Chapter 6: The Gala Floor
The villa’s main hall was a cage of light and sound. Chandeliers, fractals of cold crystal, scattered illumination over a sea of silk and hungry eyes. The marble floor was a dark lake, reflecting the distorted shapes of people who traded in secrets. A grand piano in the corner played something that was almost a waltz, if a waltz could sound like bones clicking. The air was thick—perfume, yes, expensive and cloying, but underneath it was the ozone-sharp scent of activated quirks, of power being worn as casually as jewelry.
Shinsou’s hand stayed on Bakugou’s neck as they moved through the crowd. A guide. A brand. Every gaze stuck to them, peeled over the lines of the harness visible where Bakugou’s coat fell open. The looks weren’t admiring. They were appraising. Calculating ownership.
“Our guests of honor.” The voice cut through the murmur like a scalpel. Katsuragi emerged from a knot of sycophants. He wore a kimono of midnight blue silk, his silver hair perfectly still. His eyes, sharp as glass shards, bypassed Shinsou entirely. They landed on Bakugou and traveled a slow, excruciating path from his boots, up the harness straps, and settled on the collar. A smile touched his lips. “Silas outdid himself. The geometry is… assertive.”
Bakugou said nothing. He held the man’s gaze, letting the heat in his own do the talking. I am not yours.
“He’s quiet,” Katsuragi noted, finally glancing at Shinsou. “A notable change from his public persona. Your influence, Shinsou-san?”
“Selective reinforcement,” Shinsou replied, his voice a study in casual control. He gave Bakugou’s neck a slight squeeze. The message was clear: Speak when spoken to. “Loud isn’t always useful.”
“Indeed.” Katsuragi took a sip from a crystalline glass. “But proof of concept is everything. Anyone can put a wild animal in a cage. The art is in making it perform.” He gestured with his glass toward the open space before the piano, where a few couples moved in a languid, predatory parody of dance. “A demonstration. For my associates. They require… visual evidence of your project’s viability.”
Shinsou didn’t flinch. “What did you have in mind?”
“A simple thing.” Katsuragi’s gaze was relentless. “Dance with him. Here. And show us the moment he chooses to submit to the lead. Not your strength forcing him. His own decision to yield.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a confidential murmur that somehow carried. “I want to see the fight leave his eyes because you will it. Not because you overpower him.”
It was worse. So much worse than a physical test. They wanted psychology. They wanted to see Brainwashing in the wild, without the Quirk. They wanted to watch Bakugou’s pride break in real time, voluntarily, for an audience.
Shinsou’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on Bakugou’s neck. A warning. A shared pulse of dread. “As you wish.”
He steered Bakugou toward the dance floor. The piano’s discordant melody swelled. The crowd parted, a theater in the round. All breath seemed to be held. The lights felt hotter.
Shinsou turned to face him, close enough that Bakugou could see the faint, tired lines at the corners of his eyes, the too-careful neutrality in his violet gaze. This was the mission. This was the vault. This humiliation was the key.
“You heard him,” Shinsou said, his voice low but clear. It wasn’t his Brainwashing voice. It was something else—flinty, unyielding. A command that expected obedience. “Take the position.”
Bakugou’s heart was a jackhammer against the leather strap. Every instinct screamed to ignite his palms, to scatter these vultures in a blast of light and noise. He saw Kirishima’s face in his mind. He saw the mission files, the photos of the people who hadn’t been saved. His jaw ached from clenching.
Slowly, telegraphing every motion as a struggle, he raised his left hand, placing it on Shinsou’s shoulder. The silk of Shinsou’s shirt was cool under his palm. Shinsou’s right hand came to rest on the harness strap just below his shoulder blade, his fingers spread wide, claiming a vast territory of skin and leather. His other hand took Bakugou’s right, his grip firm.
“The lead is mine,” Shinsou murmured, the words for him alone. His eyes were a trap. “You follow. You don’t just move where I push you. You decide to go. Show them you’re choosing it.”
The music had a slow, dragging pulse. Shinsou moved first, a slight pressure back. Bakugou resisted. For two beats, they were a silent, straining statue in the center of the floor. A murmur rippled through the crowd.
Shinsou’s eyes never left his. His thumb stroked once over the harness strap. A reminder. A promise. React.
Bakugou took the step back. It felt like stepping off a cliff. The fight didn’t leave his eyes—it burned hotter, a confined wildfire. But his body moved. He followed Shinsou’s subtle press, his turn, the shift of weight. It was a clumsy, aggressive parody of a waltz, all tension and coiled energy. Bakugou’s movements were stiff, jerky where they should have been fluid. He was all defiance in motion.
