Waves of shimmering light ripple above the asphalt, turning the horizon into a trembling mirage. The air itself feels molten, bending and refracting with a surreal elegance that denies the oppressive weight of it all. Every breath tastes of salt and ozone, a sharpness that feels borrowed from the sea but hangs heavy even here, far from the rhythm of the tide.

The droplet, that trembling ultramarine prison, slides sluggishly across your skin. It trails down your chest, carving a fragile, fleeting path that you can’t ignore. It lingers there, caught between sensation and oblivion, until it finally succumbs to gravity and vanishes into the leather of your car seat. For a tiny moment, you feel some coolness as the air hits the wet trail. 

It lasts but a second.

You only spare but a look at Camie in the seat next to you, only to find her in the same position as you; Sweaty, with pouty lips, trying to hold on the best she can to the sunhat that you lent her so she doesn't get sunburnt. She doesn’t look back at you, does not dare to utter a word to make the situation worse than it actually is.

It’s the hottest day of July, the middle of one of the worst heat waves and the two of you are stuck under the scorching, unforgiving sun, inside your broken down car. The day didn’t start like this really. You were supposed to visit a new beach that you saw on tiktok, only two hours away from your city. Given the fact that you only just bought your car a few months ago and that she’s studying abroad for the semester, you wanted to, needed to, go on a day trip anywhere; the fact that this heatwave was supposed to be the hottest of this month as it was announced last week in the weather forecast served as merely the push to make you plan your trip today.

The two of you spent all day yesterday charging your digital cameras and power banks, preparing food, beach towels and bikinis, stacking the boot of the car with two beach umbrellas, a cooler, tons of beer and water.

Now that all of your water has been spent on the car, in fruitless attempts to bring its temperature down, you’re stuck with only beer—as a resort of keeping your mouths from going completely dry, your eyes are fixed in on the sweat on the can that you’re holding, leaving you to wonder whether you could drink any of it.

You simply curse yourself for not listening to your father when he recommended you do not buy this car or at least, not install any modifications on it until you had actually bought a new engine.

This is your fault, really.

Camie’s fingers twitch as she adjusts the brim of the hat—a shade of faded straw, now slightly misshapen from your shared desperation to shield her delicate, sun-kissed skin. It feels like a futile effort, but you can’t bring yourself to regret lending it to her, even as your own forehead and neck burn beneath the glare of the sun rays.

In desperation, you turn the keys to the ignition and the car groans, a lifeless monument to optimism gone wrong. The back of the rolled down hood shimmering in the brutal sunlight. The air inside feels like a trapped creature, coiling tighter with every passing minute, leaving you and Camie drenched and motionless, like animals caught in an invisible snare.

“Think it’s funny yet?” she finally murmurs, her voice thin but edged with a humor so dry it could crack. Her eyes remain glued to the horizon, to the wavering mirage of something cooler, something better, just out of reach.

You force a laugh—short, sharp just a little bitter. “Not quite there yet. Give me another hour.”

“Dude, who installs modifications to a 2005-model car? Without at least checking the engine first”

You shoot her a stare so poisonous that even your eyelids hurt when you turn in her direction. “It's a 2002 model. And I wanted a better edge so I can drift safely!”

“You don’t even know how to drift bro!”

“I'm so close to actually mastering it, so i need to be safe”

Camie’s laugh is louder this time, cutting through the stifling air like a cracked bell. “Safe, you say? Real safe out here, huh?” She gestures dramatically to the stretch of desolate highway around you, the only movement coming from the shimmer of heat waves dancing mockingly over the asphalt. “I always feel the safest when I know I'm gonna burn to a crisp!”

You groan, sinking back into the seat, the sticky leather clinging to your sweat-damp beachwear like it’s trying to swallow you whole. “Look, it’s not like I planned this, okay? The modifications were supposed to improve things.”

“Well, congrats, you’ve successfully modified us into a sauna on wheels,” she says, tossing the sunhat onto the dashboard with a theatrical sigh. “Ten out of ten engineering.”

You can’t help but grin despite yourself. “You’re awfully mouthy for someone borrowing my hat.”

She tilts her head, feigning innocence. “Oh, this old thing? It barely works. My shoulders are already frying.” She stretches for emphasis, the golden sheen of her skin catching the light like molten bronze.

You roll your eyes but feel the faint tug of guilt anyway. “Fine. I’ll figure something out.”

Camie raises an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. “Like what? Summon the spirit of Vin Diesel to fix this disaster of a car?”

“No, but my dad said he called roadside assistance”

Camie joins you in hopefulness, leaning just over the passenger door, her voice carrying over the oppressive heat. 

“I think i’d die without your dad to be honest” she says, winking at you with puckered lips, batting her eyes in yours.

“Camie…Ew”

“Promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?” you ask, still waving to fan air to your face, like your life depends on it.

“Don’t tell them about the drifting mods,” she deadpans.

You can’t help it—you burst out laughing, the sound so ridiculous and misplaced in this sweltering wasteland that it startles even you. And as the car of the roadside assistance rolls closer, brakes screeching faintly against the asphalt, you think maybe, just maybe, this day won’t be a total loss after all.

The van rolls to a slow, almost apologetic stop behind your car, kicking up a lazy plume of dust that settles over everything like a final insult. You and Camie squint in unison, half from the sun, half from the growing suspicion that whoever steps out of this van is about to judge the hell out of you. Deep down you know Camie will play along with them and you can’t blame her—such exposure to the extreme heat would turn anyone into madness.

You hear the door of the van creak open—too smooth, too well-oiled and the sound alone makes you bristle. Of course their AC works. Of course their vehicle doesn’t sound like it’s dying of thirst.

A man in his late thirties climbs out, all smug efficiency in a bright blue vest that practically screams “functioning member of society.” His sunglasses catch the sun just right, reflecting your melted expressions back at you like a heatwave hallucination.

“Afternoon,” he calls, already fanning himself with a clipboard. “Which one of you owns the… uh…” His eyes fall on your car. His polite tone falters. “…vintage model?”

Camie snorts loud enough for it to echo off the pavement. You elbow her with zero subtlety. Her expression forms an ‘ouch’ that doesn’t come out her mouth.

“I do,” you answer, voice parched and somehow still defensive. “She just overheated a little.”

He hums, crouching to peer under the hood, where the engine is still radiating heat like a dying star. “Overheated a lot,” he corrects, gently, in that technician way that says I’ve seen worse but this is definitely up there.

Camie leans over and mutters, “Didn’t even get to put the umbrellas up.”

You ignore her. Or try to, as much as anyone would when their friend calls the convertible roof of their car an umbrella. The smell of hot metal and evaporated coolant is impossible to tune out, same as the shame crawling up the back of your neck. The sun seems to double down in this moment, spotlighting your failure like it’s being featured in some tragic travel documentary.

“Alright,” the guy says, straightening with a mechanical sigh. “We’ll need to tow it to the mechanic”

You hesitate. Your mouth opens but no sound comes out. Camie, unbothered, swoops in with a singsong, “Do you tow people too or just sad little cars with personality disorders?”

“Well unfortunately” the man speaks “you will have to come with”

You blink. Once. Twice. The sweat crawling down your spine seems to pause in confusion along with the rest of you. You and Camie are wearing just beachwear. And while she has opted for a mesh woven dress, you're just wearing a mesh skirt and your bikini top. 

Riding in the truck with a stranger dressed like this makes you feel… uneasy.

“Like… in the tow truck?” you finally ask, voice cracking like it hasn’t seen water in days.

“Yes,” he says, far too cheerfully for someone delivering such a humiliating sentence. “It’s regulation. Can’t leave passengers stranded on the highway.”

Camie lets out a noise somewhere between a groan and a laugh. “Great. Shotgun in the shame car.”

“You’re not—” you start, gesturing vaguely between her, yourself, and the hulking, sticker-plastered tow truck that seems to mock your suffering with its chirpy reflective tape and unnecessarily clean windows. “You’re not actually excited about this.”

“I’m not not excited,” she says, already dragging her beach bag across the gravel like this is some kind of deranged adventure. “Honestly, this might save the day.”

“The day is unsalvageable,” you mutter, watching your car—your precious, barely-breathing, modded-too-much-for-her-own-good car—get hooked and strapped and treated like a lost cause on national TV. “She’s gonna be laughed at.”

“She’s not the only one, trust,” Camie says, tossing you a look over her shoulder that hits you square in the ego. You scowl, following her into the passenger cab of the truck like a dog being led to the vet.

The interior smells like gas station air freshener and secondhand coffee, if that’s even possible. A pair of fuzzy dice hang from the mirror, swinging slightly as you climb in and slam the door shut. The vinyl seat sticks to the back of your thighs. 

You hate everything.

“Air’s on full blast,” the man says, adjusting something on the console with the confidence of someone who’s never had to pour bottled water over their radiator on the side of a highway. “Should cool you two down in no time.”

Camie lets out a near-orgasmic sigh as the cold air hits her face. You try not to be bitter about how quickly she regains her humanity.

