Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“I think I always knew.”

Bakugou’s eyes burned, closing the distance across the basement in laser sight red. He slouched where he sat on the staircase, back to muttering and raking both hands through his hair at the root. A varsity-style jacket was discarded and gathering sawdust near where his feet were planted. One of his combat boots tapped so fast the buckles jingled. Arms tattooed with koi in ten colors and shiny with stress sweat. His shirt, Todoroki observed with annoyance, was skin-fucking-tight. As always. Pecs like a stripper, one too many rows of abs, a gun at his trim little waist. Shame the police academy never prepared Todoroki for how fuckable some criminals had the nerve to look.

Shame Bakugou’s mugshot, all scowled and unflattering in low printer toner stripes on Todoroki’s desk, had put him off guard from the very beginning.

“Knew what?”

“That you were a fucking cop.”

“Like hell you knew. You would have already-,” Todoroki croaked, shifting his shoulders until one of them clicked. “Ow.”

“Hurts?”

“Kinda.”

"Kinda?” Bakugou leaned into the grip he had on his hair. “You really don’t know how much trouble you’re in, do you?”

Todoroki’s wrists were crossed and bound over his head. A tangle of rope and duct tape connected them to a strut in the ceiling. He’d already tried lifting his feet off the ground and yanking on the beam with all his weight. The wood was solid. He wouldn’t be able to brute force an escape, but the bindings were too inelegant to use some finer strategy. A lockpick set and all the time in the world wouldn’t do shit for him now. If someone strolled in and handed him a fucking box cutter, he still wasn’t at the right angle to saw his way free. Why couldn’t it have been handcuffs? Those, he was used to. Those, he could get out of.

While Todoroki struggled and twisted and eventually came to understand that he was, to use an industry term, screwed, Bakugou watched. Waiting. Frowning. Boot tapping with maddening, constant percussion.

“Such a cop. No fucking idea how no one noticed it. You were always asking weird questions. Looking at everything too long. Rooms. Faces.”

“Is that why you blindfolded me on the ride here?”

“I’ll put it back on if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

Bakugou hopped to his feet. He took his burner phone out of his pocket and clicked the clamshell open and closed, open and closed, worrying it like a fidget toy. It was annoying.

“That’s annoying,” Todoroki observed, not sure when he’d mentally miscalculated enough to say it out loud.

“The fuck did you say to me?”

Bakugou’s face carved into rage. Ugly, immediate, piqued bestial at the corners of his mouth like the oni mask tattooed on the back of his hand. Even as Todoroki felt true, bright fear leap in his belly, he clarified:

“The clicking. With the phone. Stop it.”

“You-!”

“Play a game on it if you’re that bored.”

“You trying to get your ass beat?!”

“I have to try?”

Incredulity confused Bakugou’s lips from a snarl to a half-smirk.

“Fucker,” he growled, pitching the phone overhand into a dark corner. Hands leaping up to tug at his hair again, Bakugou stalked the length of the room back and forth. Curses flowed by in a quiet pendulum.

“Asshole. Fucking…asshole. Grade A. Shit.”

Content that Bakugou was distracted, tracking his movements with wary eyes, Todoroki twisted his wrists in the restraints. They weren’t any looser, but sweat provided a bit of slip between the rope and his skin. He had a range of movement now. A limited, painful, range of movement that was a hell of a lot better than nothing. With new ambition, Todoroki grasped upward towards a dangling end of the duct tape, and took his focus off of Bakugou for a moment too long.

“Oi. Officer. Don’t bother.”

Bakugou’s voice made Todoroki freeze. His frown and wearily shaken head made Todoroki feel almost guilty, a kid elbow deep in a cookie jar.

“What’s the plan if you get out, hah? I still have a gun.”

“My plan is…” Todoroki swallowed hard. “...developing.”

Bakugou sighed, strolled closer, calm in a sudden and unnerving way. Hands tucked in his pockets. Todoroki’s chest tightened at every step he took.

“Let’s talk.”

“Okay.”

“Was it fun?”

“What?”

“Was it fun? Buddying up to us just to sell everyone out to customs? Messing with our heads?” Bakugou leaned close, tapped Todoroki’s skull where the red and white came together. “Playing fucking mind games?”

“It wasn’t a game. It was an assignment.”

“Assignment-?! This isn’t grade school, jackoff.”

“Okay, it was a job.”

“No, stopping the shipment was your job! Fucking snitch-ass job if you ask me, but we all got bills to pay!” Bakugou gripped Todoroki’s jaw, raising his pulse to an uncomfortable thrum. “Was it your job to make it personal?”

“That’s exactly what it was.”

Bakugou tilted his head with dark interest, expectant, a dog figuring out where to bite first.

“Yeah?”

“Gain trust. Gain information.”

“You didn’t get either from me.”

“Oh, I did. I got exactly what I needed.”

There’s no one braver than a guy with no luck left to test. At least, that’s what Todoroki figured when he took a measured breath, raised an eyebrow, and poked the beast.

“Pissed you fell for it?”

Well, if Bakugou wasn’t pissed before, he sure as fuck was now. Pissed enough that he reeled for a moment. Mouth working open and useless until it clamped in a flat line too tight for the steam to escape. The air in the room got thin, like Bakugou had swallowed all the oxygen between them in a single, rage-greedy breath. Some kind of hell was nakedly promised in the brimstone burn of his eyes. The flare of his nostrils. The tightening of his fist on Todoroki’s collar.

A right hook, maybe? Or a knee to the stomach? Todoroki was already hanging from the ceiling, and it stood to reason that Bakugou might complete his transformation into a punching bag. Apropos. He had it coming, really. So Todoroki didn’t flinch when Bakugou steadied his face with a squeeze that bunched his cheeks in the middle. Didn’t waver when he leaned in.

Didn’t even close his eyes when Bakugou closed his, made a little tutting noise, and kissed him.

Stomach flipping, Todoroki tore his face away from Bakugou’s grip fast enough to tweak his neck. His mind was too blank to race. The element of surprise had melted him down to base fucking molecules.

“Why’d you do that?” he finally asked, voice all creaky, counting his breaths to make sure they were still coming.

“What?” Bakugou sneered. “Kiss you?”

“Don’t.”

“Kiss you on the mouth?”

“Don’t say it.”

“Kiss you all nice like your prissy ass deserves?”

“Shut up.”

“Why?”

“You-”

Bakugou dove in for another kiss, Todoroki made an immediate strategic failure. He opened his mouth to say stop or slow down or any other futile protest that wouldn’t do shit in the end. Bakugou’s tongue stole its way forward, the tilt of his head naturally shifting to chase after Todoroki’s lips. He found the bare gap of skin between the hem of Todoroki’s shirt and the waistband of his jeans, teased it with a ticklish scrape of his nails. Todoroki gasped, stiffening like he’d been jabbed with a taser, then moaned. Forgetting where he was, forgetting this was wrong, remembering every time he’d wondered how this first kiss would play out if he was a bad enough cop to just go for it.

Some undercover agents got hooked on drugs. Went full Stockholm Syndrome, flipped and joined up with the other side. As Bakugou’s palm went flat over Todoroki’s navel then dove beneath his closed fly, Todoroki started to understand just how easy it might be to go rogue.

