinned to yours. Kaminari sat at his feet on the floor, looking between you two with astonishment painting his pointed features.

You turned away, rushing over to the entry and stuffing yourself into your boots. “I don’t know what I was thinking, fuck. I’m sorry--I’m so sorry.”

Hot tears began to pool in your eyes and you ripped your jacket off the coat hook, not bothering to throw it on before grabbing wildly for the door knob. God what the fuck had you done? One guy pays you the least bit of attention and you repay him by mauling him in his own dorm?

You’d just gotten the door open when it was suddenly wrenched from your grasp and slammed closed with a violent force that shook the building. You whirled, but a hard shove had you stumbling back against the door, knocking your head against the wood.

You let out a cry, but it was swallowed up by a hot mouth on yours. The scent of smoke and sugar invaded your senses, and a firm body pressed you against the door, a rough palm coming up to cup your chin and tilt your face up to his. All rational thought fled your mind and you arched up into his grasp, pressing as close as you could.

“It’s Katsuki, princess,” he growled when he finally drew back from you. Your eyes blinked open and you realized at some point they’d fluttered shut.

“What?” you asked, stupidly.

Bakugou smirked, as if he knew exactly how he’d fried your brain.

“You called me Bakugou,” he said, “It’s Katsuki.”

You stared at him. Your mind was simultaneously blank and racing a million miles a minute.

“I don’t--understand. I, you, you didn’t want--I kissed you and then you didn’t--”

“I didn’t think you’d make the first move, princess,” he said. “You surprised me.”

Your eyes flicked over his face madly, cataloguing every nuance. Your thoughts were racing to catch up with you and you felt like everything was disconnected. You didn’t understand what was going on.

“If I made you uncomfortable, I can go. I didn’t mean to upset you,” you said, trying to step back out of his grasp.

He let out a hoarse kind of a laugh. “Go? I don’t think so, nerd. Not now, when I’m finally sure you want to be put in your place.”

A hot spike of something like arousal and irritation went through you. He couldn’t mean...

“My place? And where is that?” you growled.

Bakugou leveled you with a burning look. “Under me.”

You vaguely registered a flash of white teeth and ashen blonde hair before you were being hauled over one strong shoulder. You heard yourself let out a strangled noise like a yelp, but it was immediately drowned out by a hoot from the lounge as Kaminari laughed and called something perverse at you and Bakugou.

Then the world was a blur of stairwell and hallway and the next thing you knew, you were being tossed onto a familiar bed. You hit the mattress with a soft oof, bouncing once, before Bakugou was on you.

“Knew you had it in you, princess,” he panted, leaning down to recapture your lips. The weight of him pressed you into his mattress, and a hand came up to grab a fistful of your hair.

You couldn’t seem to form words, not that you could have spoken them, anyway. Bakugou filled your mouth with his tongue, his left hand kneading desperately at your waist. You felt like you could hardly breathe, your mind empty of anything other than good and yes and more.

Bakugou slid a rough palm up the side of your shirt to cup a breast. “This okay, princess?”

You nodded, not trusting yourself to speak. His fingers slid under the edge of your bra, thumb pressing into one peaked nipple. You let out an embarrassing noise, and tucked your face into his neck, burning with embarrassment.

“Fuck,” he breathed, pushing your shirt up your chest to free your breasts. “You sound so good for me, princess, and I’ve hardly even touched you.”

A hot mouth encircled your nipple and you let out a startled cry, arching uncontrollably up into his touch. He freed your hair to reach down and grasp your leg, hauling it up along his side. His knee pressed the mattress down between your thighs and you felt yourself grind desperately against him.

“Kat--fuck, Katsuki--!” you managed, grasping a handful of his blonde hair. “I want--!”

His mouth released your nipple and he pressed his face into your shoulder, biting down.

“Tell me what you want, sweetheart.” He rasped, fingers digging into the meat of your thigh.

“Ugh, you! I want you!” You whined, tearing blindly at his shirt. “Just get this off of you.”

He smirked and leaned back on his haunches. “Thought you were shy, nerd. Where’s this coming from?”

You glared. “If you’re literally not naked in the next thirty seconds I am leaving.”

He laughed, but obligingly pulled his shirt over his head and moved off of you to step out of his pants.

You tore your shirt and pants off as he did, and in an instant he was back over you. You stared, mesmerized, at the sight of his abs and powerful arms as he caged you in. This was way better than the gym.

