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Chapter Text

Izuku checked over his luggage one final time. At the bottom, an old All Might poster was ready to smile up at him when he unpacked. Then his informal clothes, vacuum-sealed to make room for his three sets of Best Jeanist coats loaned from his job (“Gotta show the world we mean business,” said his boss). 

He’d deliberated far longer than necessary on the exact All Might action figure to include for good luck, eventually going with the Silver Age “Rocket Might” figure with thirty-four points of articulation for the coolest dynamic poses. His recorder, camera and equipment, microphone, and laptop sat on top of everything, next to the toiletries, ready at a moment’s notice. And of course, tucked into a corner of embarrassment, his heat suppressants in a bottle marked “Cimetidine” -- stomach pills.

In two hours, he'd be sitting in Dynamight's personal plane, landing an elusive interview on a flight to I-Island to report on the I-Expo, where heroes and inventors from around the world would gather to discuss new Quirk technology. Dynamight was a notorious press hater who hadn't given an interview in two years, so when Juzo News had assigned Izuku the job, he'd jumped for joy. Then when he'd learned he'd be headed to the conference, he almost fainted.

This was going to be the best day of his life, and then the one after that was going to be the new best. Years of working lesser hero reporting jobs were finally going to pay off.

Izuku had always loved heroes, though as a Quirkless Omega, he had no chance of becoming one. But he at least wanted to be near them, to see them fighting for hope. He didn't want to just work as a maid or a cook until some Alpha found him. So he'd taken heat suppressants, posed as a Beta, and worked his way up the ranks at Juzo. Hero reporting jobs were hard to come by since everybody wanted them, but he'd proven his persistence and dedication.

The taxi stopped at Dynamight's estate. Izuku paused for a moment to gather his nerves before getting out. He'd seen a coworker come in with a black eye from trying to get a word after Dynamight defeated Tally Mark. 

He could do this. Dynamight had agreed to it. He could handle anything the hero threw at him.

Izuku paid the driver and stepped out. Usually a top ten hero would have somebody out to meet a reporter, a Beta or Omega secretary. Izuku couldn’t see anybody. He walked up the driveway to Dynamight’s house. 

It was a fitting house for the number one hero. A ring of fire encircled a massive five-story mansion that looked like a cross between a modern building and an imposing fortress, all steel and concrete. He couldn’t see any buttons to turn off the line of fire closing off the front walkway, which led to a broken concrete staircase.

The massive door opened with a low boom. A head of spiky blond hair poked out. “Well shit, you’re here. Gimme a sec!” 

The head went back inside. Crashes, crunches, and expletives sounded from within. When he popped out of the door again, he had a large, red suitcase in his hand.  

Hundreds of black burn marks scarred the uneven concrete outside his door. He pointed his hand downward and unleashed a massive explosion which roared in Izuku’s ears and rattled the ground. The force shot him up and over the wall of flames. Izuku couldn’t help but gasp. He should have had his camera out. 

He’d seen Dynamight fighting villains on television hundreds of times. In person, he looked even more formidable. Battle scars accented his angled cheeks and muscled arms. His wild, red eyes seemed to carry a fire more intense than the one outside his mansion. He stood a foot over Izuku. 

Heroes all had an air of power and greatness to them. They were like gods, forged of valor and the magic of quirks. He’d met several at his job, but none as impossibly, ruggedly beautiful as Dynamight. 

“See that fire?” Dynamight asked. “It doesn’t turn off. That’s to keep…” He stared pointedly at Izuku. “ ...vultures from bothering me. I used to have a normal fucking moat, but it didn’t work well enough.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He usually had a million questions ready to go, but something about Dynamight put him at a loss for words. His deep, angry voice made a current tingle through Izuku’s body, maybe just from being around a hero he admired so much.

Dynamight strode around the house abruptly, without speaking. Izuku rushed to follow. They walked right on the grass, which alternated between lush and burnt.

“What about your staff? How do they get in?” asked Izuku. 

“Ever hear of Hatsume Mei?”

“Absolutely! Her beam gloves played a crucial role when Stonecutter fought the Starlight Gang! And without her regeneration shield, Fantasy Man--”

“Right. Thanks to her, I don’t need any people coming around to fuck things up. Machines take care of my house.”

“What about your family? Your manager? Your Omega?” Plenty of magazines less prestigious than Izuku’s had speculated on whether or not Dynamight had an Omega.

“Manager has a flight quirk, gets in just fine. No comment on the rest. Get used to the words ‘no comment.’ You’ll be hearing them a lot.”

They walked around one of the mansion’s outbuildings to find a private plane that looked barely big enough to make the trip. “Where’s the pilot?” asked Izuku.

“I’ll be flying. I’m not gonna let some dumbass pilot steer me straight into a cliff.”

Izuku stepped inside. Something about being in such a small space with Dynamight for hours sent strange tingles of anticipation through his body even though he knew Dynamight wouldn’t make it pleasant for him.

“Let’s get something straight,” Dynamight said as he climbed into the pilot’s seat. His Alpha scent of woodsmoke and caramel filled the plane. “You’re here because my manager told me if I didn’t do an interview sometime soon, the opinion-poll portion of my ranking would be so bad that I would stop being the number one hero. I don’t like you and I am not going to cooperate.” He flipped some switches. “I encourage you to shut up and make up your own interview.” The engine blasted to life.

The plane's ascent combined with the heavy smell made Izuku feel pleasantly light-headed. He’d never been on an international reporting trip before and the smell seemed to stoke his natural excitement. He stared at the mansion below him growing smaller and more distant. Once they reached cloud level, he found himself staring more at Dynamight. His smooth, expert command of the plane was fascinating.

Once they levelled out, Izuku retrieved his microphone and recorder from his luggage. “I know you don’t want to answer questions, but don’t you think it would help your opinion polls if the people got to know a few small things about you?”

“No comment,” he said. Izuku could hear the smirk in his voice.

He decided to start with the kind of questions that might make Dynamight want to brag to open him up. “How long did you know you wanted to be a hero?”

“It comes with the territory of-- noooo comment.”

“That almost sounded like a comment!”

“Hmmm.”

“Can you tell me more about how your quirk functions?”

“Hmmmmmmmmmm.”

Time for plan B. He had to catch Dynamight by surprise. “When you were injured by Razor Hair, you got fined for assaulting the doctors. What happened there?”

The plane rattled. “I didn’t need any doctors, okay? I had everything under control. They made up a bunch of fake injuries because they wanted everybody to think I wasn’t capable.”

“But you--”

“And also, no comment.”

“The fight was on camera. We all saw the way you got cut down to your arm bone.” He was glad to be making progress.

“And I still won. That cut might seem like a big deal to somebody like you, but heroes are made of stronger stuff.”

“Alright,” said Izuku. “How long did you know you wanted to be a hero?”

“I don’t remember not knowing. Winning comes naturally to me. How long did you know you wanted to be a little annoying bug with a camera?”

“Well, when I turned out to be quirkless…”

Dynamight chuckled. Izuku felt himself blushing.

“I couldn’t be a hero myself, so I just… wanted to be closer to heroes.”

Dynamight turned from his seat to face Izuku, looming over him with a sneer. “Close enough for you?”

“The… the plane!” Izuku had trouble breathing, especially with every breath bringing more of Dynamight’s scent.

“Relax, there’s autopilot. You think I’m an idiot?”

“I’d, uh, I’d be more comfortable if you looked ahead of you for the flight.”

He grinned, showing off sharp crocodile teeth. “I know you would.”

Izuku felt extra embarrassed as heat rose to his cheeks and ears because now Dynamight could see him blushing. He tried to remember his questions. How had he lost control of the conversation so quickly? He’d faced reluctant, pushy, angry Alpha heroes trying to get under his skin before. What made Dynamight so different?

No. He had to keep his head on his shoulders. “What do you say to the accusations that you care more about defeating villains”--Dynamight’s unwavering stare made his words grow softer as he spoke--“in a... large, impressive manner... than about collateral damage?”

“No.” Dynamight leaned toward Izuku until his face took up his whole field of vision. Izuku leaned back, trembling. “Comment.” Dynamight popped a small explosion in his hand. Izuku almost jumped out of his seat, constrained only by his seatbelt. His heart beat faster and faster.

Juzo had trusted him to do this job. He had to keep going. He had to do better. They still had hours of flying to do and he wasn’t just going to sit there and let Dynamight walk all over him. “Do you ever worry about Shoto overtaking you as the number one hero?”

“Oh fuck no. I’ve been better than him since forever.” He returned to the pilot seat and Izuku let out a sigh of relief. “He’s too focused on his friends and Omega to put enough time into hero work. Honestly, fuck you for suggesting it.”

“You said you agreed to the interview because your manager said you could lose the top spot, though.”

Dynamight launched out of his seat toward Izuku, teeth bared, eyes alight with fury. He jabbed his finger into Izuku's forehead. Izuku felt a chill running down his body.

"You," he said, throwing the word like a punch, "are going to shut up on your own or I'll fucking make you shut up." 

Some strange part of Izuku wanted to smile and reply, "Then make me." He thought better of it. Dynamight was close enough that Izuku could feel each rapid, angered breath against his face. His neck itched near his repressed scent glands.

Dynamight ripped the recorder from Izuku's hand and unleashed an explosion around it, destroying it and shaking the plane. Izuku winced. Dynamight turned around in a huff and stomped back to the pilot's seat. 

Izuku could still feel Dynamight's finger on his forehead where he'd touched him. He blinked to stop the tears from falling. Why was this hero affecting him so much? He hadn't been such a crybaby since high school.

He decided not to antagonize Dynamight anymore, at least for the time being. He didn't need all his other stuff wrecked.

Izuku grabbed his phone and wrote down their conversation as best he could from memory. He had a fancier recorder in his luggage that he could use once Dynamight calmed down. 

Outside the window, soft clouds moseyed across a calm, sparkling sea. Not a boat or island in sight, just endless white and blue. He thought he saw a dolphin jump, but they were too high up to tell. 

WHAM!

The plane jerked down and to the side. Izuku's body strained painfully against the seatbelt. The engine sputtered and stopped.

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!"

Dynamight's fingers flipped switches and hit buttons as quickly and gracefully as an expert pianist. The plane sped toward the waves below. 

Izuku unbuckled himself. "You have a parachute?"

"Fucking hell, what fucking happened -- we do, but it's not gonna do us any good to parachute into the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no--"

WHAM!

The plane spun around, knocking Izuku against the floor and ceiling and making his stomach churn. He closed his eyes as his luggage whacked him in the face. A loud blast vibrated the spinning plane. Izuku couldn’t tell if it was from Dynamight or the plane’s engine or whatever was outside. Vomit stung his throat. When he opened his eyes again, the coarse, grey fibers of the floor were above him and rushing away. A stray seat cushion knocked him toward the window, which showed a cracked picture of water speeding toward him.

An explosion brightened the plane and thrust him back into the floor. Whistling air buffeted him, stinging his eyes and replacing Dynamight’s musk with smoke and salt. Izuku coughed, hands flailing. His fingers desperately sought something to grasp as the wind lifted him.

A firm, strong arm grabbed him roughly around his waist. Dynamight leapt from the plane as it fell apart into the ocean, dragging Izuku with him. He unleashed an explosion behind him, jolting them both into the air. The feeling of Dynamight’s arm against his skin sent sparks down Izuku’s body.

Another plane was in the sky with them, flying off into the distance. Izuku was so disoriented that he couldn’t even tell which direction the plane was headed. 

“Come back and fight me, you cowards!” shouted Dynamight. He blasted toward them, unleashing explosion after explosion, but the plane was much faster and soon appeared as just a dot in the distance.

That left just the two of them, with infinite splashing waves around them. Whenever Dynamight fell close enough to the spray of the wave-tips, he blasted them back into the air. A seagull cried nearby. As far as he could tell, Dynamight would run out of energy eventually, and then the water would take them.

“Well,” said Dynamight. “We’re fucked.”

Chapter Text

A seagull squawked as it glided past them. “Damn bird,” said Dynamight. He blasted an explosion in its direction. It flapped faster to get away.

“Wait,” shouted Izuku, “Doesn’t that mean there’s land nearby?” It was hard to make himself heard over the waves and the explosions.

“What?”

“Seagulls don’t fly too far from land!”

“Let’s follow it, then!” He aimed his next downward explosion to propel them toward the bird.

“Well, maybe,” Izuku muttered, more to himself than to Dynamight. “But it’s possible you could run out of energy before we get back to land, especially if it just flew out here, and it’s also possible that by following it we end up making it fly in the wrong direction to escape us. The seagull is more of an indicator that land is nearby than any specific direction… there must be some other way to – blaugh!” spray from a wave splashed into Izuku’s face.

“What?” Dynamight shouted. “I can’t fucking hear you!”

“Go up! As high as you can! We’ll see the land!” 

Dynamight nodded. Izuku felt Dynamight’s grip around him tighten. Explosion after explosion hammered into the water below, rocketing them toward the sun. 

The air near the sea had been warm. The higher they went, though, the more the winds buffeting his wet clothes grew cold and harsh. Izuku peered around but only saw the ocean stretching in all directions until it merged with the sky. 

Izuku found himself clutching with white knuckles to Dynamight’s arm, which bulged with muscles. Even though Dynamight’s grip felt reassuringly solid, it was still a long way down. 

With winds whipping across his face and goosebumps rising on his arms, Izuku saw it. A tiny dot against the horizon. “Look there!” He relinquished his death grip on Dynamight’s arm to point.

“Holy fuck, that’s far away. Let’s go!” 

The two lurched forward. Izuku curled his arms around Dynamight’s and watched the sea soar past below them. 

Faced with time to think, the severity of his circumstances hit him. He was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by seawater, with no food, no water, no heat suppressants, and no way of contacting the rest of the world. Even if the island supplied some of his immediate basic needs, his long-term prospects were bleak.

The sun shone directly down on them. The wind from their movement pushed sweat from his forehead to his hair. The island was visible in the distance now, never seeming to get any closer. The constant explosions propelling them forward had Izuku’s ears ringing, and the jerky movement made his stomach turn. I could be sitting in a cool, comfortable plane right now, arguing with Dynamight over interview questions, he thought, and sighed.

