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.

The summons hit Izuku’s inbox at 04:11, priority flag red and unblinking. He was still damp from the shower, towel hanging by a thread on his hips as steam curled out of the bathroom. The subject line read: HPSC: Immediate Briefing — Level Omega. He didn’t think. He tapped Accept, then stared at his reflection while the map pinned coordinates. The mirror showed eyes too tired and a mouth he couldn’t make stop tightening when he thought of Bakugou’s face under harsh lights.

He dressed fast, uniform swapped for plain black and a jacket that didn’t catch on anything. The city at pre-dawn was a line of sodium lamps and long shadows. The car the Commission sent was silent except for the soft navigation prompts. Izuku tucked his hands under his thighs to stop the jitter he couldn’t shake.

Security at headquarters was tighter than usual. Palms on glass, retina scan, the mechanical whisper of doors allowing him through in measured increments. A handler he didn’t recognize met him in the corridor—thirties, short hair, expression that didn’t give anything away.

“Agent,” she said. “Follow me.”

Her badge read Saito. She moved like she didn’t waste steps. They passed rooms with smoked glass, silhouettes bent over tables, the low hum of pressure he’d come to associate with situations that would bend everything for months.

In a small conference room with no windows and a metal carafe sweating on the table, Saito laid out a case file. Photos slid into the sterile light. Bodies on stretchers with lines of scar tissue at the base of their skulls. Close-ups of empty vials with residue that gave Izuku a headache to look at too long. A warehouse wall tagged with a symbol—a stylized splice of two circles, one black, one white, threaded by a barbed line.

“Quirk-trafficking,” Saito said. “Not just activation enhancers. Full transfers, modifications, black-market surgeries. We have clusters popping in three prefectures, and chatter says an entity is consolidating. We need deep inroads. Long-term.”

Izuku’s jaw locked. He knew what it meant: missed patrols, missed agency obligations, a life split by lies. He knew why they were asking him: he could adapt. He could become small enough to fit into dark places and big enough to crack them open.

“What’s the angle?” he asked, resting his fingertips on the table, careful not to smudge the gloss on the photos.

“Underground fighting circuit,” Saito said. “They recruit from there. We’ve got a route into their farm system—mid-level handlers who bring them new muscle. Your cover: disgraced pro who flamed out after a family scandal. You’ve got tape from your school days that supports a scrappy narrative. You can take hits and you can make it look good.”

Izuku accepted the tablet when she handed it to him. The file populated with a new identity: Midorikawa Itsuo. History stitched from pieces of truth and lies. A mother who worked in a hospital. A father gone. Fights kept off the record. He didn’t let his mouth twist when he saw how closely they liked to hew.

“How long?” he said.

“As long as it takes,” Saito said. “You won’t be solo. We’re pairing you.”

His head came up, a flash of heat in his chest that he fought to keep off his face. “Who?”

“You’ll meet your partner at secondary briefing,” she said, which was not an answer. “Your role is to analyze from the inside. Keep contact minimal. Comms will be intermittent. If the handler assesses compromise, you are to exfil and burn the identity.”

He thought of the press conference. He thought of the alley where Bakugou had shielded him without looking. He thought of standing shoulder to shoulder without breaking each other first. He didn’t let any of it show. He nodded once.

“I accept.”

Her eyes moved just enough to catalog the decision. She slid a key across the tabletop. Physical, heavy in his palm. “Safe house,” she said. “Your handler will deliver logistics at 0900 in Briefing Three.”

He tucked the key into his pocket and left with the file. The corridor smelled like antiseptic and coffee. He imagined a different handler, a different room. He imagined someone else sitting across from a table just like this one, saying the same words. He pushed the thought down, set the pace of his breathing to four counts in, four out, and headed for the elevator that would take him to the next step.

Bakugou’s summons burned a hole in his sleep at 04:13. He didn’t remember falling onto the bed. He remembered heat, water, the training room flooding, and then dark. The message dragged him up like a hook under the ribs. He swore into the pillow, rolled, and had a shirt over his head before he was fully awake.

He didn’t wait for a car. He took his bike, engine snarling in the quiet street like something that wanted a fight. The Commission building rose out of the city like a block dropped in from somewhere with worse weather. He slapped his credentials at the scanners and glared at the cameras like they were trying him.

