Filler Episode
For the past 2 months, things had been kind of...weird for Uraraka. She could comfortably say that while it wasn't necessarily the worst point in her life, she had to admit, she could've handled things way better.
At the very end of April she woke up in her shitty apartment miles away from Tokyo, a call from her former agency telling her she had been given the opportunity to relocate and work under Hawks for a very secret mission. She had been told she'd be paid nearly triple of what she made now and that she'd still have a job even if she declined the mission.
After eating a week's worth of ramen in 2 days, Uraraka figured she had nothing to lose.
So there she was, packing up what she owned with Midoriya's help because at the time, one could say they were 'dating'. It was a loose umbrella term to describe the complex, ever-changing, and seriously undefined nature of their relationship, which crossed the border between platonic and romantic every few months. But truth be told, Uraraka was growing tired of the uncertain plainness Midoriya brought into her life, and she kind of wished for something new, something different, something...exciting.
That's where Keigo came in, she supposed.
It was weird at first, she hadn't known Midoriya was moving to Tokyo until she stepped in the office on her first day, the 1st of May. She was excited to be working alongside him just like they did in high school, but once she got comfortable at the agency, she started to realize something.
Either Hawks was a serious flirt with all his rookies, or he actually had a thing for her. That interfered with her relationship with Midoriya, which she felt like was finally settling down. But the complacency of it all combined with the new environment, new apartment, new boss, new schedule, new everything made a routine life with Midoriya seem kind of like a bummer. She had been there for about two weeks when she started to notice Keigo would wink at her, or he'd leave his hand on her back a second longer when squeezing through the tiny break room on her office floor. Uraraka nearly peed herself once when he whispered in her ear for some sugar for his coffee.
Mina, who had been contacted to work under Hawks around the same time as Uraraka, was into this idea, and she often quietly encouraged Uraraka to just stop overthinking and speak to Keigo. But Uraraka didn't, and she briefly contemplated the idea of him the day she ran into Bakugo.
That was were everything changed, honestly.
Bakugo had absolutely no intention of falling into anything that wasn't his work, and he felt out of place since the middle of May, finding it a bit weird that Hawks of all heroes wanted him at the agency. It was a great offer he couldn't refuse, but he didn't really consider himself Hawks' type. When Bakugo found his former classmates had also been employed, he really felt out of place, beacuse it was an odd mix of heroes. Asui, Kirishima, Midoriya, Mina, and Uraraka were all pretty decent heroes, and they were among the top of their class in highschool, so Bakugo kind of chalked it up to a skill thing. But the idea of someone more popular in the ranks like Todoroki or Yaoyorozu crossed his mind more than those idiots.
Call it a hero's intuition when he felt like he was going to get into some weird shit.
When he ran into Uraraka on his first day, he was ultimately reminded of why he didn't really tolerate the woman, because he kind of thought she never changed in the past 5 years. She was still short, she was still bubbly, cute, and all things pink. He could say she seemed more mature, more...aware of herself and the fact that she was a relatively young hero in a career she had been training for since they were 15-16.
He hated her.
Not for any particular reason, she didn't really do anything, it was just her.
For a week after he got there, he tried to avoid her, he really did, but he found out her office was in between his and Mina's, and they were assigned to work together for a good 3 days. He didn't really speak too much to her, and vice-versa, but he did notice something about her whenever they interacted.
Ochako was kind of a bitch at times.
It wasn't to talk down on her, or to make her look bad, but that 'self-awareness' he noticed earlier was more so of an overconfidence she had gained in the last few years, and because it didn't really fit her default personality, she kind of came off rude or pretentious at times. Maybe it was the endless cat-calling she had endured, or the contempt she had for being pinned as a rescue-based hero, but the more she served Japan, the more she was kind of turned off from who she initially branded herself to be.
But she liked it. Mina liked it. Keigo liked it, Midoriya was a bit unsure of it, and Bakugo was confused by it.
Nothing made him want to gouge his eyes out more than knowing he accidentally slept with her at a party that same weekend.
Let's get this straight, they both hated the idea of hooking up with each other not because they didn't do hook-ups, they hated it because they never acknowledged or took pride in the fact they both enjoyed what little they remembered of it.
Uraraka didn't do that kind of thing before she was employed at the agency, it just never presented itself in an opportunity that she could actually see herself going through with. Bakugo just kind of grew tired of it after his one and only relationship, and while he did hook up with one or two lower-ranking pros in the past 2 years, it just kind of wasn't his thing and when it came to women, he shut down the affectionate, loving, and caring parts of himself so much that it was impossible to crack that exterior.
