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The bathroom of the club is cleaner than he had been expecting. The tile is cracked, bleach white and the lights give an eerie blue glow. The pulse of the club's music shudders against the walls of the cramped space, making him almost feel like he is underwater. All noise above the surface.
But, it's empty and not something he is expecting.
Bakugou had steeled himself for instantaneous, for all-at-once, but standing alone he is left in that vague mist of unease as he presses himself back into the corner.
Annoyed, he touches the earpiece. "Hey, Moon-Eyes what's going on?"
"That's not my name." Kenma, Mind Breaker's sidekick and computer man, grumbles. "She got sidetracked by the bar. She's coming now. Wait in four, three, two—"
"Would you knock it off?"
"—one."
The bathroom door opens and his breath catches in his throat, fight or flight clocked, ready to jump or run, or call for extraction, but—
—the woman who passes through the door is short. Her hair neatly trimmed to fall against the knob of her neck. She is humming under her breath. It's the song playing in the club outside like a tinny echo. Her voice, like a melody, strikes a memory in the corner of his mind.
Bakugou steps out from the corner and clicks the lock on the bathroom door.
The noise startles her. She jumps forward reflexively, turning on her heel as she takes up a fighter's stance, fists curling and a scream on her lips before she launches at him, but she stops short when she sees him in full. Her expression pinches, confused. "What?"
It is not the reaction he had been expecting.
Then, his mind comes back to him and he remembers the password. "Spicy Mochi."
He feels ridiculous saying it, it's obviously Ochako's password, but it does not prepare him for the instant sag of Ochako's shoulders, the surprised, shocked expression as her mouth opens and shuts. She looks like she might break.
"K-Katsuki?"
Her voice is soft, uncertain.
"Hey Cheeks."
It comes punched-out. Her nickname falling from his mouth like a prayer.
She is on him in the next instant; wrapping him up in her embrace and Bakugou folds himself against her. Her soft curves and hard muscles. The scent at the bow of her neck. The dig of her fingers against his back. The shiver, shutter sigh of relief that coils out of her in waves.
He forgets that he is on a mission. He forgets Kenma can hear everything in his earpiece.
He has his girl in his arms.
His body remembers the shape of her, the feeling of her warmth and he cannot quite shake the out-of-body feeling. "I've missed you so much." Her voice is like a sob.
"I missed you too."
Her lips are against his shoulder. Lips pressing into the fabric.
He can feel her breath, the warm drag and pull, the rise and fall of her chest. It lets him know she's alive.
"What are you doing here?" Her hand passes over his hair, thumb sweeping against the bristled of where Mina cut the sides too short. Her eyes are wide and worried. "You could have been seen—" He can hear the panic in her voice, palpable, real. "Katsuki, what if someone saw you—"
"I was careful," he says softly, softly as he can with anxiety knotting in his own stomach. He knows he cannot tell her about how he got here. "I was really careful."
She has a furrow between her brows, similar to him, a persistent worry like the one that's wracked him for months.
Then, she kisses him, soft and sweet.
Bakugou relishes in the feeling of her, so close, finally. Her hands cupping his face, brushing across the bristle of his hair, his jaw, moving to the back of his neck to tip his face towards hers.
For a moment, everything feels normal.
They rock together, entangled in one another. If Bakugou closes his eyes, its almost as if they are back in their apartment before the world turned over. They are together and none of this ever happened.
They are happy and nothing can touch them.
The Hero Commission had snatched up Ochako after graduation.
In a twist not even their teachers saw coming, once out in the field, Ochako quickly rose to prominence in hero society. Saving lives. Topping charts. Building an empire for herself that secured her family's future as well as her own.
They had reconnected at a black-tie party for some cause or another. Ochako circling the room with her friends and mentors. She had brought Glasses with her, as a friend Kirishima had told him, and when he walked across the room, something between them had changed.
Things just slid into place after that. Hero Society's It Couple. The girl who got along with his parents and could take his moods as steadily as he took hers. The woman he loved more than anything in the world.
Those were the golden years, before the Commission wanted a return on their kindness.
"I don't have long," she says, breathlessly, in a way he misses so much. "You're here with Mind Breaker, right?"
He nods.
She keeps her hands on him, to his small relief, and he gets a good look at her.
