Chapter Text
There were screams.
Screams so loud they sliced through your brain, tearing at your ears with clawed fingers—wild, panicked, desperate sobbing—
There was the dim.
Dust swirling through the air, powdery clouds choking you, blinding you, grit in your eyes rendering it too painful to see.
The was the violent shudder through the building, the groan as it trembled in its foundation, the slap and clatter of the ceiling coming apart— There was the sick, disorienting vertigo, your body listing, sliding—
There was panic, as you had never known it before.
And then.
There was warmth. The hot press of a strong body against your own, the tickle of unfamiliar hair against your nose, the rancid sweetness of chemical sweat pressing into your mouth.
There was a gloved hand against the back of your head.
There were growled words, raspy, too hard to hear over the sound of the building giving in.
And then there was no more.
—
You didn’t notice that your apartment was haunted at first.
Mostly because it had never been haunted before the accident, and also because you’d chalked everything up to stress following the events of that day. You wouldn’t have been the first girl to completely lose her shit after a near death experience, and you wouldn’t be the last.
It started off with small things.
Things you were able to attribute to your own absentmindedness–things like keys missing from where you’d sworn you put them, only for you to find them lying on the floor a couple feet away. Things like walking into your kitchen to find all the drawers pulled out, when you were certain you’d left them shut. Things like the creeping feeling of a pair of eyes on you—when you were sure you were alone, stuffed up in bed with an enormous mug of tea and something watery and dramatic playing on your laptop.
You had assumed it was your own fault.
And in terms of reactions to the sort of thing that had happened to you–this was mild.
Last week, you had almost been killed when a villain with an earthquake quirk had struck the street you worked on. Your whole building had shuddered in its foundation, steel caging screaming. And then it had started tearing apart, crumbling in great craggy pieces, falling apart into dust.
Everyone had made it out alive, thanks to a team of top heroes who had arrived quickly on the scene. You’d been one of the last evacuees to have been dragged from the building, thirty seconds before collapse. You’d found out later that your rescuer had been none other than Bakugou Katsuki–number two hero Dynamight–and you’d also found out that just as he’d leapt from the building with you in his arms, one monstrous explosion sending you clear of the debris, he’d suddenly blacked out, explosions fizzling out in his palm.
Number one hero Deku had sensed something was wrong when the two of you began to hurtle towards the ground with none of Dynamight’s explosions to slow your descent. He’d caught you both in blackwhip, your form still clutched in Dynamight’s limp grip.
You’d seen a report later, laying in your hospital bed, that Dynamight had entered some kind of coma—though physicians could find no evidence of physical injury on him. By the time you’d been cleared for discharge, he’d still been unconscious, and by now, it had been nearly a week with no sign of improvement in the number two hero’s condition.
You had been the last person he’d saved.
So of course you’d been a mess.
Your company was still scrambling to get affairs in order after your office had been destroyed, and you’d been on leave in the meantime, left to wander around your apartment in a daze with little to orient you. You’d barely drawn together enough motivation to shower regularly, and your meal times were scattered. You switched between your hobbies like you were trying on different outfits, unable to settle on one for any length of time, reading a book for five minutes before cleaning for another ten before switching on Netflix for five minutes and then back to the book.
You weren’t exactly doing swell.
So of course you had assumed that all the weird shit in your apartment had been due to your scatter-brained state.
That was, until Tuesday night when you finally scraped up enough motivation to cook something again—and found out everything was very much not your fault.
You’d put together a little salad, with arugula and fragrant onion and tiny red cherry tomatoes, and then decided you’d like something more substantial to go with it, digging around in your cupboards for pasta noodles and a jar of tomato sauce.
It was as you were dumping the sauce into a pan that you finally heard it–the whisper of something behind you, raspy, and growing gradually louder–
“Fucking jarred sauce?” A voice said, distorted and echoing, but somehow familiar.
You jumped, sending a wave of the sauce in question slopping straight up the wall, sliding back down with a heavy thump to pool over the back burner. You whipped around, a scream catching in your throat when there was a man there, lingering just behind where you’d stood, like he’d been leaning over your shoulder as you cooked.
You’d screamed and flung the jar of sauce at him before you even realized you’d moved—only for it to sail straight through him, shattering on the opposite wall.
