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Somehow, shit always ends up like this: with Deku squeaking out that he's got a project due and sprinting off to the engineering lab on a Saturday night, Cheeks wearing a hole into their couch as she demolishes a pint of strawberry mochi ice cream, and Katsuki left to pick up the fucking slack.
She looks up from the crappy telenovela she's watching on the TV — on Katsuki's TV, dammit, that he bought for himself and maybe Deku and definitely not for the carousel of friends that come to cry on their dorm room's couch and eat them out of house and home — and moves her lips as he pads into the living room. Katsuki points to his ears. He's not gonna put his hearing aids in for some house guest to chatter across the room at him at one in the fucking morning. She can come get him like a civilized adult if she needs anything.
...But, shit, she smells bad. Not gross — the waft of chamomile winding through the room is one of the only alpha scents Katsuki can tolerate in his living space — but bad. Choked up and twisted, like there's something nasty eating her up and the only way to escape it is by hitting the bottom of the ice cream bucket. Katsuki glances over his shoulder at her as he enters the kitchen, and she looks... small. Curled into herself, cheek propped on an armrest, infuriatingly huge eyes rimmed with red and gleaming with tears.
And against his better judgement, he forsakes his industrial-quantity weekend meal prep (the only reason the idiot parade that marches through his life ever has nutritious food) and stalks over to the living room couch instead. Cheeks glances over at him when he sits on the ground, knee drawn to his chest and back to the seat cushions. He expects her to glare at him like she does every time they bicker until Deku gets in between them — but her expression is open and weirdly earnest and it makes Katsuki want to blow shit up.
"I thought you slept early on weekends,” she says. He's sitting close enough to her that he can hear her even without the aids, and it doesn't escape him that she talks a little louder, shapes her lips a little more clearly for him. That she always does this, has done it long before they were ever approximating "friends," when even his own idiots still routinely forget he can't fucking follow along when they whisper into each other’s ears.
"I would've if you and Deku hadn't been shrieking like animals the whole night."
Her brows knit into the very picture of scandalized. "We weren't shrieking! We were trying to be quiet and mindful of your sleep, actually."
"Y'wanna be mindful? Don't come into my apartment, bang around in the freezer, and change the channels for an hour. What's the fucking matter, anyway? DE midterm got you shitting your pants?"
Cheeks growls at him around the spoon in her mouth, scent souring, but they both know it's for show. This is the silent, stumbling thing that's become of their rivalry turned (incredibly fucking begrudging, thank you very much) respect: he takes a jab her and she gets pissed and they both know it's fine because, at some perfectly-calculated opportunity, she'll have her revenge and leave him spluttering curses after her retreating, satisfied smile. Shitty Hair calls this dynamic "bonkers." Pikachu has eaten shit multiple times for insisting they "cut the shit and kiss already." And Deku always smiles at them, wide and watery like some proud parent at a primary school ballet recital. Fuck his life.
Especially fuck the way Cheeks' eyes screw shut as she falls into thought, tears glittering on her lashes like the world is ending.
"It's nothing," she murmurs. "I'll be over it by tomorrow. Thanks for letting me have your ice cream."
"Hah! You look fuckin' miserable, how the hell are ya gonna get over it by tomorrow? And look, Cheeks, if you're gonna get your snot all over my furniture, I have a right to know what's wrong with you this time."
"You say that like I'm crying on your couch every week!"
Katsuki smirks. "'Cause you are."
She puffs out her flushing cheeks — stage two of indignation, fucking clockwork — but relents when she realizes he's right.
"The differential equations midterm will require a whole other pint of ice cream," she sighs. "Today it's just... ugh, this is stupid, you and Mina both told me you saw it coming..."
"What, did that knothead dump you?"
Cheeks winces and nods. A few tears fall from her lashes to inch down her cheeks. "I — I really thought it would be different this time. He was sweet and charming and h-he said he respected me, but he's just like everyone else, I... Bakugou, tell me — 'cause Deku's never honest when I ask him — am I dumb? Am I asking for too much? Am I j-just bad at being an alpha?"
