Chapter 7: Scene 1
The hum of the villa was a distant memory, replaced by the subterranean groan of the city’s guts. The abandoned Neon District subway tunnel was a graveyard of light. Holographic ads for dead brands sputtered and flickered, throwing epileptic shards of color across corroded rails and stagnant, metallic puddles. The air was cool, damp, and carried the ghosts of urine and ozone. It was the kind of place where echoes had echoes.
Shinsou leaned against a grime-smeared tiled column, the faint glow from a shattered cosmetic ad painting his profile in sickly pinks. He was alone, waiting. The directive after the villa had been clear: disperse, evade possible tails, reconvene at the secondary location for a handoff. The data filament hidden in Bakugou’s harness had recorded more than enough to justify a full-scale raid. Tonight was supposed to be a clean withdrawal.
He didn’t feel clean. He felt stained. The phantom weight of Bakugou against him, the memory of that controlled, shuddering breath in the sitting room, the look in Kirishima’s eyes when he’d burst in moments later—it all clung to him like the tunnel’s damp. Adequate. He winced inwardly at the word he’d used. A coward’s word. He’d aimed to wound, to re-establish a boundary they’d incinerated. He’d seen it land, seen the fury flash in Bakugou’s eyes. Good. Fury was safe. Fury was familiar ground.
A scuff of a boot on grit. Not the approach he’d expected. He turned his head, not his body.
Kirishima stepped into the jagged light, his form solid, his usually open face carved into hard lines. He hadn’t gone to his assigned perimeter position. He’d followed.
“Eijiro.” Shinsou kept his voice neutral. “You’re off-mark.”
“Am I?” Kirishima’s voice was low, gravelly with a tension that had nothing to do with the mission. He stopped a few feet away, his hands clenched at his sides. “What the hell was that, back there?”
“You read the briefing. You knew the parameters.”
“The briefing didn’t include you making him…” Kirishima trailed off, jaw working. “I saw his face. That wasn’t acting.”
Shinsou pushed off the column, a slow unfolding of his lean frame. A dangerous calm settled over him. “Your point? The mission succeeded. The asset performed. We got what we needed.”
“He’s not an asset!” Kirishima’s voice echoed down the tunnel, a sharp crack that sent a drip of water pattering into a pool. “He’s Katsuki. And you… you broke him open for an audience.”
The words were a physical blow. Shinsou’s mask didn’t slip, but his eyes narrowed. “You think I wanted that? You think I enjoyed it?” A cold, mirthless smile touched his lips. “This isn’t about your protectiveness, Kirishima. This is about your inability to watch him need something from someone who isn’t you.”
The truth, laid bare in the flickering half-dark, was brutal. Kirishima flinched as if struck. The raw jealousy he’d been choking on all night surged to the surface, naked and ugly. “You don’t know him. You don’t get to touch him like that. You don’t get to see him… like that.”
“I did what the mission required,” Shinsou said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “And he let me. He chose to. That’s what you can’t stomach.”
Before Kirishima could retort, another sound cut through the tension—the deliberate, echoing tread of boots on concrete. They both turned.
Bakugou emerged from a side access tunnel, his coat gone, the harness fully visible under his thin black shirt. The eerie holographic light caught the steel rings, glinted off the collar at his throat. He looked at Kirishima, then at Shinsou, reading the confrontation in the stiff set of their shoulders.
“The fuck is this?” Bakugou’s voice was sandpaper rough. “A support meeting? The handoff is in three minutes at sector seven.”
“Katsuki,” Kirishima started, taking a step toward him, his hand coming up.
“Don’t.” Bakugou’s single word was a wall. He looked past Kirishima, his crimson eyes locking onto Shinsou. “We clear?”
Shinsou gave a single nod. “We’re clear.”
The dismissal was absolute. Kirishima stood, gut-punched, watching as Bakugou walked past him as if he were part of the tunnel’s scenery. He went straight to Shinsou, stopping close, too close for professional partners. The space between them vibrated with a history Kirishima wasn’t part of.
“The contact is late,” Bakugou said, his voice low, for Shinsou only. “Smells like a trap.”
“Agreed.” Shinsou’s gaze swept the tunnels. “We’ve been compromised. The villa performance wasn’t convincing enough. Or it was too convincing.” His eyes flicked back to Bakugou. “Kirishima’s emotional state is a liability. He followed me. He could have led them here.”
Bakugou didn’t look at Kirishima. “I’ll handle him. You scope the east conduit. If it’s a buy, we need the payment chip. If it’s an ambush…”
“We fight our way out,” Shinsou finished. There was a grim understanding in the exchange, a seamless sync that excluded everyone else. Shinsou moved, melting into the deeper shadows of a maintenance alcove.