“Don’t-” he managed to repeat before Bakugou mashed their mouths together again. The hand in his pants wasn’t shy. Bakugou grabbed Todoroki’s dick over his boxers, tested it from a few angles. Curious. Searching. Then he grasped lower, forcing his big knuckles into Todoroki’s pant leg and-

“Bastard,” Bakugou snarled, breaking the kiss and ripping his hand up from Todoroki’s jeans. A black surveillance recorder was in his fist, still connected to Todoroki’s inner thigh by a long wire. Cursing, he yanked the rest of it out, and Todoroki yelped when a patch of his leg hair came away with the tape. Bakugou wrapped the wire around his index fingers like he was tightening shoelaces and tore it in half. He dropped the recorder and stomped it until plastic shards were the only thing between his boot and the oily concrete.

“A fucking wire?!”

“I’m surprised-” Todoroki huffed, lips still prickling hot from the kiss, “-you didn’t find it earlier.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t fucking killed you yet!” Bakugou’s hands shot up to Todoroki’s neck, wrapped around it, and Todoroki drew in a huge breath before they could tighten.

They didn’t.

They just hung there, slack except where Bakugou’s thumbs kept skimming the length of Todoroki’s windpipe.

“Fuck,” Bakugou growled. His hands dropped to Todoroki’s rib cage, tapping around to check for more hardware. “That was the only wire, right?” He patted the front of Todoroki’s thighs, the small of his back. “You don’t have a GPS tracker shoved up your ass?”

“No.”

“Better not be lying, liar.” His fingers fluttered on either side of Todoroki’s spine, then dug in with stronger pressure. “I’ll check.”

“Do what you have to do.”

“Tch.”

Finally opening his eyes, Todoroki confirmed a suspicion that Bakugou was smirking. Just a little bit, the tiniest twitch of a dimple in one cheek.

“So no one’s listening,” Bakugou theorized. He flexed his arms, canting their hips together so their crotches tapped. “And no one else knows you’re here.”

“Seems like it.”

That should have scared Todoroki shitless. Here, at the total mercy of someone he’d betrayed barely an hour before. A very hotheaded, impulsive someone who’d caught him in a lie and blown his cover ragged and wide open. Pointed a gun between his eyes and made him tie on his own blindfold and kicked him into a van big enough for a body, fast enough for a quick getaway.

All Todoroki felt, though, was a strange, anticipatory excitement. Like every time he’d gone on patrol and tasted danger in the night air, he couldn’t wait for that addictive adrenaline rush to overwhelm him. To put him on full autopilot and give him over to instinct.

“Just to take inventory,” Todoroki began, restrained hands twitching to come down and get acquainted with Bakugou’s chest, “You’re not actually going to kill me.”

“Why?” Bakugou let go of Todoroki’s hips, crossed his arms. “You wanna be my first?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re not a murderer. You just hang out with them.”

“Hah. So you do-”

Bakugou was going to say know me, Todoroki sensed, but he’d stopped himself. After all, that was a notion they both needed to get over. That they’d ever known anything about each other, except how badly they wanted this. Whatever the hell this was, bodies flush, breathing the same air back and forth and throwing out dares with their eyes.

“Then what are you going to do to me?” Todoroki finally asked, aware he was all but dumping blood in the water. He was the quiet type. Not the patient type.

Bakugou tightened his arms, the muscle there rippling so visibly that his koi tattoos started swimming.

“Not sure.”

“Uh oh.”

Bakugou replaced his grip on Todoroki’s waist and swiveled him around to face the blank basement wall. Purred, predatory, against his nape:

“Wish you were in uniform. Officer.”

All over gooseflesh. Todoroki shivered, nipples shrinking into peaks, new friction behind the fabric of his shirt.

“Sorry,” he said, not at all sure why he was apologizing.

Bakugou skimmed between Todoroki’s pectorals for a badge that wasn’t there.

“Always wanted to rip open a set of blues. See if all that clean living really does a body good. Oh, fuck-.” The trim planes of Todoroki’s stomach became the new focus of Bakugou’s attention. He stroked from sternum to navel, then snuck underneath Todoroki’s shirt to repeat the action skin to skin. “You keep it tight all over, huh? What’s the story here? Interval training? Planks?”

Unwilling to admit that, of late, his workout routine consisted primarily of bedroom floor push ups and sprinting towards closing subway doors, Todoroki said:

“Is this how meatheads talk dirty?”

“Talk is cheap.”

“You’re sure doing a lot of it.”

“Tch.” Bakugou’s strumming fingertips went still, gripped hard, bruised where they sank in. “I’ll just skip to fucking you, then.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a go ahead?”

“It’s a get it the fuck over with.”

A dark, breathy chuckle on his nape. “Not like you can stop me, huh?”

“Right.” Todoroki said, squirming. Bakugou was a hot, consuming, six foot brand along the back of his body. “I can’t stop you.”

“Would you, though?”

Tapped kisses to Todoroki’s shoulder, chased with a swipe of tongue.

“Would you stop me?”

“No,” Todoroki said, and closed his eyes, and waited for Bakugou to touch him.

Touch him everywhere. Test every defenseless inch of him for a reaction. Take back all the control Todoroki’s deception had robbed him of. The moment it started, it surely wouldn’t stop. Not until Todoroki had repaid his debt to Bakugou in the only currencies at his disposal. Moans and sweat and drool and cum and why the fuck was it taking so long?

“Well?” Todoroki made a half turn, peeking around to see that Bakugou had replaced some distance between them. One of Bakugou’s idle hands rested on the clothed bulge of his erection. The other was posted on his hip.

“Well what?” A cocksure sweeping gesture, and Bakugou went back to groping himself. “Beg for it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Beg me to fuck you.”

“No. What? ...No.”

“At least ask for it. Cmon, I’m feeling charitable.”

“No.”

“Tch.”

“I haven’t even begged for my life and you think I’m going to beg for your dick?”

“It’d be a good look on you, princess.”

Todoroki struggled around so they were fully facing off. “Calling me that isn’t helping.”

“So…” Bakugou’s grin went mean. “...what should I call you?”

A list of nasty little pet names flashed through Todoroki’s mind, left a glowy afterimage. Slut, bitch, maybe another taste of officer would do it. The specifics wouldn’t matter, of course, once Bakugou got close enough, and growled low enough. He could call Todoroki whatever he wanted to.

Chewing back his lower lip, Todoroki let silence answer for him.

“Hmm…” Bakugou tugged at the neckline of his shirt. As if to say is it hot in here, or is it just me, the arrogant prick. But even the tiniest flash of a tattooed collarbone made Todoroki’s mouth water. “I called dibs on you day one, y’know. Back at the pool hall, where we recruited you. Took one look and said ‘he’s mine.’ Fuck, I couldn’t take my eyes off your ass. Almost dragged you to the bathroom to split you in half before I even learned your name.”

Todoroki took a long moment to remind himself, again, that he was better than all this bullshit. Driven by conviction. Cool under pressure. So the fact that is cock was hard could- no, had to be passed off as a pure physical reflex. Like dodging a punch. Or miserably failing to.

“That’s…” Todoroki began, careful, careful- “...dehumanizing.”

“Oh, I’ve been talking to a person this whole fucking time? Could have sworn you were a cop.”

Reaching back and grabbing his collar, Bakugou pulled his shirt forward over his head. Todoroki reeled with dumb lust at the smoothness of the movement. Fully aware that every motherfucker who ever takes his shirt off like that knows exactly what he’s doing, Todoroki still couldn’t stop his eyes from leaping over Bakugou’s newly exposed torso. His pecs, revealing themselves with a symmetrical bounce, were branded at the edges in the same colorful tattoo motif as his arms. With something deeper and more dreadful than horror, Todoroki realized Bakugou’s nipples were pierced.

