* Katsuki *
"I know you're not the cheating type, so can you tell me what's been going on?" Ochako said, her eyes burned in fury but her face remained calm. Katsuki shrugged. He had barely set foot through the door and kicked off his shoes before his eyes met hers, cold fury, unspoken accusations.
"You're right, I haven't been cheating." was all he said. A crack on her calm exterior flashed before she placated herself again. He took a ragged breath, his own impatience giving way to the anger that always bubbled below the surface. "You called me here, what do you want?"
"Are we breaking up? Is this over?" Ochako said. She made a tiny gesture with her hands at everything around them. Their too lavishly decorated, too big, too pink apartment, mostly Ochako's things.
"Are you going to relax and let me be?" Katsuki asked. His hands were fists in his pockets. He hated difficult conversations, and he wanted this to be over with. Whatever she wanted, he had made up his mind to just go with it.
He had somewhere to be.
"Where have you been staying?" Ochako asked. She couldn't mask the accusatory tone.
"You know where, my apartment." Katsuki said. "Thought you could cool your head off. Stop being so whatever this is." he said as he gestured at her.
"Who's been with you." she asked. Katsuki felt the cold trickle down his neck. He twisted his face into rage letting his impatient anger boil over.
"I thought we've been over this. I have not been with anyone. I don't have fucking time to do anything. You never let me have time off." Katsuki said. A flash of recognition, complacency, happiness even, flashed across Ochako's face. She liked him angry, she knew him when he was angry and standoffish. She could deal with him when he was like that because it was familiar. That made him even angrier and he clenched his jaw so he wouldn't take the bait.
"Okay, fine. You're not cheating. So why have you been so different lately? You're calmer, nicer to strangers on the street, it's so weird. And then you don't want to model anymore?" she asked. Katsuki could hear her goading him, masked in a kind, curious, voice.
"We're allowed to grow up, yea? Let me fucking be." he said. "What do you want to do, huh? Should I stay or go? Because I have no problem leaving you more time to cool the fuck off."
Ochako reached for his arm and laced her fingers across his muscled surface. Katsuki wanted to yank his arm away but forced himself to hold still.
"We still have a contract, you know. I'm to be your agent for at least four more years." she said sweetly.
"Is this about your family again?" Katsuki asked. "You riding up my ass because you're scared you won't make money to take care of them?" He yanked his arm away and took a step back. Hurt flashed across her face and recomposed herself. "Whatever, yea I'll stay."
Katsuki genuinely liked her parents. They were kind in a way he had not known while he was growing up. All he knew was tough love, kind of like Ochako often is with him. The idea of him ending up with someone like his mother elicited a shiver and he buried the thought deep. He looked at Ochako and softened his stance.
"I'll stay, we'll talk. I just need to get something from the apartment, before I forget." Katsuki said. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead and Ochako melted against him. He pulled away quickly before she trapped him in her arms.
"Come back, okay?" she said to him as he closed the door. He looked at her through the crack, and the smile he gave felt more like a grimace.
His apartment door felt cold when Katsuki finally stood in front of it. He could tell by the drop in his gut that Izuku wasn't in there, he could sense it. He opened the door, too carefully, like it was the door that would break and not whatever little fluttering thing that existed inside of him.
There was a metallic sliding sound under his foot as he took a step and he bent at the door to pick it up. A key. His spare key.
"Bastard." Katsuki said to the key. He saw that nothing looked out of place, everything was exactly where it should be. Too perfect, perfectly staged. And his note where he had left it with the glass of water for Izuku in the morning.
He strode to it angrily and as he was about to crush it in his palm, he saw it wasn't his handwriting.
He was absolutely livid with Ochako. He was angry with the world.
Thanks for everything, Kacchan.
"Fuck you." Katsuki said to the paper, then crumpled it anyway. He unlocked his phone and stared at Deku in screen, but there was no new message. He just left, and he didn't say why. Katsuki didn't know what he did, what happened. But he knew it was Ochako's fault.
And his fault. Because he was Katsuki Bakugou, the man with an explosive attitude and abusive behaviour. Maybe it wasn't something he did, but something that had already happened. Years ago. Izuku had finally realised how fucked up he was and decided that he wasn't worth the trouble, the friendship.
The rage bubbled to the surface and to his hand that clenched the phone. He wanted to call him, demand an answer. Instead, he smacked the phone's screen in frustration and a crack bloomed across it, psychedelic colours steaked across it. He couldn't call him now even if he wanted to.
With fury and precision, he flung the phone at the floor so that it shattered when it hit the floor and sprung into the wall.
His breaths came in shallow pants and then he took a deep breath. Held it. Let it go. Everything receded back into their carefully curated spaces in his mind then he stooped to the floor and picked through the remnants to find the SIM card.
Then taking his time, he put the used towel and bed sheets in a washing machine on the ground floor and held his breath lest he smell Izuku and thought about him, swept up the debris up from his moment of carelessness and waited.
He dried the sheets, carefully put them back, folded the fresh towels and put them away and then rose to his feet like a zombie on autopilot. And he returned home to Ochako who lay in bed pretending to read a book.
"You smell like detergent." she said.
"I washed my towels, they'd have been moldy by the time I went back." Katsuki said as he stripped and walked to the shower. He wanted to wash the day off of him. "Since you're insisting we work through this shit storm." he continued to himself in the bathroom.
Ochako stayed silent.
They don't have sex that night. Nor that week.
When Izuku didn't message him or return to his apartment, and Katsuki couldn't bring himself to go to the gym to face him, he became increasingly frustrated. And when his pent up anger became alluring to Ochako and called to her saying ' you can tame him now' , she pulled him into bed.
When he sunk into her and tried to forget the events that had him too wrapped in his head, it did nothing.
When she moaned his name into his ear as she trembled around him, his eyes closed and there was a flash of green, and freckles, and the smell of spring water, and he came with a shudder and a groan that echoed the pain he had felt building in his chest.
As he emptied into her and she wrapped her legs around his waist and ran her nails along his muscles, he flinched away and lay flat on his back, panting, repulsed with himself.
What's happening to me? He asked himself.
He couldn't just go back to the way things were. Katsuki didn't feel like Katsuki anymore, and this new person no longer wanted Ochako, to be with Ochako, to be what she wanted him to be.
Katsuki ignored her stare and her breasts as they heaved and shone with the dewiness of her sweat.
"We're over." he said. "This, us, it's over."
He sat up and watched his palms, refusing to meet her eyes. Mustering the strength, he looked to her and met her surprised, fear filled eyes.
"Ochako, you'll still be my agent. But, I still need this time off." Katsuki said steadily, his heart beat returning to normal as he ignored the freckles that were burned into the back of his eyelids. "I'll still pay you, you and your family are safe. I have enough money."
Ochako's eyes filled with tears and spilled onto her pink cheeks. She brushed them away angrily.
"We're over?" she said.
"Yes, this is over. You can keep here, you paid for everything in here anyway. I'll take my name off the lease, and I'll move back into my apartment." he said
"Sounds like you have everything figured out." she whispered. She pulled the bed sheets up to her shin and her body heaved as she tried to contain her sobs. Katsuki knew she was crying but he wasn't going to look at her.
"It's taken me a while, but we can't - I can't take you to where you want to be, when you want to get there. I- we're not the same people we were when we started." he said. He let his feet hit the floor now, cool against his heels and ran his hands through his hair.
He really hated difficult conversations. This was finally over.
Katsuki blinked and the freckles he saw moments ago were gone.
His laptop, phone, and his gym bag was all he took with him as he returned to his apartment, now empty as he felt.