Fuck, fuck, fuck, she looks so small — and it's late and Katsuki can't hear shit and he came out here to cook some fucking curries, not to comfort Deku's friend and the biggest hurdle between him and top spot in his major — and how do you comfort someone who's crying into her ice cream and curling into a ball, anyway? He pats her knee and it's awkward as hell, but her mouth twitches with a little smile as she wipes her arm over her eyes. Is that working? What else can he do?
"D'you, uh —" he swallows and looks away when he feels her gaze prickle over his skin. "Did you eat anything yet? Besides all the damn ice cream in the house, I mean. Swear to god, if Deku didn't make you any dinner..."
"O-oh, I'm alright," she sniffles. "You don't need to worry about feeding me, we had snacks."
"Tch. Stay here. You're getting katsudon."
She chuckles when he gets up to make for the kitchen, and it's such a breathless and content sound he wants to tear his hair out. Set the whole dorm building on fire, maybe. His scent swirls around his neck, sticky-sweet with something he can't understand, while hers grows faint as he moves away from her yet still strikes his palate as grateful. As thank you.
And Katsuki's been told “thank you” by a million idiots a million times, but hers --- even when wordless and gentle like this --- makes something in his chest ache.
"Y'know, Bakugou," Cheeks says, and he nearly jumps because why the hell is her voice so close? — only to turn and see her standing behind him, palms against the kitchen sink's edge. She’s still a little cry-hazy, but happier than when he found her. "I've been… thinking about a change of pace. Just packing up my car and driving until I don't know where I am anymore, you know? I keep putting it off 'cause of school and work, but maybe I just need to do it."
"Don't be an idiot," he mutters, thrusting a warmed bowl of pork katsudon into her hand. "Just focus on crushing every other sad sack of shit in our major during midterms."
"Oh, easy for you to say."
"I ain't a slacker like you. Now eat."
Hey, Katsu-baby.
"Is Cheeks home?"
The green-haired roommate whose name Katsuki hasn't bothered to learn yet blinks at him, undoes the chain lock, and opens the door all the way for him. "You're her friend Bakugou, right?"
I think we should break up.
"I need to fuckin' see her."
"She's studying. Don't distract her too much, kero."
Katsuki marches in and kicks open the door strung up with fairy lights and curtain beads and every other terrible trace of Ashido’s aesthetic sense. Cheeks nearly falls off her bed in surprise.
"Bakugou?!" she chokes out. "How do you know where I — did Deku give you my apartment number? What's wrong?"
Nothing personal, I swear! The voice just keeps fucking going, stuck between his ears like drying cement and driving Katsuki insane because — because he thought he'd finally found someone who —
It's just that you're not really my type, ya know? I like an omega who's eager to submit. Not to mention smaller than me, hah! I'm sure you get it. I'll see ya around?
His fingers are sinking into Cheeks' shoulder; her hand flies up to cover his. Not to remove it, but to squeeze his creaking knuckles, almost like a reassurance. Her eyes are wide and soft and Katsuki --- Katsuki won't cry, he won't.
"That fuckin' road trip," he grits out. "The one you were talkin' about the other night. Let's do it."
Her eyes widen even more --- how it's biologically possible at this point, he'll never fucking understand. "Right now?"
"Right now. Let's go."
Cheeks swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands. "Say less."
Katsuki doesn't process it, not really, until he's hoisting himself into the passenger seat of Cheeks' beat-up truck that's older than the both of them combined, pharmacy bag in his white-knuckled fist, as her voice rises over the morning news to ask,
"Got everything you need?"
He's really going to do this. He's really going to ditch everything and drive — with her, of all people, until the static in his head clears.
A week's worth of clothes bundled up in the backseat, check. Jerry cans of gasoline and jumper cables and a tire jack, check. Snacks within arm's reach, spicy for him and sickly-sweet for Cheeks, triple-check, 'cause buying them was Cheeks' job and she practically cleared out the whole store. Texts sent to friends, telling them not to worry but also to call the cops if they aren't back in ten days? Check.
The most critical thing Katsuki needs: in his lap as he eases the door closed. Check.
Soft, pink fingertips drumming on the steering wheel, eager to get going, check. The whole damn car smelling so much like Cheeks it wouldn't even make a difference if he mushed his face against her neck and inhaled, quadruple-fucking-check.
"Yeah," he mutters. "And you? Got enough chocolate to last you until we switch drivers, or should I pick up a couple extra pounds?"