“Now I get why you didn’t flirt back,” Bakugou continued, thoughtful, whipping his shirt around the back of his neck and holding onto both ends like a locker room towel. “Hard to get laid when you’re wearing a wire. I’d be sucking your cock right next to the microphone. Dead giveaway. Or maybe I just would have fucked you until you screamed so loud they’d send backup.”

“I didn’t flirt because I wasn’t interested.”

“Bull-fucking-shit. What about that time in the taxi?” Bakugou licked across his teeth. His stupid hand was back on his stupid cock, squeezing to make the thickness of its outline even more obvious. “When you let me feel you up.”

“I was drunk,” Todoroki insisted, but he couldn’t help but remember how drunk he wasn’t that particular night. He’d held his breath and pretended to doze against the rainy window as Bakugou explored and kneaded his ass and practically fingerfucked him through his jeans. Played dumb when the taxi dropped them off and Bakugou invited him up for a nightcap that absolutely would have ended- shit, begun with fucking. Walked home with his oath and ethics upheld and no fucking umbrella, even as his dick compelled him to backtrack towards Bakugou’s building and throw it all away.

“I was so ready to wreck you,” Bakugou said, drawing his gun and pointing it oh-so-politely at the ceiling. A .38 Special, kind of old school, not dissimilar to a police issue sidearm. As Bakugou approached, Todoroki wondered if it was loaded. That was silly. Guns are always loaded, even if they aren’t. “I don’t think you understand how hard I would have-”

“I understand,” Todoroki interrupted, sick and tired of getting his mind curb-stomped into the gutter.

“Bullshit. You don’t.” Tipping Todoroki’s chin up with the tip of the gun barrel, Bakugou stole a deceptively shallow kiss. “You can’t. Because you think you’re stronger than you are, and you don’t know how pretty you are.”

New, weird heat shuddered through Todoroki’s body.

“What are you trying to do?” he asked, voice just flat enough to cover his desperation. A question there was no satisfying answer to. Or at least no answer that would leave him with any leverage or dignity. He’d already fucked this up. He fucked up the moment he kissed back.

“I’m trying to give you what you want.”

Another kiss, deeper this time, and Todoroki was vaguely aware he might have initiated it himself. He was woozy now, erection sapping so much blood flow that his strung-up arms were fully, finally numb. The gun slid lower, following the length of Todoroki’s neck, the midline of his stomach, until Bakugou used the end of it to gap the elastic of Todoroki’s boxers away from his skin.

“All you have to do is beg, remember?”

The kiss fell apart as Bakugou plunged the gun next to Todoroki’s bare cock. Cold metal nestled along his erection, making his teeth bite together in a hiss, fingers waking up just to clutch at nothing above his head.

“Bakugou-” he gasped, rainstick pins and needles flowing down his arms. Bakugou worked the gun in a slow up and down motion, rubbing and teasing and digging a raw line in Todoroki’s skin with the ridge at the end of the barrel. “Bakugou, nnh-!”

“Present,” Bakugou murmured. Now the gun barrel slipped lower, behind Todoroki’s balls. Might as well have been a fucking ice cube with how his whole body tried to writhe away from it. Bakugou tutted, curving an arm around Todoroki’s waist to hold him steady. “Careful.”

“I can’t-” Trembling in place, conscious of how risky one wrong move could be, Todoroki fought to keep his hips centered. “-I’m never going to- I won’t beg you for- ah-”

Mercifully, or at least Todoroki was temporarily dumb enough to see it that way, Bakugou drew away the gun. The elastic on his boxers pinned his cock with a snap, left half of it peeking out dark pink against the pale of his stomach.

Humming with interest, Bakugou circled the head of Todoroki’s exposed cock with the gun’s muzzle. Pressed the end of it into his slit. Lifted it again. A heavy drop of precum gleamed on the tip of the pistol. Bakugou locked eyes with Todoroki and laved his tongue up the barrel to capture it.

“Mmm…” He kissed off the remnants, replacing the shine of precum with the shine of spit. “Yum.”

Then he grinned, so fucking pleased with himself. And something about the shitty, devilish curve of Bakugou’s lips made Todoroki’s pride fracture into pieces small enough to swallow. He swore, kicked the ground, and said:

“Suck my cock, then.”

Bakugou’s eyes lit up. Kid at a candy store. Todoroki was relieved to see that, certain some kind of compromise was on the horizon. If Bakugou wanted this as bad as Todoroki did, swept up in a new directive, he might forget the stated requirement for Todoroki to-

“Beg for it,” Bakugou commanded, re-holstering his gun. He invaded Todoroki’s space again, drawing an invisible target under Todoroki’s navel with a bent finger, one that arched around the head of his cock but never touched it.

“Bakugou, just-”

Nosing under Todoroki’s earlobe: “Beg.”

“Okay.” A steeling breath in and out, a quick mental rehearsal that did nothing to reassure Todoroki he wasn’t about to sound pathetic. “Suck my cock?” His voice tuned up at the end. Great. Convincing. “Just...I need your mouth on me.”

“Holy shit, you’re bad at this. Do you know what begging is?” Bakugou drew back so Todoroki could see his sneer, the pitying shake of his head. “Like, dictionary definition.”

“If you don’t suck my cock I...” A rise of blood in his cheeks, a helpless rush of new honesty. “...I’m gonna lose it. I’m serious.”

“Can’t lie. I’d like to see that.” Bakugou drawled. His eyes flicked down to Todoroki’s waistband, where rounded moisture was straining to fall from Todoroki’s tip. Dotting his index finger to capture it, Bakugou conveyed the sparkling precum to Todoroki’s bottom lip and spread it on like gloss. Messy, from one corner of his mouth to the next, chasing it with a heavy kiss that gave them both a dose of salt sharpness on their tongues. Todoroki bore with it, then whipped his head away and gasped into his own shoulder.

“Fuck, you’re an asshole-”

“And you’re still trying to be in control. What’s it look like when you go a little crazy?”

“Like this, right now. It looks like this.” Todoroki pleaded in an embarrassingly high register, pleasure-chasing. He didn’t sound like a cop, not one bit, not anymore. More an urchin with an outstretched bowl. “I want you bad, alright, so just do it or don’t, stop fucking-”

“Shh.” Some surprise and smugness alternated in Bakugou’s expression, because he knew how hot he was, had all along. Maybe hadn’t been convinced Todoroki was smart enough to catch on. “Ask nicely.”

“Bakugou...” A cramp spiraled down Todoroki’s back, making his hips jump forward, making him bite his lip and hell, if he was going to suddenly look even hornier, he might as well use it. Only thing left in his arsenal at this point. “Hah…” he panted and slumped when the pain subsided, “...Bakugou, please.”

“Hmm…” Gratified, finally, Bakugou lowered himself to the floor knee by knee. Face level with Todoroki’s crotch, he leaned in, bumped a bold path down Todoroki’s erection with his nose. Tempting clouds of breath filtered hot through the fabric as Bakugou huffed, open-mouthed over Todoroki’s boxers. “Say please again.”

“Please.” No hesitation, no subterfuge. “Please.”

“Again.”

“Please.”

“Again.”

“Please! Bakugou, please, please, please-”

Each repetition mattered less and less as Bakugou wiggled Todoroki’s boxers down, steadied his cock with a firm hand, and ended their stalemate in one wet, deep mouthful.