Dynamight was panting. Izuku didn’t know how long exactly Dynamight had been propelling them, but the sun had moved in the sky, and the island’s dot in the distance had grown. Dynamight was constantly adjusting his sweaty grip on Izuku, sometimes switching arms so that the other could fire blasts behind them. Every so often, a pod of dolphins would follow below them.

As the island grew closer, Izuku could make out more of its features. A few palm trees on the beach led to a densely packed jungle that climbed most of the way up a prominent mountain.

Strange feelings kept bubbling within Izuku, desires to fold in closer to Dynamight’s straining muscles, to memorize the feel of his arm. 

Dynamight’s muscular chest heaved against Izuku with every strained breath. His sweat dripped onto Izuku’s arms and forehead. With every descent after an explosion, the two dipped closer to the waves below. Dynamight’s arm holding Izuku in place trembled with exertion. When Izuku gazed up at him, Dynamight had his teeth clenched and eyes focused with a crazed desperation that Izuku had only seen in the toughest of villain fights.

The spray from a wave licked at Izuku’s feet, soaking his socks. “Dynamight?” he shouted. “Are you okay?” 

“Sh– shut up!” Dynamight shouted back before coughing repeatedly, once again letting them dip low enough to feel the waves. 

Dynamight’s blasts began to feel half-hearted. He bobbed back and forth in the air, making Izuku’s stomach churn and bile rise in his throat. 

Then, the unthinkable happened. Dynamight’s arm, which had felt as unshakeable as iron when he had first grabbed Izuku, went slack. Izuku clutched onto it, keeping them together as they both fell into the water. 

They had been close to the water already, so the fall was short, but the impact still felt like his whole body being punched. He almost let go of Dynamight – almost – but managed to maintain his grip. He pushed up toward the surface, desperately pumping his legs. When he broke through to the air, he gasped and coughed. A short wave slapped him back under and gave him a mouthful of water. He popped back up, then dragged Dynamight’s limp form to the surface next to him. 

The strong, fierce Dynamight had gone, replaced with a vulnerable young man coughing for breath. He’d never seen the man’s face not marked by anger or determination. His lips were fuller when not curled up into a sneer. 

Once he was sure Dynamight could breathe, he slung Dynamight over his back (awkwardly, as the man was taller than him), wrapped Dynamight’s arms around his shoulders, took hold of his hands in one arm (big, capable hands, rough from moving rubble away from villain attacks to save civilians), and began the swim to shore. Dynamight had saved him by getting him most of the way to the island. Now it was time to return the favor. 

Dynamight shifted against him as he swam. “N –” he coughed. “No…”

A crest of water splashed over the two of them. The closer they got to the shore, the bigger the waves became. 

Dynamight struggled feebly. “Lemme go… I can–” He coughed again. “I can fucking–” another cough. “Get there my own damn self…”

Izuku let Dynamight’s hands go, believing the superhero would know his own strength. Dynamight sank down Izuku’s back, his fatigued attempts to swim proving fruitless. Izuku dove after him, once again grabbing him and hauling him above the water, where he once again spluttered and coughed as the waves crashed around them. The thought of his hero disappearing into the depths made his chest sting. 

His legs and the arm not holding Dynamight began to burn as he swam as hard as he could for shore. The saltwater stung his eyes, and between every wave he gasped and heaved for breath.

“I’ll… get there… on my own!” said Dynamight, but he could barely manage to struggle. Izuku wasn’t going to let go ever again. 

His body felt so tired from the exertion that he worried they’d both drown. But he had to keep Dynamight alive. He switched which arm he swam with and continued on, his force of will overpowering the pain in his legs. 

Between every wave, Dynamight coughed and yelled at him to let him go. His strength must have been returning to him, because his struggles grew more powerful, but Izuku continued to carry him.

Every muscle in his body was screaming for him to stop, to surrender to the ocean. But he wouldn’t let Dynamight go. Getting Dynamight to shore was the only thing on his mind.

Finally, his sore arm hit soft sand. A final wave pushed the two ashore, where he and Dynamight crawled above the water and flopped down, coughing and retching, surprised and grateful to be alive.

They had made it. Somebody out there had wanted them dead, and they had destroyed that asshole’s plans. It had taken every ounce of strength in both of them; they were sore, soaked, sunburnt, missing all their things, and detached from civilization, but they had survived. Izuku inhaled the salty air and let out a crazed, desperate laugh from the joy of making it out. A wave lapped over his shoes.

He wanted to hug Dynamight… but something about the prospect seemed embarrassing, even though they’d just been attached to each other for hours.

Izuku lifted himself from the wet sand, only for the island to suddenly begin rumbling. He tripped and fell backward onto Dynamight, sending them both tumbling to the ground. The earthquake vibrations grew stronger before subsiding. 

Izuku’s cheeks grew hot as he stumbled away from Dynamight. “Sorry about that.”

Dynamight scowled. “I could have gotten here–” He drew a ragged breath. “--on my fucking own. I want you to know that, loser.” He let out a few coughs. “We may need to stick together to stay alive on this damn island, but once we get off, I never want to see your goddamn face again, understand?”

Izuku felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest. He’d just busted his butt to keep Dynamight alive, and Dynamight hated him for it. He nodded slowly, working hard to keep himself from breaking down.

“Good. Now help gather up palm fronds and bamboo for our shelter. I’ll get us some coconuts to drink.”

“Sounds good.”  Maybe if he showed his competence at helping them survive, he’d make Dynamight like him.

He trudged up the beach toward the jungle. The sun was setting, giving the trees around him a dim orange glow. After a couple of minutes of gathering resources, Dynamight approached him with half of a small coconut, full of coconut milk.

The liquid felt incredible against his parched mouth. He drank greedily, grateful to have Dynamight around. When he had finished, Dynamight offered him another. After the day’s hardships, the coconuts were the best things he’d ever tasted. 

“We’ll look for a better water source and build a better shelter tomorrow. For now, let’s just set the bamboo sticks against that rock. Help me tie the palm fronds on. The stems can be split apart and used as lashing.” 

Izuku felt heat rising to his face. Dynamight was so competent and knowledgeable. He knew exactly what to do in such an unlikely situation. His usual rage was gone, replaced with a calm determination to get done what needed doing. 

“Goddamn motherfucking bugs!” he shouted, slapping at the air. Alright, maybe not all of his usual rage was gone.

Izuku worked on tying the fronds to the bamboo, but his fingers were slow and slippery from a long day. 

“You’re fucking it up. Do it like this.” Dynamight grabbed Izuku’s hand. Izuku’s cheeks burned. He wanted to protest that he knew what he was doing, but with Dynamight’s hand on his and the wind blowing Dynamight’s sweet scent toward him, he could only stand there.

Dynamight led Izuku through the tying process, his rough, strong hands lashing the fronds in place. Izuku followed suit. By the time they’d finished, only the moon lit their progress. 

“God damn, this is not what I wanted to be doing today,” said Dynamight. “Let’s get some sleep.” He crawled into the tiny shelter.

“T–together?” asked Izuku. His stomach began running in circles.

“We’re in a fucking survival situation and you want to be all awkward? You wanna go sleep outside where it could rain?”

“No, no, of course… of course not. I’ll come – I’ll go inside. With you.” He crouched through the tiny entrance. There was barely enough space for the two of them, but he managed to separate himself enough that he wasn’t touching Dynamight. He didn’t want to make things any more awkward than they already were.

Izuku heard Dynamight’s fingers tapping the floor repeatedly and his body moving and stretching. He was about to speak up when Dynamight’s words broke the tense silence.

“Look. About what I said. I’m…” Dynamight made a quiet grunting noise that almost sounded like “sorry.” 

“Dynamight?”

No response. Dynamight began snoring like a train. Izuku sighed. The rock floor was the most uncomfortable place he’d ever slept. At least he had a hero around to help him survive. 

Dynamight’s sleeping body shifted, and his arm draped over Izuku. He didn’t want to move it and wake Dynamight up. It felt kind of nice, like an extra protection against the wild night. 

Then he felt it. The stirrings within. A tingling in his lower region, paired with a restlessness in his arms that made him want to gather soft things and pile them together. A faint echo of heat. His heat suppressants were long gone, and he had no way of getting any more.

He knew this wasn’t full heat. He’d be a complete wreck if full heat overcame him. This was just his hormones going a bit wacky from the sudden lack of twice-daily heat suppressants. The feelings would come in waves, growing stronger every time, until he actually went into heat and became incapable of doing anything but lusting for Alphas. 

He needed to get off the island by then. Dynamight couldn’t know. Dynamight already thought he was an incompetent loser; he couldn’t be seen as an Omega as well. 

Dynamight sniffed at Izuku in his sleep but didn’t wake up. Izuku sighed. He hoped Dynamight wouldn’t awaken to the scent of Omega pheromones. It would completely wreck any chance Izuku had of gaining his respect. 

He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. 

Something heavy moved up against Izuku’s legs and onto his torso. At first, he thought it was Dynamight moving in his sleep, but it kept moving and moving and moving…

Izuku opened his eyes and found himself face-to-face with the biggest snake he’d ever seen in his life.

Chapter Text

Izuku was paralyzed - partially from terror and partially by the enormous snake wrapped around him. The dim morning light showed the snake’s massive body tightly twisted around his legs and abdomen. Izuku wanted to scream, but he didn’t want to startle the snake and hasten its attack. 

Dynamight looked like an angel snoring obliviously to his left.

“Dynamight…” The snake’s mottled coils pressed down further, squeezing the air from his lungs. 

Dynamight didn’t move.

“Dynamight, please wake up… I need you,” he gasped, drawing the last of his breath.

Izuku tried to thrash against it, but he found his limbs pinned under the snake's vice-like grip. It tightened mercilessly as ominous black spots flickered across his vision.

BLAM!

An explosion launched Izuku and the snake straight through the wall he and Dynamight had spent the day making. Sand scoured his face, stinging like fire. The snake’s coils loosened. Izuku took a gulp of precious air. 

“Stay the fuck away from him!” shouted Dynamight. He jumped out toward Izuku and grabbed two of the snake’s coils, which had returned to squeezing him at full strength. His muscles bulged and strained as he wrenched the snake’s grip off of Izuku.

Izuku shook back and forth beneath the snake's grasp as Dynamight grappled with it. His lungs were crying out for air. 

Dynamight's arms trembled from effort, the sleeves of his shirt digging into strained biceps. The snake's body slowly loosened, bit by bit. Izuku seized his chance to gasp and gulp down as much air as possible. 

Dynamight's shirt tore from his muscles on both sleeves. He pushed the snake apart more. Now there was a gap large enough to wiggle through. 

Izuku twisted and pushed against the snake until he landed face-first on the beach. Gagging and spitting out sand, he crawled until he was a healthy distance away.

As Dynamight grappled with it, scales began to detach and hung suspended in midair for a few seconds before launching themselves at Dynamight. This was no ordinary snake. 

Izuku had heard of animals having quirks before. The most famous one was UA’s principal, Nezu, who had super-intelligence and could speak like a human. 

“Yaaaaugh!” Dynamight shouted as the scales left cuts across his face. He landed a fearsome punch, and when his hand drew back, his knuckles were bloody. 

Izuku scuttled backward. He wished he hadn’t caused Dynamight so much trouble. Now Dynamight was getting hurt on his behalf.

The snake sank its fangs into Dynamight’s leg. Izuku winced. He hoped the snake trying to constrict him earlier meant it had no venom, but with an animal with a quirk, normal logic went out the window. Dynamight roared in pain and pried the snake's head off of him, leaving behind two bloody holes. 

A couple of the flying scales hurtled toward Izuku. He lifted his arms to protect himself. The scales sliced painfully at his forearms, drawing lines of blood.

An intense, dramatic look swept across Dynamight's features. His mouth curled up in fury and his eyes were so full of rage and hatred that he looked as terrifying as the beast he fought. 

“You!” He shouted, launching a massive explosion that shook the ground, lifting the snake into the air.

“Do!” He shot himself through the air and grabbed hold of the creature with one hand, propelling them higher with another explosion.

“Not!” 

“Hurt!” 

“Him!” 

Dynamight let off a final explosion that rattled Izuku's bones and catapulted the creature so far back into the horizon, it disappeared completely.

Dynamight made a rolling landing, then stood, panting, slices bleeding across his body, eyes wild. 

Izuku rushed over to him. “Dynamight, are you alright?” He wondered what it meant that Dynamight had gotten so angry over the snake hurting him. Did Dynamight truly care about him, more than would simply be expected from a hero caring about a civilian? And what did that mean? Izuku didn’t even know what he was hoping for.

His crazy expression faded. He looked around as if suddenly noticing where he was. “I’m fine,” he said. “Snake’s gone. Problem solved.”

Izuku frowned. He didn’t know if Dynamight was lying about being fine. He’d just have to keep an eye on him and hope for the best.

Dynamight grabbed Izuku’s arm and glared at the gashes etched into his skin. They were small compared to Dynamight’s wounds. “You should have fucking run away the second the snake was gone. Don’t fucking put yourself in danger.”

Why hadn’t he run away? He supposed he’d wanted to see more of Dynamight, even if it meant getting hurt or getting in the way. But that wasn’t a good enough reason.

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

Dynamight sighed. “What’s done is done. We need to work on building a raft as soon as possible. Who knows what other bullshit this island has to throw at us. I’m gonna take a dip in the ocean to help my cuts.”

“Wait!” said Izuku. “That doesn’t work!”

“Huh?”

“Regular saltwater can help, yes, but there are so many germs in the sea – you know, fish poo and all – that it’s worse than doing nothing. You’d get infected and I’d – I’d – have to fend for myself,” he said. He had almost said, ‘I’d lose you,’ but it felt embarrassing to say.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’ve already been on this pile of sand too long. I’ll knock the trees down; can you help arrange them into a raft?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to just wait here for rescue? There have to be all kinds of people looking for us, with you being the number one hero and all.”

“You almost got killed by a snake. I’m not gonna let this island put you in any more danger. With my explosions as propulsion, I can get a raft back to Japan in no time. I’ve done boat rescues before.”

Izuku nodded, and the two of them walked into the woods.

