You’d been skating before you could walk. Literally. Your parents were former national champions, and you grew up breathing rink-chilled air and sleeping to the sound of blades carving perfect lines on frozen glass. While other kids played tag or ran around playgrounds, you learned balance, edge control, timing. Your earliest memories weren’t of toys or cartoons—they were of watching your parents rehearse lifts, counting beats in your head, being lowered onto the ice like it was holy ground. By thirteen, you were a prodigy. By fifteen, a legend in the making. The U18 Professionals had you on contract before you'd even hit your growth spurt.

Everything had been carefully calculated. Every competition, every routine, every hour of training mapped out like a military plan. You didn’t believe in luck. You believed in repetition. Discipline. Obsession.

So when the academy’s schedule was shuffled—your coach out with the flu—you didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary. Minor inconvenience, that’s all. A new slot, a new rotation. Just another practice day. Until the assistant waved you down, a clipboard in her hand and something unreadable in her eyes.

You were being paired. Not just for warm-ups. For training. Competition.

With him.

Katsuki Bakugo.

You knew of him. Everyone did. Not because he tried to make himself known, but because his presence was impossible to ignore. He moved like fire on the ice—sharp, consuming, violent in the way he claimed the rink. His routines weren’t elegant or traditional. They were explosive, feral, electric. Judges either loved him or didn’t know how to score him. He didn’t skate for approval. He skated like the world had wronged him, and the ice was where he took revenge.

Whether speed, power or precision, he turned skating into an art of destruction. No one got close to him, and he liked it that way. Partners came and went. Most couldn’t handle the way he trained, the way he demanded. You’d only crossed paths briefly—passing nods, mutual glares. Not enemies. Not friends. Just aware of each other, the way two apex predators instinctively recognize threat.

You were two meteors on separate trajectories, until now.

The assistant barely looked up from her clipboard. “He needs a partner. You're the best.”

You scoffed. “I don’t do pair routines.”

“She said the same,” came his voice—rough, low, from behind you. “But you’re here, aren’t you?”

You turned. He was in his warm-up hoodie, laces loose, eyes sharp.

There was nothing uncertain about him. No hesitation in his stance, no flicker of apology. He stood there like he belonged on that ice, like he was already two steps ahead of you and just waiting for you to catch up.

“…You’re seriously doing a pairs competition?” you asked.

He shrugged. “Didn’t plan on it. Partner bailed. I’ve got two weeks. Don’t have time to break in a newbie.”

So this was desperation—his version of it. It looked like confidence but you could see it in the slight tension of his jaw, the way his hands flexed open and shut like he was already imagining the routine in his head and calculating how much time he’d have to waste adjusting to someone new.

“So you think I’ll just drop everything to save your ass?” you replied flatly.

“No.” His eyes locked onto yours. “I know you’ll say yes. Because you’re like me. You don’t like losing.”

Damn him. He wasn’t wrong.