Your heartbeat almost flatlined in fear.
“Holy shit!” you yelled, stumbling back against your counter. “Who the fuck are you?! What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?!”
The man stared at you, looking startled, his eyes wide open. He looked strange in front of you, slightly pale and washed out, as though you were seeing him through a gossamer veil. His clothes were dark, tac pants and a chest-hugging shirt with a violently orange X cut into it, and his blonde hair stuck up in all directions–his outline just barely blurred as though he were beginning to dissolve into the air.
Despite the unsettling details of his appearance, he was also extremely handsome–clever, classical features set in a sharp-jawed face, flinty-eyes at war with a soft, sensuous mouth. His eyes were scarlet, fringed with thick blonde lashes–
And then you realized you knew those scarlet eyes. You knew that costume. You knew the man in front of you.
This dude looked exactly like Bakugou Katsuki–pro hero Dynamight.
“Oi, quit screaming,” he snapped. He looked completely unconcerned that an entire jar of tomato sauce had just gone right through his chest, but he did look surprised that you were addressing him.
“What the fuck is happening,” you said, gaping at him.
“That’s what I want to know,” he said acidly, crossing his arms over his chest. Your eye snagged momentarily on the way his muscle flexed menacingly in the light of your kitchen. “Out with it, you little stalker.”
You jerked your gaze back to his face, gawking up at him, wondering what the fuck he meant.
Out with what?
“What the hell am I doing here and why can’t I leave?” he demanded, glaring at you.
“You very much can and should leave,” you told him, gesturing quickly to your door. You were not about to stand in this guy’s way. You’d seen the damage he could do on the news, and your apartment did not stand a chance–you’d seen him nuke an entire city block.
Your eyes flicked to his palms.
He glowered. “No the fuck I can’t, idiot, I’ve gotten it open a million times but can’t walk through. So what the hell did you do to me?” he growled, prowling closer. His step was completely silent on your kitchen floor, disconcerting in its unnaturalness.
You held up your wooden spoon against his approach, like a cross against a vampire.
“What do you mean, what did I do to you? I didn’t do anything, I’m just making pasta!” you said. Your back pressed against the stove top, the metal warm against your back, steam from your pasta water curling through your hair. You stilled, not wanting to knock into the pot.
“First of all,” Bakugou growled, “that’s not pasta, that’s a jar of sugar and preservatives. Second of all, I know you fucking quirked me so I’d be stuck here with you. You have three seconds to tell me how to get out, or I’m going to kill you myself.”
Quirked him? Stuck here? Kill you? What the hell was he talking about?
The threat sent a shiver down your spine despite the heat of the stove at your back. “I swear to god I didn’t do anything!” you said, raising your hands in the universal gesture for peace. “I don’t know why you’re here! I don’t even know how you got here.’
His face clouded, and he took a step closer. He was taller than you had realized, every plane of his body hard with muscle. You'd never seen a body so intentionally and meticulously honed--he was built like a weapon, one he very clearly meant to use.
Your heart rate skyrocketed.
“And even if I wanted to fuck with you, there’s no way I could have!” you added quickly. “I don’t even have a quirk!”
Bakugou stopped in front of you, scarlet eyes hot on your face.
“Quirkless,” he echoed, a mistrustful note in his raspy tone.
“Yes! Registered and everything,” you said hurriedly. “I have the paperwork and can prove it to you!” You eyed the palm of his hand warily, watching for the tell-tale spark of his explosions.
A frown pulled at the corners of Bakugou’s mouth. “I didn’t see it in any of your drawers,” he said accusingly.
“You…opened my drawers?” you asked, wondering how he’d snuck around the kitchen with you in it. Unless…
You paused, the memory of all your kitchen drawers pulled out swimming into focus before you. “Wait, Bakugou….when did you search my drawers?” you demanded.
“Couple’a days ago,” Bakugou said. You noticed he hadn’t moved any closer, but his stare was still fixed on you with the kind of intensity you’d only seen in nature documentaries before. A cheetah watching a gazelle graze unsuspecting on a grassy plain. A panther, waiting in the treetops…
You pulled back, scandalized. “You’ve been in here for days? How did you–? When did–?” you struggled against the riptide of all your sudden, horrified questions. “Why the hell didn’t you say something, you total creep?”
