A Synchronicity of Violence

Flashbulbs stung like grit in the air, and the podium microphones fed the crowd’s hunger with every breath. Izuku could feel Dynamight beside him before the cameras even found them—the heat of Bakugou’s body, the coil of his impatience, a storm pressed into a suit jacket.

“Deku, Dynamight—some estimates put collateral at eight city blocks. Do you consider this a win?”

Izuku leaned in first. Smile measured, apology tucked beneath it. “Our priority was evacuations. The traffickers detonated rigged charges as a diversion. We minimized casualties, and we’re already coordinating with reconstruction crews. I’m—”

“We did our jobs,” Bakugou cut in, voice flat and sharp enough to slice the question in half. “You want a number? Thirty-seven civilians moved out of the collapse radius. I don’t owe you a prettied-up answer.”

Flash. Flash.

“Dynamight, do you think your… methods… increased the damage?”

Bakugou’s jaw flexed. The microphone captured the sound of his breath. “My methods stopped three armed assholes from blowing a school van. You want me to negotiate with a grenade? You want me to ask it to be nice?”

Izuku slid closer to his mic. “What Dynamight means is that the call was made based on real-time threat assessment. We train for that, and—”

“Don’t translate me,” Bakugou said without turning. His fingers tapped twice against the podium, knuckles nicked and still dark with grime. “I said what I meant.”

A murmur rolled through the press pit. Izuku kept the smile, gentled the tone. “The hero network is covering hospital bills for anyone injured. We have witnesses who can attest to the evacuation plans executed on scene. We’re grateful to the citizens who trusted us.”

“Grateful?” Bakugou snorted. “They got out. That’s the point.”

“Deku, we have sources saying you took point on strategy while Dynamight engaged the leader. Was there tension regarding command?”

“No,” Izuku said quickly, heat creeping up his neck. “We’ve worked together a long time. We both know how to switch lanes when it counts.”

Bakugou tilted the mic down. His mouth curved in something that wasn’t a smile. “He called out angles. I blew holes through them. You want a headline, write that.”

A hand shot up. “Residents said it sounded like a war zone. Do you two even like each other?”

Some in the back laughed. Izuku did not. “We have professional respect,” he said, the words stacked carefully. “And history. That history lets us anticipate each other’s moves even under extreme pressure.”

Bakugou finally turned his head, the sideways glance sharp, too intimate for a stage like this. “What, you want us to braid friendship bracelets? Heroes aren’t here to make you comfortable. They’re here to end threats.”

“Mr. Midoriya,” another voice, clipped and eager. “You were seen restraining Dynamight from advancing into the smoke. Did you think he was being reckless?”

Bakugou exhaled a quiet “Tch,” jaw ticking.

Izuku swallowed. “Visibility was zero. I held him for a second to listen—sirens, structural groaning, the secondary charge timer. It wasn’t about control. It was about staying alive so we could keep people alive.”

“So you disagree with Dynamight’s tactics?”

“I disagree with dying,” Izuku said, and the room paused, just for a heartbeat. “And he didn’t. He adjusted.”

Bakugou’s fingers curled on the podium lip, then released. “I adjusted because I wanted to smash the bastards who set those charges,” he said, voice low. “Not because Deku tugged my leash.”

The air thinned. Izuku felt his pulse in his ears. “No leashes,” he said quietly. “Just partners.”

“Question for Dynamight: rumors say you told local police to ‘get the hell out of your way.’ Is that accurate?”

“If they were standing in the blast line, yeah.” He shrugged. “You want me to be polite while the building eats them? Next question.”

“Do you accept responsibility for the shattered water main and the power outage?”

“Yes,” Izuku said at the same time Bakugou said, “No.”

They stopped. Izuku inhaled. “We accept responsibility for the results of our choices. The water main flooded the lower staircases and stalled the spread of the fire. The power cut minimized the chance of electrical ignition and triggered backup lights for evac routes. We made calculated calls.”

Bakugou leaned into his mic, eyes like flint. “And if that pisses off investors, they can bill me.”

The moderator’s smile froze. An aide made a slicing gesture from the wings. Izuku pressed on. “We’ll be on-site tomorrow to assist with cleanup. Please direct further questions to the agency’s public affairs office. Thank you for your patience—”

“Dynamight, one more—people say Deku’s the brains and you’re the blunt instrument. How do you respond to that?”

