Chapter 2: The First Public Test
The air inside the Obsidian Club was a solid thing, thick with bass from hidden speakers and the cloying sweetness of premium liquor. Strobing neon in venomous greens and purples cut through a haze of cigar smoke, illuminating fragments of faces—a smirk here, a greedy glance there. The floor was black marble, so polished it reflected the chaotic light show above like a still, dark river.
Shinsou felt Bakugou’s hand on his arm the moment they passed the velvet rope. Not the practiced, relaxed hold from the safe house. This was a grip. Anchoring. Possessive. Just as they’d discussed, but the intensity was a live wire.
“Easy,” Shinsou murmured, not looking at him, his own hand coming up to cover Bakugou’s, a gesture that could read as affection or restraint. His fingers tightened over Bakugou’s knuckles for a half-second. Breathe.
Bakugou’s answering exhale was hot against his neck. He didn’t relax, but the grip shifted from crushing to claiming. Good. They moved into the main room, a slow, deliberate push through the crowd. Shinsou kept his expression a mask of bored amusement, his violet eyes scanning, cataloging. He saw the types immediately. The power brokers in tailored suits holding court in circular booths. The aspirants, lesser villains or quirk-wealthy fetishists, eyeing the heroes with a mix of awe and hunger. And the enforcers, bulky and quiet near the pillars, watching everything.
“He’s here,” Bakugou muttered, his head tilted as if nuzzling Shinsou’s jaw, but his eyes were sharp, tracking left. “Three o’clock. The booth with the ice sculpture.”
Shinsou followed the line of sight. In a recessed booth draped in deeper shadow, a man sat alone. He was mid-forties, with silver streaks at his temples and a beard trimmed to a ruthless point. He wore a simple, expensive black shirt, sleeves rolled. One hand swirled a glass of amber liquid. The other rested on the shoulder of a young man kneeling silently beside the booth, a collar gleaming at his throat. The man’s eyes met Shinsou’s across the room. He didn’t smile. He gave a slow, considering nod.
Katsuragi. The target.
“He’s watching,” Shinsou said, his lips brushing Bakugou’s ear. He felt the fine tremor that went through him. Not fear. Adrenaline. The kind Bakugou lived for. “Time for the show.”
They found a spot at the bar, a relatively open space where they could be seen. Bakugou ordered two whiskeys, neat, slapping a heavy hand on the polished wood. The bartender, a woman with scales shimmering along her neck, nodded deferentially.
“This place is a fucking circus,” Bakugou said, louder than necessary, his voice cutting through the ambient hum. He took his glass and knocked back half of it in one go.
“You chose it,” Shinsou reminded him, his tone dry. He lifted his own glass, sipping slowly. The whiskey was smoke and fire, expensive. “You said you wanted to see what the fuss was about.”
“The fuss is a bunch of losers playing dress-up.” Bakugou’s crimson gaze swept the room, a challenge. Several people looked away quickly. Others watched with open fascination. “Wasting my night.”
“Our night,” Shinsou corrected, his voice dropping, threading a needle of steel into the words. He set his glass down with a precise click. “And you’re making a scene.”
“I’m always a scene. That’s the point of me.” Bakugou turned to face him, crowding into his space. The air crackled between them. This was the script, but the anger in Bakugou’s eyes was a little too bright, a little too real. The club, the eyes, Katsuragi’s silent appraisal—it was sandpaper on his nerves.
“The point of you,” Shinsou said, leaning in so their foreheads were almost touching, “is to listen to me when we’re in public. Remember?”
A muscle in Bakugou’s jaw jumped. He looked like he wanted to detonate. This was the dangerous edge. They had to fight, but Bakugou had to lose. Publicly. It went against every fiber of his being.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your brainwashed puppets,” Bakugou snarled, his voice low and vicious.
“The only one here who needs brainwashing is you, if you can’t control that temper.” Shinsou’s hand shot out, not to hit, but to grasp Bakugou’s chin, forcing his gaze to stay locked. The touch was electric, a jolt that silenced the immediate area around them. “You’re embarrassing us.”
