Chapter Text
Ochako admitted to being clumsy. She’d known it since she’d been a little girl who wanted to help her parent’s business and make money for them. She’d known it when she grew into a teen and entered UA. She’d known it even after she graduated and endured the three years of learning how to be a good hero.
Despite the clumsiness she knows she will never be able to entirely get rid of, she’d always done her best in everything she does. And she did.
Being a twenty-one year old, she’d found that even the smallest mistakes could end up in dreading disasters. She’d been there and had done just that in the past. She’d learned it through a number of possible ways. Knowing it didn’t help anymore than trying to stop the wind from blowing in a direction though.
Thankfully, her mistake - her clumsiness at the moment, wasn’t causing any monumental danger or disaster. Nothing remotely close, actually. What it ends up causing though, was a lava heat-inducing embarrassment that she thinks might just melt her into the ground and swallow her whole. All this sounded really dramatic. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was exaggerating it. Wanted to, really. Because she couldn’t explain how she really wanted the pavement to just open up already and eat her into nonexistence.
It all started when she heard a woman scream.
It was a Saturday. It was one of the days she finally had her break after an exhausting week full of minor crimes, major disasters, loads of rescuing and taking care of aftermaths. Of course a hero never really gets a break or an actual day off as there were too many things happening in the world, the good and the bad. So as she looked to the direction of the woman’s scream and sees her terrified face, looking up where there was a child hanging on the metal fence of the overpass, she doesn’t stop to think how very true her previous thought was and just didn’t think twice in activating her quirk on herself, springing from the ground and launching herself towards the bridge - hands first - and catches the hand railings to stop herself from going straight through the the bridge and into sky and released her quirk just in time to grab the child’s wrist and activate her quirk again to make it easier for her to bring the child back to the safety of her embrace.
It was one of the rare moments where there wasn’t a single person passing through the overpass despite the crowd of people walking along either side of the street.
With her arms securely tight on the child’s form, she released a breath she’d unknowingly been holding and relaxes a bit just as she hears the loud cheer of people who’d witnessed her getting to the child. She doesn’t really pay attention to it as she thinks through and realizes what could have happened to the child - a boy, if she’d been even a little too late at jumping in and grabbing a hold of him. Because man, that was seriously a close one. She’d seen the child’s entire arm shaking with the effort to hold on to the metal just before she’d reached him.
Without thinking too much about possible falls, cars and splatting, she looked the child over and searched for any injuries.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Ochako didn’t see any visible injuries on the boy except for the redness on his right hand. Just how long had the kid been hanging on the bridge? This was the inevitable side effects of a society full of heroes. People grew too dependent on heroes, so people who sees incidents like this one would wait to see a hero rescue a civilian - their cameras ready - rather than do something themselves despite having quirks themselves. The law enforcing the ban of use of quirks in public doesn’t help matters and just makes it worse. Though Ochako understands why it’s necessary to have such restriction, sometimes she just thinks it’s bullshit when it comes to having to rescue people who needs help.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts and looks to the child. The kid must have been scared - terrified, but he wasn’t crying, surprisingly. He was pale and shaking, his eyes looking directly at her before slowly nodding a confirmation that he really wasn’t hurt.
She couldn’t help but smile at the child’s courage. She grinned at him and pats his head.
“You were really brave weren’t you? It’s okay. You’re fine now.” She soothed, trying to take away the sense of danger in his system.
Just before she asks where his parents were, she heard a shout, “Sora!” and sees the same woman she heard scream earlier. There were undeniable tears in her eyes as she runs in her office clothes and heels.
The moment the boy looked at the woman, he finally broke down crying.
“Mom!”
Ochako lets him on the ground and the woman immediately picked him up, embraced him and looked over at him, asking if he was alright.
When the boy confirmed he was by nodding and crying, the woman looked at Ochako, her eyes rimmed red.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” The woman bowed deep.
Embarrassed, Ochako tried to get the woman to look at her and repeatedly said it was ok.
“Just, please, be more careful in the future.”
The woman nodded and asked if there was something or anything she could do to thank her for saving her son. Ochako smiled kindly and told the woman that her gratitude was enough. After moments of convincing the woman that everything was alright and that she didn’t need anything, they finally said their goodbyes.
