#theragethatisdesire

Mina doesn’t have time to answer your clueless question before there’s a clamor of greeting and the addition of larger, male bodies to your small group of girls.

“Ladies!” Denki makes his way through security first, grinning broadly behind a pair of gaudy Versace sunglasses with his arms held wide in expectation of hugs. Ochaco humors him first, planting a barrage of kisses on his cheek, and you make a mental note to keep an eye on her.

Kirishima comes next, tumbling down next to you hard enough to bring a noisy creak from the booth that you can hear even over the music. His fingers rustle the top of your hair before making their way to the hem of your dress– your very short dress.

“This dress is hot,” he slurs in your ear, planting a slobbery, good-natured kiss on your cheek. “You’re hot!”

You greet him with a gentle pat on the head, settling easily into the familiar arm he throws over your shoulder. “Having fun?”

“Don’t we make a good-looking couple? I mean, come on,” Eijirou ignores you, yelling over the music to Denki with a—delayed—suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows. Denki barely considers him, waving him off in favor of the liquor on ice.

“You two were cuter back in school,” Denki finally scoffs, pouring up.

“I heard your tastes lean a bit pinker these days, anyway,” Ochaco says, reclining into Izuku’s arm with a wink.

Eijirou’s reaction is slow, dulled by the drinks, but comical. His red eyes widen, arm tightening defensively around your shoulders. Eijirou’s gaze darts to Mina, who—bless her—is oblivious and fussing over Sero’s collar.

“She told you?”

“She didn’t have to,” you laugh, rubbing a reassuring hand on Eijirou’s forearm. “You really thought it was a secret?”

“It was supposed to be,” Eijirou grumbles, barely audible over the thumping bass. He settles into the couch beside you, crossing his arms in a pout unbecoming of a man of his musculature. It only makes you laugh harder, snuggling into his side.

“Eiji—”

“Shitty secret.” Ah, there he is. You try your hardest to be entirely unreactive to his arrival, but contrary to custom, Bakugou breaks first, eyes locking in on you almost instantly as he takes his seat. His sustained gaze is enough for you to justify a slow once-over; a simple black button-up clings to the curve of his well-built muscle, making his hair look brighter, his eyes look redder, his scowl look meaner. Black always suited him, an appropriately intense color for a personality like his. He looks good— really good. Annoyance flares inside of you at the realization.

Eijirou whines out something to the effect of disappointment without surprise, but it’s clear Bakugou isn’t listening. He accepts the glass of bubbles Mina pushes into his hand without so much as a grunt of irritation, his eyebrows lifting in an indistinct reaction when they catch on the short hem of your dress. When he leans forward, elbows to knees, you feel your body’s unwarranted reaction zipping through your nerve endings like fire catching, little burns lighting you up from temple to fingertip.

“What’s your problem, Blasty?” Denki laughs, addressing the obvious staredown between the two of you. “Got butterflies?”

“Dress,” Bakugou coughs out around a mouthful of champagne, flicking calloused fingers at you in a display of insouciance.

“Please don’t start,” Mina begs, nestling into the cushion on the other side of Eijirou. “We’re celebrating!”

“What about it?” You ignore her, sitting up out of Eijirou’s warmth to draw the length of your torso out, the hem of your little black number climbing yet another dangerous inch up your thighs. If your legs weren’t crossed politely at the ankle, strappy heels resting on one another, you have no doubts that Bakugou would be able to see the unsubtle color of your g-string. Hell, he still might.

Bakugou rises to the carefully constructed choreography you two have assembled over the years, tilting his head thoughtfully. “Makes you look…” he trails off, squinting at you.

“Hot?” You supply sweetly, dragging a hand down your thigh.

“Easy,” Bakugou corrects, a cruel smirk melting over his face like butter. Izuku cries out in protest, landing a heavy hand on Bakugou’s shoulder to scold him. Eijirou hurries to pull you back into his side when you scoot forward, teeth bared; Mina’s arm darts out to corral you before you can deliver what would have been an artfully crafted insult about Bakugou’s lack of length downstairs.

“We’re celebrating,” Mina seethes, elbow digging into the hollow of your throat. Her lethal eyes lock on Bakugou, who’s still grinning smugly. “Whether you like it or not, Number 9.”

You’re still debating the merit of dumping your vodka soda over Bakugou’s stupid, blond-tufted head when Mina’s words settle in. Number 9. Bakugou’s grin has dropped, and he’s staring at you intently, seemingly waiting for you to acknowledge the news. Even he doesn’t look like he knows how he wants you to react, face eerily neutral but a clear flush of pink rising to his cheeks. 

“Number nine?” It sounds hollow when you repeat it, even amongst the racket of Denki half-heartedly trying to organize a toast.

“Congratulations to the—” hiccup, “—best of us knuckleheads to come out of UA!”

“Except you,” Ochaco sings to Izuku, planting a kiss on his cheek. You can only make out her words because there’s a ringing that’s begun to shake in your ears, and you’re simply watching her glossy mouth curl around the words inches from his freckled cheeks. Your chest feels incredibly tight.

“Top ten today, top five tomorrow!” Eijirou crows, crashing his flute against Denki’s with nearly enough force to break the glass.

“Number nine!” Sero echoes, smiling lazily.

“The top ten?” You finally find the presence of mind to mouth to Mina, who shakes her phone at you meanfully amongst the chaos of Denki’s toast.

minnie<3: i wasn’t even positive that they were coming…

me: you still could’ve told me!?!? #9???

minnie<3: email went around the agency this morning!!! you didn’t see?

The answer is redundant enough that you lock your phone and shove it back under your bare thighs, glaring at Mina. Obviously not.

Bakugou’s still staring at you over the rim of his champagne like you’re some indecipherable language, and it’s making your skin crawl with heat. Kirishima’s beginning to notice, you realize with a flare of panic, as he’s tilting his head at Bakugou questioningly, but it’s all rendered moot when the cocktail waitress appears with a tray of sickeningly green shots.

“We didn’t order those!” Mina shouts over the music.

“They were sent over as a gift!” The waitress responds brightly, passing out the little glass jars.

“What are they?” Ochaco eyes hers disdainfully, grimacing when Denki throws his back without question.

“A round of our ‘toxic sludge’ shots to celebrate the Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight!” The waitress ignores Bakugou’s embarrassed snarl at the mention of his former full hero name. “Courtesy of a friend.”

She gestures vaguely to the packed bar and darts off to attend to the other needy patrons in her section before any of you can ask her to elaborate. The pointed name of the shot doesn’t go unnoticed, all of you exchanging wary glances as Bakugou scoffs and pours his shot into the ice bucket in the center of the table without a word. Sero stands and cranes his neck over the crowd. Denki hops up beside him, still half-smiling, before a nervous expression of realization overtakes his cheery countenance. You stand, despite Eijirou’s attempts to tug you back down by your wrist. You’re perhaps overly aware of Bakugou’s crimson eyes tracking your movements as you step gingerly around the small table cluttered with glasses, coming to the barrier separating your private table from the rest of the club.

You really should have expected this, but there’s still a melancholy note of surprise that rings through you when you meet Neito’s eyes across the crowd. The surprise fizzles out into anger when he raises his shot in a toast, identical in color to the ones that have just arrived at your table.

“Fucking Monoma,” Sero hisses, flipping the bird across the busy room. Neito places a hand over his heart in feigned pain, then blows you a sickly kiss. Your stomach churns.

“Are you kidding?” Izuku’s eyes narrow.

“Of course not–”

“Copy-Paste sent these? What a bitch,” Bakugou says irritably, and you really do commend him for not bringing the building down. Maybe he is maturing after all, though his cheeks still redden while he rolls his eyes. You, however, have had just enough to drink to feel your temper rear its ugly head, tossing your clutch back on the couch behind you.

“I’m going to say something,” you say suddenly, surprising even yourself as you start to shoulder past Denki and Sero.

Mina reacts first. “No. No way are you going over there.”

“Yes I am, Mina, this is fucked–”

“I agree. No shitty-ex-boyfriend showdowns tonight.” Sero wraps a firm arm around your waist, but pauses when you glare up at him.

“Do I need to turn the heat up in that big head of yours, Hanta?” You aren’t sure what about the gesture has you running this hot, you can tell you’re overreacting. You can even feel your quirk slipping away from you– Denki’s vodka soda is starting to steam. “Move.”

Sero thinks twice about grappling with you in this state, and steps aside, fielding multiple alarmed protests from around the group as you stomp past him. You can even hear Bakugou swear under his breath as you duck under the red velvet rope and past security, shoving through the crowd with an impressive speed, spurred on by your anger.

While Hitoshi, who you’ve belatedly realized is standing next to him, widens his eyes at your approach, Neito seems unsurprised to see you. The easy, expectant grin that spreads over his face only ramps your temper up further, and you narrow your eyes at the cocktail in his hand, turning it to a solid block of ice just to piss him off. Neito only chuckles, setting it on the bar behind him and holding his arms out, as if you were running to him for a hug.

“Sweetness! How are you?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Neito,” you snap, pressing your manicured finger up against the buttons through the center of his shirt. “That was beyond immature.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hitoshi moans quietly, one palm coming up to cover his face in shame. “I told you not to–”

“To whom?” Neito tilts his head, his smile growing. “Don’t tell me you ran over here with your claws out because I made a little joke at Dynamight’s expense.”

You blink, momentarily stunned. You want to tell him that that’s ridiculous, but he’s…right. Embarrassingly so. Neito’s eyes flicker over your face, all the sick satisfaction he’s getting from calling your bluff showing plainly on his features.

“Did you go running from my bed into Dynamight’s? I am surprised—”

“No,” you cut him off sharply, regaining your composure. “This isn’t about Bakugou, and, to be clear, I’m not sleeping with him, before you leak that rumor to the tabloids.”

You turn your gaze to Hitoshi, glaring at him and raising your eyebrows to imply that your unspoken threat extends to him too. Hitoshi, never a fan of you and Neito’s spats, simply holds his hands up in a show of innocence, turning back to the woman he’d been talking to.

“Right, right. Still not the fondest of bedfellows, then?”

You take a deep breath to settle your quirk. It’s twitching beneath your fingertips, the urge to grab his frozen cocktail, boil it, and throw it straight in his smug face. You’ve dated some unsavory characters, but god, Neito has to have been your worst decision yet.

“When I ended things, I gave you strict instructions not to interact with me again.”

“Like I said, the drinks were a gift for Bakugou.” Neito gives you that look again, the one you loathe that feels like he’s picking you apart faster than you can put your defenses up. “So sweet of you to come celebrate his big night.”

“Mina tricked me,” you mutter, inadvertently losing that exchange with your flimsy excuse. “When I told you to leave me alone, that went for my friends too, asshole.”

“You look beautiful,” Neito murmurs, reaching up to brush his knuckles against your cheek. You flinch hard, and your face twists into an ugly scowl.

“Stay the hell away from us, alright? Before you start something you can’t finish.” You turn your back on him, ripping your arm free from his attempt to grab your wrist. Just before you disappear back into the mass of bodies that separates you from your section, you hear Neito’s last comment.

“Right, run back to your best friend, Bakugou.”

You brush his words off with an angry huff, throwing your shoulder ahead of you into the crowd. You intentionally take a moment to get lost in the masses, not necessarily wanting to return to your friends so soon after the confrontation with Neito. Don’t tell me you ran over here with your claws out and your panties bunched because I made a little joke at Dynamight’s expense. You chew on your lip as you weasel through the people around you, mulling it over in your head. Sure, you can tell yourself that it was just leftover animosity from the breakup, but that was months ago, and you weren’t even that upset. Was it really over Bakugou? Then again, you could just be a live wire because of what it means now that Bakugou’s reached the top ten. A conversation from your last semester of high school threatens to bring itself to the forefront of your memory, but you shake it off as the security guard lets you back into the bottle service section. He probably doesn’t even remember.

“There you are!” Mina tugs you back into the plush leather cushion with a sigh of relief. “What happened?”

You shrug, feigning nonchalance and avoiding Bakugou’s inquisitive gaze. “I told him the fuck off. I told him to leave me and you guys alone months ago.”

“Pretty bad-ass.” Denki raises his glass across the circle, draining yet another cocktail.

“He’s the worst,” Ochaco commiserates, still tucked snugly against Izuku, who nods.

“Let’s just forget about it,” Izuku says cheerfully, brushing aside the half-empty shot glasses and reaching for his champagne again. “We’re partying with a top-ten hero, aren’t we?”

Notwithstanding that the top ten hero in question is more of a homebody than anything else, you all cheer and raise your glasses, happy to put the incident behind in favor of having a fun night. You set your resolve to try at least, to put the bullshit with Neito in the back of your mind and not let your temper dredge forward into the rest of what could honestly be a fun evening, but the look Bakugou sends you practically makes your blood run cold.

Amongst the joyful cheering of “Top 10! Top 10!” around you, Bakugou’s jaw is set, tension burrowed into each sharp angle of his face. His eyes drag up your body, from your heels to your ankles and further, pausing momentarily at the soft fold of one thigh over the other. When your eyes finally connect, your friends’ obnoxious chanting fades to the background. It’s pointed– the carmine eyes locked on you tell you exactly what you hoped wasn’t true. The breath leaves your chest; he does remember that conversation all those years ago. Vividly, if the leisurely pace of his gaze on your skin is anything to go by.

It’s hard to shake it, but you try valiantly, leaning back into Mina and Eijirou’s little bubble on the couch, exchanging tidbits of gossip and increasingly slurred grievances about the rising costs of hero insurance. Denki brings a handful of girls up from the crowd, enthusiastic fans who are more than happy to drape themselves over the single heroes in the group and put some distance between you and Bakugou. Bakugou bristles when Denki tosses a bubbly blonde in his direction, but for the most part, he takes it on the chin, even letting her perch on his knee. You’re stupid enough to raise an eyebrow, a snarky comment rising in your throat, but the smirk Bakugou shoots you over her shoulder shuts you up. Does he plan on cashing in? Like, actually?

“Give me your phone,” you blurt, reaching for Mina. Still mostly caught up in her blatantly flirty conversation with Eijirou, she hands it over wordlessly, batting her eyelashes and giggling at whatever joke he’s made. You ignore them both, opening her messages and clicking on the most recent conversation.

pomeranian: Y’all are at Drop? Don’t know if we’re coming but Ei’s asking.

mina: yessssss!! we’re in a booth under my name, just ask security.

pomeranian: The girls are with you?

mina: you know it

pomeranian: Is she there?

mina: sighhhhhh yes ur nemesis is here but play nice, we’re celebrating YOU!! see u later don’t let denki pass out yet

You read the conversation several times, blinking your false lashes rapidly as it all sinks in. Bakugou made sure you would be here. You flick your eyes up to where his all-powerful hand is resting on the small of the woman’s back, present enough to feign interest but not low enough to suggest anything. Not for certain. A stray, green spotlight illuminates the spread of his scarred fingers over her dress, and your breath catches in your chest at the span of his fingers, the breadth of his palm. It’s all too much, suddenly.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you mutter to Mina, tossing her phone on the couch.

“What?” That gets her attention; she sits up away from Eijirou, gently wrapping pink fingers around your hand. “Are you good?”

“Yeah,” you say with a tight smile, picking up your clutch and—of course—dropping it in your haste. “Shit.”

“I got it!” Eijirou practically dives to the floor to scrabble your lip glosses and tampons back into your bag, understanding his role in the situation immediately as he gives you and Mina a quick, private moment over his spine.

“What’s up?” Mina hisses, eyes flicking back and forth between you and the guest of honor. “Bakugou?”

“He asked you if I would be here.” You try to keep the accusation out of your voice, but everything’s beginning to peak in your chest. The drinks are too strong in your bloodstream, the lights are too low in some places and too bright in others, there’s a handprint embedded in your mind. Mina chews the inside of her cheek.

“I guess I didn’t think about it, I don’t know. Is something going on? Besides,” she pauses, glancing at Bakugou over your shoulder, “the usual, I mean.”

It isn’t Mina’s fault. She only knows the carefully crafted story, the same as the rest of your friends. A historic rivalry, not one with the grandeur of Deku and Dynamight, of course, but a more personal one. A private rivalry that started in your first year of UA and developed into something dark, something with teeth, with a tongue. She doesn’t know about the conversation, or about the gradual fall of the unlikely dominoes that had set the scene, the night that lit the match. You take a deep breath, exhaling through your nose.

“No,” you say firmly, taking your bag from Eijirou. “I just need to, like, decompress. I have my phone.”

“Want me to come?” Mina tries, but you’re shaking your head, backing away from her with an unsteady smile and mouthing something about how you’re totally fine. Right.

You don’t dare turn to see if Bakugou notices your hasty escape, wiggling past the security guard again and beelining down the miraculously clear path towards the VIP bathroom. Your phone’s already buzzing frantically in your clutch, likely Mina and Ochaco firing off round after round of urgent texts trying to puzzle out your sudden departure, drawing even more attention to you at the exact moment you need it least. The VIP bathroom is strangely, blessedly empty, except for the bathroom attendant. She greets you kindly, but your breath is coming fast.

“Can I– can I just have water? And, like, a quick second alone?”

“A second?” She frowns as she hands you the paper cup, and tilts her head, realization blooming over her face. She’s a pretty girl, younger than you, but not by much. An excited smile brings dimples to her cheeks. “Wait, aren’t you–”

“Yes,” you answer breathlessly, forcing a gracious smile. “Yes. It’s so nice to meet you, and I’d be happy to talk more, but I really need a favor.” The girl nods eagerly, and you feel like such a dick pulling the celeb card, but really. You need a favor. “Can you just stand outside and guard the bathroom for a minute? I just really, really need to be alone.”

“Got it,” she says with a determination that rivals that of your fellow pros in the field. “Anything else?”

“No, no. Thank you so much, it’ll just be a sec.”

She nods again, stepping out through the door and telling you to take all the time you need. You really should get her name, put in a good word for her with the promoter or something. A shaky hand brings the cup to your lips, and some overly fragrant flavored water wets your lips. It isn’t enough.

You give in to the natural urge of self-critique as a form of self-soothing and approach the mirror, picking at various pieces of your hair and popping the cap off your eyeliner as the dreaded memory surfaces, bobbing along your consciousness like it was doomed to the moment you heard Number 9. The morning after your graduation party comes rushing back to you, and it’s almost embarrassing how clearly you can recall the morning sun bleeding through a crack in Bakugou’s shuttered blinds, the angry green numbers of his alarm clock, the ridiculously high thread count sheets you woke up tangled in. You recall the shock, the dawning horror of the weight of the arm over your waist. It was two weeks after your eighteenth birthday, and you hadn’t yet developed any ability whatsoever to hold your liquor. The very first time you let your guard down, you woke up in Katsuki Bakugou’s dorm room.

The nervous bite you plant in the palm of your hand leaves an indent in the skin, not dissimilar to the bruises Bakugou had left on you all those years ago. You stare in the mirror at the spot on your neck that had been purple the next day, the bruise Mina had poked that you’d blamed on a drunken make out with Shinsou, Bakugou glowering at you all the while from across the table. You remember parts of the hook up itself; you were both still nervous teens, sexual experience severely limited by a grueling training schedule, a literal war, and your self-imposed relegation to the same friend group since your first year. Bakugou’s shaky hands stroking softly down the backs of your thighs as you’d straddled him, the tentative press of your lips against his collarbone as he spread your legs, the tentative, disbelieving laugh you’d shared when it was all over. And then the morning after…

You shimmy your shoulders thoroughly, forcing yourself to see you in the mirror instead of the knock-kneed girl trying to cover her hickeys with concealer and steel her way through her first round of sidekick interviews. You pull your phone from your purse, wincing at the amount of notifications.

ocho!!: where’d u go??? did bkg say smth?

minnie<3: do i need to come check on u?

minnie<3: i’m worried

eiji: please text mina back if you see this ;p

ocho!!: was it monoma???

deku: Ochaco would like you to text her back. Thank you!

minnie<3: bkg asking where u went..

ocho!!: bakugou is asking after u…?????

minnie<3: if u don’t text me back rn one of us is coming after u

You sigh, firing off a quick text that you’re fine, lying about a line at the restroom and insisting you’ll be back soon. That’s that.

“It was years ago,” you say to the mirror, voice echoing through the empty stalls. God, you hope that the attendant isn’t right outside the door. “It was years ago. You’re being crazy. No way he remembers. No way.”

The effect is small, but talking to yourself aloud is silly enough to shake some of the nerves from you, and you let out an awkward giggle to yourself. Right, you are being crazy– it was a high school hook up for god’s sake, and—

“Let me in that fucking door right now, or I’m going to set you to the side and blow it off the hinges.”

You’d recognize that voice anywhere, especially with that tone.

“Bakugou!” you practically shriek as you throw the bathroom door open to find a worrisome scene: Bakugou in all his terrifying, Dynamight glory, towering over the bathroom attendant who’d so kindly allowed you to hole up in the bathroom on your own. There’s a short line of glamorously dressed women behind him, looking at him with some confusing combination of fear and attraction on their faces. You get it, honestly. “What in god’s name are you doing?”

“There you are.” Bakugou settles back into himself with frightening ease, looking you up and down like he’s inspecting you for injuries. He frowns. “What’s the matter with you?”

“With me?” You scowl back at him, taking the fearful bathroom attendant under your arm. It’s usually easy to separate the Dynamight that you can count on to pull you out of a pile of rubble and the Bakugou that you can count on to “accidentally” knock your drink into your lap when you’re getting hit on, but not when he’s like this. His forearms are practically bulging from the cuffed sleeves of his shirt, eyes bright and narrow like he’s on site at work. He’s intimidating by design, but beautiful by happenstance. Your bathroom pep talk flies out the window.

“I told him you needed a second,” she says warily, eyes flickering between you and Bakugou. Bakugou rolls his eyes, but you’re genuinely impressed she was willing to go toe to toe with Dynamight over you. You absolutely need to find out this girl’s name when you’re done dealing with the obvious blond problem in front of you.

“Fifteen minutes is a lot more than a second–”

“I’m so, so sorry, he’s an idiot. No social skills,” you cut him off, turning to her apologetically. You can feel Bakugou’s frown deepening in offense, but you ignore him.

“It’s okay,” she says, shooting Bakugou a look so scathing you have to stifle a chuckle. “Do you still need me to hold the bathroom?”

“No–”

“Yes,” Bakugou says at the same time. All the women in line groan in exasperation, and he turns his angry face to them, causing a few to blanche. “Oh, fuck off. Go piss in the men’s room.”

“We don’t need the bathroom,” you hiss at him, grabbing him by the wrist to tug him closer to you. “Why are you making a scene?”

“I need to talk to you without all these fucking extras eavesdropping,” he spits back, gesturing wildly at the line of women you’re attempting to usher towards the restroom.

“Speak to– w-why?” you splutter, looking up at him in surprise.

Bakugou scoffs, returning to his full height and looking around until his eyes find purchase on a red emergency exit sign. He mutters about you being so damn difficult under his breath, but takes your hand none-too-gently anyway, tugging you towards the exit until you’re bathed in the erratic lights of the city at night, feeling the breeze lick mercilessly at your bare legs. Once he’s dragged you outside, Bakugou simply drops you, leaning against the dirty brick with his arms crossed over his chest and staring at you accusingly. Your patience thins.

“You’ve got some nerve, Bakugou. What was that?” You cross your arms right back at him, trying to play it off as if you’re not just trying to shield yourself against the cold. He’s unrepentant, brushing your question off.

“Why are you holing up in the bathroom like some freak in the middle of a party? You’re acting like fucking Icy Hot.”

“I just needed a second,” you grit out, scowling. “What about that is so hard?”

“What freaked you out? Your shitbag ex say something?” He’s watching you as he speaks, as if the furrow between your brows can be decoded somehow if he stares at it long enough, as if you’re hiding a secret in the irritated tapping of your index finger against your bare arm.

“Nothing,” you say harshly, rubbing your arms up and down your shoulders. “Can we be done here? It’s freezing–”

Bakugou levels an irritated glare at you. “I’ve seen you boil a man alive. You’re a pro, figure it out.”

You bite into your lip, embarrassed, and take a moment to close your eyes. Adjusting the temperature of your own blood, especially to a minute degree, is tricky business, and landed you in the recovery ward more than once back in school. You’ve mastered it now, as he knows, just with a bit of concentration. Bakugou waits impatiently.

“Okay,” you breathe, taking him in. He really is gorgeous like this, angry and hot to the touch and easy to admire in a way you don’t let yourself do often. You miss the hope you had that night, the hope garnered when gentle hands touched you and you let yourself think there was more to him than what he let you see. “Spit whatever’s on your mind out already. Clearly you want to be out here for a while if you’re making me work for it.”

Bakugou smirks, but his heart’s not in it. He’s tense, you realize belatedly, and that makes your stomach drop. “Depends.”

“On?”

“Do you know what today is?”

Your heart stops. You dodge. “Sunday.”

Bakugou scowls at you. “Don’t play stupid. Doesn’t suit you.”

He’s skirting dangerously close to giving you a compliment, so you bite. “Today is the day the hero rankings were updated for the year.”