For a stretched second, Bakugou stared at him, fire and defiance and something else, something raw that made Shinsou’s chest tighten. Then, with a visible, shuddering effort, Bakugou’s eyes dropped. He jerked his chin out of Shinsou’s grasp, but the submission was clear. He stared at the floor, his shoulders tense, his breathing ragged.
The crowd around them exhaled. A soft, appreciative murmur rippled through the closest onlookers. A powerful, untamed thing, publicly chastened. It was exactly the spectacle they craved.
Shinsou picked up his whiskey again, his own hand steady. He took a slow sip, his eyes scanning over the rim of the glass. He saw Katsuragi watching, now with a faint, unreadable smile. He’d taken the bait.
“We’re leaving,” Shinsou said, his voice carrying finality. He threw a stack of bills on the bar. “Now.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. He turned and walked toward the main exit, a direct path that led past Katsuragi’s booth. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. The sound of Bakugou’s footsteps, a half-beat behind and to his left, was all the confirmation he needed.
They were three steps from the booth when a smooth voice stopped them.
“A shame to see the evening end so soon.”
Shinsou paused, turning with careful indifference. Katsuragi had risen from his seat. Up close, he was taller, with a calm, dense presence that seemed to push the club’s noise back. The kneeling young man didn’t move.
“The show was just getting interesting,” Katsuragi continued, his eyes flicking from Shinsou to Bakugou, who had stopped, standing stiffly just behind Shinsou’s shoulder. “The legendary Ground Zero, brought to heel. It’s a rare sight.”
“He’s not a spectacle,” Shinsou said, his voice flat. He slid his hands into his pockets, a picture of casual control.
“Aren’t we all, in here?” Katsuragi smiled, all teeth. “My name is Katsuragi. I’m an… admirer. Of order. Of potent dynamics.” He took a step closer. The scent of his cologne was spicy, expensive, and underneath it, the ozone-sharp scent of a powerful quirk, dormant but present. “Your partnership is the talk of certain circles. Many wondered if it was real. Or just clever PR.”
Bakugou made a low sound in his throat. Shinsou shifted minutely, his elbow brushing Bakugou’s arm. A silent command. Stay.
“Our private life isn’t PR,” Shinsou said.
“Prove it.” The words hung in the smoky air. Katsuragi’s gaze was insistent, amused. “Indulge me. A private room. A drink. Let’s discuss the nature of control. I have a proposal for individuals of your unique talents.”
This was the moment. The invitation was the goal. But the look in Katsuragi’s eyes was predatory, testing. He didn’t just want to talk. He wanted to see the mechanism up close, to verify its authenticity.
Shinsou turned his head slightly, meeting Bakugou’s eyes. He saw the conflict there—the mission, the pride, the simmering anger from their staged fight, all of it boiling under the surface. He gave a barely perceptible nod.
Then he reached out and curled his hand around the back of Bakugou’s neck, the same hold from the safe house, but here, under the blinding lights and watching eyes, it was different. It was a brand. He felt Bakugou swallow hard, his skin fever-hot under his palm.
“We can spare an hour,” Shinsou said to Katsuragi, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse point. He was walking a knife-edge, between the performance and something that felt dangerously like truth. “Lead the way.”
The private room was a vault of quiet, all soundproofed velvet and low, golden light that made the ice in their glasses chime like distant bells. Katsuragi settled into a high-backed chair, gesturing for them to take the leather sofa opposite. Bakugou sat first, a controlled fall that made the cushions sigh, his posture rigid. Shinsou followed, letting his arm drape along the sofa back behind Bakugou’s neck, his fingers just brushing his shoulder.
“A demonstration was requested,” Shinsou stated, his voice cutting the placid air. “You’re seeing it.”