You sit in silence for a minute as the truck lurches forward, dragging your car behind it like a funeral procession with extra chrome. The heat starts to peel off your skin layer by layer, revealing the deep, aching embarrassment underneath. Your head stings with blooming pain from the impending doom of hyperthermia.

Camie mutters something about her phone being hotter than a scorching egg —whatever— that you can barely hear amongst the heatstroke you’re definitely going through. So as she continues, you stare dead ahead and pretend not to hear her.

Instead, you look into the side mirror, where the sun paints your car in harsh golds and unforgiving shadows, the edges of the frame warped by the heat still rising from the road.

You wish you could go back to this morning. Back to when everything still smelled like sunscreen and cold fruit and holiday-potential. When your car was just a little stupid and not catastrophically so. When the beach was still an attainable promise and not just a heat-soaked dream that turned to mirage, then to dust.

“Next time,” Camie says, voice low now, almost like a secret, “we’re taking the train.”

You don’t answer. Mostly because she’s right. But also because you’re watching the horizon tilt gently through the windshield—blue smudged with gold, like the color of an apology you haven’t figured out how to say yet.

And for a second, the world feels almost quiet.

Even if everything else is still melting— like your savings account, now that you will have to pay for your car to be fixed.

____

Forty five minutes and a grossed out line of traffic jam later, the tow truck pulls into the mechanic’s lot with a sharp turn and a little too much ceremony. Like it’s actually proud of the wreck it’s hauling. 

The engine cuts, and for a second, there’s silence—thick, oil-scented, and heavy with the kind of stillness only midday heat can create. 

You step out first, removing your shoulder from under Camie’s head in order to wake her up, but your knees are wobbly and stiff from the ride, and you immediately get hit with that particular smell of hot pavement, motor oil, and rusted metal. A scent so specific it could punch you in the face.

You try to tell yourself you like this smell, and you should—if you’re so into turning your car into a project— but right now, it just doesn’t feel right. Like, at all. 

Camie stretches like she’s emerging from a spa day, arms overhead and back cracking audibly and only speaks after yawning “Honestly, that AC nap saved me. I can feel my soul rehydrating.”

You’re about to shoot back something about her soul being past saving when you hear it—heavy, rhythmic footsteps against the concrete. Not the light, unsure tread of a trainee or someone stuck on customer service duty. These are confident. Weighty. Like the person making them knows the ground should move for him.

And then—

He appears.

And it’s like there’s no background anymore. Just pink and orange gradient and throbbing 3d hearts surrounding him, while ‘Take my breath away’ hums to the beat of your heart.

He appears from the side bay, wiping his hands on a rag that looks more black than white at this point, wearing nothing but oil-streaked cargo pants that hang low on his hips, and a scowl that seems burned onto his face by default.

Blond hair disheveled, spiky and short, a few strands stuck to his temple with sweat. Skin golden from the sun and covered in smudges of grease, neck glistening, shoulders broad enough to make the whole shop feel like it just shrank a little.

You forget how to blink. Or how to close your mouth.

Your hungry eyes are set on the gold chain that dangles with a cross down his very, very defined pecs, then travel down to the insane amount of abs that his stomach is consisted of and oh. Oh, those biceps. 

They’re bigger than your head! No, they’re actually twice bigger than your head.

Your mouth dries out for a full second before you force yourself to look away like you didn’t just get visually sucker-punched by a shirtless Greek tragedy in steel-toe boots.

“Bakugo?” Camie speaks and the blonde, nods his head upwards in order to greet her.

The orchestral music in your head comes to an abrupt halt at that.

Camie knows this guy? 

The guy—Bakugo—walks over, dragging the back of his wrist across his jaw, leaving a smear of something dark across chiseled cheekbone and stubble. And that gorgeous blonde goatee he sports. He sizes up the car, doesn’t even flinch at the mess of your modifications that you know he notices, and lets out a low, unimpressed grunt. Then his eyes cut to you.

Sharp. Sharp in a way that makes your spine straighten like you're standing trial. You get the feeling he already knows exactly what kind of dumbass decision led to this car ending up on his lot.

“This hers?” he asks the tow driver, nodding at your car.

“Yup. Overheated mid-trip. Radiator’s cooked.”

He snorts. Looks back at you. And now you’re blinking. Too fast. Like your body is trying to manually restart itself.

“Let me guess,” he says. “You messed with the intake and didn’t bother with the cooling system.”

You try, desperately, to find a solid surface to die behind but there’s nothing. Just your car, Camie’s smug silence, and him—standing there like a living, breathing warning label for falling too hard, too fast.

You clear your throat. “I was gonna upgrade it. Just… didn’t get around to it.”

He raises a single eyebrow. It does more damage than a full sentence ever could.

“Right,” he says, voice low and sandpaper-rough. “’Cause that makes sense.”

You want to melt into the sidewalk. Not from heatstroke this time, but from some confusing soup of humiliation and… whatever the hell is fluttering violently in your stomach.

“I can take a look now,” he adds, already walking toward the car like he doesn’t need your permission. “Gonna have to pull the radiator. Might be the whole water pump too, if you were really stupid about it.”

“She was,” Camie offers helpfully.

“Thanks,” you deadpan, turning to her with the blankest expression you can muster.

She just grins, all teeth and smug. “What? He asked.”

And like. Why does she even answer? Like Camie even knows the first thing about cars to begin with. You wouldn’t trust her to know what an exhaust is or how it works for her own good, despite having a car guy as her boyfriend.

Whatever. You need to focus on more important stuff. Like how you’re going to dig at the fact that she knows this holy looking man in front of you, because flirting with him? Oh you’re going to mess it up expeditiously if you even attempt it.

You’ve never been good at flirting, in stark contrast to Camie who’s the epitome of flirtiness (not very successfully, but her looks excuse everything these days). Maybe this is one of the reasons you’re like two peas in a pod, being the opposite of each other and whatnot. Though in her defense, she's tried, and tried, and tried to help you overcome the awkwardness you’re feeling when trying to make a move at least.

Had you not been so hesitant to take her advice, maybe you wouldn’t be in this situation now. Because you keep thinking of things to say and the only thing that comes out through the broken static mush that is your brain is:

“Soooo,” Sigh.

“You guys know eachother?” You ask, finally realising you’re still wearing just a bikini top and a skirt, though the way you suddenly hug yourself does nothing to hide you. 

You’re left to watch Bakugo swallow painfully hard as he looks down at your breasts, pressed together by your biceps.

At least he’s looking at you, right?

“He’s Shoto’s friend”

Oh! Shoto! Camie’s boyfriend. The one she was trying for years to get to fold. 

Bakugo’s eyes flick back up immediately, too fast, like he’s been burned by his own instinct. You catch the twitch in his jaw—the kind of restrained reaction that says he noticed but isn’t about to give you the satisfaction of seeing it. Still, the air feels different now, thicker somehow, and not just from the lingering smell of coolant and hot asphalt.

If you could think of anything other than how beautifully brown his eyes are, you would actually care about your car or the situation you’re in.

“Camie’s never talked about you!”

“Yeah,” he mutters, voice rougher this time, wiping his hands on his pants again even though they’re already relatively clean. You catch his nervousness and drown in it like it’s the most delicious thing in the world “Todoroki drags me out most of the time. Guess that explains his own dumb car.”

“Hey,” you protest automatically, though it comes out softer than you meant it to. The words fall flat between you, smothered by the hum of cicadas and the faint hiss of metal cooling.

Camie, of course, catching on to this exchange can’t leave it alone. “He says that like he didn’t help Shoto install a turbocharger in his dad’s old Lexus.”

Bakugo shoots her a sharp look, but she’s already stepping away toward the vending machine that just caught her eye, fanning her face with both hands like she’s just done you the biggest favor in the world. She leaves you there, stranded between your half-dead car and the very alive, very shirtless man who looks like he was carved out of every wrong decision you’ve ever made.

You shift your weight, crossing your arms tighter over your chest, pretending it’s about modesty and not about grounding yourself. “So, uh… you’ll be able to fix it today?”

He exhales through his nose, glancing at your car again. “Depends how bad you fried it. You’re lucky I’m only installing an exhaust on a bike for the day.”

You nod like you understand, even though you don’t. Because truthfully you pay no attention to anything that comes out of his mouth. You’re otherwise caught up in how luscious his full lips move. He definitely notices that too—much to your demise— because a ghost of a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth before he ducks under the hood again.

You try not to look, but it’s impossible not to. Camie squints at you the second Bakugo’s gaze diverts.

But you’re too fixed on the way his back moves under the light, the way the sunlight catches the sheen of sweat running down his shoulder blade—it all feels too intimate for a random afternoon at a mechanic’s lot. You don’t even realize you’ve been staring like a full on creep until he speaks again.

“You gonna keep standin’ there or are you plannin’ to faint on my concrete?”