“Right.” Bakugou nods. He pushes off the wall, not coming closer, exactly, but he’s standing unsupported now. Your breath catches in your chest. “I moved up.”

“Three spots,” you agree, trying very hard not to appear affected and mostly failing. He’s the one with his back to the wall, but you feel cornered as you watch the way his hands flex around his sizable biceps. 

“I’m in the top ten now,” Bakugou says bluntly. He takes a step forward this time, and you step back in turn, wincing when your body involuntarily admits your weakness.

“I know.” Your voice sounds labored. Bakugou takes notice, tilting his head curiously.

“You said something to me,” he finally blurts, face unreadable, “years ago. You remember?”

You swallow thickly. You’re back in his dorm room, the last morning he would ever spend in it, screaming at him like you weren’t wearing his shirt.

“Of course no one can know,” Bakugou spits, running a hand through his sleep-addled hair. “Especially not Ei.”

“We broke up two months ago,” you bite back, scowling.

“I’m his best. Friend,” Bakugou growls, pointing at himself. The fact that this particularly fucked situation is probably the only context he’d ever admit that out loud makes you roll your eyes.

“I don’t even know what I was thinking–”

“Don’t sit there on your fuckin’ high horse.” Bakugou’s in your face before you can think, that slightly crooked finger now pointed accusingly at your chest. “You were down my throat before I could say no.”

“Oh?” Your temper flares, and you’ve got an identical finger pointed between the meeting of his collarbones, face scrunched. “You were the one who left these on my neck! What do you have to say for yourself when I’m sitting here looking like I slept with a horned up vampire?”

“Bad judgment call,” Bakugou hisses.

You can feel the humiliating crumble of your face, the way your body suddenly flinches away from him. There’s a moment, a brief, thunderous moment when you can see regret flicker in his eyes, when his jaw stutters almost like an apology is clawing at his teeth. It’s too late, anyhow. You have one of those irreparable wounds now, the ones you hear your non-hero friends talk about in your increasingly sparse conversations about their boyfriends. It’s deep, down in your gut. Bad judgment call.

“Fuck you,” you whisper, backing away from him and scraping your bra off the floor. “Fuck you.”

“Again?” Bakugou quirks an eyebrow, and if you had any more years of experience, you’d see the guilt staining his cheeks red, you’d hear the rasp coloring his sarcasm the wrong shade of blue. You’re young, though, and vicious to boot.

“I’m glad I got it out of the way, actually,” you say, voice low and venomous. Bakugou’s eyebrows lift, and you relish in his surprise, ready to jab the knife in deep while he’s belly-up. “It’s a relief to find out you’re such a disappointment.”

Bakugou almost stumbles. He sways, and that’s enough. His face contorts, ugly and angry and maybe even a little fearful. You don’t care; you’re too busy gathering your dress off the floor and stifling tears.

He finally regains his composure, scoffing at you. “We’ll see about that when you come crawling back for more.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Liar,” Bakugou says through gritted teeth. You’ll wonder later if he’s trying to take a shot at you, or himself.

“Okay, fine.” You stand up, eyes blazing and hands full of the clothes he’d slowly stripped you of not eight hours ago. “The day you make the top 10. That’s when I’ll come ‘crawling back’.”

Bakugou coughs out a laugh, the usual cocky mask he wears settling into place with what appears to be conscious effort. “Yeah? Hope your schedule’s clear next year, princess.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about it,” you scoff, reaching for the door handle. “It’ll never. Fucking. Happen. Good luck, asshole.”

It strikes you again how damning it is that you remember the entire exchange, word for word. So much life has taken place between then and now. You’re two capable pro heroes now, signed to your respective agencies. Bakugou—Dynamight, you unwittingly correct yourself—dove between you and a nasty shot from a villain’s quirk just last week. You (against the half-decent advice from your PR agency) forced yourself close enough to boil a villain that was inches away from putting a knife through Dynamight’s jugular last year. It made global headlines, good and bad. You’ve both got apartments, an entire space where you live your day to day life that the other has never seen. You’ve dated other people, you’ve been reported on, you’ve done the motions. You both made it, and in the background, the day you swore would never come approached, quietly and lethally. You blink at Bakugou.

“I remember.” Your voice is shaky, and you force yourself to look away.

“It happened.” There’s a sobering lack of smugness in his voice. You hadn’t even noticed him coming closer, too lost in your reverie, and now, when you glance up, he’s close enough to bite. “Top ten.”

“I know,” you say, wishing he would just get to the point, give you anything to move forward with. Bakugou’s eyes are unreadable as he glares down at you.

“You promised me something.” It seems like it takes effort for him to say it, his breath moving heavy in his chest. You hadn’t dared to think he might be as on edge as you, but there’s questionable evidence. “But I don’t take consolation prizes.”

He knows you too well. Your hair-trigger temper kicks behind your ribs, determined to hold onto your pride, even if it’s with white knuckles. You frown at him determinedly. “I’m a big girl. We made a bet.”

Bakugou angles his head down, coming close enough to really look at you. Despite your longstanding intolerance for one another, you work together often, something from your agencies about how good the obvious friction is for your media profiles. More than that, your quirks actually work nicely in tandem, and sometimes, your ability to predict his movements, to rely on the familiarity you have with the subtleties of his body, is the only thing that saves you from an early grave. It’s habit for you to watch him, something as bone deep as knowing when to take your next breath.

He still moves like the apex predator he is, ungodly muscles strung taut as a bow beneath that pretty dress shirt, but you’re so close you can see the gold of his chain glinting in the low light with the movement of his labored breath. You shiver when he cuffs his fist, drags war-worn knuckles along the length of your bare arm. Goosebumps appear in the wake of his touch as his breath warms your forehead.

“Still cold?” His voice is gravelly when he speaks, knotted behind his Adam’s apple. You swallow thickly, but steel your resolve. 

“Nope.” 

You hold his gaze, getting the distinct impression that he’s testing you for something. You want to pass whatever arbitrary test he’s putting you through, and you immediately kick yourself at how easily he’s got you rolling over. In your defense, Bakugou is truly a sight to see up close: the sharp angle of his jaw, the elegant slope of his nose, the intensity of his crimson eyes.

Bakugou leans down ever so slightly, ghosts his lips over your temple. You can smell the burnt sweetness of his quirk, thinly veiled by his cologne. Your breath is caught in your chest, every muscle locked. You’ve had calmer moments staring down the barrel of a gun.

“I’m not going to pretend like I don’t want this,” Bakugou speaks quietly, “but I don’t want it if you have to pretend like you do.”

You think for a moment, throat constricting around your ego as you force it down. You wince when your words hit the air, airy and all-too-telling.

“I won’t have to pretend.”

Bakugou stiffens, nods silently. When he takes a step back from you—and you release a breath so massive it’s humiliating—his eyes are unreadable, but the corner of his mouth quirks up.

“S’that why you wore that fucking cocktail napkin?” Bakugou gestures at your dress vaguely, grinning in anticipation of your reaction. It’s whiplash to go from admitting to Bakugou that you actually would very much enjoy fucking him to him insulting you, but it’s familiar. Your face screws up in a scowl.

“Are you going to be this big of a dick throughout this entire process?”

The accidental double entendre makes you frown harder, and Bakugou barks out a laugh. It breaks the tension, if anything, so you let it slide, chuckling along with him.

“Probably.” He shrugs, looking you up and down with far less subtlety now that he knows he’s got the green light. You try to look like you aren’t enjoying it, foot tapping impatiently.

“It’s still my big night,” he finally says, gesturing towards the door and not even trying to hide how smug he looks. “Come help me celebrate?” 

All you can do is scoff, half of the magic of the prior moment gone and the other half pooling hot and molten between your hips.

“Just be subtle, please,” you sneer, mostly to cover up how obviously flustered you are. You stomp ahead of him before he can put you back under whatever godforsaken spell he’d just managed, heels wobbling under your hard steps.

The atmosphere of the club is unwelcome to your frayed senses, the bass thudding through the walls almost makes you wince. The sweet bathroom attendant waves excitedly at you when you walk past, and you offer her a wave back and a mouthed word of thanks, unable to stifle the laugh that comes flying out of you when she scowls at Bakugou.

“Not making any new fans, I see,” you say over your shoulder, alarmed when you realize just how hot on your heels Bakugou is. He presses a warm hand to your hip to guide you through the crowd, and you bite deeply into your lip to suppress the gasp he wouldn’t be able to hear.

“She has shitty taste in heroes, anyway.” Bakugou grins wickedly when you turn around mid-stride to glare at him, pressing harder against your back to urge you forward. Your heart thuds in your throat as you have the silent march back to the table to ruminate on just what you’re in for— you’re going to spend the night between Bakugou’s sheets. Bakugou, your most consistent hero partner and the bane of your personal life. Your stomach rolls in anticipation.

“Welcome back!” Kirishima shouts with a smile that’s almost believably oblivious, red eyes flitting between you and Bakugou suspiciously.

“Are you okay?” Mina and Ochaco ask simultaneously, the latter of the two pulling you into her lap. You pause, glancing at Bakugou, who nods ever so slightly.

“I think so,” you say weakly, putting on an air of exhaustion as your nerves buzz beneath your skin, far too conscious of Bakugou’s intense gaze. “I feel really lightheaded. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”

“What?” Ochaco pouts, pressing the back of her hand to your forehead. “Oh, you do feel pretty warm, actually.”

You frown slightly before you remember— you haven’t turned your temperature back down since stepping outside. All the better then.

“Did you hit my vape? I have a press thing tomorrow!” Denki gasps, looking at the grape flavored bar in his hand like it’s burned him. You roll your eyes, waving him off.

“I think I just need some rest,” you say, wincing sheepishly at your friends. “Are you guys going to kill me if I call it a night?”

“Of course not.” Mina pats your hand, smiling so kindly at you that you can feel guilt spreading under the current of your nerves. “Do you need—”

“I’ll call a car,” Bakugou interrupts, bringing the rhythm of the group to a stuttering halt. The blonde that had enjoyed a prior residency on his thigh glances at her friends, disappointment in her smoky eyes. The annoyed glare she shoots at you makes the situation a little too real, and you snuggle into Ochaco’s shoulder to mask the tension on your face. Mina gapes at him. 

“What?”

“Car,” Bakugou emphasizes, scowling at her. “You want her to walk home? I’m leaving, anyway.”

“I guess not,” Ochaco says, looking between you both strangely. Your eyes widen ever so slightly in warning, but Bakugou’s unreadable, clicking away on his phone. Even Kirishima sits up, frowning.

“But Katsuki, bro, it’s your big night!”

“Yeah, and I came.” Bakugou rolls his eyes, putting his phone away. “I have an early patrol. Thanks for the bubbles.

“You’re…welcome?” Mina stutters, staring at you. “You’re good? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I guess I’ll take whatever help I can get.” You’re on your feet now, more than ready to just get the hell out of here, even if the next location that awaits you is unthinkable. You aren’t sure when Bakugou became so bold; you’ve seen him pick up women before, always talking lowly in their ear with one of those damn hands pressed to the small of their back, granting them a rare smile in some dark corner away from your friends. Yet, here he is practically parading you out like a damn showhorse.

Goodbyes are exchanged with varying degrees of awkwardness; you hold no qualms that your friends aren’t observant enough to notice something is up, but that’s a tomorrow problem. You and Bakugou have experience building a cover story in the light of day, anyway. He doesn’t touch you as you walk before him, not even through the crowd. There’s a pointed absence there; you aren’t sure if you want him to put his hand back on your hip, your back, but you miss the warmth.

Bakugou ushers you both through a side door, smartly avoiding the path out through the front onto the sidewalk. God forbid the paparazzi get a shot of Entropy and Dynamight ducking out of the club. Early. Together. The side door spits you out in the garage, and in typical douchey, Bakugou fashion, a black Mercedes pulls up almost instantly. You almost have to stifle a laugh when Bakugou opens the door for you, glaring at the chauffeur when he tries to get out and do it himself.

The air inside the car is stifling. The seats are laid out so you and Bakugou sit on opposite sides of the SUV, facing each other. You hold your little clutch tightly in your lap, staring right back at Bakugou, whose eyes haven’t left you since the door shut. You tilt your head in the direction of the driver, raising an eyebrow.

“He works for me,” Bakugou says gruffly, understanding your question without needing to hear it. He shuffles around in the armrest next to him, producing two small bottles of water. He tosses one your way carelessly, cracking the lid of his own. “If you have something to say, say it.”

Charmer, you think, trying not to roll your eyes. “Where are we going?”

“My place,” Bakugou answers simply, bringing the bottle to his lips. It’s all very clinical, how suddenly you’ve ended up in the backseat of a car with him on the way to his mysterious apartment that he forbids any of you from visiting.

“Really?” You cross your arms over your chest, feeling very exposed in your little dress outside the forgiving darkness of the club. Bakugou’s eyes dart to your thighs briefly, but he brings them back to your face with enough speed that you don’t dare to call him out on it. You wonder how much of the spark you’d felt in the alley has carried into the car, skin still hot even as he’s several feet away from you. “Thought it was off limits?”

“What, you thought I was going to fuck you in the car and send you on your way?” Bakugou scoffs. The brashness of it catches in your throat, your eyes wide. It makes him smirk, how startled you are.

“No,” you spit back, trying to recover. This is familiar: Bakugou acting like a dick, and you digging your claws into him in return. “I didn’t really think about the logistics of this because I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

“I was ranked twelfth just last year,” Bakugou points out, still smirking at you. You have no retort, feeling just how inevitable this night always was sinking heavy in your stomach. You’re forced to concede, crossing your arms over your chest with a little huff and looking out of the window beside you.

The rest of the short ride passes in weighted silence. It turns out Bakugou doesn’t live that far from The Drop– you’re still in the middle of mentally cataloguing the various ways in which this is a terrible idea when you feel the car pausing to allow the arm of another parking garage to let you in. You look at Bakugou, eyebrows raised—this is a pricey district, after all—but he’s just looking out of the window, watching the concrete blocks of the underside of his home come into view.

The years have been kind to him– physically, at least. You can admit it within the private recesses of your mind: Bakugou is intimidatingly hot, so much so that it’s practically chafing against your skin. He looks like a fucking model, pretty red eyes cut sharply into the angular structure of his face, strong nose, high cheekbones, and god, the rare occasions he does smile can knock you on your knees if you’re not careful. That’s not even counting the musculature he’s packing below the neck. You try to swallow, but it gets stuck in your throat as the knowledge of what’s to come runs hot in your bloodstream. You’re actually going through with this.

Bakugou thanks the man curtly, passing a folded bill into the waiting hand over the driver’s seat. He opens his own door again, offering a hand to you to help you clamber out of the SUV. The elevator’s right there, and Bakugou presses the button, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

“You good?” He coughs lightly into his hand, still avoiding your eyes.

“What?” You hadn’t realized he’d actually been picking up on the quiet tension. It’s easier to imagine Bakugou as an uncaring ass, but you do know him, and you know how intuitive he is. You hope he can’t feel the anxiety rolling off you in waves.

“You’re quiet,” he says by way of explanation. When you pause, he grins a little. “Not saying I don’t like it, but it’s weird.”

You shove at him in an uncharacteristically playful manner, a bit of the tension bleeding out of you. He even gets a little laugh out of you, and your breath finally starts to come easier. “I’m not being weird, you asshole. This is weird.”

“Is it?” Bakugou hums, gesturing for you to step into the elevator when it arrives. You wish so badly Mina could be here to see this: Bakugou, the perfect gentleman, and you, his lovely leading lady. It’s hard not to laugh again as the doors close behind you.

“I didn’t think you remembered.” It’s a quiet admission when you let it leave you. It hangs in the stale air of the elevator, your breath caught in your chest as Bakugou considers it, eyeing you all the while as you travel upwards toward the inevitable. He leans against the opposite wall, crossing his arms over his chest and making his biceps bulge in a way that feels entirely unfair. The way he’s looking at you very abruptly concentrates all of your feelings into something…hot, moving slow through your veins. All that tension you’d felt behind the bar was nothing compared to this, this molten feeling pooling between your hips.

“Did you remember?” Bakugou tilts his head. You track the angle of his shoulder, the minute degree he’s lowered his jaw to.

“Yes,” you whisper, finding his eye contact more and more smothering by the second. You opt out, glancing up to the numbers increasing far too slowly as you travel up, floor by floor.

“Why wouldn’t I, then?” Bakugou’s harshness bleeds into his question, like he doesn’t understand why you’d think he’d forgotten. Seeing him now, in this light, seeing the impatience that’s growing more and more obvious in him, you don’t know why you thought that, either.

You’re bailed out of answering when the elevator doors finally ding open, letting you both out on the twenty-seventh floor. You try not to wobble on your heels as Bakugou lets you exit first, then takes the lead, digging in his pocket to find his keys. The doors are few and far between on this floor, suggesting large apartments. You almost regret what you’re here for; the prospect of being the boots-on-the-ground journalist to snoop through Bakugou’s apartment on behalf of your friends is almost as enticing as the idea of sleeping with him. When you reach his door, Bakugou pauses with the key in the lock to look at you, eyes sweeping over your face. He’s close, close enough that you can see something in his eyes, something you’ve never seen before and don’t have the language to define. It shoots through you like lightning, steals your breath.

“You good?” It’s your last out and you recognize it as such. The gaze he locks you in on is laser-focused, so intense that you have to consciously remember how to move your mouth when you respond.

“Open the door, Bakugou.”

Bakugou practically shudders when you address him directly, the first sign he’s starting to crack under the pressure, same as you. You have no idea what awaits you, positive that there’s been significant changes in the years since you laid under a nervous teenage boy, but you step forward, anyway. It’s time you admit to yourself that you’re curious, chomping at the bit, even.

Bakugou’s apartment is almost totally dark when you step in. The only light source is  an overly warm, almost orange lamp propped tastefully on a table that spans the length of the back of his couch. You don’t get the chance to pry too much due to the low lighting, likely by design, you think with a pang of annoyance. Bakugou’s surprisingly quick to back you against the wall, finally making use of the size advantage he has over you, the breadth of him caging you against the wall by his front door. The proximity should be startling, but you’re too ready for this to care; too many of the mental walls you have preventing this from sneaking into your most forbidden fantasies have already fallen.

“I…” Bakugou leans down, drags his nose along your cheek, “have been waiting for this. For fucking years.”

He doesn’t kiss you, not yet. He just lets his hands skirt over the skimpy fabric that’s serving as your last layer of protection. You’re beyond saving, you think, as you gasp, arching forward into his touch.

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bakugou says, as if it’s the most simple thing in the world. Your heart pounds in your throat, nipples pebbling against the thin, black cotton. His hands continue their maddening path, shaking with a tremor you’ve come to recognize from the field. It overtakes him when he’s rearing up for a good fight, usually alongside that vicious grin the magazines love so much. You’re dizzy. “Years of putting up with your ass, lettin’ you pick fights, talk shit to the press, but I knew you’d end up here eventually. Knew I’d earn it.”

You can feel the satisfaction in his voice, smooth as honey with a burn like liquor. Knew I’d earn it echoes around in your head with what should be alarming significance, but you can’t dig into it at the moment because the sharp smoke of his cologne has you leaning your chin up, inadvertently asking for him to kiss you. A slip of the hand, and your eyes widen. Bakugou chuckles under his breath, his hands finally coming to rest on your ribcage.

“You want it, too, huh?” Bakugou murmurs, fanning the flames of the humiliation raging in your chest. He taps your nose with his, letting you feel just how close his lips are. “You want me?”

The whispered yes hardly makes it past your mouth when Bakugou’s on you, licking into your mouth like he’s been waiting on it all night. He swallows your gasp easily, one hand coming to splay between your shoulder blades, shoving your chest flush to his. The other fists in the hair at the nape of your neck, keeping you tilted up to him so he can run his tongue along your teeth, nip at your lip. He’s incredible at this—of course he is—kissing the breath out of you until you’re practically mewling into his mouth, feeding the ego that has him grinning against you between kisses.

Your hands run over his arms, his shoulders, his chest, pressing your fingers greedily into each deep line that marks the curvature of his muscle. Bakugou’s body isn’t unfamiliar to you; you can’t count the number of times you felt his chest on your back during a narrow save, the number of times you’ve felt the pressure of his strength during a training exercise, but this— this is completely new. One of his thighs comes to press insistently between your legs, and it takes all the willpower in you to hold your hips back from rubbing yourself over the strong muscle you know to be there, the muscle you’ve felt for yourself in an entirely different context. When Bakugou pulls away, he takes a string of spit and a keening, whiny sound from you with him, panting as he looks down on you, hand still harshly fisted in your hair.

“Good?” Bakugou huffs, licking his lips. You’re too far gone now, words shooting out before you can stop yourself.

“Where’s your bedroom?” You’re embarrassingly out of breath. Bakugou cocks an eyebrow at you in surprise, and you’re not so far gone that you don’t roll your eyes at him. “If you’ve been waiting for this so damn long, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of saying it was bad.”

Bakugou groans and laughs all at once, which is, unfortunately, devastatingly hot. He uses the hand in your hair to bring you close to him again, dropping down for another deep, harsh kiss. “Come on, then.”

Existing in a space in which most of the people you regularly interact with are superpowered freaks should mean you’re less surprised when Bakugou easily lifts you, but the squeak you let out is undignified to say the least. You lose one heel on the initial hoist it takes him to throw you over his shoulder, and the other is torn off by Bakugou and tossed carelessly to the side.

“Those were $600, you ass,” you seethe through your teeth, trying to bite back the butterflies swarming in your stomach as he carries you to his bedroom. You try to rationalize: Of course Bakugou can carry you, you’ve seen the guy bench 450 fucking pounds. It does nothing to quell the giddy, electric arousal zipping up and down your nerve endings.

“Well they better not leave a $600 mark on my wall,” Bakugou snips back, but you can hear the gravel in his voice. You aren’t sure what’s hotter: how absolutely insane this entire situation is, or how turned on by it he seems.

You wriggle in his grip until you can bend at the hip over his shoulder, completely abandoning your idea of using this as an opportunity to squint in the dark and make out anything about his apartment—torture devices, spiked furniture—in favor of sinking your teeth into the hard flesh of his hip. There’s barely enough give in the muscle for you to properly bite into it, but it makes Bakugou jump all the same.

“You little fucking– did you just bite me?”

You bite into your lip now, smug. “Hope that doesn’t leave a mark either, then.”

Bakugou practically kicks open the door he’s reached, and a dirty thrill runs down your spine as he carries you over the threshold of his bedroom and sets you down unceremoniously, hands steady on your hips to make sure you don’t wobble. He leans down to press his hot mouth back to yours, only moving his hands from you for a second to slick his shirt off. You let him press hot, open-mouthed kisses against your mouth even through the awkward movements of him wrangling the silk off his shoulders, keening into the kiss as he nips harshly at your bottom lip, payback that draws a breathy chuckle from you.

You want to keep playing with him as your confidence returns, pushing him, and you act boldly; one hand comes between his legs, palming over the bulge you find. Jackpot— Bakugou’s lips stutter against yours helplessly as a grunt from him breaks the rhythm of your kiss.

“Oh,” you simper, pulling away just enough to bat your eyes at him. “Having fun?”

“Yeah, you got me hard. Happy?” Bakugou says impatiently, but the heavy breathing in his chest takes the bite out of his words. You don’t respond, peppering a series of kisses along his jaw, down the strong column of his throat and over his Adam’s apple, humming under your breath when you feel his fingers tighten around the flesh of your hips.

You lean into the rush of it, the high of having a literal killing machine strung tight under the lightest touch you can manage. Before you know it, you’ve dropped to your knees before him, prompting a sound from him that’s somewhere between a guttural groan and a gasp of surprise.

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m going to,” you say simply, bringing one hand up to the button of his pants. You pause, and look up at him, biting your lip innocently. “Unless you don’t want me to?”

Bakugou practically rolls his eyes. “Yes— fuck, yeah, of course I want you to, but—”

“Then let me,” you say, your smile beginning to infect your voice as you work his fly open. He’s big, you can tell already as you rub gently over his boxer briefs, warm to the touch and so hard it feels like it hurts. “You earned it, right?”

The noise that escapes Bakugou this time is far closer to a whimper than you know he’d like to admit. 

It takes you one solid breath to muster the confidence to join Bakugou in the effort of ridding him of his slacks and underwear, but you can feel the saliva pool wantingly in your mouth when you return to your kneeling height only to be met with a face full of Bakugou’s cock. You almost want to groan at how much you hate this; of course he’s perfect. Red tip drooling for you, fat and weighty when you wrap your hand around it. A tentative pump of your fingers down the shaft has him grunting above you, and has you squeezing your thighs together, thanking your lucky stars you’d thought to go down on him.

You lick carefully at the head, eyes rolling back at the saltiness of his precum, how silky the skin here feels under your tongue. Your hesitance doesn’t last long; it only takes you a few moments to stick your tongue out fully, grabbing him by the base and rubbing the head over the flat surface of your tongue.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Bakugou grits out, sounding almost panicked at how easily you’re plucking the control of the situation from him, string by string. You’ve been so occupied with his cock you almost forgot about the man attached to it, and you flick your eyes up towards him, eager to watch his undoing. What a sight you’re met with.