“Fuck…” Todoroki groaned, and kept groaning even as words failed him, even as he almost pulled a long muscle in his thigh trying not to shoot off immediately. It felt too fucking good. Bakugou’s technique was messy and noisy but patient, was the most unexpected thing. Tongue pulsing slow along the underside of Todoroki’s cock, upping the suction, creating a seal just to pop it and suck it tight again. He was relaxed, for fucking once, brow going smooth behind his spiky fringe. Bakugou might have been all hard body and harder knocks but his mouth was velvet inside and out. Who knows where the hell he was hiding those viper teeth of his. They were a non-factor even when Todoroki’s hips started humping of their own accord, roughing up the rhythm and daring Bakugou’s tongue to keep pace.

“Yes, god, yes, fuck, more, fuck-” Todoroki moaned, effusive, pink from the collarbone up and fumbling the simplest of words into nonsense strings. If he’d had anything resembling control over his hands, his arms, his range of movement, he would have tried to steady himself. Hold Bakugou in place by that wild, pale headful of hair to drill his mouth deeper.

Or would he have pushed Bakugou away by the forehead? Said back off with a nevermind frown, and been halfway up the basement stairs before his zipper was situated? Feel a bullet in his spine before he made it to the landing? He’d never know, never have to, bound and devoured as he was, backed by all the plausible deniability in the world. God, how easy had Bakugou made it for him to lose himself?

“Thanks,” Todoroki sighed, and an amused snort broke the cadence of Bakugou’s slurps. Then another noise- familiar, foily, as Bakugou eased something out of his front pocket. Todoroki’s naive streak and blowjob brain teamed up to make him wonder if Bakugou was introducing a granola bar into the proceedings. But no, it was a condom, because why wouldn’t Bakugou be stocked up with those every minute of every day of his inked up pantydropping life?

“You’re gonna-” Todoroki stopped short when Bakugou caught him behind one knee and lifted his foot off the ground, pants and boxers left looped around his other ankle like a ball and chain. Pliable, bent and arranged until his shoe was planted on Bakugou’s bare shoulder and Bakugou was making quick work of the condom wrapper in his lap with both hands and somehow he’d never taken his mouth off of Todoroki for even a moment, never even slowed down. “Holy shit.”

“Mmm,” Now Bakugou let Todoroki’s cock loll free, and Todoroki was startled at how full and red it looked, standing at a dramatic angle and shining in bands that matched the fluorescents overhead. He could have whined at the lost heat, but there was no time to mourn it. Situating the condom over a thumb, Bakugou rent the foil pocket completely in half and slammed it slick side up onto Todoroki’s asshole. “Need all the lube we can get,” he clarified, far too late for Todoroki to not tense virgin tight with surprise. “Know what they say about cops.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You guys squint at both ends.”

“What the hell does that- oh,” As quickly as he’d slammed Todoroki’s ass shut, Bakugou worked him open, ditching the wrapper and replacing it with two practiced, swirling fingers shielded in the condom. They slipped in side by side, easy, quick, crooked just right, an invasive shock of pleasure that Todoroki hadn’t felt in so long he’d have sworn he’d forgotten it completely. Knowing he couldn’t trip with his arms strung up, Todoroki went tiptoe then rocked back on his heel to welcome Bakugou all the way to the knuckles. Moaned at the fullness, then let his chin drop, his thighs go limp, his mind zero in on that nucleus of sensation that Bakugou kept tossing for luck, over and over.

“You’re pretty down here, too.” Bakugou dipped his head to get a better eyeline on Todoroki’s asshole, slipped his fingers out just to stretch it into a taut oval with his thumb. He let out a wolf whistle, long and low, not stopping until he’d sunk his fingers all the way back in. “Almost feel bad about how much I’m gonna mess you up.”

Just another threat from a guy who was fluent in them, but this one couldn’t have been empty. Not with how Bakugou’s fingers accelerated, how Todoroki thrashed his head with every targeted grind across his sweet spot, finding nothing but his own bicep to bite down on, to whisper into, all bossy and needy and unearned, “Right there, right there-”

“Whoaaa, shush, shh. Got you,” Bakugou said, calming Todoroki in that stern but smooth sort of voice usually reserved for bucking animals. Another pressed in finger, three now, held firm and right there. Curling and coaxing and rapping at the base of Todoroki’s cock from the inside. Bakugou kissed a line up Todoroki’s leg. “You close?”

“So fucking close,” Todoroki choked. A new wave of pleasure built, crested, shrank, layered over the next, overlapping the goodness until goodness was all he felt. His muscles went tense and he locked around Bakugou’s fingers, saying with his body what he went on to say out loud, “Almost, almost- god, fuck, keep going-”

“Not gonna stop now. Promise.”

Sweat made Todoroki’s temple slide down his upraised arm. Weak, resting a feverish cheek against his own bicep, he watched. Watched the muscles in Bakugou’s forearm shift in multi colored cords, milking his ass towards the finish line. Watched how Bakugou wasn’t even concentrating, eyes all lazy and half-lidded, the flash of white teeth when a hickey was initiated on the inside of his knee. Watched the smooth coordination with which Bakugou popped his lips off the ripe purple mark, stuck out a curled tongue and cradled the head of his cock on it like a dissolving tab of something illicit.

Crying out some mangled combination of Bakugou’s name and exactly how fucking perfect he felt, Todoroki spilled. Exploded, really- coating Bakugou’s tongue in bursts and pooling white in the middle. Todoroki lost his footing and regained it by wrapping his calf around the back of Bakugou’s neck. Brain grayed out, balance compromised, cock pumping out diminishing returns, Todoroki shuddered through the last pangs of what proved he wasn’t pretending anymore.

“Fuck…” he said, gasping for breath and blinking the static out of his eyes. Words weren’t his friend, abandoning him to continue with: “...that…fuck.”

“Mmm,” Still level with Todoroki’s slumping erection, Bakugou brought up a cupped hand and let a whole mouthful of spit and spunk drop unceremoniously into it. He wrinkled his nose. “Can’t believe I sucked off a narc.”

“Shut up. Ah-!” Bakugou’s fingers slipped out of his ass, not before saying farewell with one last pump to his prostate. “I’m not a narc.”

“You taste like one.”

Then Bakugou was standing and kissing him again and hell if narcs didn’t taste a whole lot like secondhand cum. Regardless, Todoroki leaned into it. Content enough from the waist down and fuzzy enough from the neck up to pretend his stomach wasn’t fluttering. All cute and smitten and inadvisable. Like this was real. Like this meant something.

“Hike your leg up,” Bakugou growled, redoubling the kiss and dosing out his tongue in hot, hurried passes. “Gonna fuck your ass, gorgeous.”

Gorgeous. Maybe the rest of Bakugou’s words were more evocative, but it was the gorgeous that Todoroki reeled at. There it was. Exactly what he’d wanted to be called all along.

“Uh…” Propping a shaky leg at Bakugou’s waist, Todoroki maneuvered away from the kiss. “...you have lube?”

“Nah. I usually fuck pussy.”

“So how are we gonna-”

Bakugou presented his drool and cum messed palm. Ticked his head towards it.

“Oh....” Shrugging was impossible with his shoulders around his ears, so Todoroki weighed in with a quiet: “...Creative.”

When the kiss resumed, both of Bakugou’s hands stole around Todoroki’s back. Fingers found and plunged his hole again, but they were sticky and lukewarm. Todoroki couldn’t turn his head, but he could visualize Bakugou borrowing cum from one hand, scooping it into his ass, prepping him rough and fast for what would be rougher and faster.

