Chapter Text
The process of Deku moving in is gradual, without many obvious markers. His things fill Ochako’s space as gradually as the tide coming back in.
Back in, because they were already living together when they became a couple at UA. After the war, Heights Alliance shields them from the worst of public scrutiny, lets them take their time putting each-other back together.
After graduation though, separate apartments are pressed upon them as a professional necessity. Ochako’s publicist, who oversees all Ryukyu’s sidekicks, informs her dating other Pros is unofficially discouraged because it pigeonholes heroines as damsels in the court of public opinion. Especially considering Ochako is going into Rescue. Attaching herself to Japan’s new Symbol of Hope will totally overshadow her own career.
They can still date if they really want to, the lady smiles, as if her opinion could ever stop them. But distance is vital.
Deku, of course, seizes on the idea of his success being Ochako’s burden. He wouldn’t want to impose. His hero deserves to be recognized on her own merits. Ochako almost asks for a different publicist then and there, but as a lowly Rescue Sidekick she's not in a position to make demands.
(And privately, Ochako wonders what Deku’s own manager is feeding him about her. Gang Orca hired him a personal one, as Japan’s new Symbol of Hope. How long did it take the man to start suggesting Ochako was dead weight? He wrong would he really be if he had?)
Then there are the dreams to think about. Getting together in the aftermath of a war shaped their relationship in some pretty foundational ways, and it isn't just their own baggage they have to grapple with.
Dream-sharing is a symptom of the Vestiges that ambushed them when they were sharing a hospital ward in the immediate aftermath of the fighting. Nine minds are simply too many to fit into one head. It’s a testament to Deku’s willpower that he's never been overcome. But sometimes, as overfull with feeling as he is, there were spillages. Dreams leaking kaleidoscope ink all over their bed, and as Ochako slept they would seep into hers, second-hand memories made third-hand now. She would wake the next morning having celebrated Shimura Nana’s wedding, caught dragonflies with En’s father, dressed Banjo’s wounds from his first streetfight, and the warmth under their sheets became a whirlwind clash of rosepetal and fresh grass and sharp copper.
At first they were mortified by the violation of each other’s privacy, but the only way of truly ending the problem was to separate, and that was like asking them to saw off a limb.
So they stayed, and adjusted, and over time Deku began to relax. Ochako was the only person he’d want to let in like that, he told her, and she glowed with the admission. Together, they became intrepid explorers into the Vestiges’ pasts.
And, very occasionally, pieces of Deku’s. Those he was willing to share, or sometimes pieces he was simply too tired to prevent slipping through. Ochako cherished these polaroid snapshots of the boy he was before they met- midnight movie marathons and days at the beach with his mother. His smile was the cutest thing.
But then there were memories that pierced her, bone-splinters through skin. Dreams of rain-slick concrete and bones snapping under fists and no home, no future, no hope. Deku bleeding out onto the sheets between them…
This is how Ochako learned what little she has of his time away from UA. And she held those insights like treasures too, but Deku only saw another way he was binding himself to her, a noose in barbed wire. They concluded, with Hound Dog's gentle encouragement, that there was such a thing as too attached. And when they move out the dreams become another reason for him to withdraw.
So they help each other find spaces to inhabit alone. Ochako even makes an effort to buy something a little bigger than she needs. A little for them, a little for you has become Ma’s new mantra recited over the phone. Ochako’s parents feel more than a little guilty for some of the lessons she took from her childhood, even though none of them were their fault. She indulges their efforts to undo them for their sakes. Which is why she has a whole spare room now!
And nothing to fill it with.
Being alone isn’t new for Ochako– when she was a kid one or both of her parents were almost always out on a job or hunting for a new one– but being lonely is. The ambiance of Heights Alliance- all that laughter and yelling and the thunder of Bakugou chasing Kaminari down the stairs again- softened her up.
And the quiet of her new place- all that extra, empty space- doesn’t stay empty for long. Izuku isn’t living with her, so Himiko takes his place. Curling like a cat onto the cold side of the bed, playing peek-a-boo in mirrors, drifting past doorways from the corner of Ochako’s eye.
