57 – Exam Night
Mina brought study notes she hadn't opened and a convenience store bento she was eating on my bed.
"Quiz me," she said. Her shoes were by the door. Her uniform was still on but the blazer was gone and her tie was hanging from the desk lamp. She was sitting cross-legged on the mattress with the bento balanced on one knee and a stack of handouts on the other and she was eating rice with chopsticks in one hand while flipping pages with the other.
"On what?"
"Everything. I need to pass the written portion or Aizawa-sensei will give me that look. You know the look."
"The look where he stares at you until you wish you were expelled?"
"That one."
I picked up her handouts. Modern Hero Art History. Mathematics. English. The English handout had a coffee stain on it and someone had drawn a small face in the margin that was either Aizawa or a very tired cat.
"What year was the Hero Public Safety Commission established?"
"Uhh." She chewed rice. "Nineteen... seventy?"
"Nineteen fifty-two."
"That was my next guess."
"It wasn't."
"It was going to be." She ate another bite. "Next question."
We went through the stack. She got about a third of the answers right, blamed the questions for the ones she missed, and at one point threw a handout at me because I told her the quadratic formula wasn't optional. Her acid left a small burn on the corner of the paper when she got frustrated, and she apologized to the handout specifically, not to me.
The convenience store cat was on the wall outside my window. The orange one with half an ear. Mina saw it and waved. The cat did not wave back.
"I think it likes you," she said.
"It doesn't like anyone."
"That's why it likes you. You have that in common."
"I like people."
"Name one."
I looked at her. She grinned. Gold eyes in black sclera, too many teeth, the grin that did things to me that a grin probably shouldn't.
"Shut up and study."
"That's not an answer."
"The answer is you. Obviously. Now shut up and study."
She stared at me. Her grin changed. Softened at the edges. She put a bite of rice in her mouth and looked at her handout and didn't say anything for about ten seconds, which for Mina was a geological epoch.
By ten-thirty she was fading. Her answers got slower, then shorter, then stopped. She was lying on her side with the English handout in front of her and her eyes were closing between sentences. I took the handout off the bed. She made a sound of protest that was mostly vowels. I put the blanket over her. She curled up and her horn pressed into the pillow and her hand found my shirt and held on.
I lay down next to her. The apartment was quiet. The five dents in the doorframe were still there.
She smelled like strawberry shampoo and convenience store bento and the faint chemical undertone of her acid that was always there, under everything. Her breathing was slow and even. Her hand was still in my shirt.
I fell asleep.
I woke up with a horn in my jaw.
Mina was curled against me, her back to my chest, her leg thrown over mine. One of her horns was pressing into the underside of my chin. Her hair was in my face. Her ass was against my hips and my arm was around her waist and my hand was on her stomach, flat, her skin warm through the thin fabric of her uniform shirt.
Morning. Light through the window, pale and early. The clock on the desk said 6:42.
She stirred. Her hips shifted back against me. Her body was warm and soft and she was moving in the half-conscious way of someone who wasn't fully awake and whose body was ahead of her brain.
"Mmm." Her voice was thick with sleep. "Exam today."
"Yeah."
She shifted again. Her hips rolled once. Deliberate this time. Her ass pressed against my cock, which was hard, because it was morning and she was pressed against me and her body was warm and her hips were moving.
"We have an hour," she said.
I looked at the clock. "Forty minutes."
"Then stop talking."
She reached back. Her hand found my hip and pulled. Her fingers curled into the waistband of my shorts and tugged and the fabric shifted down and her ass pressed back again, skin to skin now, and the heat of her against me was immediate.
I pushed her shirt up. My hand slid across her stomach, up her ribs, and she was braless because she'd slept in her uniform shirt and nothing else and my palm found her breast and she made a sound into the pillow. Low. Sleepy. Her nipple hardened under my hand.
My other arm was under her, pinned between her body and the mattress. I slid it down. My fingers found the waistband of her underwear and pushed under. She was warm. Wet already. My fingers slipped through and she exhaled long and slow.
"Nn."
I rubbed slow circles. Her clit was swollen from sleep and arousal and she rocked her hips forward into my hand and back against my cock and the rhythm was lazy, unhurried. She was half-asleep and so was I and neither of us was trying to impress the other.
Her underwear came down to her thighs. She kicked them the rest of the way off. My shorts were already pushed down. I adjusted behind her, the head of my cock sliding between her thighs, finding her entrance from behind. Slick. Warm. I pushed in and the angle was tight and she took a breath through her nose.
"Ah."
The first inch was snug from the spooning angle. I went slow. She tilted her hips back, opening the angle, and I sank deeper. Familiar. Her body knew mine and mine knew hers and the adjustment was automatic.
I was fully inside her. She was hot and tight and wet and the fit from behind was different from other positions, tighter, the pressure distributed differently, and she clenched once, testing, and then relaxed and her breath came out in a long slow exhale.
I moved. Slow. Long strokes that pulled almost all the way out and pushed back in, lazy, the pace of a morning where neither of us wanted to rush. Her hand came back and gripped my hip, guiding, and when I hit a spot she liked her fingers dug in and she pressed back.
"Right there," she said. Into the pillow. Quiet.