Bakugou’s laugh was short and ugly. “People say a lot of garbage. Deku’s got numbers in his head, sure. I’ve got instincts. Together we put criminals in the ground. You want poetry? Go to a bookstore.”

“Then why do you look like you’d rather be anywhere else than beside him?” a woman called out, bold, knowing.

Izuku’s tongue stuck for a second. Bakugou’s answer came too fast. “Because press conferences are a waste of oxygen.” He straightened, eyes cutting through the crowd. “We’re done.”

Izuku nodded, because there was no salvaging it now. “Thank you for your time.” He bowed, precise. Bakugou didn’t. They stepped off opposite sides of the stage, not touching, their silence loud enough to make the cameras chase them down the wings like wolves.

The hallway swallowed sound, soft carpet muffling footsteps, walls hung with framed commendations that glinted under harsh fluorescents. An aide tried to intercept them with a thin smile and a stack of paperwork. Bakugou didn’t even slow down. He shoved through the nearest door marked Green Room, the impact of it slamming open making the coat rack rattle.

Izuku followed, pulse climbing. “Kac—Bakugou—”

“Don’t,” Bakugou snapped, rounding on him. The door swung shut with a thud. The cheap couch, the vanity mirror with bulbs, bottled water sweating on a tray—everything looked too clean for the mess in Bakugou’s eyes. “Don’t ‘team’ me out there like you’re my handler.”

Izuku blinked hard. He kept his voice low, steady. “I was trying to keep it from turning into a disaster.”

“It was already a disaster the second they shoved us under those lights.” Bakugou flicked water from his fingers where he’d cracked a cap off. It splattered his shirt, dark dots over black fabric. “You hear yourself? ‘We accept responsibility.’ Speak for yourself, Deku.”

“We did it together.” Izuku took a breath and felt how tight his ribs were. “I don’t—look down on you. I don’t. I never have.”

Bakugou laughed, bare teeth, no humor. “You are so full of it. You’ve been looking down on me since we were kids.”

The word kids hit like a thrown stone. Izuku flinched. “We were stupid then. Both of us.”

“Stupid?” Bakugou prowled closer, the energy rolling off him, heat and impatience. “You followed me around like a lost dog and still found a way to look at me like—like I was a problem you were going to fix. Like your pity was some kind of gift.”

“That’s not—” Izuku stopped, because lies tasted terrible. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I worried. You were reckless. You wouldn’t let anyone help. I thought—if I could do something, say something—”

“You thought you could save me,” Bakugou said, and the words were quiet, heavy. “Even when you were quirkless, you stepped in like you had the right. Like you knew better.”

“I stepped in because you were going to die,” Izuku said, voice rising. The memory burned: the river, the sludge, Bakugou’s muffled choking. “I didn’t think. I just moved.”

“And ever since then you’ve acted like moving is your job with me. Like you’re assigned to my life.” Bakugou’s mouth twisted. “At UA, when I blew past everyone, when I won, you watched like I stole something you wrote in a notebook.”

Izuku’s throat worked. “I watched like I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Because you’re—good. Because you were the person I measured myself against. Because I wanted to be on your level so badly it hurt.”

“Bullshit,” Bakugou said, but it lacked bite. He looked away, jaw ticking, memories pulling his mouth down. “You talked to me like that today. Like you had to soften me for them. Like you’re the translator between people and the wild animal.”

Izuku felt heat flare under his skin. “I was trying to stop them from twisting your words. They’ll eat you alive if they think you’re unstable.”

“I’m not your PR assignment.” Bakugou shot back in, close enough Izuku could see the nick on his cheek, the fine sheen of sweat still not cleaned away, the tiny scar under his left eye from Kamino. “You think you need to protect me from myself. Same as always.”

“I need you alive,” Izuku said, helpless, because it sounded stupid out loud, simple and too big. “I need you there. Not charging into smoke when we can wait one more second and listen. Not taking hits you don’t have to.”

Bakugou’s hands flexed at his sides. “And I need you to stop acting like you’re the only one thinking out there. I read the field. I adjust. I’m not a grenade. I’m not your project.”

“I know you’re not a project.” Izuku’s voice cracked, raw. “You’re—Bakugou. You’re—the person who makes me faster. Who forces me to be better. When we work together, we win. When we don’t—” He swallowed. “We fall apart.”