Hound Dog warned Ochako about this part too. Every Pro has at least one they can’t let go. She’ll learn to live with her ghosts in time. But in the now she's still weak to them, having given Deku away with no new defense to replace him. She sleeps fitfully. Inside those four walls time runs glacial and like mercury all at once.
For the first few months, Ochako feels weak for taking her separation from Deku so hard. It’s not like she never sees him! They tried to date like regular teenagers at first, find an eye in the hurricane of expectation, but the first time Deku took her to a movie they left the theatre to a barrage of camera flashes and a crowd screaming his name. The photos of him scooping her into a bridal carry and blasting them free clogged social media for weeks, and Ochako will never forget her publicist’s barely concealed I Told You So glee shoving the resulting headlines under her nose:
SAVE THE WORLD, GET THE GIRL!
HER HERO!! URAVITY SWOONS, DEKU SCORES!
SYMBOL OF HOPE DEFENDS HIGH-SCHOOL SWEETHEART- HOW LONG CAN THEY LAST??
DEKU’S DAMSEL, one even had the audacity to call her. He might not be the Number One Hero yet, technically, but everyone knows it's only a matter of time. Anyone seen next to him is playing second fiddle by default.
So public dates are off the table, and Ochako rarely visits Deku’s own apartment because he seems even less fond of it than she is of hers. The last time she did go over she found the place still full of unpacked boxes. It struck her then how a space didn’t really feel like his without his legions of action-figures to watch over it.
“Place feels like a fucking mausoleum,” Katsuki tries staging an intervention during one of their corperate-mandated joint patrols. He was the one who helped Deku move in after Ochako was pulled in for emergency overtime. The guilt ate at her afterwards, and now it makes her scowl. Katsuki always delivers relationship advice like a drill sargent demanding she drop and give him twenty, like he has any right to assume authority on something he fucked up so badly Ochako is still undoing the damage he caused.
Katsuki closes in, as if to herd her towards the solution he wants. Later they discover paparazzi snapped long-range photos of this too, and Ochako's grainy face, looking up at him so vulnerable, starts a whole other runor-mill churning. Katsuki bares his teeth at her, and rather uncharitably Ochako thinks of a dog forced to share its favorite chewtoy. “Get your ass over there and inject some fucking life into the place, Angel. Nerd might as well live at Fishface’s Agency at this rate.”
Gang Orca’s building does in fact have emergency barracks for Pros working overnight, though when she asks Deku about it he tells her not to worry. Their schedules are so insane and out-of-sync Ochako can never set aside dedicated time to sorting out Deku’s apartment.
She has to settle for making her place their safe-haven, as much as she can, with takeout dinners and the occasional movie night whenever work allows. It never feels like enough, and he never lets himself stay over. Too afraid of what he'll expose her to if he falls asleep.
“Balancing it all is a struggle we all go through, Uravity,” is Rykuyu’s advice, tinged with sympathy or condescension, Ochako can’t tell. “But it’s the price we pay as Pros. Remember, our lives are not fully our own. A piece of us will always belong to the people. Midoriya knows that.”
“If it’s a struggle everyone goes through, why aren’t we trying to fix it?” Ochako asks, but quietly, because now she feels guilty, and greedy, on top of everything else.
Things will get better eventually, everyone tells her. Ochako tries to believe them. In the meantime, she's used to surviving on rations. She and Deku still call all the time. She meets up with friends when she can, though Tsu spending most of her time at sea means long periods where Ochako’s best friend is completely unreachable.
As the months creep by the emptiness of her apartment becomes an emptiness in her. She begins to dread time off. She always has; before UA unproductivity meant yen left on the table, but now...
She needs something to fight the loneliness that seeps through the floorboards whenever she slows down.
Answering fanmail in her free time is Deku's idea. For him, of course, such a thing doesn’t count as ‘work’. Big Pros like Ryukyu and Gang Orca have whole teams of assistants just for fan corespondence, using standardized responses and trademarked signatures. But Deku insists on answering all of his by hand.
