MHA: Lust Quirk

The apartment smelled like sweat and convenience store rice balls when she walked in.

Ochaco had a key. She'd had one for two weeks and she still knocked before using it, three quick raps and then the lock turning before I could get to the door. The key was the point.

"I'm so TIRED." She dropped her bag by the door and walked straight to her spot on the floor next to the wall, the one between the desk and the bookshelf where the floorboard didn't creak. She'd picked it weeks ago and it was hers now. Nobody sat there when she wasn't here. I didn't sit there when she wasn't here. She folded onto it in one motion, legs crossing, back against the wall, head tipping back until her skull hit the plaster. Her eyes closed. "So. Tired."

She was still in her work clothes. Tank top, jean shorts, sneakers with the left sole peeling at the toe. Her hair was damp at the temples. The tank top had a convenience store logo on the chest that I'd never seen her wear anywhere else because she owned exactly one work shirt and washed it every night. She'd come straight from a six-hour shift and the bus and two blocks of walking in the July heat and she looked it.

"Water?" I said.

"Please."

I got a glass from the counter. The faucet was cold enough in summer if you let it run. I filled it and brought it over and she took it with both hands, her fingertip pads pressing into the glass and leaving five small divots in the condensation. She drank half of it in one pull.

"How was work?"

"A man yelled at me because the egg salad was in the wrong spot." She drank the other half. "The egg salad was in the right spot. He was in the wrong aisle."

"Did you tell him that?"

"I showed him the aisle sign. He said the sign was wrong." She put the empty glass on the floor. "Then he bought four egg salads."

"Four."

"Four. I didn't ask." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat, the permanent pink darker than usual, spreading down her neck. A strand of brown hair was stuck to her jaw.

The window was open. Evening air came through but it was still warm. The ceiling fan turned in slow circles and did almost nothing. My apartment had one speed in summer: hot.

"Come here," she said. She reached up and grabbed my wrist and pulled. Her grip was strong and the calluses on her palms were rough against my skin. Construction family.

I went down. She pulled me onto the floor next to her and I sat with my back against the wall and our shoulders touched. She leaned into me. Her head found my chest. My arm went around her shoulders and her hair was warm and slightly damp and smelled like shampoo and sweat and fried food from the store.

"When we get to camp I can't do this," she said.

"Fifty people around."

"Exactly." Her hand settled on my stomach, flat, over my shirt. "I won't be able to just come over. Won't be able to sit in my spot. Won't be able to fall asleep on your floor."

"You've never fallen asleep on my floor."

"Last Tuesday."

"That was ten minutes."

"It was forty. You didn't wake me up." Her fingers curled against my shirt. "You put a pillow under my head and went back to studying."

I had. She'd been breathing slow and her mouth was slightly open and there'd been a crease in her cheek from the seam of my floor mat. I'd watched her for maybe five seconds longer than I should have and then I'd put the pillow under her head and gone back to my rescue protocol notes and she'd slept for forty minutes and I'd gotten nothing done.

"Camp's five days," I said. "You'll survive."

"I know." Her voice was quiet. "I just like this."

The fan turned. A car passed outside. The glass she'd emptied was on the floor with condensation running down the side and pooling at the base. Her breathing was slowing. Her hand was on my stomach and her head was on my chest and her body was warm against my side.

She propped herself up.

Her hand moved from my stomach to my chest and she pushed herself up and she was looking at me, her face close, brown eyes warm and steady. The flush on her cheeks wasn't just from the heat anymore. She held my eyes for a second. Two.

She kissed me.

Slow. Her mouth was warm and her lips were slightly chapped from the sun and she tasted like water and the faint sugar of whatever she'd eaten on her break. Her fingertip pads pressed into my chest through my shirt, all five on each hand, rough and slightly swollen from hours of scanning barcodes.

She pulled back an inch. Looked at me. Checking. Her eyes moved across my face and whatever she found there was the right answer because she kissed me again, harder, and her hand slid from my chest to the back of my neck and her fingers went into my hair and she pulled.

The pull was new. She'd never done that.

I put my hand on her waist. Her tank top had ridden up and my thumb found the bare skin above her hip, warm and damp from the heat. She made a sound against my mouth when I touched her. Small. "Mm." She shifted her weight and her knee went over my legs and she was moving, climbing, and then she was straddling me on the floor with her hands on my shoulders and her thighs squeezing my hips and the weight of her in my lap.

She'd done this once before. In the gym, after the throw. But that had been adrenaline and impulse and she'd pulled away the second she realized what she'd done.

She wasn't pulling away.

Her hands went to the hem of her tank top. She grabbed it and pulled it off over her head in one motion and dropped it on the floor next to us. Sports bra underneath, plain white, nothing fancy, the elastic tight against her ribs. Her shoulders were broad and freckled and her collarbones stood out and the muscles in her arms were real, earned from years of construction sites and martial arts training and carrying things that were too heavy for her.