"Bakugou!" she scolds, but her eyes twinkle playfully anyway. Katsuki sees her smile in the rearview mirror, and turns his head away so he won't have to see more. "You don't get to judge me until you're missing a midterm to take an impromptu road trip. That's my stress chocolate."
"Tch. I'll need some damn stress chocolate if we don't get a move on already."
"Such a passenger princess you are." Cheeks snorts, carefully backs out of her parking spot, and mashes the gas until they hit the highway.
...Maybe there is something to this road trip bullshit. Road signs and skylines and quaint little tracts of green whip by as Cheeks disobeys every speed limit law she encounters, and the sun beams overhead. Katsuki's shitty problems feel small in comparison.
"Hey, Bakugou."
He catches her gaze in the mirror, and goddamn, can't they have a single nice thing? The radio's low murmur filled the silence perfectly fucking fine. But Cheeks is chatty, and always manages to get him to say or do shit he can't understand. And of course, she wants answers.
"Hah?" he grunts back.
"Just wondering... why are we doing this? I mean, you're not like me. You don't ever miss class and you study for fun, and you sleep before the sun sets and it's freaky. But you wanna miss a week of school to road trip with me?"
"Yeah."
"How come? I promise I won't tell." She mimes zipping her lips with one hand, catching his gaze in the rearview. "Anything confessed in this car stays here."
Katsuki wrings the pharmacy bag between his fists, and listens to the pills inside rattle. "...Same shit as you, I guess."
"What, got dumped by an alpha you thought was the one because you didn't satisfy? Oh, God."
Cheeks turns in her seat to fully face him, one hand on the wheel. He doesn't look at her.
"Bakugou," she whispers, "oh, God. I — I didn't realize... did that actually...?"
"Just some trashy alpha," he mumbles. "Shoulda seen it coming. I don't give a shit."
"...You smell like you do care."
"Like hell." Katsuki tightens his collar, but the pheromone oil keeps leaking down his neck. Smoky caramel and wood embers and hurting, hurting, hurting. Not fucking true in the slightest. Humiliating all the same, as he fishes out his pills and takes... fuck counting, he takes enough.
"Suppressants," he tells Cheeks's curious gaze. "He was supposed to... my heat was supposed to start soon. Can't exactly present in your backseat, can I?"
"I mean, I wouldn't stop you. That poor backseat isn't exactly, uh, sex-innocent."
Katsuki balks. "That’s fucking disgusting! My clothes are back there!"
"It's not a cum dump," she defends, grinning. "And I do clean this car, you know. Even if it doesn't look like it most of the time."
"I don't even know what omega would agree to fuck you in your dad's prehistoric stick-shift."
"Hey, don't insult the stick-shift." Cheeks makes a grabby hand for Katsuki's phone. He pulls up the satellite map and hands it to her. Their fingers brush for a perfectly normal amount of time, and Katsuki does not act weird about it. He doesn't. "And I wish I could get an omega in here — or in general, honestly. Only alphas really want me."
"So you're settling for some bastard you don't even want?"
"I like alphas! I like all the dynamics. I just... I don't know, I wish I had more than one option, y'know? Sometimes, I feel like they don't respect me. And I get it, I mean, alphas are supposed to be big and strong with huge muscles. I'm... not."
"You're more muscled than half the fuckin' protein pushers at the dorm gym."
"Look at me, Bakugou."
He looks. Her smile is sad, eyes distant as she focuses on merging lanes, and her baggy clothes do little to hide her soft curves and thick thighs. "People think I'm an omega before they smell me. It's not their fault, it's just how my body looks... but I'm tired of alphas telling me they respect me, that I'm their equal, only for me to find out when I show up to their rut that they were planning on bitching me."
Something about that makes Katsuki's chest twist, makes his fangs ache. Makes him remember every dark-scented, grinning alpha who swore they could handle an omega like him only to back out when he wouldn't submit like some goddamn broodmare just 'cause they flared their scent.
The damn suppressants still haven't kicked in; his scent's still clear as it rolls off him, practically a play-by-play of his thoughts. Cheeks falls silent and parts her lips a little to test the particular tangle of anger and humiliation (and beneath that, a need he refuses to acknowledge) riding the undercurrent of his pheromones, and fans out her own in response. Bright and determined, like tea on the cusp of steeping. I see how they treated you. I hate how they treated you. You deserved better.