For Ochako, frankly, the idea of receiving unsolicited gifts from strangers triggers every alarm in her head at once. She also gets significantly less of them than Deku. Then there's the matter of security. You don't have to a genius to realize being a Pro puts a target on your back. Everything delivered to Ryukyu's agency is vigorously screened, and there have been more than a few controlled explosions. Poor Tsu has been sent enough dead frogs to fill a French kitchen.
But still Ochako tries. These days, those pieces of advice down the phone are the only parts of Deku she has to hold her through the lonely hours.
And it does help her, for a time. A way to connect with the real people Uravity is inspiring, instead of the staged photo ops she's quickly grown tired of. It's good to be reminded that, despite how it feels sometimes, there are people out there who get it. Who see Uravity as Deku does.
Any material gifts Ochako repackages and donates. Once upon a time she might've hoarded them, but these days she's too financially secure to consider taking charity. The rest include everything from flowers and chocolate to hand-stitched Uravity sockpuppets. Luckily, unlike Tsu, Ochako never receives anything dead. But she’s sure her biggest fan would have sent her something if she could.
Himiko’s first letter from prison arrived the moment Uravity opened an official inbox.
(Not a prison. A hospice. She’s being treated. They got her out of Tartarus, with every ounce of influence the UA faculty could muster. It’s the best place for her, so Ochako can stop feeling so guilty. Any day now.)
The feel of that first envelope between her fingers is enough to relight the cold fire in her belly, send the film of dried blood swarming back over her skin. The letter's been checked. It's safe, totally official, according to the little hospice logo in the envelope's top corner. Ochako would've rather a bomb.
She opens it and hisses. Papercut.
She stares at the crimson tear welling over her fingerpad, then back at the letter. The first few words. Dearest Ochako-chan...
In her mind's eyes she can still see Himiko, pressing her forehead to hers as the knife twists and twists, mouthing along to the words of the letter.
She drops it in the trash without finishing. Then she ties off the trashbag and floats it into the sky.
Watching it disappear into the clouds doesn't help. Stopping personal responses to fanmail doesn't either. For days, Himiko's neat penmanship tattoos itself under her eyelids. Now the appartment's ghosts recite those words back to her. Maybe isolation is good for her, or good for Deku at least. That way she can't spread this nameless infection Himiko passed on to her, rampant and cancerous under the skin, making her feel unclean just for being.
Ochako's sleep worsens. She misses her parents, and feels childish for doing so.
Until one night, when the phantom pain of Himiko's knife plunge-plunge-plunging is keeping Ochako awake– which is super inconvenient, Himiko-chan, 'cause she has a double shift tomorrow, come on– she's getting this close to throwing all their rules to the fire and going to see Deku.
Ochako misses the warmth of him. So many nights as a kid were spent slowly freezing because heating cost too much, even in winter. She misses the reassurance of having him so close to hand when nightmares struck. She misses the subtle scent of his laundry detergent.
But most of all, perhaps embarrassingly, she misses the dreaming. Not because she got to see parts of Deku no-one else had, but because Deku let her see them. The dreams were incontrovertible proof that he trusted her to protect him at his most vulnerable. To bear his burdens with him.
Ochako is just thinking it’s about time she returns the favor, visits him with all the armor that’s been forced between them laid bare, when there's a tap-tap-tapping at her tenth-story window.
For a moment she lies there, wondering if in all these musings on dreams she’s slipped into one by accident, when the tapping sounds again.
She jumps up, flies across the room like a scene from a fairytale; Peter Pan come to whisk her off to Neverland. But drifting outside like a sad balloon is just a Lost Boy. Hers, come home.
“I’m sorry,” Deku blurts as soon as she opens the window. “I- I didn’t want to bother you, but you said-”
“I did,” She tries not to let on how pathetically relieved she is to see him as she steps aside to let him in. “I also said not to apologize.”
“Baby steps,” his smile wobbles as he climbs over her sill. He looks down, and Ochako wonders how long it took to talk himself into coming here. She's proud of him for making it. “I couldn’t sleep. I… I can’t sleep.” His shoulders shake, but Ochako is hugging him before the first tear falls. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again. “It’s such a silly thing to get upset about, I just… I don’t want to be alone.”