I stayed on it. Same angle, same depth, same rhythm. Her body rocked with each thrust, her hips pressing back to meet me, and the wet sounds between us were muffled by the blanket and the mattress and the early-morning quiet of the apartment.
My hand was still on her breast. I rolled her nipple between my fingers and she made a sound into the pillow, higher, and her internal muscles clenched and the squeeze pulled a groan out of me that I buried in her hair.
The pace stayed slow. Each thrust was its own beat, unhurried. Her pink hair was in my face and the back of her neck was damp where our skin pressed together and her horn was against my jaw and none of it was graceful.
She was quiet. For Mina, quiet. Muffled in the pillow, making sounds that were more breath than voice. Small gasps. The occasional "mm" that vibrated through the pillow into the mattress.
My hand moved from her breast to her hip. I pulled her tighter against me and the angle changed, deeper, and she gasped and her hand on my hip dug in and her body went tense for a second before relaxing again.
"Ryo."
Into the pillow. My name. One syllable because the second one got caught in her throat.
I kept the pace. Steady. Her breathing was faster now, short exhales through her nose, and her body was tightening around me in pulses that were getting closer together. The wet between us was louder. The blanket had slid off our hips and the morning air was cool on my thigh and warm where we were connected.
Her hand found the sheet. Gripped. Her knuckles went pale against the pink of her skin and the sheet bunched under her fingers and her horn tilted toward me, pressing harder against my jaw.
I slid my hand between her thighs from the front. Found her clit. Rubbed in time with my thrusts and her whole body shuddered.
"Ah- nn-"
She buried her face in the pillow. Her hips ground back against me, harder now, the lazy rhythm breaking faster, more urgent, her body demanding what her voice wasn't asking for.
I gave it to her. Faster. My hips against her ass, the sound of skin, the wet slick noise of me inside her, and she was gripping the sheet with both hands and her breathing was coming in short sharp bursts through the pillow.
She came.
A gasp. Muffled. Her body clenched around me in long waves and her thighs pressed together and her back arched against my chest and her hand let go of the sheet and grabbed my forearm and held on. The sound she made was quiet. For Mina, impossibly quiet. A choked breath into the pillow and a shudder that ran through her whole body and her pussy pulsed around me in waves that reached my spine.
I followed. A few more thrusts into the tight clench of her and the orgasm hit low and warm and my hips pressed against her and stayed and I came inside her and she made a small sound and clenched again and I pressed my face into her hair and breathed.
We lay there.
Her breathing slowed. Her grip on my forearm loosened. Her body relaxed against mine in stages. The pillow was damp where her mouth had been. Her horn was still pressing into my jaw. I was still inside her and she was still warm and the room was quiet and the clock said 7:04.
Her hand came up and touched the side of my face behind her. Her fingers traced my jaw where her horn had been pressing. Gentle.
"I was quiet," she said.
"Yeah."
"I don't know why." She sounded confused by herself. "I'm never quiet."
"Maybe you're comfortable."
"I'm always comfortable."
"Then maybe you're comfortable enough to not have to prove it."
She was quiet again. Her fingers were still on my jaw. Her horn shifted when she moved her head.
"Huh," she said.
I pulled out slowly. She made a small sound at the withdrawal and shifted her hips. The wet between her thighs was warm and visible on her pink skin and she didn't reach for a towel. She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling and her gold eyes were half-lidded and her hair was wrecked and she looked like someone who'd been thoroughly occupied for twenty minutes and had strong opinions about the experience.
"I'm going to ace this exam," she said.
"You got thirty percent on the practice test last night."
"Shut UP." She grabbed the pillow and threw it at my face. It hit me and bounced off and landed on the floor and she was grinning, the full one, too many teeth, gold eyes bright in the morning light.
I laughed. She punched my shoulder. Her acid fizzed on my skin for a second and she pulled her hand back and said "sorry" and I said "it's fine" and she said "your skin is tougher now, I used to burn you worse" and I said "please don't test that" and she punched me again, lighter, no acid.
"Shower," she said. "You smell like me."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
Her cheeks went darker. Pink over pink.
"Shower," she said again. "Separately. We don't have time."
She was right. We didn't have time. Forty minutes ago we'd had forty minutes and we'd spent twenty of them on something that wasn't studying. The exam was at ten. The written portion first, then the practical.
She got off the bed. Found her underwear on the floor. Pulled them on and walked to the bathroom and her bare legs were long and her walk was the walk of someone whose thighs were slick and who was pretending they weren't.
I lay on the bed. The sheets were warm and damp and the pillow was on the floor and Gerald was on the ceiling watching me with the patient judgment of an arachnid who had seen too much.
The exam was in three hours. Mina was going to get thirty percent on the written portion and she was going to be fine because she was Mina and Mina's real test was the practical and the practical was going to be terrifying and she was going to face it loud and with acid.
My exam was against Aizawa. With Momo. The girl who thought I could see the future and the teacher who could erase my Quirk.
The shower turned on. Mina was singing in the bathroom. Off-key. Loud. The song bounced off the tiles and came through the door and she was singing the chorus wrong and she didn't care.
I got up. Found my shorts. Went to make rice.