You want to commit it to memory, the image of Katsuki Bakugou—of Dynamight, even—completely undone above you. Bakugou’s head is lolled lazily on his neck, chin to the sky as deep breaths rock his core. His hands are uncharacteristically tentative as one pets over your hair, the other planted firmly on the wall behind you as he leans into the warmth of your mouth. His abs contract and shudder, skin twitching over steel muscle like a racehorse. Bakugou notices your pause and tilts his head down to take you in, one thick string of drool connecting your wet lips to his cock. He narrows his pretty eyes at you, smirking cruelly, and you think it’s cosmically unfair for someone to be this fucking attractive.

“You like watchin’?” He questions you softly, bringing his thumb to your lips.

You follow his cue and suck his finger in, moaning around it as the taste of burnt caramel greets you; his quirk, you realize. It’s mind-numbingly hot to have it in your mouth, the force of explosions powerful enough to level a city dripping down the back of your throat. Bakugou’s answering groan sounds pained, especially when he drags his thumb in and out of your mouth, massaging your tongue.

“You don’t know how many times I thought about you like this,” he confesses, pressing his thumb deep into your throat, testing for your gag reflex. “When I was some punkass teenager who got lucky enough to get into your pants, when we’re on patrol and you snap at me, watchin’ you run around with all those fucking extras you insist on dating.”

You can’t even gasp in surprise, too preoccupied with the hypnotic motion of Bakugou’s thumb still stroking slow and steady over your tongue. There’s a furrow between his brows as he watches you absorb the information, and a gratified upturn at the corner of his mouth when he realizes you’re choosing to keep his thumb in your mouth instead of smarting off to him. His smile widens, darkens, and you realize he’s slowly palming his cock beside your face, almost like he’s sizing you up next to it. The thought sends a fresh current of arousal rocketing through you.

“I could just take a picture.” Bakugou rubs his wet thumb over your cheek, almost lovingly, even as you let out an indignant squeak. He strokes his cock slowly in front of your face, fingers carding into your hair. “You want it?”

You nod eagerly, letting your jaw open wide in lieu of an answer. That’s all it takes for him to push forward into the soft, warm cavern of your mouth, stretching your kiss-swollen lips around the girth of his cock. You keep your eyes on him, watching as he lets his own jaw drop slightly, letting the sight of you, mouth stuffed with him, really settle in his mind. He’s not afraid to thrust forward into your throat, to tap the sensitive back and pull increasingly large gags out of you, one hand now fisted in your hair. You know him well enough to know he’s still taking it easy on you, but he seems to be enjoying finding your limits, see how far your body will allow him before you hunch over with a particularly harsh gag. He fucks into your mouth not roughly, but firmly, with a slow, pointed rhythm– you get the distinct impression that he’s less interested in the act itself than he is the fact that it’s you doing it, you perched on your knees and starting to let little moans eek out every time his cock kisses the back of your throat.

Drool is beginning to leak out of where you’re connected, collecting in a little puddle on the cliff of your chin and pouring in long strings over onto your chest, your dress, your knees. Bakugou’s free hand comes to swipe at the mess below where you’ve got his cock nestled firmly in your mouth, collecting some of your sticky, thick saliva on his fingers. When he brings his hand up to his mouth, sucking off the evidence of his cock in your mouth, you moan in earnest, eyes fluttering as you rub your thighs together wantonly. It’s so…depraved, so un-Bakugou the way you’ve always imagined him, and above all, it’s hot. Bakugou chuckles, letting his cock free from your throat with a lewd pop.

“Gettin’ lonely down there?”

You have to cough before you can answer, something that gratifies Bakugou endlessly if his face is anything to go by. “You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

“Well, if I knew what that mouth could do, I would’ve stopped telling you to shut it years ago.”

You laugh dryly as Bakugou helps you to stand. Your gut instinct is to adjust your absolutely ruined hair, wipe your face, swipe at the eyeliner that’s surely bleeding down your cheeks, but Bakugou stops you with the look he gives you, grabbing you by the jaw.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Bakugou says quietly, eyes flickering over your face as he smiles disbelievingly, “but you look so goddamn good like this. Even better than I imagined.”

Your momentary insecurity gets stuck in your throat, your entire body freezing as you watch him take you in. It’s a short moment, blessedly– Bakugou reaches around you and easily finds the zipper that holds your cocktail dress snug around your body, he hesitates for the shortest second, giving you one last chance to make the easy choice, to deny him access to your body and walk out, to call a car and wind up snug in your bed. You remain nestled firmly against him, shimmying subtly as if you’re asking him. As if you’re inviting him. Once your dress is in a puddle on the floor, it takes Bakugou no time to lift you by the waist, practically tossing you onto his bed. A giggle leaves you when you bounce, giddy and almost relieved to be shucked of your restrictive dress; the only thing that hides any part of you from him now is your g-string.

“Orange?” Bakugou cocks an eyebrow at you as he lays his strong body over yours, snapping the thin strap of your panties as he stretches himself out. Your cheeks heat, face scrunching indignantly.

“It’s peach. And it was a coincidence–”

Bakugou cuts you off with a sharp laugh. “Yeah, right. Little surprise just for me, more like.”

“Fuck you,” you hiss, trying to retain your dignity as one of his strong hands comes to palm the fat of your breast, thumb toying with your nipple. Bakugou grins, wide and unabashed.

“You’re about to,” he says, not waiting for your response before ducking down to drag his tongue roughly along the pebbled peak of your nipple, tearing a ragged gasp from you. “God, these fucking tits.”

You can’t formulate a proper response, pinned beneath him as he eagerly takes your nipple in his mouth, sucking harshly and pulling back to flatten his tongue and lick in earnest. His free hand wraps around your torso to find its former home between your shoulder blades, splaying wide and pushing you up to arch for him, forcing you to press your breasts into his face. His teeth sink into the fat underside of your breast as he sucks a dark bruise into the flesh, drawing a haggard moan from you. 

Satisfied, he switches sides. When his hand comes back around your body, you assume it’s to grab at the tit he’d just moved from, but it travels down your body, squeezing at your hip before finally coming to rest just over the orange fabric that’s quickly growing damp.

“Bakugou–” you gasp in surprise, even as your body betrays you, unintentionally twitching up towards his touch. Bakugou shoots you a look, even as his teeth are gently clamped around your nipple.

“Little formal,” he grumbles, properly pressing two fingers down against your panties. You’re soaked, you can feel it in proper when he presses the fabric into you, rubbing little circles over your clothed clit.

“K-Katsuki.” Your brain protests, the natural instinct of a decade of dealing with Bakugou threatening anyone who uses his given name, anyone but Kirishima, anyway. To your surprise—and satisfaction—a deep groan rumbles through Bakugou’s frame when you stutter his name out; he rewards you by slipping his fingers beneath your underwear, sliding them through your wet folds eagerly. You choke on a moan, one hand darting to lock itself around his wrist– you don’t know if you mean to move his hand away, or pull it closer.

“Too much?” Bakugou—Katsuki—murmurs, kissing his way up your chest to lick up your neck, nip at your jawline. Your fingers wrapped desperately around his wrist do nothing to deter his slow, steady movements between your legs; you always forget just how damn strong he is.

“Uh-uh,” you manage, shaking your head urgently. When he’s back over you properly, he’s staring down at you, so intense it almost takes your breath away. You almost wonder what he’s looking for, until he answers your unspoken question: one long, calloused finger sinks into you, pulling a long whine from your chest. Your eyes flutter shut, but you can hear him suck in a breath above you.

“Fuck– fuck yeah. You’re so wet,” Bakugou mutters, mostly to himself, you think. “When’d you get this worked up? In the car? Back at the club?”

“I’m not answering that,” you grit out, even as your hips cant eagerly up into his hand. You’re so wet that the second finger he slides in meets little resistance; you relish the stretch, cunt fluttering happily around the intrusion. Bakugou smirks, curling his fingers up and intentionally stroking along that spot you can feel deep in your stomach. You choke out another moan, turning your head to hide in his shoulder as he dismantles you.

“Can’t wait to feel you wrapped around my cock,” Katsuki continues, scissoring his fingers inside of you. “Can’t believe how fucking wet you are, and it’s all for me. Bet you hate it, don’t you?”

You do hate it, at least a little. You could snap back at him, but your body’s making it pointless. You’re so wet it’s smeared between your thighs, coating Bakugou’s palm, and as silence envelops the two of you, you hear it– a soft, wet sound, produced by the combination of Bakugou’s rhythmic thrusting and your undeniably soaked cunt. You untuck your face from his neck, eyes wide in horror as Bakugou’s grin grows, the noises of his ministrations growing louder as he speeds up, just to drive home the humiliation heating your face.

“Listen to that,” Bakugou whispers, smugness lighting every sharp feature of his handsome face. “S’like she’s talking to me.”

“Oh my god, can you shut up,” you murmur, hand flying over your face to mask your embarrassment. Katsuki’s not having it, pinning your arm above your head with frightening speed. He’s properly in your face now, forcing you to look him right in the eye as the coil behind your belly button starts to grow tighter and tighter.

“I don’t think you want me to,” Katsuki counters, placing a jarringly soft kiss on the corner of your mouth. He’s still smirking down at you, but you know he can feel how your body’s starting to shake, how your walls are clamping down on him. “Sure doesn’t feel like you want me to. Down here it feels like you want to cum.”

“No,” you gasp out, even as his fingers begin to press harder against that one spot—that he found far too quickly—that has you spiraling, clenching around him. “No.”

“No?” Katsuki doesn’t stop, but he slows, quirking one eyebrow at you curiously. “You don’t want to cum?”

“Not like this,” you choke out, able to regain some of your bearings as he slows his pace. Katsuki slips his fingers out of you, blessedly content to just rub small circles over your clit. He watches you curiously, watches the way your eyes dart from his eyes down to his cock, hard and waiting. He furrows his brow, but you can see the moment realization lights up in the red of his eyes, and the grin that curls on his face is nothing short of evil. He’s going to make you say it.

“Oh?” Katsuki’s circles slow even further, like he knows you need the extra brainpower to form the full sentence he wants. “What do you want?”

“Katsuki,” you whine, trying to appeal to him with his given name. His tongue flickers out over his bottom lip, but he holds his ground.

“What do you want?” He repeats himself, staring down at you intensely. You have no doubts that he’ll give you what you want, but you know he’s not going down without a fight. Your eyes narrow at him, before you sigh.

“I want to cum with…with you inside me. Please.” Your voice is low, ashamed, but Katsuki’s face lights up.

“Look how nice you can be,” Katsuki says, far too amused. He’s slipped his hand out from your panties now, and you groan, smacking at his chest in annoyance.

“You’re such a dick.”

“Yeah,” he admits, bringing his fingers up to suck you off of them. His eyes close, a blissful hum rumbling in his chest. “Fuck.”

“Taste good?” It’s your turn to smirk up at him, choosing to ignore the nervous current of arousal that floods you as Katsuki slides your g-string down your legs. In lieu of an answer, he leans down and buries his tongue in your cunt abruptly, making you gasp and jump. Katsuki laves his tongue through your wet folds, kissing sloppily over your pussy. When he stretches his body over yours again, hips slotting between your thighs, his smile is wet, slick with the damning evidence of how turned on you are.

“See for yourself.” Katuski licks into your mouth just how he’d licked into your cunt, and you moan openly into his kiss, practically sucking the taste of yourself off his tongue. He echoes a groan back into your mouth, one strong hand carding through your hair and tugging gently, forcing you to open up further for him. The accidental swipe of his cock through your folds makes you gasp, pulling back. Katsuki seems rattled too, panting as he looks down to see his cock drooling on the trimmed hair between your legs.

You can feel the intensity of the moment stalling the current you’ve established, both of you realizing that the true point of no return has finally arrived. Katsuki’s eyes return to yours, flickering over your face as his thumb rubs over your cheekbone.

“Do it,” you murmur, turning your head to press an errant kiss to the heel of his hand. “You earned it.”

Katsuki reaches down to place his palm at the back of one of your knees, opening you up for him. He groans quietly when he sees the strings of your arousal stretching as he bends your thigh back towards the bed, swiping his hand through the mess he’s made and using it to wet his dick.

“I’m not goin’ easy on you,” he mutters, shoulders twitching when the head of his cock catches at your entrance.

“Don’t,” you say breathlessly, one hand wrapping around the wrist he plants next to your head. You blame what comes out of your mouth next on how dizzy you are with the sensation of it– Katsuki Bakugou of all people, kneeled in between your legs and seconds away from fucking your brains out. “Show me what you thought about all these years.”

Katsuki sucks in a sharp breath, eyes darting to yours in surprise. He looks down at you, and for a moment, everything you hate about him is gone. It strikes you just how beautiful he is, the precise corners of his face and the intimidating bulges of his musculature. His eyes are intense when he searches your face for even a note of hesitance, for anything that isn’t abject, unadulterated want. The corner of his mouth twitches upwards, and he leans down, kissing you deeply, licking over your tongue.

Your gasp gets lost in the kiss he plants on you as you feel him press into you, the insistent stretch of his cock as your body gives him the space he demands of it. He was big in your mouth, but he’s massive in your cunt, weighty and thick as your walls spasm around him.

“Holy shit,” Katsuki grunts into your mouth, breaking the kiss to look down at where he’s pushing into you. “Look at that.”

Against your better judgment, you tilt your head to the side, giving yourself an obstructed view of Katsuki’s cock ruining you, inch by inch. You whine, tossing your head back against his pillows, fingernails digging into his arm.

“Oh my god–”

Katsuki cuts you off with a hiss under his breath when he bottoms out completely. He doesn’t thrust, not properly, just grinds himself against you, letting you feel just how full you are.

“You feel like fucking heaven, sucked me right in.”

“God,” you manage, chest heaving as your thigh twitches in his grasp, instinctually trying to cage him in. “You’re– you’re big.”

“Yeah?” The tone of his voice makes you realize he’s never going to let that go, and you throw a palm over your eyes to shield yourself from the weight of his ego.

“Can you just let me enjoy this without ruining it?” Your voice is humiliatingly hoarse, even as he punches a groan out of you with a sudden, deep thrust. Katsuki chuckles, leans back on his haunches just long enough to wrap his hand around your wrist and pin it beside your head with the full weight of his body, forcing your eyes back on him.

“Oh, I can make sure you enjoy it.” Katsuki bites into his lip as he slides smoothly back into you, no rhythm, just feeling how you contract around him at this angle. He’s insufferably smug when his eyes meet yours again, especially as your bottom lip wavers with the heavy pressure of him between your legs. “But you’re going to watch.”

You can’t even get another word out before he’s picking up his pace, not finding his footing anymore but fucking you now, in every sense of the word. Your jaw drops, eyelids fluttering as you watch his cock, slick with your cum, pound relentlessly into your cunt. Your fingers flex and grasp around nothing where Katsuki has your one hand pinned, but your other hand comes up to grab at your breast, fingers closing around one nipple.

“Yeah? Like that?” Katsuki grunts out, voice labored with effort.

“That’s– oh,” you stutter around a gasp when his hand forces your leg higher, giving him an entirely new angle to fuck into you. It’s perfect, revamping the momentum that you’d forced him to abandon earlier. “That. There.”

Katsuki’s face lights up in a wicked grin, somehow managing to drive his hips faster. He leans down to you, mean and unapologetic as he sees your eyes widen.

“You think I can make you cum like this? Just with my cock?” His eyes search your face, relishing the impending panic blooming on your features that yes, he probably can make you cum like this, and soon, if the tightening behind your bellybutton is anything to go by.

“I– I don’t– fuck.” You can’t even get a full sentence out, turning your head to the side and screwing your eyes shut, trying to make sense of the onslaught of pleasure that’s turning you inside out.

“Tsk.” Bakugou’s hand is gone from your knee, and before you can make sense of it, he slings your knee over his elbow, strong hand grabbing your chin harshly. He has to lean down further into you, forcing you to open further for him, forcing his cock deeper, forcing you to cry out when he jerks you to face him again.

“Oh–”

“What’d I say?” Katsuki growls, narrowing his eyes at you. The pressure in you is building, almost alarmingly fast, and you feel your cheeks grow hot as you blink away a stray tear.

“Katsuki, I– I think I’m close.”

“Told you I was gonna make you watch,” Katsuki spits out, a groan rumbling in his chest as he feels the frantic contractions of your body around him, your end spelling itself out in the rhythm of his thrusts. “Don’t hide.”

The orgasm building in you is almost terrifying in its intensity, your eyes wide as you blink up at him, panicked. 

“I can’t, I– it’s so much–”

Katsuki shakes his head firmly at you, holding your gaze like he isn’t quite literally dismantling you piece by piece.

“Don’t run from it. Just breathe,” he pants, hot and heavy into your open mouth. You recognize that tone; you’ve heard it in the field, heard it when your quirk output is too high and you’re about to knock yourself out mid-fight. He’s always telling you that when you run too hot. Breathe.

The tension begins to wrap around you so tight you almost feel like you’re suffocating, like there’s no possible way this can break without breaking you along with it. You know your nails have breached the skin of his back, can feel the breath caught in your throat.

“Breathe,” Katsuki says more urgently, bringing one hand to cradle the back of your head, force your forehead to meet the sweaty skin of his shoulder. “I’ve got you. Breathe.”

When the cord snaps, it genuinely feels like you’re going to die for a second, like no one on earth was ever meant to feel this level of euphoria. His name finds a home in your mouth, stuttered gasps of it and desperate cries punctuating the most intense orgasm that’s ever racked through your body. Toes curling, fingernails breaking the skin of his shoulders, Katsuki sees you through to the end, even as your vision goes white and your back arches beneath him. It’s incredible, really, how long the pleasure rolls through you, throwing you against the rocks again and again. You suck in a deep breath, trying to regain your footing as Katsuki’s thrusts start to slow, aligning himself with the rhythm of your body clenching around him as you come down from your high.

“K-Kat–” you choke out, searching for him even before you can force your eyes to focus properly. “Katsuki?”

“Here,” he responds instantly, pulling your head out from the crook of his shoulder. “M’right here. You with me?”

“Holy shit,” you surprise yourself by laughing breathlessly into his mouth, “like– holy shit.”

Katsuki chuckles along with you, fingers swiping hair from your forehead. “Yeah?”

“I don’t– I don’t think bodies are supposed to do that,” you say through your disbelieving laughter, letting him lull you into a gooey, post-orgasmic state as he rocks into you slowly. Your fingers twitch as you card them through his hair lazily, trying to force your body to return to some state of homeostasis. Katsuki barks out a laugh at that, bringing his hand back to your chin and shaking you gently.

“Keep stroking my ego like that, and I’ll have to get your brain checked for oxygen deprivation,” Katsuki says, smirking down at you.

“It is concerning,” you agree, exhaustion ringing in your voice. Katsuki studies you, not overly soft, but there’s something observant in the way his eyes flicker over your face. You frown. “I’m not tapping out, if that’s what you’re trying to figure out.”

Katsuki’s grin grows wider, feral. “Thought I had you for a second.”

“You wish,” you spit, quirking your mouth back at him. The banter comes back to you far more naturally than it should, considering you’re still pinned under him, naked and trembling with the aftershocks of your orgasm.

“Good.” Katsuki pulls out of you, leaving you empty and puffing out a little surprised gasp. “Because I want you on top.”

“After that?” You say indignantly as he rolls to his back, sitting up against his headboard and tugging you along with him. Your thighs already burn from what he’s enacted on your body, quads shivering under your skin as he gets you situated on his stomach, just a precarious inch or two away from his waiting cock.

“You a pro or not?” Katsuki eyes are heavy as he takes you in, running his hands up and down your quivering thighs bracketed on either side of his waist. Strong fingers press into your skin, massaging the muscle. “Don’t make me start sending you to my trainer.”

“That guy’s a lunatic,” you scoff quietly, wiggling yourself down to rest atop his cock properly, slotting it right in the center of your wet, swollen folds. Katsuki grunts, one hand traveling up to ghost fingers over the curve of your breast, the peak of your nipple.

It’s not until you meet his eye that you reach the striking realization that you’ve been here before– the first time you’d slept with him, all those years ago, Katsuki had insisted you ride him, fingers gripped tight into your hips as he lowered you down. He still has that hazy, almost reverent look in his eyes as he takes you in. You’ve grown so much since then: new scars, heavier breasts, firmer hands. Katsuki wordlessly takes you with one strong hand, wedging his thumb at the sticky fold of your hip into your thigh, urging you to move, sliding you up and down his cock. You both continue like this for a moment, your hands braced on his shoulders while he shuffles you along. You’re wet enough that it isn’t long before the head of his cock catches on your dripping hole, and you shift your hips just enough to sink down on him, moaning lowly as the fulfilling stretch of Katsuki inside of you overtakes your senses again.

“You’re warm,” he murmurs, both hands skimming eagerly up and down your ribcage as you begin to slowly undulate your hips, not bouncing, but just grinding down, letting him carve out permanent residence inside of you.

Insecurity spikes, awareness of your quirk coming to the forefront. “Too warm?”

“Mm-mm,” Katsuki replies, shaking his head. “Feels good. Too good.”

The thought that he might cum soon is a relief and a disappointment all at once, your walls fluttering around the thick intrusion of him as you try to reckon with the fact that, yes, this will have to end. There will be an after. Katsuki’s errant thrust up into the heat of you knocks the thought out of your head before you can drift too far from him, thankfully.

“We did this before,” you whisper, a full-body shiver ripping through your body as you get him sitting at the right angle, head of his cock rubbing on that soft spot inside of you over and over, maddeningly slow. “The first time.”

Katsuki doesn’t respond, gaze soft. His hands are indulgent as he takes free reign to grab and grope at the curves of your body, occasionally sucking in a sharp breath when he reaches something he particularly likes; the small of your back, the curve of your ass, the back of your neck. His eyes don’t close for a moment, darting from one corner of you to the next, even as his breath begins to come heavier in his chest.

“Think you can cum again? Like this?” Katsuki’s strained voice breaks the silence, thumb finding your swollen clit, swirling circles in the mess that joins the two of you.

You have no response but a slow, thin whine, head rolling back on your shoulders. This isn’t what sex with Bakugou was supposed to be; it’s passionate, intimate, the way he sits up further, leans in to kiss open-mouthed down your neck. He groans, so deep in his chest it shakes you, licking and scraping his teeth over your sweaty skin. He trusts you to find your own rhythm, placing one massive hand on the nape of your neck, pinning your sticky chest to his. The familiar pressure starts to build inside of you, but it’s different this time, nothing but slow, molten heat dripping down your core, concentrating all of your attention on his cock splitting you open, on your clit, trapped between the full pressure of his thumb and your torsos moving together. You lean back into the hand at your neck, forcing him to give you enough leeway to come nose to nose with him, eyes lidded but still searching for red irises.

“Will you cum with me?” You ask back, grinding down harder, with more intent. Katsuki’s moan gets caught in his throat, fingers flexing around your neck.

“Yeah, s’that what you want?”

“Yes,” you breathe wantonly into him, one of your palms coming to press flat to his cheek. Your thumb gets caught between both of your open mouths, rubbing over the spit-slick plush of his bottom lip. It was never supposed to be like this. Every piece of carefully constructed protection crumbles around you as you let him fuck you into someone new in his arms, someone vulnerable, someone needy.

Katsuki’s not much better off, kissing you even as your thumb partially hooks into his mouth, keeping him open so you can run your tongue over his teeth. You’re hungry now, unabashed without any walls to hide behind. The room is suffocatingly hot, both from the sex and the involuntary way your quirks lick at each other, the otherworldly heat of him and the space between atoms that you’re desperately trying to keep a grip on.

“Fuck,” Katsuki pants, crushing his mouth to yours. “Perfect, perfect pussy, gonna make me cum. You with me?”

And you are. It’s fast, humiliatingly so, but you’re drowning in the sensation of it all, mind lost to everything but the slick grind of his cock in your cunt and the taste of him in your mouth, warm and sweet and salty on the back of your tongue.

“Yeah, just– oh, that. Fuck, keep doing that.” Katsuki knows what you want before you can get it out, it seems, hands finding your hips, giving you a little more lift to the way you’re rolling your hips into him, moving faster and faster until you can feel your orgasm wrapping itself around your throat.

“There you go,” he growls, forehead pressed to yours. “Right there, isn’t it? Just stay with me, I’m almost–”

“I-inside, Katsuki.” The thought stutters out before you can stop it.

“Oh shit– okay, you’re fuck– fuckin’ milking me,” Katsuki grits out, pained. “Come on, baby, m’so close.”

Reflecting later, you’ll realize that—humiliatingly—it’s baby that pushes you over. Even the illusion of tenderness, Katsuki’s specific brand of it, has the knot in your stomach slipping itself undone with a slow, sticky satisfaction that rumbles through you like thunder. You keep your lips on his, moaning openly into him, ignoring the tears that color your kiss salty. Katsuki, to his credit, keeps you stable even as you shake and squeeze around him, lifting you up and down on his cock as you cum hard all over again, fingers fisting in his hair and digging into the grooves of his shoulderblades. It doesn’t take long for his jaw to stutter against yours, a broken groan pouring into your mouth as you feel him pin you in his lap, grinding your clit against the neat blond hairs above his cock as warmth bleeds into you from the inside out. Katsuki’s cock kicks inside you as he cums, fills you until the creamy mixture of both of you is sticking you together, dripping between your thighs to stain his bedsheets.