They share the silence for a moment and let the radio chatter on, but like he always does when he's in biting range of Cheeks, Katsuki says some shit that shifts the world on its axis, just a little.
"Fuck alphas," he growls. "Good for nothing sacks of shit."
"Fuck alphas!" Cheeks agrees. "They’re always just thinking with their knots!"
"And then piss their pants when you're not what their pea brain says you oughta be."
"You tell 'em a million times what you are but as soon as they pull your pants down, they act shocked —"
"They wanna earn dominance without fuckin' working for it, the lazy bastards —”
Cheeks cranks down her window, and into the whipping jet stream beyond, screams, "Fuck alphas!"
And Katsuki, not to be outdone, sticks his head out his own window and hollers, "Eat shit, choke on a knot, and die!"
And when they lock gazes again — with wind-tousled hair and water in their eyes and a sudden lightness crawling through Katsuki's chest, like sunlight — Cheeks bursts into giggles. Katsuki follows suit, snickering into his palm, and one thing leads to another and then there's an aux cord in his phone, Cheeks' breakup playlist on the screen, and they're both shout-singing along to some pop artist Katsuki's never heard of before but knows all the words to anyway.
And still, he's making enough awful decisions to last a lifetime. But maybe, just maybe, all this shit will turn out okay.
Katsuki is fine.
It's not like he hasn't slept in uncomfortable places before — Tape Face's bathroom floor, a workbench in the engineering labs, the backseat of a car crammed between four other people, for fuck's sake. Cheeks' passenger seat reclines decently enough, and the shoulder of this highway is blissfully quiet so late at night, lit only by the stars and the almond-sliver moon overhead. He just... has to get used to this, is all.
So it's perfectly normal that he can't sleep right now.
He glares into the rearview mirror for the millionth time since they decided to save motel money by pulling over and sleeping out here. Cheeks is passed out in the back, blissfully sprawled over all three seats. Her hair's coming out of the bun she tied it in; her sweatshirt's ridden up to expose her stomach and the hem of her sports bra. Even in the relentless darkness, he can tell that it's red — her bra, and the little stripe of waistband poking out from beneath her shorts. Both red.
She doesn't quite snore in her sleep, but fuck, does she breathe loud. And mumble to herself as she shifts. It's annoying.
(Katsuki wants to find it annoying, because if he doesn't, he'll think it's endearing, and isn't that a disgusting, disastrous thought to have about the alpha he's gonna be stuck in a car with for a week.)
(...He feels this way about far more than the way she sleeps. And maybe this isn't new. Maybe he's been feeling this way for as long as he's known her, the heartbeat of this forbidden thing behind his teeth pulsing just a little quicker each time he sees her in his dorm, each time she brushes shoulders with him during class.)
"Mmf... Bakugou?"
Katsuki jerks back to reality, and slips a hearing aid back on for her sleep-worn voice. "That you, Cheeks? Keep sleeping, it’s not dawn yet."
"You don't smell right."
She's right, and he hates her for it, and he hates these new-formula heat suppressants that somehow don't even take the slightest edge off his embarrassing, tell-all scent. "I smell fucking fine."
Cheeks sits up in the backseat, scrubbing her face with her palms and pulling her shirt back down. Her hair is cutely ruined and she's close to the truth; both facts make Katsuki grip his thighs through his sweatpants hard enough to bruise.
"No, you don't." She leans in a little closer, parting her lips to better taste him. "You smell distressed. It's because your heat is close, right? You need your packmates?"
"I ain't got any fucking packmates!"
"Bakugou," she insists, and hearing his name on her tongue always makes his throat strangle shut. "You don't have to hide it, okay? I'm the same way."
That's when Katsuki senses it —and whips around in his seat because what? And it's true. Cheeks’ sleep sweatshirt is Deku's, thoroughly washed in his petrichor scent. The hair ties on her wrists smell like her green-haired roommate, and the stuffed animal under her arm (who fucking sleeps with a stuffed animal anymore? and why does Katsuki want to bite her cheeks about it?) gives off Icy Hot’s spearmint-spice. Her own calm chamomile overshadows it all unless she's this close.