“Hey, what’s this?” asked Dynamight. He reached down to the ground. “Does this mean somebody else is here?”

It was a wrapper for a strawberry-flavored Kit-Kat. There wasn’t any residue inside of it, but it didn’t look old or worn out. 

“It could,” said Izuku, “but it could also just be pollution brought in from the sea and wind. Candy wrappers wind up everywhere, even atop tall mountains and deep inside jungles.” He didn’t know whether he wanted somebody else to be there or not. Another person could help rescue them… but they could also be hostile. 

Dynamight sniffed at it for a few seconds before putting it down. Then, with a confused look on his face, he sniffed the air. He shook his head and continued forward. “I thought I smelled… never mind,” he said.

Izuku looked down in embarrassment. He knew exactly what Dynamight had smelled. He was having another wave of pre-heat. If Dynamight figured out that he was an Omega, any chance to earn his respect was gone. He needed to get off this island as quickly as possible. 

Dynamight stopped to size up a tree. He knocked against the wood. “Looks sturdy enough. Now get out of the way; I can’t be precise with where this fucker’s gonna fall.”

Izuku scurried back until he was out of the tree’s range and put his hands over his ears. Dynamight attacked the tree with a powerful explosion. The tree shook, but didn’t fall over.

Dynamight shook his head and threw another strong explosion at the tree, this one even larger than before. Dirt and sand flew in all directions. The tree’s leaves all shot away first, then the tree itself cracked and toppled over. 

“Perfect,” said Dynamight, wiping his brow. “A few more of those and we’ll be off of this shithole.”

Dynamight and Izuku worked through the day on the raft. Dynamight felled the trees, then the two of them worked together to push them to the beach. Dynamight seemed surprised at first that Izuku could do his share of the heavy lifting. Izuku had never wanted to be the stereotypical weak Omega, so he had taken working out seriously until he was stronger than most Betas. He’d never thought that it would pay off like this.

When the sun set below the horizon, they finished hauling the final log to the beach. Both of them were drenched in sweat. Izuku was shaking from exertion. With a strained grunt, he set down his end of the log. Dynamight placed the other end down and gave Izuku a nod of respect. The full moon illuminated his face, giving a silver shine to his breathtaking beauty. 

“For a fucking reporter, you’re a lot less useless than I thought,” he said.

“Thanks.” He turned his head so Dynamight wouldn’t see the smile stretching across his face. Why did such a small, backhanded compliment make him so giddy? 

“I’m gonna get us some fish.” Dynamight called as he waded into the ocean. His cuts had healed enough that Izuku figured it was likely no longer a danger.

Izuku sat down on one of the logs they had made. They’d only stopped a couple of times to eat some coconuts, so he was starving. 

It was nice to watch him by the moonlight. There was something so unique and alluring about Dynamight that made Izuku glad just to observe. He had the stirrings of pre-heat again and felt relieved that Dynamight was off in the water, not nearby to notice. Although, strangely, part of him wished that Dynamight was right next to him…

A thunderous explosion from Dynamight sent water spraying everywhere. Izuku wiped his face off and spit out brine. His tattered clothes were drenched.

Dynamight waded through the waves, picking up the dead fish as they floated to the top. He looked proud as he brought the fish back to the beach. Izuku’s stomach rumbled. 

“Wish we had some way of cooking them,” said Dynamight. He set the fish down on the log next to Izuku.

“Can’t you make a fire with your explosions?”

“Usually, my explosions are over too quickly to set anything on fire. I’ve set things on fire before by accident, but I’ve never tried to.” 

“No time better than now to try. Some coconut husks should be easy to light.” 

Dynamight’s permanent scowl loosened at his words. The two gathered coconuts and put them over a pile of loose twigs and logs, which they wedged between two boulders.

“I don’t usually try to make small explosions,” Dynamight grumbled. He cupped his hands over the kindling and let loose a tiny boom. The flash of light briefly showed the concentration in his features. The twigs and coconut husks dislodged from between the boulders and scattered across the beach. “Fuck damnit!”

As they gathered up the kindling again, clouds moved in to block out some of the stars. The full moon still allowed them to make out what they were doing. When Dynamight was turned away, Izuku would stop what he was doing to gaze at him for a few seconds before snapping back to reality and collecting the twigs. A couple of times, he felt sure Dynamight was doing the same, but he could never catch him in the act.

The second attempt at fire went exactly like the first. So did the third, and the fourth, and by the fifth, Izuku offered to just eat the fish raw, but Dynamight insisted that he wasn’t going to fucking give up. More clouds had moved in, so the full moon only gave light when it peeked through the holes.

Finally, Dynamight’s explosion lit a tiny ember in one of the coconut husks. It had taken a lot of effort after a rough start, but the spark was there, undeniable. He cupped it and blew on it to increase the flame until it was big enough to stay alive on its own. Then he went to grab the fish while Izuku tidied up the sticks. He set a couple of sticks above the fire for the fish to lie on.

More clouds moved in above them, blotting out the moon. Only the fire gave them light. The way the light flickered over the sharp lines of Dynamight’s face fascinated Izuku. He couldn’t keep his eyes away. Dynamight stared back at him, and instead of looking away in embarrassment as his instincts told him to, he held Dynamight’s gaze. The two stayed looking at each other over the fire for a long moment.

It was Izuku who broke away first. “The fish is ready,” he muttered.

A tiny drop of rain landed on Izuku as he took his first bite. Dynamight scowled and glanced up. “Looks like we can’t leave tonight, then.”

“You were going to leave in the middle of the night?”

“I just want this whole damn thing over. I can’t… I can’t fucking keep being around you.” He said the final word like an insult.

Izuku looked down into the fire. He’d thought they were making progress. That Dynamight was hating him less, even growing to appreciate him. He supposed he’d been reading into things too much. He’d been arrogant to think he could get through Dynamight’s shell when all other reporters had failed, especially so quickly and in such an extreme situation. 

He had to fight to keep tears from blurring his eyes. There was something about Dynamight – some strange feeling that grasped at Izuku’s insides – that made him different from any other hero he’d reported on. More important, and not just because of how powerful he was.

He finished off his fish in silence. The raindrops plopping against his skin grew bigger until they formed rivulets that carried away the salt that had remained there from his sweat and when he had swum with Dynamight in the ocean.

He worked up the courage to speak as they walked back to their makeshift shelter. “We can’t both be asleep tonight. There might be another snake, or something else. I’ll take first shift.” He still wanted to make himself useful, to show Dynamight that he was more than his first impression as an annoying reporter. Secretly, he planned to stay up the whole night so Dynamight could rest. The hero had been through enough and needed it.

Dynamight snorted. “The fuck you are. I’m the hero here. When you’re strong like me, you don’t need as much sleep. I’ll watch over you.”

“That’s not fair. You’re going to be the one to propel us off the island. You can’t stay up all night, or you’ll be less vigilant for any kind of ocean dangers. I want – I need you to be stronger than ever tomorrow.”

Thunder rang out as they made their way into the shelter. It was broken from the snake fight, but there was still enough space inside to keep dry. 

“Look,” said Dynamight. “I can’t sleep right now. There are things… things I have to think about.” His hand rested on Izuku’s knee. “I’ll wake you up for a shift when I get tired. Don’t worry about me being strong enough for tomorrow. I’m the strongest hero in the world.”

Dynamight’s hand on his knee felt like the lightning outside was striking him. It was different than when Dynamight had grabbed him to save his life on the plane. He was touching Izuku for no other reason than that he wanted to. Izuku wanted to stay touching him forever. But of course, eventually the hero moved his hand away.

“But–”

“I’m going to be up whether you’re up or not. It’s your choice whether you sleep.”

With a grumble, Izuku lay down and closed his eyes. He, too, had things to think about, but the day’s exercise had left him exhausted. He supposed it wasn’t as big a deal to Dynamight, who spent so much more time training his body.

Dynamight’s hands grabbed him roughly and dragged him out of the shelter, jolting him awake. 

“Izuku! Wake up!” Dynamight’s voice was shaking with… panic? Izuku shot up and looked around.

Nearby flames lit up the night, dancing toward them across the treetops. The scent of smoke filled the air. Dynamight pulled Izuku onto his back. Izuku grasped him tightly.

Chapter Text

The wall of flames spreading through the trees rushed at them faster than Izuku thought fire could move, engulfing their shelter just as Dynamight launched the two of them skyward. The heat touched Izuku’s feet before a second blast brought them far above the island so quickly that Izuku had to fight to hold in his dinner.

“If it’s not one fucking thing, it’s another,” Dynamight shouted in-between explosions. “I thought tropical islands were too wet to burn.”

“They usually are. I guess we got an unlucky lightning strike.”

The morning light showed the blackened trees behind the fire and the lush forest in front of it. The fire moved quickly, but already seemed to be dying down.

“It already burned out behind those rocks. The fire probably won’t come back if we go there.” He adjusted his grip on Izuku and they headed to a different part of the beach. Dynamight made an ungraceful landing that had them both toppling into the sand. 

With his head against the sand, Izuku heard a strange noise – a high-pitched note played over and over. He shook his head. His ears were ringing from being right by Dynamight’s explosions. He didn’t know how Dynamight hadn’t lost all of his hearing yet.

The ground quivered for a few moments and then went still. 

“All that raft building for nothing,” said Dynamight. “Now we have to start over from the damn beginning.” 

Izuku agonized for a few seconds over whether it was okay to do so, but eventually he decided: If Dynamight could touch him, he could touch Dynamight. He put his hand onto Dynamight’s shoulder, and Dynamight made no indication that the contact was unwanted. “We’re in this together. It won’t be long before we’re right back in Japan. Back in our beds.” Back in their beds, alone, away from each other. Well, that was how Dynamight wanted it. So it was okay.

Izuku took his hand off Dynamight’s shoulder perhaps a moment later than was necessary. 

“I’ll get us some more fish,” said Dynamight, turning away perhaps a moment later than was necessary. “We’ll eat them raw today since all the kindling seems to have burned away.”

“I’ll, uh, start making a shelter.” It suddenly seemed massively important to get done right now. The thought of building a new one made him unreasonably giddy.

“Out of what? I was thinking we’d go to another part of the island later once the fire’s gone and make one there.”

“Uh, stuff,” said Izuku. He was distracted by looking for stuff to make a shelter out of. 

The sand by the water was soft, at least, but it seemed like the only soft thing around. What plant life was left was scorched and brittle, hardly shelter material. The lack of soft items or any nearby cover made him antsy. He took his frayed shirt off and set it in a scoop in the sand. It seemed like a poor start…

He shook his head. A start to what? What on earth was he doing? He put his shirt back on. Dynamight was right. They would make shelter after they ate, somewhere where there were more materials at hand. He didn’t know what had gotten into him. 

Dynamight came back with his arms full of fish and seaweed. “Just like sushi except there’s no rice or condiments and also the seaweed is still wet,” he said. It wasn’t the most appetizing meal, but he needed the energy to go make a shelter once they got somewhere more amenable to building one. 

The idea of sleeping somewhere nice and soft kept returning to his mind. He really missed his bed. He wished he had a thousand blankets.

“You smell… different.” said Dynamight as he picked bones out of his fish.

“Different bad?”

“No, not at all. It’s… hard to describe. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be back home soon.”

He knew how he smelled. Every passing moment, he smelled more like an Omega. He felt embarrassed at Dynamight noticing, but of course he would notice. He was an Alpha, after all, with a sensitive nose for Omega pheromones. 

When they finished eating, they began walking along the beach to get to a more tree-filled area. Izuku had kind of hoped he would get carried in the air again, but Dynamight just started walking and didn’t bring it up, so Izuku didn’t bring it up either.

As Dynamight walked, He would sometimes close his eyes, slow down, and let his head droop before shaking his head and focusing again on the trek. He must have been extremely tired. Izuku wanted to suggest that he rest, but he already knew how that would go. 

Eventually, the burnt tree trunks gave way to healthy trees and lush vegetation. 

“Great, now I can build a shelter,” said Izuku.

Dynamight shook his head, yawning. “We have to get back to building a raft first. We might not even need a shelter.” 

Izuku nodded, and he meant to follow Dynamight to help him carry more logs once he knocked over more trees, but he found himself instead touching a leaf that felt especially soft. It would be perfect. A bunch of them together could make a sort of natural mattress. 

He bundled as many as he could in his arms and looked for a good place to put them. There weren’t any convenient overhanging rocks like where they first landed on the beach. He was gathering fallen branches that looked good to fasten together when he noticed he hadn’t heard Dynamight blasting apart any trees. 

Dynamight’s scent was unmistakable on the breeze. If he weren’t so worried, he’d love to just sit around inhaling it for a while. Instead, he dropped his branches and rushed after the smell. He shouldn’t have left Dynamight’s side even for a second! They needed to stick together! Why was he so obsessed with gathering leaves and branches when the island was dangerous?

He found Dynamight safely asleep with his back against a tree and breathed a sigh of relief. A beetle crawled across Dynamight’s arm, and Izuku tenderly swept it away.

With Dynamight asleep, he could take all the time in the world to gaze at his handsome visage and take in delicious breaths of air, savoring his scent. He brought his nose closer and closer, as close as he dared without disturbing the hero. Something about that scent calmed all of his worries. He wished he could have the shirt Dynamight was wearing just to be cocooned in his musk. 

The thought of leaving the scent for too long sent a cold lump down his stomach. He would have to build a shelter around Dynamight. He was glad Dynamight had shown him earlier how to make the basic structure. He sped through that part to get to the really interesting part: filling it with as many soft leaves as possible.

The longer Dynamight slept inside the shelter, the more his scent permeated every inch. Izuku loved being in there. 

He was halfway through bringing another pile of soft leaves in when he realized what he was doing.

He wasn’t just being practical and making a shelter so the two of them could survive. 

He was nesting.

Part of him wanted to haul all the mosses and leaves he had found out of the shelter so that Dynamight wouldn’t know. But he had grown so attached to his nest that he couldn’t do it. 

Nesting meant heat was right around the corner. And the only Alpha around was Dynamight…

He imagined Dynamight helping him through his heat. He didn’t ask for his mind to go there, but it did, easily and automatically. And he had to face it: he liked what he imagined. He… he liked Dynamight.