A fucked out grin breaks over your face as you come back to yourself, moving your lips against his slowly as your hips twitch against him. Words don’t come to you, not yet, only the quiet awareness that these are your last vestiges of plausible deniability, last moments to feel him sticky and trembling with exertion under you. Or so you thought.

“Kat–” His name escapes you in a breathless cry as your back hits the sheets, his cock leaving you with a gush of cum that he’s quick to remedy by pressing his open mouth between your legs. “Katsuki!”

Any attempt to fight him is fruitless, his iron grip is locked around your thighs, knees rested on his shoulders, holding you open for him to lick into. It’s too much immediately; your hands come to tug at his hair harshly, but he only groans, his satisfaction vibrating through you as he tongues at your cunt, cleaning up the mess he’d made of it. Your luck wins out when you start kicking halfheartedly at his back. Katsuki pulls away from you, one long string of your arousal literally dripping off of his chin, and leaps up your body with an exhausted laugh.

He’s on your mouth before you can even fully process the absence of him between your legs, kissing you with a fervor that you might have matched if he hadn’t fucked it out of you. You simply keep your hand in his hair, letting him spread the taste of you—both of you—over your tongue until he pulls back, panting.

The eye contact you hold isn’t like one you’ve ever experienced before, not with Katsuki, and certainly not with anyone else. Your chests are heaving, faces slick with the sacrilegious evidence of what you’ve done tonight.

It’s almost like you can see Katsuki settling back into himself, see the hard lines returning to his face as he watches you, monitoring for any sudden movements. You’re too spent to even waste too much energy puzzling about it, just letting your breath grow more even as your eyes flicker over the pretty features of his face. Katsuki brings his hand up, making like he’s going to thumb affectionately at your cheek, but just as you’re bracing for the devastatingly soft touch he’s going for, he hesitates. When he redirects, he wipes your chin messily instead, tsking under his breath.

“You need a shower,” he says decisively, rolling off of you and onto his feet before you can even mourn the moment that’s shattered.

You sit up onto your elbows, affronted. “Like you’re any better.”

Katsuki grunts an assent, swiping at his chin with the back of his hand. He pads off in the direction of a door on the side of the room, presumably his bathroom, without a word, leaving you to flop back into the sheets, absorbing the state you’re in right now. Your eyes dart around on instinct, stealing little bits of Katsuki while he has his back turned.

The room around you is similarly dark to the small glimpses you’d gotten of the rest of the apartment; sleek lines of dark-stained wood make up his bed, matching nightstand, the desk off to the side. You’d expected it to feel cold and artificial, but there’s a book on his nightstand and— you smirk to yourself. A pair of reading glasses folded neatly over the cover of a romance novel. The only splash of color in the room is a framed magazine; when you narrow your eyes, you realize it’s a signed All-Might edition of Hero Weekly, from way back in the day, maybe even before your high school years. Suddenly, all of this feels too personal, even more so than having him inside of you. You’re in Bakugou’s apartment. 

You’re mentally mapping where you think all of your stuff is—shoes by the door, dress on the carpet, clutch…maybe in the front hall, panties god knows where—to make a quick getaway when Bakugou returns, rubbing at his forehead like you’ve given him a migraine.

“You comin’? S’hot now.” His voice is low, almost slurred like something’s been taken out of him. You fight through your surprise, trying not to stare as you nod, pulling your aching body from the softness of his sheets.

He leads you into his bathroom, flinching when your bare feet make contact with the white-and-black tiled floor. It’s surprisingly warm, twin lamps lighting the space from either side of the mirror. The shower isn’t hot enough to fog the glass yet, and one of your hands comes over your mouth in horror as you take in your own reflection: bruises forming in too many spots to count—your hips, the junction of your neck and shoulder, a nasty one on the underside of your tit—skin pallid and sticky with sweat, eyeliner smeared down to the curve of your jaw. You catch Katsuki’s eye in the mirror, expecting bravado, but his mouth twitches with a tired sense of satisfaction, a quiet pride in the work he put in on your body.

Wordlessly, you step into his shower. Katsuki shuts the door behind him as he follows you. You can’t help the quiet moan that slips from you as the scalding water hits your skin, bringing needed relief to your sore muscles. You move around each other efficiently, like you can predict his movements. You pass him the cedar-scented body wash when you’ve scrubbed the strings of dried spit from your chest, and he hands you the shampoo without a word. Something shifts the longer you’re under the water together; Katsuki’s hand grazes your waist when he reaches for the washcloth, you bump into his hip when you move to scrub between your thighs. Almost like your bodies are seeking each other out where you don’t have the courage to.

The dam breaks when you’re wrestling with your hair, an unreal amount of conditioner gumming up the knotted strands. It’s hopeless– you can’t go to sleep like this, god only knows what it’ll look like in the morning, but it’s a mess. Your fingers are making little progress when a second set joins them, as strong and steady as the sigh Katsuki breathes into the steam. You start slightly at the contact, but you melt against his chest easily when his hands start to gently untangle your hair. Nose tucked between his pecs, you slump against him, refusing to let yourself think into the comfort your sore body is so desperately craving. Katsuki’s silent above you, but you can hear his heart thudding in his chest, the deep rhythm of it lulling you into submission as he works his hands against your scalp.

It would be easy to worry about this—the intimacy, the novelty of having Katsuki’s broad chest pressed to your cheek—but you know there will be time to pick it apart tomorrow.

You don’t think about the potential implications when he keeps you pulled tight to him as he rinses your hair. You don’t let your breath hitch when he turns the water off and your flesh breaks out in goosebumps, when he rubs his warm hand over your back to ease the chill that bites at you. You don’t let your mind take it and run when he slides one of his t-shirts over your head, tugging the hem until you’re fully swallowed by black fabric.  You don’t overthink it when he pulls you to him under the covers, tucking your body against the curves of his like you fit there, like there’s space for you to belong to him until the sun comes up.

These odd, early nights are, strangely, when you make the most money. Occasionally a Friday, usually a Saturday, always when you have a bar that’s just busy enough to matter. Tee, your boss, steps out from the back room in a cloud of cigarette smoke, flashy chain glinting in the blue neon as he looks around, assessing the flow of business. He’ll eventually turn to you, turning the slow-burning Rothman between his teeth over.

“Shut it down at 10. Everyone out.” He eyes the regulars cozied up to the oak, gives you a brief, unsettling smile. “If they give you shit, send them to me.”

You’ve learned to nod, slide him a two-finger pour of reposado, and follow his instructions without question. Tee isn’t the first sketchy character you’ve worked for, but he is the first that’s seemed to take a quiet interest in you. He takes care of you on these nights that he shuts you down before the money-making hours, usually pressing a thick stack of bills into your hand on his way out. You aren’t stupid enough to ask questions, but you’re starting to grow stupid enough to wonder what he’s up to that’s worth the quickly-accumulating cash pile in your kitchen pantry.

You’re just about to open the register to finish your cash for the night when you hear the side door fly open behind you, hitting the wall with a bang.

“Sorry, closed early–” you cut yourself off when you look over your shoulder, a small grin pulling at your mouth.

“Well, I know the owner.” Carmen, Tee’s daughter. Twenty-three and hell on heels.

“Tequila?” You’re already reaching for the bottle. She yanks one of your barstools off the bartop, sliding in with an eager nod. It’s hard not to be fond of her.

“Duh.” She tosses her purse onto the bar with a clatter, popping her gum as she looks you up and down. “Tee shut you down early?”

“I’m not complaining,” you say honestly, sliding her a glass with a generous pour of Sauza. She downs it, wincing. You wait a beat and– there it is. Carmen fakes a gag, gesturing to you frantically until you cave, handing her a lime wedge. “Still need your training wheels, I see.”

“Whatever,” she coughs, sucking on the lime. “Another.”

You raise your eyebrows at her, almost hesitating when you reach for the bottle again. “Big plans?”

Carmen watches you pour her shot in silence, sizing you up. Tee claims she’s a spitting image of the mother that left when she was eight, but like this, she reminds you of her father. Calculating.

“Sort of.” A vague answer, unlike her, but you don’t push. You’ve struck up a tentative friendship over a handful of shifts, but it rarely extends past a few post-work beers at the even shittier bar down the street. She’s certainly not dressed for Pinky’s tonight– four-inch heels, heavily-lined lips. Carmen’s out for trouble, which usually doesn’t require your presence.

She chokes down the second shot, and you don’t hesitate to toss a couple limes in the empty glass for her this time. She bites into both greedily, chasing the burn of the tequila. Carmen wipes her chin with a manicured thumb, and the smile she gives you when she recovers is inviting, pretty brown eyes looking you up and down like there’s a plan forming behind them. Oh boy.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“What?” You scoff, pulling your twenties out of the register. “You and Shorty hooking up again?”

Carmen’s smile fizzles into a scowl at the mention of the fry cook in the back— the fry cook Tee had expressly forbidden her from seeing.

“No.” She narrows her eyes at you, watching your thumb fly efficiently through the bills in your hand. “Do you have plans?”

“Tonight?” You move on to your tens, still not fully taking the bait. “Guess not. I was expecting to be here.”

“Do you have your makeup bag?” Carmen’s grin is growing a little wild now. You freeze, flick your eyes up to look her over carefully. She’s pinching her little clutch between her fingers, eagerly awaiting your response.

“...Why?”

It only takes you twenty minutes in the bathroom to touch up your makeup, pull the neckline of your tank top down a little. You hold your car keys up in question, but Carmen just shakes her head.

“We’ve got a ride.”

You feel underdressed next to her, well-worn denim hugging your hips and a black tank on top, but at least you had the foresight to shave your legs. You step out into the oppressive July heat, the heavy night air clinging to your skin like a blanket. Carmen’s uncharacteristically silent as you lock up, clicking her gum and rocking on her heels like she’s . Your stomach roils with an odd sense of anticipation, only broken when Carmen squeals.

“That’s us!”

Nothing could have prepared you for what greets you when you turn around. You notice him first: tall and tan, accepting the hug Carmen practically throws at him with an easy chuckle. He’s a looker, you’ll grant her that; pitch black hair that hangs at his chin and curls around his ears, a hat backwards on his head that pushes just enough of it back to showcase handsome features. The next thing that catches your eye is his car.

It just looks fast. That’s all you can think. It’s a Nissan, but not like one you’ve ever seen. Black, sleek, low to the ground, and humming like it’s just dying for someone to press the gas pedal. Haunting, icy-blue light bleeds from the undercarriage, making the pavement glow. You blink disbelievingly at Carmen.

“This is us?”

The man seems to notice you now, extricating himself from Carmen’s arms as he unashamedly drags his eyes from your boots to the point of your hip, up your torso to land on your face. An easy smile stretches over his mouth, all teeth.

“Oh, they’re going to love your friend.”

“Behave.” Carmen smacks him, giving you an apologetic look. “But yeah! This is Sero.”

He offers his hand, smiling. “Hanta, actually. Half-Japanese, Sero’s my family name. Either’s fine.”

You force your feet to carry you close enough to shake his hand, offering your name slowly in return. Something feels very off about the whole thing, like maybe you’ve stepped outside your normal wheelhouse by a mile more than a hair, but Hanta gives you another smile, one that seems genuine. It puts you at ease, if only partially.

“Love newbies.” He chews on the toothpick between his teeth, jerking his head toward the car. “Climb on in.”

You do question the sanity of both Carmen and yourself as you clamber inside as soon as he opens the door. Even the way the car idles is rougher than anything you’ve ever felt; it feels more akin to sitting on something…living once you settle in the backseat, something that might have an opinion on anything it’s guided to do. Carmen’s indifferent to the power radiating from the car, collapsing in the passenger seat and tossing her bag into the floor. She grabs the Monster in the cupholder, taking a long swig until Hanta swings into the car, snatching the can from her.

“Hey, hey! I need that,” Sero complains, taking a sip from it himself. He doesn’t sound particularly affected; you get the impression that not much riles him.

“For what?” Carmen scoffs, moving the rearview to check her lip gloss. “I thought you weren’t running tonight.”

“I’m not.” Hanta readjusts his mirror with a good-natured roll of his eyes. “Not until I get this fucking clutch to grab right.”

“Still?”

Hanta eyes you in the mirror before replying, studying you quizzically. He leans in to Carmen like you’re not in the backseat. “She ever been in one of these things before?”

That makes your irritation spike. “I can speak, actually.”

“My bad,” Hanta chuckles easily under his breath. “You buckled up?”

You nod, snapping the seatbelt against your chest for emphasis. “What kind of car is this, anyway?”

“Almost forgot I had a seatbelt back there.” Hanta laughs again, fingers drumming on the gear shift idly. He catches your eye in the rearview again, shoots you a wink. “Just enjoy the ride, babe.”

You roll your eyes this time, crossing your arms over your chest and leaning back into the seat behind you, clearly designed for function as opposed to comfort. There’s something acrid in the air, some combination of the fruity bite of energy drinks tossed into the floorboard and the winter ice air freshener dangling from the mirror upfront. The smell of cigarette smoke lingers beyond that, a scent that’s almost grounding, almost homey due to all your time spent behind a bar. It’s grounding that you’ll need, you discover, when Hanta shifts into drive, letting the engine rumble fully to life.

You feel the growl deep inside of you. The purr of the eager engine works its way down through your muscle, through your nerves, down to your very bone marrow. You try—impressively—to remain unaffected, but when Sero shoots forward, you gasp, fingers coming up to grab at his seat instinctively. It isn’t fear that rockets down your spine as the car starts moving—like, really moving—but something else. Something that threatens to stick with you.

“Tsk,” Sero clicks his tongue under his breath, irritated. “See? Even the new girl can feel it.”

“You definitely can’t run with your clutch like that,” Carmen agrees, sneaking another sip of his energy drink when his eyes dart over his shoulder, merging onto the freeway that passes over The Office. You have no idea what they’re talking about: clutch, grab, run, whatever. You can barely hear them over the roar of the engine as Sero masterfully moves the gear shift. The car’s keen to match him: second, third, fourth gear all whiz by smoothly as you fly down the highway.

“Your dad already there?”

“Should be.” Carmen’s rolling down the window, letting her fingers twist in the wind for a moment. She turns back to him, eyes wicked. “Why? You scared?”

Sero coughs a laugh into his fist. “We’re not doing this.”

“Why?” Carmen whines, leaning on the console. Your attention’s torn: you’re unintentionally being fed bits and pieces of what you’re heading into, but the machine carrying you there steals at least half of the show. You watch lights flare to life on the dashboard, the needles of the gauges oscillating between RPM, speed, a couple others that you don’t understand.

“A. Your dad would fucking hang me.” Sero pulls his hand off the gear shift to hold fingers up, counting. “And if I survived? Point B. Katsuki would fucking hang me for pissing Tee off.”

“Not if they don’t know.” Carmen settles in her seat with a huff, fussing around in her bag casually as if the speedometer isn’t rapidly approaching triple digits. “Think Marco’s gonna come?”

“I hope not,” Sero snorts, switching lanes. “That shitty Mazda is bound to spin out on him one of these days.”

“He’s kind of cute.”

“Don’t be a bitch,” Sero hisses, but it’s half-hearted. “He’ll lose if he shows. Ei’s got him by a mile.”

Carmen smirks to herself, pleased. “Right. If he gets the jump at the right time.”

Sero narrows his eyes, glaring at her. He chooses self-preservation it seems, eyes meeting yours again in the rearview. “What about you? What’s your deal?”

You think for a moment, weighing your words. What is your deal? You don’t know this guy, you hardly know Carmen, and yet you’re hurtling towards something that feels like it’s going to be relevant. More than a fun night out.

“I work for her dad.” You shrug, directing your gaze at the blur of lights outside the window. It’s soothing, somehow, going so fast under such a high modicum of control. Like an airplane with wheels.

“Don’t we all,” Sero says, and you itch to dig more into that cryptic statement. “You from here?”

“No.” The only familiar thing about this: the get-to-know-you conversation. You rehearse it regularly with customers, but it comes genuinely from you this time, something about the novelty of the situation disarming you. “I’m from all over.”

Sero smirks. “But now you’re here.”

“I’ve been here for a year, give or take.”

“You like it?”

You tilt your head side to side, considering. “It’ll do. For now.”

Sero laughs, bright and loud. “I like that.”

He’s pulling off the freeway now, Carmen roping him into yet another conversation consisting of vocabulary that doesn’t resonate with you. You keep your eyes trained on the mayhem below the interstate as the car pulls onto the exit ramp, seemingly reluctant to slowly shift back into its lower gears.

A crowd of people, all milling about excitedly as you pull close to the otherwise-abandoned lot, the stretch of road that looks like it hasn’t been maintained in years. The noise muffled by Sero’s windows still bleeds through– the roar of music, heavy bass thumping through speakers. There are dozens of cars, all of the same species as Sero’s: souped up, intimidating. You’re at a car show…you think?

“What is this?” Hanta’s decrease in speed has left some room for your voice to lay low as you lean forward, speaking directly into Carmen’s ear. She only laughs, windchimes that offer no explanation.

“Trust me, you’re going to fucking love it.”

Hanta directs you slowly into the crowd, seeming to instinctually predict how quickly they’ll part for his car. He keeps the windows rolled up, even amidst the random cheers, the shouted heys. He only flicks his fingers coolly at the greetings, keeping that lazy smile draped across his face.

“You hanging with us?” He finally breaks the lapse in conversation, eyes flicking to Carmen, to you. The uproar outside looms, the chaos feeling like it’s literally pressing in on the glass.

“No,” she answers quickly, swiping cherry-scented gloss over her lips. “Well, maybe later. Want to give her the full experience, you know?”

Sero chuckles quietly under his breath, so much so that you don’t really hear it, just watch his shoulders shake with the effort. “Fair point.”

It’s only then that you notice he’s rolled to a stop. Sero turns to Carmen, lets his eyes wander just enough to suggest interest, not enough to suggest intent to act. The smirk that flickers over his face is bitter in the kindest of ways.

“Your boy running tonight?” Carmen’s a little out of breath as she asks, taken by Hanta’s intent gaze. His mouth twitches, and he inclines his head toward the throng of people surrounding his car.

“Why do you think they’re all here?”

Carmen doesn’t respond, already unbuckling her seat belt. “Come on,” she calls over her shoulder to you, prompting you to scramble to unbuckle yourself, collect your keys and wallet off the floor.

It’s an immediate onslaught of sensation as soon as your boots hit the dirt. Voices and bodies alike surround you– it’s like being dropped off in the middle of the pit at a concert. Carmen hugs a few other girls with a squeal, jerks a thumb at you as she shouts your name over the clamour, but you’re too dazzled to offer much greeting. Streetlamps above bleach everything into sharp contrast: beer cans gripped tightly as the crowd moves on its own, the glint of custom wraps on foreign hoods, occasional puffs of exhaust rising into the air. That same steady rumble from Sero’s car courses through you, but now, it’s pressing in on you from the outside, the thrum of too many powerful engines competing for space. Your heart races in time with the fast-moving scene, but your nerves were left in the backseat.

A sudden commotion catches Carmen’s attention, and her fingers lock around your wrist.

“They’re starting!”

You have no room to ask who’s starting what when Carmen drags you forward into the thickest part of the crowd, seemingly able to see straight through the mass of bodies separating you from the increasingly loud hubbub ahead. When the crowd breaks, you pop out at the start of what you realize is a road, long, straight, and hardly-maintained. You blink in surprise: Tee is in the center of the chaos, organizing it into something that turns a profit.

Tee takes cash from one noisy spectator, then another, leaning in to confirm something with them before handing the fistful of bills to a man behind him who nods, takes the pencil out of his teeth and marks something down on a dogeared piece of paper. Two intimidating men in black stand flanking Tee and the man with the money, hands hovering over their waistbands. You aren’t afraid, not yet, but you can feel the gravity settling in your throat at the realization of the stakes at hand, something heavy on your palate amidst the buzzy adrenaline.

Carmen tugs you close to her, shouting in your ear over the roar of engines and voices alike.

“That’s Cruz,” she says loudly, pointing to a man in backwards hat spitting into a crushed water bottle, “with the Lexus.”

Cruz is leaned up against a champagne-colored Lexus sedan, feet crossed at the ankles and arms crossed like he could be anywhere else right now, and it wouldn’t make a difference. You tilt your head, frowning; other than a few dings in the back fender, his car looks uniquely typical in the throng of modified, Transformers-type vehicles.

“His car looks normal?” You shout back, trying to feel your way through it without looking completely clueless. Carmen nods excitedly, eyes bright.

“That’s the point. It looks street-legal, but there’s a monster under the hood. He normally doesn’t race with it, but his Subaru stalled out bad on him a few weeks ago. He’s probably gonna smoke Marco.” Carmen’s pointed finger shifts over to another man, pointedly different from Cruz.

Marco’s hyping up the crowd, shouting trash talk in alternating English and Spanish with a wide grin on his face. He laughs recklessly when the spectators shout back, tossing bottle caps and spraying beer at him– Marco’s only response is to shake his flippy black hair out and place his hat back on his head, flipping a bird to the crowd.

“That’s the guy you and Sero were talking about?”

“He’s a trainwreck, worse than his car,” Carmen laughs, shaking her head. “But sort of cute, right?”

You tilt your head, watching Marco’s tiny hoop earrings glint in the blinding light, the gentle curve of his rounded cheeks. He’s too young for you, but Carmen blinks wistfully at him, and you indulge her.

“Super cute.” You flick your eyes to Marco’s car: banged up, silver Mazda, purple taillights, a license plate that reads HOLAMAMI. It makes you laugh; trainwreck though he may be, at least he puts on a show. “So, they’re just going to drive straight and see who wins?”

“Sort of.” Carmen bites into her lip, cocking her head and scrutinizing the matchup at hand as Marco and Cruz shake hands, clambering into their rigs. “Marco’s issue is that he pushes too hard, too fast. Cruz’s Lexus jumps quick. Not really a fair fight unless Marco did something to his Mazda. Again.”

You nod, trying to catalogue this and weigh it against the limited scope of information you’ve already received. Cruz is the likely winner…you think. The engines start revving, Cruz’ Lexus practically snarling in response to Marco’s jumpy, chirpy Mazda. The soundwave travels through you physically, putting all your nerve endings on edge, and before you quite know what you’re cheering for, you’re yelling alongside Carmen, hands cupped around the exhilarated smile on your face.

Tires screech, cars buck under their drivers like they’re as eager as the crowd to get this show on the road, literally. One of Tee’s boys steps out between the cars with a flashlight, so close to them it makes your heart jump up into your throat. There’s no dramatic countdown, just the endless clamor of the crowd growing louder and louder, actually managing to compete with the engines as he raises his flashlight, eyes darting to Tee. Tee inclines his head ever so slightly, and the flashlight drops. Go.

It feels like standing behind a shockwave when the cars lurch forward, tires screaming as they shoot several tons of metal forward at a speed that doesn’t feel possible. The noise drowns out around you, eyes wide as you watch Marco and Cruz rocket forward. Cruz gets the jump, as Carmen predicted, but Marco’s not far behind, and the racket of the crowd slowly changes to one of shock and surprise as Marco edges forward, bit by bit and– Carmen grabs your arm, hard.

“Did Marco just fucking–”

“Did you see that?” A girl on Carmen’s left shakes her excitedly. “Marco just beat him!”

The entire thing lasts less than fifteen seconds, but you feel like you’ve just come hurtling down the peak of a rollercoaster, your chest moving rapidly with how hard your breath is coming to you. Marco and Cruz waste no time pulling back around to rejoin the crowd. Marco pops out first, pounding on his chest as his boys pull him in, smacking his shoulders and hollering congratulations. Cruz steps out in the same nonchalant manner he’d stepped in, extending a good-natured hand that Marco accepts.

“Holy shit,” Carmen wheezes beside you, still holding the top of your arm hard enough to bruise. She turns to you, grinning manically. “Well?”

“That was…” you’re a bit at a loss, still dazed by the frantic rhythm of adrenaline coursing through your body. “Whoa.”

“Ha!” Carmen barks out a laugh, practically tackling you as she throws her arm around your shoulders. “That wasn’t even a good one, wait til Sero’s guys get out there–”

It’s like she’s manifested what unfolds next. Marco takes his money from Tee, counts it, and shoves the entire pile back into Tee’s chest. Tee’s eyebrows raise in surprise, but it quickly melts into a crooked smile at what Marco shouts to the crowd.

“I want Big Red!”

The crowd erupts into low oooohs, even a few boos, a shouted “No way!” in response, bodies shuffling around in excitement. You have the chance to ask– Carmen’s already putting her brow in her hands, groaning.

“Fucking– he always does this.”

“What?”

“Wins once and then bites off more than he can chew.” Carmen’s eyes dart around in anticipation before landing on an approaching movement through the crowd. “There.”