The handler waiting for him was a man with neat hands and eyes that didn’t blink enough. “Dynamight. This way.”

“Use my name again and you’re paying for my dry cleaning,” Bakugou said, because the silence needed to be punctured by something. The handler didn’t react. They didn’t, usually.

In the room they gave him, the table was the same size as a coffin. The file that slid across it was thick enough to bruise. He flipped it open with two fingers and scanned fast: photos, chemical analyses, lab diagrams that made his lip curl.

“Trafficking,” the handler said. “They’re moving quirks like product. The ring recruits out of unsanctioned arenas. We need someone who can sell vicious and win.”

Bakugou snorted. “Congratulations. You found the right bastard.”

“Undercover,” the handler said. “You’ll have cover as a washed-out underground fighter. History of altercations, unreliable attitude. Your real rage will help. You will not be yourself.”

Bakugou leaned back, chair creaking like a dare. “And?”

“And you’ll be paired,” the handler said. “Two-man cell. It gives us redundancy and covers your blind spots.”

He felt the flicker under his sternum he didn’t want. He folded the feeling into irritation. “Who?”

“You’ll meet them when you need to,” the handler said. “The cell will occupy a safe house. There will be a schedule. If your personal issues jeopardize the case, you will be removed. Permanently.”

Bakugou’s jaw tightened. He had a list of personal issues as long as the city grid, but he had one that mattered. He kept his eyes on the file. He liked the smell of the paper. He liked the way it grounded him somewhere that wasn’t a press room or a training hall flooded up to his thighs. “I accept.”

The handler slid a key at him. He caught it without looking, thumb stroking the edge. Real metal. Not everything was a code you could change after the fact.

“Briefing Three,” the handler said. “0900.”

Bakugou stood, file under his arm, the key cutting a half-moon into his skin. The elevator hummed. He watched numbers crawl and told himself it didn’t matter who waited at the end. He told himself the job was the job. He told himself he could do precise, he could be a scalpel, he didn’t need anyone calling out angles over the line to make him hit his mark. He held the lie steady and stepped out when the doors opened.

Briefing Three was colder than the corridors. The lights were too bright, the table too clean, a stack of cover dossiers centered with surgical precision. Saito stood at the head with another handler, a grey-suited man with a face like a locked drawer. A wall screen idled with the symbol Izuku had seen—the spliced circles and barbed line. A folder at each seat, two seats facing each other.

Izuku stepped in first, pulse steady by force. He took the chair on the left, set the key near his elbow, and squared the folder with the table edge. The door opened behind him, the air shifting with heat and a specific ozone tang he could have picked out blind.

“Sit,” the other handler said, voice clipped.

Bakugou’s footsteps were the same as they’d always been: grounded, impatient, daring anyone to be in his way. He stopped when he saw Izuku, the temperature dropping like a vent had opened to winter. His mouth went dangerous.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, flat and sharp.

Izuku’s chest went tight around a breath he didn’t take. He did not stand. He did not look away. “You didn’t know either,” he said, not a question.

“Enough,” Saito cut in, gaze pinning both of them. “We briefed you individually. This is the joint briefing. You will listen.”

Bakugou dragged the other chair back with a squeal of metal, sat with his legs spread and his jaw set. He tossed his key onto the table so it clinked, a challenge. Izuku kept his hands still.

“The cover,” Saito said, sliding two thinner folders forward. “You’ll enter the Sumida circuit as free agents. Disgraced, volatile, short on options. We’ve seeded the narrative. Bar fights, bad debts, a promoter you stiffed. You’re a package deal—trained together, fell apart, crawling back as a team because it’s the only way you get booked.”

Izuku’s name on the cover was MIDORIKAWA ITSuo. Bakugou’s read KAMIYAMA KATSUO. The photos had them darker, meaner, exhausted in believable ways.

“You expect me to sell ‘team’ with him?” Bakugou’s laugh had teeth. “I’ll blow the whole ring before I pretend we—”

“You will,” Saito said, over him. “Because your overlay is better together than apart. Your combined record sells. They look for efficiency, brutality, rhythm. You have that. You will demonstrate it.”