Todoroki moaned when Bakugou’s fingers pulled out, trailing wet along the curve of his ass. The streak cooled, a marked point of no return that Todoroki ignored just like he’d ignored every other opportunity, every crystal-clear prompt to shut this bullshit down. Because…

“...I want you really bad.”

“Yeah? Hold it in, then. Don’t waste a fucking drop.” Bakugou punctuated his warning with a stiff spank to Todoroki’s raised thigh, tutting and rubbing in the immediate pink stain. “Hear me?”

“Copy.”

“Tch.” Bakugou chuckled, spanking him again. “Such a cop.”

Todoroki grumbled, tensing his ass shut. He already was tense in other places. Numb in more. His shoulders were stone, the muscles in his neck coiled so tight his head felt like a champagne cork. Arms faraway, bloodless. Hands? Vestigial organs. Maybe it’s Hollywood cliche that some senses are heightened in the absence of others, but it really did seem that way when Bakugou’s fingers fell away from Todoroki’s flank and left phantom, tingling streaks. So well-defined Todoroki could have counted them, one to five.

His hearing was more sensitive, too, with his eyes shut against the force of Bakugou’s kisses. The muted slap of a used condom hitting the floor. The crinkle of a fresh one being opened. Bakugou’s zipper ripping down, the noise that pulsed low in his throat as he pulled out his cock and suited it up. Every action smooth enough to be rehearsed, but edged with hunger, devoid of the impulse control he’d employed up until then.

Bakugou snatched Todoroki’s other foot off the ground, and Todoroki went malleable. Let his bare legs get joined around Bakugou’s waist. They were sharing his weight now. An exquisite relief for his hanging arms...until they woke back up, nerves singing painfully offkey with all the sensation they’d been denied. It hurt, hurt like a bitch, dripping down a burning rush and forcing his middle to tighten. His ass drew up as his stomach flexed, bumping Bakugou’s cock between his cheeks. So it was a welcome distraction, if not an intentional one, when Bakugou shot his full length into Todoroki’s ass with one piercing, unexpected thrust.

Fuck. Immediate, all-consuming fullness and that good kind of stretch. Any attention Todoroki had been giving his arms rerouted below the waist, baring down and clenching to test Bakugou’s shape and depth and whimpering sharply when the results were in- huge. Jesus, Todoroki hadn’t even gotten a good look at whatever Bakugou was packing and now it was inside him and it was so so big and why wasn’t it moving-

“Whoa- holy shit-” There was a disbelieving stutter to Bakugou’s voice as he scrambled his hands around and lifted Todoroki’s ass, retreating him up inch by inch. “You’re tight as all- fuck, hold on-”

“No, wait, stay there-”

Todoroki drew his legs in, bringing their bodies together with a filthy smack. Clenching his asshole to try and lock Bakugou inside. Full again. They moaned in matched registers against each other’s shoulders.

“Goddammit-”

“You’re gonna fuck me.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Then do it.”

“I said hold on-”

“Now. Do it now. Fuck me.”

“Fucking- give me a minute.” Bakugou craned towards Todoroki’s ear, bit it, licked it out all nasty and panted heat into the center of his brain, “Feels fucking great, alright? Stop trying to make me bust too fast to wreck your ass. Is every damn thing on a timetable with you? What, you got a fucking appointment after this, or-”

“You’re being paranoid.” Todoroki choked the base of the rope with ice cold fingers. “Just fuck me.”

Hoisting his entire body up with pure grip strength and rare little groups of back muscle, wincing at the slippery latex drag, Todoroki slammed onto Bakugou’s cock. Bakugou cursed, barring an arm around Todoroki’s waist in a blind catch.

“Give me another order and I won’t fuck you at all.”

“Please fuck me-”

“There you go.”

“-hard.”

“Yeah? How hard you want it?”

“This hard.”

Todoroki had put his occupational status out of his mind, stubbornly forgetting that shiny badge that was hidden in a drawer more often than it was pinned to his chest. Now, as he lifted himself by the rope again, he thanked every training drill that ever tasked him with climbing a wall or scrambling over a fence. Ankles interlocked, heels dug into the meat of Bakugou’s back, abdomen keyed tight- Todoroki used a series of rapid underhand pullups to fuck himself on Bakugou’s cock.

Fast, desperately fast, groaning from the supreme effort it took to keep up the pace and from how good it felt, Todoroki was ten reps in before Bakugou started thrusting to meet him. The moments of lost time showed in the set of Bakugou’s eyes and mouth, first widened in surprise then scorching with purpose. He stepped backwards until Todoroki’s arms were forced to full length again. Strung between the ceiling and Bakugou’s hips, Todoroki’s torso stretched as long and lean in open air as it would have across silk sheets.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” Bakugou said, and Todoroki could have imagined some shaky respect in it, some new fear. Then Bakugou was throttling his waist like a throat, fucking his ass, pounding him so stupid hard that Todoroki went stupid. No more analysis, no more wondering. All focus shifted to pleasure, weathering the force of it, drooling through the choke of it, god, god could Todoroki ever play the good guy again after getting fucked like this?

“Fuuuu-uh-uh-uck-” Todoroki’s voice broke on every thrust. His posture failed him, muscles sagging, but Bakugou wouldn’t let him bow out. He slid both tattooed arms under Todoroki’s back, wedged his palms in the tight pockets of space between Todoroki’s neck and strung up shoulders. With a new, resolute grip, Bakugou pulled Todoroki onto his cock just as much as he was pushing it in, the slam of his hips sounding more like open hand spanks every time their skin connected.

“Oi,” Bakugou snapped when Todoroki’s chin drooped to his chest. “Didn’t get you to put out just so you could sleep through it. Eyes up.”

“Nnnh…” Pleasure-drugged, Todoroki lifted his head to look at Bakugou dead on and found- holy shit,- were they ever in the same boat. Screw the play for authority in Bakugou’s words, because the lips they came out of were parted and pink and puffing out whole quiet, vulnerable breaths. He was flushed in a patchy mosaic down to his chest. Sweating shinier than his piercings. Leaning in for an insistent, unnecessary kiss. Todoroki gave it to him, smirked into it, because all the porn star moves in the world wouldn’t have hidden those wedding night eyes.

They’d roped each other in, it turned out.

“Fuck, you feel…ugh, fucking- take it.” There was some kind of agony in Bakugou’s voice as he hiked Todoroki’s legs higher. He took his sweet time on the next thrust, groaning at the push in, even louder at the pull out. “Take it just like that-”

“Yeah, yeah, ah,” Todoroki tightened his legs around Bakugou’s waist, spurring him into a new, messy kiss. They’d reached that heady point that separates good sex from great sex- lost vocabulary. “S’ so good.”

“Perfect fucking ass-”

“Mmm, fuck it, fuck me-”

“God-”

“Cum in my ass-”

“Fuck! Baby-” Bakugou’s cock perceptibly pulsed and swelled thicker. “Shut up, you’re gonna-”

“Cum in me-”

“Beg,” Bakugou demanded, biting Todoroki’s lip, his chin, the shelf of his collarbone, back arching, hips rabbiting, rhythm failing.

“Please cum in me, Bakugou, please, please-”

“Haa-aaah-”

Snarling, Bakugou dug his heels in as if for burnout traction. Too far gone to stop now, Bakugou dipped his thumbs into Todoroki’s hipbones, fixed him in place, and hammered through to orgasm. A body-shaking one that tossed his head back like an uppercut. As his cock leapt and emptied inside Todoroki’s ass, he stopped thrusting. With a betrayed whine and a wrenching motion, Todoroki tried to engage his arms again, to ride and bounce back to the pace they were at before.

