MHA: Lust Quirk

She came back the next afternoon.

Different clothes this time. A yellow cropped hoodie that stopped above her navel and gray joggers that sat low on her hips. Same sneakers with the acid burns on the toes. She was holding a plastic bag in each hand and she came through the door without waiting, same as yesterday.

"I said real food." She dropped both bags on the kitchen counter next to the rice cooker. "So."

The bags were full of rice balls. A lot of rice balls. Salmon, tuna mayo, pickled plum, kombu, mentaiko, plain salted, one wrapped in a leaf that he didn't recognize and she probably didn't either.

"I didn't know what you liked," she said. "So I got all of them."

There were at least fourteen rice balls on his kitchen counter. He counted twice because the first number seemed wrong.

"How much did this cost?"

"Not the point." She was already opening one. Salmon. "Eat."

He ate. They sat on the floor in the same spot, backs to the wall, between the bed and the desk. Her spot. She'd been here once and it was already her spot. The rice balls were between them and she worked through three while he worked through two and the salmon was good and the mentaiko was better and the one wrapped in the leaf turned out to be something pickled that tasted like a dare.

"That one's bad," she said, watching his face.

"Yeah."

"I knew it would be bad. I got it anyway."

"Why?"

"Wanted to see what you'd do."

He ate the rest of it because her eyes were on him and the dare was funnier if he followed through. She grinned. Too many teeth. The sharp ones catching the light from the window.

The apartment was different with her in it. The ceiling stain was still Gerald. The fridge was still humming. But the space between the furniture had someone in it and the someone was pink and warm and eating mentaiko with her legs crossed and her knee touching his thigh through the joggers.

The canned coffee from yesterday was still on the floor where she'd left it.

"You didn't drink it," she said.

"I was saving it."

"For what?"

He didn't have an answer. He'd left it there because she'd put it there. He didn't know why that mattered but it did.

"Drink it now." She leaned across him and grabbed it and put it in his hand and her arm dragged across his chest on the way back and the warmth of it went through his shirt. She settled back into her spot. Her knee was still against his thigh. The contact was casual from her side. On his side it was less casual. His body was tracking every square centimeter where her joggers met his sweatpants and he was pretending it wasn't.

They talked. Small stuff. Kaminari's group chat had evolved into a meme war. Kirishima had posted a picture of himself flexing and captioned it "unbreakable spirit" and Sero had replied with a picture of a rock. Mina showed him the thread and her laugh filled the apartment, too big for the room, loud enough that the neighbor's TV went quiet for a second.

"Bakugo hasn't posted anything," she said, scrolling. "Not even once."

"Bakugo doesn't post."

"Bakugo should post. It'd be hilarious. He'd just scream in text." She did a voice. Deep, growly, bad impression. "'I'LL KILL YOU ALL. REPLY AND DIE.'" She laughed at her own impression. He watched her laugh. Her eyes closed when it hit a certain pitch and the gold disappeared behind the black lids and her whole body rocked sideways into his shoulder.

The laugh faded. She was leaning against him again. Same as last night, except today she'd gotten there faster. No horror movie required.

"Hayami."

"Yeah."

"You know yesterday. When I-" She stopped. Looked at the floor. The pink of her cheeks was darker. Her cheeks were always pink but this was different, a deeper color underneath the baseline, and it reached her ears. "The ribs thing. When I was going to. You know."

"Yeah."

"Were you going to let me?"

He looked at her. She was still looking at the floor. Her fingers were playing with the hem of her hoodie, rolling the yellow fabric between her thumb and index finger. Her knee had stopped touching his thigh because she'd pulled it in, tightening up, making herself slightly smaller, which was wrong on her because nothing about Mina Ashido was supposed to be small.

"Yeah," he said. "I was going to let you."

She didn't look up. The hem-rolling continued. Then she said, still to the floor: "You matter. To me. I know that's- I know we've known each other for like a week and a half and that's weird and I don't care that it's weird." She looked up. Her eyes were gold and steady and terrified and not backing down from any of it. "You went toward the Nomu. You went toward it and I was in a different zone and I couldn't do anything and then Kaminari told me you caught Shigaraki's hand and I-"

He kissed her.

He leaned forward and his mouth found hers and the angle was wrong because they were sitting on the floor against a wall and his nose bumped her horn on the way in and neither of them cared. Her lips were warm. Warmer than the rest of her, which was already warm. They were soft and they tasted like mentaiko and she made a sound against his mouth that was surprise and not surprise at the same time.

She kissed him back.

Her hand came up and grabbed the front of his shirt. Both hands. Fists in the fabric, pulling him toward her, and she kissed him with her whole body. No half measures. Her mouth opened against his and her tongue found his and she tasted like rice and salt and the faint chemical undertone that was always there, always her, the acid that lived in her skin.

He put his hand on the side of her face. Her jaw was small in his palm. Her skin was smooth. No texture, no pores he could feel, just warm silk over muscle and bone. His thumb brushed the base of her horn and she made a sound that vibrated against his teeth.

She pulled him and he went and somehow they were standing and her back was against the wall next to the desk and his hands were on her waist and her fists were still in his shirt and the kiss hadn't stopped, hadn't even paused, they'd just changed geometry.

