MHA: Lust Quirk

She pinned me in four seconds.

One moment I was standing. Then her palm was flat on my chest, all five fingertip pads down, and gravity left. My feet lifted off the mat and the ceiling of Gym Gamma swung into view and I had enough time to think oh before she hooked her ankle behind my knee and drove her hip into mine and I hit the ground on my back with her weight across my hips and my right arm locked under her elbow.

The mat bounced. The gym lights buzzed overhead. My weight hadn't come back yet and I was pressing upward against her like a balloon held by a kid, and she braced down harder and her thighs clamped around my ribs.

"Got you."

She was breathing hard. Her brown hair was stuck to her forehead and her cheeks were flushed darker than the permanent pink and her chest was heaving and she was sitting on me.

"Yeah," I said. "You got me."

She'd been working on this for a week. The Gunhead preview session had given her the framework, the joint-lock mechanics, and she'd spent every afternoon since then turning it into a full technique. Touch, negate, grapple. She'd practiced the grab-and-pin on training dummies first, then on me, and every day the transition got faster. Four seconds today. Yesterday it had been six.

My weight started coming back. Gradual, like sand filling a bag. My body settled against the mat and she was still on top of me and her thighs were still tight around my ribs and she wasn't moving.

Three seconds.

Five.

Her breathing slowed but her face got redder. She could feel me getting heavier underneath her. My hips against hers, the full weight of me pushing up into the contact, and her hands were still on my arm from the lock but she'd stopped applying pressure. Her thumb against my bicep.

The gym was empty. Late afternoon, everyone else gone. The lights hummed overhead and the ventilation pushed air across the mats and somewhere in the building a door closed.

"Sorry." She rolled off. Fast, scrambling, her knees catching on the mat. She stood up and tugged her gym shirt down and pressed her fingertips together to release the residual Quirk and her eyes were on the wall behind me.

"Stop apologizing."

"I wasn't- I mean, the technique worked, so that's-" She picked up her water bottle. Put it down. Picked it up again. Drank. The water sloshed because her hands were unsteady.

I stood up. My shoulder was sore from the pin and my ribs had the pressure ghost of her thighs.

"Run it again?"

She looked at me. Then at the mat. Then at the wall. "Maybe we should do striking drills instead."

"The pin was clean. Your weight distribution was off on the left side, though. You were leaning into the arm lock instead of centering over my hips. If I'd bridged hard you would've gone sideways."

She was staring at me. Her mouth was open and her water bottle was tilting and a thin stream was running down the side onto her hand.

"Your bottle's leaking."

She looked down. "Oh." She wiped her hand on her shorts. "Okay. One more."

We ran it three more times. She adjusted the weight distribution on the second rep, centered better on the third. The fourth time she pinned me she held the position for ten seconds, counting out loud, professional, her jaw set and her eyes on my trapped arm. She didn't look at my face. When she released and stood up she turned around before I could see her expression.

"That's enough for today," she said to the equipment rack.

We packed up. She wiped down the mats with the spray bottle from the supply closet and I returned the striking pads to the wall hooks. She folded her towel twice before putting it in her bag. Always twice.

The walk from Gym Gamma to the main gate took eight minutes. She fell into step beside me without deciding to. She'd been doing that since the first week. Her shoulder near my arm. Close enough that if either of us shifted, we'd touch.

"Internships start Monday," she said.

"Yeah."

"I'm going to Gunhead's agency. In Kanagawa." She adjusted her bag strap. "He said I have good instincts for close combat. That the grappling work translates." She glanced at me. "He said I fight like someone who's been drilling with a partner."

"Imagine that."

Her mouth pulled sideways. "Where are you going?"

"Haven't decided yet."

That was a lie. I'd decided three days ago. An agency in Hosu City, small, forgettable, chosen for the zip code and nothing else. Because the Hero Killer was going to be in Hosu during internship week, and Iida was going to Manual's agency to hunt Stain for what he did to Ingenium, and someone needed to be there when it went wrong.

I couldn't tell her any of that. So I said "haven't decided yet" and she accepted it. A pause, then moving on.