It doesn’t take any intimate knowledge of anything going on around you to know that the crew that steps up next means business. It’s Sero again, still laid back but something in his frame is tenser, more conscious than he’d been in the car. He’s flanked by a massive man with dark roots and red-dyed hair, ridiculous physique on display as he steps up to answer Marco’s challenge, a frown etched deeply into what appears to be a generally kind face.

“That’s Ei– oh, shit–” Carmen cuts herself off when she joins the collective gasp as ‘Ei’ marches right up to Marco, finger in his chest, shouting something incoherent. Marco rises to the bait, baring his teeth in a manic grin as he plants his hands on Ei’s bare chest and pushes back hard against the larger man. It doesn’t escalate– two blonds emerge from the crowd, shoving Ei back, as Sero takes Marco by the shoulders, pinning him back to his still-humming Mazda.

You tilt your head, taking notice of one of the men in particular. A black muscle tee hangs loosely on his frame, showing off a tattooed, chiseled bicep as he plants a finger on Ei’s chest— firm, unyielding. He doesn’t have to raise his voice to get Ei’s attention. He redirects the tension from Marco to himself with ease. The crowd seems to ripple with his sudden entrance, hushed mutterings popping up around you; even Marco’s eyebrows raise slightly, but that begging-to-get-hit grin doesn’t drop. He’s hot, hot in that gritty, busted-knuckles way that makes a familiar kind of heat rip through you, fast and unforgiving. He finally manages to get his friend calmed down, hands on Ei’s shoulders as Ei still frowns, peeking around his shoulder at Marco and nodding resignedly.

Sero’s still got Marco pushed back by the collar of his t-shirt, but he turns his head, looking to the blond man pressing Ei back away from the altercation. The man turns his head, catches Sero’s eye for a brief second, inclines his head forward the slightest bit. Sero nods in return, releasing Marco’s t-shirt, not without knocking him back against his own driver’s side door one more time, just for good measure.

Tee steps forward to meet them as Sero returns to his crew, speaking lowly to them even as a few boos crop up from the onlookers, the excitement of a physical fight ripped away from them. The redhead turns on his heel and stalks away, already fishing in his pocket. Tee grins widely, stepping forward.

“Looks like Marco’s got an answer!”

The crowd erupts in applause, whoops of anticipation surround you, but all you can focus on is the blond talking closely with Tee.

“Those are Sero’s boys?” You ask Carmen, leaning forward to her ear. She stops her gossip with the girl to her left, returning her attention to you. She nods, using her index finger to identify them one by one.

“That one’s Eijirou, the guy about to race Marco.” You follow her direction to the redhead that’s now returning, pulling around in a vintage Challenger that easily drowns out the crowd, even dwarfing the growl of Marco’s engine. It sounds almost terrifying, like that much power shouldn’t be contained under the hood of one vehicle.

Eijirou, as you take him in, is clearly irritated, jaw set as he huddles with Marco and Tee to discuss the terms for their race, but something about him seems friendly, safe, even as you can see the muscles of his back flexing, the anticipation of the race affecting him physically. It’s a little odd to you that he’s shirtless, but maybe it shouldn’t be; this time of year, the air’s as hot under the cover at night as it is with the sun blazing down on the pavement. Swirls of red, black, and blue ink, traditional Japanese style tattoos, cover large swaths of his skin, even venturing—you note with a curious lift of your eyebrow—down below the waist of his jeans.

“He’s got to be beating girls off with a stick,” you remark wryly to Carmen, who barks a laugh in return.

“He’s a big softie,” she confides, lowering her voice as much as she can given the roar around you. She adjusts her finger, slides it over to a lanky man with frosted tips who’s massaging Eijirou’s shoulders, hyping him up playfully. “That’s Denki. He’s the biggest slut of all of them.”

“Really?” You squint your eyes, able to make out an eyebrow piercing. Denki’s popping around man to man like a firecracker, grinning obnoxiously and elbowing Eijirou when Marco shoots him an insult like he wants to rile him up all over again.

Carmen scoffs. “You haven’t heard him talk. He’s smooth–”

“Oh, and you have?”

“Please, Tee would kill me.”

“But not for Sero?” You make knowing eyes at her, inclining your head towards the dark-haired man leaning easily against his hood, watching the negotiations with an air of relaxed amusement.

“Sero would be worth it,” Carmen replies dreamily, likely only half-kidding. She shoots Sero a flirty little wave that he, after glancing at Tee to make sure he’s still occupied, returns slyly.

Something is agreed upon in the tight huddle of men between the two cars idling, and the group breaks, the still-unnamed blond man you’d taken notice of earlier coming to lean on Sero’s hood beside him, arms crossed, something angry in the line of his strong shoulders. The man follows Sero’s gaze up to Carmen, scowls, and elbows him, but– then his eyes catch on you.

His gaze is unapologetic, flickering over your face like maybe he’s seen you before and he’s trying to figure out where, but there’s something so aggressive in the sharp, handsome features of his face that makes your skin prickle. It’s visceral to be on the receiving end of his attention, the tangible drag of his eyes over your hips, the span of your neck, your lips. The way he observes you is immobilizing, and you swear your breath snags in your chest as he takes his time looking you over. You choke the momentary pause down, swallowing and forcing your eyes back to the race.

Eijirou swings into his Challenger, still glaring at Marco even as he revs the engine. Marco’s still not making things any easier for himself, raising his arms to hype the crowd up and get them good and loud.

“Do they…not like each other?” You lean to ask Carmen, shouting now as the engines snarl at each other, competing for space in the mayhem.

“Explain after!” is your only answer, because then– the flashlight drops.

Eijirou’s Challenger floors you more than anything else has, little silver flames bursting from the back pipes as it flies forward, right in time with Marco. There’s no way to describe it; this race is just different from the first, the pounding of American muscle on the hot asphalt elicits a physical reaction in you, hair standing on edge and pulse fluttering in your throat like it’s threatening to break out of your skin. It’s over quickly—Eijirou smokes Marco by a fair margin—and you’re almost glad for it, subconsciously concerned about your heart rate.

You give credit where credit’s due, even if you don’t fully understand your own reaction to the insanity before you.

“Holy…” you trail off, laughing breathlessly and making a half-hearted attempt to tuck your hair back behind your ears, petting down the mess kicked up by the wind. “Okay, you might be on to something here.”

“I told you,” Carmen says, vindicated, grabbing at your arm. “I knew you’d love it. That was a real race.”

You crane your neck to watch Eijirou pull his car around, stepping out to collect his winnings. To his credit, he doesn’t so much as smirk nastily at Marco, taking his cash from Tee in silence as Marco good-naturedly accepts the jeering of the crowd, bowing.

“So…those two?” You point between Marco and Eijirou, remembering the conflict earlier.

“Bad blood.” Carmen shrugs. “Marco told everyone that he slept with Ei’s ex-girlfriend, but…” she lowers her voice, leaning in, “Tee told me that Marco upped a wager on him, forced Eijirou’s hand, and lost. Turns out he wasn’t good for it, guess what he did?”

You can’t imagine. “What?”

“Called the cops on the meet before the guys could shake him down.” You’re new here, but even your eyes widen. You have no idea of the legality of all of this, but you can imagine the police are unwelcome.

“No.”

“Yeah,” Carmen says gravely, nodding. “Eiji almost got tagged running, and Marco didn’t even reach back out with the money, didn’t apologize, nothing. They haven’t been good since.”

You don’t respond, watching the ecosystem play out in front of you, letting the height of the stakes here settle in. You do have enough common sense to realize Carmen’s dragged you along to something you, after leaving your own years of debauchery behind in a different city, have no business getting involved in. The realization doesn’t land with as much gravity as it should.

You don’t mean to initiate the eye contact again, clueless as to what’s gotten into you that you just keep getting drawn back to this man, but when you look to the blond guy in Sero’s crew again, he’s staring right back at you this time. Pointed. You can tell he has an attitude from here, mouth twisted in an ugly, appraising expression as he looks you over. No one has ever looked at you like that, not really— estimating. Squinting like he’s sizing you up. It makes irritation kick in your chest, and you hold his gaze, narrowing your own eyes back. His eyes widen a fraction, like you he hadn’t been expecting you to respond.

You mouth the word at him, knowing he won’t hear you over the crowd. What?

That makes his face twist further, and he looks away, grumbling something to Sero, who looks up at you and chuckles. You’ve seen enough; two can play at that game.

“Who’s the guy with the attitude?”

“Hm?” Carmen follows your line of sight, snorts. “That’s Katsuki.”

“Katsuki.” You sound the name out for yourself, bitter at the way it sizzles on your tongue. Enticing. “What’s his problem?”

Surprisingly, Carmen hesitates, weighing her words. “I mean, he’s the best driver out here. Definitely.”

You scrunch your nose, disappointed at the certainty in her voice. Disappointed at how a small, vulnerable bit of you preens, impressed. “Really?”

“When he feels like it.” Carmen shrugs. “He doesn’t get pulled into bullshit easy, only comes out here when Tee calls, only runs if he thinks it’s going to be good.”

“I bet he’s an ass.”

Carmen coughs out a laugh, nodding. “Maybe, yeah. He’s cocky, for sure, but he can always back it up.”

Your eyebrows lift unwittingly, but you catch yourself, forcing your gaze back over the crowd. “Huh.”

Carmen sees right through your bullshit, instantly.

“Oh no,” she says, warning, “don’t even think about it.”

It’s almost alarming; when had she gotten to know you so well? “What? No, I–”

“He’s…” she thinks, but she’s smiling, “a handful. Kind of insane. No, wait, he’s probably fully insane. I wouldn’t go near that.”

“I’m not,” you say crossly, tucking your arms over your chest defensively. Carmen doesn’t have the time to respond before the next two cars are lining up, Eijirou looking much happier to be racing Denki’s little Nissan, glittering under the lights with a nondescript color like gasoline on water. Carmen’s already going on in your ear about why it’s sort of funny that they’re racing each other, why they’re probably just putting down ten dollars and a biggest-dick-of-the-week medal, but you’re not listening. Your eyes are still gravitating to him, Katsuki, stomach twisting strangely as the corner of his mouth quirks up in a chuckle. Hm.

You spend an exhilarating couple of hours beside Carmen at the back of the racetrack, coming excruciatingly close to losing your voice as you gossip over the roar of engines, as you cheer for Sero’s crew, excepting Katsuki. He runs twice, once against a mysterious man with his face covered that goes by ‘Ghost’—corny, you think, but whatever—and once against a guy named Tyler that Carmen scoffs at– Lives in the suburbs. Daddy built him that car.

Katsuki is, infuriatingly, a force to watch, calm and controlled as he slides behind the wheel of a monstrous Nissan, presses the engine to what you’re sure is enough g-force to launch a rocket. You’re not close enough to see much of the finer details, but something about the way he settles behind the wheel of a machine that growls, but accepts his direction so readily, like they’re in conversation– it makes something hungry twist in your stomach. It adds to his intrigue, unfortunately, how each time Katsuki steps out of his car, after clearing several in a matter of seconds, he doesn’t even look surprised to see his opponent conceding with a rueful handshake. You try to distract yourself during his races, but his magnetism carries to his presence behind the wheel, and you find yourself reluctantly clapping when he wins. The crowd seems to expect victory from him, chattering excitedly when he steps up to bat, and he delivers. Seamlessly. Alright, fine. You’re on your third beer, and you’re a little curious.

You do your best to mask that when Tee waves Carmen and you down with two fingers, smiling warmly.

“Look who we have here.” Tee grins when you approach, letting his daughter smush into his side with a kiss to her temple. “Carmen, you know better than to get your friends in trouble.”

“She’s having fun!” Carmen protests, kicking at Tee’s shin. “Aren’t you?”

“It’s something,” you admit, shrugging bashfully as Tee laughs.

“You’ve been keeping her safe, right? Out of the way?”

“Of course.” Carmen rolls her eyes, pushing away from him. Sero and his guys aren’t lingering far, and Carmen locks her eyes on him, grinning wickedly. “Want to go make some friends?”

Tee’s expression turns exasperated, so much so that it makes you laugh before you answer with an affirmative. Tee stops you from following, though, just for a brief moment.

“You’re aware that this is…not something you should share with your other friends, aren’t you, jefa?”

You level with him, mouth twitching with a sarcastic smile. “I don’t have other friends. And don’t worry, I get the picture. Hush hush.”

Tee chuckles, looking you over with something flickering in his eyes. A renewed interest, maybe. “You don’t seem intimidated.”

You take a beat to look around, eyes flickering over the spectators, the lights, the chaos of it all, and he’s right– you’d assimilated quickly. You’ve always had a taste for the things that happen under the nose of finer society.

“I like it,” you say honestly. “Feels like something I could come back to.”

Tee hums, nodding at your answer. He thinks for a moment, then leans in to you. “If you’re as tight-lipped as you say, there could be some extra money around the bar for you. Let’s call it…overtime.”

From anyone else, it might have sent chills down your spine, but you know Tee at this point, somewhat well, you’d like to think. It isn’t like you couldn’t just pick up another legitimate job for a little cash, but…you sigh. Your taste for trouble is going to damn you one day.

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

“No problem, jefecita. Now, go.” Tee tilts his head toward the men you’ve learned the names of, crowding around Carmen and shoving her around like a little sister, something that seems to be driving her up a wall. “Make sure the boys play nice. They know my rules.”

His half-joking warning isn’t for no reason, it seems– Eijirou and Denki are liberal with the way they drag their eyes over you, from the dust gathered on your motorcycle boots up your bare legs, to the tank top barely covering your midriff. You’re not unused to male attention, but you feel like there’s some caution behind their appraisal, like they aren’t so quick to dismiss you as just hot. It flares your ego until you wonder if it’s just your association with Tee, with Carmen.

“I was wondering when you were gonna come bite,” Sero says, playful, even as Carmen thwacks at his chest, introducing you.

“Denki Kaminari,” Denki blurts, smoothly shooting out a hand while giving you a megawatt smile. “Aren’t you a little smokeshow?”

“Denki,” the man you know to be Eijirou mutters in warning, nudging him, even as you take Denki’s hand with a coy smile. “Sorry about him. We try not to let him around the public often.”

Denki shoots Eijirou a look, even as he’s shaking your hand. “I’m being friendly.”

“Right,” Hanta scoffs, shoving him by the shoulder. “She works for Tee, before you get any smart fuckin’ ideas.”

“Do you?” Eijirou turns his gaze to you with renewed interest. You’re pleased to see you had been right about him; the smile he gives you is warm, inviting. “I’m Eijirou, but Eiji, Ei, even Kiri– whatever works.”

“Hi, Eiji.” You shake the hand he extends, overly conscious of how small your fingers are in his palm. “I watched you race earlier.”

“Yeah?” Eijirou lights up, grinning wider. “What’d you think?”

“It’s her first time,” Carmen says, beaming. “She loved it.”

“I mean…it’s definitely loud,” you say simply, drawing laughter from the group.

“No shit.” Katsuki’s scoff comes floating over Eijirou’s shoulder, drawing your attention to where he’s leaned against Eijirou’s hood just behind the group, eyes scanning the crowd like he’s some kind of security guard. The flutter in the pit of your stomach is traitorous; it blessedly doesn’t show on your face, but he’s twice as intimidating up close, mean eyes cutting across the sea of faces and shoulders tense. Eijirou rolls his eyes, saving you the embarrassment of your words being caught in your throat.

“Ignore him, too. He’s not socialized.”

You laugh along with the group, letting it come as a reflex more than a genuine reaction. When Katsuki averts his eyes, turning to talk to Tee, you take advantage of his distraction, unashamedly letting your eyes run over him, top to bottom. It’s a shame he’s so standoffish; he’s so good-looking it’s almost unfair, almost unnatural. Your specific brand of trouble, wrapped up with a spiky bow.

A few minutes of easy banter go by as the crowd around you thins, innocent questions about you and your background that you stealthily talk your way around. You don’t have to ask much in return: this crew has very clearly been rolling together for years, so at ease with each other you wouldn’t be surprised to find a few familial relations between the four of them. Even Carmen fits in her own way, tucked under Eijirou’s arm and stealing cigarettes from between everyone’s fingers.

It’s Katsuki that ends the fun, turning back to the group and butting in with an abrupt: “You done flirting?”

He’s nudging Eijirou, whose eyes widen scandalously, cutting off his conversation with you. “I’m not– fuckin’, what? You ready?”

Katsuki nods tersely, already pulling his keys from his pocket, but before he can respond, you, aided by the Keystone Lights buzzing through your veins, are biting at him like you’ve been dying to do for the last fifteen minutes.

“What, you feelin’ left out?”

Sero and Denki ooh like a couple of schoolchildren, and Katsuki freezes, eyes flashing angrily at you. You’re very satisfied at the half-second it takes him to recover before his features shutter closed again, that innate standoffishness sliding back over him. He pushes off the hood of the Challenger, crossing his arms.

“Careful.” Your stomach flips– not from fear. “No bar to hide behind out here.”

You scowl at him immaturely, not able to get a second shot at him as he’s already turned to shake Tee’s hand in a quick dap goodbye. You’re surprised when the guys begrudgingly shove themselves up to full standing, cars rocking as they’re relieved of weight. Katsuki’s word is law, it seems.

There’s a shameful note of disappointment sinking in your chest, one that you aren’t delusional enough to pretend has nothing to do with Katsuki’s departure. You don’t think you’d be able to hold more than a five minute conversation with him, even at gunpoint, but the wire’s been tripped. At the very least, you can admit he’s easy on the eyes, and you’re slightly skeptical of this mythic status that seems to follow him around, wanting to poke holes in it until the man beneath is revealed. It seems tonight won’t be your night to do it, though.

“Take us back?” Carmen looks up at Sero pleadingly, who hesitates, nervous eyes darting over to Tee. Carmen’s not having it, tugging him down by his shirt sleeve. “Her car’s at The Office!”

Katsuki tsks disapprovingly as he stalks off, shooting you one last parting glance that feels…almost indulgent. Too slow to be accidental. You force yourself not to dwell on it, chuckling as Sero winces, but relents, digging around in his pocket for his keys.

The ride back is much easier than the ride here had been; Sero’s passion bleeds out of his nonchalance almost by accident as you needle him with questions. Why do these cars go so fast? Can his? Does he race? Who’s the best one in his group? It seems to be fun for him, enduring your interrogation and rising to meet your curiosity, still halfway through explaining what a carburetor is when he rolls to a disinclined stop back at the Office.

“Me first?” You aren’t subtle when you look between Sero and Carmen, the obvious implication before you.

“I’m just taking her home,” Hanta clarifies quickly, words strained with the threat of Tee’s unspoken rules. It makes you almost laugh, especially when Carmen clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes, settling irritably in the front seat.

“Riiiight,” you say playfully, gathering your things and leaning forward to pinch Carmen’s cheek.

“Stop it.” She swats at you, but laughs, turning as you start stepping out of the car. “Did you have fun?”

“Definitely,” you say, certainty grounding your voice. “Do these happen, like, often?”

“If you know who to call.” Sero winks at you over his shoulder, and you do understand Carmen’s yearning. You like him, the easy way he carries the weight of a 600-horsepower machine under him, the calm rhythm with which he detonates Carmen’s reluctance to let him be free of her.

“And now you do,” Carmen follows him up, an equally devious grin splitting her face. “You should come around more.”

“If I’m invited, I guess I can’t say no.” You step onto the pavement, waving over your shoulder as you make your way to your Mitsubishi.

Tee waves a careless hand at the half-full pint glass sweating onto the hardwood, steps around the bar to pour himself his usual tequila. You direct your attention back onto the profit records before you, scribbled into fading sheets of a graph paper notebook you’re positive Tee bought at least four years ago, but you track him as he goes about getting a glass, finding the bottle. There’s something more than a well-earned drink keeping his movements slow. Measured.

Tee leans on the bar when he’s gotten the liquor poured, watching silently as you thumb through the cash collected over the course of this week. You can feel his gaze float over your shoulder, honing in on the exit behind you. You almost want to roll your eyes; surely, after six months of employment, he doesn’t think you’re stupid enough to sort his cash with the door unlocked.

The bills hit the bar silently, pinned under Tee’s tattooed fingers as he slides them to you. When you look up, he’s simply watching you. Patient. Calculated. This is where Carmen gets it from, wearing her father’s cool bravado and utilizing it for innocent nights out, one more round at Pinky’s. That’s not what Tee’s asking you for.

You finally bite. “What’s this?”

“Profits,” Tee says simply. “I forgot to include them in the week’s cash.”

You look at the cash. Tee. Back to the cash. You have no misgivings that these aren’t profits made by your hand, or any of the other bartenders. You reach forward, carefully pick the money up– it’s only $470, not much to account for when you stack it beside the bar’s weekly profits that you’ve always felt were a bit…bloated.

“For this week?” you ask after a breath, holding the bills up to the light like you would for anything over a fifty. You can tell by the texture they’re likely not fake, but it’s reflex.

Tee’s mouth twitches. Slight, easy to miss. “Yes. For this week.”

Tee sips his tequila interestedly, watching as you fold the hundreds into your already-sizeable stacks. You add one to Wednesday– Brianna, the daytime girl you rarely see, is known to snag a couple six-packs on her way out without paying. Problem solved. You add two to Friday, break a fifty out of that profit pool and move it to Monday. Friday had been busy, lots of regulars who usually pay in cash. The last one takes some movement, a couple of twenties migrating into your claimed tips for the night, but– it only takes a minute for the money to disappear. Gone.

You’re already scratching away at the graph paper, erasing a seven here, adding a zero here, when you realize Tee is still watching you. Never one to balk, you pop your head up, eyeing him back.

“Sorry about the beer,” you blurt, unsure of what else has captured his interest so thoroughly. Tee only laughs, tapping one ringed finger against the glass of tequila in his hand.

“I find that this is the only thing that makes balancing my books bearable.”

Balancing. Present-tense. Your eyes narrow, only for a brief second, but long enough that you know Tee catches it. The hiccup that you’re now puzzling the volition of. Alright, I’ll play ball.

“Good thing you have me for that, now.” You don’t smile fully when you say it, only letting your mouth curve. Just a bit. You grab your glass and clink it against Tee’s, even when he doesn’t move to toast you. Your heart is heavy in your chest, but slow. Even.

Tee’s eyes flick to the paper beneath your hand, back to your eyes. “You’re good with numbers, it seems.”

“I usually take it over if I stay at a place long enough,” you say by way of guarded explanation. Give a little, learn a little. Tee nods slowly, jaw moving as he considers your answer. You don’t press him, a comfortable, if loaded, silence stretching between the two of you as you scribble your way through the remainder of Tee’s weekly financials. You’re just starting to internally consider if you should care about the origin of that small cash pile when Tee speaks again.

“Have you ever been to a casino?” His tone is light, maybe even playful. You shrug, opt for honesty.

“A few times.”

“Ah.” Tee reaches into his breastpocket, smacks his Rothmans against his palm. When he offers you one, you accept, even as your own Camels sit neglected in your purse. Tee lights your cigarette first, cupping his hand over the igniting tip, then his own. “I didn’t take you for a gambler. What do you play?”

“Blackjack.” You think for a beat, a small smile pulling at your lips. “And I’m not a gambler.”

Tee mirrors your expression, tilting his head. “Not poker?”

“Is that what you play?” you shoot back, tapping your cigarette on the ashtray Tee’s slidden down the bar to be close enough for convenience. He grins outright now, pleased by your willingness to play, it seems.

“I don’t usually play.”

“But when you do?”

Tee nods in admittance. “When I do. Why blackjack?”

“Because I’m good at it,” you say simply. It’s the truth; your first in a line of increasingly terrible boyfriends had coached you on it back in your teenage years in Destin until you could roll with the big kid’s table at boy’s night. How to count cards, how to weigh risk. When to press on the house, and how to tilt the table in your favor. Tee only nods again, slower this time. Like you’ve shown your hand.

“You don’t play poker, though?”

You shake your head, sucking a deep lungful of smoke while you consider your answer. “Poker’s too…social. I like to beat the house one-on-one, not rob some asshole who’s putting his mortgage on the table.”

“Poker is for thrill-seekers,” Tee chuckles.

“Does that apply to you?” You let the smile grow just a pinch.

“The appeal is in the danger,” Tee chuckles, self-aggrandizing, and flicks ash off the tip of his cigarette. His eyes dart towards his notebook, still open on the counter beside your neatly-sorted pile of cash, finding their way back to you. That appraising air is back, less hidden now. “Blackjack carries its own risks, but it is more certain. If you know how to count, of course.”

“I didn’t take you for the poker type.” You change direction, suddenly feeling out of control at the way he’s cat-and-mousing you. Tee accepts this, pouring himself another tequila while he mulls over your comment. When he turns, you’re surprised to see that he’s holding two glasses. You clink them in silence, letting the warmth of the reposado spur you on.

“I wasn’t as smart as you when I was your age,” Tee says, smiling wryly. He thinks for a beat. “I had to learn to appreciate certainty.”

You weigh this, letting it knock around in your head. “I like an element of risk, but poker makes people turn cards personal. You aren’t using your head if your ego’s running the show.”