Your face burns instantly. “I—I’m fine,” you stammer, which probably convinces absolutely no one. Especially Camie, who’s squinting her eyes even more by the second.

He grunts in reply, not looking up. “Good. I don’t do CPR.”

“Maybe we could use some water, if you’ve got any”

“We got a vending machine down the hall to the office, suit yourself”

Wait! Wasn’t Camie venturing at that very vending machine like a second ago? When did she actually sense that you would simply fall and die at the sight of this guy without her by your side and decide to come back halfway through.

Nonetheless, you almost laugh, but it gets stuck somewhere in your throat. Camie disappears from your view instantly and for good after that and suddenly the heat presses down, the air thick with the smell of oil, salt, and something electric you can’t name.

Some seconds after, behind you, a can clatters in the vending machine, followed by Camie’s voice—sweet, oblivious, and far too cheerful. “They got cold tea!”

You blink, stepping back like that sound broke a spell. Bakugo straightens again, pushing his hair back, leaving streaks of grease along his temple, and looks at you for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

“Don’t touch anything,” he says finally, tone clipped but not unkind. “I’ll let you know when you can stop panicking. Camie, why don’t you call Todoroki to pick you up?”

Camie makes a face, mid-sip of her canned tea. “You kicking us out already?” she says, one brow raised, but there’s no real bite to it.

Bakugo just grunts, the sound low, dismissive. “Yeah.” He nods in your direction without looking, already half-bent under the hood again. (Fuck, his back is insanely ripped too) “She looks like she’s about to pass out, and I don’t need that in my shop.”

You open your mouth to argue—something about being fine, about not needing saving—but your tongue feels dry, and the air’s too heavy to pull a full sentence from.

Camie sighs theatrically and starts scrolling through her phone anyway. “Fine, fine. I’ll call him. But you owe me a smoothie after this.” She looks at you, eyes glinting, before whispering  “And you, don’t die from thirst or embarrassment before I come back.”

“Thanks for the support,” you mutter.

She flashes you a peace sign, already walking toward the gate for better signal “Moral support only!”

The garage settles after she’s gone again, the quiet broken only by the click of metal and the faint hum of a fan somewhere in the back. You shift your weight, the smell of oil and sun-heated concrete seeping into your skin. Bakugo doesn’t look up, but you can tell he knows you’re still standing there staring at him—his movements get sharper, deliberate.

After a moment, he tosses a rag onto the workbench and wipes his hands down his forearms. This absolutely has to be a wet dream! It can’t not be! This guy has literally wiped grease everywhere on his very naked torso and it sticks to him in all the best spots —like he has any bad to begin with. 

“Sit,” he says, jerking his chin toward the small folding chair near the wall.

You hesitate, but do as told, the chair creaking under you. He leans on the edge of the car, arms crossed, watching you with that steady, assessing stare that feels more invasive than any question.

“How old are you?”

“Wha– twenty five” you giggle, he chuckles back, red slightly creeping up on his cheeks “you?”

“Twenty three” He clears his throat, as if to snap back to what he originally wanted to say and all the redness on his cheeks disappears along with the boost of confidence you had received from it. “This is your first car isn’t it?”

You nod. So he’s the same age as Camie.

“You drove this thing out in that heat with a busted radiator,” he says finally, tone even but low. “You’re lucky it didn’t blow completely.”

“I didn’t know,” you answer quietly. “I thought I could handle it.”

(Oh, you did not just say that!)

He studies you for a moment, eyes narrowing—not in anger, but in something that feels uncomfortably close to concern. Then he looks away, muttering, “Handle it, huh? Yeah, that’s what everyone says right before shit breaks down.”

You want to be offended, but the way he says it isn’t cruel. It’s tired. Practical. Like someone who’s seen too many people try to muscle their way through things that should’ve been fixed a long time ago.

He turns back to the car, voice softer this time. “I’ll check what I can. Might need to order parts after all.”

You nod, your voice small. “Okay.”

“The mods you installed already should have been the least of your problems”

“Okayy”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just hums, then glances over his shoulder. “And don’t just sit there cookin’. There’s cold water in the fridge by the counter if the wedding machine is too far for yah.”

It’s the closest thing to kindness you’ve heard all day.

You get up, cross the concrete floor, and pull open the old metal fridge. Cold air rushes out, wrapping around your knees, and you take a bottle, holding it against your chest before twisting the cap.

Behind you, tools clink, a low hum of work starting up again. The heat feels less oppressive now—not because it’s gone, but because, for some reason, it doesn’t bother you quite as much when he’s the one filling the silence.

____

You hear the rumble of an engine long before you see it—clean, even, unmistakably Shoto’s. A car that hums instead of groans, a car that doesn’t leak every kind of fluid known to man. Camie perks up the second the sound cuts through the muffled heat of the garage.

“That’s our ride,” she says, tossing her empty can into the bin with a metallic clatter. She glances back at you, half-grin, half-warning. “Try not to flirt yourself into a heatstroke, okay?”

You glare at her. “I wasn’t—”

“Sure,” she interrupts, already heading for the door, her tone sing-song. “You totally weren’t.”

You grab your bag and follow, trying to ignore the way your heart thuds like it’s trying to match the rhythm of the power tools behind you. You don’t even look back—at least not until you reach the open bay door.

“He was too tho!” Camie says and winks at you.

You look at Bakugo again and he’s still there, bent over the car, one perfectly sculpted hand braced on the frame, the other steady as he reaches for a wrench. The light hits him just so, outlining the edges of his back, the faint streaks of sweat along his shoulders. He doesn’t glance up. But somehow, you still feel caught.

You leave hurriedly, only nodding in the blond’s direction, before you go ahead and say anything that can make it worse.

Shoto’s car smells like clean leather and eucalyptus. The AC hits your skin like salvation. You sink into the seat, groaning softly, the sound slipping out before you can stop it.

Camie’s already chatting in the passenger seat, recounting your breakdown with way too much enthusiasm. Shoto listens, eyes fixed on the road, expression unreadable in that trademark way of his.

When the story hits the part about Bakugo, his mouth twitches—barely. “You took her to Katsuki’s shop?”

Camie laughs. “Well the roadside assistance did. And Bakugo looked like he walked straight out of a construction calendar, our girl was weaaaaaak.”

Uh-oh, she noticed. You bury your burning face in your hands. “Please stop.”

There’s a pause. The road hums beneath the tires. You can feel the flush still clinging to your skin like the heat never left. Then, quieter than you mean it to be, you ask:

“Shoto?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you… can i have Bakugo’s Instagram? I kinda left in a hurry and didn’t uhm… didn’t ask for any communication details.”

Silence. Then, slowly, his head turns just enough for one mismatched eye to meet yours.

Camie explodes into laughter and a sequence of whistling in the passenger seat. “Oh my god.”

You slap her shoulder her weakly. “Shut up—It’s just—I want to ask about the car, okay?”

“Just the car?”

“Yes, no! I’m not gonna text first if I'm the one adding him either way.”

Shoto hums, the kind of sound that could mean sure or liar. “I’ll send it to you,” he says eventually.

You nod, trying to look casual, but your reflection in the window betrays you—cheeks flushed, lips pressed tight, eyes distant.

Outside, the late afternoon sun is still heavy and gold, spilling across the road in long, shimmering bands. You tell yourself it’s just the light making your heart beat faster.

But you know it’s not.

Camie’s still half-laughing when she leans forward between the seats. “I can’t believe you’re asking for his Instagram. You were drooling.”

“I was not,” you mutter, staring hard out the window as the scenery blurs by in streaks of sunburnt green and gray. “It’s for car stuff.”

“Sure,” she says. “For car stuff. Like his abs.”

Shoto shifts gears, his usual calm never faltering, but his eyes flick up to the rear-view mirror. “Was he flirting back?”

Camie pauses, grinning at his tone. “Oh? Curious now?”

He shrugs. “Katsuki doesn’t usually waste words on people. If he was talking, it means something.”

You turn, squinting at him. “You’re making it sound like decoding a secret language.”

“That’s pretty much what it is, though,” Camie says, tapping her phone against the seat, before turning to Shoto. “He kept giving her that look—you know, the one where guys pretend they’re mad to look macho. And he was blushing!”

Shoto hums again, noncommittal but amused. “That…sounds like him.”

You groan, sinking lower in your seat. “Can we not psychoanalyze it while I’m still dehydrated?”

Camie reaches her hand beyond her seat to you lightly. “You’re the one who asked for his Instagram, babe.”

You can see the corner of Shoto’s mouth twitch, like he’s fighting a smile. “I didn’t know you liked guys like Bakugo.”

“I don’t!” you blurt out, then pause. “I mean, I didn’t.”

Camie cackles. “You so do now.”

“Camie, have you ever seen me talk about guys lately? Maybe my type has evolved.”

“Into Bakugo?”

“Is it so bad?” you ask

“Girl! No! Oh Em Gee, Bakugo is like— really nice. Abrasive and maybe stupid at times, but he’s nice.”