Ochako remained standing on the overpass for a few seconds before slowly walking and thought about how glad she was that the boy was safe.
Hero work was demanding and involved more risks than a normal person could take. It consumed time and dedication, but it was all worth it. Call it selfishness or self-gratification but more often than not, heroes - including herself, were happy to help people in need. It was what they do, their passion. They may be paid for it but generally, for a lot of heroes, it was just an added bonus to doing what’s right. Although she may have started wanting to be a hero for money, now that she was where she wanted to be, she wanted to be more and help even more people that she could. Darn her if she felt satisfied when she helps people.
She was almost halfway down the stairs, too focused in her own thoughts that she didn’t see or notice the small stone just lying on one of the steps. She stumbled over it and tripped over her own foot. Before she fully realized what just happened, she was somehow already falling towards the street. She briefly saw a person and deduced she’d be hitting him if she didn’t act fast.
Ochako just barely managed to make herself float and avoid slamming herself to whoever it was in front of her.
Before she could release a breath of relief, a gust of strong wind reaches her and she became too aware of her dress opening and floating to the air. Oh yeah, did she mention she was wearing a really frilly dress? The wind rapidly blew until it nearly made her dress upside down, like an umbrella that got hit by a storm turning it upwards, and nearly exposed her undies to the world.
Her eyes opened wide, briefly regretting her choice of attire and hearing a distinct ‘What the fuck!’ before she aggressively slammed her dress back down to cover her bare stomach and her underwear - except, she didn’t feel her hands anywhere on nor near her legs. She’d slammed her hands on what felt hard - shoulders - and felt her face flame as her mind processed that she just trapped a person’s head inside her dress! Freezing at the thought, her hands unconsciously squeezed tighter to whatever - or whoever - it was she was holding on to.
Seriously, Ochako should’ve gotten a clue on who it was that’s currently hidden inside her dress and currently in front of her stomach when she heard the loud shout before she’d brought her hands down. So when she felt warm and firm hands on her hips, her bare hips, and heard a ‘Get me outta here!’ whilst the person tried to push her off, she knows - to her absolute horror - that it’s the king-of-explodo-kills that was in her clothes before she instinctively switched her hold from the shoulders she was gripping to his head - she doesn’t really know how this happened and is feeling pretty incredulous - then unmistakably hugged him close to avoid being flung to the air and avoid flipping her dress over for all to see.
This is how she found herself probably redder then her pink cheeks, eyes spinning with confusion while hugging Bakugou’s head close to her chest, trying to stop him from pushing her so suddenly that she’s afraid her dress might tear. Her brain tells her that she was wearing a dress that didn’t have a line underneath the chest area so she’s pretty sure that’s Bakugou’s forehead she feels in between her chest - she short circuits. Her brain was forced to work again when she was nearly pried off of his head. She stammered a series of ‘Wait a sec!’ and ‘Stop!’ while Bakugou, being his usual self, yells curses along the lines of ‘Bitch! Let go of me!’, ‘Stop grabbing my damn hair!’, ‘I’m gonna kill you sonofabitch!’ and other things she really couldn’t focus enough to listen to.
Both of them struggled furiously until Bakugou renewed his struggle, the grapple with his hands on Ochako’s hips tightening. She felt her heart surge at the sudden strength Bakugou’s exuding, trying to push her body and her dress off of him. Barely thinking about anything but the wind she feels beneath her clothing and the urge to cover her skin, she spontaneously and without thinking too much about it, moves her legs to grab at whatever it could - in this case, Bakugou’s upper body.
It takes Ochako a full second to register that Bakugou seemed to have stopped moving. Maybe he was too shocked to react or too angry to even say anything and all she could think of was how she felt like a baby monkey stuck to a human’s head. It’s when she heard and felt him just breathe almost breathlessly between her chest that it dawns on her like ink spreading on a piece of paper, that she was now straddling Bakugou’s head and chest. Worse, She’d brought him - his head, his nose, his mouth! - in between her chest. The moment she had all this realizations is when she felt so impossibly hot that she really, just really, questioned if she’d explode from all this embarrassment and heat.