Tee’s face positively blooms with realization, eyes floating over your features like you’ve said something particularly profound. The attention makes you uncomfortable, the almost paternal pride in the warm lines of his face. It feels like you’ve gotten an answer right on a test you don’t think you should be taking, but you’ve been braced by Don Fulano and what you’re beginning to suspect is a chance to dive headfirst into the ‘overtime’ Tee had mentioned at the race.

“You are smart,” he remarks, like it’s a fact more than a compliment, “in a way most people are not. In a way I sometimes am not.”

You tilt your head, and maybe the tequila hit your empty stomach too hard because you feel your mouth moving. Unwisely, ironically. “You’re a gambler.”

“And you are a magician.”

Your brow furrows, momentarily confused. “What do you mean?”

“You say you’re good at blackjack, no?”

“Yes.” Your pride rises, face warm from the booze. “Very good.”

“I know your type.” Tee points a ringed finger at you, not unfriendly, but defining. “Rare. You make money appear, you make money disappear. You understand where money likes to hide.”

You narrow your eyes, still unsure of what he’s playing at. “I’m good with numbers, yeah.”

“Más, jefecita.” Tee’s eyes are sparkling, hands moving in small gestures as he explains himself. “You feel the money through the cards, speak to it. The house will move to scare you off, but you force the dealer onto your level. You do not need to waste your time stealing from other player’s hands because you know where the power truly lies. It is automatic for these types of people.”

When your frown deepens, Tee taps the pile of cash, raising his eyebrows pointedly, watching you work it out. The muscles of your face loosen, expression falling neutral as your eyes flicker over the work before you, the work you’d just done thoughtlessly. The illegal work you’d just done thoughtlessly. You nod slowly as the realization settles on you with less gravity than it should.

“I’m good with numbers,” you repeat, swallowing thickly, “with money.”

“And you’re not a gambler.” Tee’s mouth twitches. You’re getting it now, says the crinkle at the edge of his eyes. “You are a magician.”

Money laundering has always sounded so big, such a complicated crime crammed into syllables that land on a table like a jail block door slamming shut. You look over your books, the cleanly-altered cash profits for each day that you’d wedged the extra money into. It hadn’t required more than a few minutes of thought, reasonable excuses, plausible deniability. Your gaze drifts back to Tee, and you don’t know which direction he’s going to take this, but you do know he has an office he doesn’t let you go in alone and a .45 in the top right drawer of his desk, so you figure now would be a good time to let him keep leading the conversation.

When Tee realizes that you’ve picked up his drift, he speaks again.

“You said you liked the race,” he says, tone as casual as if he were discussing your newest favorite television show. You blink, only stunned for a second.

“I did,” you reply easily, flicking the long column of ash off of your forgotten cigarette, greedily taking a few puffs back to back.

“Would you like to go back?”

“If Carmen invites me–”

“I am inviting you.” Tee picks up the cash laying on top of his notebook, thumbs through it quick enough to feel the weight but not quick enough to count. That’s your job. He looks over the graph paper, a pleased smile toying at his face when his eyes find you again. “Call it a business trip.”

This starts a series of dominoes falling that changes the course of your life in a way that feels irreparable. The skeletal parts of something resembling permanence does spook the part of you that’s a drifter by nature, but the adrenaline rush is too rich for you to care. The handle, the hold, the figure, the vig, the sheet– Tee walks you through the scaffolding of his betting pool with a focused concentration that’s so very at odds with the chummy, jovial man who collects the bets trackside you almost get whiplash.

Back at the Office, your ‘lessons’ are easier. Betting, racing, collecting– all of it’s borrowed vocabulary that you don’t understand. The numbers you fix are becoming your second language, and you’re growing more fluent by the day. It should probably unnerve you how easily you take to all of this, but instead, all you feel is a growing sense of satisfaction, the welcome pain of claws gripping into you. Tee doesn’t ask you to start making the cash drops– you volunteer.

This is how you land outside of Dobson’s Auto Repair, shielding your eyes from the setting summer sun and squinting up at the nondescript sign, thirty-two hundred dollars weighing your purse down. All cash.

It’s a nondescript shop with chipping paint and three bays, only two of which are occupied. One lonely mechanic makes his way between a Honda and a Subaru with no real hurry in his movements, two customers sip styrofoam cups and sit as far apart as they can manage on a battered, plaid couch. You’re unimpressed to say the least, even to the extent you wonder if you’re in the wrong place, but you remember Tee’s instructions: walk around the building, follow the gravel path until you reach the real garage. You will know when you see it.

The bored-looking secretary behind the desk perks up like she’s caught sight of you, and that incentivizes you to start moving, gravel crunching under your boots. You’re sure that the small mechanic shop you’ve discovered can’t be what you’re here for, not when you’re bearing five thick wads of cash rolled into neat stacks in the handbag you never use, but you are a newbie. You let your feet carry you around the small building, and what had appeared to be an irrelevant silver roof hanging in the background of Dobson’s comes into view on top of a massive warehouse and– you’re definitely in the right place.

The true garage opens almost cinematically before you as you approach. A long, metal-sheet warehouse with nine bay doors, over half of which are open, circulating the stale July air through the huge building. You don’t bother approaching slowly, pushing your heels into the gravel harshly to bring you closer to the sound of intermittent whirring and banging, the sound of a boombox turned up to its maximum volume. The sound sticks to you like a second skin, raising goosebumps along your legs even as the sticky summer heat licks at your calves.

The sensation is visceral when you step onto the concrete landing in the closest open bay door.

The most distinct thing that hits you is the smell: crude motor oil tickles your nose, something burnt lands on the back of your tongue, the acrid mixture of concrete and metal flooding your sensory palette. You pause for a brief second, recalibrating yourself. It’s a little difficult to regain your footing after being assailed by the harsh air burning through your sinuses, but you focus on the song blasting through the yawning cavern that is the garage.

It’s something you recognize, and you can ground yourself with it. Tom Morello’s predatory, coiled guitar riffs track your movements as you step further in, not bothering to hide the wonder on your face as you take it all in.

You’ve never seen a space so full of…stuff. Workbenches, vehicles, tools you couldn’t begin to even guess the names of are scattered everywhere, not a clear surface to be seen. Street signs—stolen, you think with an appreciative smile—are hammered into the steel walls, and a few huge neons of beer and car brands make the metal glow red, blue, white.

The types of cars you’re beginning to find familiar surround you, some on lifts, some with their supercharged guts on display, hoods popped as diagnostics are run. There’s a distinct lack of agitation to the garage that you’ve seen in other, similarly-sized operations while getting your oil changed, tires rotated. Everything feels routine, mom-and-pop. The first person you spot in the organized chaos is—Eijirou?

You blink. Sure as shit, that’s him— bobbing his head along to the beat of Audioslave’s low, aching hum and hammering at the door of a sleek green Kia Stinger like he’s coaxing it carefully into shape. It only takes him a moment to notice you, dazzled eyes darting around like an admission you hadn’t meant to make.

“Hey!” His voice carries easily over the music thanks to the wide bays, the tall cavern of the roof. The seemingly perpetually shirtless Eijirou is jogging over to you, wiping sweat from his brow and grinning like your interruption is more than welcome.

“Hey,” you laugh back, willing your voice to rise over the noise and partially failing. “Do you–”

“How are you?” Eijirou cuts you off when he approaches, holding his hand out like he expects you to shake it. You glance down, very aware of the streaks of oil on his palm, but clap your palm into his anyway.

“I’m good,” you say, surprised. “How are you?”

“Living somebody’s dream,” Eijirou says with a hint of dry sarcasm that feels like it might be borrowed. He gestures back to the Stinger. “Fuckin’ hate Kias. Foreign body builds are always a pain.”

You nod as if that bears any meaning to you, then your brain catches up. Eijirou. Here. Tee’s errand. You look up at him, suddenly. “Wait– you work here?”

“No,” Eijirou draws it out, smiling good-naturedly. “I just sweat my ass off and smack steel around for fun.”

“Could have fooled me,” you snipe back, but your eyes are still darting around. You aren’t sure if Eijirou’s the right person to have this conversation with, but your options are slim to none. “Are you...the owner?”

“Say that louder, where he can hear.” Eijirou winks, then looks over your shoulder. “Yo, Kat! Got company.”

Kat? Your eyes widen. Oh– no, no, no–

“The hell are you doin’ here?” His voice reaches you before he does, gruff and impatient. You turn on your heel, and you swear your breath catches in your throat.

Cars are hot. A guy that works on cars is hot. These are truths you made peace with long before you had the opportunity to get your hands on either of them. It’s a cruel twist of fate that the asshole approaching you is an infuriatingly muscled, grease-streaked, straight-out-of-a-wet-dream embodiment of this truth. This sucks.

“I’m looking for the owner.” You hold your ground, even as Katsuki’s eyes narrow at you threateningly. You despise how hard you’re finding it to keep a straight face. It’s almost a hundred out, and the sweat sticking Katsuki’s white wifebeater to the chiseled lines of his torso is unseemly evidence of the heat bearing down on you. It should also probably trouble you at how your pulse quickens when he glares down his nose at you, how the annoyance has something troublemaking kicking in your veins. The whole thing feels very unfair.

“Not looking anymore,” he answers, crossing his arms over his chest. You very pointedly avoid looking at the bulge of his biceps. “Who told you about this place?”

“Tee,” you say indignantly. “He said go by Dobson’s Auto–”

“This isn’t Dobson’s,” Katsuki interrupts. You scowl at him. 

“Obviously. He told me the real shop was in the back.” Your eyes flicker over his unwavering face, waiting for any indicator that he’s picking up on what you’re saying. Katsuki holds firm– he’s going to make you say it, it seems. You lower your voice. “I have your retainer.  And your profit.”

That seems to spark a bit of reaction from him, finally. Katsuki’s eyes dart over the top of your head, connecting with Eijirou’s, before they return to you. He looks you over again, more careful in his appraisal this time. One eyebrow lifts, disbelieving.

“You’ve got my money.”

“Unless you want me to stick it in my wallet and go have a field day at Victoria’s Secret, then yes,” you hiss back at him, grabbing the shoulder of your bag for emphasis. Eijirou whistles lowly behind your back; you can practically hear the shit-eating grin spreading across his face as you and Katsuki stare each other down.

Katsuki jaw ticks. “Ei– the Stinger looks like shit. Go. And you– office.”

He turns on his heel, wiping his hands on a towel hanging from the back of his jeans and discarding it to the side thoughtlessly. His pace would require you to scurry after him to keep up, but you have no intentions of leaving here without your dignity intact, so you force your legs to move you casually along towards the one wall actually covered over with concrete. A window reveals a cluttered office within, sparse with decoration and thickly covered with paper. Above the window is a graffiti-style tag: La Escuelita.

Katsuki slams the door open behind himself, tapping impatiently on the frame as you make your way inside. The door shuts behind you so forcefully you have to physically stop yourself from flinching. A loaded silence stretches between you as Katsuki rounds the desk.

“Bartending not paying the bills anymore?” Katsuki looks you up and down. Scathing. “Carmen said she made a killing last Wednesday.” 

“Carmen fluffs her credit card tips,” you scoff.

“How would you know?”

“Who do you think runs Tee’s numbers?” you shoot back, shoving your bag off your shoulder and in one of the chairs facing the desk. You bend at the waist to start shuffling through the minimal contents, savoring the pause your revelation has brought him. You smirk. “Not just an errand girl, if you can believe that.”

When you straighten, two labeled envelopes in hand, the way Katsuki’s staring at you has changed. If you didn’t know better—which you don’t, really—you’d say he almost looks uneasy, but he swallows it, holding a hand out and curling his fingers up as if to say hand them over. You plant the envelopes in his hand, leaning one hip against the desk and crossing your arms over your chest.

You don’t miss the way his gaze travels to the plush of your hip against the desk, the way the wood cuts into your skin, slick with summer heat. His eyes widen fractionally, and his Adam’s apple bobs with a thick swallow; you file that away with a note of warm, sticky satisfaction.

“You gonna count it, or are we good?”

Katsuki snaps out of whatever strange trance he was in, scowling at you and opening the envelopes you’ve handed him. He speaks again as he sifts through the cash.

“If you’re doing Tee’s drops now, you’re not going to talk about money on that floor, got it?” Katsuki licks his thumb, eyeing you to make sure you’re listening. “You come, you find me, we handle it in here.”

“Got it.”

Katsuki peeks back up at you, bills still flying through his fingers like a reflex. “This gonna be a regular thing?”

“Yeah,” you say, steeling your shoulders. “I’m helping out.”

Katsuki scoffs. “That what Tee’s calling it? ‘Helping out’?”

“Overtime, actually.” You bite into a reluctant smile, surprised when Katsuki’s lips twitch. It’s slight, but there’s some dark amusement toying with him, a welcome reprieve from the bizarre tension that’s got his hackles up.

It’s that flicker of a smirk, the idea of it fully realized, that has you nodding your head yes when, later that week, Carmen says she’s got plans for you two. You have to play at reluctance as she loads you in her Camaro, very obviously baiting you for a reaction. Denki invited Jess– you remember Jess, from the other weekend? With those godawful highlights? Yeah, right. Denki called Jess and said they just finished a new build, something supposed to be really cool. They’re testing it at a lot near Dobson’s, but she doesn’t want to go alone, and I’m still pissed at Sero, so I don’t want to go support her alone. You game?

You are rather impressed with the nonchalance of your shrug, already smacking Carmen’s Camel Lights against your palm. You should probably interrogate the quiet zip of excitement that bites at you at the thought of seeing Katsuki again, but stealing Carmen’s cigarettes is much more appealing.

The sun has started lazily readying itself to sink when you pull up to the lot– it’s a setting that’s growing more comfortable, a long stretch of hot, black asphalt that’s been baking all day, ready to shred some rubber. You do remember Jess, vaguely– you think you’d had a conversation with her at the race a couple weeks ago, but you throw out your name anyway.

“Oh, yeah, I remember you,” Jess says, waving off the hand you extend in favor of a coconut-scented hug. “You’re down at Tee’s place, right?”

“That’s me.” You accept the styrofoam cup she extends to you, raising a suspicious eyebrow at the yellow sloshing around in it. “Good to see you again.”

“Malibu and pineapple juice,” Jess says by way of explanation, handing Carmen a cup of her own as they exchange a kiss to the cheek. “We have a cooler in the backseat, if you need a refill.”

Thankfully Jess turns just in time to miss the exchanged look of no way that you and Carmen share– rule number one, impressed on you with great severity from Carmen and Sero: never go in Denki’s backseat. Sero had almost shuddered recounting how often Denki shares a conquest story; the backseat of Denki’s zippy little Silvia has seen more women than a department store, if Sero’s to be believed.

“Thanks,” you cough out, averting your gaze from Carmen’s to stop the snicker building in your throat from slipping out.

At your arrival, Denki perks up from under the hood of a glittering white Subaru with a high spoiler, grinning. “Hey ladies!”

Katsuki unfolds beside him, and you don’t miss the way his gaze lands straight on you. You especially don’t miss the way he takes his time looking you over. He squints against the setting sun, but doesn’t falter, gaze snagging on where your tank top rides up to show the glinting sparkle of your bellybutton ring. You’re generous with the sip you drain from your cup while he takes you in, content to let yourself preen a little under his attention, something that feels like it’s not given lightly. A beat passes, but the scene unfolding on the track finally steals your attention.

Eijirou is hanging out of the passenger window of the monstrous Challenger you know to be his, shouting something profane over the thunder of an engine that sounds incredibly offended at what’s being asked of it. When you squint, you realize it’s Sero behind the wheel, and he’s taking a turn, and– the rear of the car swings, fast, tires screaming against the pavement, and the Challenger throws them in a way you’re positive is not what Sero’s aiming for. Sudden silence cuts across the lot, somehow more deafening than the roaring protests of Eijirou’s engine.

All you hear is a loud “Ha!”

“Eijirou’s gonna kill him if those tires look anything like they sound,” Denki remarks, grinning as a resigned Sero steps out of Eijirou’s Dodge, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“I’m gonna kill him if he fucks up the suspension,” Katsuki snarls, curling his lip as he slams the Subaru shut. “Took me six months to get that shit right.”

You raise your eyebrows, turning back to Carmen, who’s shaking her head.

“That thing’s never gonna drift,” she tsks. “Too heavy.”

“Sounded painful,” you agree with a wince, feeling a smile play at your lips as Eijirou and Sero approach, Eijirou’s lecturing growing easier to hear as they come closer. 

“You two done?” Katsuki’s tone is flat, final. Sero winces, shrugging.

“I’ll get it one day–”

“No way, bro,” Eijirou cuts in, shaking his head. “The old lady doesn’t like it, you heard her. She’s done.”

“His mom?” you whisper to Carmen, who smirks.

“His car,” she corrects, tilting her head toward the Challenger, whose tires are still smoking concerningly.

“We didn’t come out here to play.” Katsuki climbs into the Subaru, turns the key. The engine turns over almost irritably, shaking to life quickly and chugging under the shiny white hood. It sounds impatient.

Denki tilts his head, grinning. “I mean, we sort of did.”

Katsuki doesn’t dignify that with a response, testing the gas pedal with a hesitant foot. The Subaru argues back, air rumbling through the cylinders petulantly. His eyes narrow.

“She sounds pretty, Denks,” Eijirou says, smacking a hand on Denki’s shoulder. Denki nods, arms crossed over his chest.

“I wanted it to sound eager.” He tilts his head, nodding at Katsuki, who revs the engine a bit. The engine growls at him, seemingly bitter at its current immobilized state. Denki whistles, smiles to himself. “Tuned the back-pressure out, so when it’s idling, it sounds a little…I dunno. Blue-balled.”

“How cruel.” Sero grins beside him. “Who’s taking the first spin?”

“Me,” Katsuki says, with no room for argument. “Denki, get in here. I want to feel how the engine runs with whatever crazy shit you did to the cam on this thing.”

Denki hisses a little yes and jumps in the passenger seat without a second thought, already rambling, Katsuki nodding along because he actually understands the various terms Denki’s spitting out, rapid-fire.

“It isn’t that crazy– well. I pushed the cam timing by like, four degrees, so if you get some pushback on the lower RPMs, don’t freak. Once you’re past three thousand, she’ll pull, trust me. You’ll feel boost come in earlier because I tightened the wastegate, so wait til like, twenty-five hundred–”

You don’t hear the rest; Katsuki revs the engine again, like he wants to properly piss the thing off before he opens it up. The car is pretty, even if it sounds like it has a bad attitude, high spoiler and a little indigo racing stripe delicately painted along the side. When Katsuki finally pulls off the brakes, the exhaust breathes like it’s relieved, all the stagnant energy that feels caught up in the engine finally being allowed to roll through its proper channels smoothly. It jumps forward onto the track just like Denki said– eager.

You lapse into easy conversation with Jess and Carmen, both of them losing interest as the boys alternate between ripping their cars down the strip next to the Subaru and hopping out to debate minor tweaks.

“Okay,” Jess starts, lowering her voice just enough to make sure it doesn’t carry to where Katsuki and Eijirou are leaned on the hood of Denki’s Silvia. She wipes a thumb at the corner of her mouth, catching a stray drop of cocktail. “What do we think of Cruz?”

“Cruz Gonzalez?” you clarify.

“Yeah!” Jess nods enthusiastically. “Gold Lexus?”

You and Carmen exchange a look: Cruz had approached you just last week at the race you’d worked with Tee. You aren’t particularly taken with him, but you are also bored, even given everything you’ve taken on with the Office financials, so when he’d asked for your number, you’d obliged. This isn’t something you’re about to share with Jess, though.

“You came here with Denki,” Carmen points out, tilting her head to the Subaru that Denki’s spurring on like a racehorse.

Jess rolls her eyes. “By coincidence. You know we aren’t like that.”

“He seems nice,” you say neutrally, sipping your drink to hide the awkward expression that threatens to break through onto your face. This seems like enough to satisfy Jess, who smiles brightly.

“I think so,” she responds before leaning closer, peeking over her shoulder conspiratorially as Denki returns, tossing the keys into Eijirou’s hand, “but don’t tell Denki.”

“Why would we?” Carmen rolls her eyes. Jess huffs.

“I don’t know.” She chews on the inside of her cheek, shooting a glance towards the man in question over her shoulder. Jess lowers her voice even further. “I sort of have to keep Denki on retainer. Brittany wants me to hook her up with Katsuki.”

That should not hit you the way it does. A solid beat passes between the three of you.

“Brittany Michaels?” Carmen says disbelievingly.

Jess’ face tightens defensively. “Why not? She’s gorgeous–”

“It’s not that,” Carmen dismisses her easily, waving a hand in front of her face. “Didn’t she cheat on Eiji, like, a couple years ago?”

Jess shrugs. “He probably forgot.”

Carmen shoots you a look. “Eijirou doesn’t forget shit like that. Neither does Katsuki.”

“But it might be–”

“Yo, Carm!” Sero interrupts, calling from several feet away behind the wheel of his Nissan, waving coolly. “Want to come for a ride?”

You catch her eye before she responds, widening yours at the momentary panic of decision-making fluttering across her face. You try, honestly.

“Carmen, you’re still pissed at him– no, don’t–”

“Okay!” She gives you a regretful wince and sets her cup down on the hood of her Camaro, skittering down towards the Subaru and a grinning Sero before you can properly stop her. You pinch the bridge of your nose between your fingers, exhaling. A grunted chuckle comes from your left, and you whip your head towards Katsuki, who’s smirking.

“Shut it,” you say sharply, not even sure when you developed the need to defend Carmen’s admittedly poor choices, or if it’s just becoming a reflex to snap at Katsuki when he ticks you off. He doesn’t even grant you a response, only letting the smirk on his face grow wider.

“Anyway,” Jess is already continuing, oblivious, “I don’t know how well you know Katsuki, but he isn’t the kind of guy you just walk up and pitch your friend to, you know? I already don’t even know him all that well.” She pauses, studying you quizzically. “Are you two…friends?”

You let your gaze drift idly back to Katsuki, the sharp lines of his profile and the shadows in the divots of his musculature. “Not exactly.”

“Figures,” Jess says with a short laugh. “He isn’t the friendliest, but he is, like, the bag of the century–”

You cut her off with a loud snort. “I mean, okay, he’s good-looking, but he’s not exactly great company.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.” You whip your face back to Jess in surprise; she’s smiling mischievously at you. When you don’t respond, she bites her lip impishly. “It’s not a secret that he’s run through half the girls that hang out around the races.”

You blink. “Really?”

“Oh, sure,” Jess continues airily. The empty cup in your hand is suddenly very interesting, and Jess hops to, digging around in the cooler as she goes on. “And from what I’ve heard, it’s a good time. Like, really good–”

“Sh,” you shush her urgently, eyes darting in the direction of the seemingly oblivious Katsuki. He’s still talking engine mods with Eijirou, but you’re not taking any chances.

Jess blushes, giggles, mouths oops, but thankfully, she lowers her voice. “Anyway, I don’t know how to get Brittany in because it’s like he just chooses. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

You frown unintentionally into your drink, mulling this over. The Katsuki Jess describes seems so at odds with the Katsuki that lurks around the peripherals of your thoughts when your guardrails are low. The Katsuki that takes shots at you, that drags his eyes over your body like he wants you to know he’s taking inventory. To you, he’s always seemed so…intentional.

“I didn’t expect that from him.” A bit overly honest. You backtrack with a wry laugh. “I mean, he’s so…I don’t know. Prickly. I wouldn’t expect him to get much ass, honestly.” 

Jess blatantly stares at Katsuki over your shoulder, raising a skeptical eyebrow at you. “Have you seen him?”

“Have you spoken to him?” you snap back, too sharp. “I mean, I know you said you don’t know him that well, but I do, and trust me, he’s a jackass.”

“I thought you said you weren’t friends.” Jess eyes you. You don’t give her an inch, sipping your freshly-filled drink and narrowing your eyes at the cloud of dust that is Sero and Carmen barreling back towards you. Jess takes your silence in stride, shrugs. “Whatever. I think he’d just be a good rebound for her.”

Something about it nips at you viciously; Katsuki is…you don’t have a lot of words for him, but casual is definitely not one you would use. He’s a pain in the ass, he’s rude, he’s…okay. He’s a little funny, sometimes, but when you let yourself look straight into the setting sun and let some internal part of yourself breathe, the most complimentary word you can give him that excludes anything physical is deliberate. 

You mercifully don’t get the chance to needle that thought further when Sero and Carmen come stumbling back up, giggling. You want to roll your eyes; you’ll be hearing about this tomorrow, that’s a given.

“Alright.” Sero looks around, hair mussed in a manner that’s not not suggestive, wiggles his eyebrows enticingly. “Who’s next?”

Eijirou clears his throat, stepping forward and snagging the keys from Sero’s hand. “I’ll go. I want to feel if the suspension’s still pulling left like it was last week.”

“We should give Denki a break,” Katsuki says gruffly, pushing off the hood of Eijirou’s Dodge. “Put it up against something with some real horsepower.”

“What about you?” Sero says suddenly, eyes narrowing on you. You perk up, suspicious.

“Me?”

“You want to give it a shot?” Sero tilts his head toward the shiny Subaru that Eijirou’s already opening the driver’s side to. You bite your lip, mulling it over.