Bakugou finally turned to Kirishima. In the stuttering light, his friend’s face was a wound. “You need to leave. Now. Go to the extraction point.”
“I’m not leaving you with him,” Kirishima growled.
“You don’t have a choice.” Bakugou’s voice was terrifyingly flat. “You’re compromised. You’re staring at me like a kicked puppy, and it’s going to get us all killed. This isn’t about friendship. This is about the job. And right now, you’re bad at it.”
Each word was a precise, surgical cut. Kirishima’s hard skin quivered. “You’re letting him use you.”
Bakugou closed the distance in one swift stride. He grabbed the front of Kirishima’s shirt, yanking him down so their faces were inches apart. “He’s not using me. I’m using him. I’m using the fucked-up, nasty, perfect lie we built to burn this whole shitshow down. Do you get that? Or are you too busy being in love with me to see the mission?”
The silence that followed was swallowed by the sudden, deafening screech of metal on metal. A service door farther down the tunnel wrenched open, spilling yellow light and distorted shadows—the promised contact, or the anticipated trap.
“Go!” Bakugou shoved Kirishima hard toward a spillway grate. “That’s an order!”
Kirishima stumbled, his eyes wide with hurt and dawning understanding. He gave one last, agonized look at Bakugou, then vanished into the dark grate just as the first shot rang out, a sharp crack that ricocheted off the tunnel walls.
Shinsou was already moving, a purple-haired wraith sliding along the tile. “Four hostiles,” his voice came low through Bakugou’s hidden comm. “Armed. Quirks unknown. It’s a wipe squad.”
Bakugou ducked behind the column, his palms already heating, sweat beading. The glorious, familiar rage ignited, but it was different now. It was focused, channeled, and underneath it was a cold, calculating thread that felt like Shinsou’s influence. “Draw them in,” he hissed into his wrist. “I’ll flush them toward the third rail.”
“Acknowledged.”
The fight was a brutal, concise ballet in the strobe of dying holograms. Shinsou used his capture weapon from the shadows, a lash of fabric to trip, disarm, and disorient. He didn’t use his Quirk; the risk of an uncontrolled puppet in close quarters was too high. Bakugou was the explosion. Controlled, concussive blasts that didn’t bring the ceiling down but filled the tunnel with deafening noise and blinding light, herding the confused, armored figures into the kill zone Shinsou had outlined.
It was over in ninety seconds. Four bodies lay stunned or incapacitated among the puddles. The acrid smell of spent nitroglycerin and burnt wiring mixed with the tunnel’s damp.
Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
Bakugou leaned over, hands on his knees, breathing hard. Adrenaline sang in his veins. Shinsou emerged from the shadows, a thin line of blood tracing from his temple down his jaw. They looked at each other across the wreckage.
No handoff. No payment chip. Just a trap they’d sprung and survived. Together.
The aftermath of the fight left a vacuum, and into that vacuum rushed everything they had been suppressing. The sight of Shinsou bleeding—a superficial scratch from flying debris—acted like a tripwire in Bakugou’s mind. That single, vulnerable line of red undid him.
He crossed the space between them in three long strides. He didn’t speak. He grabbed the front of Shinsou’s shirt and slammed him back against the cold, damp tiles of the tunnel wall. The impact jarred a grunt from Shinsou’s lips. Bakugou’s body pressed against him, pinning him, all hard muscle and trembling rage.
“Adequate?” Bakugou snarled, his breath hot against Shinsou’s mouth. His hips ground forward, the thick, insistent bulge in his trousers pressing against Shinsou’s thigh. It was an accusation. A challenge. “You smug, brain-fucked bastard. You call what I did adequate?”
Shinsou’s eyes were wide, pupils swallowing the violet in the erratic light. He didn’t fight the hold. His hands came up, not to push away, but to grip Bakugou’s hips, fingers digging into the leather of the harness. “It was a tool,” he breathed, his own control fracturing. “To create distance.”
“It didn’t work.” Bakugou crashed his mouth onto Shinsou’s. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. Teeth clacked. It was wet, angry, and desperate. He tasted blood—his own, Shinsou’s, he didn’t know. He didn’t care. His tongue shoved into Shinsou’s mouth, claiming, punishing. Shinsou met him with equal ferocity, his hands sliding up to claw at Bakugou’s back, dragging him closer until not a sliver of light could pass between them.
This was nothing like the villa. There was no audience. No performance. This was the raw, ugly truth they’d been building since the first forced touch. It was hatred and need welded together into something unbearable.
Bakugou wrenched his mouth away, gasping. He fumbled with the fastenings of Shinsou’s trousers, his explosive fingers clumsy. “You want a demonstration of control?”