“They’re not convinced,” Shinsou whispered against his temple as they turned. His breath was warm. “You’re just strong-arming me.”
“What the fuck do you want?” Bakugou ground out, the words barely audible.
“I want you to listen.” Shinsou’s hand slid lower on his back, fingers brushing the top of the steel ring. Bakugou flinched. “Not to the music. To me. There’s no one else in this room. Just my voice. And I’m telling you to let go.”
He executed a sharper turn, forcing Bakugou to pivot or stumble. Bakugou pivoted, his body reacting to the unspoken threat of public failure. His pride revolted. But something else, that live wire from the car, hummed in the space between their bodies. The hand on his back was a brand. The collar a weight he was hyper-aware of. Shinsou’s complete, unwavering focus was a gravity well.
On the next slow drag of the music, Shinsou pulled him incrementally closer. Their chests almost touched. The world narrowed to the points of contact: hand on shoulder, hand on hand, the flat palm spanning his back. Shinsou’s eyes were dark, intense, boring into him, stripping away every layer of pretense except this one.
“Now,” Shinsou breathed, the word a vibration in the air between them. “Right now, Katsuki.”
It wasn’t the command. It was the use of his name. Raw, unfiltered, without the performative edge. It was a crack in Shinsou’s armor, and through it Bakugou saw not the calculating pro hero, but the man who hated this as much as he did. The man who was asking him, just this once, to trust the fall.
Bakugou’s resistance didn’t snap. It dissolved. A fraction. A millimeter. The rigid line of his shoulders softened under Shinsou’s hand. The aggressive set of his jaw relaxed. He didn’t look down. He held Shinsou’s gaze, and in his eyes, the blazing defiance shifted, transformed into something more complex, more devastating: a conscious, grievous surrender. He stopped fighting the lead and began to move with it, his next step seamless, his body aligning to Shinsou’s guide not as a force, but as a choice.
A collective, hushed sigh went through the watching crowd. It was the sound of a concluded wager.
Shinsou’s fingers curled, just for a second, into the leather at his back. A spasm of something that looked like pain crossed his features before the mask slammed back down. He completed the turn, and as the music reached a discordant, unresolved chord, he stopped. They were chest to chest now, breathing the same air. Bakugou could feel the rapid, controlled rhythm of Shinsou’s heart against his own.
The silence was absolute.
Then, slow, deliberate applause from Katsuragi. Others joined in, a polite, chilling patter.
“Excellent,” Katsuragi said, his voice rich with satisfaction. “The tensile strength of will. You have your proof. Enjoy the evening, gentlemen. The real conversations will begin shortly.”
The crowd’s attention broke, diffusing back into murmurs. The theater was over.
Shinsou’s hand fell from Bakugou’s back as if it were burned. He took a small, swift step back, putting cold air between them. His face was pale, his expression carefully void. But his eyes were wrecked.
“Petrichor,” Bakugou heard him murmur into his comm, the code word flat and dead. The vault was confirmed. The mission was a go.
But the ground had already opened beneath them. Bakugou stood there, the phantom pressure of Shinsou’s hands still mapping his skin, the echo of his name in the charged air. The submission hadn’t been an act. Not entirely. And the horror in Shinsou’s eyes confirmed he knew it, too. The demonstration was a success. They had just proven, beyond all doubt, that the most dangerous fiction they’d sold tonight was to each other.
They had just proven, beyond all doubt, that the most dangerous fiction they’d sold tonight was to each other. The applause was acid on Shinsou’s skin. He turned without a word, a hand at the small of Bakugou’s back guiding him off the floor, through a gilded archway, and into a deserted corridor lined with lurid oil paintings. The silence between them was physical, a third presence shuffling in their wake.
“Here,” Shinsou said, his voice scraped raw. He shouldered open a heavy door to a dimly lit sitting room, all velvet drapes and the smell of stale cigars. A single lamp cast long shadows. He closed the door, the click of the lock definitive. For a moment, he just leaned against it, head bowed, his purple hair falling over his eyes. The perfect control he’d worn on the dance floor was ash now.
Bakugou stood in the center of the room, breathing hard like he’d just run a mile. He ripped at the collar’s clasp. “Get this damn thing off.”
“Leave it.” Shinsou didn’t look up. “The room is likely monitored. Audio, maybe visual. We have to assume.”
“What?” Bakugou’s hands froze. The fury returned, a welcome, familiar flame. “After that… you think they need more?”