No, from this distance — close enough where Katsuki can count the constellations reflecting in her eyes — she smells like a family.
"It’s not the same as being with them,” Cheeks continues, “but having their scents here helps me feel better. And, um, I did ask your friends for their clothes, in case you ended up needing them..."
"Y-you asked my fucking—?! What the hell is wrong with you?"
"So you don't want the stuff they sent for you?"
"Fuckin'... just give it to me."
Her eyes twinkle, like she's got him all figured out. Katsuki thinks she probably fucking does. She clambers away from him to reach into the trunk, and emerges with an armful of clothes: Shitty Hair's hoodie, Raccoon Eyes' top, Pikachu's tee, Tape Face's jacket. Bedgrudgingly, he takes them, and arranges them around his spot in the passenger seat.
And it helps. It helps far more than he'd like it to, relaxing him into bleary-eyed mush immediately. The combined scents are just like from his unpartnered heats, where he'd end up on Shitty Hair's guest futon, being brought food by a procession of concerned idiots that'd leave their laughter and scents behind.
(And with the chamomile to top it off? It makes Katsuki feel warm.)
Cheeks purrs, low in her throat. "See? That wasn't so bad."
"Fuck off," he says without heat. "You're a damn shitty alpha, invading an omega's privacy like that..."
"Is that your way of saying 'thank you, Uraraka'? Because it's cute, but you're kinda far off the mark."
Katsuki growls. "Why did I ever agree to a damn road trip with you?"
"'Cause you like me."
"I hate alphas."
"Really? 'Cause I think I'm your favorite."
"Who let you be so cocky at three in the morning?"
"I'll keep pestering you until you say it."
"Fuckin' say what?"
"'Thank you, Uraraka.'"
Sighing his whole, entire soul out of his body, Katsuki meets her sparkling eyes through the rearview mirror once more. "Thanks, Cheeks."
"Oh, come on! You know my name, Bakugou. You can say it. I believe in you."
"...Uraraka."
"Good. Now try and catch some sleep. You're driving first tomorrow."
Katsuki's stomach does not give a pleasurable little twist when she calls him good. Katsuki's tongue does not taste like sugar and steeping tea when he whispers Uraraka. Katsuki's mangled little instincts do not want to coo over how she'd taken care of him without even being asked.
The stars overhead wink mockingly at him. Katsuki is extremely, extremely fine.
"Calm down, Cheeks."
"This needs to work. This has to work." Uraraka stares at the jumper cables in her hands and lets out a choked sob. "This isn't working!"
"Crying ain't gonna fix shit. Try again."
Breath shaking, she wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, and goes about putting the cables together for the millionth time. "Positive to positive," she mutters, "negative to ground... try the engine."
Katsuki turns the key and gets nothing. Uraraka drops the jumping battery and sinks to her knees, and, fuck, here they are again. Back at this comforting shit, except now Katsuki's expected to have a half-decent idea of how to help and he doesn't, and they're in the middle of fucking no-cell-service, bitterly cold nowhere with only some convenience store snacks and a prayer to go off of. He grits his teeth and curses every god he knows, and gets out of the driver-side door.
"Cheeks," he says. "Look at me."
Uraraka looks up at him. She's sweat-soaked with dirt on her pants and so many tears inching down her cheeks it makes Katsuki's instincts scream.
"We're gonna get out of this shit, okay? We've got each other."
"But this c-car is my responsibility," she blubbers. "I need to fix it! Without it, we can't do anything, w-we'll need to spend money and I don't—"
"Shush. Anything we need to spend is on me."
"B-but—"
"Please, Cheeks."
Her hands feel small in his, soft, but not weak. She's got as many cuts and calluses as the toughest, meanest alphas, all corded wrist tendon and short-kept nails, and Katsuki doesn't let them go even as he pulls her to her feet.
And, god, Katsuki doesn't know what the fuck he's about to do. He just hopes it'll work. Her eyes are huge as he continues to talk, tears still trickling down her cheeks. He drops one of her hands to thumb her lashes dry.
"I know you, alright, Cheeks? We've been in the same classes for our whole fucking degree. First thing I noticed about you? You work harder than everyone else, every single time. Your fucking... that determined look you get during a project or a test, where nothing can stop you anymore, that's what these extras spend their whole damn lives fucking chasing. You already have it. Whatever shitty problems come your way must be pissing themselves stupid once they hear they're meant for Uraraka fuckin' Ochako to handle."