He wanted to have Dynamight around for his heat. He really did, and admitting it to himself made him want it even more. But he knew Dynamight wouldn’t want to be there. It would be an unfair thing to ask. Dynamight didn’t return any of the feelings Izuku had developed for him. 

Tears welled up in Izuku’s eyes. He always got emotional before his heats, back before he got on suppressants. He was so physically close to the perfect man, but emotionally, they might as well live on different planets. 

The urge to put more soft things into the shelter returned. He tried to fight it for a while, but eventually he reasoned that he couldn’t make it more obvious that he was nesting than he already had. 

Well, unless he rubbed the leaves against his scent glands. When he found himself doing that, he immediately ripped the leaves up and tossed them away. He definitely couldn’t explain that as just part of making a nice shelter.

He wished he could hide his smell. It was only a matter of time before Dynamight figured everything out, and he would hate Izuku for tricking him. If only he really were a normal Beta reporter.

When he next returned to the shelter, Dynamight was standing outside of it. 

Izuku walked up nervously. “I…” He tried to think of an excuse. 

“I have to say, I’m impressed,” Dynamight said, and Izuku’s heart jumped. “I fucked up by falling asleep, I’ll admit it. This shelter you built… it’s better than anything I could have made.”

The compliments had Izuku’s face heating up. He couldn’t help but crack a massive grin. He didn’t mention anything about Izuku being an Omega or nesting. Was he really that oblivious? Well, he did live without an Omega around, so maybe he just didn’t know all of the signs of heat. 

Dynamight sighed. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I’ve never met a reporter like you. Hell, ever since the plane went down, you haven’t even been bugging me with questions.”

“I mean, the recorder is in some shark’s guts by now.”

“Still, you could have been looking for answers, wanting to memorize everything for your precious future article. And you could have not helped out at all, just letting me do all the work because I’m a hero.”

“I didn’t want to be useless.”

“That’s not a common attitude, at least among the people who try to hang around celebrities. Let’s go back to building that raft.”

The two walked together, Izuku fighting to stay calm. Dynamight was feeling good about him. He could have run around the island fifty times. He kept trying to think of excuses to touch Dynamight, but they all ended up being too weird to pull off in real life. 

He let Dynamight pull ahead so he could better stare at the way his back muscles moved under his shirt and savor his smell. He wished Dynamight would take the shirt off, but it was considered inappropriate for Alphas to lose their clothes around Betas or Omegas, even when doing hard work in the heat. His shirt was torn in a few places from the snake fight, and Izuku imagined (hoped) it would fall apart after another couple of days. 

They worked hard for hours on taking down trees and bringing the logs to the beach. Izuku loved the way Dynamight’s sweat increased his scent. The work felt much easier than it had the previous day, just because Dynamight’s attitude towards him had improved.

“Dynamight…” he said, not even knowing where the sentence was headed. He couldn’t confess. He couldn’t. But he could at least hear Dynamight’s voice in return.

“You can just call me fucking Bakugou. What is it?”

“B-bakugou,” he said, loving the way it sounded on his tongue. He wished he could keep saying it forever, slowly, quickly, repeatedly, but he knew that would sound weird in front of Bakugou. “I… I just think now would be a good time to get some more, uh, coconuts, to make up for the water we’re sweating out.”

The Omega in him was screaming at him to say something more. To reach out to this beautiful, incredible-smelling Alpha and beg him to claim him. But he refused to disrupt the balance they had going on. Bakugou seemed to like him now, and he couldn’t ruin that. 

It was once again late at night when they finished their raft. Izuku kept thinking about his nest and how much he wanted to rub his scent in it and invite his Alpha in – no, not his Alpha. The Alpha who thought of him a bit more highly than before, but didn’t have any feelings for him. Couldn’t have any feelings, even, because he didn’t even know Izuku was an Omega. 

But he could still invite him inside. “You aren’t seriously thinking of trying to head back to Japan tonight, are you?” he asked. 

“Of course I am. This island fucking sucks.”

“B-but I spent so much time on that shelter,” he said, not mentioning how he worried about Bakugou taking such a long trip without enough sleep. “Can’t we just set off in the morning?”

After a long pause, Bakugou huffed. “I guess. Don’t put it in your article, alright?”

“Of course. The only thing that will go in that article is how much of a badass hero you were.”

They had more fish for dinner and walked back to Izuku’s nest. It was too dark to see, but he loved the sound and smell of Bakugou going to sleep. He could tell by scent that Bakugou enjoyed the soft piles of leaves that Izuku had placed. It satisfied Izuku’s deep instincts to know that the Alpha was accepting his nest. 

As soon as Bakugou was fully asleep, Izuku couldn’t resist the urge any longer. He rubbed his scent glands all over the nest, making it truly feel like home. He would almost be sad to leave tomorrow, but he was glad he would at least not have to deal with the embarrassment of going into heat with Bakugou around. He laid his hand gently on Bakugou’s arm, and Bakugou emitted a slightly happier scent.

Between the Alpha’s soothing scent and his soft nest, as much as he tried to stay awake, Izuku eventually drifted to sleep. 

This time, when he woke up, it was still dark and Bakugou was still asleep. It wasn’t a snake or a fire that woke him up. It was his own body. He felt hot all over – his cheeks, his arms, his legs, and especially his groin. His underwear was soaked with slick. The scent of the Alpha next to him was overpowering him. 

His clothes felt like they were burying him, constricting him like the snake. He quickly stripped them off. He felt desperate, needy, and let out a whine. He needed to wake up his Alpha and beg for release. But… no! Not now! He covered his mouth, glad that Bakugou was undisturbed next to him. 

He thought he’d have more time! He needed more time! He couldn’t go into heat now!

Chapter Text

Izuku’s heart hammered against his ribs. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to bolt out of there, grab anything with a whiff of his scent, and hide out for his whole heat so that Bakugou wouldn’t find out. He could say that some animal attacked him. It was shameful and cowardly, but not as shameful as being an Omega in heat. 

He took a crouched step toward the shelter’s exit. Then another. Almost there-

But his body betrayed him mid-stride. His legs locked, buckled, and he sank back into the pile.

The instincts in his body were too strong. He couldn’t leave his nest, not for anything, especially not when the Alpha was there. 

The Alpha could fix everything. He needed the Alpha so badly. Every bad thought would disappear in the Alpha’s embrace. If the Alpha would only take him, claim him, make him whole…

He strained to keep his hands off of Bakugou. The hero wasn’t his Alpha. He didn’t want Izuku. Their scents hadn’t started naturally adding elements from each other. 

What was he going to do when Bakugou woke up? Bakugou would know his deepest shame. All of the careful relationship building would go toppling down. Maybe, his Omega whispered, he can at least see me as an… outlet for his urges.

Was that what he wanted? It was hard to say no. He wanted so much more, but everything he wanted with Bakugou was an impossible dream.

He took a deep inhale of the Alpha’s scent and touched himself, stroking like his life depended on it with one hand while the other went in and out of his slick-coated hole. “Oh, Bakugou,” he whispered. His rational mind screamed at him to shut up, to stay quiet and hidden, but his Omega screamed louder, begging Bakugou to wake, to smell him, to claim what he was offering.

In the dark, he couldn’t see Bakugou, but his mind’s eye replayed every moment they had spent together, focusing on his bulge and his muscles. He yearned for Bakugou’s knot inside him. The smell of Bakugou around him was making him dizzy and delirious. 

Raindrops started falling on the roof of his nest. Bakugou shifted in his sleep. Izuku buried his nose in the pile of leaves where Bakugou’s arm had moved from. He could never get enough of that scent. He felt sticky heat running down his legs at the overpowering smell. 

His scent glands ached, itched to be bit down on by an Alpha. Scratching at them did nothing. He imagined Bakugou’s teeth buried in them as his knot buried itself in his cunt… 

A deluge of slick washed down his thighs as he panted. It was a small orgasm, not enough, not nearly as much as the Alpha could give him.

He heard Bakugou sniffing the air in his sleep and made himself as quiet as possible. 

“Mmmmm… wha?” Bakugou made sleepy grunts.

It was now or never. He could still leave the nest, make sure Bakugou never saw him like this.

But as embarrassing as it was, his Omega wanted Bakugou to see him like this. And he couldn’t leave the Alpha. 

The sniffing became more pronounced. Bakugou’s smell shifted. He was waking up.

“What the… Midoriya… wha’s goin’ on?” He still sounded half asleep, but every word grew more alert.

“Uh…” Izuku didn’t know what to say. Everything he truly wanted to say, take me, be my Alpha, I want you so bad, he knew he couldn’t.

But the one benefit of a heat was that he didn’t have to use words. 

After a couple of deep sniffs, Bakugou was upon him. His hands digging into Izuku’s shoulders, his bulge grinding against his crotch through his pants. He let loose a dominant roar that shook the nest, then leaned in towards Izuku’s ear. He licked the lobe slowly with his tongue, causing a shiver to spread throughout Izuku’s body. Izuku bucked his hips back at him. 

“Omega,” he said in a low growl, his scent clouding the air and making Izuku lightheaded. “You’re m…”

Bakugou stopped and pulled himself away, arms shaking as if it took more exertion to do so than to lift heavy logs for the raft earlier. 

“Fuck,” he snarled.

“A-alpha, please…” Izuku tried to pull him back, whining and bucking his hips against the air. Now that he had felt the presence of Bakugou’s aroused cock, even with all the fabric in between them, how could he live without it deep inside him?

“Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” 

“I need you… Alpha…” It was hard to think coherently anymore with so much of Bakugou’s scent in his system and the memory of his tongue across his ear.

“You don’t. You don’t actually want this. You’ll say anything because you’re in fucking heat.”

Tears came to Izuku’s eyes. “That’s not true! I want you more than anything!” His hands grasped at Bakugou’s unmoving body, feeling the hard, rigid muscles covered in sweat, desperate to memorize him.

“I can’t be around you. Fucking hell, why do I have to deal with this? I– I need to go.”

The thought of him leaving horrified Izuku. “Can’t you stay? Just for a while? Let us be Alpha and Omega.” 

“That’s the heat talking, not you. Of all the… do you know how hard this is on me? If you had just told me… whatever. See you in two days.”

Bakugou stood up. Izuku clung to him as tightly as he could. He couldn’t let the Alpha leave him all alone. He couldn’t face his heat without the Alpha.

“Get off me, damnit!”

He only gripped Bakugou tighter. He could feel his own pheromones releasing stronger than ever, trying to convince the Alpha to stay.

“Get off me, you stupid Omega. I– I don’t want anything to do with you! Nobody would want to spend a heat with a weak little extra like you!”

The words stung, but he remained attached to the Alpha. If the Alpha just stayed a little bit longer, he would understand, surely, that this was where he was meant to be.

“Get off me,” he commanded, an Alpha Order, and Izuku’s arms went limp. He fell backward into a pile of soft leaves. “And stay there.”

Izuku whimpered as Bakugou slowly left the nest. It turned to full-on wailing when he heard the explosion and felt it rattle the ground, signifying the Alpha was leaving fast.

Alphas weren’t supposed to be able to resist Omegas in heat. How could this happen? When the Order wore off, he poked his head out of the nest, but he couldn’t make himself leave. Going out into the rain when he was in heat… he wasn’t like Bakugou, strong enough to ignore his instincts. 

His stomach churned, but he couldn’t make himself vomit. Knife-like cramps twisted through his chest and abdomen. How could the Alpha leave him like this? When he sniffed deeply in the place Bakugou had slept, he felt slightly better. He imagined Bakugou’s strong, reassuring arms wrapped around him and cried out from how it wasn’t real. 

He spent the rest of the day in a daze, sometimes begging out loud for the Alpha to return, sometimes rubbing himself while sniffing at Bakugou’s slowly weakening scent. 

How had he gone so wrong? How had he become so unlovable that an Alpha could ignore him while he was in heat? Why did Bakugou hate him so much?

Sometimes he would hear him in the distance. Great, booming explosions and what sounded like agonized howls. Whenever they went silent, he worried about Bakugou being in trouble, but then the explosions would continue, and he’d know the hero was okay. Maybe he was making a new raft. Maybe he was so mad at Izuku, so disgusted with him that he’d abandon Izuku on the island. 

He slept terribly, waking up a few times to the distant booming of explosions. Even though they had only slept next to each other for a few nights, he was already used to Bakugou’s presence and found it hard to sleep without him. His heat kept him desperate, grabbing tightly to a lump of moss like it was Bakugou’s hand. 

Izuku’s suitcase had torn open, and all of his things were rushing around him, bumping into him and the walls of the plane. Whenever he caught a glimpse of a window, it showed the sea, rushing closer, growing bigger and hungrier. He was falling, falling to his doom, and when he reached out his hands for his savior, he wasn’t there. He remembered where the Alpha was supposed to be, where his hands were supposed to grasp. Nobody was there. Just the sea, swelling up to reach for him.

“Bakugou!” he tried to shout, but the word came out as a whisper. Where was the Alpha?

Right before the plane hit the water, he stopped falling. The whirlwind of objects around him gently set themselves down against the floor as a familiar, deep, perfect smell filled his nostrils. The water receded. The plane was flying again. And in the pilot’s seat… was that…?

Izuku opened his eyes to the darkness of the nest around him. He reached out to the Alpha, but of course he wasn’t there. But something smelled different. 

He stumbled to the door. He still didn’t think he could manage to override his instinct and leave, but he could always aim his pee outside of the nest to not make it dirty. Not make it dirtier than it already was, all soaked in his slick.

Outside the nest were dozens of coconuts, lined up by the door, ready to drink. 

Each one smelled of Bakugou.

So the scent had woken him up. Bakugou had cared, somehow, enough to help him rehydrate. Being in heat meant losing a lot of liquid. 

He gently brought the closest coconut to his face and rubbed it against himself. The smell was so pleasant and calming. He needed it in his nest. 

All of the coconuts made their way inside. They took up a lot of space, almost as much as Bakugou, so he arranged them in his general shape. The fresh smell excited him and soon he was rubbing himself frantically, imagining the same hands that had carried the coconuts grasping his waist firmly as he thrust himself inside. 