“I see a hand on a shoulder. I see admirable tension.” Katsuragi swirled his drink, his eyes never leaving them. “What I’m interested in is the transfer of agency. The moment the will capitulates. Ground Zero is a creature of pure impulse. How do you turn that off?”
Bakugou’s knee began to bounce, a minute tremor of contained energy. “He doesn’t turn it off,” he gritted out, staring at a point on the far wall. “He just… redirects it.”
“Intriguing.” Katsuragi leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Show me. Not a performance for the rabble. Here. Now.”
The command hung there. This was beyond the script. Aizawa’s briefing hadn’t covered private audience participation. Shinsou’s mind raced, calculating the risk of refusal against the risk of exposing their fraud. Bakugou was a live wire next to him, his breathing shallow.
“Look at me, Katsuki,” Shinsou said, his tone leaving no room for debate. It was the voice he used in the field, the one that preceded his quirk.
Bakugou’s head turned slowly, his crimson eyes blazing with a turmoil that wasn’t entirely fictional. There was real fear there, the fear of a man about to jump into an abyss he’d spent a lifetime avoiding. Shinsou held his gaze, trying to communicate a steadiness he didn’t fully feel. His thumb stroked the taut line of Bakugou’s trapezius muscle.
“Tell him,” Shinsou prompted, soft, just for them. “Tell him why you listen.”
Bakugou’s throat worked. The words seemed to fight their way out, scraped raw. “Because when he tells me to stop… I can finally stop thinking.” He blinked, and the admission seemed to shock him as much as it did Shinsou. It was too real, a fragment of a truth they’d constructed now sharp enough to draw blood.
Katsuragi’s smile widened, a slice of genuine pleasure. “Beautiful. The relief in submission. A concept so many powerful men never learn.” He stood, walking to a small sidebar to pour another drink. “I have a compound. A retreat for like-minded individuals who appreciate structured dynamics. I’d like you both to visit this weekend. Consider it a… stress test of your bond.”
The offer was the mission’s objective. It was also a trap. Shinsou felt the trap in his bones. “We’ll consider it,” he said, his hand slipping from the sofa back to curl around the base of Bakugou’s skull, a firm, stabilizing hold.
“Do.” Katsuragi handed Shinsou a black enamel card with a single line of silver coordinates. “No communications. Bring only each other. The experience will be illuminating.”
They left the room, the club’s noise crashing back over them like a wave. Shinsou guided them through the crowd, his grip on Bakugou unyielding until they burst into the cool, diesel-scented air of the alley behind the club. Bakugou immediately wrenched away, stumbling a few steps before bracing a hand against the dirty brick wall, his head bowed.
“Hey,” Shinsou said, approaching slowly.
“Don’t.” Bakugou’s voice was wrecked. He shoved a hand through his hair, making the spikes stand wild. “Just don’t, okay? That was…” He couldn’t finish.
“It worked. We’re in.” Shinsou leaned against the wall beside him, close but not touching. The alley was quiet, just the distant murmur of the city and a dripping pipe.
“It wasn’t all… I didn’t mean to say…” Bakugou tried, faltering.
“I know.” And Shinsou did. The line was gone, vaporized in that room under Katsuragi’s greedy gaze. Something real had slipped out, a raw nerve they’d both agreed to pretend didn’t exist. The jealousy Shinsou had felt earlier curdled into something more complicated, a sharp protective urge that felt too large for the mission parameters.
Before either could speak again, Shinsou’s encrypted phone vibrated once in his pocket. A priority alert. He frowned, pulling it out. The screen displayed a short, coded line from an unexpected source: Central Security, Hero Communications Monitoring.
It was a flag. A keyword ping from Bakugou’s public hero line. The flagged phrase was “Obsidian Club.” The source of the inquiry was listed with a single hero ID: Eijiro Kirishima, Crimson Riot Agency.
Shinsou’s blood ran cold. He’d seen Kirishima’s name in Bakugou’s call logs at the safe house, the only frequent contact. A call an hour ago, likely when they’d first entered the club. Bakugou, on edge, must have mentioned the location.