“What, you scared?” Katsuki pipes up, something wicked tugging at his mouth. You frown.

“No.” Yes. Maybe a little. It’s not something you haven’t imagined after all your nights at the track, but you’re stuck between being intimidated and very much not wanting to be.

“You’ve got a shitty poker face,” Katsuki presses, only making you frown harder.

“Don’t be a dick.” Sero nudges him. “I was just asking. She doesn’t have to–”

“I’m not scared,” you interrupt, unable to bear the satisfaction curling over Katsuki’s features. Sero looks to you in surprise, but you ignore him, eyes cutting to Katsuki as you shrug carelessly. “I just don’t think it’d be that exciting.”

“Yeah?” Katsuki’s eyes flash. “Then get in.”

That sits for a moment before you realize Katsuki’s keys are in his hand, and he’s already taking a step towards that monstrous black Nissan that you’ve become so accustomed to watching from afar. The sun glints off the glossy finish, winking at you. Daring you.

You can feel everyone’s bated breath as you stare at Katsuki, waiting for a punchline you’re positive you won’t get. Eijirou’s mouth twitches. Carmen’s forehead falls into her hand.

“Fine.” You set your drink down with an air of finality that feels more directed at yourself than anyone else, and your feet are moving before you can second guess it. Katsuki’s eyebrows raise for the briefest moment, but he shutters his expression almost instantly and slides in behind the wheel like he has thousands of times.

“Jesus Christ,” Carmen mutters, pinching at the bridge of her nose.

“Your chariot awaits,” Eijirou says, shit-eating grin now fully plastered on his face as he tilts his head in the direction of Katsuki’s car as the engine turns over. It growls at you, predatory. Fuck.

“I better survive this,” you whisper to a dumbfounded Carmen as you slip past, heart hammering wildly in your throat.

You slide into the passenger seat too easily, keeping your movements fluid and practiced so you don’t lose your nerve. The first thing you notice is how far you drop down– you practically feel like you’re sitting on the ground, collapsing into the seat with enough weight to shake a huff from your lungs. You pointedly avoid Katsuki’s watchful eye as you buckle up, trying not to let a satisfied hum crawl up your throat as the feel of the car hits you. The engine, more of a steady, rolling growl than a purr, feels like it’s trying to lull you into a sense of false security, the hot leather licks at your skin unforgivingly, and the smell– oil, hot metal, a hint of something manly, like smoky cologne. It feels like sitting inside Katsuki’s mind, if you could even phrase it like that.

Katsuki throws the car in first, eyeing you as he rolls the three of you down to the imagined starting line where Eijirou’s idling in the Subaru.

“You gonna freak out on me?”

“No–”

“Tell me now,” Katsuki says, something grave and unfamiliar infecting his voice. You know he doesn’t fuck around about cars, but it still catches you off guard. “I won’t give you any shit. Can’t have you spazzing out when you feel the jump and trying to rip your door open or something stupid.”

You turn to face him properly, finding a welcome breath of comfort in the natural agitation he pulls out of you. “I’m not going to freak out.”

Katsuki’s eyes flicker over you, the press of your thighs into the leather below, where the seatbelt cuts across your collarbone. He huffs something under his breath and rolls the windows down, maybe a quarter of the way. You aren’t ungrateful—who would have thought that a confined space with Katsuki Bakugou would feel like anything less than a stalled elevator—but you still look at him in surprise. He shrugs.

“You should feel the wind.” He speaks without looking at you, fiddling with something on his dash that doesn’t seem necessary. “That’s the point. To feel the speed.”

You nod along like that wasn't the single most daunting thing he could have said. You glance at the speedometer that tops out at 200mph and swallow.

Eijirou revs his engine beside you, challenging. Katsuki presses back, but it’s half-hearted, playful. The sound of a monster laughing.

“Ready?” Katsuki asks, still not looking at you. His eyes are glued to Denki, who’s between the two cars swaying his hips like you’ve seen the hot girls they use for flashlight drops at big meets do. You both laugh quietly, lacking entirely in humor but bloated with tension.

“Yeah. Whenever you are.”

When Denki’s hand drops, you have a single, heart-stopping second to think, internally, what the hell am I doing?, before the launch presses you back into the seat with an effortlessness that tells you you’re now a passive part in a machine. It isn’t rough, but it’s insistent, the wind shrieking through the cracks in the windows loud enough to draw a startled, pitchy laugh from you. Your fear falls away just as Kastuki breaks 60 in 6 seconds, left behind in the tracks of burnt rubber as adrenaline courses through you, lightning hot and more intense than you’ve felt in your entire life. It’s fun. It’s way too fucking fun.

A stuttered gasp comes puttering out from you as Katsuki eases off the gas about halfway down the track, letting Eijirou rocket ahead in the Subaru. Your breath is hard to catch, evasive as you giggle madly.

“Holy shit.” You turn to him, unabashed. “Holy shit.”

You’re so amped that you’re practically high, so the weight of Katsuki’s face doesn’t settle like it should, but you’ll have ample time to pick it over later. His eyes are bright, a disbelieving grin lighting up his features, finally free of all the furrowed-brow, brooding nonsense that usually weighs him down. He’s looking at you like you’re a sight to behold, eyes flickering over you rapidly, like he’s taking notes.

“Yeah? That was fun?”

“Fun?” you say back, one hand ripping through the tangles in your hair excitedly. You won’t find the words, so you don’t bother, only able to chase the rush. “Can we go again?”

Katsuki’s eyes do something funny, something intense in a way that’s unnatural to what you know of him so far. He’s just on the verge of responding when Eijirou whips back around beside him, hanging out of the driver’s side and grinning smugly at the two of you.

“Quit babysitting! Let’s run it again!”

Your chest is still heaving as Eijirou zips off toward the start of the track. Katsuki has calmed down a little now, sobered by Eijirou’s taunt if the tic of his jaw is anything to go by, and you immediately know that you don’t want that. You want his attention, so you get it, boldly brushing your fingers over where his are still tight on the gear shift. Katsuki’s face slackens ever so slightly before he can stop it; you almost think you can see his breath catching in his chest.

“Well, you heard him.” You may not call Katsuki a friend, but you know enough about him to know he can’t say no to a dare. “I’ve seen you race. Let’s open this thing up.” Your eyes slide meaningfully to where the engine hides under layers of carefully sculpted metal.

Something shifts in him. Katsuki’s eyes flicker with something feral, something that makes warmth drip down below your stomach, pool with restless energy. You want to sink your teeth into something.

“Open it up, huh?” Katsuki laughs under his breath, and for once, it isn’t something you’ve had to earn. “You’re talkin’ like us. Been hanging around too much.”

You shrug, practically vibrating with excitement. “I want to see what your car can do.”

Katsuki’s Adam’s apple bobs, his jaw sets, and his eyes grow dark, determined. You know you’ve struck a chord, even if unintentionally, and you’re glad he doesn’t give you the opportunity to press on it. The windows seal shut with a quiet sucking sound, and you tilt your head at him as your world narrows to Katsuki and the car beneath you. He doesn’t give you an explanation, pulling to a stop beside Eijirou. This time, when Eiji taps the gas at him, Katsuki gives him a proper answer. Denki, returning to his post between the two cars, smirks at the loud snarl of Katsuki’s Nissan, one eyebrow raising curiously. The rev of his engine shoots through you from the balls of your feet to your temples, a course of energy that feels too powerful to be manmade. But then again, Katsuki built this engine himself.

“Close your eyes.”

“What?” It sounds ridiculous, but when you turn to Katsuki questioningly, he doesn’t give you any hints. Just flicks his eyes up at his rearview, back at the oscillating RPM needle as he warms his engine up, priming it.

“I’ll tell you when to open. Trust me.”

That’s the Katsuki you think you’re beginning to learn the shape of– deliberate to a fault. You don’t know when you started trusting him, but when you reach within yourself to question him, you find that something’s rooted there, something that wants to listen to him. You close your eyes, against all reason. Before you can feel strange about it, Katsuki’s car pounces, and everything about him makes sense in a millisecond.

The only sensation you can process immediately is the pressure. It never occurred to you that speed would feel heavy, but this time, Katsuki’s Nissan shoves you back against the seat, with no room for argument and so hard that you can feel the framework beneath the cushion. The speed climbs up your throat, fingers twitching and digging into the leather, the bare skin of your thighs, and then, impossibly– something kicks from the back of the car, a commitment to breaking the sound barrier, you think, and you’re rocketing faster, all the breath being entirely squeezed from your lungs by the physics of a body going faster than it was meant to.

“Open,” Katsuki shouts over the thunder of horsepower, and you do, and the world is watercolored around the car. You catch a peek of the white needle pressing past 120, but your eyes close again with the involuntary shriek of glee that comes ripping out of your throat. You’ve never felt anything like it, like you’re experiencing something that the laws of nature themselves forbid. It feels like nothing you could put into words, mainlining caffeine and learning how to fly all at once, and as soon as it crests, heart stopping in your chest, you know you’ll be chasing this feeling for the rest of your life.

When you manage to force them open again, your eyes dart to Katsuki and– oh. The impossibly fast rhythm in you picks up speed seeing the white-knuckled grip of his hand on the gear shift, the calculated eyes narrowed at the searing asphalt like he’s going to rend it before his tires can, the cocky set of his jaw and the smug curve of his lips and– now he’s glancing back at you, letting himself see you for the briefest second while he eases off the gas. 

This is where you learn that speed can become light. The crushing pressure on your chest eases, incrementally, as the engine stops urgently sending you forward and starts to allow outside pressure to slow the body of the car down. It feels like floating if floating felt like a rug being pulled out from underneath you, like a seatbelt biting into the skin of your collarbone. It takes longer than you expect, and you wonder if you’re even still breathing by the time you get to reasonable highway speeds. When Katsuki finally rolls you to a stop, the silence is louder than the idling, cooling engine, what you’ve just discovered is whooshing in your ears so loud that you’re contemplating hearing loss.

Katsuki’s trying to play at caution when he looks back at you, but you can see the keen curiosity in him. A peal of laughter comes flying out of you, breathless and disinhibited and lighter than you’ve felt in maybe your whole life.

“Katsuki…” is all you can get out before you’re laughing again, running your fingers through your hair. “How fucking fast was that?”

He doesn’t even try for humility, smirking as you desperately try to catch your breath. “Think we capped out at 140.”

“140,” you repeat slowly, another overwhelmed giggle racking your frame. You wish you could verbalize this, this urgent thrumming rocking every muscle in your body. You feel like you’re being shocked over and over again, and welcoming it.

“You’ve never done something like that,” Katsuki says, factually, but not unkindly. He’s already urging the car to move—slowly—to carry you both back toward the group, and you can feel the craving in your chest for more, to watch him kick it all the way up. Your heart’s thumping in tune with his engine, eager to climb back up through the gears.

“No,” you agree, still breathless. “But– how does that even work? Like, you built this, right?”

“The car?” Katsuki cocks an eyebrow at you. You like this side of him, so much so that you can’t even build a wall around it. Playful, smug, in his element. Your stomach flutters.

“The engine,” you shoot back, smiling. “I mean, they can’t sell this at a dealership, right?”

“Hell no,” Katsuki scoffs, drumming his fingers idly on the car like he’s assuring it of its singularity. “Can you imagine some random fuckin’ civilian dealing with that much juice?”

“How many horsepower is it?”

“How much,” he corrects, but there’s no malice to it. “You even gonna know what it means if I tell you?”

The car’s coming to a regretful stop now, but it still feels like your bones themselves are vibrating. You tilt your head at him, sufficiently shaken up enough to be unguarded. “Can you explain it?”

Katsuki looks at you properly for the first time since his speedometer hit zero. His eyes flicker over you, and you can see the intrigue shining. It’s flattering, almost unnerving to have a creature like him so attuned to you all of the sudden, makes you want to ask the right questions again and again just to keep him looking at you like that.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll explain it to you.” His voice is quiet, soft, a little excited, and you think it’s the rawest thing you’ve gotten from him yet. You file this warm, vulnerable Katsuki away for later, letting him belong to the silence of the space between his sealed windows. He nods slowly at your door, prompting you when the fragile moment stretches out between you in a way you don’t think either of you are equipped to deal with. “Hop out. Get your drink.”

You follow his instruction, feeling a little more human when the hot, wet air envelops you, kisses over every inch of your skin like a mother reassuring herself of your safety. Sero and Denki are already jeering when you step out, shivering even in the heat.

“Show off,” Denki says through a smile, planting a hand on Katsuki’s shoulder that Katsuki quickly shakes off.

“Ponerle mucha crema a sus tacos, bro,” Sero says with a good-natured roll of his eyes.

“That was crazy,” Jess breathes quietly as you approach, already moving to hand you your cup. You shrug, despite the tremor of adrenaline still coursing through your limbs.

Carmen’s watching you strangely, eyes flicking between you and Katsuki like she’s puzzling something out. Before she can make whatever sly comment is clearly toying at her mouth, Eijirou comes barreling in, slinging an arm around her neck and digging his knuckles into her scalp playfully despite the squeak she lets out. The friendly bickering he starts with Denki about something to do with the drive shaft gives you an opening.

“So,” you start, taking a long sip of your pineapple drink to brace you, leaning up against the passenger door of the still-warm GTR beside Katsuki. He raises an eyebrow at you. “How much horsepower?”

The corner of his mouth quirks. “650, give or take.”

“And that’s a lot?” you ask, treating yourself to another long dreg of your cocktail because he looks even better up close and he’s making a face like maybe you’re an idiot for even asking that.

“Yeah, that’s a lot.”

“Like, my car, for example—”

“What do you drive?”

“Mitsubishi Eclipse.”

“GT?”

“I think.” Your tongue goes between your teeth. Katsuki waits patiently. “Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“Not…terrible.” You can see the effort it takes him to say it playing out on his face. “V-6, 3.0 liter?”

You realize he’s asking you to confirm something and your face warms. You shrug. “Sure.”

Katsuki scoffs, but it’s amused. Light. “Okay, so probably breaks 200. Might get up to 250 if you handle it right.”

You pause. “And the GTR has 650.”

Katsuki’s mouth twitches, like you’re catching on. “Yeah.”

“So, how did it—” you stop yourself, eyes flitting toward the glossy hood that’s hiding that superpowered engine. Something about it thrills you, knowing he manhandles this much power just to get to work every day. “I mean, it doesn’t come like that, right?”

“No,” Katsuki snorts, “not even close. Stock runs…” he pauses to think, biting his cheek and looking up, which is unfathomably cute, “about 480? Which is already a serious car, don’t get me wrong. Most people would be happy with that, but the engine’s got a ceiling. Factory parts can only take so much.”

“So you change them,” you supply. Katsuki nods, something lighting up in his eyes.

“Exactly.”

“Where do you start?”

Katsuki’s head tilts, properly fixing his gaze on you. He’s as unabashed in his assessment of you as he is in everything, and you want to keep quizzing him based on that spark of interest alone.

“Boring shit first,” Katsuki says, almost hesitant, like he’s waiting for you to check out on him. “I started with the exhaust so I could get the engine breathing right. Replaced the factory downpipes, got the cats out of the way.”

You stare at him. “So…the sound?”

You’ll credit him— he actually looks a little impressed. “More than that, but basically.”

“So that’s why it…like, growls.”

Katsuki coughs a laugh. “Sure. Yeah. I just didn’t want to fuck with it too much without being able to hear was I was doin’. ECU got tuned after— Denki helped a little, if you can believe it, but I did the hands-on stuff myself.”

He pauses, looking at you, and you get the impression this is something significant. “I take it that was really hard?”

“Pain in the ass,” Katsuki confirms, not without easing a bit. A tiny bit of that inherent rigidity bleeds out of him as he talks, gaze drifting over to the Nissan like he admires it for being tricky. “The ECU is like…the car’s brain. When you start swapping parts, you’ve got to give the car a way to understand how to use them, otherwise the whole thing’s fucked. It might run, but not like it should. Most people ship an ECU out if they need it tuned.” He takes a moment to let his eyes run over the curves of his car, pride glinting in his eyes. “I wasn’t lettin’ anyone get their hands on it.”

“Except Denki,” you interrupt cheekily. He rolls his eyes.

“He’s a freak of nature. Electrical shit’s his second language. I needed him for a couple tuning questions, but did the grunt work on my own. After the ECU came the intercooler—won’t bore you with that—but once we got all that shit done, we could commit with the turbos. That’s the horsepower you’re asking about.”

“Right.” You aren’t following, but it’s exhilarating to hear him talk like this. Uncontrolled, almost passionate. “And a turbo is…?”

“A fan.” Katsuki wrinkles his nose, rubbing at his chin while he thinks of how best to translate. “Sort of. Takes the exhaust gas and shoves it back into the engine to make more power. That’s what tears the ceiling off an engine. After that, it’s…kind of boring again. Fuel injectors, retuning—”

“It isn’t boring,” you say, hurriedly. Katsuki’s face opens for just a moment, revealing something that you don’t know how to hold in your hands. “It’s cool, actually.”

The armor goes back up, but it feels like it’s been constructed differently. Katsuki narrows his eyes at you, suspicious. “Like you’re getting any of this.”

“I’m trying,” you huff back, eyeing him. “It’s just complicated. Like, where in the engine is the wasted gas going–”

“It’s not that complicated,” Katsuki insists, an uncharacteristically harmless bite to his tone like he wants you to speak his language, “and it’s not wasted gas. It’s exhaust, there’s a difference. Like, you know how an engine works?” You look at him blankly, and judging by the sigh that leaves him, you’re about to know more about engines than you’ve ever given second thought to. “Look, the basic thing you’re dealing with is combustion, right? That’s what generates power–”

“Give it a rest, Kat,” Eijirou laughs as he interrupts, placing a heavy hand on Katuski’s bare shoulder and shaking it. “You’re gonna put her to sleep.”

“It’s interesting,” you say quickly despite how your cheeks grow warm, noting the way familiar irritation is replacing the fading enthusiasm on Katsuki’s face. You don’t think Eijirou has it in him to be genuinely malicious, but you want to throttle him right now. “I mean, it’s a cool car. I wanted to know how he built it.”

Eijirou cuts ahead before Katsuki can respond, smiling slyly at his friend. “You tell her about my beautiful suspension job yet?”

Katsuki rolls his eyes, scoffs dismissively. “If we’re gonna talk about suspension, we’re gonna talk about the Dodge, the one I retrofitted for your old-ass Mopar–”

“He fought me the whole time,” Eijirou continues, talking right over Katsuki with a smug grin, “but he can’t take credit for the whole GTR. The coilover job I fabricated for it is a work of art, was on the first try–”

“No,” Katsuki cuts him off, sliding narrowed eyes towards Eiji, lip curling, “remember the first dampers you put on it? They were so damn stiff I’d tap the brakes and the front end would drop like a bitch–”

“Which I fixed, mind you–”

Katsuki drifts away from you unintentionally, pulled into a brotherly squabble about shock absorbers and damper stiffness, far out of your depth as far as your meager knowledge of cars. You know you need new brake pads on your Eclipse, but you don’t think that there will be a good opening to wedge that into this particular conversation. Gravity and the deflation of what might have been a moment if Katsuki wasn’t so…Katsuki pulls you back to Carmen and Jess, who are animatedly discussing the merits of hooking up with guys who have their tongues pierced. You don’t miss how Carmen’s eyes flick longingly to Sero, who has a sparkling silver ball just through the middle of his tongue. It makes you chuckle as you ease against Denki’s hood where you’d started the night, trying to swallow the disappointment you want so desperately to pretend isn’t eating you inside out.

That had been the first time Jean came in you, fucking into your throat while Eren watched from across the room, palming over the bulge in his jeans. The second time, the two of you had invited Jean out for a drink, which, in hindsight, he should have seen the ulterior motive from a mile away. He had ended up cumming in your pussy, bending you over in the bar bathroom with Eren’s cock in your mouth. The third time had been in Eren’s bedroom as you rode him, Eren sitting behind you and working your hips over Jean’s cock as you wailed.

Jean had stopped his ministrations in your hair as he was reflecting on how exactly he got into this situation, trying very hard not to think too far into the filthy details to prevent propping your head up with an erection. You make a little noise of discontent, grabbing at his hands and urging them back to your hair.

“Jean, don’t stop. Feels good.”

Jean’s mouth tightens into a thin line at your choice of words, words he’s heard from you before under very different circumstances, but he obliges. So much for self control. Eren raises a smug eyebrow at him from across the couch.

“You’re giving her what she wants, right, Kirschtein?”

Jesus, you two are insatiable, still managing to grate on Jean’s razor-thin willpower with all of your clothes on. Jean wonders briefly what the appeal is for Eren, if he gets off on watching you take another man’s cock, bring another man near to tears with your warm, silken cunt. Does Eren enjoy dangling you in front of Jean until he’s forced to give in? Eren’s gaze lingers on Jean’s hands, threading through your hair, awaiting an answer.

“Yeah,” Jean says, not trusting any more words to his loose lips. They’ve already betrayed him three times now, saying yes when they should have been saying no.

“Good,” Eren responds simply, offering a small smile that, to anyone else, looks innocent. Jean knows Eren better than that. He watches as Eren’s hand travels up your bare leg, coming to rest on your upper thigh. You’re affected by it, such a simple touch, such a sensitive little body; he can feel you tense over his thighs.

Jean steels his jaw and forces his eyes back over to the movie. He’s got to stop playing these fucked up games of yours, it’s bad for him and he knows it. He hasn’t dated in months, not since you’d first pulled him into your little world, can’t bring himself to look at anyone else, can’t stand the thought of feeling anyone else’s skin under his fingers. His little crush has bloomed into full-blown lovesickness, and it would be best for him if he just stopped.

All of that ironclad willpower melts away in an instant when you let out a little moan.

Eren’s hand has snuck its way up to your shorts, nudging at the apex of your thighs. His focus is still trained on whatever reality show you’ve put on, completely ignoring the way you sigh under his touch. Jean’s cock twitches in his pants; this is his opportunity to hesitate, to say no, but he stays silent, only watching as you squirm in his lap.

“Eren,” your chastisement comes out as a breath. One of your hands comes to meet Eren’s, trying to push him away, but he simply swats your hand, shooting you a stern look.

“Behave,” Eren warns, eyes dark and dangerous. Jean’s learned that Eren’s mean to you, snappy when you put on your little attitude and fight back, but Jean doesn’t have the willpower. He holds you gently while he fucks into you hard, gives you anything you ask for.

You bite your lip and turn your head back to the TV, one hand coming up to pull Jean’s away from your head, wrapping your fingers around his. Jean’s breath hitches in his throat when you squeeze tight, back arching like you’re holding back a moan; Eren’s worked his way into your panties now, rubbing little circles over your clit.

“Look, Jaeger,” Jean makes a half-hearted attempt to remove himself, pulling his hand from yours and making all the movements to suggest he’s going to stand up, “I should–”

“What?” Eren cocks his head, as casual as if they’re discussing the weather. “Look at her, you really gonna just leave her there like that while I’m teasing her?”

Against his better judgment, Jean flicks his eyes down towards you. It’s a pitiful sight, your eyes already glossed over and staring up at him, wide and pleading, your bottom lip tucked in tight between your teeth.

“Jean,” his name comes out of your mouth, broken and already heady with arousal. That’s what snaps his resolve clean in two. You need him.

“What is it?” Jean hates the fondness in his voice, so glaringly obvious in front of your fucking boyfriend. Eren doesn’t seem to mind, though; he picks up speed, making you wriggle impatiently.

“Wanna kiss,” you whimper, reaching up towards his face.

“Don’t,” Eren stops Jean from leaning down, “she’s been bad today.”

“Is that so?” Jean rubs a thumb over your lips, frowning down at you. He can see the guilt in the way your brows knit together; oh, you have been bad, and you know it.

“Wouldn’t stop begging me for you, wanted to snuggle with Jeanie,” Eren raises his voice to mock you, slapping a hand against your clit and making you jump.

Jean’s face burns; is this it? Is this finally Eren telling him that you’re off-limits, finally deciding that Jean’s had his fill? And he’s going to rub it in his face by torturing you on Jean’s lap?

“Tell him,” Eren demands, another sharp smack landing on your cunt.

“Didn’t want to wait t-til you got home,” your face is already blotchy, eyes clouded with shame, “wanted Eren to text you and make you leave work.”

“And what did I say?”

“Be patient,” your voice wavers, Jean’s heart pounds in his ears, “and Jean would come take care of me.”

“So needy,” Eren tuts down at you, cruelly shoving a finger into your wet heat and instantly removing it, drawing a breathy whine from you, “see?”

Eren’s offering his finger to Jean, shining with slick, eyebrows lifted insistently. Jean narrows his eyes, cocks his head. What game is he playing at?

“What, don’t want a taste?” Eren’s eyes glint in the low light, taunting him. Jean leans forward hesitantly, lets the other man slide a thick finger between his lips. You always taste so good, salty and tangy; Jean feels a groan rumble deep in his chest. The corner of Eren’s mouth curls ever so slightly. Whatever game he’s playing, Jean’s losing. “Touch her, but no kisses. She has to behave if she wants that.”