The smell carried him over the edge, but he found himself wanting more. He’d been producing so much of his own scent that the nest mostly smelled like him and hardly at all like Bakugou. The whole place was sticky with his slick. It was hard to find motivation to clean up when the Alpha was gone.

Bakugou’s quirk thundered in the distance. How could he have cared enough to deposit the coconuts but not wanted to stay with Izuku at all? It didn’t make sense. 

He spent the rest of the day imagining Bakugou with him, crying out for Bakugou, and digging through his nest for areas Bakugou had touched, hoping to find places where the scent had been better preserved. His nest was a wreck by the end.

Things would be so different with a single touch from Bakugou. He didn’t even have to mate if Izuku disgusted him so much. Izuku just wanted him to lay his hand on Izuku’s scent glands, or rub their cheeks together, anything. 

Izuku curled around his coconuts, body grinding against the hardness. Outside, Bakugou's explosions detonated on the wind, always nearby, but never close.

Tears filled his eyes as he fell asleep alone. 

Once again, Izuku’s nightmares were interrupted in the morning by the Alpha’s scent. The scent was like cool water on a burn. He tripped over himself, heart racing, but eventually made his way outside, hoping for more coconuts to at least be able to sniff and imagine Bakugou’s presence.

Instead, the scent grew even stronger as he opened his door and saw Bakugou looming at the shelter’s entrance, backlit by blinding sunlight, sneering down at him, arms crossed.

In fantasizing so much about Bakugou, he had blurred over certain features in his mind’s eye. He was shocked at how the real man was even more handsome. It helped that there were new, large rips down his shirt, which barely hung on to his incredibly muscled frame.

"Is your fucking heat over?" His nostrils flared, and his glare intensified. "Shit. I can still smell it on you." He set the coconuts at Izuku's feet.

"Come find me when it's done," he said, already out the door.

“Wait! Alpha, please!” he sank to his knees. “I need you. You don’t have to… I need your touch… your scent, please. I’ll do anything!” he cried, but Bakugou had already disappeared into the trees. 

Izuku took big gulps of the air, trying to draw Bakugou’s scent toward him. The coconuts weren’t enough. They didn’t smell enough like Alpha. The Omega in him was hurting so badly it made him nauseous. He rocked himself inside his nest as he listened to the distant explosions.

Eventually, the need lessened. One minute, he clawed at his nest, the next he felt lucid enough to feel shame about his begging. The fog in his head slowly dissipated. He clung less tightly to the scent of the coconuts and took longer breaks between rubbing himself. He felt like he could breathe again. His body still ached with need, but it was less all-encompassing.

He never wanted to go off heat suppressants again. 

His clothes had been shredded by the feral grasping around he had done in heat. There were leaves, large enough to cover him but still embarrassingly small. He wished he didn’t have to go out like this, to face Bakugou… 

Thinking about how he had acted around the Alpha made him wince. There went any respect he had earned through being helpful earlier. How could he have been that much of a desperate slut? It was clear Bakugou really didn’t want him, and as much as that hurt, he needed to just deal with it. Once they left the island, he could avoid the hero forever. Take a new job, so he wouldn’t even accidentally be in the same room as him. It stung deep down to contemplate never seeing Bakugou again, but he knew he had blown it so badly that it was the only logical choice.

He used the shreds of his clothes to tie a couple of larger leaves around his waist, took a deep breath, and stepped outside. 

Bakugou’s scent stood out among the trees. The scent still had a bit of a hold on him, still made him feel a bit of comfort, still turned him on. He tried to ignore his feelings. 

He practiced apologies in his head. Bakugou deserved a big one.

As he got closer, a new scent joined Bakugou’s. He could have sworn he’d smelled it before. The further he walked, the stronger it grew. It was an Alpha’s scent, mixed with blood, showing clear signs of distress.

When he pushed through a row of trees, he found Bakugou, kneeling over a rock by a creek. Splayed out on the rock, breathing shakily, naked aside from a pair of grey briefs, was the hero Red Riot.

Chapter Text

Red Riot had a nasty bump on his forehead covered in dried blood. Scratches and bruises covered his body, and his underwear was torn. One of his legs was at an awkward angle, suggesting it was broken. 

“What happened?” asked Izuku, approaching slowly.

“No fucking idea. I found him just before you did. He’s not responding to his name.”

“Red Riot?” asked Izuku. The Alpha didn’t say anything. Something was strange about him. Izuku had done reporting on Red Riot before and seen him up close. And he was an Alpha who loved to show off his body on social media. So Izuku knew how big Red Riot’s muscles were supposed to be – much bigger than the ones in front of Izuku. 

“What the…” Bakugou poked Red Riot’s arm. “He had a scar right here from his fight against Necrosword. There’s no scar now.” 

“Does he have a brother or something?”

Bakugou shook his head. “He’s got one ten years younger, not an identical twin.” 

“I can stay and watch him while you get food and water to help him.”

Bakugou narrowed his eyes, looked at Red Riot, then looked at Izuku. “Absolutely not.” He moved between the two of them, anger and suspicion on his face. 

“...Omega… smell…” muttered Red Riot. His eyes twitched but didn’t open fully. 

Bakugou let loose a low growl. “Absolutely. Fucking. Not. Whatever left him in this condition could get you if I leave you alone again.”

“But we can’t just leave him like this! Isn’t Red Riot your friend?”

“I wasn’t going to leave him like this. I just…” he gritted his teeth. “Alright. I can go get some coconuts while you watch him. But I don’t want you getting too close to him. You could hurt him. Or he could hurt you if he wakes up disoriented.” He took a stick and drew a large circle around Red Riot in the damp soil. “Don’t go past the fucking circle unless it’s an emergency. I won’t be far.”

Izuku nodded. Bakugou leapt away, blasting furiously through gaps in the trees. 

Red Riot’s eyes fluttered open. “Trees… pain… rocks… Omega smell… where– where am I?” 

“We’re all stranded on an island.”

“What’s my…” he stopped and fell asleep again. 

Part of him still felt traces of heat, but he didn’t want to get closer to this other Alpha. He only wanted to be with Bakugou, even though he knew it wasn’t possible.

Bakugou returned after a couple of minutes, almost crashing into him. “You didn’t go past the line, did you?”

Izuku shook his head. “He woke up for a bit, but he didn’t say much. He seemed confused.”

Bakugou sighed, his head turned away from Izuku. “He’s in no state to be moved around. Guess we’re stuck here a while longer.” He punched open a coconut and sat by Red Riot.

“I… I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” said Izuku. “For– for what I said. When I was in heat.”

“But you’re not sorry for not even warning me that was gonna happen?”

Izuku looked down. “I thought I’d be back in Japan before it did.”

“You have no fucking idea what being around an Omega in heat is like. I could have prepared myself. I could have gotten out of here faster instead of wasting my time on sleep.”

“You were only around me in my heat for what, five minutes? I had to deal with my heat on my own for days!” He stopped and realized how pushy he sounded when he was supposed to be apologizing. “I’m sorry. I’m sure if Red Riot is here, other heroes are coming to find us. You won’t have to deal with me much longer.”

“I didn’t have to be right next to you. Your damn stench spread across the whole island. An Omega in heat, not even sealed up in a room, fills the air for miles. I couldn’t really get away from you.”

“What kind of Alpha hates the smell of Omegas that much?”

Bakugou growled. “Are you serious? Hate? It took every ounce of self control I had not to stay in your bear trap of a nest. No Alpha who hasn’t gone through extensive pro hero training could resist that. You’re fucking welcome for me not taking advantage of you when you were vulnerable.”

“But… you said you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Yeah, I had to get you the fuck off of me before you could convince me to stick around.”

Izuku felt his cheeks heat up, followed by his ears and the rest of his face. Bakugou hadn’t been snubbing him, he’d been looking out for him, which would have been obvious if his mind weren’t still a bit heat-addled. A large part of him did want Bakugou to have claimed him when he was in heat – but a larger part of him was grateful that the Alpha was able to avoid doing so. Being able to avoid his instincts in order to protect Izuku from himself only made Bakugou more attractive. 

Red Riot groaned. His eyes fluttered open. “Who– who are you guys?”

“Has living like this changed my appearance that much? I’m Katsuki.”

He stared up blankly. “I must have forgotten you, it’s been a long time, sorry.”

“What the fuck are you playing at? Are you pissed at me for not messaging you when I’ve been trapped on a goddamn island in the middle of nowhere?”

“What?”

“I didn’t have a way of contacting you from here, moron.”

“I don’t get it. Why would you… contact me?”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

Izuku stepped forward, ignoring the line of the circle. “Hey, I think he’s got some memory issues, Bakugou.” He turned to Red Riot. “Do you remember your name? How you got here?”

Red Riot tried to sit up, winced, and lay back down. “Uh, come to think of it, I don’t know what my name is, no. Or how I got here. Musta forgot.”

Bakugou scooted over, positioning himself between Izuku and Red Riot. “If you really did forget… you’re a superhero. Kirishima Eijiro is your name. The three of us are trapped on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You must have come by plane or boat, possibly looking for us, and crashed or run into some sort of danger. There’s no way you’re alone.”

“I’m a hero? That’s amazing.” He clenched a fist. “So manly…” 

“That’s right. Your hero name is Red Riot and you’ve saved countless lives from villains.”

“I like the sound of that.” He gave a shark-toothed grin. “And who’s the Omega? Is he yours?”

Izuku blushed at the thought. Some part of him wanted to say yes, just to see what would happen. Maybe Bakugou would even go along with it. He discarded the thought. “My name is Midoriya. I’m a reporter on heroes and I was doing an interview with Bakugou when our plane crashed.”

“An Omega… reporter? Since when do Omegas become reporters?”

A growl sounded from deep within Bakugou. “Since one of them managed to be fucking good enough, you got a problem with that?”

Good enough? Since when did Bakugou have anything but disdain for reporters? A warm bubble of happiness grew in Izuku’s chest from being defended. 

“I don’t have a problem with it, it’s just weird.”

“Only thing weird is how great at his job he is. If an Omega wants to be a reporter, that’s his goddamn right.”

Izuku blushed and looked down. Did Bakugou really think he was good at his job? 

Red Riot winked. “Maybe I’ll answer a few questions for you, then, honey, if I’m really a big hero.”

Bakugou roared and leaned in close to Red Riot, eyes wide, crazy, and teeth bared. He was so much bigger than Red Riot, a massive ball of muscle and barely restrained fury. His hands thumped down above Red Riot’s shoulders. “Don’t. FUCKING. Talk to him. Like that.” 

Red Riot whimpered. “U-understood.”

“You already have an Omega. You don’t have any need for another one,” Bakugou said, slowly backing off.

“I do? Lucky me. Wish I could remember them.”

“Better start remembering quickly.” Bakugou glared at him. “Wait a minute. Where’s your bite?”

Red Riot put a hand on his scent gland, the one where his Omega would have given him a reciprocal claiming bite after he had claimed his Omega. “Dunno, maybe I don’t have an Omega after all.”

Izuku leaned forward to peek at Red Riot’s unmarked scent gland. “You’ve been with Okuno for three years. I’ve taken pictures of the two of you together and you definitely had the scars from when you claimed each other. What’s going on?”

“Well don’t ask me,” said Red Riot. His eyes fluttered. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna just rest…” He returned to sleep.

“Something fishy’s going on and I don’t like it,” said Bakugou. “There are people out there with shape-shifting Quirks and I think our so-called amnesiac is one of them. You should stay away from him. We don’t know what he’s planning.”

“He’s seriously hurt and he hasn’t done anything to threaten us. And there are Quirks he could have been hit with that would have given him all kinds of side effects, so this could still be Red Riot.”

He shot Izuku an unpleasant glance before quickly turning his head away. “Did you have to wreck all your clothes? For fuck’s sake!” He took the tattered, holey shirt off his back and thrust it at Izuku. 

The shirt was practically more sweat than fabric and smelled strongly of Bakugou. He wished he’d had it during his heat. When he put it on, it reached almost down to his knees. The scent calmed him down, relaxing muscles that he hadn’t even realized were tense. 

Bakugou may have been able to prevent himself from staring at Izuku, but Izuku was less able to fight his instincts. Without his shirt, Bakugou was a wall of sweat-soaked muscles. His pecs were so huge, it took all of Izuku’s willpower not to feel them up. He had an eight-pack… no. Izuku was counting wrong, distracted by the beauty. He had a ten-pack. God. How was Izuku supposed to just live with that around him? He thought back to when Bakugou had pinned him down and almost taken him, realizing just how close he had gotten to all of those muscles. 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. He could never be with Bakugou. But the memory of that sight could help him the next time he was in heat. He reluctantly forced his eyes away – upward, toward Bakugou’s face. 

Which was smirking at him. 

“Can’t look away, huh, Omega?”

“I, um…” Izuku could feel his face turning bright red as he took a step back. “I’m sorry. Sorry,” he mumbled, barely getting the quiet words out. He took another peek at Bakugou’s mesmerizing muscles, then turned away. “Sorry.”

“Oh? What happened to the intrepid reporter? The brave survivalist? Suddenly you can’t talk?”

“I said I was sorry…”

“What’s that? Still can’t hear you.”

“I’m sorry, okay! I’m sorry for looking at you like that. I have no right after how I acted in heat. And I’m sorry for not telling you I could be going into heat, and I’m sorry for holding you back so much, and I’m sorry for everything.” Tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

There was silence for a while, aside from Red Riot groaning in his sleep. 

“Midoriya, you don’t have to apologize for all that. The lying part, sure, but I don’t hold against you how you acted in heat. And you haven’t held me back. You’ve… how can I put this… done the opposite. The opposite of holding me back.”

“You mean… helped you?”

“Absolutely fucking not. Heroes don’t need help. You have simply done the opposite of holding me back, and you’ve done a lot of it. Damnit, I don’t know what it is about you, but I can’t stay mad at you. Which is fucking weird because I can stay mad at the whole damn world and everybody else in it easily enough.”

Izuku felt an almost painful swelling of hope in his chest. “Bakugou…”

“If you’re gonna put my name on your tongue, say it like a fucking normal-ass person. And let me tell you what the worst fucking apology in your whole fucked up list was. I got absolutely zero problem with you looking at me like that.”