“Me neither,” she cradles his head as tears seep into her nightshirt. “Me neither, sweetie, I didn’t say anything because I thought I was being strong, but I didn’t realize how much it hurt–"
He laughs.
“It’s not your fault that I’m… like this.”
“Hey,” she pulls back to look him in the eye. “Don’t talk like that. Come to bed. I couldn’t sleep without you either.”
Helping him strip isn’t a suggestive or sensual thing, but physical intimacy runs at a premium these days, so Ochako lets herself luxuriate in running her fingerpads from his abdomen to his chest as she eases his shirt over his head. Izuku huffs, muscles clenching, and she giggles. Together they climb into a bed that, it seems to her, has always been meant for two, and only now does Ochako realize how tired she is.
Sleep finds them quickly, cocooned in each-other’s arms.
She isn’t sure if it’s relief or tiredness, but that night Deku is an open book to her. Through the windows of his mind she sees his isolation in his own apartment, a cell of bare walls and unpacked boxes, and her heart aches so keenly it wakes her.
In a drowse she pulls him closer. He mumbles something intelligible, snuggles in. As Ochako slips back under, isolation is washed away by sunlight, memory mingles with dream: Ochako sees two children resting under a tree on a high and verdant hill. His hair is the same shades as the sun-dappled grass, crowned with flowers she spent the whole day weaving with small but steady hands, that rest now one on his freckled cheek, the other on his chest. Feeling how his even heartbeat matches hers.
It's a good dream, Ochako thinks. She feels the Vestiges she has come to know in snapshots watching over them, standing guard, and knows that they agree.
Sexual intimacy is not something that came easily to them as a couple. Deku has neuroses built like a siege wall around a self-image warped beyond recognition. Ochako is better, but the bar is in hell, and Hound Dog never missed a chance to remind her that her own ideas around what she deserved from her relationships aren’t… ideal. Especially with Himiko crawling under skin every time they touched.
All this to say that when they finally started dating the progression of their physical relationship was fitful, tentative, and very occasionally infuriating for both parties.
Things got harder when they moved apart. Deku is the first to admit his work-life balance is abysmal, on account of not really having a life to practice balancing before One For All consumed it. And without him or her friends to steady her Ochako was almost as bad. Twice the work for half the credit had been the old Uraraka family motto, and it's proving as relevant to Heroics as it was to construction. If she forgot to do things like relax or call friends or eat between shifts, well. There was a learning curve to everything.
It felt like failure to admit she needed Deku to hold her to the mark, to remind her to set an example. That only in saving him could she save herself.
Time was always against them. Those timid explorations that were finally becoming more confident as they graduated sputtered out under a flood of new responsibility. When they did see each-other often they were too exhausted to be intimate, or there was too much else on their minds they had to process.
All this to say that by the night Deku appears at her window, he and Ochako haven’t had sex in well over a month.
When she opens her eyes the next morning he's already staring at her. Her breath catches, electric green cutting through her haze of tiredness.
“Hi,” she croaks, and the roughness in her voice must strike something in Deku because a flush crawls up his throat. He licks his lips. Ochako’s eyes follow his tongue.
“Hello.”
She shifts closer under the covers, so she's breathing into the crook of his neck, and something hard and getting harder is pressing into her thigh. Deku swallows nervously and Ochako has the sudden need to feel the way his Adam's apple bobs under her tongue.
“I- I’m sorry, Ochako. I didn’t come here to… I don’t expect… your shift…“
Without breaking eye-contact, Ochako hooks her leg around his waist and slowly, deliciously rolls her hips into his erection. Deku’s speech shatters into a high whine. He sounds like he's in pain. Ochako should help with that-
He kisses her. Frantically, one hand fisting in her hair and the other snaking down to grip her thigh, pull her closer, grind into where she's already so hot below.
“God, Deku,” she gasps between kisses, that clever tongue between her teeth now, and fumbles between them to get his boxers off as he fumbles to yank down her shorts. His fingers drag up her slit to her clit and press the way they've learned she likes. Circling, circling, gathering slickness to rub up and down as she mewls and bucks.