“Don’t turn this into one of your speeches.” Bakugou took a step back, like distance could make this easier. “You stood in front of me and told them we were partners. Then you held me back like I didn’t know what I was doing. Same as UA, same as before. You look at me and I can feel it in my bones—you think you’re above me. You hide it behind worrying, behind that damn voice.”

“I don’t,” Izuku said, and he wanted to grab him, shake him, make it stick. “I don’t think I’m above you. I think you’re the only person who ever scared me because you’re right there and I never know if I can reach you. Because every time I try, I get burned.”

Bakugou’s mouth opened, shut. The mirror behind him caught both of them—two figures braced like they might swing. “You can’t fix this by saying the right thing.”

“I don’t want to fix you,” Izuku said. “I want to fix us. I want us to be on the same side without feeling like we’re pulling each other apart.”

“You think I don’t want that?” The words ripped out of him, sharp. “I’ve been chasing you since we were ten. I can’t breathe without measuring the space you take up. And every time you talk like that in front of others, it’s like you’re setting me a little lower so you can put yourself exactly where you want—above the blast, looking down.”

Izuku stared at him, chest tight. “Then tell me what you need from me. Tell me how to do this without making you feel small.”

Bakugou’s breathing slowed, nostrils flaring. He dragged a hand over his face, fingers pressing into his eyes. “Stop telling me to wait like I’m a threat you need to leash. Say you trust me and mean it. Stop translating me. Stand next to me and let me speak.”

“I do trust you,” Izuku said, steady, and this time he held the look, didn’t look away when Bakugou tried to burn him with it. “I trust you with my life. I trusted you today when I went right because you said left was compromised. I trust you enough to put my back to you and not worry if it’ll hold. I need you to trust that I’m not trying to keep you small. I’m trying to keep you.”

Silence pressed down. Bakugou’s throat bobbed. His fists uncurled, fingers shaking just slightly, the tremor only noticeable because Izuku was close enough now to see it. “Dammit.”

The knock on the door came thin through the quiet. “We need you to sign the post-brief forms,” a muffled voice said, nervous.

Bakugou didn’t look away. Izuku didn’t either.

“Later,” Bakugou called, voice flat, rough. The footsteps retreated.

Izuku drew a breath that tasted like the air before a storm. “We can’t keep doing it like this.”

“Then don’t,” Bakugou said, each word deliberate. “Stand with me or get out of my way. But stop looking at me like I’m something you have to save from myself.”

Izuku nodded once, slow. “Stand with me,” he said. “And I’ll stand with you.” He held out a hand like an anchor thrown between them, small and raw. “Deal?”

Bakugou stared at it, jaw tight, eyes unreadable. He didn’t take it. Not yet. He looked at Izuku’s hand, then his face, and the wall between them shifted, a hairline crack forming deep and dangerous.

Night pressed down over Musutafu, the city a scatter of sodium orange and cold blue. Izuku took the north route out of habit, rooftop to rooftop, the steady rhythm of muscle and quirk an anchor. Wind tugged at his hood. His comm stayed quiet, Bakugou’s frequency a thin line of static he didn’t touch.

He landed on the edge of a dental clinic’s sign and crouched, scanning the street below. A couple argued softly outside a convenience store. A delivery bike buzzed past. Nothing that needed him. He breathed in the faint smell of rain clinging to hot asphalt and pulled out his phone, thumb opening a folder he hadn’t let himself look at in months.

Kacchan—Explosive Enhancement: practical counters, synergy notes.

His own handwriting filled the screen: bullet points, clipped observations, timestamps. Videos linked: clips from training, fights, old sports festival footage he’d pulled years ago and kept watching like a ritual. He swiped through, the notes precise, almost clinical.

Pattern recognition: chooses high ground when forced into defense. Prefers to feint left and rotate clockwise. Right gauntlet slightly heavier; favors left when the right is on cooldown.

He had written this at fifteen, sixteen, the sentences flat, a poor mask for the way his chest had ached. He remembered the hours spent recording, pausing, rewinding, not because he wanted to dismantle Bakugou but because he wanted to understand him enough to stand close without getting torn apart. He wanted to be useful. He wanted to be seen.

He watched a clip: Bakugou dropping into a low stance before blasting upward, the thrust angled to shave a few milliseconds off his ascent. The efficiency of it still made Izuku’s breath catch. He could see the path of the blast through the air, the exact place he would put himself to use it, to turning it into momentum, to step where Bakugou needed him to be without asking.