Izuku swallowed the reflex to smooth the edges. “You can give us separate covers that intersect. We can meet in-venue, build rivalry, make it more believable—”

“No,” the man in grey said. “You are tethered. One key to a safe house. You move like a unit, you sleep like a unit. That’s your angle. A single point of control. Easier to monitor. Harder to split and flip.”

Bakugou’s chair scraped back two centimeters. “I don’t need a babysitter. I don’t need him watching my six. He drags. He talks.”

Izuku’s temper flared, hot under the careful breathing. “You blow holes in walls. You forget civilians when you see red. You want to ‘sell vicious’? You’ll sell sloppy without someone to call you down.”

Silence hit like a lid dropping. Saito’s eyes narrowed a fraction. The grey-suit’s gaze ticked to the screen, then back.

“You’re making our case for us,” Saito said. “You don’t like each other. Good. The ring doesn’t recruit friends. It recruits people who can win together because they have to. Your bickering reads as authentic. Use it.”

Bakugou leaned forward, forearms to the table. His hands were scarred and steady. “No. You’ve got a dozen underground idiots who can throw hands. Pair me with one who shuts up.”

Izuku’s mouth was dry. “Pair me with someone who won’t blow cover the second someone looks at him wrong.”

The man in grey placed a palm flat on the table. “This isn’t a negotiation. This is the assignment. Your handlers selected you based on parameters you don’t have clearance to dispute. You will pose as a two-man cell, disgraced, hungry, efficient. You will enter the circuit tonight. You will be seen together. You will get noticed. You will take the meetings we direct you to. Or you won’t take the case.”

Bakugou’s eyes cut to Izuku, bright and mean. “You walk, nerd?”

The old nickname hit like a bruise pressed. Izuku held his gaze. “I accepted,” he said. “Because the people in those photos can’t.”

Saito’s mouth softened by a millimeter, then firmed. “Cover details. You met in a sanctioned gym, got thrown out for violating code of conduct. You burned a promoter, and he’ll vouch for your unreliability—he’s ours. You owe money to a loan shark—also ours. You have one handler in the circuit—Kageyama—who you don’t know is ours. You will not break cover unless you are burned.”

Bakugou kicked his heel against the chair leg, a small, precise explosion of sound. He didn’t look away from Izuku. “We make one thing clear. You talk when I say. You follow my lead in the ring.”

Izuku’s laugh was without humor. “You want me to sell believable? Then you follow mine outside it. You don’t posture at the wrong people. You don’t blow our timeline because your ego needs air.”

Saito stepped between the gazes like a blade. “You will both defer to me. You will both shut up unless asked. If your personal dispute compromises the mission, you will be pulled and sanctioned. That includes suspension of licenses and public censure. Are we clear?”

The room breathed. Izuku’s knuckles were pale on the folder edge. Bakugou’s jaw worked once, twice.

“Clear,” Izuku said, first.

Bakugou’s answer was a growl smoothed into a word. “Clear.”

Saito slid a slim black phone across the table. “Safe house address is preloaded. One key. Don’t lose it. Don’t split it. Be there by 1100. Your first fight is at 1900. You have eight hours to make the apartment look lived in and your partnership look convincing.”

Bakugou snatched the phone. Izuku picked up the key, the weight suddenly heavier than metal. They stood at the same time, chairs protesting in dissonant harmony.

“Try not to kill each other before the ring does,” the grey-suit said, already turning to the screen.

Bakugou shouldered past him at the door, deliberate, hot. Izuku didn’t flinch. They walked out side by side with an inch of air between them that felt like a wall of ice, and the key bit into Izuku’s palm as if it had teeth.

They hit the corridor and the quiet was a pressure system, the kind that made your ears ring. Fluorescents hummed. The floor was polished enough that Izuku could see the blur of Bakugou’s shoulders, tight and squared, in the shine.

“Don’t drop that,” Bakugou said without looking, a flick at the key in Izuku’s fist. “You lose it, I’m blowing the lock.”

“It’s one key,” Izuku said. “Saito said not to split it.” He hated how reasonable he sounded when his nerves were sparking. “We can make a duplicate on the way—”

Bakugou shot him a look that could have scorched metal. “You gonna log that with daddy Commission too? We’re undercover. We use what they give us. We don’t improvise two hours in because you get twitchy.”