Izuku gasped and turned around. The muscles were all right there where he had left them. He felt a dizzying whiplash. Bakugou was fine with him staring. So that meant… did that mean… that Bakugou could have feelings for him? Or maybe not full-fledged feelings. Proto-feelings, at least? A spark… that needed more kindling to turn into a real fire? 

He felt like he needed to say something, but the words were jammed somewhere between brain and tongue.

At least with his heat fully gone and not distorting his feelings, he could admit to himself that it was good that Bakugou had stayed away from him. It was painful, but he didn’t want an Alpha who would use his heat as an excuse to do things he wasn’t actually ready for. 

“Th-thank you,” he muttered.

“For what?”

“For… for not taking advantage of me. When I was in my heat.”

“It’s just common decency… but that’s another reason to get off of here ASAP. It was fucking impossible to get far enough away from that damn smell trying to draw me back to you. I was losing my mind, trying to lose myself in my quirk in order to distract myself.”

Izuku blushed. “What do I smell like? In heat? I… I don’t know. I’ve been on heat suppressants since I was a teenager and I never asked my mom, since it was too embarrassing.” Why he felt like he could ask Bakugou, he didn’t know.

Bakugou turned around, showing off his incredible back muscles. “You have no idea what you would do to any Alpha who smelled you. If you weren’t on heat suppressants back in Japan, every Alpha in your city would have been at your door trying to court you.” His voice grew lower, tinged with… need? “It’s like a lush, green forest full of prey – prey that invites and teases, perfect for the hunt. A forest you could get lost in for hours exploring, just like when you were a child, but that you can only truly appreciate as an adult.”

Izuku was silent, entranced by Bakugou’s voice. He had never thought about himself like that. 

Bakugou walked behind a tree and peered out at Izuku from behind it. “I need to be… alone with my thoughts for a bit, alright. But I don’t want you to be around this fake Eijiro. Go gather some materials to make a new shelter. I won’t be able to stand going to your nest tonight.”

Izuku ventured into the woods. He felt light on his feet after the “I got zero problem with you looking at me like that” comment. The image of Bakugou shirtless right in front of him kept playing in his mind, so vivid that he ended up tripping into trees a couple of times. 

The direction he picked still smelled like Red Riot – it must be where he came from. Izuku decided to follow the scent. Knowing how the man got here would be useful. He’d followed the scent trails of heroes many times as a reporter.

He decided as he walked that he needed some real answers out of Bakugou. The man was always being cagy, evasive, taunting him or getting angry before answering questions. They might need to stay on the island a long time to make sure Red Riot recovered, and maybe, deep in his heart, he hoped that they could stay together after that. So he needed answers, not just as a reporter, but as a… survival companion? Friend? Potential mate? It was hard to pin down what they were. 

Izuku resolved that he was going to stop being dazzled by Bakugou’s looks and intimidated by his attitude. He was going to get his answers on Bakugou’s life no matter what. His biggest question, of course, was: What was his history with Omegas? 

Red Riot’s trail eventually ended at an unnatural-looking clearing with a large rock in the middle. The grass was all short, and, upon further inspection, had been cut, though not in a long time. It was completely flat aside from the rock, which was about twice as tall as Izuku.

It didn’t just smell like Red Riot. It smelled like a lot of different people had been to the clearing in the past, Red Riot most recently. Some of the smells were vaguely familiar, like people he had interviewed in the past… was that… Chargebolt? Uravity? What was going on?

He circled the rock and sniffed deeper, trying to figure out the exact point Red Riot came from. 

When he put his face closer, he noticed a tiny, almost invisible crack. He followed the crack until it formed a complete rectangle.

A door. 

Chapter Text

Izuku spent a few minutes trying to pry the door open or find a button or handle, but he didn’t have any luck. He made his way back by following Red Riot’s scent trail. 

When he returned to the rock by the creek where Red Riot was sleeping, he heard Bakugou grunting from behind a tree. 

“You okay?” he asked.

Bakugou’s head peeked out, his face red. “Fuck off! Go away!”

Izuku took a couple of steps back. His first thought was that the Alpha was pooping, but he didn’t smell it. No, the Alpha smelled… more seductive than ever, with heightened pheromones. The smell’s power quickly increased, and Izuku found himself rolling his head back instinctively to expose his scent glands. 

He shook his head and stopped. What was he doing? He thought he had decided not to embarrass himself any more with Bakugou around.  

Bakugou’s scent returned to normal and he stepped out from behind the tree. 

“What were you doing back there?” asked Izuku. 

“None of your goddamn business.” 

Izuku started walking toward the tree to investigate, but Bakugou blocked him with his body. “I said none of your goddamn business, you nosy fucking reporter.”

Izuku’s eyes darted down to Bakugou’s bulge, and noticed that it was larger than normal. Almost like the knot was fully present, though it wasn’t erect. 

“You were… uh…”

Bakugou followed Izuku’s eyes down to his bulge. “Great job, deku, you figured it out. Can’t have any goddamn peace on this fucking island.”

Izuku couldn’t help but snicker.

“You think that’s funny, do you? Fucking Omega. I thought you were supposed to be building a shelter.”

“I followed Red Riot’s scent trail.”

Bakugou frowned. “You shouldn’t have done that. It could have been dangerous. You don’t know what kind of gang this fraud brought with him. Or he could have set a trap for you.”

Izuku rolled his eyes. “I didn’t get hurt. clearly. And I found a door! It looks like a rock at first but there’s a door if you look closer and it smells like a bunch of heroes.” His words bubbled out in a rush.

Bakugou cocked his head to the side like a wolf. “What do you mean, a door? With no building or anything? Just standing there?”

“Well, presumably it goes underground. I couldn’t get it open.”

The ground under them shook for a few moments. After the movement stopped, “Red Riot” opened his eyes again. 

“You got any more coconuts?” he asked. “I’m parched, man.”

“What’s your real name?” asked Bakugou before breaking a coconut open.

“Huh? My name? You said it was Eijiro Kirishima, right?” He winced as he sat up. “I feel a bit better now, but I still don’t remember much.”

Bakugou handed the fruit over. “Midoriya here says you came from a door that leads underground. Care to fill us in on what’s going on with that?”

“I don’t know. Seriously.”

Bakugou glanced at Midoriya before turning back to the other man. “Do you think you can walk?”

Red Riot slowly stood up, his face screwing up in pain a couple of times. “Not, uh, not far. Not without maybe leaning on Midoriya…” He grinned. 

A pair of explosions blasted from Bakugou’s hands, making both Red Riot and Midoriya stumble. “You can lean on me. Midoriya, lead the way. I can hardly smell anything with your damn heat-smell lingering around and clogging up my nose.”

Midoriya blushed and set off down the path he’d taken before. It was slow going, with Red Riot limping and occasionally falling, both he and Bakugou swearing as Bakugou caught him. They had to stop to let Red Riot rest several times, Bakugou always glaring at him. 

Finally, they reached the clearing and the rock. Izuku had to show Bakugou the thin line that marked the edge of the door.

“Any of this jog your memory?” Bakugou asked Red Riot. “Maybe you know of an opening mechanism?”

Red Riot shook his head. “I can’t recall ever seeing this place… but…” he frowned, looking off into the distance.

“What is it?” asked Bakugou.

“I don’t… I don’t like it here. I think I should… we should get away from here. Just my gut feeling.”

Bakugou shook his head. “This is where we’re going to set up camp. On the other side from the door so that we’ll hear them before they see us. We can’t leave until we have answers.”

“You almost sound like a reporter yourself,” said Izuku with a chuckle.

Bakugou’s face grew sour. “Looking for answers is something heroes do, too. Something heroes do better, even.” He cracked his knuckles. “I’m going to need you two to stand back. Well, Midoriya, at least. You can face the full blast if you want.”

Izuku and Red Riot backed up to the edge of the clearing.

“Further back.”

They headed into the trees. Izuku peeked out from behind an old and sturdy looking one.

Bakugou drew his hands back, roared, and then pounded a massive explosion into the rock-door that sent him shooting into the air. Izuku ducked and squeezed his eyes shut as a blast wave of hot air and debris pummeled through the forest, bending and breaking the weaker trees. Red Riot tripped and landed on Izuku, who was glad Bakugou wasn’t around to see. 

When the dust settled enough for him to see, he stepped out, shirt over his nose. Bakugou was sitting at the top of a nearby tree, frustration clear in his face.

The door no longer disguised itself as a rock – that had all been blasted away. Instead, it was a metal rectangle that went into the soil. The crater from Bakugou’s blast was at least ten feet deep. Izuku figured there must be a ladder inside. While the metal had some scratches and dents, none of them were deep. Bakugou’s blast hadn’t hurt it. 

Bakugou leapt down and walked up to the structure, a growl in his throat. He drew back a fist at it, but seemed to think better of it. “What the fuck is this shit made out of? I fucking hate it!”

“I think… I think I remember something,” said Red Riot. 

“What is it?” asked Izuku.

“I was in those trees over there… the ones that you knocked over.” He pointed. “There was pain… I was trying to go as fast as I could, but it was dark… night time… and there were too many roots and brushes so I kept falling over. I was trying to get away from here. Get away from this door. I don’t know why, but it seemed really urgent.”

Bakugou snorted. “All the more reason to stay right here and figure out what the fuck is going on.”

Izuku walked around the structure, taking in every inch of detail. “What’s that right there?” he asked, pointing to a small black spot in a corner near the top.

Bakugou flew up using his explosions, lay atop the structure, and peered at the spot. He stuck his finger in for a few moments. When he took it out, his finger was black. “I can feel the ends of wires in there, but they were damaged pretty badly by my explosion.”

“That must be the opening mechanism. There’s no way we can get it open from outside now,” said Izuku.

Bakugou put his hand right up against the hole and blasted an explosion that knocked him back into the air. Then he blasted himself back and kicked the door. “Damnit. Still sealed tight.” 

“It’s getting late,” said Red Riot. “We should get away from here to make camp.”

“I don’t fucking think so,” said Bakugou. “We’ll make a shelter right here. Behind the door so that if somebody comes out, we’ll hear them before they see us.” 

Izuku and Bakugou worked together to build a shelter while Red Riot sat and rested, too injured to help out. It took until the sun had set to finally make one big enough to barely fit all three of them. 

“I’ll keep watch,” said Bakugou. 

“You’ll keep first watch,” said Izuku. “Remember when you…” He wanted to mention the time he fell asleep on accident in the middle of the day, but decided not to embarrass him in front of Red Riot. “Remember when staying up all night bit you in the ass?” He was already picking up Bakugou’s speech patterns.

“Alright. But this other guy doesn’t get a turn. We can’t both be sleeping when he’s around.”

“Come on,” said Izuku. “With the state he’s in, you’d wake up and stop him before he could kill us in our sleep.”

Bakugou gave a noncommittal grunt. “I’ll take first watch, then.”

“I still don’t think camping here is a good idea,” said Red Riot as he got into the shelter. 

Izuku and Red Riot lay down next to each other. He knew if Bakugou had realized that would happen, he wouldn’t have volunteered for first shift, but there was enough distance between them that they weren’t going to touch. 

Izuku pretended to sleep and waited until he could hear Red Riot snoring before quietly getting up and meeting Bakugou outside. He could barely make out Bakugou’s rugged outline in the moonlight.

“Couldn’t sleep with that fucker around?” asked Bakugou.

“Well, being around him doesn’t help, but I think I’ll manage eventually. I wanted to ask you some questions.”

“Hmph.” He shrugged.

“You’ve always been so secretive about Omegas. Other heroes have Omegas they’re mated to or seeing, but nobody has ever caught you with one.”

“Oh, so it’s reporter questions,” he said with disgust. He moved away and turned his back to Izuku. “Maybe I don’t talk to reporters about Omegas because it’s fucking personal?”

Izuku shook his head vehemently. “It’s not about being a reporter. It’s about getting to know you. Haven’t we gotten to know each other a bit over these past few days? Aren’t we… not strangers anymore?” He couldn’t fully keep the tremble of need out of his voice. 

He paused. “Yeah, I suppose we aren’t,” he grumbled. “I told myself, once we made it to the island, that I would make sure not to let you get too close since you’re a reporter and all. And then once I realized you were a fucking Omega, I told myself this again. But there’s something about you. It’s fucked up. I can’t help but be drawn in. I guess we can be called acquaintances now. But that’s it.”

Acquaintances sounded like a slap in the face. At least it was something? “What’s so bad about being an Omega?” 

“Well, you know, whiny, weak, can’t function, needs babysitting, all that shit.”

“You know that’s not me,” said Izuku. “So what’s wrong with me being an Omega?”

“Well, I…” His fists clenched. “I might get too attached.”

“So?” He felt like he was blowing on a tiny flame, desperately trying to keep it alive without blowing it out.

“So that wouldn’t be good for you. Trust me, you don’t want to get close to me. You think you do, but you don’t.”

Izuku rolled his eyes. “You don’t get to decide what I want or don’t want. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you’ve done an awful lot to keep yourself alive these last few days. You’ve never given up on survival.” He gave a short laugh. “So you don’t have a death wish. So once we’re off this island, you’ll stay the fuck away from me.”

“Did you just threaten to kill me?”

He slapped his forehead. “No, that’s not what I fucking meant. Being around me is dangerous. That’s all. I’m a hero. You’re some random extra. You’ve already seen what danger I bring, snakes, plane crashes, fire. It’s no different back in Japan.”

“I can be the judge of what risks I’m willing to take.”

“You can’t fully understand the risks without being a hero yourself.”

“What, so you’re only going to da – get close to another hero?” The word date had wanted to escape his mouth, but ultimately he was too afraid to say it.

“No, I’m not gonna get close to anybody.”

Izuku’s mouth fell open. “That’s – you must be so lonely, though!”

“Better to be lonely at the top than settle into a life filled with mediocrity and Omegas.”

That didn’t sound right at all. He wanted to reach over and give Bakugou a hug, but from the way he bristled just sitting there, Izuku knew that was a bad idea. Even without sex and romance, how long had it be en since Bakugou had had a real, sincere hug? It made Izuku want to cry. He would have to find the perfect time to spring one on him. “Other top heroes have Omegas, though.”