The gate. The street. The train was three blocks east and the sky was going from blue to orange over the rooftops. A cat was sitting on a low wall near the convenience store, licking its paw with the focused intensity of an animal that had never once questioned the purpose of its afternoon.

"Are you hungry?" she said.

"Always."

"I have rice at home. I could- I mean. We could go to your place and I could-" She stopped walking. "Can I come over?"

"You don't have to ask anymore."

She looked at me. Then at her feet and started walking again.

We bought onigiri from the convenience store because she insisted on splitting the cost and I let her because she'd get upset if I didn't. Two salmon, two tuna. She counted coins from the small pocket of her bag, the one with the zipper that stuck. A hundred and twenty yen. She put the coins on the counter one at a time and the cashier waited and she didn't rush.

My apartment. Third floor. The hallway smelled like someone's curry dinner. She took her shoes off at the door and walked to her spot. Between the bed and the desk, back against the wall, knees up. She'd been sitting there since the first time she came over. She didn't call it that. She just went there.

I filled the rice cooker with water and put it on for tea. She unwrapped the onigiri and set them on the desk next to each other, two and two, and she used the edge of the wrapper as a plate because she always did that.

"Tsuyu's going to Selkie's," she said. "Maritime rescue. She's excited but she won't say she's excited because she thinks being excited is immature, which is the least immature thing about her."

"Sounds right."

"Momo's going to- I actually don't know. She didn't say. I think she's embarrassed about which agency she picked. Or she's doing the Momo thing where she doesn't want people to think she's bragging."

"Also sounds right."

She bit into the salmon onigiri. Chewed. The rice cooker clicked on.

"I'm going to miss this during internships."

She said it to the onigiri. Her voice was quiet.

"It's one week."

"I know." She turned the onigiri. Bit. Chewed. "But I got used to..." She trailed off. The rice cooker was heating and the water inside ticked against the metal. Her jaw worked around the bite and she swallowed and put the onigiri down on the wrapper.

"I got used to coming here."

The light through the blinds was orange. Her fingers were pressing the wrapper flat on the desk surface, smoothing the wrinkles, running over the same crease.

I put my onigiri down. Stood up from the desk chair. Walked to where she was sitting.

Her eyes tracked my feet. My knees. I knelt in front of her. On the floor, in the space between the bed and the desk, close enough that my knees were near her crossed ankles.

"Ochaco."

Her lips parted and she stopped breathing. I'd never used her first name. Hayami-kun and Uraraka, that was the distance between us, the polite gap that everyone in 1-A maintained because Japanese social structure ran on surnames and suffixes and the first-name was the line you didn't cross until you'd decided to mean it.

"Ochaco," I said again, because she needed to hear it twice to believe it wasn't a slip.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Her fingers left the wrapper and curled against her palms and her cheeks were dark and she was looking at me from the floor with her knees up and her back against the wall.

I leaned forward and kissed her.

Her mouth was warm. Soft. She made a sound against my lips, a small intake, and her hands came up to my shoulders and her fingers gripped the fabric of my shirt and she pulled me closer.

Mina kissed like she was staking a flag in conquered territory, all teeth and grip and volume. Ochaco kissed like she was finding out what happened next. Her lips moved against mine and she tilted her head and the angle changed and I could taste the salt from the onigiri and the cheap green tea she'd been drinking all afternoon.

My hand on the side of her face. Her cheek was hot under my palm. She pressed into it and her eyes were closed and her eyelashes were dark against the pink of her skin and her breathing had gone shallow and quick through her nose.

I kissed her deeper. My other hand went to the back of her neck, fingers in her hair, short brown strands against my knuckles. She made another sound. Her grip on my shirt tightened and she pulled and I went forward and she was leaning back and my weight pushed her down and her back settled against the floor.

She let me. Her shoulders on the hardwood, her head on the thin carpet near the wall, and I was over her, one hand still on her face, the other braced next to her head. Her knees fell open and my hips settled between them and she kissed me back and her hands moved from my shirt to my hair.