Izuku rolled the key into his other palm, counting the teeth and the weight out of habit. “We improvise when it keeps us alive,” he said, softer. “We always have.”

Bakugou’s snort was ugly. “Don’t start with the ‘we.’”

They took the elevator down because there was nowhere else to go. Doors shut them together in a box. Izuku could smell smoke and soap, something clean trying to scrub over something that wasn’t. Bakugou’s hands flexed in and out at his sides as if missing the weight of gauntlets he wasn’t allowed.

“You heard the schedule,” Izuku said to fill the air. “We need to hit the safe house, stash anything traceable, establish patterns. If Kageyama sends someone to check, they need to see signs of life. Toothbrushes. Takeout. Laundry.”

“You want a chore chart?” Bakugou said. The word was a knife.

Izuku’s jaw tightened. “I want us not to get burned because you thought crumbs on a countertop made you look weak.”

“Crumbs don’t make me look weak,” Bakugou said. “You do.”

The doors slid open before Izuku could swallow down a reply that would get them both sanctioned. They stepped into the lobby with the muscle memory of not touching. Cameras tracked, indifferent.

Outside, the air was thin with late winter and exhaust. Bakugou stalked ahead, then reined himself in and matched Izuku’s stride without seeming to want to. It was an old rhythm, one that made Izuku’s throat ache because it didn’t need words.

“Covers,” Izuku said, flipping his folder open as they walked. “Kamiyama and Midorikawa trained under a guy named Tsutsui out in Nerima. He’s on file as a brute who got deregistered. We got tossed for fighting in the parking lot. You broke a guy’s nose. I—”

“Coward-punched him?” Bakugou said.

“Dragged you off,” Izuku said, ignoring it. “We owe three hundred thousand yen to a loan shark in Shitaya. We stiffed a promoter named Nakao. He’ll vouch that we exist and that we’re a pain. Our first fight is booked at Sumida on a novice card, two-on-two. We need to look like we like money more than rules.”

“That part’s easy,” Bakugou said. His eyes cut sideways. “You going to take the edges off in there? Smile at the recruiters so they think we’re safe?”

“They’re looking for efficient and dangerous,” Izuku said. “Not unhinged. We sell the thing they can use.”

Bakugou’s mouth twitched like he wanted to bite. “You say ‘we’ again and I’ll—”

“What?” Izuku stopped at the curb. It was careless and he hated that he did it, but the thread snapped. “You’ll do what? The thing you always do? Get loud, make it about how you don’t need anyone, make it all explode until I have to—”

Bakugou stepped in, heat pulsing off him. “Until you have to what, Deku? Lecture me? Take a hit meant for me? You already built that into your plan?”

The name hurt and soothed in a way Izuku couldn’t handle. He looked past Bakugou’s shoulder and fixed his focus on a bus ad peeling at the corners. “I built in what will keep us from failing. You’re not the only one who—”

He caught himself and shut it down. He wouldn’t bleed in a street.

Bakugou’s breath sawed once, hard. He stepped back as if he’d heard the edge close. “Safe house first,” he said, flat. “Then you can draw your little maps and I’ll tell you where they’re wrong.”

Izuku didn’t argue. The cab ride was silent except for the driver’s radio and the city sliding by in glass reflections. Bakugou kept his knee bouncing like a tremor he couldn’t arrest. Izuku kept his hands on the key and the phone like talismans.

The safe house was in a building that had been new forty years ago and never updated. Third floor walk-up. The lock turned with a stiffness that said it hadn’t been used in months. The door stuck on the swollen jamb and then gave.

Inside, the air had that hollow, pretense-of-living smell. Bare couch. Table with one scar down the center. A kitchenette with two cups in a cabinet as if someone had thought of it and stopped. A single bedroom with a door that wouldn’t latch unless you lifted and shoved. Saito hadn’t been joking about one key and one everything.

Bakugou threw his bag onto the couch. It slumped into the cushion like it belonged. He moved through the space fast, cataloging exits and sightlines with the sharp motion of a man who hated walls. He flipped the mattress on the floor with his boot, tested the windows, jerked the curtains once to see if they were lined. They weren’t.

