Chapter Text
The show ended in sirens.
Bakugou Katsuki stood center stage, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face, guitar hanging on his shoulder by one loose buckle. His lip was slit. His fingers were bleeding. The crowd roared louder than the damage.
The lights cut. The buzz lingered. Even as the noise grew quieter, his head pounded.
Backstage was a humid, chaotic blur. Kirishima tossed him a towel while trying to pull off his sweat-soaked shirt. “You good, bro? You kinda lost it on the bridge.”
“I meant to,” Katsuki muttered, wiping blood and booze from his face. His voice rasped—hoarse from screaming, wrecked from smoking since noon.
“Well, it was badass!” Denki said, flopping onto the greenroom couch like he hadn’t just soloed with his amp fried. “Sounded like— like a demon got electrocuted! That’s a compliment.”
Mina laughed, fingers dancing over her phone screen, probably already posting backstage clips to their socials. “The pyros were late, but it kinda made it artsy. Like, dangerous-sexy.”
“Pyros weren’t late,” Jirou said, sitting cross-legged with her bass in her lap. “Blasty blew the cue when he threw his pick into the fucking crowd before the chorus.”
Shinsou leaned against the far wall, unreadable as ever, arms crossed and one brow raised like he was counting down the seconds before he could light a cigarette. “Good set,” he said flatly. “Venue’s pissed, though. That’s three lights and a speaker stack.”
“They’ll live,” Katsuki growled.
“You keep performing like you want to die on stage,” Shinsou said, “and we’ll see how long that holds.”
The room fell quiet for a second too long.
Katsuki dropped into a chair, cradling his guitar like a wound. The silence settled on him like ash.
Then Shinsou’s phone buzzed. He checked it, and something in his posture shifted—barely, but Katsuki caught it.
“What?” he asked, his face scrunching.
Shinsou stared at the screen. “Tour’s official,” he said. “Quirkstock’s calling it The Revival Circuit. Multiple cities. Shared headliners.”
“Cool,” Mina said, perking up. “Who’re we paired with?”
Shinsou didn’t answer right away. He looked up at Katsuki, face blank.
“…You’re not gonna like it.”
“Spit it out,” the blond hissed.
Shinsou sighed. “Full Cowling.”
Everything stopped. Kirishima looked up from his towel. Denki sat up. Jirou stopped fiddling with her tuning pegs.
Mina’s smile flickered. “Wait. That’s—”
Katsuki’s jaw clenched.
Midoriya fucking Izuku.
He hadn’t heard that name in three years. Not since the award show. Not since the fight. Not since the voicemail he never deleted but hadn’t listened to since he got blackout drunk in Osaka and nearly smashed his phone trying to erase the sound of that voice.
Katsuki stood up so fast the chair tipped over.
“No.”
Shinsou didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
“Pick someone else.”
“You don’t get to pick. It’s done. Label signed off. Tour starts in two weeks.”
Katsuki’s heart beat in his teeth. “Fuck that. No.”
“You want to keep headlining? Then you play the game. You suck it up, you show up, and you don’t make it a public bloodbath. Or the label drops you.”
Katsuki stared at him, teeth grit so tight it hurt. His band was silent. Watching.
Of course it was Midoriya. Of course that fucking ghost was back.
“Cool,” he said, voice low and lethal. “Then I hope he’s ready.”
Katsuki was gonna burn the stage down.
The acoustic in the hotel room was shit.
Too many soft surfaces. Carpet, thick curtains, walls that hummed with the distant life of Tokyo just beyond the glass. Izuku sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed, guitar in his lap, trying to find the right chords for a song that didn’t want to be written.
He pressed his fingers down. G major. Minor seventh. Back to G. Still wrong.
He sighed and leaned forward, letting his forehead rest against the body of the guitar. It was warm from his hands, a welcome distraction from the busy city outside and the ringing in his ears. His guitar was familiar.
Outside, rain tapped against the window like it was trying to get in.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Once. Then again. Then again.
He didn’t look.
Instead, he closed his eyes and let the silence swell until it felt unbearable. He hated this part—this moment between songs, when the noise in his head got louder than any crowd. When there was no beat to drown out the static of everything.
He finally grabbed the phone and flipped it over.
5 new messages.
All from Aizawa.
Izuku exhaled through his nose, heart already crawling up his throat.
He opened the most recent one.
“Tour confirmed. Quirkstock. You’re co-headlining.”
“The other band is Ground Zero.”
“Don’t overthink it. We start press in a week.”
“Get some sleep, kid”
“And write something good.”
He stared at the screen for a long time.
It had been years. Years since Katsuki Bakugou screamed in his face backstage and said Izuku never gave a damn.
Years since they ruined each other in front of a hundred thousand screaming fans.
Years since the voicemail. The one Izuku still hadn’t listened to.
He told himself he didn’t care. That he had moved on. That he was better now.
But his hands were shaking.
“Shit,” he whispered, setting the phone down like it had burned him.
The door creaked open a second later, and Ochako poked her head in.
“You didn’t answer your texts,” she said gently. “Iida’s ordering food. Todorokis worried about you.”
Izuku didn’t respond. Just strummed the same bad chord again.
She stepped in. “You saw the news?”
He nodded, tears welling in his eyes.
She sat next to him without asking, legs tucked under her, fingers grazing the strings of his guitar lightly. “Are you okay?”
He swallowed. “No.”
“Fair.”
He turned to look at her, guilt pressing heavy in his chest. “This could get bad.”
“Then we’ll handle it,” she said, too calm, too sure.
“We haven’t seen each other in three years.”
“And if you both still hate each other that much, we’ll keep you on opposite ends of every venue. I’ll even hold your damn hand if I have to.”
Izuku let out something between a laugh and a sob, the sound fragile and small.
The door opened again—this time with more force.
“Have you seen these setlists?” Iida boomed as he entered, holding his phone like it was offensive. “They’ve scheduled us after Ground Zero in three of the cities. It’s clearly sabotage.”
Todoroki followed him in, sipping tea with the same detached apathy he wore like armor. “Didn’t realize you cared about set order.”
“I care about integrity,” Iida snapped. “And acoustics.”
“They’ll have to move us,” Ochako said. “We’ll make it work.”
Izuku just stared at his guitar.
He could already feel it—this tour wasn’t going to be clean. It wasn’t just business. Not when it was him.
Not when Katsuki Bakugou was involved.
That night, after his band was asleep and the city was soft and blue outside his window, Izuku finally pulled up the voicemail again.
[Voicemail: 1 Unplayed. From: Katsuki Bakugou]
His thumb hovered over the play button.
He didn’t press it. He didn’t think he ever could.