He snorted. “You sound like my agent. Maybe they shouldn’t have Omegas. But what they do isn’t my fucking problem.”

“You’ve never… felt a connection with somebody before? Ever?”

He paused, and the pause stretched into a long silence of him not answering. 

“So you have? And you… denied yourself the connection? Because of this philosophy you have?” He didn’t like thinking about how Bakugou could have feelings for somebody else, but he had to know the truth. 

“Get away from me,” he said, his words tinged with a bile they’d never had before, not even in his angriest moments. 

“Did you just abandon them?” 

Bakugou blocked out the scant moonlight as he leaned inches from Izuku’s face, his Alpha scent overpowering, full of a deep fury. “You need to go to sleep. Now.”

“Is that why you don’t want me to get close?” he whispered, tears beginning in his eyes. “You’ll do the same to me?”

“Go to sleep. Now.” He gave an Alpha command.

“Shows what you know. You can’t order somebody to go to sleep because that isn’t in my conscious control.”

Bakugou roared, letting loose small explosions in his hands that briefly showed his face twisted in rage. “Lie in that fucking bed at try to sleep until it happens you fucking extra. I never want to see your fucking face again.”

Izuku found himself compelled, shaking, tears spilling over his eyes as he crouched into the shelter and tried to sleep. He could hear Bakugou pacing outside, occasionally letting off explosions and screams of rage like a madman well into the night. Red Riot slept like a rock, not even seeming to notice the explosions. 

He wished he could take his words back. He was so desperate to know more about Bakugou that he had ruined everything. And he still didn’t have the information he wanted, though the scraps he had gleaned were painting a worrisome picture. 

Izuku woke to Red Riot shaking him awake. “Wake up! Both of you! Now!” He shouted, fear in his voice. “Something’s moving inside that thing!”

Chapter Text

Izuku sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, a knot of fear forming in his chest. He stumbled outside the shelter, where Bakugou and Red Riot were waiting. 

Bakugou put his hands on Izuku’s shoulders. “I need you to get as far away as you can while I deal with whatever’s in there. It might be hostile, and I don’t want you in the blast radius. And… I need you to promise me something.” The first traces of morning light showed the serious concern on his face. “Promise me you will do everything you can to keep yourself safe.”

Izuku nodded. 

“Go! Run!” He shouted. Izuku watched him blast himself to the top of the structure. Red Riot had already disappeared into the forest. Izuku sprinted away through the trees in a different direction from his scent – he figured that if there was a villain, it was best to make them have to look for two separate people than find two people together. 

His hands trembled as he ran. He heard massive explosions behind him and knew there was a fight. He knew Bakugou was the strongest hero in the world, but… he still didn’t know the villain’s strength. What if Bakugou got hurt? He had been hurt in fights before. And what if Izuku got attacked afterward? 

He muttered his thoughts to himself as he ran, stumbling across roots and scrambling over rocks. Bakugou could handle it. He had to. He always handled everything. Part of him wanted to go back and make sure the Alpha was okay, but he knew that was a bad idea. If things were getting rough, he would only make things worse by getting in the way. 

The explosions in the distance stopped, or at least paused. Izuku flopped onto a fallen log, panting and sweating. He wished he hadn’t shown the door to Bakugou; maybe the three of them could already be off the island, and Bakugou wouldn’t be in danger, and he wouldn’t be so far away from the Alpha. 

A mechanical noise, like some kind of vehicle engine, sounded from the same direction as the explosions. It grew closer and closer, which was strange, since he couldn’t imagine anything on wheels making it through the forest. He crouched under the log, trying to make himself as small as possible, and threw some leaves and ferns over himself. It wasn’t much, but maybe if whatever it was passed quickly, it wouldn’t notice him. It was definitely headed in his direction. He could hear his heart hammering in his chest. He tried to hold his breath, but he couldn’t manage.

A strangely familiar scent filled the air. The engine sounds combined with running footsteps closing in on his hiding place. Could it be? One of the most press-friendly heroes, not out of a love of attention, but out of a genuine friendliness that extended even to reporters, whom he had interviewed several times?

Izuku stood up from under the log. “Tenya?” It was indeed Tenya, and he had stopped right by Izuku. He wasn’t in his hero uniform, instead wearing a slightly odd-looking set of shorts and t-shirt in the same shade of light grey, along with light grey running shoes. He wore a different style of glasses than the type he had always worn before, more rounded.

He looked momentarily confused before breaking out in a big grin. “There you are. Let’s get you back to your Alpha.”

“He’s not…” Izuku paused his clarification. Maybe it would be fun to let Tenya think Bakugou was his Alpha for a bit. “He’s not hurt, is he?”

“Hurt? What could hurt him?”

“Well, you never know… but you’re right.” He knelt in the grass. “Here, climb on my back. I can get you to him in no time.”

“O-ok,” he said, stepping slowly toward the hero. He didn’t like getting on another Alpha’s back in his nearly naked state. Tenya had never been anything but polite toward him and wasn’t even showing any signs of attraction, and he did need to get back to Bakugou as soon as he could, but it still felt a bit wrong. He knew Bakugou wouldn’t like it, either. 

His Omega didn’t react at all to the close touch of hanging onto Tenya or how Tenya held his legs tightly. It was like he was still on heat suppressants. 

The two took off, but not back in the direction they had come from. “Wait, where are we going?”

“There’s a shortcut. We’ll be there in no time.”

Izuku had to keep his head down to avoid being whipped by the branches that flew by. “What do you mean, a shortcut? How can you know? Have you… been to this island before?”

His scent grew agitated. “No, no, absolutely not! I was given… the reports. By, uh, my boss.” 

“Reports?” he asked. “What do you mean? What’s going on on this island? Why is there–” 

“We’re almost there, don’t worry.” He was definitely nervous about something. He stopped in an unfamiliar patch of forest that seemed to Izuku to be far away from where they needed to be. He pushed away some vines, revealing a number pad on a nearby boulder. 

Izuku felt uneasy. Bakugou had made him promise to keep himself safe. And he had thought nowhere would be safer than with another hero. But now he wasn’t so sure. He told himself that heroes had important reasons to keep secrets from civilians. But why were they so far away? He memorized the numbers Tenya put into the number lock just in case. 

With a mechanical whine, the boulder moved to the side, revealing a concrete stairwell. “He’s right down there,” said Tenya, gesturing for Izuku to go first.

Izuku didn’t smell him. Something was wrong. “I… I’m not going down there. He’s not there.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tenya. He grabbed Izuku around the waist, pinning his arms to the side, and started walking down the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. He kicked and wiggled.

“Don’t make this difficult.” 

“Let me go! Where’s Bakugou! Bakugou! BAKUGOU!!” He shouted, trying desperately to free himself from Tenya’s iron grip. He turned his head and bit down hard on Tenya’s forearm.

Tenya loosened his grip just enough for Izuku to twist out of his arms and land on the stairs. He scrabbled up only a few steps, shouting Bakugou’s name, before Tenya caught him again and carried him the rest of the way down. He knew he would never get free, but he kept struggling because he wasn’t going to make it easy for Tenya. 

The stairs ended in a doorway with a fingerprint scanner. It accepted the same code that Tenya had used earlier. 

Izuku stopped struggling for a moment as he looked around in surprise. How had all of this been under the island this whole time? They were at a junction of five concrete hallways, each leading to dozens of doors before curving away. And the smells… so many familiar people had passed through these halls. Heroes. Practically every hero in Japan and a few from abroad. Only one major Japanese hero was missing, and it tugged at his heart not to smell him. Bakugou, of course.

Some of them were walking through the halls, in and out of doors, all clad in similar grey clothes to Tenya. There were others, non-heroes, and they all wore green uniforms. One such woman was sitting at a desk behind a pane of bulletproof glass right next to them. 

He felt his cheeks heat up at being pantsless where all of these people could see. He wished he could hide. Nobody in the halls seemed to pay him much attention, at least.

“Employee 14806 Tenya Iida returning from mission,” said Tenya. “Successfully obtained Omega of Bakugou Katsuki.” 

The words I’m not his Omega died before they got to his throat. They weren’t going to just let him go, and if they had a use for him as Bakugou’s Omega, at least they weren’t going to kill him. Because with the scale and secrecy of whatever this was, murder suddenly looked like it might be an option.

The woman in green pointed a device at Izuku’s head. He winced in fear. “Quirkless,” she said, then put it down. She typed into her computer. “Hand off the Omega to Employee 03019 Ochaco Uraraka and report to Central. You will be given a scented fabric to pursue Employee 10046 Eijiro Kirishima.” She continued typing. 

He felt numb and detached. How could all of this be happening?

Tenya carried him down the middle hallway, then opened a door that led to another hallway, down another set of stairs, and through a set of double doors. Izuku tried to remember the path. If he could escape soon, he could smell his way out by following his own scent. But a cold lump in his gut made him worry he might not escape soon.

“Wh-where are you taking me?” 

Tenya hesitated for a moment, then continued on through another hallway without answering. 

“Why are you doing this to me? Where’s Bakugou? Bakugou! Bakugou, help!” Nothing he said got through to Tenya, though Izuku could smell the discomfort in his scent. 

As they progressed, the air grew hotter. He could tell they were following a familiar scent trail, that of the hero Ochaco “Uravity” Uraraka, but Izuku didn’t let his hopes get up. He knew by now that something was wrong with all the “heroes” here. Back in Japan, Ochaco had been somewhat of a friend and had even requested Izuku personally to interview her on several occasions. 

One more door and there she was, holding a tablet, smelling of lavender and gingerbread. She wore the same grey attire as the other heroes. There was a thin scar running up her forehead and into her hair. Behind her was a large, heavily reinforced metal door.

“Employee 14806 Tenya Iida dropping off Bakugou Katsuki’s Omega.”

“You’re always so uptight, oh-six,” Ochaco said with a smile. “Sign here.” She held up the tablet. Izuku considered trying to grab for it and do… something, something to mess up their system, break it, push buttons, something, but he suspected that would only make things worse for him. 

Once Tenya let go of him to sign with his finger, Izuku’s stomach lurched as he felt himself floating up until he rested three feet above the floor. He whirled his limbs around trying to find a balance that never came. 

Ochaco focused on her tablet, not paying attention to him. Once Tenya left the room, Izuku knew it was a longshot, but he had to try.

“Please, Ochaco, it’s me, Midoriya. Don’t you remember me? Whatever they’ve done to you, you have to snap out of it.”

“Haven’t met you before, actually,” she said distractedly. “Probably won’t meet you again.” 

She finished with her tablet and put herself at eye level with a small box next to the massive metal door. A laser scanned her eye and something made a clicking noise. She took a key and opened a hatch on the door, revealing a number pad. Izuku tried to remember the number she put in, but it was fifteen digits long and the numbers became muddled together in his head. 

“Don’t you remember when you showed me that knock-off action figure of you that you keep around for good luck and touch before important missions?”

Ochaco shrugged. “Nope, sorry.”

A light above the door flashed, and an alarm blared as the door slowly slid downward. A blast of hot air filled the room, causing Izuku to slowly rotate in midair. Ochaco pushed him through.

Far below him, the source of the sweltering heat was a pool of magma. Above him, cells with bars were set into the walls. Thick chains on the walls connected to a platform in the center above him. 

“Sending him up, Niney!” shouted Ochaco. She fiddled more with the tablet.

“Ready, Sevens!” The faint voice from above sounded exactly like Ochaco’s. Izuku felt himself being slowly lifted up. Around halfway up, he felt a small jolt in his momentum and spent a fraction of a second falling before continuing up the rest of the way. A few seconds later, the alarm marking the door being open stopped.

Just below the platform, Izuku was at eye level with the first ring of cells. Most were empty. A couple of them had heroes inside – Endeavor sat in one, dressed in orange, and another contained Eraserhead. Both wore Quirk-dampening wristbands attached to handcuffs. Izuku must not have warranted them.

Izuku floated up to the platform, finding himself face-to-face with another Ochaco. His eyes widened. Same grey clothes, but this one didn’t have a scar. “What the… why… why are there two of you?”

She looked puzzled by the question. “Guess I’m just that special,” she said. She kept him hovering above the platform as she stared at a tablet. “Looks like you’re going… right there. Perfect.” She floated him away from the platform toward an empty cell with no bars. No other inmates were adjacent to him. As soon as he landed inside, bars descended from holes near the top of the entrance.

Izuku sat atop the small bed, his knees against his chest, his head down. Dozens of questions circled through his head, and most of their answers drove knives of fear and worry through his heart. The biggest ones, the ones that he tried to shy away from, but kept repeating, were:

Was Bakugou alright?

Where was Bakugou?

Would he ever see Bakugou again?

Chapter Text

Tears threatened to spill from Izuku’s eyes. He was so alone, so far from Bakugou or any friendly face. He had never been so alone. He should have hidden from Tenya. No, he shouldn’t have run in the first place. If he had stuck by Bakugou, ignoring what Bakugou had told him to do, Bakugou would have kept him safe.

That was all assuming Bakugou had gotten out of his fight free. And unharmed. And ali– no. Bakugou had to be alive. And nobody was as strong as Bakugou, so he had to have won. 

No one hero was as strong as Bakugou. But so many of them combined, some of them with multiple copies…

If Bakugou had won, wouldn’t he have gone looking for Izuku?

Well, that might be why he was here. To lure Bakugou into a trap. And while Bakugou might normally go looking for Izuku, would he walk into an obvious trap for him?

Bakugou had made him promise to keep himself safe. Izuku felt the tears roll down his cheeks. He hadn’t kept himself safe, and now if Bakugou even bothered to try to find him, he would be in massive danger, too.

He hadn't had time to process the things Bakugou had said to him the night before. “I never want to see your fucking face again.”

Maybe Bakugou wasn't coming after all. Tears began rolling down his cheeks. He was going to be here forever, rotting away with Bakugou hating him. 

What had he done wrong to deserve all of this? He couldn't think of anything. He had the right to ask some questions about the man he had been surviving with. 

And the answers Bakugou had given… he hadn't said anything directly, but the implications were chilling. Some poor Omega just like him had fallen in love, and Bakugou had used them and abandoned them out of a sense of duty to his job.