And whether due to sweat, or adrenaline-aided super strength, or the failing tensile quality of off-brand duct tape, both his hands ripped down from their restraints. Splinters rained from the ceiling. Liberated loops of rope arced in the corners of his vision. At the falling sensation, Todoroki gasped what he’d always suspected might be his last words:

“Oh, shit!”

Just in time to stay upright, Todoroki scrabbled an arm around Bakugou’s neck and dug a hand into his hair. The nerve endings in his fingertips were dead to the world, so clutching at Bakugou’s scalp felt like clutching at nothing. With no feedback to temper it, his grip went far too painful, forcing a loud swear out of Bakugou. He tripped, the shift in their shared center of gravity staggering him backwards, boot over jingling boot.

Only when Bakugou’s shoulders hit the cinderblock wall of the basement did the clumsy perp walk end. Nose to nose, wild-eyed, they panted in rough unison. Todoroki’s hand, cold and stirring with bloodrush tingles, slid out of Bakugou’s hair to rest at his nape. He pulled Bakugou in for a quickly broken kiss.

“Not done with you yet, gorgeous.”

“Didn’t think so,” Todoroki said, and joined their mouths again.

There was leather rustle from below, near where they were still shoved together. The unmistakable sound of an unsnapped gun holster. As they melted to the floor, tongues out and scooping back and forth, smooth steel raked up Todoroki’s side.

“I’ll shoot you if you try anything.” Bakugou warned, panting. The whole wall was his chairback now, a throne from how he so arrogantly took up space. He parted his thighs in a comfortable spread to either side. “You’re not too pretty to die here.”

A single finger to Todoroki’s sternum pushed him up to sit. Bringing the gun between them, Bakugou squinted an eye shut, like he’d have to snipe a kill at this distance. He reached out and wrapped a lazy, loose hold around Todoroki’s cock.

“If you cum for me again, I’ll let you go.”

“You don’t need to threaten me for that to happen- oh, hnh!” A flick of the wrist kickstarted Bakugou’s hand, and he was jerking Todoroki off. Working the head around, flashes of wet pink coming and going in the gaps between his fingers. Todoroki let out a drooly groan and gripped his own ankles where he kneeled. Hips vibing, tummy tensing to jagged definition and easing smooth again. Bakugou was hard inside him, harder than ever, somehow, the load in the condom coaxed down dangerously as Todoroki wrung his cock out with little bounces.

“I’m gonna-” Todoroki moaned, and what a fuck up of an overshare that was. Because Bakugou took the opportunity to grin, let his hand fall away, and recline with it pinned behind his head.

“There an issue?” he asked when Todoroki stared at him with something approaching murder in his eyes. “Cum and you’re out of here.”

“Fuck you.”

Shrugging, Bakugou made himself comfortable, settling in with a bitten lip. The pervy kind of face you’d see reflected back at you if your phone went dark when you were watching porn on it. He was just as hot as he always was, though. Blonde and ripped and pierced and perfect. Eternally, cursedly able to pull off every douchebag cliche he attempted.

“Fuck you,” Todoroki repeated, and moved to touch himself. To masturbate as urgently and dispassionately as he did in his personal life. To get this negotiated orgasm the fuck over with-

-then Bakugou’s thumb slid up to hover over the gun’s hammer.

“No hands,” Todoroki sighed with tragic understanding.

“Quick learner, huh?”

Bakugou tucked his thumb away.

It was a punishment for both of them when Todoroki planted his splayed hands on the wall and rode Bakugou’s cock in long, tip to base plunges. The lube was getting scarce, overstimulation was setting in, friction becoming more foe than friend. Yeah, there was a turned timer on this being fun anymore. Tossing the clumped, sweaty hair off his forehead, Todoroki clenched his teeth and sped up.

What a strange hypothetical made real- could you cum if someone pointed a gun at you and told you to? He was pretty sure he’d faced that line of questioning early in his career, sitting in a squad car next to some bored beat cop, watching the sun come up and playing never have I ever between bites of danish.

What’s the person with the gun look like? he’d asked, brushing crumbs off the dashboard.

Well, he had his answer now. The person was Bakugou, and he looked like he should have been modeling for all the brands his crew counterfeited in thousand unit shipments. As helpful as that was in getting Todoroki’s dick hard, it wasn’t enough. He’d asked the wrong question, then.

The right one would have been how sure am I that they’ll actually pull the trigger?

“Cock it,” Todoroki growled, digging his nails into damp, pitted concrete. “Cock it and put it in my mouth.”

He expected some hesitance, at least. For Bakugou’s eyes to pop like he’d been jogged awake. Instead, they stayed lasciviously half-lidded, dilated black in a scarlet border. His growing smile knew too much. As he braced his thumb over the hammer and brought it down, he twitched in Todoroki’s ass.

Click.

Todoroki dipped down to lick the cold barrel of the gun, obsessing over the presence of a readied bullet at the other end of it. The danger was real, present, everything. A transgressive shock of a turn-on that Todoroki didn’t have an opportunity to question before his cock spat a new stream of precum. It drizzled into Bakugou’s navel. Amused, Bakugou got a fingerful of it and stretched up a thin, sparkling string.

“You’re actually getting off on this. Shit. Knew we were compatible.” He dragged Todoroki’s tongue out and stubbed the tip of the gun on it like a cigarette butt. “Suck.”

Todoroki obeyed, pulling a messy slurp up the gun barrel, lavishing it like it could feel what he was doing, tonguing into the open end of the chamber. It tasted like rust and coins. His throat hitched, and his tongue came back with a oily, carbon black ring around the tip.

“You ever- hah- cleaned that thing?” Todoroki asked. He spit a gray streak across the ground beside them and rocked his thighs to a fever pitch. The knuckle that wiped his mouth became a much-needed something for him to bite down on.

“It’s seasoned,” Bakugou said, spiking an unexpected thrust into Todoroki from below. “How we feeling, Officer?”

“Nnh,” Todoroki made a needful sound, but nothing else. He was as close to orgasm as he’d been before and wise enough to shut the fuck up about it. Throbbing where it counted, inside, outside. Heating up to that desperate cut-brakes point of no return again. Any second now.

“Fuck, you’re loving it,” Bakugou said, chuckling. “Try being a tough guy after this. Try showing your face on the streets again. You’re gonna get horny every time you get drawn on.”

Trailing the gun from Todoroki’s neck to his chest, Bakugou used the end of it to fiddle with a hard nipple. The one that wasn’t fatally close to Todoroki’s beating heart. Groaning, working his hips in a shameless, broken belly dance, Todoroki curled his fingers around the barrel and shifted the gun to the left. He held it. Held his breath. Bakugou’s index finger curled back and slotted over the trigger.

Here’s when Todoroki’s short, regimented life should have flashed before his eyes. Make him regret every misstep that led him to this moment- off the grid, on his knees, getting fucked by some guy that should have stayed a case number.

Instead, he came. Slammed himself as full of cock as he could and watched his own shoot an ambitious white path up Bakugou’s stomach, chest, and jaw. The last spurt beat the odds, caught Bakugou right on the mouth. Just a little vertical stripe where a shushing finger would go.

“Pow,” Bakugou murmured and licked his lips.

“Gotcha,” Todoroki said, listed forward, and collapsed into the mess.

Too exhausted to move,Todoroki didn’t lose consciousness. No, he found it. Reality, with a sidecar of panic. Sweat going colder with a renewed realization that he’d fucked up a million times harder than he’d gotten fucked. The hands stroking his back and petting grooves through his soaked hair were a small respite, until he remembered who the hell they were attached to. Oh shit. Oh, no.