Her hands came back to my chest and pushed me flat against the floor. My back hit the mat and she was over me, her hair falling forward around her face, brown strands catching on her cheeks.

"Ochaco."

"Don't talk."

She kissed me. Her mouth was harder now, open, her tongue pushing against mine, and her hips rocked forward once in my lap and the friction through her shorts and my jeans was enough to make my hands tighten on her waist. She rocked again. Deliberate. She knew what she was doing. She'd learned what she liked and she was taking it. Straight from work, still sweaty, still smelling like fried food, and the first thing she did was climb into my lap and push me flat.

Her hand went to my belt. Her fingers worked the buckle. The metal clicked.

My phone rang.

The sound cut through the room. The ringtone was a guitar riff I'd assigned to one person because she'd insisted on picking her own sound and she'd played the first eight seconds of a pop song into my phone and said "THAT'S my ringtone, don't change it."

Mina.

Ochaco's hands stopped on my belt. Her fingers went still. The buckle was half-open.

The phone was on the desk. Two feet away. The screen was lit up and the name was visible from the floor. MINA with a string of pink emojis. The guitar riff played again.

Ochaco looked at the phone. Then at me. Then at the phone.

I reached over and silenced it. The screen went dark.

"Answer it later," Ochaco said.

"Yeah."

She kissed me. Her mouth found mine and her hand went back to the belt and the buckle clinked and her fingers found the button of my jeans and I was hard and she was shifting her weight forward and the air was hot and her skin was hot and the phone was dark on the desk and Mina's name wasn't on the screen anymore but it was in the room.

Ochaco kissed me for another minute. Her hands were on my chest and her hips were pressed against mine and the shorts she was wearing were thin enough that the heat of her came through the denim and her mouth was warm and open and her breath was fast and she was there, right there, and the phone was dark and silent and Mina's name was still in the room.

She stopped.

Her mouth left mine. She sat up, still straddling me, her hands on my stomach. Her sports bra was white and tight and her chest was moving with her breathing and her cheeks were red and her lips were swollen and she was looking at the phone on the desk. She wasn't looking at me.

"Actually," she said. Her voice was rough. She swallowed. "Actually, I should go."

"You don't have to."

"I know." She climbed off me. Stood up. Her knees popped when she straightened. She picked up her tank top from the floor and pulled it back on and the convenience store logo was crooked and she didn't fix it. "Before I get mad about something I already agreed to."

She said it quiet. Steady. Looking at the wall behind me, not at my face.

I sat up. My belt was half-undone and my heart was going and the floor mat was warm where she'd been sitting.

She walked to the door. Stepped into her sneakers. Picked up her bag.

"Ochaco."

She turned. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were bright and wet and the flush on her cheeks had spread to her ears.

She crossed the two steps back to me. Grabbed my shirt. Kissed me hard. Her teeth caught my lower lip. She held it and let go and stepped back and her fingertip pads left creases in the fabric of my shirt.

"Call her back," she said. "I don't want to be the reason you don't."

The door closed behind her. I heard her sneakers on the stairs. The left one with the peeling sole made a different sound than the right.

The apartment was quiet. The fan turned. The glass on the floor had a ring of water around the base where the condensation had pooled. Mina's ringtone didn't play again because I'd silenced it but the notification light was blinking on the desk, slow green pulses.

I fixed my belt. Buckled it. Sat on the floor for a while.

Then I picked up the phone and called Mina.

She answered on the second ring. "FINALLY. Okay so I need your opinion on something critical. Like, life-or-death critical."

"What."

"Do I bring the purple bikini or the black one to camp? The purple one is cuter but the black one makes my boobs look amazing and there's going to be a LOT of outdoor training so strategically-"

"Mina."

"What?"

"Bring both."

"Oh my GOD that's genius. Why didn't I think of that? You're so smart. Okay next question, bug spray, do we need to bring our own or-"

She talked for fourteen minutes. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall in Ochaco's spot and listened to Mina talk about bikinis and bug spray and whether they'd have wifi at the lodge and whether Bakugo would actually participate in the courage test or just blow everything up.

She was cheerful. Loud. Oblivious. Excited about packing and the bus ride and seeing everyone. She had no idea about any of it.

"Okay I gotta go, Kirishima's here, we're doing a practice spar before dinner. Kiss?"

She made a kissing sound into the phone. I heard Kirishima in the background saying "Dude, who are you calling?" and Mina saying "None of your business, go stretch" and then the line cut.

The apartment was hot. The fan was turning. The spot next to me was empty.

Five days until camp. Five days until the Forest Lodge and the Vanguard Action Squad and the night that was going to change everything.

I got up. Put the glass in the sink. The fridge had groceries Ochaco had brought three days ago. Sale vegetables. Bulk rice. Store-brand eggs.

I cooked dinner for one and ate it at the desk.