Ochako is wearing a pair of slimming pants and a strappy black shirt with a pair of heeled boots. It's sexy. Low-cut. Tight. A club outfit. A distinctly not Ochako outfit that he might be able to appreciate under any other circumstances.
He fixates for a moment on the necklaces circling her throat, particularly a gold-plated one with Mine imprinting over Bakugou's favorite patch of freckles. It's then he catches sight of something like a shadow on the wing of her collarbone.
It's a bruise. Faded black and blue.
Small as a kiss.
He presses his thumb against it and Ochako stills, breath caught in her throat.
Cold reality sinks into the pit of his stomach.
Ochako presses her lips together. He can see in the way she locks up that she does not know what to say next. Her eyes are watering. Her jaw is tight. Her hands are shaking from where they have hooked against his shoulders.
He feels sick.
"It's the mission," she says after a beat too long. "She doesn't . . ."
Bakugou knows that.
But he is more concerned with who Ochako's mission is.
The slimming black outfit, the gold-plated necklace, the love bite where he can see it. It's all her.
Himiko Toga.
A proud member of the League and one of Shigaraki's chosen few.
Bakugou remembers Toga from years ago when they first met. She had been one of his jailers in those days he was with the League, a blonde girl with a manic gleam in her eye and flashing fangs when she spoke. The whole of her so delighted at the sight of him, captured and helpless. Like a predator and her prey.
He had not known until years later, that Ochako had met her in the woods during his capture.
Ochako had not lingered on the details, but she told him it was her first real fight; using her training from Gunhead to subdue her, but stranded in the woods without a cellphone and her friend injured, it had been all Ochako could do to just hold the villain hostage until help arrived.
And help never arrived.
Then, to make a strange situation even stranger, they had got to talking. Though, Toga did most of the talking, getting into Ochako's head and her insecurities about crushes and feelings and how Toga can smell the chemical shifts of someone in love.
The effects of which distracted Ochako long enough for Toga to get a syringe in her leg and gave her the chance to wriggle free and make her escape. A mistake that they, at the time, had not known how dire. That was then, before Toga's abilities were known to the extent that they knew now.
That they knew because of Ochako.
Ochako made contact with the League, just as her predecessor had. She made contact, made friends, but the script had flipped early when the Commission was exposed by another hero for negligence and endangerment and, in review, Uravity's illegal activities got leaked to the public.
With her reputation in shambles, Ochako had disappeared into the criminal underbelly without looking back.
Two words sitting on his phone and the nightmares returned.
They had tracked her phone to a dumpster behind the Commission building.
They found her hero costume in an opium den fronting as a spa. They found her DNA on glasses and hotel rooms and thumb-printed onto murder weapons. The police combed their shared apartment, taking her things, her clothes, her books, the very essence of her from his life.
And Bakugou had stood-by, confused and boiling while his girlfriend fought for her life out in the wild.
He had challenged his company to go up against the Commission, and what they found was more telling then he knew.
It was all according to plan. The leak, the incrimination, the abandonment.
The League had not accepted Uravity as easily as they did Hawks. The League had been burned before and did not trust someone they had terrorized since she was in hero courses. They had hold ups, initiations, and gate-keepers.
But, Ochako had an in no other hero had.
She had Toga.
Toga who had, previous to Ochako's assignment and even after their tangle in the woods, had shown interest in her. In battles and bank robberies, Toga and Ochako's entanglements were splashed across hero sites and analytic forums since Ochako's formal debut. Her rivalry with Toga had been a hotly debated topic. Despite what comics might make you think, a hero having continuous one-on-one battles with a single villain were something of a rarity.
Both of them being female had been more fuel to the fire.
It had been the subject of many of her interviews, the cases she took on and, ultimately, the end of her career.
Ochako never really talked about her, just those weird moments when they connected. How Toga seemed to be looking into her like that night in the woods.
She could see right through her armor.
Then, when Ochako made contact as a potential ally for the League, the tone of their fights had shifted.
Bakugou still remembers the day she came home and told him exactly what her new mission was and what it entailed. They had argued. They had screamed. They had settled.
It had started as a fling, a couple of meetings where Ochako would check-in with mussed hair or a cut on her lip, and then more. Ochako would disappear for a couple days, and come back with stories of underground drag races and drug deals. Toga drawing her in and drawing her closer still.