Her fingers in my hair. Pulling. Her hands needed to hold something and I was the only thing available. Her nails scraped against my scalp and the sensation ran down my spine.

I kissed the corner of her mouth. Her jaw. Below her ear. She turned her head to give me the angle and her breath caught and her fingers tightened and her hips pushed up against mine once, and then she froze.

"Sorry- I didn't mean to-"

"You don't have to apologize for that either."

Red. Her cheeks, her ears, her neck, down to the collar of her gym shirt. Her hands were still in my hair but she'd gone rigid. Her eyes were open and on the ceiling past my shoulder and her breathing was fast.

I pulled back. Gave her space. Braced on my forearms above her and she looked at me. Brown eyes. Wet at the edges. Her mouth was swollen and her bottom lip had a mark where I'd caught it with my teeth.

"We don't have to-"

"I KNOW." She covered her face with both hands. Her pads pressed flat against her forehead and her palms hid her eyes. "I know. I just." Her chest rose and fell. "I've been wanting to do that since the entrance exam."

Since the entrance exam. The original body's memory, the concrete rubble, the bleeding forehead, the "you're fine, don't worry about it" that I'd said with a voice I was hearing for the first time. She'd been carrying this since chapter one of a story she didn't know she was in.

I pulled her hands away from her face. Gently. She resisted for a second and then let me. Her eyes were bright and her mouth was trembling and her cheeks looked sunburned.

"Then stop covering your face."

She looked at me. Direct. The same way she looked when she talked about her parents' construction company. Certain about what she wanted even if the wanting scared her.

"Ryo."

Different from how Mina said it. Mina said my name like she was writing it on a wall. Ochaco said it like she'd found a word she'd been looking for.

"Ryo," she said again, and her voice cracked on the y.

I kissed her forehead. Her nose. Her mouth. She kissed me back and her arms came around my neck and she held on and her body was warm underneath mine and her hips didn't push up again but the effort of keeping still was in her thighs, in the controlled tension, the discipline of a girl who took every step one at a time.

I didn't push. She didn't need me to.

We stayed on the floor. The light through the blinds went from orange to gray and the rice cooker clicked off and neither of us got up. Her forehead against mine. Her hands on my chest, palms flat, the pads pressing against my shirt. My hand on her hip. Still.

Her breathing settled. The flush faded from her neck but stayed in her cheeks. She opened her eyes close enough that the darker ring of brown around her iris was visible.

The onigiri was getting cold on the desk. A siren wailed somewhere in the city, blocks away, wound up and faded out. The hardwood was cool under my knees.

"I have to go," she said. Not moving.

"Okay."

"My train."

"Yeah."

She didn't move. Her fingers curled against my shirt, gathering the fabric, and she looked at my mouth and then my eyes and then my mouth.

"Monday," she said.

"Monday."

"Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."

"Define stupid."

The corner of her mouth pulled up. Small and specific and aimed at me. She pushed against my chest lightly and I rolled off her and she sat up and her hair was flat on one side and sticking up on the other and she pressed her fingers together in the release gesture, a reflex, even though her Quirk hadn't been active.

She stood. Picked up her bag. Wrapped the leftover onigiri and put it on the desk. Checked her flip phone. The cracked hinge caught the light. Shoes on at the door.

She looked back at me. I was still on the floor.

"Ryo."

Third time.

"Yeah."

She held my gaze for three seconds. Her mouth opened. Closed. She shook her head, fast, and the smile came back, wider, and she left.

Her footsteps in the hallway were quick. Light. She walked like someone who needed to be moving before she turned around. The stairwell door opened and closed.

I sat on the floor. Her spot. The carpet was warm where she'd been lying. The onigiri wrapper was folded neatly on the desk.

My phone buzzed. Tsuyu. Don't do anything reckless during internships. I mean it. Ribbit.

I typed back: I'll try.

Monday was Hosu. Stain. Iida walking into an alley with a sword waiting at the other end. And Ochaco in a different city learning joint locks, her flip phone in her bag with my name in it for the first time.

I ate the cold onigiri. Turned off the lamp.