“She wouldn’t entertain it if that wasn’t the case.” Shoto adds after a sceptical moment.

The car fills with laughter and the glorious heaven that is air-conditioning, both cutting through the leftover heat from the day. You try to play along to everything else Shoto and Camie converse about, but part of your mind drifts back—to the smell of oil, the grit of his voice, the way he didn’t look away fast enough and ultimately the way you kept ogling at him.

You won’t ask Shoto if Bakugo is single, because frankly, you think he’s smart enough to pick up the clues as to why you’re asking for his Instagram and not the workshop’s landline. And Camie would have set you straight and would have absolutely not let you thirst over him had the circumstances been any different.

You glance at Shoto, one final time. “So… you’re really gonna send me his Instagram?”

He nods once, eyes on the road. “Yeah. Just… don’t tell him I gave it to you.”

“Why?” you ask, frowning.

“Because,” he says simply, “he’ll think I’m setting him up. And he’ll never let me live it down.”

Okay yeah, he definitely gets it.

Camie leans towards you again, whispering dramatically, “You hear that? Even Shoto thinks there’s potential.”

You push her back, rolling your eyes, but there’s a traitorous warmth creeping up your neck that you can’t quite hide. Somewhere between the laughter and the quiet, you realize the flutter in your chest hasn’t gone away—it’s just settled in, comfortable now, like it plans to stay a while.

You knew your friends -Camie- would tease you endlessly for what you did. Amidst the shyness and the courage it took you to blurt the words out though, you truly did run to the safety of Shoto’s car the second you figured it was your way out of that awkward situation. But no matter how much you think about it, you want to pursue someone for once. It’s been too long since anything exciting has happened in your love life. Camie has been on your case about not doing anything about it too. So, like, where’s the bad in it? 

The worst that could happen is him not being into you.

____

Turns out, you weren’t in for a surprise when you thought earlier that your father would chew your ear off on the car situation.

He spends all evening lecturing you about how he was never on board with the idea of you modifying your car just because you like the idea of drifting. How he thinks it’s dangerous and that you shouldn’t even try to force it, because today was definitely a sign against what you think you can master and you mostly respond with how you think he’s too dramatic for a man who wasn't even willing to teach you how to drive.

Dinner ends in that quiet kind of tension that hums through the air even after everyone’s stopped talking. The kind that makes the clink of utensils on plates sound too loud, too final. You scrape your fork against your food just to have something to do with your hands, eyes fixed on the table as your father launches into another round of I told you so’s.

He’s pacing now—he always paces when he’s frustrated. “You think this is a game? What if that engine had caught fire? What if you’d been on a slope? You don’t just mess with things you don’t understand.”

You try not to roll your eyes, but it slips through anyway. “Dad, it was just a drift mod. I wasn’t even racing.”

“Just a drift mod,” he repeats, like you’ve confessed to arson. “You’re lucky you didn’t blow the whole thing. I told you to wait until you could afford a proper upgrade. But no, you had to get clever.”

You drop your fork, sitting back in your chair. “You also told me not to drive alone at night, not to drive outside the city, and not to buy the car at all. So, forgive me if I stopped listening.”

That earns you a sharp look—the kind that’s equal parts disbelief and disappointment. It’s worse than yelling.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” he says finally, low and tired. “I’m trying to make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

Your chest tightens, but you push the feeling down, muttering, “Yeah, well, I already learned my lesson, didn’t I?”

Your sister, who’s sided with him for the first time in forever, chooses that exact moment to appear in the doorway, backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing that look of theatrical irritation that only younger siblings can perfect and a shirt you suspiciously lost a little over two weeks ago.

She, as expected, ambushes you with no actual moral support as she drifts off to her maths cram school, way too mad that someone isn’t willing or able to drive her there, although it’s barely a twenty minute walk from your house.

“So no one’s driving me to cram school?”

“Walk,” your dad says without looking at her.

She groans like he’s sentenced her to exile. “It’s too far!”

“It’s twenty minutes,” you say, but she just shoots you a glare that says traitor.

“Unbelievable,” she mutters under her breath, stomping toward the door. “First you ruin the car, and now I have to walk with this heat. Thanks for nothing.”

The door slams behind her, rattling the frames on the wall.

Silence again.

Your dad exhales through his nose, pinching the bridge of it like the headache’s already settled in. “I’m serious about this. No more mods. You’ll take it to someone who knows what they’re doing.”

You nod, quietly, half out of guilt and half because you know arguing won’t get you anywhere tonight.

He leaves the kitchen eventually, muttering something about work emails, and you’re left alone in the fading light of the dining room. The hum of the fridge fills the silence. The faint ring of cicadas filters through the window.

You rest your head against your hand, staring at your phone where it sits face down on the table. Shoto’s name is still pinned in your chat history.

Your thumb hovers over it for a moment before you finally pick it up.

A new message blinks on the screen.

[Todoroki]: Sent you Bakugo’s handle. Don’t say I never help you.

Your stomach flips, just once—clean, sharp, and inconvenient.

You open Instagram before you can talk yourself out of it.

You type his name into the search bar and there it is—bakugokatsuki. No fancy underscores or numbers, no profile picture that screams look at me. Just a black square and a follower count that’s unfairly high for someone who doesn’t seem to post much.

You click anyway.

A public account, though he does not seem like that guy who would enjoy people ogling at him.

He has four posts. One highlight.

The first post is a car—obviously. A stripped-down RX-7, red paint dulled by use, hood popped open. The lighting’s all wrong, but you can tell he doesn’t care about aesthetics. It’s the kind of picture that smells like motor oil and late nights and knuckles split open on rusted bolts.

The second’s worse. Or better, depending on how honest you’re being.

It’s him, in the garage from today. Sweat-darkened shirt clinging to his back, the fabric tugged just enough to show the line of muscle along his side. He’s half-turned toward whoever took it, jaw set, mouth caught mid-word. You can practically hear his tone through the photo—short, sharp, probably cursing. The caption just says: don’t touch my shit.

You scroll slower after that.

The third post’s a video—him revving some customer’s (??) car, face out of frame. The sound fills your chest even through your phone speakers, deep and rough, like thunder caught in a box.

The last one is… quiet. A photo of the garage after hours. Lights off. Just a sliver of moonlight cutting across the floor, glinting off a wrench. The caption: some days end right.

You stare at it longer than you should.

There’s something about the stillness of it—the way it feels like a secret, or a part of him no one’s supposed to see. You try not to read too much into it, but it’s too late; you already are.

Your thumb hovers over the Follow button.

You imagine the sound he’d make if he saw your request—probably a low, annoyed scoff. Maybe he’ll think you’re that creep that kept staring at him today. Maybe that twitch in his jaw will appear again, that little shake of his head like he can’t believe you’d bother.

But maybe he’d remember. The heat, the way your voice cracked when you said Shoto’s friend.

You press Follow anyway.

The little blue checkmark turns gray.

You toss your phone onto the bed and groan into your pillow.

The phone buzzes a second later.

You freeze. Then reach.

[Instagram]: User @/bakugokatsuki requested to follow you.

Your stomach does that stupid thing again—flutter, drop, something in between.

And before you can stop yourself, you’re scrolling his posts again, this time with your heart thudding so loud it almost drowns out your dad’s voice calling from the hallway.

“Sweetheart,” your dad’s voice booms, vibrating through the thin drywall as he knocks twice for permission to enter your room. It’s muffled, distorted by the distance and his irritation, but the intent is crystal clear. “Can we talk a little bit more?”

He isn’t going to talk about the car anymore—you know that—he’s going to talk about your lack of focus, about the way you’ve been drifting through everything lately, and the frustration in his tone is already heavy, a suffocating weight that you absolutely cannot handle right now.

Fuck, you just wanted to go to the beach with Camie today, how did you end up with an impending lecture from your dad and a new crush by 11pm?

You shove the phone under your pillow like it’s contraband, the screen still aglow with his profile. The contrast is jarring—the absolute silence of that moonlit garage on your screen versus the  energy radiating from the other room.

You scramble off the bed, smoothing out your shirt and forcing your face into a mask of placid compliance. You step into the hallway just as your father is turning the corner of your door, his eyes tired and rimmed with a sharpness that makes you want to look away. He doesn’t even stop walking, just jerks his chin toward the study.

“I’m not trying to be the villain here, you know. I just… I do worry about that car, but mostly you. It’s old and… You haven’t been safe with it.”

(Oh, maybe he does want to talk about the car)

You follow, your heart still erratic, the phantom hum of that Supra engine from the video playing on a loop in your brain. His lack of aggression feels almost heavier than the shouting. It’s harder to be defiant when he’s not giving you a reason to fight. 

“I know, Dad,” you mutter, though your mind is a thousand miles away, fixated on the fact that the person who just told everyone on the internet don’t touch my shit had just requested to follow you.

You know by now, that every time your dad dares to point out a mistake in your logic, he does it with a heavy sigh. Always after a fight and before bed. His hand rests briefly on your shoulder—a rare, grounding gesture that makes your throat ache with sudden guilt.

