MHA: Lust Quirk

The train station was loud with goodbyes.

Platforms three through six were full of U.A. students in civilian clothes with duffel bags and rolling suitcases and the specific energy of teenagers leaving home for a week and pretending it was longer. Some of the Gen Studies kids were crying. A Support Course girl was trying to fit a device the size of a microwave into an overhead rack and Power Loader was on the phone explaining why she couldn't bring it. Kaminari was taking a selfie with Kirishima on Platform 4, both of them doing the same pose.

I stood near the ticket gates with my bag over my shoulder and watched 1-A scatter.

Bakugo walked past without looking at anyone. His bag was over one shoulder and he boarded his train like it owed him money. Todoroki followed a minute later, heading for a different platform. He nodded at me on the way past. I nodded back. We'd punched each other in the face on national television and the nod was enough.

Iida was across the platform. He had a rolling suitcase with a color-coded luggage tag and his posture was stiffer than usual and he was heading for the Hosu train. The same Hosu train I'd be on tomorrow morning. He was going to Manual's agency to find the man who'd paralyzed his brother. I knew this because I'd watched it happen on a screen in a life that might not exist anymore. He was standing thirty feet away and I couldn't say anything.

He boarded. The doors closed. The train pulled out.

Ochaco was at the gate for the Kanagawa platform. She had a backpack that was slightly too big for her and a plastic bag from the convenience store with what looked like onigiri and a juice box. Her flip phone was in her hand and then she was looking at me.

Her cheeks went dark. Her mouth opened and she pressed her lips together and her fingers tightened on the phone. Two nights ago I'd kissed her on my apartment floor and she'd said my name three times and her voice had cracked on the second letter.

I caught her eye. Nodded once.

She went redder. Her mouth pulled into the start of a smile and she ducked her head and pressed her fingertips together, quick, reflexive, and she boarded her train with the too-big backpack. Her shoulders were up around her ears and she was smiling at the window.

Tsuyu appeared next to me. Frog stealth. One second the space was empty and the next she was there with a duffel bag and her hair tied in its bow and her enormous green eyes looking up at me.

"Don't do anything stupid, ribbit."

"Define stupid."

"Getting hit by things bigger than you."

"That's my entire fighting style."

"Exactly." Her wide mouth didn't move but the corner twitched. She turned and walked toward the maritime platform. Her feet were silent on the tile.

Momo caught me near the exit. She was wearing a coat that probably cost more than my apartment's monthly rent and she had a leather bag with a monogram on the handle and her hair was in its spiked ponytail.

"Which agency did you choose?"

"Small firm in Hosu. You wouldn't know them."

Her eyebrows pulled together. "Hosu. That's where Iida is going." She looked at me. "You won the Sports Festival. You had offers from top ten firms."

"It's where I need to be."

"Why?"

I didn't answer. She waited. I didn't answer some more.

"Be careful," she said. She adjusted the strap of her bag and left. Her heels clicked on the tile. Momo Yaoyorozu was going to figure out why I'd chosen a nothing agency in the same city as Iida, and the answer was going to give her another data point in the file she was building on me.

The station thinned out. Trains left. By noon the platforms were quiet and I went home.

My apartment. Gerald on the ceiling. The rice cooker. The spot on the floor where Ochaco had been lying two nights ago. I packed a bag. Three days of clothes, toiletries, the shock-absorbing knuckle guards Mei had built me.

I sat on the bed and looked at the ceiling stain and thought about Stain.

The Hero Killer was in Hosu. Three Nomu would be released during the incident as a distraction. Iida would find Stain in an alley. Midoriya and Todoroki would show up. In the original timeline they'd barely survived. In this timeline Mirko was in Hosu tracking the same man and I was going to be there and the variables had shifted.

The foreknowledge got less reliable every time I did something the original story didn't account for.

Someone knocked on the door.

Hard. The kind of knock where the hinges felt it. I knew the knock.

I opened the door. Mina was standing in the hallway in a hoodie and bike shorts with her overnight bag over her shoulder and her horns catching the hallway light.