When it came to Uraraka however, she just slid past that little exterior and clocked him right where it hurt. Bakugo couldn't have been too sure where it started, maybe it was the day they did laundry together (5), or the day he won a power struggle against Keigo in her office (7), but he was beginning to warm up to his despicable coworker. The problem was, Ochako just couldn't get her shit together.
After waking up in Bakugo's bed after a housewarming party the week after he arrived, she immediately went to her room, vomited, and showered to clear her head of the very obvious elephant in the room. As a means of unwinding, she turned on some soap opera and contemplated binging her night away on some time-piece romance that was only going to make her feel sad about being technically single. As much as she had going on with Midoriya, they were not in a relationship, and any and everything was up for grabs, and that included her young heart.
Whether Keigo knew she was single or not didn't really matter, because he called her that same day after the housewarming party, invited himself over, flew her up to the roof, and kissed his way into being her new interest.
And of course, Bakugo saw this from his bedroom window, because it just so happened Uraraka lived directly above him. Of course that's how his life panned out from then.
Uraraka just kind of ditched Midoriya, and as her first act of being a single woman in her 20s surrounded by attractive men, she let Keigo into her life excitedly, making out with him in her office or letting him come by her apartment after work. She kind of disregarded she had sex with Bakugo the night this all started because he didn't mean anything to her, and her only real obligation was letting Midoriya down easy. But she didn't, and she left a 5+ year long whatever of a relationship die off 2 weeks later.
Their mission had been assigned, she had been instructed to fake a relationship with her most infuriating coworker, and she had been maintaining a budding relationship with her boss. It was wild, it was different, and more importantly, it was happening at such a rate she couldn't process clearly. She just kept living, and she kept making decisions at a rate that was bound to create a huge problem that she couldn't keep passing off as a mistake.
The thing about relationships that Uraraka never realized was how easily they could be broken, formed, or even forgotten. She had a general idea that her lack of communication was wrong, but Midoriya didn't seem too heartbroken about it, even though she felt like the scum of the earth. But then Bakugo had scooped her up, literally, (10), and she was kind of seeing a bit of a difference in him.
Bakugo's mistake was making himself too available, even in the fake relationship he didn't have too much feelings towards other than indifference. It was his job, and he was going to do it, no matter if he noticed Uraraka was creating a mess before anyone else did. He did think at times that he didn't have to clean up her problems everytime she came crying to him, or everytime he witnessed a shift in her 'relationship' with Keigo, but he had grown accustomed to her, they had a daily routine of walk to work, work, crime-fighting, more work, and walk home. That was their thing, and it was the only constant outside of their changing dynamic. Bakugo appreciated routines, he liked things in order because chaos only slowed him down, so those few days they didn't speak at work he found himself longing for those small interactions.
His revelation that he liked her wasn't as shocking as hers. It was just something that grew on him, the familiarity of growing with a person in the most mundane ways. It didn't make sense that it had to be her, but it just was, and his strong dislike towards her faded once he realized he didn't really have a real reason to not like her. Her revelation grew from the boredom and stress of dating Keigo, and once she realized her time with Bakugo felt more like a refresher from her time with Keigo, things got twisted in her heart.
To be completely honest, she felt bad about this entire thing from the start. But because she wouldn't let her mistakes be her source of weakness in a world that already criticized her harshly enough, she just figured (more like hoped) it would all fix itself before it got too deep. But it got deep, and it got deep quick, and it was a confusing mess that no one could really piece together, even her.
It felt like a dream to her, and maybe it all was, because the last thing she remembered for a while was wondering how her life got this far when she was snatched into her apartment the night before she and Bakugo were to be deployed.
It went a little like this:
1. Uraraka moved to Tokyo.
2. She was assigned a new job, got a new apartment, and was recruited on a secret mission. Pretty standard thing, it happened at the peak of every young hero's career.
3. Her relationship Midoriya dwindled considerably from *exclusively dating to a basic friendship around the same time her relationship with Keigo grew insanely from boss/employer to *casually dating with intent to become exclusive. For the most part, she was technically single this entire time, but because she hadn't had too much relationship experience outside of Midoriya, she felt obligated to Keigo's time and emotions as if she were his girlfriend, though she wasn't too sure that's what she really wanted from him.