Izuku put the key on the table, center, metal against wood like a point they could orbit. He opened drawers. There were cheap sheets, a first aid kit that was stocked like someone had thought of what they’d need, a roll of duct tape, a box of burner SIMs. He took a breath that filled and emptied nothing.

“Shower is clean,” Bakugou called, and it sounded like an accusation.

Izuku turned the burner phone on and pulled up the preloaded map of Sumida. He could feel Bakugou behind him without looking. The room pressed at his skin.

“We need to decide how we present,” Izuku said. “Who talks first, who doesn’t. Your posture reads as ‘will swing at anything that moves.’ That sells. But if you blow at the wrong guy, Kageyama ghosts us.”

Bakugou leaned on the other side of the table, knuckles to wood, crowding without touching. “You going to tell me when to shut up?”

“Yes,” Izuku said, and the word came out steady. “And you’re going to tell me when to stop explaining and hit harder. We both do the thing we’re good at. We don’t try to be each other.”

For a second, something eased minutely at the corner of Bakugou’s mouth. It wasn’t a smile. It was a flicker of recognition. He looked at the key between them, then at the bedroom door, then back at Izuku.

“One bed,” he said.

“One couch,” Izuku said.

Bakugou’s gaze dragged over him slow, not appreciative, assessing, like measuring weight and speed and whether his shoulder would fit under Izuku’s arm if he needed to carry him. “I’m not taking the couch.”

“I don’t care where you sleep,” Izuku said. “I care that we get through tonight without anyone seeing through us.”

Bakugou reached out, tapped the key once with a finger, a small metallic note. “We make it look real,” he said. “You and me. A unit.”

Izuku hated how the word made his chest move wrong. He nodded. “We make it look real.”

Bakugou pushed off the table. “Then stop standing there and make the place look like we live here.”

Izuku moved. He set cups on the counter, dropped a takeout menu and crumpled the corner, tossed a hoodie over the back of the couch where Bakugou’s bag lay like a threat. He found a pen and scrawled a phone number from the burner onto the wall near the door, under a light switch, like a habit someone had. Bakugou went through the fridge and left the door ajar for a second too long, enough for condensation to bead. He threw an empty bottle in the trash so it clinked.

They circled each other, performing the intimacy of existence without touching. In the bedroom, Izuku yanked the sheets onto the mattress with the efficiency of someone who had slept in worse. Bakugou came in and dropped a blanket on the floor near the bed, a territorial line without saying it.

When they ended up back at the table, the key still sat in the center like a dare. Izuku reached out and pulled it toward his side by a centimeter. Bakugou watched his hand like a fuse.

“Don’t lose it,” Bakugou said again, lower.

“I won’t,” Izuku said. He held the key until the bite of the edge marked his skin. He let the mark stay. He didn’t look away when Bakugou finally did. The next hours would be a test. The ring would be worse. The key was a promise and a trap.

The phone buzzed with a text from Saito: Be visible by 1730. Be convincing by 1900.

Bakugou’s mouth thinned. Izuku nodded once. The air between them stayed cold and tight and necessary.

The knock wasn’t a knock. It was the scrape of the door and Saito stepping in without waiting, eyes cutting over the staged mess with a quick, clinical tally. He looked at the tossed hoodie, the ajar fridge, the scrawled number, the mattress half-made, the blanket on the floor like a border.

“Good,” he said, and it wasn’t praise. “You’ve got the illusion of life down.”

Bakugou straightened from the counter, arms folding, chin lifting. Izuku felt his spine align without thinking, the posture of being evaluated drilled into him. The burner buzzed again—a calendar ping. Saito held out a small envelope. Inside were laminated IDs that would not hold up to forensic scrutiny and cash, counted in bands.

“You’ll get more after the first fight,” Saito said. “If you’re still in.”

Bakugou bristled. “We’ll be in.”

“You’ll be in if you remember you’re not Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku,” Saito said. “You’re Kamiyama and Midorikawa, a pair of idiots who like to hit things and hate being told what to do, and you can’t slip, not once.” His gaze slid between them, reading the static like it had its own light. “Which brings me to this.”