In a single move, Ochako had effectively secured Toga's trust as well as her own total submission.
Then, the times came when Toga started taking her blood and passwords were put into place to make check-ins more secure.
Bakugou's unease only grew. He would be lying next to her at night, wondering if this Ochako was his Ochako. He would watch her make coffee in the morning and study her pouring in sugar with a critical eye. He would kiss her goodbye, wondering about the taste of her lips, the curve of her mouth, the way she touched his face, all affection and trust and none the wiser.
The poisonous thoughts filling his mind that she was, somehow, no longer his.
And then, the leak, the postal shift of his entire life and Ochako's extraction from his every day which left him grasping at the seams.
Ochako tells him everything.
Every detail of the passed few months condensed down movements and attacks, some in progress and others in wait. The villain legions spread throughout the underbelly. The treaties being made in secret. The alliances with law enforcement and corrupt heroes, all this knowledge that made him sick on the principle.
He cannot comment. Just let Kenma take it all down through his earpiece.
Just listen as his girlfriend unloads her work with nary a comfort.
When its done, she looks up at him from where she is, leaning over the sink, hair smoothed, lipstick reapplied, her perfume pressed against her pulse. She looks lovely, prepared for battle and so terribly sad.
Not even five minutes have passed.
He can see the wheels turning in her head.
It still does not hit as hard as it does until she looks at him and says it. "I have to go Katsuki."
And he knows that. He does.
But, he can't.
She passes the earpiece back to him and he holds it in his palm, smaller than a pea-pod, and his only connection to the world outside.
"Stay safe, Cheeks." He says. "Stay alive."
She flashes a smile at him, but its wane, a sliver of a thing disappearing after a moment. Her eyes water. She looks like she wants to touch him again, but their initial hug had been too much. Over the years, Toga's sense of smell had only ever gotten stronger. Ochako has already did her best to remove all traces of him from her and she will take the long way back, passing through the crowd, slinking through other bodies, other scents to remove him.
He still wants to touch her. Feel her. Know she is real.
His hands ball into fists to stem that want.
"I love you," he says, just as she is reaching for the door. The lock turns in her hand and she pauses. She looks back at him.
"I love you too," she whispers and then, almost under her breath, "Goodbye Katsuki."
The door shuts and he is alone.
The loneliness is instant.
He stands for a moment in the bathroom, the cracked tile and eerie blue.
He has to move. He has to leave.
Radio static crackles in his ear. Kenma asking him if he is on his way out. He gives the affirmative and touches his neck, where Ochako's fingers grazed his hair, and the warp-gate yawns open for him.
He steps through and relishes the instant rush of air conditioning, the scent of stale, greasy food wrappers. The lights are dimmer, the walls a deep gray. The surveillance truck from all of his heist movies growing up.
Kenma gives him a level look. His eyes are wide and luminous like moonshine. His quirk is a mutation one, almost analytical. He never misses a movement. Something he applies to surveillance work rather than typical hero work, which is part of the reason why Mind Breaker probably likes him so much.
"So, how'd it go?"
"Like you don't know?"
"No cameras in the bathrooms." Kenma says blandly. "It's illegal."
"Did you get everything through the earpiece or not?"
"I did." Kenma mutters, gaze sliding back to the screens.
He still feels the residual ache of having seen Ochako again. The not quite there pinch of regret and anger he feels. His mind is stumbling over her words, her expressions, her actions, trying to find the niche of his reason for why he feels so rotten.
"You did good," Kenma says, needlessly. He is not looking at him, but Bakugou still feels so watched by those eyes.
Bakugou squints at him, more annoyed than ever, and turns his attention to the screens Kenma has stacked against the wall of the van.
"What's all this?"
"The actual security cameras from the club," Kenma mumbles and taps a button on his keyboard, the camera zooming into a knot in the dancing crowd. "There's a couple other members of the League here. Mind Breaker wanted to build a profile. I'm just getting a scope of the crowd before we pack up for the night."
Bakugou wants to make a comment about Shinsou needing to do his own work, but buries it with teeth. He does not want to fight right now. Doesn't want to give Shinsou reason to shove him off the squad.
His gaze snags on another screen marked VIP LOUNGE in the corner. There is a film over the screen, a grain on the lower left corner like someone had put tape over the camera before, but for tonight, someone had forgotten to do so. The room is vibrant pink and purple, shadows and glimmers of lights.