He swiped to a more recent entry: Dynamight’s current loadout. Right gauntlet repaired after Shie Hassaikai. Sweat composition variance post-hypoxia incident. Recommended verbal cues: short, one word. Trust signals: tap shoulder twice, don’t touch elbow.

His throat tightened. He had cataloged him like a storm map. He had found ways to draw circles around the dangerous edges so he could step inside. And today, under too-bright lights, he’d heard the crack in Bakugou’s voice when he said, You set me a little lower. It lodged under Izuku’s sternum like glass.

A siren wailed in the distance, then turned a corner and faded. Izuku slid his phone back into the pocket of his jacket but didn’t move. He let his eyes close. The roof’s tar paper pressed rough against his soles through the thin soles of his boots, the city a low hum under everything.

We waste it, he thought. All that instinct and analysis that locked together without effort when they let it. All the times their bodies had read the same rhythm and moved like a single thing. They could have been terrifying in the right way, clean and precise. They were, sometimes. And then they opened their mouths and everything fractured.

He thought of the green room, the way Bakugou hadn’t taken his hand. A crack had appeared anyway. Deep and dangerous. He pictured it like a fault line running under their feet, something that could level them or rearrange the city into a new shape if it ever gave.

His comm pinged with a location update. Bakugou was two districts away, sweeping the industrial park south of the river, his dot a stubborn, steady pulse. Izuku stared at it too long and then forced his eyes away. He launched himself to the next building, shoulders loosening as he moved.

On a quiet residential block, he perched on a stairwell roof and pulled out an old notebook, the one he still carried despite digitizing almost everything. The pages were soft from being turned too much. He flipped to a section he knew by heart even if he pretended not to.

Katsuki Bakugou—notes not for field. Underlined twice.

You are the immediate variable I can’t calculate around. You make me better because you never let me be lazy. You terrify me because I want— He had stopped there years ago, pen hovering, disciplined lines breaking into a staggered scrawl. Beneath it, he’d written in smaller letters: want to reach you. Want to stand where you are and not make you turn away.

He pressed his thumb into the margin until the paper dented. He heard Bakugou’s voice in the press room, the way it had gone low. Say you trust me and mean it. He’d said it back. He meant it. He had meant it all along, in every note, every calculation designed to keep Bakugou moving, alive, unbroken.

A woman walked her dog below, the animal’s nails clicking against pavement. Izuku watched until they turned the corner and then closed the notebook gently. He didn’t want to be the thing that made Bakugou feel small. He didn’t want to be the translator and the leash. He just wanted to stand with him and stop wasting this thing they had built in spite of themselves.

His comm crackled with a brief burst of static, the channel spike he’d come to recognize as Bakugou testing the line with a brush of his glove. Izuku lifted his hand to his earpiece and let it fall without touching. He looked out over the city, the spread of lights like a map of all the places they could fix if they stopped breaking each other first.

Rain started, a soft pinprick hiss. He didn’t move until it soaked the curl of his hair and ran into his collar, goosebumps prickling along his arms. Then he stood, knees bending into the fall to the next roof, the next, the motion automatic, clean. The ache in his chest stayed, old and shaped like a boy with ferocious eyes who had once pulled him through a world that hurt and dared him to keep up. He wanted to keep up. He wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder and let the noise fall away. He wanted to stop wasting time.

The training hall was empty at this hour, the reinforced walls layered with scorch marks that were mostly his. The fluorescents hummed. He wrapped his palms tight, the bandage biting into his skin, and flexed his fingers until the joints popped. The image played again, uninvited: that face under the press lights, eyes too soft, mouth shaping careful words that made everything worse.

Pity. He could taste it like metal in his mouth.

He punched the console on. Targets unfolded from the ceiling, drone pods waking with a wasp-buzz. He didn’t bother with the warm-up. He launched.

Explosions cracked the air, the recoil traveling up his forearms, a rhythm he drove into himself until it could drown out anything else. He pushed hard and then harder, vaulting off a blast that hit the wall at an angle that would add lift without tearing the panel. He tracked the drones by vibration, not by sight, cutting the time it took to decide and blowing them to shrapnel on instinct.

“Faster,” he breathed, and his breath fogged, sweat rolling into his eyes. He blinked it away and went again.