Her head was still spinning when she became aware that they were getting stared at by a gaping crowd that had probably slowly gathered. She absolutely refused to think even half of what could be running through their minds. She then tried to even out her voice but miserably failed and stammered, “P-please wait.”
She didn’t mean for her voice to come out like a whisper gone to the wind but Ochako knows - perfectly, that Bakugou heard her well because of their distance - or lack of.
It was a wonder how Bakugou, with his famous temperament, wasn’t blasting her to space at the moment. She couldn’t help but wonder if he knows why she insists on being stuck to him like a koala or even had a clue why she was even doing what she just did when she heard him threaten her, “You better fuckin get off of me in three seconds or I’ll blow your damn dress off.” he basically growled low.
She moved immediately, not because she was afraid of the threat but because she didn’t think she could take anymore of the situation they found themselves in - or she forced him in. She just needed to be grounded on the pavement and on the surface of the earth. So she started to untangle herself from his person when she was sure he won’t be pushing her abruptly off him and pushed herself up, using Bakugou’s shoulder as leverage and made sure that she tucked her dress where it needed to be until she gets the entirety of her clothing off of him and then softly released her quirk, landing without anymore trouble.
Ochako knew Bakugou was one to value, highly, one’s personal space, and this was going way over and beyond that. Besides her embarrassment, she didn’t know how Bakugou was going to react or what he’d do or what he’d say, not that she was scared of his explosive temper because everything had been an accident... of her making. But still. How can she face him after that.
Understandably, the awkward silence looming between them was downright uncomfortable and... awkward. Heck she didn’t know what to say. She still felt the heat on her face, what she’d done still playing like a broken record in her mind. She basically flashed Bakugou and jumped on him! Oh my god! She wanted to hide somewhere and just die on the spot. She’d been embarrassed in the past, it wasn’t anything new, but this was just, this was something else! She wished Bakugou would just be himself and explode or just tell her to fuck off so she could run or float to the never ending space, anything to cut the nauseating silence.
“Uh, um..” she tried to start, her voice more of a squeak as she tried to look Bakugou in the eye and found herself unable to do so, her eyes shut down towards his chest and then remembered where her legs had been just moments ago, her flustered gaze narrowed further down to the space between them and on to the floor.
She was able to let out a short, awkward laugh, her hand on the back of her head. She looked anywhere but the person in front of her.
“Listen, I’m so sorry about that. Um, I just got distracted and- and fell.” She sounded hysterical even in her own ears. She readied herself for Bakugou’s bark. It didn’t come.
Heart pounding and curious, she chanced a glance at his face and stared. The look of annoyance and his signature frown was , as always, plastered on his features, but his entire face was glowing red. He was facing away from her. She internally cursed as she was finally able to cool herself but then she sees him as red as an apple, her blush returned full force. Her heart thudded loud in her ears. If she wasn’t as red moments before, she was positively glowing now. She turned her gaze off him, somehow embarrassed and maybe a little bashful.
Bakugou was dressed in civilian clothing, she guessed he’d come from the gym given the black tank top with the word ‘KILL’ etched on it and a matching black summer shorts he was wearing. Maybe he was also on a day off, she wasn’t sure. Bakugou seemed to be everywhere as he appeared on the news frequently, defeating villains and criminals left and right. Although she sees him about twice or once a month, they’d never really interacted unless the situation calls for it. The picture of his muscled chest, the contour of his arms and his strong build stuck to her brain and she couldn’t take her mind of how he felt when she was stuck on him. She guessed she really couldn’t help her reaction towards him. Like his quirk, he was hot. Literally and figuratively. Always had been and it’s not like Ochako was blind. Honestly, she didn’t need a reminder that he was physically attractive and she absolutely didn’t need anything embarrassing to happen to remind her that he was fit. She desperately wanted to clear herself of such thoughts but the idea that she can make THE Bakugou Katsuki red-faced was both flattering and admittedly pleasing.
So they stood there, awkward, red-faced and not doing anything.
Ochako never hated her clumsiness more than this moment.