Finally got to write this after having it stuck in my head.
Seven days of blood, gunfire, sleepless nights, and the kind of violence that left its mark long after the bruises faded.
Bakugou barely remembered the drive back to headquarters. The city had blurred into a smear of rain and flickering neon lights, his hands steering on muscle memory alone. By the time he dragged himself into the infirmary, dropping heavily into the cold metal chair, he was running on nothing but instinct and stubbornness.
His boss worked in silence. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights hummed, throwing sharp shadows across the room. The smell of antiseptic stung Bakugou’s nose, but he barely flinched when the swab hit the deep, ragged gash along his ribs. The man’s hands were practiced, steady, and entirely devoid of pity as he cleaned the wound before wrapping it tightly with medical gauze.
“You pushed yourself too far.”
“I’m alive aren't I,” Bakugou bit out, his voice a dry, gravelly rasp.
Bakugou clicked his tongue, glaring up at the water-stained ceiling tiles. Every breath burned. Every muscle in his shoulders was coiled so tight it felt ready to snap.
His boss tied off the bandage with a sharp tug that made Bakugou’s jaw clench, then stood back, fixing him with a look that had stopped far scarier men than him.
“You know what happens after missions like this.”
Bakugou’s jaw tightened even further. “…Yeah.”
“The adrenaline doesn’t switch off. Your head won’t be right for a few days.”
Silence heavy as lead fell over the small room.
“No arguments. No stopping by for ‘just five minutes.’ No convincing yourself you’re fine.”
Bakugou’s hands curled into fists against his thighs, knuckles turning white.
“You’ve been running on nothing but instinct for a week,” his boss continued, voice even, unyielding. “You’re exhausted, overstimulated, and your judgment is compromised.”
Another beat of thick, suffocating silence.
“If you go to her like this, you’ll regret it.”
A low growl rumbled deep in Bakugou’s chest, sharp and protective. “…Fine.” The word sounded like it had been dragged out of him through broken glass. “I’ll try.”
His boss didn’t look convinced. “You’d better.”
The drive back to his apartment felt longer and his apartment was silent.
Bakugou shut the door behind him, the deadbolt clicking into place with a heavy thud. He leaned back, resting his forehead against the cool wood.
He’d imagined this moment every single night during those seven endless days. Whenever the jobs became unbearable, whenever another firefight erupted into chaos, whenever the sheer weight of exhaustion threatened to drag him under into the dirt, he’d thought about you.
Your laugh. Your smile. The quiet, exasperated way you’d scold him for forgetting to eat or for coming back with fresh cuts he pretended weren’t there. It had been the only anchor strong enough to keep him moving forward through the blood and smoke.
Your face appeared immediately behind his eyelids. Warm. Familiar. Safe.
A slow, shaky breath left his lungs.
Then, uninvited, another image surfaced, cutting through the warmth like a blade.
Bakugou’s eyes snapped open. “Damn it.”
He shoved the thought away before it could settle, pushing off the door and stumbling toward the kitchen.
Lately, sleep had become its own fucking battlefield. Every time exhaustion finally claimed him, those dreams returned. Always the same. Always the three of you, entangled in the dark, skin against skin, boundaries blurred until there was no telling where one of you ended and the other began. They lingered long after he woke up, vivid and hot enough to leave him restless, pacing his floor for hours afterward.
He hated them. Or at least, he spent every waking hour telling himself he did.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, dragging his palm over the dark circles bruised under his eyes. “What the hell’s wrong with me…”
It wasn’t just the dreams that unsettled him. It was the fact that, somewhere beneath all the denial, deep in the dark corners of his chest he refused to inspect, they felt… honest.
That was the part he couldn’t accept.
He’d spent years convincing himself he understood exactly what he wanted. Life wasn’t supposed to be complicated. Loyalty wasn’t supposed to be complicated. Feelings definitely weren’t supposed to be. You were supposed to pick a lane, protect what was yours, and keep moving. Yet somehow, his own mind kept twisting the script, blurring every strict line he had spent years drawing around himself.
He growled under his breath, shaking his head violently. “No.”
He wasn’t entertaining this. Not tonight. Not after seven days of absolute hell.
He tossed his keys onto the counter with a metallic clatter and leaned heavily against the laminate edge, forcing himself to focus on anything else. The city lights filtered through the blinds, casting long blue slats across the floor. The apartment smelled faintly of lavender, the candle you always lit whenever you dropped by to clean up his mess or keep him company.