“You just gonna stare, nerd?” He asked, pressing his forehead to yours.

You kissed him in lieu of answering, arms coming up to wrap around the back of his neck and pull him down to you. The heat of his body was overwhelming and you could feel every place where his skin touched yours. Your nerve endings felt like they were on fire.

Calloused fingers played with the edge of your panties. “You sure about this, princess?”

You glared, but managed no heat behind it. “God, yes--just, hurry up!”

In an instant, he had your panties around one ankle and was lining himself up. With a muttered swear, he sank into you and you moaned at the feeling of fullness. A rough palm came up to cradle your face with surprising gentleness.

“F-fuck--” he swore, bucking a little like he was unable to help himself. “You feel incredible, princess. So good for me.”

You were moving your hips in little undulations, desperate to feel him inside of you. “Katsuki, please! You can move, just--”

He pressed in deeper, until he was fully seated inside you. You swore, gripping his shoulder as he moved, a heat building inside you like you’d never felt before.

“Goddamn, princess,” he panted into your neck. “Been wanting to fuck you since the second you opened your mouth. Such a little brat that first day, had me hard as hell.”

You pinched him. “You’re the brat.”

He silenced you with a particularly effective thrust and his mouth on yours. Talented fingers pinched and rolled your nipple and you felt your eyes roll back in your head.

Katsuki reached down between you, and his clever fingers found where you joined, pressing insistently against that small bud and magnifying everything by a thousand. You could do nothing but gasp, gripping his shoulders and writhing with abandon underneath him as he moved his hips, setting an earnest pace.

Everything after that was blind sensation. Katsuki played your body with the confidence and natural skill he did everything else. It would have been infuriating if it wasn’t the best thing you had ever felt, if you had more capacity for thought other than more and please and Katsuki.

Finally, Katsuki slowed, his thrusts becoming deep and measured with intention. His thumb brushed maddening circles over your clit.

“I want you to come for me, princess,” he said between kisses, licking over your bottom lip, “Can you do that for me?”

“Ah--yes. Please, Katsuki!” You bucked wildly against his hand.

He smirked. “I’m going to let you, sweetheart. But you have to do something for me too.”

You felt crazed, clawing at his back. You would have agreed to anything if he would just let you. “God yes, whatever it is, yes!”

He let out a soft laugh. “Go out with me, nerd.”

The sheer force of your desperation was the only thing that stopped you from gaping at him, kept you squirming against him. “W-what?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, “Let me take you out.”

Your heart swelled. “Yes--fuck. I would have said yes without all this. Now please, please make me come.”

He smiled, something both pleased and predatory. “As you wish, princess.”

And he did.

Fuck, he did.

When you returned to yourself, he was following you into climax, jerking in short, sharp thrusts and slotting his mouth against yours. He sighed and relaxed over you, pressing you harder into the mattress. His weight felt good, keeping you anchored in the afterglow, when you felt like you might vibrate out of your skin with something like happiness.

“Well don’t you look pleased, princess.” He rasped, rubbing his face into the sensitive hollow of your neck.

“I was just thinking,” you said, running a hand through his soft blonde hair, hardly even daring to believe you were allowed to touch him. “I couldn’t have ever imagined this, at the beginning. I just wanted to stop talking to you and do my project.”

He chuckled, and moved off of you, looping a heavy arm to pull you back against his chest. He went quiet and you lay there, just enjoying the silence and his warmth behind you.

Within a few minutes, his breathing started to even out. You let your own eyes close and settled in against him. Just when you thought you might drop off to sleep, a drumroll of insistent knocks started on the other side of the wall.

There was crashing noise and an ow, dude don’t followed by a series of thumps, before a muffled voice, sounding suspiciously like Kaminari, echoed from beyond, “Congrats on the sex.”

Instantly, Katsuki shot up out of bed, climbing over you and sliding hurriedly back into his pants. “I’m gonna kill that little fuck.”

Your face burning, you smothered a laugh into his pillow.

On the other side of the wall you heard stifled swearing and the sound of a door whipping open.

Katsuki growled, not bothering to pull on a shirt before he launched himself out his own door. As he slammed it behind him, you could hear him yelling, “You’re fucking dead, asswipe!”

You lay back in his bed, laughing. You let yourself grin, and thought about tomorrow, now that your thesis was behind you and a date (!) lay ahead.

That had really been some project.