“Katsuragi is a connoisseur.” Shinsou pushed off the door, finally looking at him. His violet eyes were dark, unreadable pools. “He doesn’t just want the public show. He wants the private aftermath. The… verification. He’ll expect a consummation of that control.” He spoke flatly, each word a clinical bullet. “Or the entire performance rings false.”
The meaning landed, heavy and ugly. Bakugou stared. The harness felt suddenly like a net. “You’re joking.”
“I don’t joke about mission integrity.” Shinsou took a step forward. His movement was fluid, predatory in a way that had nothing to do with showmanship. “They saw you yield. Now they need to see you… accept it. Fully. Or everything we just did, everything you just did, is for nothing.”
“There’s a line,” Bakugou snarled, but his voice lacked its usual heat. It was the tremor of a dam under pressure.
“We crossed it on the dance floor.” Shinsou was before him now, close enough that Bakugou could see the pulse in his throat. “This is just geography.” His hand came up, not to strike, but to settle on the side of Bakugou’s neck, his thumb resting over the frantic beat there. The touch was shockingly warm. “It’s a performance. Same as before.”
“It’s not the same,” Bakugou breathed out.
“No.” Shinsou’s agreement was soft, devastating. “It’s not.”
His other hand moved to the fastening of Bakugou’s trousers, the sound of the zpper obscenely loud in the hushed room. Bakugou’s own hands shot up, gripping Shinsou’s wrists. Not to stop him. To hold onto something. To ground himself in the solid bone and tendon under his fingers as the world tilted.
“Look at me,” Shinsou commanded, his voice low. It wasn’t his Quirk. It was something worse. It was the voice from the dance floor, the one that had asked for trust. “Only at me.”
Bakugou obeyed. He kept his crimson eyes locked on Shinsou’s, on that exhausting, captivating violet, as Shinsou pushed the fabric down his hips. The cool air of the room hit his skin. Shinsou’s gaze never wavered, holding him prisoner in a shared shame. His hand slid back, over the curve of his ass, possessive and deliberate.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t prepare. There was only the slick pressure of his own saliva-wet finger, a crude, rushed breach against tense muscle. Bakugou sucked in a sharp, shattered gasp, his fingers digging into Shinsou’s wrists hard enough to bruise. The pain was bright, clarifying, a white-hot anchor in the swirling humiliation.
Shinsou worked his finger inside, a slow, relentless invasion. His own breathing was ragged against Bakugou’s cheek. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t passion. It was a grim, mechanical act of espionage, a violation scripted by nameless handlers in a safe room miles away. Every push was a betrayal of something unnamable.
“Breathe,” Shinsou murmured, his forehead now resting against Bakugou’s temple. His voice was a wreck. “Just breathe through it.”
Bakugou trembled, a full-body shudder he couldn’t suppress. The sensation was overwhelming, a brutal fullness that blurred the lines between pain and something else, something terrifyingly close to relief. Relief that the pretense was over. That this was the ugly, real price. His eyes burned, but he didn’t blink, didn’t break the stare Shinsou had ordered him to keep.
He watched, transfixed, as a single, clean tear escaped Shinsou’s lash line and traced a path down his pale cheek. It fell silently. Shinsou’s jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped. He was opening him up with one hand, and crying with the other, and the contradiction shattered Bakugou completely.
This wasn’t just the mission. This was Shinsou, drowning in the same acid bath.
When Shinsou finally withdrew, the absence was a shock. They stood frozen, a tableau of ruin. Shinsou’s hand came up, clumsy, and wiped roughly at his own cheek. He cleared his throat, the sound strangled.
“Proof delivered,” he said, the words hollow. He stepped back, turning away to adjust his own clothes, presenting only his back.
Bakugou mechanically pulled his trousers up, his hands shaking. The physical evidence of the act was a cooling dampness on his skin. The harness felt different now. Not like armor. Like a brand he’d been seared with, from the inside out. He finally looked away from Shinsou’s back, down at his own hands. They were steadying.
The silence stretched, thick and painful.
Then Bakugou spoke, his voice low and rough, but clear. “Your tear hit the floor. If they have video, they saw that, too.”
Shinsou’s shoulders tightened. He didn’t turn around.
“Good,” Bakugou said, surprising himself. “Let them see it. Let them wonder what the hell it means.”
The splintered crystal of the champagne flute bit into Eijiro Kirishima’s palm. He didn’t feel it. His hardening quirk had activated on instinct, a silent scream of shock translated to skin. He stood frozen in the shadowed hallway, one step from the archway leading to that damnable sitting room. The heavy door had been ajar, just a sliver. A sliver was enough.
