Blink If You Hate Me┃K. Bakugo

Sudden Shift

Hawks kept a steady stride toward the operations room, which was just a little faster than usual; any other day it might've gone unnoticed —but today, both students trailing him had little else to focus on. His demeanor had shifted the moment he received the update. Wings tucked at a slightly tighter angle, giving away the tension in his shoulders, every step precise.

He moved through the agency with deliberate accuracy, threading between desks, past clusters of workers, cutting through the usual hum of chatter, half-finished coffee mugs, and flirtatious greetings without a single hesitation.

Marketing came into view, a stretch of desks and workstations, papers stacked in precarious towers, phones ringing intermittently, the soft clattering of keyboards bled into the space. Hawks passed through it like a current, wings brushing just enough to disturb a corner of a hanging poster.

"Morning, superstar," Lila called, voice threading over the hum, leaning over her cubicle with elbows braced lightly. "You ghosted my email."

He pointed at her without slowing. "Didn't ghost. Strategically postponed."

"Careful. That almost sounded convincing." she said, tilting her head, letting the edge of a smile sharpen.

"C'mon, don't look at me like that. I figured you enjoyed the anticipation." He winked.

She smiled, waiting for him to lean on her desk like he usually did, but he kept walking forwards with his students.

"You good?" she asked, a little more serious now.

He answered spinning around, still moving "Yeah. Just chasing something."

"You're always chasing something."

He walked backward a step, finger-guns soft and automatic. "And I always catch it." Turning the corner before she could ask any follow-up questions.

They moved down more corridors toward Operations, Hawks opened his mouth once, clearly about to start the briefing he'd promised. "Alright, listen up—there's been a—"

A cluster of sidekicks gathered around a flickering comm screen, gesturing at a new mission hologram.

Hawks paused mid-word, exhaled softly through his nose, the barest tilt of his head and tightening at the shoulders hinting at a quiet internal calculation. He didn't speak, didn't explain his silence—just continued forward, eyes fixed ahead, wings flicking with subtle precision, carrying a tension he didn't voice. More sidekicks and heroes crowded the space around them, nodding or chatting, oblivious.

Bakugo caught it first. His gaze flicked to Y/N, a single raised eyebrow cutting through the quiet rhythm of their steps.

Y/N slowed her pace just enough, letting the corridor stretch between them and Hawks.

"He was about to debrief us, wasn't he?" She said in a hushed voice.

"Yeah, changed his mind."

The door ahead swung open fast just as she reached it, though her thoughts were still stuck on Hawks' weird behaviour. Without missing a step, Bakugo pushed it fully open with one arm and stayed where he was, shoulder to the frame, giving a tilt of his chin that said move it without needing the words.

She slipped through the narrow gap between him and the door, shoulder grazing his as she passed, lips twitching at the way he managed to make something decent look like attitude.

"Focus, idiot." he said, jaw flexing as he looked away.

The corridor opened into the Ops Wing in a spill of cold light and muted color—screens suspended in midair, data streaming in translucent columns, voices overlapping in clipped dispatch cadence. To the right, partitioned by reinforced glass, was the attached strategy room—smaller, elevated slightly, its soundproofing visible in the faint distortion along the frame.