He isn’t looking anymore for a fight tonight; he just looks tired, like the weight of keeping you safe is finally starting to wear him down.

Your phone vibrates underneath your pillow. Once. A sharp, insistent pulse.

You don’t dare check it, but the phantom sensation of the notification burns through the fabric of your sheets. You look at your dad as he’s getting started with his lecture on safe driving, trying your best to look apologetic, while your entire attention is anchored to the message waiting for you.

He stops mid-sentence, suddenly quiet. He looks at you, his brow furrowing as he notices the way your gaze keeps drifting toward your bed. He doesn’t look annoyed; he looks concerned. “You’re not here, are you?”

“I’m here,” you lie, the taste of it sharp and metallic.

“You look like you’re somewhere else,” he says, his voice dropping into that quiet, patient register he uses when he’s trying to bridge the gap between you. “If you’re stressed about the car… we can talk about it tomorrow. When things aren't so heated. It’s just… you’ve been working non-stop all year along with your classes and taking care of your sister and I. Take a break if you need to, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah okay…”

“I can talk to the mechanic if you want—”

“Oh nononono!” You shriek too quickly, shaking your hands to wave the thought off “I can do that! It's okay, I’m a big girl.”

Your father lets out an airy sigh, his eyes shutting in defeat. “All right sweetheart, I'll let you handle it on your own. Want me to leave you to rest while I go pick up your sister?”

“Yes please!” 

The silence of the house finally settles in heavily once you hear the front door clicks shut behind your father. You don’t even wait to reach the light switch before you’re lunging for the bed, your fingers clawing at the mattress until they find the (finally) cool, rectangle of your phone.

Your heart is suddenly a frantic bird against your ribs. You flip it over, thumb hovering over the screen, and the notification light blinks at you with an almost taunting rhythm.

There’s still Bakugo’s Instagram request which you haven’t accepted yet. And there, right below it—a DM request. From him.

(Thanks, dad, for taking up some of your time so you don’t appear desperate.)

You hold your breath, but the air in your room suddenly feels thin and electric. You don’t know if you should let Camie know about this ASAP or let yourself handle it on your own, though given these are the only available choices you have you’ll just have to go with the later. It’s an ego thing; you just told your father you are a big girl who can handle things on her own and that should not only apply to planning out beach-trips with your best friend.

Plus Camie did not need your help to bag Shoto.

Sighing like you’ve just mentally defeated your own self, you tap at the first notification and your vision blurs for a heartbeat before snapping into focus. 

After you accept Bakugo’s follow request, you move to his DM.

[bakugokatsuki]: Most people ask their mechanic for their number or something instead of disappearing.

You stare at the text. It’s dry, sharp, and so painfully, authentically him (from what you’ve gathered in the span of a few hours) that you let out a strangled, half-hysterical laugh. He’s already calling your bluff. He’s already painting you as the nuisance, and yet—he’s the one who texted you first.

Your thumbs tremble as you type back, deleting and rewriting until the words feel casual enough to be safe, but pointed enough to show you aren’t just some random tourist.

[You]: Bold of you to assume I didn’t long to get under the coldest shower of my life asap.

You wait. The cursor blinks—once, twice, three times—and then, the "typing..." bubbles appear. They dance for a second, disappear, then come back. He’s thinking about it. That same deliberation he used when he was hunched over your engine.

[bakugokatsuki]: Radiator’s pulled. Pump’s shot to hell. You were a mile away from a seized block and a fireball.

Then, as a response to your message

[bakugokatsuki]: Did you?

Oh my god! Oh my fucking god! That’s flirting if you know a thing or two about swooning!

You sit up, pulling your knees to your chest, your back against the cool headboard. Fuuuuuck how do you respond now? Well, you started it technically, he didn’t need to know about that and you did tell him, you did add to the allusion of the fact that he had already seen you half naked, in a tiny bikini, just a few hours ago.

Fine. Breathe in. Breathe out. This is easier via dms than it is irl.

[You]: Fireball sounds dramatic. I prefer ‘spontaneous combustion’.

[You]: And yes. I did.

Please don’t say without me. Please don't say without me. Please don’t say without me.

[bakugokatsuki]: Whoever told you that should be banned from touching a wrench for life. It’s an MX-5, not a grocery getter you can slap stickers on and call ‘drift ready’.

[bakugokatsuki]: You want an edge? Get a real tune and stop trying to play with the big dogs before you can handle the clutch.

The words ‘big dogs’ echo in your mind. You know what he’s talking about. The underground scene in the big city—the late-night asphalt sprints, the smell of burnt rubber that hangs in the air of the industrial district of Tokyo on Friday nights, the way people talk about the "Drift Kings" like they’re urban legends. It’s a world you’ve only ever skirted the edges of, mostly from the backseat of Shoto’s car.

Something you don’t know about Bakugo yet, is that he isn't just a mechanic. He’s a fixture in that scene. 

[You]: So, are you saying you’re going to teach me? Or are you just going to charge me for the privilege of being insulted?

You hit send on another flirtatious effort before the panic can set in. The room is dead quiet, the only sound the faint, distant hum of the city through your window.

The typing bubbles return, but this time, they stay for a long, agonizing minute. You wonder if you’ve pushed too far, if you’ve broken the delicate, abrasive tether he’s allowed you to keep.

[bakugokatsuki]: I’m a mechanic, not a driving school. Let’s get your car fixed first. Then we’ll see if you’re worth the air it takes to teach you anything.

He’s shutting you down, but he’s leaving the door cracked. ‘Then we’ll see.’ It’s not a no.

You lean your head back, closing your eyes, the image of him in the shop—oil-stained, raw, and undeniably, powerfully hot—burning behind your eyelids.

~All rights reserved: @/strawberry-nugget, 2026. Please do not copy, over write or steal my work //

Likes and reblogs are so appreciated but if you you liked this you can let me know in the comments <3

Every storefront appears where it should be. Independent cafés spill customers onto crowded patios. New era hipster cafe-bars, smashed burger joints right next door.

But the people look like strangers.

Office workers clutch overpriced iced coffees as they hurry toward buildings they probably spend too much of their lives inside. Your favorite burger joint sits wedged between a boutique clothing store and that one tattoo parlour, the scent of grilled onions lingering in the air whenever the door swings open.

And yet— something about it feels… eerie.

The colors look, different somehow. Filtered. Dull.

However much the city is alive in all the ordinary ways you remember, it only makes the feeling gnawing at the back of your mind even harder to ignore.

You’ve been here more times than you can count. Sure.

After Kara moved into the area, Chicago gradually stopped feeling like a place you visited and started feeling like an extension of home, in a way. You know the skyline. You know the streets. You know which cafés have decent coffee and which ones only survive because they paint leaves into the foam. You know where the traffic bottlenecks during rush hour and which rooftops offer the best views of the lake after sunset.

Familiarity has always made cities easier to read. Especially in your job field.

Chicago, however, suddenly feels like a language you’ve forgotten how to speak.

Glancing down at yourself makes you realise you’re wearing your costume. A strange version of it, actually. The bat-eagle emblem on your chest looks over-simplified and you’re missing the gloves underneath your bangles.

The differences are subtle enough that you can’t immediately put a name to them. A building catches your attention, from the corner of your eye, for a moment too long before you realize its shape isn’t quite right. Another seems newer than it should be, its reflective surface gleaming where an older brick structure ought to stand.

The streets themselves feel strangely wider, the architecture cleaner, as though someone had reconstructed the city from photographs and missed a handful of details in the process.

And now that you think about it, you’re definitely not wearing your gladiator skirt. Just the undershorts that are meant for privacy. Not for people’s eyes to see.

You find yourself searching for logical explanations where there are none.

Maybe you’re just disoriented. 

The thought would be comforting if it weren't so easy to dismiss.

You've been knocked unconscious by various metahumans, thrown through concrete walls, trapped in magical illusions, and subjected to enough telepathic attacks to make most people swear off heroics altogether. Disorientation has a familiar texture to it. A weird aftertaste.

But this—this isn’t a dream, Bruce has taught you how to differentiate between illusion and reality.

One of the first lessons he’d drilled into you involved recognizing the difference between reality and manipulation. Dreams, hallucinations, fear toxins, magical constructs—every one of them leaves traces if you know where to look. Inconsistencies. Repetition. Gaps in logic. Fear laced in bloodstream. Details the mind invents because it doesn’t know what belongs there.

Neither the city nor you possess any of those flaws.

The breeze coming off the lake is too cold.

The traffic is too loud.

The smell of gasoline, coffee, and lake water is too real.

A bigger problem that resurfaces is— you don’t remember what you were doing before you found yourself in the middle of Strange-cago.

You remember this morning. 

You remember yesterday.

You remember last night’s patrol routes in Gotham, training exercises until 3am, half-finished conversations with Tim and the embarrassing amount of time Kara spent trying to convince everyone in the cave that pineapple belonged on pizza over the phone.