“Don’t touch me,” Todoroki croaked.

“I’m still in your ass, idiot.”

“Then get out of it.”

A wince and a sigh from both of them when Todoroki lifted off of Bakugou’s soft cock. Mutual grimaces as they scraped what they could off of their torsos, using Todoroki’s overshirt like a rag, balling it and tossing it to the floor. If the basement was ever investigated as a crime scene, DNA evidence wouldn’t be in short supply.

Then there were more clothes to locate and put back on and do so in complete, stoic silence, because sex is never mind-blowing or filthy enough to make the cleanup any more than mundane. They faced opposite walls instead of each other. Not that there wasn’t still some crackle of chemistry, some unfinished business hanging between them. Something they hadn’t yet put into words. Wouldn’t. Because those words would be simple and searching in some ego-threatening way, along the lines of-

So was that the best fuck of your life, too, or...?

Ass throbbing when he pulled his pants up over it, Todoroki didn’t have much pride left to spare. He kept his mouth shut. And his eyes trained on Bakugou’s re-holstered gun. And his footfalls quiet as he snuck up behind Bakugou and pressed him into a chest to back hug.

“Fuck, after all that you’re still thirsty.” With a chuckle and a head shake, Bakugou pulled one of Todoroki’s arms around his waist. “I meant it when I said I’d let you leave, y’know. But if you’re looking for round two, I could always take you-”

Click.

“-home.”

“Turn around,” Todoroki said, stepping back and lifting the pistol to eye level. “Hands up.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Turn. Around.”

“Un-fucking-believable.”

As they crept up at either side of his head, the oni masks tattooed on Bakugou’s hands looked as pissed as he sounded. He swiveled around fast enough that it seemed for a moment he might lunge. All his teeth were showing, animal bared. Spooked, Todoroki pulled the hammer down and retreated a few feet.

“I’m bringing you in,” he said.

“For what?!”

“Illegal transport of goods. Kidnapping.” A glance at each discarded condom. “Littering.”

“Jesus fuck, you-” Fury waning to exasperation, Bakugou dropped his hands to his hips. “While you’re at it, add assaulting an officer.”

“Hit me and I shoot.”

“I already did, and you already did.”

“Put your hands back up. No-” A bead of sweat made Todoroki wink. His grip on the gun went wavy, then locked back to center. “-hands behind your head.”

Bakugou obeyed, stretching his arms up lazily, joining his fingers at his nape. Then he flexed, the conceited bastard, and took a step towards Todoroki.

“Ohhh, I’m gonna punish you for this. You’re so, so fucked.”

“Back up!” Todoroki shouted. Raising his voice was a reflex, as was the glance over his own shoulder to make sure he couldn’t be backed into a corner. Todoroki knew he was reckless, but he’d never taken Bakugou for stupid. Now he was squaring up on a goddamn firearm. Why the hell was he escalating?

“I taught you how to say please. Maybe next time I can teach you how to say sorry.”

As Bakugou drew close enough that Todoroki could see the grinning pink of his gums, smell his smoky club cologne, Todoroki’s options narrowed down to one. His trigger finger jumped, then went dangerously still.

“There’s not going to be a next time.”

“Because you don’t want me anymore?” Bakugou tilted his head. “Then by all fucking means. Pull the trigger, gorgeous.”

“Because you’ll be dead, you fucking-” The weight of the gun seemed wrong all of a sudden. Too light in his hand. Too comfy. “-wait.”

He drew the pistol back, snapped open the cylinder and thumbed it around in a full revolution. Six empty chambers. No cartridges. It wasn’t loaded.

Disgusted with himself, Bakugou’s rasping laugh already in his ears, Todoroki dropped the gun. Turned tail as it clattered to the floor. Walked.

“Aww, cmon, gorgeous-!”

Todoroki broke into a jog up the stairs, aware of faint boot jingles closely following.

“Where are you rushing off to, hah?!”

Todoroki sprinted three steps at a time to the landing, up to the ground floor of what was clearly, predictably, a drug den. Through a hallway stripped of its copper wiring. Into a living room there’s no way someone hadn’t died in. Past a nest of used needles on the coffee table winking with disco ball whimsy in the sunrise. Bakugou was behind him, somewhere, stomping hard enough to shake the rafters. There wasn’t a front door.

Todoroki was all the way to the sidewalk when he heard it. Just a single authoritative “Oi!” that echoed through what Todoroki hoped was an abandoned neighborhood. He slowed to a stop, sighed, and snapped a glare over his shoulder.

“What?”

Gripping the house’s empty door frame, Bakugou leaned over the threshold and onto the porch. Lit by a morning sunbeam that haloed his hair, brightened his eyes, turned him downright innocent.

“Running away’s a bitch move.” Bakugou said, ending a long moment of silence wherein Todoroki hated him, came around to him, hated him again. Loathed him, and wished he’d gotten one last kiss.

“You told me I could leave. Why do you care how fast I do it?”

“If this is the last look I get at your sweet ass, wanna make sure it’s a long one.”

Some kind of reverse psychology voodoo made Todoroki turn to face him. Or maybe it was just to hide the tail between his legs.

“Keeeep spinning,” Bakugou pointed his index finger at the ground and moved it in a loop. “Take your time.”

“No.”

“Gonna walk home backwards?”

“Maybe.”

“Tch.”

Bakugou started a trudge down the porch stairs, eyes full of dark humor, pockets full of hands. Daylight suited him. Shouldn’t have been surprising. When the last call lights came on at any bar the old crew frequented, when everyone else’s flaws became too stark under fluorescents for beer goggles to preserve the illusion, Bakugou’s looks were some kind of universal constant. Something to measure Todoroki’s wildest fantasies against, and find them lacking.

Tempted to be taken in again, alarmed that the trajectory Bakugou was taking seemed to be towards a hug, of all fucking things, Todoroki compensated with an iffy, sidestepping dodge. Transparency wasn’t an option any more. Distance was. The blunt tips of Bakugou’s fingers grazed his forearm in a near-miss grab.

“You want to get the last word,” Todoroki observed. “Go ahead.”

It wasn’t hard to read Bakugou’s tightly shut mouth as what it was: a tensed springboard for more bullshit. Maybe a jab, a joke, a smug reference to what he was packing and where he’d already put it. No topic could ever be put to rest so handily that Bakugou wouldn’t have plenty say about it.

“I don’t need your permission,” he bristled.

“Well, you’ve got it,” Todoroki responded. Bland as the gray, underfoot asphalt he was suddenly perusing like it was a Renaissance goddamn painting. “Can’t turn it down.”

With a long reach and an aggressive snatch, Bakugou cupped his hand around Todoroki’s nape. Tripped him close. Close, defenseless, immediately strapped into an embrace. The hug was unwelcome enough to be humiliating, warm enough that Todoroki didn’t care. Then a question beside his ear, in a tender, husky inside voice:

“How do I see you again?”

Shoving his cheek against Bakugou’s sternum, Todoroki stared at the manhole cover their feet were planted around.

“In court.”

“Fuck that. If I’m in jail, I can’t get another crack at you.”

“Bakugou…”

“Officer.” Bakugou imitated Todoroki’s tone, maneuvered him by the chin into a nose to nose face off. “Fine. Fuck back off to the real world. Start your paperwork. Disappoint your dad. Do whatever the hell you do all day. I don’t know you.”