“We have a problem,” Shinsou said, his voice hollow. He showed Bakugou the screen.
Bakugou stared at it, the color draining from his face. “Ei,” he whispered, the nickname slipping out unbidden. “He… he checks in. He knew I was wired. He must have heard something and ran the club name.” His eyes met Shinsou’s, wide with a new kind of panic. “He’ll dig. He won’t stop. He’s…”
“He’s what?”
“Protective.” Bakugou looked away, his jaw clenched. “Always has been.”
Shinsou remembered the easy touches, the uncomplicated loyalty. He thought of Kirishima’s honest, open face now contorted with suspicion, digging into a mission he wasn’t cleared for, driven by something more than just comradeship. He has always wanted Katsuki. The thought wasn’t his own; it was a cold, factual assessment that now posed an operational catastrophe.
“You need to call him,” Shinsou said, the plan forming in the stress-lit alley. “Now. Before he goes to Aizawa or worse, comes here himself. You need to sell him the lie, too.”
“I can’t lie to him.” The statement was flat, absolute.
“You have to. Or this whole thing burns, and we fail.” Shinsou’s voice was brutal with necessity. “Tell him we’re dating. Tell him it’s real, and it’s private, and you lost your temper at a stupid club. Tell him to stand down.”
Bakugou looked utterly torn, caught between the mission and the one person who had always seen through his explosions to the core beneath. He took the phone Shinsou offered, his thumb hovering over the call button. His hand was shaking.
In the silent, grimy alley, under a single flickering security light, Bakugou pressed call. He put it on speaker. It rang twice.
“Katsuki?” Kirishima’s voice erupted from the speaker, edged with a tension Shinsou had never heard in it before. “What the hell is going on? The Obsidian Club? That place is a villain magnet, the system flagged it the second your comms tagged the location. Are you okay? Are you with Shinsou?”
Bakugou closed his eyes. “I’m fine, Ei. I’m with him.”
“Why? What’s the mission? Why wasn’t I briefed?” The questions were rapid-fire, layered with a possessiveness that confirmed every unspoken truth.
“It’s not a mission.” Bakugou’s voice was rough but steady, a stunning piece of acting or perhaps the first layer of a terrible truth. “We’re… seeing each other. It’s new. Private. We had a fight. In public. It was stupid.”
The silence on the other end was profound, broken only by a low, staticky breath. When Kirishima spoke again, the hurt in his voice was a physical thing, sharp enough to make Shinsou wince. “Seeing each other. You and… Brainwasher?”
“It’s Hitoshi,” Bakugou corrected, softly, using the name they’d practiced, and it sounded heartbreakingly genuine. “And yeah. It’s… it’s real. So just… back off, okay? Please.”
Another silence, longer this time. Shinsou could picture Kirishima’s face, the hardened heroism crumbling into something shattered and young. “You’d tell me if you were in trouble. Right, Kat?”
The old nickname hung in the air. Bakugou’s composure cracked for a second, a pained flinch. “I’m telling you now. I’m not in trouble. I’m with him. Stand down.”
The line went dead. Kirishima had hung up.
Bakugou slowly lowered the phone, his expression blank with shock. The alley seemed to grow darker, colder. The success of their performance for Katsuragi now tasted like ash.
Shinsou watched him, the unwanted, jealous ache morphing into a heavy dread. They had secured their in with the villains. And in the process, they had just broken something irreplaceable. The collateral damage was no longer abstract. It had a name, and a heart, and it was now a rogue variable screaming into the silent night.
It had a name, and a heart, and it was now a rogue variable screaming into the silent night.
Bakugou didn’t move from the alley wall for a full minute. The brick was cold and gritty under his palm. Shinsou watched the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, each breath visibly controlled. A distant siren wailed, fading into the city’s hum.
“We need to move,” Shinsou said, his voice cutting the thick air. He kept his hands in his pockets. “Now.”