But the moments immediately before arriving here?

Nothing.

You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to force the memory forward.

What were you doing? 

Were you on a mission? At the Cave—Back home? Had you been fighting someone? Had something hit you?

The harder you search, the more elusive the answer becomes.

Fuck it, your head is throbbing! A knot begins to form in your stomach; Memory loss isn’t normal. Especially not for you.

Especially not for someone who has spent years being trained to remain aware of her surroundings under every conceivable circumstance.

Your gaze sweeps across the crowded sidewalk again.

Surely there’s a singular explanation.

Like…Maybe this is some elaborate prank. The thought arrives carrying a small amount of desperately needed hope.

Oh yeah —Wally! This has Wally West written all over it.

You can practically hear his laughter already, breathless and wheezing because he’s never been able to keep a joke to himself for more than five minutes.

Maybe he’d dragged you across the country at superspeed while you were distracted.

Maybe Zatanna helped!?

Maybe the others are hiding somewhere nearby waiting for the perfect moment to jump out and laugh at your expense.

You turn slowly, scanning rooftops, windows and crowded café patios.

“Very funny,” you mutter beneath your breath, tapping the earpiece that you confirm is still there. Tucked securely in your ear.

Nobody reacts.

No familiar streak of red and yellow appears. No snickering speedster falls out of a nearby alley.

No one speaks in your comm.

You’re just… standing there… like that one emoji. Unmoving, hands glued to your side, body locked into stance. And all around you there are just strangers moving through their day, completely uninterested in the growing concern seeping into your chest.

For the first time since arriving, the possibility that this isn’t a prank or a memory gap at all begins to feel terrifyingly real.

“Batman?” you try, keeping your voice level.

Nothing.

“Red Robin? Oracle?”

Silence. Not even static. Complete and utter silence.

A crawling feeling creeps up your spine.

The communicators were designed with enough redundancies to survive most disasters. Interference happened. Damaged signals happened. Entire planets between transmission points happened.

Complete silence did not.

Did your comms die? —No, no it can’t be! There’s absolutely no way your comms died… they’ve survived a Darkseid attack for God's sake!

You tap the earpiece again, with shaking hands but determined fingertips.

“Anyone?”

Still nothing.

The knot in your stomach tightens. Maybe now your night starts wavering a little.

“No response.”

The words leave your mouth quieter than intended. Like a sigh you had been holding back for way too long.

You lower your hand from the communicator, dragging it across your face in desperation before staring out across the skyline. The silence sitting in your ear feels heavier now. Communications fail, you tell yourself so you can ease your mind. Satellites go down. Villains jam frequencies. None of that is unusual.

What is unusual is Batman not having a contingency.

What is unusual is fucking Oracle not finding a workaround within thirty seconds.

What is impossible is complete and absolute silence.

You try to think through the problem again, logically this time, the way Bruce taught you.

Step one!

Assess your surroundings: Done. 

Establish your location: Done too.

Step two!

Identify immediate threats: uhh, none?

Gather information: still on it!

The main issue with gathering information is that every piece of it you get, only creates more questions: The skyline is wrong (though you can’t quite place why). Your uniform is definitely wrong. Your missing memories are the worst by far.

Even the people are wrong.

Not because they look different, but because they move with an ease that doesn’t belong in a world full of illegal superheroes. Nobody glances toward the sky. Nobody scans rooftops. Nobody instinctively tracks every loud noise in case it turns out to be another metahuman battle.

The civilians around you behave like people who expect a world in which you’re dressed the way you are to make sense.

The thought too, settles uncomfortably in your stomach.

A sudden crack echoes overhead.

Not thunder. A sonic boom.Thank fucking God.

Your head snaps upward hoping to see Kara. It has to be Kara.

Expectation does that thing where it’s flaring hot and immediate inside your chest. The familiar red cape interlaced with the big ‘S’ on her chest. The warmth found in her kind, Kryptonian presence that always turns impossible situations back into something solvable. The kind of arrival that makes cities feel smaller just by existing above them.

For a moment, you actually let yourself believe it. Believe in her.

Relief, colored in pale peony, finally tries to surface.

You wonder—Is this how people feel when Superman comes to their saving? Because if so, that feeling is just holy.

You continue looking up, pinpointing a blurry figure flying in the distance. 

The shape that cuts through the sky is wrong.

Your heart races, pulse runs thick in your bloodstream. That barely ever does in crises like this— because you’re trained for fucks sake, because you’ve seen destruction happen, you've fought all your life. Nothing scares you on a battlefield. Someone who flies just like you, your friend, doesn’t scare you either.

It must be an intuition issue.

But before you can pinpoint why your stomach is sinking, however, a blue-and-yellow figure streaks across the sky between two skyscrapers, moving fast enough to leave a ripple through the clouds overhead. Several pedestrians immediately stop to watch.

None of them panic. Some wave. Some others cheer. One person actually takes out their phone and starts recording.

This— This isn’t Kara. Because first things first—This is a man. 

The costumed stranger banks sharply around a tower, overshoots the turn entirely, and clips the corner of the building hard enough to shower glass into the street below.

A collective groan rises from the crowd.

The flying figure catches himself before impact with the pavement and rises into high skies before he immediately changes course. Toward you.

Your muscles tense.

There is no reason for him to be heading in your direction. No reason except that you’re the only visibly superpowered person in sight.

Years of experience make the next conclusion and sequence of events automatic.

He has identified an unknown metahuman and is investigating, about to take action too.

The figure slows as he approaches your block from above, hovering above street level with an ease that suggests he doesn’t think about gravity anymore. His attention locks onto you almost instantly, as though your presence is the only thing in the scene that doesn’t belong.

You can make out details now. A dark-haired man. Broad shoulders. Athletic build. No visible weapons. 

Any hero not trained by Batman or an army of Amazons would be having a heart attack.

He slows several stories above the street and hovers there for a second, studying you. You study him right back.

The shared stare lasts longer than it should. Long enough that you notice his posture subtly changing.

His shoulders stiffen. His eyes narrow. And then he just goes for it. 

The air between you tightens impossibly.

He flips mid air, then drops.

One hand formed into a fist that is surely coming down on you and a sonic boom later and the man is approaching towards you fast.

You let him come at you at full speed, cause you’ve seen faster, you've trained faster.

He approaches, closer, in a straight-line descent, like someone closing distance on something they already intend to classify as a threat, even though you haven’t moved.

And in your intent to stay calm and avoid any fight in the middle of a city swamped with civilians; you meet him halfway. You lift your hand up towards the sky— in a quarter of the time he takes to reach you— and catch his fist into the air.

The impact sounds more like a pressure breaking rather than the sound of a punch. Like the atmosphere around you and the stranger itself is refusing to compress any further.

The street beneath you fractures outward in cracking patterns that only become visible after the initial shockwave rolls away. Glass in nearby windows shatters, unwilling to bend or retaliate in this impact.

Your gaze lifts towards the man above you and it lingers, gleaming eyes looking at goggles that don't quiver.

It takes a few seconds for Mark to realise that his fist has stopped at your hand. Ultimately. 

In those seconds his mind runs through every conclusion possible, before quickly realising he didn’t miss.

He simply cannot continue or break through.

His fist remains tucked inside your steady palm while neither of you moves.

Up close, his expression changes in small increments that only someone trained to read violence would notice. The initial certainty faded first and then the expectation of resistance. Then something far more important: calibration.

He tries to pull back.

The air tightens around his arm as he applies force, muscles engaging with the kind of strength that would normally send a normal opponent flying across multiple city blocks.

You do not move. Not even an inch.

The pavement under your feet deepens its cracks instead.

His eyes flick briefly to the ground, then back to you.

A Viltrumite or a Kaiju would have at least moved a little, but you? 

From the second he spotted you until now you’ve only moved twice. The first time was when your hand reached to catch his attack with mathematical precision and the second one was when you turned your head to look at him.

Recognition of scale.

That's the new thing that comes to his mind.

So he pushes again, harder this time, just to test the waters and something in the air around his arm gives a faint, strained distortion as if the world is briefly unsure whether it should allow this exchange to continue.

Still nothing changes on your end.

No strain you can’t manage. No instability you can’t correct.

Just push meeting resistance.

And then Mark understands something that doesn’t fit into any expectation he brought with him.

This is not Viltrumite-level strength. This is simply beyond it.

And not by a margin he can quickly adjust to. But an entirely different category of physical reality.

His breath catches slightly as he holds the position mid air —although he is unsure if he’s holding his body in the air or if you’re the one holding him up— eyes flicking, from inside his goggles, across your posture, your grounding, the way you absorb force instead of dispersing it.

Whatever you are, you are not something he can overpower and he is not used to that being true. 

A part of him, one that is buried not as deep inside as he’d like to, instantly begins to think in the rhythm of his rapidly pulsing heart. Looking at you feels like… like… like love at first punch? Maybe!? Your aura is kind of enticing, he supposes.