Bakugou’s scarlet eyes went wide, his mouth thinning with anger. “Me? You’re the fucking stalker who put me in here!”
“I don’t even know you!” you said disbelievingly. “This is my house, my private space! Where I shower and use the bathroom and eat cheetos in bed and all that other gross stuff. I don’t want or need an audience, thank you very much!”
“And watch sappy fucking weenie shows and cry like a little baby,” Bakugou added, with some measure of malicious pleasure. His mouth twisted up in a smile that was more bared teeth than anything.
“Oh my god, you were watching!” you cried, going to shove him back from you. Only, your hand went right through him, and a chill raced up your arm, like you’d dunked it in ice water.
A strangled noise like “Aagh!” escaped you, and you leapt back from him, banging back into the stove. Water sloshed out of the pasta pot and you barely jumped away in time for it to go spattering onto the floor. Your shoulder slammed the side of your fridge and you staggered, gripping the side to keep upright.
What the hell was that?
“I tried to fucking talk to you already and ask what the hell I was doing here,” Bakugou said, heedless of your plight. “But you didn’t hear or see me.”
You stared at him, heart hammering as you clutched the side of the fridge. “You…did?”
Bakugou’s arms crossed over his chest, biceps cording with the movement. “Yes. And you didn’t say shit back.”
If he’d been here—talking to you, waving at you, trying to get your attention, and you hadn’t seen him…
An alarming thought crept up your spine like a spider. “Bakugou, you’re not–you’re not a ghost, are you?” you asked.
Bakugou did not look like he liked this idea. His mouth went even flatter and his nostrils flared. “I better fucking not be,” he intoned dangerously.
But that horrible thought was already taking hold.
“Oh my god are you attached to me because you died saving me?” you said. “I thought you were just in a coma! Are you dead?”
You didn’t even wait for his response before you were already racing into the living room. You unearthed your laptop from the couch, quickly banging out a search into google.
You scanned the results anxiously for an announcement. No update had appeared on the news sites, however, and a report from NHK News Web dated only 24 minutes ago still put pro hero Dynamight at Tokyo Memorial Hospital, still in a coma and general condition unchanged.
An annoyed grunt from behind you told you Bakugou had followed you in here.
“Okay you’re still alive,” you told him. “At least, I think.”
He leaned down over the couch, putting a hand out to brace himself, except it went right through the top of a cushion. Your stomach churned.
Not how physics worked on an alive person.
Bakugou seemed unfazed, reading the article over your shoulder. “I’m in some shitty fucking coma?”
You nodded. “Apparently you blacked out as you were rescuing me.”
This seemed to grab his notice, and Bakugou looked down at you, those scarlet eyes fixing on you with renewed interest. “You’re the brat from the office building?”
You nodded, though brat was not exactly the identifier you would have chosen. Person, maybe. Girl. Woman. Hottie. Any of those might have been preferable.
“You passed out as soon as you got me out of the building. Pro hero Deku caught us midair, I’m told, but I had blacked out too at that point,” you said.
Another ugly frown slashed across Bakugou’s perfect mouth. “Fucking Deku,” he muttered, like he was annoyed he hadn’t been allowed to die if it meant the number one hero had been involved. Like he hadn’t needed the help.
It seemed unwise to comment that without pro hero Deku’s assistance the two of you would have been nothing more than splatters on the pavement.
Bakugou’s eyebrows knit with concentration as he stared over at your screen, a long silence building between you two. He pressed the back of a long-fingered hand over his mouth, scarlet eyes intent. In the kitchen, you could hear your pasta water beginning to boil, the soft burble of bubbling water.
“It has something to do with you,” Bakugou eventually pronounced. “If you were there when I went into a coma, and now I’m trapped in your shitty fucking apartment–it’s something to do with you.”
You did not love this theory.
“I would agree,” you said hesitantly. “Except that I am quite literally quirkless, as I explained to you. And if you’re not dead, then I don’t see how you can be here…”
Then another awful thought occurred to you “I’m not hallucinating you, am I? Is this a post-traumatic stress response? Because I feel guilty?”
Bakugou looked annoyed. “I’m right the fuck here.”
“Are you though?” you demanded.