You pout, bottom lip still wobbling where you’ve pushed it out, but you arch your back a little, straining your tits against your tank top. Jean knows you well enough by now, knows you chose that thin little top and didn’t wear a bra just for him, just to tempt him. You have been bad, but Jean doesn’t care, could never care when you’re looking up at him all sweet and needy. But he knows better than to disobey Eren’s rules, for your sake. Eren will edge you for the rest of the night, make himself cum, and leave you out to dry.

“Jean, please–”

“Sh,” Jean shushes you, sits you up just a little so he can pull your tank top over your head, “I’ve gotcha. Just be good for us, alright?”

You nod and smile drunkenly as he cups your breasts, kneading your nipples between his fingers. They’re one of his favorite things about you; he can’t resist leaning down to place sloppy, open-mouthed kisses along your hot skin, lick around your nipples just light enough to tease. Maybe Jean can be a little mean too.

“More,” you gasp, fingers coming to clutch at his head, “more, I– oh!”

Jean’s eyes flit down your body to see Eren’s now got two long fingers shoved knuckle-deep in you, curling them fast enough to make you cry out, roll your hips up towards him. If he looks closely, he can see a wet patch forming on the crotch of your shorts; it makes his cock throb. He’s never met a woman that gets as wet as you, filthy at the slightest touch.

“You’re so messy,” Jean voices his mind without exactly meaning to, pulling himself from you so he can prop you up against his chest and let you look at the mess you’ve made. You give him a little whine of protest, tilting your chin up towards him, searching for his mouth.

“Please, I want–”

“I know what you want,” Jean thumbs at your lip, “he’s mean, isn’t he? Making you behave yourself when all you want is a little love, isn’t that right?”

“Mhm,” you manage to shoot a scathing glare at Eren that makes Jean chuckle, makes Eren smack your thigh hard enough to echo throughout the room.

“Stupid little slut,” Eren growls, moving his fingers faster, “you’re just all about Jean because he spoils you, aren't you? Someone has to make sure you behave yourself.”

Jean’s eyes widen; Eren’s clearly in a mood today, and Jean hopes it doesn’t have anything to do with his presence. Eren’s a mixed bag most times. Jean’s overheard him making soft, quiet love to you, little praises slipping out from the crack in his bedroom door, but Jean’s also watched Eren edge you to the point of tears, spit on your cunt, spank you until you bruise. Maybe Eren’s jealousy finally is getting the better of him, Jean thinks, maybe he just can’t say no to your insatiable appetite, and he is actually pissed that you had begged him for Jean.

“Jean,” you’re clutching at his shirt, moaning pathetically as Eren sucks harsh bites into your thighs.

“Did it to yourself,” Jean shakes his head at you sadly, “you know better than to make him mad.”

“Shut her up,” Eren nods his head at your mouth meaningfully, “I’ve heard enough out of her for today.”

It takes some awkward repositioning, but Jean’s able to pull his cock out, tap it against your tongue where you’ve already got your mouth hanging open, drool pooling on his lap under your cheek.You shove yourself up with some effort, and take Jean almost to the hilt on your first go, slurping lewdly around him. Jean nearly chokes.

“Oh, you are needy today,” he hisses, threading his fingers through your hair, making sure his view remains unobstructed. “That what you wanted? My cock in your throat?”

You manage a stiff nod around him in between the muffled moans you’re letting out around his cock; Eren’s added his thumb to the mix now, pulling your panties to the side so he can swipe at your clit.

“She was fuckin’ drooling for it earlier,” Eren says, meeting Jean’s eyes with a smirk, “should have seen her, all pouty and sad because her Jeanie wasn’t here. Pathetic.”

In the small part of Jean’s brain that’s still able to think rationally with his cock nudging at your gag reflex, he’s frowning in confusion. Eren is pissed at you because you were begging for Jean, and here he is spurring Jean on in fucking into your throat. It makes no fucking sense, really, but Jean’s getting his dick sucked, and not for the first time, by the woman he’s been pining after for months, so who is he to question it?

“Mmph!” You squeal, mouth too full to form a real sound, hips canting up violently towards Eren. Eren laughs, low and cruel.

“Aw, I think she’s gonna cum soon,” Eren pulls his fingers from you, a tear slips down your cheek. “Pity.”

Your cry of protest is whimpered by Jean standing up slightly, angling his hips to plunge as deep as he can. He’s only had his cock in your mouth a few times, but Jean’s intuitive. He knows how much you can take, knows exactly how far to push you before it’s too much.

“Don’t whine, baby,” Jean huffs, “just gonna make him more mad. He won’t let me help you if you don’t behave.”

“Look at you,” Eren runs his hands along your thighs, leans down to press a chaste kiss over where you’ve ruined your shorts, “being a good girl for us. S’that what it takes for you to behave? Need both of us?”

If Jean’s not mistaken, the garbled sound you make around him is one of agreement. The thought goes straight between his legs, brings him far closer to the edge than he’d like to be at this point. He pulls your mouth off of him, making you pout.

“But–”

“I know, I know, you want it,” Jean rubs an affectionate thumb over your cheek, “but you want me to fuck you, too, right?”

“Please,” you breathe, reaching down to wiggle your shorts off. Eren’s face lights up.

“Wanna show him your little surprise, baby?” Eren’s tugging at your shorts now, ripping them off and tossing them to the sides. He puts his hands under your arms, yanking you out of Jean’s lap and throwing your chest over his shoulders. When Eren’s hands come to your cheeks, spreading them so Jean can see, Jean’s heart nearly stops. There’s a little pink rhinestone glittering where your asshole should be– a plug, keeping you open and ready. Eren meets Jean’s eyes, daring. “She picked it out just for us. Want us both, don’t you? Nasty little thing.”

Eren punctuates his statement with a grin and a sharp slap to your ass that makes you jump, nod desperately from behind him. Jean reaches a cautious hand over, puts two fingers around the toy and pulls lightly, just enough to watch it move in you. You whine; he can see your empty cunt flutter.

“Can she take it? Both of us?”

“Oh yeah,” Eren brushes off Jean’s concern, “been using all her little toys for weeks, making me practice with her. She can take it.”

With that, Jean’s standing, padding into his room and knowing Eren’s following with you still tossed over his shoulder. His head spins; you, his precious little toy, have been stretching yourself out, getting yourself ready to have two cocks in you? The thought nearly makes Jean moan to himself, imagining how tight you’ll be all stuffed full.

Eren’s thrown you on the bed none too gently, stripping as you look up at him, hearts in your eyes. He stops midway through pulling his clothes off to grab your chin, offer your pleading gaze to Jean.

“Why don’t you ask him, hm?” Eren coos, looking between you and Jean with a filthy grin on his face. “Ask him again, see if you’ve been good.”

“Will you kiss me, Jean? Please?” Your voice has that thin, fucked out tone to it that drives Jean crazy, makes him want to make you cry.

“Yeah princess, I’ll kiss you.” He leans down, takes your soft mouth in his, Eren never releasing his hold on your chin. Jean can taste himself on your tongue, smiling appreciatively at the salty tang. Eren rips you away far too soon, pressing his mouth down on you far rougher than Jean had. They balance each other well, Jean thinks, the gentle caresses and the sharp slaps that make you come undone under them in a way neither of them can manage alone.

“On your knees, brat,” Eren sneers, the shred of tenderness that he’d grabbed your face with long-gone, “convince us to fuck you stupid.”

You nod obediently, sliding off the bed and onto your knees, reaching for Jean. He steps forward, letting you hold his cock in your little hand, rub up and down while you take Eren in your mouth. Even your hands are enough to drive him crazy, so soft and supple around him; Jean’s head falls back.

“Fuck,” Eren sucks a sharp breath in between his teeth, “that’s it, baby, take it.”

Something possesses Jean, what it is he can’t be sure, but he reaches a hand down to the back of your head, pushing you further down Eren’s length. He half-expects Eren to chastise him for it, but Eren groans, long and loud, a sound that simmers in Jean’s stomach.

Jean watches the contractions of Eren’s abs, trails his eyes up to where the other man’s strong chest is heaving, a strange, hot sensation trickling through his center. It’s too late to look away once he realizes he’s been caught, but instead of finding amusement when he meets Eren’s eyes, Jean finds something else entirely.

Eren’s looking at Jean the way he looks at you, all lusty and uninhibited. Jean nearly scowls at him, everything he’s internalized over the years rearing its head in his chest, but Eren stops him with a hand wrapped around the back of Jean’s neck. In the blink of an eye, there’s a set of lips on his, a sharp tongue licking into his mouth.

Jean lets out a wanton, strung out moan that Eren swallows, echoes with one of his own. Jean notices that your head has stilled under his hand, and he shoves you back onto Eren’s cock mindlessly, relishing in the way Eren’s mouth stutters against his own when you retch around him. He trails his hand, tentative and exploratory, up to Eren’s hair, grabs the bun at the back of his head and pulls. Jean’s surprised at the heat beneath his palm; he’s always known Eren runs hot, especially after the last few times he’s fucked you. It’s only natural to brush arms, brush legs during the act, but Eren’s skin is scalding, damp with sweat under his touch.

It’s not Jean’s first kiss with a man, not by any means, but he’d never guessed that Eren, headstrong, manly, unreadable Eren, had this in him. Had it been hiding there for all of these years? Was it a spur of the moment thing, that Eren would look back on and cringe at later?

Doubt getting the better of him, Jean breaks first, pulls away with a quiet smacking sound. Eren’s eyes are just as wide as his feel, searching Jean’s face for any sign of regret, of satisfaction, of something. A loud whine from below distracts them both, and whatever odd moment was forming is broken as they look down at you.

Your chin is covered in drool from where you’ve been choking on Eren, gagging around him, and your eyes are glossy and needy. Jean’s cock gets impossibly harder.

“What?” Eren taunts. “You jealous that I kissed your Jeanie?”

“Yeah,” you pout, brows knitting, but Jean can see the arousal written into your features. You liked it.

“Get up,” Jean says to you, voice hard and unforgiving.

You follow his instruction, standing on shaking legs. Jean can see the snark in your eyes before it comes out of your lips. “What, finally going to pay attention to me now?”

As soon as the words have left your mouth, Eren’s hand is around your jaw, wrenching it open for him to spit into your mouth. “Don’t fucking talk back, not if you want to cum.”

“You were doing so good,” Jean rubs a hand over your hip, guiding you to lay on top of him on the bed, “what, are you that desperate for us that you can’t mind your manners?”

“I just–”

“Want both of your slutty little holes filled?” Eren scoffs, kneeling on the bed behind where you’re straddling Jean’s hips. “Yeah, we know.”

You frown and lean down to Jean, searching for consolation, but he shoves you to sit back up, admiring the way your chest bounces with the movement.

“Can’t be nice to you all the time,” Jean’s voice is low, dangerous, “not when you act like a brat.”

He can see the heartbreak on your face, revels in it, but it’s short lived. Your eyes fly open as Eren works the plug out of you, tossing it to the side and wrapping an arm around you to take your neck in his hand. Eren looks down at Jean, exchanges a conspiratorial smirk with him.

“Why don’t you ask Jean if you can sit on it while I work you open, hm?”

Your eyes glisten pleadingly at Jean, but something’s come over him. He realizes he likes drawing those begging moans out of you, likes holding you over the edge between the tips of his fingers. Jean shrugs.

“Show me how bad you want it.”

While Eren reaches over to scrounge around for the lube in Jean’s bedside table, you start to work your hips over Jean’s cock, slicking it up with how wet you already are. Jean grabs you by the back of the neck, pulls you to him to drink down the little whimpers and moans that escape your lips.

“Jean, please,” you sigh into his mouth, “I need you.”

Jean’s resolve wavers, but he stands firm. “Beg.”

“I–” hot tears of shame are welling in your eyes now, Jean wants to lick them from your cheeks– “please, I need it, need your cock in me, please, Jean.”

“What do you think, Eren?” As Jean asks the question, it strikes him just how often he refers to the other man simply as “Jaeger”, not by his first name. In his mind, ‘Jaeger’ is his friend of many years, and ‘Eren’ is the man that he had just inexplicably, passionately kissed. “Think she’s earned it?”

“Let’s see how she takes my fingers,” Eren replies, slicking his fingers up with lube and forcing two into your already-stretched hole with ease, making you squeak in surprise, “oh fuck, she’s already so stretched out for us. Yeah, give her what she wants, let her warm up to it.”

“Thank you, t-thank you,” you stammer, out of your mind with want as Jean slides the head of his cock into you with a long groan.

“Shit,” Jean growls, holding onto you tight to prevent your hips from pushing down on him too fast, filling you up too quickly with Eren’s fingers hard at work in your other hole. Maybe he is the nice one, after all. “So fucking tight for me, aren’t you?”

“Mhm, for you,” you hum, lip tucked in your teeth.

“Think she likes you more than me,” Eren smirks from over your shoulder, working a third finger into you and making your jaw drop. For his part, Jean bottoms out, hissing as you pulse around him. He can feel Eren’s fingers scissoring through your walls, eyes rolling back into his head at the sensation.

“You okay? Is it too much?” Jean notices one of those tears that had sparkled in your eyes earlier threatening to fall, grabbing your face and forcing you to look at him. You look beautiful, all stretched around him and fucked out, mind blank.

“It’s a lot,” you nod, sniffle, “but I’m okay, I can take him. Want to, want– need you both.”

Eren’s eyes darken, and Jean can feel him remove his fingers, feel the accommodating stretch of your walls able to breathe again. Jean takes your hips in his hands, rolling you along his cock to grant both of you some of the friction you desperately need. You mewl, leaning over to wrap your arms around his shoulders. Eren’s lining up behind you, running a soothing hand over your back.

“Deep breaths, baby,” Jean instructs you, holding you to his chest. You sniffle and nod into his shoulder, muscles tense and twitching.

“Tell me if it’s too much, alright angel?” Eren leans over to press a surprisingly tender kiss between your shoulder blades and gives Jean a signaling nod, which Jean returns.

Jean can feel it the moment Eren pushes in, feel your body stretching itself to accommodate both of them. You squeal into the skin of Jean’s shoulder that you’ve taken between your teeth, and it hurts, but he lets you, rubbing circles on your lower back.

“Doing so good for us, baby,” Jean hums, pressing his lips to your ear, “too much?”

You shake your head, whimpering as Eren pushes in further.

“God, she’s– shit, it’s so fucking tight,” Eren growls, jaw clenched and a little vein protruding in his neck from the effort of holding himself back, reining in the part of himself that just wants to snap his hips forwards into you.

“Yeah, she is,” Jean chokes out, feeling suffocated by the way you’re pulsing around him, by the pressure of Eren’s cock shoving at him. He’s not sure where he ends and where the both of you begin, if there’s even any separation between his skin and Eren’s and yours anymore.

“Feel so– full,” you hiccup, nails digging into Jean’s shoulders. Your watery voice makes Eren pause, rub a hand over your back.

“You doing okay, baby? How you feeling?”

“Feels….” you take in a deep, heaving breath, “good. Feels so good.”

Eren grins, something feral. “That’s our girl. So good for us, yeah?”

“You like being full, hm?” Jean can feel a smile mirroring Eren’s on his face.

He doesn’t miss Eren’s choice of words. Our girl. And you are their girl, you love being full of them. Of course you do. You’re their insatiable little plaything, so good at taking them in each of your holes. You love it, you love them.

“It’s– fuck, I’m in,” Eren’s staring at where you’re all connected. Jean wishes he could see, but the tightness of you around him is enough, the way he can feel Eren through your thin walls, pressing against his cock. Eren pumps his hips experimentally, and all three of you moan in sync.

“Pl-please move, Jean, fuck- no, Eren, just–” you’re babbling nonsensically, music to their ears.

“We’ve got you,” Jean hushes you, fucking his hips up into you and cutting you off, “just sit tight and be our good little girl, alright?”

“Oh g-god.” Your words wrench from you in a sob, jolting with the thrust of Jean’s hips up into yours. It takes some work, but soon enough, they’re pumping in and out of you at the perfect pace, synced up so you’re never empty, not for long. You’re wailing, voice scratchy from all the crying you’ve already done that night, clutching onto Jean like he’s your last lifeline.

“Feels so fucking good,” Eren grits out, digging his fingers into the flesh of your hips, “so good for us.”

“Not gonna last long, not like this,” Jean agrees, sitting you up so he can see you, see your wet cheeks and your open mouth, “so pretty like this, aren’t you? All stuffed full?”

“She loves it,” Eren growls over your pathetic, shaky moan of agreement, landing a smack on your ass, “fucking loves us, don’t you baby? Tell us, tell us how much you love it.”

“I-I love it,” you manage, voice wrecked, “love you— fuck- love you both so much.”

Jean’s eyes widen, roll back in his head a little. You’re so perfect, obedient and willing to take both of them, let them abuse your holes. The thought makes him bite down on the inside of his cheek, not willing to be the first to break and ruin this perfect moment.

“Jean, I– shit, I’m gonna cum soon,” Eren pants, pupils blown wide and mouth hanging open when he meets Jean’s eyes. “Make her cum.”

Jean nods determinedly, somehow finds the presence of mind to slide a hand in between your slick bodies, swiping at your clit insistently. Your body blooms for him, back arching as you throw your head back against Eren’s shoulder. He feels you clench violently around him, knows you’ve already been on the edge since they started with you, knows you won’t take much goading to break for them.

“That good?” Jean forced out through his clenched jaw, trying to keep pace with Eren amidst your vice-like grip on him.

“Yes, so fucking– oh my god, J-Jean, I’m– Eren,” you’re babbling, close to the point of hysteria, eyes blank and teary. Jean’s free hand wraps around your hip, grabbing hard at the flesh there. He’s so gone he barely catches it, just barely, but he notices Eren’s hand. Eren lays his palm over Jean’s, deliberate and steady, grabbing onto the other man’s hand and squeezing down. Jean meets Eren’s eyes, fucked out and hooded.

“Come on,” Jean rubs faster, harder, his eyes flitting back and forth between yours and Eren’s, “show us what a good fucking girl you are for us.”

Whatever was tethering you to your sanity falls away, and you cum harder than Jean’s ever seen, mouth hanging open in a silent scream as your muscles lock up, legs trembling on either side of Jean’s hips. He grips your hip harder, trying to maintain a pace so you can ride your orgasm out on top of them. Eren follows quickly behind you, biting into your shoulder with a loud, long groan. When Jean feels Eren’s cum leaking out of you, feels the mess they’ve made between your legs, he falls over the edge too, slamming your hips down into his and grinding up into you with a moan.

The three of you collapse into a heap of limbs and sweat and stickiness, chests heaving and muscles twitching. Jean can feel the burn of Eren’s skin and the slick, plush give of yours, enveloping him from every angle, and for the first time in months, he lets his eyes flutter shut, letting himself enjoy the simple pleasure of touch.

But nothing is forever, and after a few minutes, he feels you begin to stir between them, mumbling about needing to go to the bathroom. Eren reluctantly rolls off the bed to help you to the bathroom to clean up, leading you out on shaking legs. Alone again, Jean throws his hands over his face and sighs, deep and hefty.

He shouldn’t be here, he should have never let you both goad him into this.

It occurs to Jean that he needs some air; the apartment feels suffocatingly small knowing that both of you are only a few layers of plaster and a door away. He pushes through regret and self-doubt, pulling his sweatpants back on and scrounging around in his laundry basket of unfolded, clean clothes to find a shirt.

“What are you doing?” Eren’s suddenly in the doorway, scowling at him.

“Going out.”

“You worked this morning. What, do you have plans or something?” There’s a clear note of annoyance in Eren’s voice, but Jean’s too exhausted and shaky to look into it.

“Jean?” You, Eren’s shadow as always, peer around his shoulders, a cute little furrow of confusion between your brows. “Where are you going?”

Jean nearly growls in frustration, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Out. I’m going out.”

He hates the way you flinch, grab onto Eren’s hand for stability in the wake of his snapping at you. Eren speaks next, but Jean doesn’t recognize his tone; it’s firm, but somehow, it’s lacking Eren’s perpetually angry intonation.

“Sit.” Eren’s got one finger pointed to the bed, ordering him as if this isn’t Jean’s own room. He drags you over behind him, plopping on the bed as if you all do this every day. Jean glares at Eren, softens his eyes at the way you’re looking up at him invitingly.

“We just want to talk a little,” you pat the comforter, smiling softly. That breaks him, and against Jean’s better judgment, he’s sitting where you’ve indicated, t-shirt still fisted in his hands.

“About?”

“We don’t want you to think– well, this…” Eren gestures his hands between the three of you, frowning deeper, and eventually sighing, “I don’t know how to say it.”

You pick up for Eren, smiling at him. “We don’t want you to feel like you’re out of place here, that’s all.”

Jean cocks an eyebrow. “In my own bedroom?”

“No, asshole,” Eren rolls his eyes, “with…with us.”

“What does that mean?” Jean’s heart nearly stops. A small, soft hand over his makes his breath catch in his throat.

“We’re not, like, experienced with this, so maybe we’re doing this whole thing wrong,” you look to Eren anxiously, who nods at you reassuringly, “but…we have room for you. If you’re open.”

“Like…” Jean barely trusts his voice to carry above a breath, “in what sense?”

“It’s not just sex,” Eren mumbles, flushing pink, “to us, at least.”

“We like you,” you clarify, smiling again, “and however you want us, if you want us, at least, you can have us.”

Jean blinks stupidly, looks to Eren to see if his face betrays anything, anything that could explain the conversation taking place, if it’s a joke, if he’s unsure. To his surprise, Eren looks up at him, green eyes earnest and burning into his, and takes the t-shirt out of Jean’s hands, giving one of Jean’s hands to you and taking the other for himself.

“It works,” Eren says, finding some conviction, “whatever you want to call it, this works.”

“For both of you?” Jean can hardly believe his ears, can hardly fathom the feeling of your soft, delicate little fingers and Eren’s calloused palms wrapped around his hands.

“For both of us. But…does it? For you?” Your voice wavers, your nerves betraying you.

“I mean, I don’t know what it is. I don’t understand it,” Jean admits, positive that his eyes are comically wide in the face of this new information.

“Me neither,” Eren shrugs, “but we don’t have to be so serious about it–”

“Not for now at least,” you smile at Eren encouragingly, nodding and urging him to press on.

“Not for now,” Eren agrees, squeezing Jean’s fingers ever so slightly, the smallest, most tentative reassurance, “we can figure it out later.”

“If you want it,” you bite your lip, looking up at Jean through thick lashes, “want us. We won’t be upset if you say no. No pressure.”

Jean thinks for a moment, thinks about everything you’re offering him. You, who he’s pined after for months, so beautiful and sweet to him. He thinks about sharing coffee with you in the mornings, holding you tight to his body and drifting off to sleep, letting you play with his hair. He doesn’t know if he loves you, but whatever he feels is pretty damn close to it, close enough to drive him crazy and keep him up at night.

And Eren. He’s been friends with Eren for near a decade now, known him for as long as he can remember. What this agreement means in terms of his relationship with Eren, Jean hardly dares to press, knowing how Eren is: flighty, argumentative, brash. None of that is written into Eren’s features now, though; Eren’s watching him intently, earnestly, chest stilled as if he’s holding his breath, waiting for Jean’s answer.

Something old and something new mixed together into something entirely unfamiliar.

“We don’t have to put a label on it now, or even go through the semantics,” Eren’s voice is spent, nearly breathless.

“We’ll give you some space if you need–”

“No,” Jean cuts you off, looking between you both, “no, it’s– it’s just a surprise, that’s all.”

Eren snorts. “How many times do we need to fuck you before you get the hint?”

“Eren!” You slap his arm, looking between him and Jean meaningfully. “Not really the time for jokes, is it?”

“I mean, fucking in the bathroom of Scout’s isn’t exactly wining and dining me,” Jean rolls his eyes. Eren laughs at that, unintentionally tightening his grip around Jean’s fingers and making Jean’s heart thud a little in his chest.

“You two are beyond annoying,” you huff, crossing your arms over your chest. Eren and Jean exchange a wicked smirk.

“Regretting this already?” Eren teases you, digging his fingers into your side and making you giggle.

“Get over here,” Jean pulls you onto his lap, feeling emboldened to press a quick succession of kisses to your jawline, to your cheek. God, maybe he does love you, the weight of you in his arms feeling almost perfect. Eren leans over and tackles you both, tickling you wherever he can reach, Jean pinning you to his chest despite your protests and thrashing.

That’s what’s missing, Jean realizes. It’s not about you and Jean, or you and Eren, or he and Eren. He understands Eren’s bluntness earlier: the three of you just work, regardless of the weirdness of it all or the awkward conversations that lay ahead. It works, and for now, that’s enough.

Eren relents in his torture, scooting up the bed and dragging you with him, pulling Jean’s covers over you both like he’d done it a hundred times. Jean’s last little inkling of self-doubt perseveres, and he hesitates, until Eren tosses the covers on your other side back, patting the sheets meaningfully. Jean swallows his pride, swallows his insecurity, and pulls you into his side, very mindful of Eren’s arm tossed over both of your shoulders, of Eren’s fingers weaving absentmindedly through the hair at the nape of his neck.