It's been so long. In the madness of work she tried to shut out how badly she ached for him, but now that ache roars back to life inside her. Sex has never been like this before for them; always slow, always shy but steady and testing and waiting. This is desperate, gasping; Deku rolls himself on top of her and finally slips a finger inside, the kisses trailing up her neck turning to bites, hard sucks at the juncture between her throat and jaw. She can barely breathe.
Ochako finally has Deku’s briefs down to his ankles and decides that’ll do for now, sliding her hand up his inner thigh to cup his balls, her other wrapping around his shaft. Deku jerks into her touch, hissing, and works another finger into her as revenge.
“Fuck,” she whispers, tilting her head to kiss him properly again. “Fuck, Deku, I need you to– inside me, please–”
He withdraws his fingers immediately, and gently but firmly rolls her onto her side. Ochako opens her thighs so he can kneel between them, straddling her bottom leg and pulling the other over his thigh.
Maybe the funniest thing about first trying sex with Deku was the way he researched different positions like they were supermoves. The first time they settled down to actually go all the way- booked themselves a hotel away from prying ears, spent the night and everything- he came prepared with an entire sequence of the things laid out like one of his battle strategies.
(First get the height advantage with Float, then divebomb with Blackwhip Claws, activating Smokescreen to create cover...)
(First we should move from the Seashell to the Tabletop, then I can easily switch to eating you out, and from there you’ll be perfectly positioned to...)
Ochako nearly busted a gut laughing, which in hindsight was not particularly kind, but she was so nervous it only took the slightest nudge to push her into hysterics. She made it up to him later. After some slow, methodical exploration– with Izuku making notes and comparisons and even at one point a diagram Ochako immediately asked him to burn– they landed on a few things that worked for them.
Now he looks her in the eye as he enters her, slow and smooth with her slickness, watching, watching for discomfort. Ochako just moans, letting her eyes flutter, shifting her hips to meet him at his base. They pause there for just a moment. Panting into each-other's open mouths.
It’s the closeness that always does it for her. Binding herself to him like this, as she knows no-one else has. Barbed wire become ribbons of silk. Their separation was a slow drowning and after so long this feels like finding dry land.
“Move,” Ochako says, and it comes out more of a demand than she meant it. “Please, Deku, I need you to-”
He rocks out and then in and she cuts herself off in a moan. He fucks her quickly, precisely, grinding his pelvic bone against her clit with each thrust, and Ochako loses her ability to think for several eternities. Her grip in his hair tightens to ground herself and it must be painful but he only moans, broken, pressing his forehead to her temple and grinding harder and harder. His fingers dig into the flesh of her thigh. He's going to leave bruises and she wants him to.
“Missed you so... so much,” he manages, and just listen to how she wrecks him. She can only hum in agreement, the power of his thrusts making the mattress bounce now. How has she survived without this? How have they both gone so long and not even realized–
“Missed you too,” she husks. “Need you so bad, ‘Zuku, so bad-”
He yells as he comes, curling over her like she punched the air from him. But he doesn’t let himself waver, does his best to keep fucking her through his orgasm, and she groans at how he pulses so deep and hot inside her. Her hand flies to her clit and she follows him over the edge with one, two, three tight circles. Deku hisses in agonized delight as she spasms around his softening cock.
After a long, shuddering moment Deku eases himself out of her, and rolls onto his back beside her on the bed. Eventually, Ochako finds the strength to lift her head and look at her clock. Still an hour and a half until her shift, thank God.
“Cleanup,” Deku croaks, pushing himself up. “And... Oh God, you need a pill- I'm sorry-”
“There’s one in my bedside table,” she yawns. She’s already on birth-control, via an implant that’s much more convenient than having to keep track of medication, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious. “With the condoms.”
He flushes, grabbing her a fistful of tissues and wipes as an apology, before tottering out of the room to fetch some water for her pill. Ochako watches the way his knees shake with a sense of immense satisfaction, before setting about cleaning the worst of the mess.