4. Bakugo entered the mix in the critical point of her beginning with Keigo and ending with Midoriya, serving as a placeholder for her residual emotions, her frustrations, sadness, and lust. He knew he served this purpose to an extent, but didn't mind because it worked, until his feelings got stronger after the housewarming incident and a few others. As Bakugo's feelings got stronger, so did Keigo's and both men resented each other for it, though Uraraka never explicitly stated which man she preferred, but it was implied it was Keigo. The problem with running off these implications and assumptions meant that both men continued to pursue her at a growing rate knowing she wasn't going to choose soon in hopes their efforts trumped the others'. Neither men had really factored in that she was refusing to acknowledge the eventual choice she was going to have to make.
4 1/2. Uraraka and Keigo experienced a short break after he chastised her for defending herself after being harrassed at a nightclub, and this allowed Bakugo to move closer to her for a moment, and she experienced the first time she contemplated her attraction towards him, until Keigo came back through a half-assed apology, throwing off what could have been between Bakugo and Uraraka. Their mutual attraction was later sparked back up when they went on vacation, and Uraraka was forced to confront her self-hatred and built-up love for Bakugo in a weird, yet mutual understanding that Keigo was now the third party, not Bakugo.
5. The entire situation imploded on itself after their vacation, when Uraraka was forced to see the extent of both man's feelings for her in two very different displays of affection. This was ultimately the moment she realized what she had really done to both of them, and it drove Bakugo away, and she ended things with Keigo the next day. For the most part, Keigo wasn't too hung up on her, and it didn't tarnish their work relationship, seeing as he was considerably older than her and knew that she was going to make a few mistakes.
6. Bakugo was devastated by this series of events, and he avoided her for 2 weeks after the trip, bringing the two heroes to their current state of distress. He only spoke to her at work, and it was very minimal, though he really just wanted this whole thing to blow over deep down. Bakugo actually understood Uraraka made an honest mistake, and he recognized she was human, and she was only so direct about these things. He blamed her for the problem, but he knew none of it was with malicious intent, hence the growing need for him to reach out to her again. His pride however, said fuck that, and he holds an intense grudge against her. Uraraka feels an insane amount of guilt and wants to make things right, but she's not sure she can or if Bakugo will even listen to her.
7. The first week Bakugo ignores her, they attend Mina and Kirishima's going away party together, very awkwardly and extremely tense. Uraraka meets Bakugo's one and only ex-girlfriend Camie, and she finds out they dated for 2 years. (I would like to add it had been about 2 years since they broke up, so he was well over it, and many people, including Mina, forgot it actually happened). Uraraka is a bit thrown off by this information, and she felt as if that was something she should've known, though Bakugo feels as if it wasn't her place to know. This leaves Uraraka in a state of jealousy and further heartbreak, causing her to leave for a few minutes. She realizes it was a dumb thing to get upset over and tries to go back, but when she sees them speaking amicably, not because Bakugo and Camie still love each other (they don't) but because they came to the realization in the past 2 years that their break-up was just a misunderstanding, she's saddened and vents to Kirishima, expressing her doubts for winning Bakugo back.
and Camie talk, and though they never say it, they both understand why they broke up, and based on this mutual understanding, Camie gives Bakugo advice in the event he and Uraraka go through a similar misunderstanding (which they are, but everyone is still stuck on their very healthy fake relationship). He kinda comes around, thinking he may be too harsh on Uraraka and is ready to reconcile, but he overhears her rant with Kirishima thinking it was Keigo, and they drunkenly argue outside of his apartment door when they leave the party. Bakugo is purely turned off from her efforts at this point, and Uraraka is fully in love with Bakugo, broken that her attempts at confessing keep blowing back up in her face. He ignores her for the second week until Friday, where they are preparing for their deployment, and his feelings of an attempted reconciliation resurface until they are both kidnapped in their apartment.
It felt like a dream to her, it really did. None of it felt real, but it was such an intense experience she couldn't help but to think of how complex and intricate all these felings were. She felt exposed, she felt confused, but she had never felt more like herself than in this moment. She felt like a real person, like her autonomy in the world had been smashed and she was one with her decisions. They all came back full-force, they didn't resolve themselves immediately, and they were all lasting, creating weird shifts in her most personal relationships.
This was the most self-aware she had been since high school.
That all came crashing down in a blinding headache when she opened her eyes slowly.