He’d seen the final act. The grim intimacy. Shinsou’s back, the slope of his shoulders, Bakugou’s face over them—a mask of pain and something else Kirishima couldn’t name, something that made his stomach knot. He’d seen the tear track through the dust on Shinsou’s cheek. Heard Bakugou’s ragged, swallowed gasp. Then Bakugou’s voice, raw and low: “Let them wonder what the hell it means.”
It meant nothing. It was a mission. He knew it was a mission. He’d been briefed, in sterile, clinical terms, about the deep-cover parameters. He’d told himself he was rock-solid, that he could support his friend through anything. Watching it was different. Watching Katsuki, all that defiant, brilliant fire, forced into a posture of shattering vulnerability by Shinsou of all people—it lit a furnace in Kirishima’s chest he didn’t know how to name.
The heat was shameful, acidic. It wasn’t righteous anger. It was a possessive, clawing thing that felt all too close to envy. He staggered back a step, the crushed glass falling from his hand to scatter silently on the plush runner. The small sound from the room had ceased. A floorboard creaked.
He couldn’t be here. He turned, his movements uncharacteristically clumsy, and shouldered his way through a beaded curtain into a deserted solarium choked with unfamiliar, fragrant plants. The air was humid, suffocating. He braced his hands on a cold marble table, head bowed, breathing in the stink of orchids.
“Get a grip,” he muttered to the empty room, his voice a gravelly mess. “It’s not real.” But the image wouldn’t erase: Katsuki’s eyes, wide and fixed, trusting the fall with the man who was pushing him over the edge. That was the core of it. The trust. He’d never seen Katsuki look at anyone like that, not even in their darkest fights at UA. It was a look that stripped every defense, a voluntary disarmament. And Shinsou had caught him.
“Damn it,” Kirishima hissed, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until colors burst. He was supposed to be extract support, a hidden blade in the crowd. He wasn’t supposed to be… this. This shaky, hollowed-out thing tasting copper jealousy on his tongue. He thought of Katsuki’s hands, usually sparking with contained energy, gripping Shinsou’s wrists like they were a lifeline. He thought of the leather harness, the collar he’d glimpsed earlier. A costume. It was all a costume.
So why did it feel like he’d just watched something profoundly, terrifyingly authentic?
Back in the sitting room, the air was still a solid thing. Bakugou’s words hung between them, a challenge to the unseen watchers and to each other. Shinsou finally turned from the door, his expression sandblasted clean of any readable emotion. He surveyed Bakugou, who stood straight again, the harness lines cutting across his torso like a diagram of the tension thrumming under his skin.
“We need to circulate,” Shinsou said, his voice restored to its flat, mission-ready tone. It was a jarring shift. “Separately. Gather what you can. The deal will move tonight.”
Bakugou nodded once, a sharp jerk of his chin. He adjusted his coat, hiding the harness from view, his fingers brushing the hidden seam where the recording filament was woven. He didn’t look at Shinsou. “Where’s the extraction point if this goes to hell in the next ten minutes?”
“East fountain. Kirishima’s on perimeter.” Shinsou’s use of the name was impersonal, just an asset. He moved to the door, hand on the knob. He paused, his back still to Bakugou. “What you did on the floor. And after. It was… adequate.”
It was the worst thing he could have said. Bakugou’s head snapped up, a fresh spark of fury in his eyes. “Adequate? You crying was adequate?”
“It sold the performance.” Shinsou opened the door. The noise of the party flooded in, a wave of false cheer. He didn’t look back as he stepped into it, dissolving into the crowd.
Bakugou stood alone in the center of the room for five more seconds, his breath sawing in and out. Adequate. The word was a pebble in his shoe, a grain of sand in the mechanism. He kicked the leg of a velvet armchair, a silent, furious outburst. Then he smoothed his expression into a sneer, shoved his hands in his pockets, and followed Shinsou out, heading in the opposite direction towards the bustling main hall.
Kirishima, from his vantage point behind a towering potted fern near the archway, saw them both emerge. He saw the rigid set of Bakugou’s shoulders, the deliberate distance Shinsou placed between himself and everyone else. The hollow in his own chest widened. He’d come for a fight, for a mission, to have his friend’s back. Instead, he felt like a ghost, haunting the edges of a scene where he no longer had a part to play. He watched Bakugou accept a fresh glass of something dark from a passing server, his laugh a short, sharp bark at something a villain in a gold mask said. It was a perfect performance.
And Kirishima, the real one, was now the only audience member who knew it was all a lie. The knowledge was a poison. He turned and melted deeper into the shadows, his assigned patrol forgotten, his mission focus shattered by a single, glaring truth: he was jealous of the lie.