He took a step closer, lowering his voice even though there was nothing in the empty building to hear. “You two are an asset together. On your own, you’re loud, messy problems. I don’t care about your history. I don’t care who broke whose nose in middle school. If I get one hint that whatever this is—” a flick of two fingers between them— “bleeds into the mission, if it costs us access or spooks Kageyama, I pull you. Not a suspension. Not a timeout. You’re off. Dishonorable discharge from the case, black mark, no appeals. You will not get assignments like this again for a long time, if ever. Understood?”

Izuku’s mouth was already forming the automatic “yes, sir.” Beside him, Bakugou’s jaw ticked hard enough to creak. Izuku got in first. “Understood.”

Bakugou smirked, ugly and thin. “Understood,” he said, like chewing glass.

Saito didn’t blink. “I don’t give this speech to every team. I’m giving it to you because I had to watch your press conference and then your hallway footage and then your medical reports from UA. You light each other up. It’s useful. It’s dangerous. Decide which it’s going to be.”

Izuku swallowed the reflex to explain, to promise more than he had a right to. He kept his hands loose and visible. “We’ll keep it contained,” he said, steady. He felt Bakugou’s stare dragging across his cheekbone like a spark looking for tinder.

Saito nodded once. “You have one key. One. You lose it, you move out in a hurry with nothing. You let your temper make choices, it’s over.” He looked at Bakugou. “You’re not in charge.” He looked at Izuku. “Neither are you. The mission is. If one of you can’t handle that, tell me now and I’ll split you and eat the failures.”

Silence. The fridge motor kicked on. A siren wailed and faded three streets away, thin through glass.

Bakugou’s fingers flexed against his bicep, then stilled. He angled his head, eyes on Saito’s shoulder. “We’re not going to hand you an excuse to bench us,” he said, quieter than Izuku expected.

Saito held his stare for three seconds longer than polite. Then he stepped back, the room seeming to expand a millimeter with the space. “You’re visible in twenty minutes. You’ll hit the ramen shop two blocks east. You’ll be seen arguing about money, not about respect. You’ll pay cash. You’ll go to Sumida. You’ll be convincing by 1900 or you’ll be back here scraping this place clean alone.”

Izuku nodded. “We can do that.”

Saito was already at the door. “Last thing,” he said, hand on the knob. “If you need me, you don’t. You need each other. That’s the work. Make it about the work.” He left without waiting for assent, the stairwell swallowing the sound of his steps.

The quiet folded over them like a wet blanket. Bakugou stared at the door as if willing it to come back so he could slam it. Izuku’s pulse knocked against his throat in a rhythm that wanted motion, an outlet that wasn’t talking.

“We can’t fight like we do,” Izuku said finally. The words were low, carefully shaved down to function. “Not where anyone can see it.”

Bakugou’s laugh was sharp and laughless. “So we fake it, then.”

“We choose,” Izuku said, and he hated how earnest it sounded. “To not give them what they expect.”

Bakugou’s eyes cut to the key in Izuku’s hand, to the indentation it had left in his skin. He took a step in, stopping within the exact radius where heat licked at the fine hairs on Izuku’s forearm. “I’m not apologizing for anything.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Izuku said. He watched the minute shift of Bakugou’s shoulders, the way a breath came in and didn’t blow. He lifted his chin. “Truce,” he said, not an offer, not a plea. A boundary.

Bakugou held his gaze like it was a test and then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. “For the mission,” he said.

“For the mission,” Izuku agreed.

They stood in it for a beat, the shape of something like agreement fitted wrong and strangely right between them. Bakugou reached out and picked up the envelope Saito had left, shoving the cash into his pocket, flipping the IDs across the table. Izuku caught his and slid it into his wallet next to cards that didn’t have his name. Their fingers didn’t touch.

“Ramen,” Bakugou said, biting off the edge. “You do the talking. I’ll do the glaring. We make it look real.”

Izuku squared his shoulders. He clipped the key to the inside of his pocket with the tiny carabiner he always carried, the motion practiced. He looked up to find Bakugou already watching. “We make it work,” he corrected, quiet.

Bakugou snorted. But he went to the door and waited, hand on the frame, not leaving him behind. When Izuku reached him, they stepped out together, the air in the hallway colder than the room, their footfalls falling into that old, infuriating rhythm that had always saved them when nothing else did. They didn’t speak, and for the first time since the briefing, the silence between them held.