She didn't say she came to say goodbye. She walked in and dropped her bag on the floor and kicked her shoes off and looked at me.

"Hi," I said.

She pushed me.

Both hands flat on my chest, her palms warm through my shirt, and she pushed me backward through the apartment until my lower back hit the kitchen counter. Her hands went to my jaw and she pulled my face down and kissed me. Hard. Her mouth was open and her tongue was against mine and she tasted like strawberry gum and she was gripping the sides of my face like I was trying to leave.

I grabbed her waist. Lifted. She jumped, her legs wrapping around me, her thighs locking against my ribs, and I turned and set her on the counter. She pulled back long enough to yank her hoodie over her head. No bra. Her pink skin was flushed darker across her chest and she grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled it off and her hands were on my stomach and my chest.

"Mina."

"Shut up." She kissed me again. Her hips pushed forward on the counter and she was grinding against me through her shorts and my hands were on her bare back and her skin was hot, always hot, her body temperature ran higher than anyone else's and the acid chemistry under her skin made her feel like she'd just stepped out of a bath.

I pushed her shorts down. She lifted her hips to let me and they caught on one ankle and she kicked them off and they hit the fridge. My pants went next. She helped with those too, shoving at the waistband, and then she pulled me in with her legs and I was against her and she was wet and warm.

"Now," she said.

I pushed into her and her head dropped back and her horns scraped the cabinet behind her. She was tight and hot and the sound she made was loud and she didn't try to muffle it because Mina never muffled anything. Her fingers dug into my shoulders and her legs tightened and she pulled me deeper.

The counter shifted under her with the first thrust. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her forehead against my shoulder and her breath was fast and hot on my skin. Standing, her weight on the counter, her legs around my waist. We'd done this before. Her body knew the angle. Mine knew the grip.

But the energy was different. No buildup. No tease. She was rough and the roughness was good and her voice got louder with every thrust.

"Harder."

I gripped her hips and drove in and the counter scraped against the floor. Her nails bit into the back of my neck. She was loud. The walls were thin and my neighbors were going to hear. Her moans broke into pieces and she said my name between them and her legs shook.

"Ryo- don't- don't stop-"

Her horns dug into my shoulder. Both of them, pressing hard, the points digging in as her back arched and her thighs clamped and she clenched around me in tight waves and she bit my shoulder. Teeth. Hard enough that the skin broke. Her whole body locked up and she held on and the sound she made into my skin was muffled and raw.

I came right after her. Buried deep, her legs holding me in, my hands on her hips hard enough to leave marks. The Quirk gain was there, small, familiar, the diminishing return of an established partner.

She stayed pressed against me. Her face in my neck. Her horns against my jaw. Her legs still around me. Both of us breathing hard. The apartment was quiet.

"One week," she said into my neck.

"One week."

She pulled back. Her gold-and-black eyes were wet. She wiped them with the back of her wrist and her jaw set and she fixed it before it could become anything else.

"If you die I'll kill you."

"Noted."

She kissed me. Soft this time. Her lips were warm and the strawberry taste was gone and it was just her. She unwrapped her legs and slid off the counter and picked her shorts up from the floor near the fridge and pulled them on and grabbed her hoodie and pushed her horns through the holes she'd cut in the fabric.

She picked up her bag. Stood at the door. Looked at me.

"Don't do anything stupid."

"Tsuyu already told me that."

"Tsuyu doesn't know what stupid looks like on you." She opened the door. "I do."

She left. The door clicked shut. Her footsteps faded down the hallway.

The bite mark on my shoulder stung. I touched it. My fingers came back with a smear of blood. Crescent-shaped, pink around the edges, already darkening.

I packed the rest of my bag. Toothbrush. Phone charger. The knuckle guards in their case. Set my alarm for four thirty.

The apartment was dark. Gerald on the ceiling. The counter had shifted two inches from the wall. The bite mark throbbed when I lay down. Mina's acid-chemistry smell was on my pillow and my skin.

Tomorrow. Hosu. Mirko at the station at six. A city with a Hero Killer in it and Iida walking toward a fight he'd chosen before he understood what it cost.

I closed my eyes.