Before you knew what was happening, Bakugou had seized a throw pillow and had shoved it into your face with enough force to slam you into the arm of the couch. Your head knocked against the arm, your nose smarting with the impact.
“Still think you’re hallucinating?” you heard him growl.
“Whuh duh fuh!!!” you spat through a mouthful of scratchy fabric, shoving the pillow off your face. It went flying back at Bakugou, but whipped right through him again.
Your skin prickled. That was so creepy to witness again.
“Tell me how the hell you’re able to pick up a pillow but I can’t hit you back with one?” you demanded. “And you opened all my drawers but the tomato sauce went through you?”
“The fuck if I know,” Bakugou spat. “You’re the one who trapped me like this!”
“No the hell I did not!” you said, exasperated. “I am quirkless. I did nothing.”
“Fucking prove it,” he said.
You glared at him, then leapt up and marched over to your closet, digging out the filing box of all your random papers–a mess of tax forms, insurance papers, your passport, your birth certificate—you finally found your quirk registration form, shoving it at Bakugou. It went right through his chest again, that icy pins and needles feeling shooting straight up your arm.
You stumbled back, letting out a surprised little gurgling noise, and then held the paper up for him to read the plain, bolded characters of the diagnosis QUIRKLESS in the description box. “See?” you demanded.
Bakugou’s eyes narrowed. “Keep your fucking shirt on, I see it.”
“Well there you go. Quirkless. Without a quirk. Completely quirk-free, and therefore completely uninvolved in whatever the hell you’ve got going on right now.”
Bakugou made an annoyed tch noise in the back of his throat. “Well if you didn’t do it then someone else did. And it somehow attached me to your shitty fucking apartment.”
You did not like the sound of that.
“Are you sure you can’t just, like, leave?” you asked. “You know, walk out the door and go to the hospital?”
“You don’t think I tried that the second I showed up here?” he demanded, drawing himself up. The movement emphasized the broadness of his shoulders, the light glinting off his blonde hair and the sharpness of a white canine. He really did fit the reputation of the intimidating number two hero—savage, spiteful, beautiful.
And strangely annoying.
“Try it again. I also couldn’t see you before, you said, but now I can,” you said. “And your touching and not touching stuff is obviously varied. Maybe the leaving thing is contingent on something too?”
You specifically did not tell him that he was freaking you out and you wanted him out of your apartment stat.
Bakugou looked annoyed at the reasonability of this idea. He turned his broad back to you, walking over to your door. You followed him curiously, watching as he reached out carefully, taking a hold of your door handle. The handle turned with the motion of his hand, pulling open slowly.
He squared those shoulders, the light of your hall skittering over the play of his back muscles. And then he took a step forward.
And went right through.
You gasped, and Bakugou’s head whipped back to look at you, surprise caught in his own expression.
“There you go!” you said happily, forgetting to be annoyed with him. “You’re free!”
But it appeared you’d spoken too soon, because as soon as Bakugou took another step down the hall, he suddenly froze. It was like he’d collided with an invisible wall, stumbling back.
He turned back to you.
“This is the shit that happened last time,” he rumbled, clearly frustrated. “I can’t go any further.”
You moved closer, curious if whatever was stopping him would stop you too. You leaned past him, sticking a hand out, but it passed easily through the space where he’d been stopped.
“There’s nothing here?” you said.
Bakugou made another irritated sound in his throat, sticking out his hand too. “There is for me, it’s like it’s—”
He cut off as his hand, too, passed easily through where he’d been stopped before, hovering in the air over yours. In the light of the hall it looked much larger, criss-crossed with a hundred tiny scars, long, calloused fingers tapering to well-manicured points.
“The hell?” he demanded, surging forward.
He breezed through the space where he’d been stopped, striding down the hall effortlessly. His boots were eerily silent on the hallway tile. He managed several purposeful steps until he stopped, suddenly—like he’d run up against another wall.
He growled, slamming a hand in the air against whatever was holding him back.
And then he turned to you, grim-faced. He looked very much like you weren’t going to enjoy whatever he had to say next.
And you didn’t. Because then he opened his mouth and said:
“Brat. I don’t think it’s your apartment.”
You waited for an explanation, and those scarlet eyes flickered up to catch yours.
“I think I’m tethered to you.”