Not that he’d admit that out loud, especially not right now.

So logically, he does what any sane superhero would; talks first (technically, no, but still—)

“Hi”

Your upper lip flinches upwards in pair with a raised brow.

“Could you Uhm—“ Mark clears his throat “could you let me down?”

Your unraised brow furrows.

“What?”

“I mean, this is starting to look really bad for me.”

The response is so unexpected that you find yourself glancing around.

Unfortunately, he isn’t wrong.

From an outside perspective, it looks less like a fight and more like a super-child being caught misbehaving.

The stranger hangs awkwardly in midair, suspended by nothing except the fact that his fist remains trapped in your hand.

The realization seems to bother him immensely.

“This is waaaaay too embarrassing for me.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah well, y’know, I'm supposed to be—

“Well, it doesn’t feel much like it” you speak, voice laced with confusion. “Normally we choose our hero names based on something we are, or at least something we can do.”

“Ouch”

The coffee shop you two are in occupies the ground floor of a narrow brick building wedged between a pharmacy and a bookstore. Large glass windows stretch from floor to ceiling, offering an uninterrupted view of downtown Chicago beyond. Afternoon sunlight spills across polished wooden floors and catches against hanging plants suspended from exposed ceiling beams. 

The entire place smells faintly of roasted coffee beans, chestnut syrup, warm pastries, and the sort of expensive candles people buy to convince themselves they have their lives together.

You plead very, extremely even, guilty of the latter.

The coffee shop nonetheless is, unfortunately, one of the strangest places you’ve ever been.

And it’s not because of the décor, or the people.

But because nobody seems particularly concerned that a superpowered altercation occurred less than half an hour ago directly outside.

A few customers glance toward your direction when you enter. Several recognize Mark or well, Invincible, immediately. One man lifts his coffee in greeting from across the room.

Mark waves back.

The man returns to reading his newspaper. That’s it. No crowd. No reporters. No frantic attempts to document every second of a superhero’s day.

The normalcy of it all feels deeply unsettling.

Back home, heroes occupied an impossible space between celebrity, public servant, military asset, and cultural icon all while being extremely illegal. Every appearance became a spectacle. Every mistake became international news. Entire industries existed solely to track where heroes were, what they were doing, and who they were seen with.

Here, one of the strongest men on the planet stands in line ordering coffee while the barista asks whether he wants the usual.

The world keeps spinning.

The realization fascinates you almost as much as it disturbs you.

“Extra shot today?” the barista asks.

Mark groans. “I got punched through three buildings yesterday.”

“That’s a yes.”

“That’s definitely a yes.”

The exchange earns a laugh from several nearby customers. Nobody seems intimidated by him and no one appears particularly impressed, either.

Invincible is simply part of the city’s ecosystem.

Like buses, weather, and construction work.

The thought lingers in your mind as you move toward an empty table near the window after placing your own order. Your eyes fixate on the landscape outside almost immediately.

Chicago stretches endlessly toward the horizon.

The city remains familiar enough to hurt.

The lake still reflects sunlight in brilliant flashes of silver and blue. Traffic still crawls through downtown streets. Elevated train tracks still weave between buildings. Office workers still hurry through intersections carrying coffees and briefcases while pretending they aren’t late.

Everything remains how it was when you first laid eyes upon it, and yet every time you look long enough, the illusion slightly cracks further 

Your thoughts are focused on a building occupying space that should belong to another when the chair across from you scrapes against the floor. Mark drops into it carrying two drinks.

“So Uhm,” He’s hesitant when he speaks, “Can we go over the part where uhmmm, where you said…”

“That I’m not an alien?”

You speak but your attention remains fixed on the city beyond the glass.

Mark’s attention remains fixed on you.

The new, additional problem to everything else, from Mark’s perspective at least, is that every time he looks away, he ends up looking back.

At first he blames your armor.

Armor is unusual enough to justify a second glance. Ancient without appearing primitive. Practical without sacrificing elegance. Silver accents catch sunlight filtering through the windows and reflect it across the table. It’s subtle enough to appear decorative where it isn’t. The cuffs on your forearms, the bangles on your biceps and the bird/bat (?) shaped emblem that sits over Kevlar on your chest.

(Not that he’s looking at your chest)

Then he begins to blame the fight —if it classifies as one—and that explanation feels safer.

Most people don’t casually stop his punches, they definitely don’t stop them without even moving.

The memory keeps replaying in his head whether he wants it to or not. The exact moment his fist met your hand. The realization that he wasn’t slowing you down but you were completely stopping him instead.

And then there’s the third explanation.

The one he is trying very hard not to think about. Because the second he acknowledges it, things become significantly more embarrassing than having an aura farming, warrior looking superhuman catch him mid-air while people are taking videos of him.

You are… beautiful. Not merely attractive. Not merely pretty.

Beautiful in a way that feels unfair.

The kind of beauty that belongs in paintings, mythology, and stories people exaggerate after too many drinks.

It isn’t just your appearance.

It’s the way you carry yourself.

The confidence in your composure.

The absolute certainty that exists beneath every movement.

Even sitting in an unfamiliar version of Chicago wearing a damaged version of your own uniform —as you told him— you somehow manage to look like you belong exactly where you are.

Mark hates how much and how easily he notices that.

Especially because he is currently sitting across from a woman who could probably throw him into orbit. Why does that somehow make the crush stronger? So much that it feels like a flaw in human evolution?

“You’re staring.” The observation arrives from you without warning.

Mark nearly launches his coffee across the table. “I am not.”

“You are.”

“I was thinking.”

“You were staring.”

“I can do both. It’s like a zoning out thing.”

Your eyebrow rises. The facial expression communicates more skepticism than an entire conversation. “Anyway. Let me get this straight one and for all. You’ve never, and I mean, ever heard of Superman?”

Mark shakes his head.

“Wonder Woman?”

Again, nothing. The answer remains the same.

Each name falls into the space between you and disappears.

Mark watches the change in your expression.

“I thought this was an alternate reality at first, but fuck—” you desperately exhale “This is a whole other dimension, apparently.”

“Oh shit! I’ve been through this too!” The words leave Mark so quickly that they almost trip over each other.

Your head snaps up. For the first time since sitting down, your attention becomes entirely focused on him..

Mark immediately sits a little straighter, feeling his mask a little tight around his neck.

"Okay, not exactly this." The excitement drains from his face almost as quickly as it arrived.

"I wasn't dimension-hopping. At least not personally." A beat passes. "Actually, that's not true either."

He rubs the back of his neck.

"I've dimension-hopped. Just not like this."

The statement does absolutely nothing to clarify the situation.

You stare. Mark stares back.

The coffee shop continues humming around you. Conversations drift between tables. Someone drops a spoon near the counter. A pair of students argue over a laptop several booths away while the scent of fresh espresso fills the air.

Normal life.

The kind of ordinary atmosphere that somehow makes the conversation feel even more absurd.

"You've travelled between dimensions."

"Yeah."

"And you're only bringing this up now?" You growl under your breath. Your hands clench into fists at the top of the table.

"I thought we were talking about this Superman guy."

Your expression remains completely unchanged. Mark immediately realizes that the awkward answer was the wrong one.

A slow, disappointed breath escapes you.

The tension that has been building beneath your skin since arriving doesn't disappear, but it shifts. For the first time since gaining consciousness in this version of Chicago, somebody has said something useful.

Somebody has confirmed that crossing dimensions is not only possible, but known.

That alone feels enormous.

"Explain."

The command arrives with enough authority that Mark almost salutes.

Instead, he takes a sip of coffee. The drink has gone lukewarm. He barely notices though, with the way you’re looking at him.

"A guy called Angstrom Levy."

Your brow furrows. You've never heard of him.

Mark notices the slight confusion in your face. "He was sort of..." The pause stretches. "Honestly? Explaining Angstrom is complicated."

"Try me."

"He could access alternate realities."

You lean forward slightly. Mark notices that too.

Unfortunately, Mark notices everything about you.

The problem is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

"He wasn't opening portals to random places. He could actually see other dimensions. Travel between them. Pull information and people from them. I also kind of killed him, so youuu probably won’t find him anywhere.”

The sounds of the city outside seem to fade slightly.

Your pulse that had quickened with that dangerous kind of careful hope when Mark started speaking dies out like a torn limp.

“You don’t seem very surprised” Mark retorts 

“You would be surprised with how many alternate earths there are in my… dimension? I guess I’ll call it that.”

"So there are others for you too."

"Tons."

Mark nods. “I’ve met more alternate versions of myself than I ever wanted to, I get you.”

That earns the smallest hint of a smile. Just enough to convince him he’s not imagining things.

The sight nearly derails his train of thought. Again.

You are so very unfair.

That’s the conclusion he keeps arriving at.

Unfairly strong, composed.

Unfairly beautiful.

The fact that all three exist simultaneously feels like a design flaw in the universe.

“So.”

You fold your arms across your chest.

“If dimensions exist here, then there’s a way back.”