“Y-you're just — saying that."
"Like hell I am!" Katsuki grabs her shoulder with one hand, tips her chin up to meet his gaze with the other. Her body is sturdy and warm and must have a gravity of its own as it draws him closer. "You think I say this shit to just anyone who cries around me? You think I talk like that to shitty Deku?!"
That gets a little giggle out of her. "I've always known you've been hiding a soft side."
"Fuck a soft side. I'm telling it like it is.”
Uraraka's a head shorter than him, but the difference feels exaggerated from this close: his hands clammy from her body heat, her fingertips wrapping around his wrists on reflex. If he leaned a little closer, her breath would warm his face.
(Pretty alpha, his instincts whisper.)
And something truly demonic and terrible must be thinking in place of his rational mind today, because her scared, hopeful, unsure scent hits his palate like a truck — and the only thing he can do is cup her chin to bring her closer, free hand unbuckling his collar. Then slotting their necks together, gland to gland.
He purrs for her. Her heartbeat races in her throat, against the edges of his fingers, and he pumps every soft, earnest, disgusting thing he knows how to feel into his scent. And so slowly it makes him ache, he starts to rub his neck against hers. A chamomile and caramel kiss, twining through the air — making Katsuki weak in the knees, sending Uraraka's hands up to grip the back of his shirt as she relaxes into him, onto him.
"Believe me now?" he breathes.
Uraraka nuzzles into him. Presses her nose into his hair, ghosts her soft exhale over the bulk of a hearing aid. "God," she whispers, "when you s-smell like that, I..."
"Keep your head on for me, Uraraka. Need you thinkin' on all cylinders."
"You can c-call me Ochako."
"Try jumping the car one more time, Ochako."
"...Okay."
Katsuki moves to pull away from her, but her hands keep him anchored right where he is. Stay, her scent says. A few moments pass, molasses-slow, of her rubbing their glands together in slow circles — and the intimacy lets him read her like never before. She's feeling comfort and safe and omega and try again, I'll try again, because he thinks I can.
(And Katsuki doesn't care if people know he's an omega, but something about Ochako seeing him like that makes his heart race.)
They part and it's too soon. Ochako beams, and stalks back to the popped hood to try the cables one more time. Katsuki resumes his place in the driver's seat, key pressed to the ignition.
"Try it!" she yells.
Katsuki turns the key and the damn thing sputters back to life. He only gets a three-second warning before Ochako dives through the half-open door, cheering, and pins him down in a bone-crushing hug.
"It worked!" she gasps. "Oh my god, I can't believe it, we did it—”
"Sure as hell did," he grins up at her. "Though we ain't sleeping on a random-ass stretch of dirt again. Motels from now on."
"But that's expensive, Bakugou—"
"Tch, so what? I'll pay. And I'll make real fucking food. Those shitty gas station meals are getting to your head."
(And Katsuki tries not to speculate about stupid shit, he really does --- but as they get back on the road and head for the nearest motel-cum-tourist trap to waste some daylight at, he thinks Ochako's looking at him a little differently than before.)
Katsuki hasn't purposefully missed a day of class in his life. Ochako says they need to have as much fun as possible to make up for it, and it's not until she calls him chicken with a dangerous glint in her eye does he agree. So they do.
They visit museums and arboretums and local tourist attractions, and only get kicked out of a few. They go to an amusement park with no safety regulations, and he laughs at her when she pukes off the side of a rickety ferris wheel. They make everyone else at the black-tie restaurant stare when they march in wearing their rattiest pajamas and order everything on the menu, and she gets her revenge by getting him drunk enough on fuck-you-expensive wine to have him escorted out of the building.
And some nights, they sit on top of the car or on the balcony of whatever tiny double-bed motel they've bought for the night, and look out at the stars.
(More accurately, Ochako looks out at the stars, and talks endlessly about the story behind each shape. Katsuki tries to appreciate the constellations, too, but mainly finds himself staring at her face. Inhaling her scent. Inching his hand toward hers, and wondering if he's being an idiot for even entertaining this.)