At this cramped angle, Bakugou can see a section of the room from the door, but not the shadowy corner where most of the VIPs have clustered around a section of low tables with drinks and wandering hands and things he does not want to see. He can, however, see one of the mini stages set up in the middle of the room for private dances.
Toga is standing on one of them, hands in the air and moving to the pulse of the club.
The tap of Kenma's keystrokes means he must see her too.
Images of her appear on Kenma's main screen. Her every movement tracked down to the finest detail. Zooming in on her outfit, her expression, searching for changes. Nuances. New scars. New weak-points.
Her chipped nail polish seems like an affront.
She is wearing a shimmering dress, hot pink like a Barbie doll, and short enough that the camera can see the twin thigh holsters she wears like an old uniform. The trademark double blades with deep grooves that collect blood with a single swipe. Security must know better than to try and take them from her.
Bakugou leans into the screen, eyes narrowing.
"You see that?" He taps the screen, the glass echoing against his touch. The screen pulls up pixelated image of Toga's wrist. Her chunky bracelets littered with a dozen or so charms—dog tags. Police tags. He sucks in a low breath and, at Kenma's questioning stare, he answers, "Trophies."
"Shit."
Bakugou watches the images still, scan, and names appearing on the screen. Profiles appear, police officers with records, without them, all of them suspiciously missing or having been found in less than ideal situations. All of them, having claimed that Toga took their likeness for a ride before she dropped them.
All of them too deep in a hole to dig themselves out.
"Well, this might clear some cases up." Kenma mutters. "I've got a buddy who works as a public defender and this mess has been keeping him up at night."
Bakugou ignores him.
The Toga on screen turns, caught in motion of her dance and then she stills. Her smile pulling at her lips, wide and welcoming as the door to the VIP room opens and Ochako enters the screen.
The scene is quiet, but Bakugou can almost hear her voice when Toga's mouth moves to say her name. The way her demeanor shifts. The way everyone else in the room seems to shift.
She must say something because Toga laughs, peals of laughter caught in motion as Ochako approaches, undaunted, unafraid. There is a drink in her hand, something fruity from the bar.
When she draws closer, Toga launches herself off the stage. Bakugou tenses, panic snapping in him, expecting a take down, a tackle, but Ochako catches her. Ochako's drink goes flying. A volcanic arch falling off-screen, forgotten as Toga's legs fastening around Ochako's waist. Ochako's hands bracing her thighs, her hand brushing against those thigh holsters as she pulls her up.
Toga falls against her, cheek-to-cheek, laughing.
It's like a slow-frame of some romantic movie.
Bakugou can feel his teeth sink into his tongue.
It means nothing. It's just a mission.
It means nothing.
But Ochako swings in view of the camera, setting Toga to rights and the villain giggles, slinking her arms around Ochako's waist, leaning into her space once again. Dizzy-drunk and happy. Ochako still has hands on her, steadying her waist, her index finger delicately raised to not activate her quirk.
"Hey, Ground Zero," He catches the shadow of Shinsou in the glass, his eyes are long and sleepless. "They're ready for you when—"
"In a minute."
Angry with himself and resentful, he looks back—
The screen is grainy, but clear as Ochako touches Toga's cheek, tucking her hair behind her ear. She says something that makes Toga giggle again and nod, her own hands sliding up Ochako's back, where her shoulder blades are bare.
Ochako draws her in for a kiss.
It's possessive, seeking, searching, and Toga melts against her. Ochako's hands slide behind Toga's head, cupping her skull and fingers sliding into her hair and tipping Toga's face to hers.
It all happens in an instant. A single, burning moment that leaves Bakugou's mouth dry and his chest hollow.
Despite everything, despite the mission, despite Ochako's tears and her reports, the bruises and cuts that appeared on her body, the way she folded into herself in those last months, the way she drew away from him, and them, and their friends. Despite her words that he trusted with his whole soul and how he believed Ochako when she told him it was nothing.
He cannot help but think that Ochako kisses her like she might kiss him. Full affection and trust, folding herself into him and giving herself over to emotions.
It's just a mission.
It's just a mission, but he cannot unsee the fact that it is not.
Not anymore.