Her back against plaster. Her chin tipped up because he was taller. Her horns catching on the wall behind her with a small scraping sound she ignored. His body pressed against hers and her body pressed back and there was no gap between them and every place they touched was warm.

He slid his hands under the hem of her hoodie.

Her stomach flexed under his palms. Her skin was hot. Actually hot. The temperature difference from the air was enough that his hands registered it instantly. She was running degrees above normal and every inch of her skin was that same impossible smoothness, acid-proof, friction-free.

"'Nn-'" Against his mouth. Quiet. Her grip on his shirt tightened.

His hands moved up her sides. Her ribs under his fingers, her stomach tensing, the hoodie bunching around his wrists. She was breathing faster. He could feel it against his chest, the expansion and contraction speeding up, and her kiss was getting messier, less controlled, more mouth and less technique. The messy version was better.

She pulled back. Her eyes were open. Gold irises blown wide, the pupils almost swallowing the color. Her lips were wet and slightly swollen and her breath was coming fast.

"Wait-" she said. Then she kissed him again. Harder. Her hands left his shirt and went around his neck and her fingers were in his hair at the back of his head and she pulled him down into her and the sound she made was "-ah" and it came from somewhere she hadn't authorized.

Bold. Then suddenly not. Her fingers tightened in his hair, then loosened. She pressed into him, then held still. Waves. Bold wave, nervous wave, bold wave.

His hands were on her lower back now. Fingers spread against the smooth hot skin. He moved his thumbs in small circles because the skin there felt good under his hands and he wanted to feel more of it.

Her spine went rigid.

"'Hah-'"

Louder than a moan. Her whole body jerked against him and her nails dug into the back of his neck and her hips pushed forward off the wall into his and the skin under his thumbs pulsed. Deeper than a heartbeat. Glandular. Chemical. A reaction in the tissue itself. The skin there was different. Hotter. Softer at the surface even though the acid-resistance was the same underneath. His thumbs pressed and she made a sound that was closer to a cry than anything she'd made so far and her eyes went wide and unfocused and she grabbed his wrists.

"Wait. Wait wait wait." Breathing hard. Her hands on his wrists, holding them still but not pulling them away. "That's- I don't know what that is. That's a lot."

He held still. His hands on her lower back, her hands on his wrists, her body pressed against his against the wall. His heart was hammering. The hum in his chest from yesterday was a full vibration now, not an idle but a rev.

"Too much?"

She swallowed. Her throat moved. "Not too much. A lot. Different." She let go of his wrists. Put her palms flat on his chest. Pushed gently. Just creating distance.

He stepped back. His hands came off her skin and the air that rushed into the gap was cold compared to her.

"Not yet," she said.

Her voice was smaller than he'd ever heard it. Her cheeks were dark pink. Her hoodie was rucked up to her ribs and she pulled it down with shaking hands and she wasn't looking at him.

Then she did look at him. And the corner of her mouth pulled up.

"That doesn't mean not ever." She pointed at him. One pink finger, shaking slightly. "That means not yet. There's a difference. Learn the difference."

"Noted."

"And next time." She pushed off the wall. Stood up straight. Tugged her hoodie down again even though it was already down. "Next time this happens." She gestured between them. "Is that a date? Are we on a date? Because I need to know if this is a thing or if I just made out with a guy against his wall for no reason."

"It's a date."

"It IS a date?"

"It is a date."

Her grin broke open. Full. Wide. The sharp teeth and the too-many teeth and the gold eyes and the flushed dark pink cheeks. She punched him in the shoulder. Hard enough that it would've hurt if his body wasn't what it was.

"Okay." She grabbed her phone from the floor. Grabbed her bag. Walked to the door. Put her sneakers on. Her hands were still shaking. She was grinning the entire time.

"I'm going. I have to go. If I don't go I'm going to-" She stopped herself. Exhaled. "I'm going."

"Okay."

She opened the door. Turned. The grin was so wide it was practically audible.

"Thursday," she said. "After school. We're going somewhere. I'm picking. Don't wear anything ugly."

She closed the door.

He listened to her footsteps in the hallway. Fast. Almost running. He heard her laugh once, far away, muffled by the stairwell door, and then gone.

Ryo stood in his apartment with his back against the wall where she'd been standing and the plaster was still warm from her body. His hands were at his sides. His mouth tasted like mentaiko and citrus and something faintly acidic. Gerald watched from the ceiling.

Then his chest released.

A pressure behind his sternum, settling, like the pop when you equalize pressure in your ears after a plane descends. Brief. Subtle. If he hadn't been paying attention he would have missed it.

But he'd been paying attention since the day he mapped the body's history onto a timeline and saw the pattern. First kiss in middle school. First jump. New girlfriend. Climbing. Breakup. Plateau.

First kiss at U.A.

He pressed his palm flat against his sternum. The pressure was gone. The hum was gone. Marginal. A fraction of what a full encounter would produce. But real.

He flexed his hand. The fingers felt the same. His arms felt the same. Tomorrow, or the day after, the numbers would be slightly different. A little more force behind a punch. A tenth of a second faster on a sprint. Nothing anyone would notice. Not yet.

The engine was running.

The apartment was quiet. The fridge hummed. Gerald stared. His mouth still tasted like her.