“I know.” Bakugou pushed off the wall, his movements stiff. He didn’t look at Shinsou. He just started walking, boots scraping on wet concrete. Shinsou fell into step beside him, their shoulders almost brushing. The walk to the parked car was three blocks of utter silence.
The safe house greeted them with its clinical quiet and faint smell of new plastic. Bakugou went straight to the fridge, yanked out a water bottle, and drank half of it in one go. He leaned against the counter, staring at the floor.
“That could have gone worse,” Shinsou offered, removing his jacket. He draped it over the back of the sofa.
“Worse?” Bakugou’s laugh was a short, harsh thing. “He’s probably calling every contact he has right now. He’s not an idiot. He heard how fucked up I sounded.”
“He heard what you wanted him to hear.” Shinsou sat, the leather sighing under his weight. “A private fight. A new relationship. It’s messy. That’s believable.”
“It is messy.” Bakugou finally looked at him, his eyes exhausted. “This whole thing is a mess.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand wilder. “I’m going to bed. Don’t… don’t think about it.”
But Shinsou did think about it. Long after Bakugou’s door clicked shut, he remained on the sofa, tracing the pattern of city lights on the ceiling. The mission was advancing, but it felt like walking on cracked glass. Kirishima’s voice, layered with hurt and suspicion, echoed in the hollow spaces of the room.
He eventually retreated to his own bedroom, the darkness pressing in. Sleep was a distant country. Every detail of the night replayed behind his eyelids—the grip on Bakugou’s neck, the heat of his skin, the raw confession in that private room. And always, Kirishima’s wounded silence on the phone.
That night, Shinsou imagines Kirishima fucking Bakugou.
The thought comes unbidden, a vicious slide into a space he has no right to visit. He imagines it not in some abstract way, but with specific, brutal clarity. He imagines Kirishima’s hands, scarred and solid, gripping Bakugou’s hips without hesitation. He imagines Bakugou’s face pressed into a pillow, not in submission to a mission, but in surrender to a trust built over a decade. He imagines the sounds—grunts, breathless curses, Kirishima’s low, rumbling voice saying things like “easy” or “I’ve got you” with an ease that Shinsou could never mimic. He imagines the sheer physicality of it, uncomplicated by lies or objectives, just heat and friction and a mutual understanding that bypassed words. The jealousy he’d felt earlier wasn’t a spark anymore; it was a furnace in his gut, burning away any pretense of professional detachment. He saw Bakugou’s back arching, not away from touch, but into it, and the image was so vivid, so acutely painful, that he had to turn over and punch his own pillow, as if he could drive the vision from his skull.
It didn't work. The vision stayed, and worse, it fed itself, growing hungrier with every detail his traitorous brain supplied. Shinsou lay in the dark, his own pulse loud in his ears, and stopped fighting it. He let the fantasy unspool.
Katsuki would take Ei so well, Shinsou imagined. That was the core of it, the thing that made his teeth ache. Not fumbling, not braced for impact the way he'd been in the safe house when Shinsou touched his neck. Kirishima's hands would be different. Shinsou pictured them, broad and hard-scarred from years of hardening his skin, spread warm over the swell of Katsuki's ass, kneading the muscle there like he had every right. And Katsuki letting him. Groaning into the sheets, pushing back into that grip, his spine dipping into that deep arch like his body had always known the shape of it.
He imagined Kirishima working him open, unhurried, one thick finger sliding in past the tight furl of muscle while Katsuki cursed and squirmed. "Ei, fuck, Ei, more." The way he'd say it, wrecked and demanding at the same time, because even on his knees with his face smashed into a pillow Katsuki would be greedy. Kirishima giving him everything without being asked twice. Two fingers, three, stretching him slow and easy until Katsuki was a trembling, drooling mess, hips rocking back shamelessly onto his hand.