He’d said stand with me. He’d held out a hand like Bakugou was supposed to forget that every time a camera was on, Deku shaped their story into something clean and safe while Bakugou ate the blame. He wanted to laugh; it came out as a ragged sound when his boots hit the floor and he used the impact to load his legs and spring, blowing open a path through a cluster of targets that tried to box him in.

His palms screamed under the wrap. He tightened. He didn’t stop.

He traded gauntlets out for bare bracers after a set, the heavy gear clattering on the bench like a dropped weight in his chest. The gauntlets protected him. He didn’t want protection. He wanted to know exactly where he broke and push past it until the breaking point moved.

He set the difficulty higher until the drones moved like real opponents, sharper, smarter. He set the pattern randomizer to punish habits and then dove headfirst into the punishment. Sparks raised blisters along his skin where the blast backwash skimmed him; he rolled his shoulder to keep the joint from locking. He drove a straight right into a hard-light barrier and let the recoil for a split second echo that first Sports Festival when Deku refused to go down, when Deku kept walking into his blast like pain meant nothing as long as he reached him.

“You should have stayed down,” he told the empty room, and blew the barrier into fragments. His throat hurt. The words came anyway. “I’ll go so far ahead you won’t even see my shadow.”

He forced his stance low and narrow, training away the arc Deku had once timed, changing his pivot point a few degrees at a time until his muscle memory protested. He took it as a good sign. He wanted to deny Izuku every tidy note, every reliable cue. He wanted to be unreadable. Untouchable.

He hit the floor wrong and his ankle rolled, pain flashing white-hot up his calf. He hissed, steadying, and fired hard from the opposite hand to keep the momentum going. The smell of his own burned sweat thickened in his nose. He coughed, then laughed at himself, at the way the sound peeled at the edges. It didn’t matter. Pain meant he was still pushing.

The timer chirped. He snarled and slammed it off, resetting. Again.

He stripped layers as heat built. The shirt stuck to him, then came off and landed in a dark, wet heap. Old scars stood out, raised lines catching light when sparks flared near them. He saw them and refused to think of hands cataloging their shape, eyes tracking the way he adjusted when a tendon pulled a fraction too tight.

He wall-ran on a blast, the shock through his bones like a jolt he needed. He let a drone get too close and then caught it, fingers closing on metal, and crushed it with a blast point-blank that stung up to his shoulder. He welcomed the sting. He welcomed the ringing in his ears. He welcomed anything that wasn’t the echo of Deku’s voice saying I trust you like Bakugou was the cliff he loved to stand on.

“Trust this,” he muttered, and set the room to flood mode. Water hissed into the basin-level, rising, forcing him to calculate in vertical layers, to control intensity so he didn’t ignite vapor and strip his lungs raw. He adjusted, cutting blasts fine, riding shockwaves like stepping-stones. The discipline of it made his jaw lock. He could be precise. He could be a scalpel instead of a grenade. He didn’t need Deku calling out coordinates in his ear to do it.

He slid, water to his knees, then his thighs, cold, tugging at his shorts, turning his skin slick. He kept moving. He didn’t let the resistance slow him. He drove a heel down and used the push to spin, palms out, twin detonations carving a corridor that closed behind him in steam. His heart stuttered and then hammered, a rhythm that threatened to get away from him. He reached for it, seized it, bent it back under his will.

By the time he killed the system, everything shook. His hands, the air, the lines in his vision. He braced himself on his knees and dragged breath in through his teeth. The room smelled like ozone and scorched metal and salt. His wraps were soaked through, dark and sticky in spots where the skin had split.

He stared at his palms, raw and ugly, and flexed them until the ache sharpened. “Keep up with this,” he said, not sure if he meant it for Deku or the ugly voice in his own skull that wanted to crawl back, to that look that had not been pity so much as—no. He shut it down. He kicked the gauntlets under the bench and reached for his towel like if he could wipe this off, he could wipe off the thought.

He was going to build something Deku couldn’t read, couldn’t soften, couldn’t stand next to and translate. He would be so far ahead that they’d never have to pretend to be a team again. The thought should have been clean. It wasn’t. It sat in him like a stone with an ache underneath, something hollowed out he didn’t want to look at.

He threw the towel aside and reset the room one more time. His body protested. He ignored it. He’d keep moving until the ache got quiet or until everything else did. He hit the start and ran straight into the first blast with his teeth bared, and for a while there was only speed and the hard edge of wanting to be alone at the top where no one could reach him. Where he didn’t have to see that face in his head and feel something he hadn’t trained for.