The certainty in your voice catches him off guard. Like you’ve already decided the problem can be solved.

As you fall in deep thought, Mark finds himself wondering if that’s how warriors in your world always react to situations this puzzling. 

Until now, every mention of dimensions had seemed to push you further inward. Every new confirmation that this wasn’t your Earth had added another brick to the wall of realization settling around you.

This—whatever you’re thinking now— is the first thing that’s visibly energized you.

“What are the chances?” you ask, leaning forward. “Theoretically. And maybe im just thinking out loud now but—”

The clarity in your hopeful expression on your face catches him completely off guard.

"The thing is, I’ve seen different Earths. Different timelines. Different versions of people. But never this. You guys don’t even have Superman or Batman here.”

Mark’s expression darkens slightly. “Batman? I’ve met this guy!”

He immediately regrets mentioning that, because your somewhat soft expression changes into something that can only be translated into fury.

“You what now?”

“I got thrown into that dimension and I was in a scary looking city and the first thing I see is this huge guy launching at me and—and there was also this guy with him—”

“What guy?”

“Huh?”

“What guy, Invincible.” You say through gritted teeth.

“Dude I don’t remember what he's called, he had a red helmet on and started shooting at me and then him and Batman got into a fight and he left and—”

“Red Hood!?” 

Your heart palpitates. And you don’t know if it’s because Bruce mentioned nothing, and if you even can hold him accountable for that, because he’s secretive like this or if it’s the fact that Jason was in Gotham once again and never told you anything about it either.

Is it appropriate to think your already failing love life is falling further apart when you’re stranded in the middle of what appears to be a multiverse?

“What happened then?” you ask immediately, refusing to let your mind spiral even further.

For the thought of Jason is a weakness more than it is a virtue. It’s always… different with him. He haunts you in dimensions that are unheard of, until now. 

Mark blinks. “What?”

“What happened after Red Hood left?”

The question arrives too fast. Too urgently.

Mark’s eyes narrow. “Oh.”

You already know what that tone means.

It’s the tone people use when they think they’ve figured something out.

You immediately dislike it. “Oh?”

His grin appears. You dislike that too.

“You know him.”

“Yes—No, ugh yesss.” you sigh in defeat.

You feel different suddenly. Small and reduced to a bundle of heartbreak that is only able to breathe and walk. You retreat from your stance and let your head drop to the table, right onto your crossed arms.

Mark doesn’t know what to make of it.

“You absolutely know him. You said his name before I finished describing him.”

“This is not our topic here!” 

You’re right. Plain as that, actually. But there’s some part inside Mark that refuses to comply with dropping the only discovery he’s made that could get him an inch of insight in what he’s interested in.

The thought of already having lost to someone who shot at him is making his stomach churn. So Mark suddenly becomes fascinated by his drink. The heat from the paper cup presses against his palms.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

The question leaves his mouth with all the grace of a meteor strike.

Your eyes lift from the table and  widen instantly “What the fuck?”

Mark closes his eyes. Immediately. Because now that the words are out in the open, he gets to experience them a second time from your perspective.

You are a stranger. A stranger who may or may not have been displaced from another dimension. Someone who spent the last hour explaining that she cannot contact her family, her friends, or anybody she knows.

And apparently his only response to that was a query on whether or not you are single. Is it awkward? Yes. Is it also a veeeeery necessary question for Mark? Also yes!

“Okay.” Mark rubs both hands over his face. “Okay, in my defense—”

“You have a defense?”

“No.”

“Oh boy.”

“And I realized that halfway through the sentence.”

A laugh escapes you before you can stop it. It is small. Brief even. Gone almost immediately.

And unfortunately for him, Mark catches it.

The sight does absolutely nothing to help his situation. If anything, it makes it worse. Because now he knows you laugh like a normal person. The fact somehow makes you less scary and more intimidating at the same time.

A terrifying achievement that one can make.

Mark rubs the back of his neck with his hand “Well—”

“It’s so complicated…”

The confession leaves you in a long exhale, your forehead still pressed against your crossed arms.

For the first time since meeting you, Mark witnesses something in you that has absolutely nothing to do with strength. It is alienated from the impossible reality of watching someone stop his momentum with a single hand and an open fist.

You look tired, vulnerable. And the glimmer he got from your eyes before you threw your head down again, won’t let him shut his brain about it.

Up until now, every problem you’ve discussed has been external. Another dimension. Missing heroes. A city that isn’t yours. A universe that somehow developed without the names that shaped your entire life.

This is the first thing you’ve spoken about that seems capable of genuinely hurting you.

And unfortunately, that makes him curious. Just not in the way people become curious about gossip. Instead it’s in the way someone becomes curious after noticing a crack in a statue they’ve spent the entire afternoon believing was carved from stone.

His fingers rotate the coffee cup between his palms.

The question about a boyfriend had escaped before he could stop it. Embarrassing. Poorly timed. Entirely lacking dignity.

The worst part is that he isn’t sure he’d take it back.

Because for the past hour he’s been attempting—and failing—to understand why his attention keeps returning to you.

Part of it is obvious, because he's already admitted to himself that you are beautiful. Like it’s something inherited from mythology. Your hair shines in a color he’s never perceived before, the color of your eyes too. It’s strange, you’re strange.

Mark doesn’t exactly have the vocabulary for it.

He only knows that looking at you makes his stomach tighten.

You also intrigue him.

Most people react to uncertainty by becoming smaller, cautious. Hesitant even. You seem to react by becoming sharper. Every revelation about your situation should be making you panic.

Instead, you dissect each new piece of information and immediately begin searching for solutions.

There is something relentless about it.

A stubborn refusal to surrender to circumstances. Even now, stranded in a reality that isn’t yours, your first instinct isn’t despair. It’s strategy.

Maybe that’s what happens when someone grows up around legends. 

You're similar to him, in that way, if that’s the case. Or maybe that’s simply who you are.

Whatever the answer, Mark finds himself wanting to know more.

Which brings him directly back to the current problem.

The current problem being that somebody else apparently got there first.

The realization settles unpleasantly in his stomach. He doesn’t know Red Hood. He barely even remembers the encounter with him. What he does know is that your entire demeanor changed the moment his name entered the conversation.

The shift had been immediate.

Instinctive.

The kind people cannot fake.

And while Mark isn’t particularly experienced when it comes to relationships, he’s experienced enough to recognize history when he sees it.

“You deserve a boyfriend that can fly though and that guy cannot fly.” He says, fully confident.

“I prefer to fly my boyfriends.” You mumble right away.

A throwaway comment. Something said without thinking. Something you don’t even fully register until after it’s already escaped; but it makes him laugh.

You lift your head slightly, peeking at him with only one opened eye. “What’s funny?”

Mark studies you for a moment—the impossible woman from another universe who has a sense of humor after all— then he shrugs.

“Nothing.”

The answer is an obvious lie. You both know it. And Mark's heart is fluttering inside his chest in such a strange rhythm. 

“I need a fucking cigarette…” You consider smashing your head against the table.

To Mark, you aren’t similar to anyone he knows and that is only true because you caught his fist midair, but now you’re peeking at him from behind your folded arms with one eye open after accidentally admitting you carry your boyfriends around. You sound like a middle aged mom in crisis who's in need of a cigarette to process what’s happening. You laugh and you have a sense of humor—a sarcastic, dry one— and you’re desperate at the thought that you’re away from your people.

Yeah, yup. He’s definitely in love at first punch. That’s out of the question now.

“I could Uhm… I could fly you around… y’know. For a change.” Mark says under his breath, palms sweaty inside his costume.

For a second, he's unsure of whether you heard him or not, and settles for fidgeting with his fingers until this new wave of embarrassment washes through his entire nervous system. Then you lift your head and your mouth twitches. Just a little to the top.

“You’re trying to ask me on a date, Invincible?”

Mark nearly chokes on absolutely nothing. Which, somehow, is worse than choking on his coffee.

“No! I just thought flying might let you clear your head and all and ugh. Fuck—” The answer comes entirely too fast. “…Maybe?”

You laugh loudly again, breathy, so genuinely it’s like a golden halo has formed around your entire form, pulling Mark in, in, in, closer than he thinks he’s allowed to. The sound spreads inside his chest like a dangerous vine, caging all around his heart, his eyes, his brain.

It’s unfair there’s no such thing as ‘you’ in this world.

And for better or for worse he decides he’d rather get punched by you into another dimension rather than admit what that laugh just did to him.

~All rights reserved: @/strawberry-nugget, 2026. Please do not copy, over write or steal my work //

Likes and reblogs are so appreciated but if you you liked this you can let me know in the comments <3

A/N: ooooh silly me, I had to write this as a comic relief from all the angst currently in the works :> I hope you liked this little thing because the other option was pain Lmaoooo and I was so not in the mood to create a whole au for invincible rn. I might be tho, in the future.

Anyways. Stay safe Yall and remember Ex! Wonder girl reader clears the whole invincible universe while she still has her powers😝