Deku has the same shift as her at Gang Orca’s agency that day, so once she swallows her pill they get ready together, stripping the bed and taking turns in the shower. When Ochako emerges from hers she finds Deku cooking for her, and has to halt in the doorway for a moment to process. When was the last time her breakfast didn’t come out of a smoothie cup?
Deku looks up from the hob, still shower-damp and glowing, framed by the weak sunlight filtering in from the window, and Ochako has never been more in love.
“I don’t want you to go,” she blurts. “I mean! I... I want you to be here when... when I come home.” (It doesn’t feel like home without you).
He inhales deeply, and nods.
“I’d like that too.”
He plates breakfast while she makes coffee, weaving around each-other in perfect syncopation. It’s this more than the battle-tactics, all the combo-moves they developed in third year but work never gives them the chance to try, that proves what a good team they are. How easily Ochako finds the rhythm of him in even the most mundane moments.
Deku takes his coffee gratefully and gestures for her to sit across her rickety kitchen table- the apartment might be a little higher-spec than Ochako needs, but she compensated by cutting as many costs with her furniture as possible. Ochako sits, but instead of taking her chopsticks she takes his hand, running a thumb over his knuckles, back and forth.
Izuku looks down at their hands thoughtfully. “I’m sorry for ambushing you last night. At your window, and, y’know...”
“In my bed?” she raises an eyebrow, and revels in his blush.
“I should’ve thought it through. Not using protection was stupid. I won’t let it happen again.”
“I think we were both a little pent-up. And it’s not like you came here just to sleep with me. Well, not like that. Nightmare?”
“They’re worse when I know you aren’t there.”
“Yeah. Mine too.” She glances at the clock and curses under her breath, starts wolfing down her food quick as she can. “We’ll talk about it after work,” she promises between bites, before rising to put her empty plate in the sink. She returns to plant a kiss on his forehead, then another on his cheek, then a line across his jaw that makes him huff and wriggle. “You are not a burden for coming to me,” she whispers into the corner of his mouth, as if imbuing the words into his skin. “And you’re not alone in this.”
He tilts his head to kiss her properly and she sighs into it.
“I know. I’ll get better at talking to you about it. Starting tonight.”
“Bring a toothbrush this time.”
He grins bright enough to fill the whole apartment, and all the empty space inside her.
Deku lived a lonely, isolated childhood, Ochako knows. She was his first real friend, and UA gave him so much more besides. Having it all taken away when he moved out felt like regression. Like looking back when he promised All Might he would always look forward. It felt like his months on the street, alone, before Ochako and the others called him home.
Ochako holds him that night after work, and tells him it’s okay. That one of the hardest lessons the war taught them was to lean on each-other, and it’s stupid to throw that away to appease the system that caused the war in the first place.
Thus begins the slow migration of Deku’s home into hers.
She doesn’t tell her superiors. He doesn’t tell his. It'd only open a can of worms about prospects and patience and paparazzi. It’s not strictly a secret; not like this is some forbidden affair. But the judgment of world has hardened something inside Ochako. She will preserve what little privacy they have left.
And so they build themselves a fortress out of this apartment, that it seems to her has always been waiting for two. He can’t stay over every night, and their shifts still rarely line up, but it’s the closeness that counts: Sharing a bed, whoever rises first leaving the other bentos with post-it well-wishes. Stopping to grab each-other's favorites from the store on their way home. Even movie-nights become a regular fixture with less logistical crap in the way.
Deku’s possessions are nearly as sparse as Ochako’s, but soon there’s a drawer of his silly kanji shirts in her room, and a stack of his crockery in her cupboards, and a bottle of his shampoo in her shower. On the days he isn’t there sometimes she’ll wash with it and close her eyes to breathe in the steam that smells like him. Imagine her hands are his hands, slipping down her chest to tweak a nipple, smoothing up her soapy thighs. The swirl of suds on skin.
Touching, dipping, curling. Palm on glass, sweat and slick washed away by the water beating down. The heat of the steam is his breath on her neck, the pressure of the water his chest pressed against her back.