Izuku needed to get over Bakugou. He needed to stop thinking about him. But he couldn't. Not all alone like this, with his only hope being some small chance that Bakugou felt enough of an obligation to him as a fellow human being to come and rescue him despite it being an obvious trap. 

For a long time he sat there, unmoving, letting the weight of his situation sink in. 

He walked to the bars and looked out. It was a long way down to certain death. The wall was slightly tilted, so that even if he managed to make it out of the bars, he could neither drop to the next cell down nor climb to the next cell up.

On the central platform was a tower of tinted glass for Uraraka to view the cells from. He could never be sure when she was watching him.

He returned to the bed. How many times since he arrived at the island had he wished for a bed? He didn't want a bed anymore. He wanted Bakugou, or at least for Bakugou to be okay.

Izuku was staring at the wall when he heard a noise at the bars to his cell. He turned his head to see a floating food container, pill packet, and set of orange clothes thumping against the bars before sliding in-between them and resting on the floor.

The whole time he'd been on the island, hunger had been a constant ache, showing up even after he and Bakugou had scrounged up some food. But he didn't feel hungry now. He set the food aside for later. 

He considered the orange jumpsuit. Putting it on meant taking off Bakugou's torn, oversized shirt. It would make Bakugou feel that much further away. On the other hand, if he kept wearing the shirt, the smell of Bakugou would dissipate and be replaced by his own smell faster. 

He wished he could hide himself to change clothes, but there was nowhere in the cell that wouldn't be visible to the central platform. The bed was bolted to the wall. He crouched by it and quickly changed to the prison clothes. Bakugou's tattered shirt went next to his pillow so he could smell it while he slept.

When he walked back to look out of the bars, he noticed somebody new being floated up to the middle platform. Red Riot. He wore Quirk-dampening handcuffs around his arms. An Uraraka came out to greet him, but she wasn't as nice as she had been with Izuku. He'd never heard her voice so mad, so loud that the whole prison could hear it.

“All you do is make life harder for everybody else! You know there’s no escape! You know it! And there’s no reason to leave, anyways! You brought down punishment on everybody, and for what? For nothing!”

Red Riot responded, but he was too far away for Izuku to hear. 

“That’s all you have to say?! Whatever! You’re lucky I don’t drop you into the magma! You’re a failed experiment, that’s all you are!” She lifted him with her Quirk and pushed him toward an open cell. “Think about what you’ve done!”

He was glad that at least it sounded like Red Riot hadn’t met up with them to betray them. He had pushed for Bakugou to be more trusting toward Red Riot. At least it hadn’t been in error. 

How long would he be trapped in here without Bakugou? He could stomach a few days. But when the thought turned to years, a pit of sludge grew in his stomach. What about going into heat? Would he have to endure it publicly in view of the central platform and without Bakugou? With all kinds of Alpha heroes locked up around him, smelling him, and no Bakugou? Tears threatened to fall again. He curled up on his bed, his nose facing Bakugou’s shirt.

He couldn’t tell what time it was. When he felt tired, he used the container of food to scratch a tally mark into the grey rock of the wall. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need many more. 

If Bakugou was okay and also trying to rescue him, wouldn’t he have done it by now? So either something was wrong with Bakugou, or Bakugou wasn’t coming. The prospects both made him want to vomit. Maybe it hadn’t been that long. Maybe he was estimating time wrong. He should have been counting in his head the whole time, just to make sure. Maybe he was being unreasonable, entitled, by thinking Bakugou would get to him so quickly. He hoped so.

The smell of the shirt helped, but he still slept uneasily. He was already so used to Bakugou being nearby when he slept. He woke up a couple of times to terrible dreams. The reality of his situation was even worse than the nightmares.

He woke up to the grinding sound of his cell bars lowering into the ground. As he shook the sleep from his head, a man in a green suit stepped into the cell. 

“Good morning, Midoriya. I’m sorry to have to meet you in such a place, but we can’t put you up in one of the dorms without getting to know you a bit better.”

The man was an Alpha, smelling of leather and sandalwood. He had an open, clean-shaven face with neat, short-cropped hair. He was one of the tallest people Izuku had ever seen. Izuku leaned away from him. He didn’t trust anybody from this place.

“Dynamight sure has caught himself a beautiful Omega,” he said, walking up to Izuku.

Izuku ran out of space to back away and found himself backed against the wall, shaking. “Where is he. Where’s Bakugou?”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Not on a first-name basis with your Alpha?” He stared at Izuku’s neck. “My, my. He hasn’t even bothered to claim you.”

Izuku stared at the man’s shoes. “He’s… he’s not my Alpha.” The words were out there now in the air. Wherever this place was, they now knew. He knew that might be dangerous to say that and make himself a less valuable hostage, but he had already basically figured it out.

The man clucked and shook his head. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t want to claim an Omega like you.” He tried to put his hand on Izuku’s shoulder, but Izuku ducked away. 

“Don’t touch me!”

“I won’t claim you or mate with you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His hand crept forward anyways, and Izuku was running out of room to duck. “It’s so sad that Dynamight hasn’t, but he still may want you, and that might change if somebody else claimed you. Maybe once this is all over, circumstances will be different…” his hand found Izuku’s arm.

Izuku sank to the floor to try to get away. He looked up in terror. The man stared down at him, moving his fingers silently. He felt strange tugs inside him along with the finger movements, like there was a fishing line going from the man’s fingers to Izuku’s arm and then up through Izuku’s neck and into his head. 

“What are you doing?”

“Around here, they call me the Pianist, and I am the chief of this little operation. I think we will become good friends by the time this is over.” 

“I… I don’t want to be friends with anybody here!” But as he said it the words felt kind of mean. He didn’t even know this man. He had no idea of his intentions. And he had said he wouldn’t claim him, at least. 

“I understand why you would feel that way, but I hope you’ll give me a chance. And let’s get this ratty thing out of here.” He picked up Bakugou’s shirt. “Stinks so bad, I’m sure half the inmates here are covering their noses.”

“NO!” Izuku rushed to grab the shirt. He clung to it with both hands, then grabbed it in his mouth just to be safe. 

The man stood and made more movements with his fingers. Izuku wondered if the request to get rid of the shirt was so unreasonable. It was kind of gross, after all… but it was his only remnant of Bakugou’s scent! He was never going to part with it!

“Hmmm,” he said. “If you want it so badly, I suppose you can keep it. Can’t hurt to have a reminder of Dynamight.” 

“What have you done with him?”

The Pianist shook his head. “I haven’t done anything. I’m trying to convince him to talk to you, but, well, he has some other priorities.”

Other priorities? Was he being tortured? Or… did he just not care about Izuku very much? The Pianist was frustratingly vague. “What other priorities?” 

The Pianist shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s private. He can tell you himself, eventually. If he decides to see you. I have some other people I need to visit, now.” He took out a tablet and pressed a few buttons. In seconds, he was floating out of the cell. “Hope to see you again soon!”

Izuku watched him leave. It looked like he was headed towards the same place Red Riot had gone, but it was hard to be sure. 

The Pianist had messed with his head, that was for sure. He had played him like a piano. What had he done, exactly, though? Izuku thought about his memories, his opinions, his thoughts… which ones could he trust? The Pianist had relented on the shirt… did that mean his powers were limited, or was that all part of the plan? Or a false memory? 

There was one thing Izuku was sure the Pianist had messed with. He knew he had seen the Pianist as a terrifying creep and part of an evil group before he had touched him. He tried to bring back those same feelings, the fear and anger and hatred and disgust, but he couldn’t manage them anymore. He could still feel them strongly about other things, like he was afraid of the giant pool or magma below him, but when it came to the Pianist, the feelings were… dull. Muted, barely there. 

He needed to make up for the lack of those feelings with his logic, then. He could act like the terror and fury were still there even if they weren’t. And always remember their sources. This was the place that separated him from Bakugou and locked him up in a cell. And The Pianist had walked up to him and touched him when he clearly didn’t want it. And messed with his head, which was never going to be okay.

The next time the food arrived, his appetite had returned. He was surprised to find the ramen included was pretty good. Way better than having to eat another coconut. Of course, he would give anything for more of Bakugou’s cooking, even if it was just coconuts. 

His thoughts kept drifting back to some of the things the Pianist had said. Bakugou hadn’t even claimed him. He had bigger priorities. And Bakugou had said he never wanted to see Izuku again. 

Maybe he needed to try to get over Bakugou. But… not here. Not when Bakugou was his only hope of escape.

The plane started to descend toward the waves. “Bakugou?” asked Izuku. “What are you doing?”

No response. 

Izuku crept toward the cockpit. There was nobody there. The plane smacked into the ocean with a force that should have killed him, but instead it dragged him down into dark waters. He couldn’t hold his breath anymore. He couldn’t take it. 

Izuku woke up screaming. Something was wrong. Well, more wrong than usual. 

The smell of Bakugou’s shirt was gone. 

A hand touched his shoulder. He flinched away. The Pianist was back, once again making his hand movements while staring down at Izuku. 

“What did you do with the shirt?”

“I’m going to have to visit with you many times. I can’t keep doing it with that awful smell around. It’s gone, now.”

Tears welled up in Izuku’s eyes. “H-how could you! How could you do this!” But his protests seemed silly. The Pianist could do whatever he wanted. Maybe it was better for Izuku to just accept that. “Stop messing with my head!”

“I’m only trying to help. You’ll be less upset if you don’t fight it. You have a lot of pain and trauma in that head of yours, and this is the most direct way to fix it.”

“I… I’ll never stop…” the words sounded pathetic coming out of his mouth. 

“I’d much rather we be friends than enemies. Couldn’t you use a friend after all that’s happened to you?” He continued moving his fingers and Izuku kept feeling the tugging inside of him. 

“I… I guess I could use a friend.” He shook his head. He wouldn’t just acquiesce. “But. But not you. You’ve done something to Bakugou.”

At Bakugou’s name, he narrowed his eyes slightly before resuming his normal friendly expression. “The hero is fine. You’ll even be able to see him eventually. The three of us can all have a chat someday.”

Izuku sat up, alert. “I can see him?”

“I said eventually. I don’t think he wants to see you right now, sorry to say. If you cooperate with me, you may be able to see him sooner, in fact.”

“Why doesn’t he want to see me?” Cooperation was supposed to be bad, he knew, but he really wanted to see Bakugou again. Maybe a little bit wouldn’t hurt. The Pianist had been nothing but nice, after all. And now that he looked at it more, the man’s face was rather attractive.

“He told me he didn’t, but he didn’t give me a reason. I’m sure you would know better than I would.”

I never want to see your fucking face again.

Izuku could think of several reasons. But he hated to dwell on them. “What is this place? What are you trying to do here? Why are there all these copies of heroes?”

The Pianist shook his head. “I’d love to explain, but it’s time for me to get going. I have other friends I need to chat with. In fact, maybe tomorrow I can introduce you to somebody you’ve never properly met.” He pushed buttons on his tablet, then floated away.

He’d messed with Izuku’s head again. Izuku tried to think about what was different. He remembered having a strong attachment to the shirt that smelled like Bakugou. But now, well, he would like to have it back, it would be nice, but he didn’t feel that strongly about it. It was as if the string connecting him and the shirt had been cut.

And he’d mentioned a possible meeting with Bakugou if Izuku was more cooperative. So now he had to pretend to be cooperative on top of pretending to himself that his feelings were still the same as before the Pianist had talked to him. It was a lot of pretending. Maybe it would be better to just sincerely be the man’s friend. Izuku shook his head. No. It was important to not be friends with him. For some reason. 

He wondered who the other friend he had mentioned was.

At least he had learned that Bakugou was probably in the facility somewhere. Was the Pianist trying to work on Bakugou’s brain, too? Bakugou could resist forever, he was sure of it. Bakugou was so strong. But Izuku… Izuku wasn’t strong at all. He didn’t know how long he could keep pretending when it started to feel like around every mental corner was a new urge to trust the Pianist.

The next time the Pianist arrived, he wasn’t alone. He brought Red Riot, who smiled and winked at Izuku. “You were such good friends before you got here, weren’t you? I’m sure you have a lot to catch up on. A lot to teach each other.”

The Pianist reached for Izuku’s arm, and Izuku didn’t bother flinching. It didn’t seem worthwhile anymore. 

“Midoriya… I was so wrong. I led you astray, and that wasn’t cool,” said Red Riot. “I think the three of us should all be friends.”

“He’s messing with our minds,” said Izuku. “You can’t trust him.” As he said it, the reasoning didn’t seem to make sense anymore. What was so bad about him healing some of the pain inside Izuku’s mind? He certainly had a lot of sadness that he wanted to let go of. 

Red Riot shook his head. “You can’t fixate on that. He’s here to help us, to repair us so that we can get out of this prison faster.”

“I… I do want to get out of here. So I can see Bakugou.” 

“That’s the spirit,” said Red Riot. 

“One thing he won’t tell me, though, is what this place is. Why do you look like Red Riot? Why does everybody look like heroes from outside?”

“Well–”

“I think that’s enough playtime. If you want to make me happy next time, it will be better to not ask so many questions.” 

Izuku nodded. “Sorry to see you go so soon. I’m glad it looks like your injuries are healed.”

“Yep, I’m good as new,” said Red Riot. “Hopefully the next time we meet, we’ll both be out of here.”

Each time the Pianist visited, Izuku could justify his distrust less and less. He began eagerly laying out his arm for the man to touch. And the Pianist also became more and more good-looking. Never as good-looking as Bakugou, of course, but… it had been so long since he had seen Bakugou. His face wasn’t as clear in Izuku’s mind anymore. And he had said such awful things. 

The tally marks on the wall indicated that a week had passed. Izuku knew that this would usually be an occasion for tears, but he couldn’t muster up that same strong sadness. He was still lonely, of course. But the deepest aches were missing. 

The nightmares had stopped. His dreams were bland, watching clocks and walking through hallways while light music played in the background. Occasionally, a smell would lead him into a new room, but it always ended up being empty.

“I have some good news for you, Midoriya. It looks like Dynamight is ready to see you. Do you want to go alone, or do you want me to come with you?”

Izuku hesitated. Meeting Bakugou alone, after what he had said… no. He needed a friend by his side. “Stay with me, please.”

The Pianist smiled. "I'd be delighted."