MHA: Lust Quirk

"I'm getting it, right? Tell me I'm getting it."

She was getting it. The four-finger toggle was cleaner than yesterday. Her thumb stayed up on the strike and came down for the release and the whole cycle was tightening, the gap between weightless and weighted shrinking and the whiplash through the pads was getting harder to absorb even for him. She'd been at it most of the afternoon and her forehead was damp and her breathing was rough and she hadn't stopped grinning.

"You're getting it."

"I KNEW it." She hit the pad again and his arm jolted and the gravity snap went through his shoulder and he shifted his weight to catch it and she bounced on her toes and her eyes were bright and she looked like a kid who'd figured out a cheat code for a game she'd been losing.

They ran the drill until the gym reservation ended. Ochaco's strikes were faster by the end and her nausea threshold had pushed back, she'd managed the full session without pressing her fingertips together to reset, and when she drank water afterward she held the bottle with four fingers and kept her thumb lifted out of habit. She didn't seem to notice she was doing it.

Outside Gym Gamma, the campus was emptying. Late afternoon, the light going orange on the walkways, a group of Gen Studies kids heading toward the front gates with bags over their shoulders. Ochaco pulled her headband off and wrung it out and put it in her bag and her hair was flat on one side from the sweat and curling up on the other and she was looking at the ground.

"Hayami-kun."

"Yeah."

"Can I come over? To your place. I know that's-" She stopped. Started again. "Iida's doing study sessions and I can't focus with him timing everything and my room at home is- I just don't want to be somewhere loud right now."

She lived at home. Small place, parents working late. Her commute was forty minutes each way and she made it every day on a train she paid for with an allowance she probably could have spent on lunch.

"Yeah. Come over."

The train was crowded and they stood near the doors and her arm was against his and neither of them moved away from the contact. She smelled like cheap shampoo and training sweat and something underneath that was just her, clean and warm. A woman across the car was eating melon bread out of a plastic wrapper and staring at her phone and Ochaco watched her for a while.

His apartment was the same. Gerald. Fridge. Bed, desk, rice cooker. The yellow sundress was gone, Mina had taken it, but the replacement sheet was on the bed and the new doorknob was on the door and the torn strip of cotton was in the trash. Clean enough.

Ochaco stood in the doorway and took her shoes off and stepped inside and looked around. She saw the ceiling stain.

"Is that a bird?"

"Gerald."

"You named your ceiling stain."

"I didn't name it. Someone else named it."

She didn't ask who. She walked to the spot between the bed and the desk and sat down on the floor with her back against the wall. Her knees up. Arms around them. The same spot. Mina had sat there with rice balls and a horror movie. Mina had kissed him against the wall above that spot and said "not yet" with her hands shaking.

Ochaco sat there and it was a different weight in the same place.

"I brought udon." She pulled two convenience store cups from her bag. Cold, the kind you add hot water to. "The kettle one. Is that okay?"

"The rice cooker does hot water."

"Your rice cooker does hot water?"

"It does one thing and it does it well."

She laughed. It was small and tired and real. He filled the cups from the rice cooker and they sat on the floor against the wall with the udon between them and the steam rose and the fridge hummed and the room was quiet.

She ate with the disposable chopsticks from the convenience store and held them in a way that her fingertip pads didn't touch the wood. Years of practice. Every grip adjusted so she didn't accidentally make her food weightless. He'd never thought about that before. Every meal, every object, every handshake. Five fingers managing themselves constantly so the world stayed on the ground.

"My parents have a construction company," she said. She was looking at the udon. "Uraraka Construction. It's just them. Dad does the actual building, scaffolds, heavy lifting, everything physical. Mom does the books and the phone calls and the permits. They don't have employees. They can't afford employees."

She said this flat. The way she'd said "you're bigger" at the gym. Just a thing that was true.

"Business isn't great. It hasn't been great since I was in middle school. The house is paid off but the equipment's old and the truck needs work and Dad's knees are bad from the scaffolding." She ate a noodle. Chewed. Swallowed. "I have a flip phone because smartphones cost money and every yen I don't spend goes home. My allowance is for the train. That's it."

The fridge hummed. She ate another noodle. Her cheeks were pink, the permanent blush that was part of her face, and her eyes were on the udon and her chopsticks were held with careful, controlled fingers.

"Your parents must be proud of you," he said. "U.A.'s hero course. That's not nothing."

"They don't say it." She put her chopsticks across the cup. "They just work. Dad gets up at five and Mom's still at the desk when I call at night. They don't talk about being proud. They don't talk about much. They just keep going."

He put his hand over hers.

Her chopsticks were still between her fingers, the disposable wood resting across her knuckles, and his palm covered her hand and the paw-like pads of her fingertips pressed into the floor under the weight of it. She went very still. Her breathing changed. She didn't pull away.

"You're going to make it," he said. "The Sports Festival. The hero career. The agency. All of it. Your parents are going to be fine because you're going to make it happen." He could hear himself and he knew he was saying too much and he knew it was too certain and he couldn't stop because she was sitting on his floor eating convenience store udon because she couldn't afford dinner and her parents were breaking their bodies on scaffolding and she was going to be the number-thirteen hero in the epilogue and found her own agency and she was going to be fine and he knew this the way he knew the Sports Festival was in five days and Stain was in Hosu and Toga would show up at the forest camp. He knew. "I'm not guessing. I'm telling you."

She looked at him. Her brown eyes were steady and wet at the edges and her mouth was pressed into a line. She didn't blink.

"You always sound like you know things you shouldn't," she said.

His stomach dropped. She was looking right at him and she had no idea what she'd just said. She was a girl sitting on his floor who'd found the exact word for what made him comforting and she'd said it out loud and the truth was right there and she'd walked past it.

"I pay attention," he said.

"You do." She leaned into his shoulder. Her head against his arm, her hair against his sleeve, the smell of cheap shampoo and sweat and underneath it the warmth of her skin. She was solid against him. Mina burned hot, every point of contact a furnace. Ochaco leaned in and her weight was deliberate and measured and she stayed there and neither of them said anything and the udon cooled in the cups between them and Gerald watched from the ceiling.

Outside, a train passed. The building shivered and the windows rattled in their frames and the sound faded and the apartment was quiet again.

"I should go," she said. She stood up. Picked up both udon cups and the chopsticks and put them in the trash before he could move. She put her shoes on at the door.

"Hayami-kun?"

"Yeah?"

She turned. Her mouth opened. Her jaw worked and the words were right there behind her teeth, he could see them building, and then her fingertip pads came together in front of her chest, all ten pressing against each other, and she looked at the floor.

"Nothing." She looked up. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were pinker than the permanent blush. "See you tomorrow."

She left. Her footsteps in the hallway were lighter than Mina's. Quieter. She didn't laugh in the stairwell.

Ryo stood in his apartment. The udon cups were in the trash. Her spot on the floor was empty. Gerald watched.

He knew what she'd almost said.

His phone buzzed. Mina. A selfie, her face and one horn, tongue out, his black t-shirt visible at the collar. Caption: miss me yet

He typed back: yeah

Sent it. Looked at the floor where Ochaco had been sitting. Looked at his phone where Mina was grinning.

The Sports Festival was in five days and he was going to fight Todoroki's ice and Bakugo's explosions and Midoriya's broken fingers and somewhere in the stands Mina would be cheering loud enough for the whole stadium to hear and Ochaco would be in the bracket and she'd fight Bakugo and she'd lose but she'd make him use everything and she wouldn't cry about it and she'd never know he already knew.

He washed the rice cooker. Turned off the desk lamp. Gerald disappeared into the dark.

Five days.