Tonight, they're at a bar. It was Katsuki's idea — Ochako was pouting over her breakup more than usual, and the hurt note on her scent made him crazy enough to peel the car toward the nearest exit and hunt down a place that looked like it sold shots without asking for IDs.
"Fuck crying over some shitty knothead that doesn't deserve you," he'd said, fangs dropping. "We’re gonna get so shitfaced you’ll forget his pathetic ass even existed."
"Cheers to that," Ochako had smiled, and her scent said thank you.
It's damn hard to remember all the alphas who've ruined his nights when he's four shots and five songs into dancing with a crowd. It's damn near impossible when Ochako sweeps into the circle in a gust of chamomile, hair haloed by the backlights and beaming like summer sunshine, as she pulls him away to dance together.
"Having fun?" she shouts over the clamor, red-faced from the alcohol and washed pink from the strobing lights.
Katsuki smirks at her. "Somethin' like that, yeah. How 'bout you, Cheeks? Cozied up to any omegas yet?"
"Oh, you know how it is. It's mainly alphas that want me."
"Tch. And 'course it's mainly omegas and shitty knotheads that want me."
Ochako links their fingers together and twirls Katsuki under her arm. The sweat on her biceps and collarbone gleams as the lights shift colors, and her getting-wasted uniform of a red sports bra, obscene miniskirt, and her flip phone tucked into her cleavage make Katsuki's ears heat up so bad he thinks they'll melt his hearing aids.
Every scent in this building is alcohol-sour and loud, but Ochako's drowns them all out. She smells so terribly happy as she pulls him about, as she sways to the music and playfully grinds against him. Katsuki matches each touch and thrust just as fucking viciously --- he will not lose to her, goddammit, he'll delight in each fucking blush and squeak he earns from her, each flushed plane of skin he touches, each centimeter of distance that closes between them ---
A hand grabs Katsuki by the collar and yanks.
And all of a sudden, he's staring up at a massive, hulking alpha, with heat in his eyes and a smirk that makes Katsuki want to puke. The hand gripping his collar remains, fingers stroking over the leather and up the vein of his pulse.
"Omegas don't dance together, silly thing," the bastard chides. "Even big, burly ones like you. How about you spend your night with a real alpha instead of her?"
"Fuck off or I'll blow your head in!" Katsuki roars, and can just barely hear himself over the thrum of the music. "Get your disgusting fucking hands off me!"
The alpha only draws closer. He's easily got a head over Katsuki, and twice the breadth in his shoulders. His scent curls out, putrid and revolting and wrong, all his instincts are screaming wrong — and settles like ash on Katsuki's tongue.
"Don't play so hard to get, baby. I can smell you haven't had an alpha in a while. In heat, are you?"
"F-fuck no — you shouldn't be able to smell that, you ugly fucking knothead—“
"Do you really think those shitty suppressants can trick an Alpha Prime?"
Katsuki claws at the hand on his throat and it doesn't budge. The bastard alpha keeps stalking forward, he keeps stepping back, his back is against a wall and it's cold. He's cold. The alpha's breath and body heat are like wildfire. His scent is making Katsuki's throat spasm, he can't, he can't — and his instincts are saying it's too late, just obey, and that's the last thing he'll fucking do, but he can't ---
"Get away from him!"
And there she comes — chamomile crashing, leaving Katsuki weak in the knees. Ochako wrenches the disgusting hand off Katsuki’s throat and turns to face the bastard, chest heaving, fists balled. He laughs at her.
The bastard laughs until he cries.
"Is she your alpha?!" he snorts through tears. "This — she'd hardly qualify as a beta. Really, baby, you sure she's got a knot? That why you smell like you haven't had a good fucking in a while?"
"Don't you dare fucking talk to him."
"Not your business, princess." The bastard tries pushing her away by just — pressing his hand to her face and pushing, like she's a doll to topple over, and Katsuki's heart is still racing and his instincts wailing but no one touches Ochako like that, not a single fucking soul —
And he's rushing forward, shouting something that's lost under the pounding bassline, but just as he moves there's a flash of red and brown hair streaming and —
— the bastard hits the floor, choked out by Ochako's thighs as she beats him within an inch of his life, fuck, he can hear the vertebrae popping as she squeezes her hips —
— everything is loud and the world is Ochako and her chamomile and how she picks the bastard up, one fucking hand, and throws him fuck knows where —
— and then it's her hand in his and he's being dragged through the bar, out the doors, into the blisteringly cold night, and his instincts scream and his shoulders shake and was he just — was he just saved?