His chest tightened so hard it eclipsed the pain in his ribs. He missed you with an intensity that almost hurt, a physical ache that throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
That was real. That was simple.
Everything else… everything else was just noise he refused to listen to.
He closed his eyes one last time, taking a long, deep breath and willing the storm in his head into silence. Tomorrow, he’d figure himself out. Tomorrow, he’d be grounded.
Tonight, he just wanted the war inside his own head to stop.
He couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
The decision didn’t come from logic; it formed somewhere between one breath and the next, sharp, sudden, and entirely inevitable. Bakugou was already moving before his brain fully registered the betrayal of his own resolve, keys scooped back into his fist, the heavy front door slamming behind him, the cool dampness of the city night swallowing him whole as he hit the wet asphalt.
He told himself he would only watch.
Just long enough to see that you were safe. That the apartment lights were on. That nothing had touched you while he was away in the dark. That would be enough to quiet the animal tearing at his ribs. He would leave right after. He would keep the promise he had half-made to his boss. He’d be a fucking ghost.
He had always been good at hiding when he needed to be.
The narrow alley across from your building offered its usual deep shadows. He settled into them the way he always did, shoulder pressed against the cold brick, breath controlled, body absolutely still despite the tremor of fatigue in his legs. From here, he had a clear view of the soft, golden glow streaming from your second-floor living-room window. He caught the subtle shape of you moving past the thin curtains, and for a second, his heart eased. Safe. You were safe.
Then your front door opened.
Midoriya stepped out onto the small, lit landing, hid coat half-on, a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. You followed him out onto the threshold. You were barefoot, your hair a little messy, your cheeks already dusted with a faint, pretty pink.
Bakugou’s eyes narrowed, his breath catching in his throat.
Midoriya said something low, his voice lost to the quiet hum of the night, but it made you duck your head, a shy, soft little smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. He reached up, his fingers sliding up to brush a strand of hair behind your ear with a slow, gentle tenderness that looked entirely practiced. Effortless.
The kiss was soft. Hesitant at first, a gentle press of lips in the cool night air. Then it deepened, just enough that your hands rose instinctively to hid waist, your fingers curling into the thick fabric of his coat, pulling him a fraction of an inch closer.
A low, dangerous growl stayed locked behind Bakugou’s teeth, vibrating in his chest.
Heat punched through the exhaustion still clinging to his raw nerves. The image burned itself into his retinas like a brand, your flushed face tilted up, Midoriya’s mouth moving over yours, the quiet, seamless way the two of you fit together on that small porch like you had done this a hundred times before.
Soft. Shy. Careful with each other.
It set something dark and primitive ablaze inside him.
He didn’t just want to pull you away, he wanted to be the one who ruined that carefulness entirely. He wanted to step out of the shadows, push his way between you both, tangle one fist in Midoriya’s hair and press his other hand flat against the back of your neck. He wanted to turn that sweet, hesitant kiss into something hungrier, something wild and demanding. He wanted to feel both of you startle and give in against him, wanted to hear the soft, wrecked sounds you’d both make when someone finally pushed past your politeness. He wanted to be the rough edge the two of you kept nervously circling but never dared to touch, something sharp enough to drag the real, desperate neediness out of you both until neither of you could hide behind blushes and gentle touches anymore.
His hands flexed into tight fists at his sides, the leather of his jacket creaking.
The mission still lived under his skin. Seven days of violence, blood, and zero sleep had left him entirely raw, every nerve pulled taut, ready to snap. Watching the two of you like this was a massive mistake. He knew it. The boss’s warning rang loud and clear in his ears like a alarm bell. Your judgment is compromised.
But he didn’t look away. He couldn’t.
Midoriya pulled back first, his forehead resting against yours. You both murmured something, a shared secret in the dark. Then he finally stepped down the wooden stairs, glancing back once with a smile that was almost shy itself before turning the corner and disappearing down the street.
You lingered in the doorway for a long moment, your fingers rising to brush your lower lip, your eyes distant, soft, and warm.
Bakugou stayed locked in the dark, his jaw set so hard his teeth throbbed, his pulse hammering wildly against the fresh bandages bound around his ribs.
He should leave. The logical part of his brain screamed at him to turn around. He had told himself he would only watch.
Instead, he was already calculating. Calculating the distance to your door, the number of steps it would take to cross the street, the exact way your expression would shatter if he appeared on your door, exhaustion carved into every line of his face, and the dark hunger he had been fighting all the way home finally far too loud to ignore.
Midoriya disappeared around the corner, his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets, the soft echo of his goodbye still hanging in the quiet air between him and your doorway.