And Katsuki would take the cock like it was what his body had been waiting for. Shinsou could see it in perfect, merciless detail: Kirishima pressing in inch by inch, the hot clutch of Katsuki's ass swallowing him to the root, Katsuki's whole frame shuddering, a broken grunt punched out of his chest. The first slow drag out and the slam back in. The slap of skin. Katsuki moaning without pride, loud and open-mouthed, because there was nothing to perform here, no crowd, no mission, just a decade of want finally being fucked out of him. He'd meet every thrust, push his hips back, chase it. He'd be so good at it, so responsive, because Katsuki was the best at everything he let himself do, and this was no exception.
Kirishima would lean over his back, chest to spine, mouth at his ear, muttering something stupid and warm like "you feel so good, Kat, so perfect," and Katsuki would come apart from it, from being talked to like that while he was being filled. He'd clench down and sob and take it harder, and when he came he'd do it with Kirishima's hand wrapped around his cock and his teeth in Katsuki's shoulder, marking him. And Katsuki would let the marks stay.
Shinsou's hand had found its way into his own sweatpants without his permission. His cock was hard and aching, leaking against his stomach, and he wrapped his fist around it with a bitter, silent laugh. So this was what the mission had done to him. He was lying in a safe house bed in the dark, jerking off to a fantasy of two people who had never touched each other, a relationship that existed only because Shinsou had invented it.
He stroked himself slow at first, the image burning behind his eyes. Katsuki on his back now, in the fantasy's second act, legs hooked over Kirishima's forearms, fucked open and glossy with sweat, crimson eyes glazed and half-shut. The faces he'd make. Shinsou had seen Katsuki in battle a hundred times, that fierce, ecstatic snarl when he was winning. He'd wear a version of it here, he was sure, except softer, stripped of armor, mouth slack and panting while Kirishima drove into him over and over, the headboard knocking the wall in a steady obscene rhythm. Begging. He'd beg, barely, through his teeth, "harder," or just "don't stop," because asking outright would kill him, and Kirishima would grin and give it to him anyway.
Shinsou's fist moved faster. His breath came rough through his nose. He hated how easy this was, how his body had decided for him somewhere between the club and the alley, how the jealousy had curdled into want without asking. He came with a stifled groan, hips lifting off the mattress, come striping his knuckles and his stomach, the fantasy peaking at the exact moment he imagined Kirishima finishing deep inside Katsuki with a low, wrecked moan and Katsuki taking it with a shudder that ran all the way down his spine.
The after-image stayed. That was the worst part. In the fantasy's quiet last frame, Kirishima didn't leave. He pulled out slow, gathered Katsuki against his chest, tucked the blanket over both of them. He stayed.
Shinsou stared at the ceiling, cooling come on his skin, feeling like he'd defiled something. He cleaned himself up with a tissue in the dark and lay back down.
The phone screen glowed 3:47 AM. He should sleep. He couldn't.
Because the fantasy had given him something the mission briefs never had: a blueprint. He now knew, in his bones, what Katsuki looked like when he surrendered to someone who had earned it. And he knew, with equal certainty, that Katsuki had never once let himself go there. Ten years of Kirishima's hands within reach, and Katsuki had kept them at arm's length. Not because he didn't want it. Shinsou had watched him flinch at the simplest touch tonight, watched the hunger under the panic.
Because surrender was the one thing Katsuki had never believed he could afford.
And Shinsou's cover persona was built entirely on taking that surrender from him. On the weekend. At Katsuragi's compound. In front of monsters.
He sat up in the dark, elbows on his knees, and made a decision that wasn't in any briefing file. Before they walked into that compound, he was going to talk to Bakugou. Not as his handler's instrument. Not as a rival improvising. He was going to tell him the truth: that Katsuragi's people would test them with real intimacy, and that Shinsou refused to make Katsuki's first time a performance for a villain audience.
Which meant that somewhere between now and the weekend, one of them was going to have to cross the line they'd drawn in the safe house kitchen.
Shinsou lay back down, eyes open, listening to the silence through the wall where Katsuki was sleeping.
Two days. He could wait two days.