"Are you hurt?" Ochako whispers. Her hands are everywhere, cupping his face and feeling down his chest, testing for any rips in his collar. They're back to her car, somehow; he's sitting on its hood with her standing between his legs. The moonlight makes her glow. "Are you okay? Oh, Bakugou, I'm so sorry, I couldn't get through the crowd toward you in t-time, oh, God, I hope that piece of shit didn't hurt you —"
"I could've handled myself." His throat's ripped raw. From the squeeze or the shouting, he can't tell.
"I know."
Katsuki stares at her. She meets his gaze with her own, wet and earnest and, fuck. Not patronizing or indulgent like the other alphas he's been with were: yes, baby, of course you can take care of yourself. She means it. She means it so much he can smell it on her scent, can feel it in the squeeze of her hand around his arm.
"I know you could've handled yourself," she whispers. "Probably even better than I could. That's why I admire you so much, y'know? Why I'm always chasing you. But Bakugou—” her fingers link with his and she squeezes, helpless, and Katsuki's eyes burn just from the expression on her face. "I want to try for you anyway. B-because I..."
"Katsuki," he rasps. "Call me Katsuki."
"Katsuki," she repeats, pressing their foreheads together. No, she's leaning even closer than that — pressing their necks together, unbuckling his collar, scenting him as desperately as she can. Her hands tremble as she holds his. Katsuki swallows and swallows and still can't get his heart out of his throat — especially not when her teeth find the spot just beneath his ear and she mouths there, almost trancelike.
"Cheeks," he warns. "If you k-keep this shit up..."
"Need to fix your scent," she growls. Truly growls, in the darkest alpha voice he's heard from her yet. It makes the tangle of instincts in Katsuki's mind bubble and froth, and he closes his eyes against the gravel of it.
(And that's the heart of this mess between them, right? Katsuki's an omega that breaks every damn rule, and he takes care of himself because not a single damn extra in this world can do it half as well. But Ochako's not an idiot like the rest of them. She gets it. He's not stupid and weak in her eyes, even now as she tongues over his jaw and draws him in by the waist. And she sure as hell isn't "not alpha enough" for him.)
(...Katsuki thinks he's been in love with Ochako for far longer than he’ll ever admit.)
Her mouth dips down to the hollow of his collarbone and she laps at it, pulling the neck of his tank top lower for better access, and he grits out, "Cheeks." She rucks his shirt up to nuzzle over his chest, all pretenses of checking for wounds forgotten, and he hisses, "'Chako."
"Katsuki," she whispers back. Her eyes gleam like moons. On the very top notes of her scent, he tastes the same shards of want and please and scared that he feels. "I feel like whatever I say next will be the wrong answer."
"You're gonna suck a hickey into my tit but act too shy to ask me out?"
Ochako flushes. "W-what?"
"Ain't that what you're doing?"
"You didn't have to phrase it like that!" And for a second, Katsuki thinks he's read this all wrong, opens his mouth to backtrack — but then Ochako sighs, long and heavy and purposeful, and returns to her full height. One soft, work-worn hand comes up to his cheek, and she cradles it like he's hers. Like, despite being nobody's omega, he’s everything she ever wanted. "What I was gonna do," she murmurs, "is ask you to be mine."
Katsuki smirks. "So ask me."
She inhales, steeling herself, and meets his eyes with her own fire. "Bakugou Katsuki," she says, "will you please be mine?"
"Hmm," he purrs. "Not sure how I feel about alphas. Weren't we sayin' 'fuck alphas' just the other day?"
"Don't tease me like this, I swear to god," she warns. Katsuki nudges her aside and hops off the hood of the car, saunters over to the passenger side, pulls the backseat door open.
"Then again, maybe I do like to fuck alphas." He grins at her, fangs dropped and scent flaring, as her brows chase her hairline in shock. "Come here and see for yourself, Cheeks."
And when Ochako tackles him into the backseat with a furious, open-mouthed kiss, Katsuki decides the road trip was a success. Everything's turning out much better than okay.