Bakugou should have turned back right then.
He should have walked to his own apartment, locked the door, and let the bone-deep exhaustion finally drag him into the dark.
Instead, the need that had been chewing through his guts snapped its teeth shut.
He couldn’t bring that roughness to you. Not yet. Not while he was still this jagged, this close to the absolute edge. He would break you, ruin you, if he touched you while he was feeling like a live wire.
So he did the irrational thing. He did the reckless, dangerous thing.
He followed the shadow instead.
Midoriya never noticed him trailing through the quiet, lamp-lit streets. Bakugou moved stealthy, all predatory instinct and zero hesitation. By the time Midoriya unlocked the front door to his own apartment building, slipped inside, and walked up the flights to his floor, Bakugou was right behind him like a vengeful ghost.
Midoriya stepped into his apartment, reaching for the light switch. The door hadn't even clicked fully shut behind him.
Before he could react, a heavy hand slammed against the wood, shoving it the rest of the way closed and twisting the lock in one swift, violent motion.
Bakugou was on him before the words could even clear his throat.
He shoved Midoriya back against the wall hard enough to rattle the framed prints hanging nearby, knocking the breath straight from his lungs with a sharp whoosh. Bakugou braced one heavy forearm across Midoriya’s chest, pinning him in place, while his other hand flew up, fingers closing around Midoriya’s throat, not crushing his windpipe, but holding him with a firm, possessive, undeniable grip, his thumb pressed right under the sharp hinge of Midoriya’s jaw.
Midoriya’s green eyes went wide in the dim light of the entryway. A broken sound escaped him as Bakugou crowded into his personal space, stepping between his legs.
“Don’t,” Bakugou growled. His voice was terrifyingly low, completely wrecked from disuse. “Don’t fucking talk.”
Midoriya’s hands flew up on pure reflex, his fingers twisting tightly into the front of Bakugou’s damp jacket. He was already an absolute mess, his cheeks flushed deep red, his breath stuttering out in frantic puffs, his wide green eyes blown out with shock and something far darker, something that looked terrifyingly like instant recognition. Like he’d been waiting for this fire to catch.
Bakugou didn’t give him a single second to process, or to find his words, or to rationalise what was happening.
He crashed their mouths together.
The kiss was nothing like the soft, shy, polite little press of lips Bakugou had just watched on your doorstep. This was feral. It was hungry, punishing, all sharp teeth, heat, and bruising pressure. Bakugou sucked hard at Midoriya’s full lower lip, tasting the startled, high-pitched whimper that spilled out of him, before pushing deeper, his tongue sweeping inside, possessive and ruthless, like he was trying to steal every bit of air Midoriya still owed him.
His grip on Midoriya’s throat stayed locked, feeling every frantic swallow, every frantic, fluttering beat of the pulse racing under his thumb.
Midoriya made another broken noise against Bakugou’s mouth, a sound suspended right on the razor’s edge between a protest and a complete, helpless surrender. His fingers tightened desperately in Bakugou’s shirt, pulling him in even as he backed up against the drywall. Bakugou only pressed closer, driving his body forward, pinning Midoriya fully to the wall with the entire, unyielding weight of his frame.
“God. I can taste her on you,” Bakugou rasped pulling back just a fraction of an inch, his words rough, raw, and laced with venomous heat against Midoriya’s wet lips. “I saw you kiss her. Soft. Sweet. Like you were both too fucking careful to take what you actually wanted.”
He leaned back in and nipped hard on Midoriya’s bottom lip, hard enough to sting, hard enough to draw a gasp, then immediately soothed the pain with another deep, rolling, claiming kiss that left Midoriya’s knees buckling, his whole body trembling in Bakugou’s grip.
“I wanted to be the one who ruined it,” Bakugou muttered, his voice dropping into a dark, gravelly register that vibrated straight against Midoriya’s chest. “Wanted to step in, grab both of you, and turn that polite little kiss into something that left you both fucking shaking on the ground. Wanted to be the rough edge you keep dancing around.”
His thumb stroked along the sensitive side of Midoriya’s throat being almost gentle, almost tender, before his grip tightened right back up, pinning him firmly.
The forbidden dreams he’d fought so hard to bury were clawing their way out, tearing through the edges of his mind.
And right now, with Midoriya pinned, pliant, gasping for air, and tasting like everything Bakugou had been bleeding to have, the violent war inside his head finally had a place to burn.
“This is what you two do to me. I feel like I'm going crazy.”
Part 2?
Voting ended onAug 6