They haven’t had sex in the shower yet, but she knows he loves to watch her. God, Ochako could barely look the first time, splayed out on her bed in the dorms with him hovering over her, taking in the mess she made of herself just for him. Trailing his fingertips from belly to hip as he pressed gentle kisses along her collarbone, asking questions, noting answers. He put the lesson to good use later.
Now Ochako scissors her fingers inside herself and groans, imagining his cock catching, dragging against the skin of her inner thigh as he ruts against her from behind, his soft praises egging her on over the rush of the water. She stuffs another finger inside but she can never get as deep as him, never feel as full-
She shouts his name as she comes, legs quaking so badly she nearly falls.
Now, Ochako won't lie. The new physical intimacy of living with her boyfriend- just the two of them, without their classmates’ prying eyes- has… unlocked something in her she didn’t know was there. Before Deku, She was never particularly interested in notions of romance, and certainly she didn’t share some of her friends’ fascination with the physical side of it all.
After Deku... well. She still wasn’t particularly interested in sex as a concept, with other people. But she was interested in him, and sex was a new way to know him as no-one else did. Now they share a bed she’s having the time of her life finding all these hidden facets of him. Extracting all his secret noises and expressions and claiming them as her own.
And the way he looks at her. The way his hands smooth over her skin like she's made of starlight. Sex with Deku makes her feel powerful, in a way even her Quirk never has, and Ochako is quickly becoming addicted to it.
Sleeping together every night they can is also making their dreams more and more porous. And sure, it sucks a little when Ochako is forced to relive the most traumatic moments of her workday with Deku as a witness, but there are silver linings too.
Communication about sex, for example, is still a sticking point in the waking world. Neither of them are exactly Cassanova, let’s be real, but thanks to the dreams everything is that little bit easier. Mortifying in some ways– given the option Ochako would probably never choose to show Deku a fantasy of three of him railing her at once– but useful, in forcing them to talk out what they share.
For Deku’s part, it transpires having your girlfriend within staring and touching distance at all times, sharing a bathroom and a bedroom with her, makes certain thoughts much harder to ignore. Not that Ochako minds. There are worse things to wake up to than the prettiest man you’ve ever met rutting the hard-on you gave him against you in his sleep.
Suddenly all that research he did when they were starting out doesn’t seem so silly, as Deku’s unconscious mind is proving as innovative in this field as his waking one is at work. The things he'd be willing to let Ochako do to him make her shudder. Sure there are slip ups- the first time they experimented with Blackwhip during sex Ochako nearly had a panic attack- but whatever boundary she pushes, Deku always seems happy to follow. Often she's just taking the ball his dreams offer and running with it, batting down every protest that she shouldn’t feel obligated, she doesn’t have to…
Ochako wants to. It’s a rare thing, she feels, to adore someone so fully and know your adoration is returned in equal measure. She doesn’t intend to waste it.
So, when Deku gets home an hour later (home. Home,) and Ochako pounces on him and his hands slip under her skirt to discover she isn’t wearing underwear, he’s only too happy to scoop her up as he did in front of the paparazzi all those months ago, and carry her inside. He finds a condom- he went a little overboard after their oversight that first night, stashing boxes in every room that Ochako lives in perpetual terror of guests discovering. But she’s grateful now because they mean he can he fuck her slow and deep right there on her rickety kitchen table, her fingers dancing over her clit as she chants his name.
The table breaks under her, she got what she paid for, but Deku catches her. He always catches her. And then he keeps fucking her, holding her up like she weighs nothing with her legs wrapped around his waist. Her fingers find her clit again and she whines into his spit-slick neck as she reaches orgasm, making a mess over his cock.
After cleaning up Deku takes his turn for a shower and Ochako makes dinner, to be eaten on the couch in front of a space documentary he recommended. Tomorrow will be the first day they've both had free for months. They’ll have to go buy a new table. Deku can probably persuade her to get something better-quality and longer lasting now, if they’re sharing this space.
You deserve nice things, Ochako, he always insists. The very best.
Which is why I have you, she’d hum, and he blushes every time.
She smiles, curling into Deku’s side as he settles next to her on the couch, and finally feels ready to make this place a home.