“Based on that, you might.”

“But don’t you ever for a fucking second think you’re gonna forget about me.”

Before Todoroki could dodge it, Bakugou flicked him hard right between the eyebrows.

“Ow.” Todoroki said, flinching back tears and rubbing at the tender spot.

“Damn right.”

“Why.”

“I’m in your head now, motherfucker.”

“Great. Am I free to go?”

“....such a cop.”

Decisively breaking eye contact, Todoroki spied a landmark building miles in the distance. Not much of a compass, but aiming for it would get him back to the good part of town.

“Bye, then.”

“Copy,” Bakugou said. It was either mocking or affectionate. Definitely not both. Todoroki wondered if he’d miss being confused like that. If safe and boring were synonyms.

A car honked blocks away, dredged him out of his thoughts. Awake again, aware, and sore in the worst possible places. Shrugging off the instinct look back at Bakugou, he rolled his neck around and started the longest walk of his life.

There’s a lot that action movies don’t get right about cops, but they nailed one thing:

If you mess up? Desk duty.

And Todoroki messed up bad.

While the shipment he’d been tasked with stopping was successfully derailed, they hadn’t been able to prosecute anyone for it. Millions in counterfeit goods, and not a single arrest. All the criminals he’d spent months getting information on only needed hours to dive back underground and regroup. Half of them probably had new passports by the time Todoroki was getting his cock sucked.

Lucky for Todoroki, his father was the chief of police, and it was always nepotism season in city politics. He got paid leave first. Then a demotion from “officer” to “technician” once they cooked up some bullshit reason not to throw him off the force. Banned from field work because every bad guy in town, thug to kingpin, knew his face and exactly how to kick it in. A transfer to the suburbs hung over his head like a guillotine, and he wasn’t sure if being on his best behavior would make any difference.

Now it was 2pm on a nothing afternoon- Tuesday? Wednesday, maybe? Todoroki was two more cups of coffee from caring. Earlier in the day, he’d spent hours shoulder to shoulder with a records clerk, helping her scan old reports into the digital archive and getting all the juicy details on her grandkids. He could tell she felt sorry for him, and while he hated that, he couldn’t hate her. She sent him back up to his desk with a back pat and a tiny lollipop, one of those cheap ones they give away at the bank.

Todoroki was numbly sucking on it, trying to figure out what the mystery flavor was, when his phone rang.

“Musustafu Police Department,” he said, not bothering to take the lollipop out of his mouth.

“Todoroki. It’s Kota.” The new kid. Grumpy, looked younger than he was, outranked Todoroki at the office within a month of his start date. “From the front desk.”

“I know who you are, Kota.”

“There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

“Hmm?” That was interesting. Interesting enough to improve his posture. In his glorified receptionist role, he almost never got calls that were actually intended for him.

“Anonymous tipster.”

“A tipster?”

“Yeah.”

“For me.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have any active cases. What’re they gonna give a tip on? A double parked car?”

“I dunno. He won’t leave.”

“He’s here? Physically?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not exactly anony-”

“I’ll send him back.”

“Wait, don’t-” The call ended with a thump and a buzz. “-argh.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Todoroki clicked the lollipop back into his cheek. Cherry? No, raspberry. No-

“Arrrrrghhhhh…” he growled as he nominally tidied his desk, stubbing some public complaint forms into a neater stack, elbowing a styrofoam cup into his wastebasket. A black baseball cap floated over the frosted portion of the glass that separated the office area from the lobby. There’s the guy. Anonymous tipster. Bullshit. Could this be a prank?

The double doors swung open from the middle. Moments later, when Bakugou walked in and stared him dead in the eyes, Todoroki learned that lollipop sticks aren’t just for holding. They’re fantastic for the purpose of not choking to death on a lollipop.

He was still hacking and beating on his chest when Bakugou approached, ignored the available chairs, and leaned on the corner of the desk.

“I knew it,” Bakugou began, smiling as wide his split lip would allow. There was a superglued seam of a wound across half of his chin, a punch-swollen eye that was too fresh to have turned black. “You’re so fuckable in that uniform. S’there an empty squad car we could steam up? Interrogation room? I’ve never done it against a mirror.”

“You-” Todoroki wheezed, motioning for Bakugou to sit down. “-you look like shit.”

“Nah. I’m pulling it off.”

Falling into a chair, Bakugou groaned, stretched, then propped his boots up on the desk. Todoroki pushed them back to the floor.

“Hey, how about a little hospitalit-”

“What’s the tip?”

Bakugou’s eyes went narrow and mean, then softened into disappointment. He scratched the uninjured side of his chin.

“All business, huh?”

“Yes.” Clasping his hands, Todoroki nodded towards his ancient computer monitor. “This is a workplace.”

“Wow. Nice rig. What’s your high score on Free Cell?”

“It’s not just for games.” Now Todoroki hovered his hands over the keyboard. “It’s also great for looking up active warrants. How is Bakugou spelled again? B-” Tap. “-A-” Tap.

“Some guys are going to kill you.”

“K- and...what?”

“That’s the tip.”

In the shade of his baseball cap, Bakugou’s eyes were somehow fiery and somber.

“I know when they’re planning it. How they’ll do it. Where. They’ve been following you. And they know where you live.” A lazy pointed finger at Todoroki’s hair. “You’re conspicuous as fuck, halfy.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I am.”

Pale in the cheeks, fingers floating up to loosen his tie, Todoroki let out a slow breath. Desk duty. It’s for your own safety, son, his father had told him with suppressed rage behind each word, Todoroki’s confiscated gun laying in his huge hand.

Well, desk duty ended. Every day, like clockwork. Then came the parking lot, the quiet midnight subway terminal, the dark stairwell up to his apartment, and holy fuck how many close calls had there been already?

“Oh, shit.” That same phrase Todoroki had always associated with his own mortality. Then: “Why?”

“You already know why. Haha.” Bakugou frowned through an uncomfortable stutter of a laugh. “You pissed off some scary motherfuckers.”

“No. Why are you warning me?”

“Dunno. Guess your sweet ass turned me into a snitch.”

“Please be serious. What do you want in return? A protective order? Immunity, or-?”

“No.”

“Are they the ones who beat you up?”

“Unrelated.”

“I don’t need you to protect me-”

“Hah?!” Bakugou’s whisper seemed deafeningly loud. “Your brains would have been graffiti if I hadn’t said anything! Still could be, if I decide to walk outta this shithole right now. You should be thanking me, not telling me to back off. Y-you should be kissing my fucking boots!”

“Thank you.”

Bakugou’s fingers went white around the edge of the desk as he reigned back the rest of his rant. Swallowing, he sat back in his chair and scowled at the window.

“Thank you, Bakugou,” Todoroki repeated. Personalized now, and painfully honest. “Thank you.”

“Welcome,” he grunted. “Told you before I called dibs.”

“Right.”

“Only I get to kill you.”

“Oh?”

“N’ its gonna be with my dick.”

“Oh.” Blushing, sweeping the room the make sure no one was eavesdropping, Todoroki picked his phone up from the cradle. “I’m not sure what the procedure is to investigate a targeted threat on an officer’s- ahem, on a police employee’s life. So I’ll have to escalate this.”

“Not yet. Jesus, always in a hurry.”

“Bakugou, you don’t...get to decide how urgent this is.”

“I’m not gonna give you those names in front of anyone else. This is privileged information, alright?”

Slamming the phone down, Todoroki sighed.

“And an excuse to get me alone.”

“Bingo.” Slicking his tongue across his teeth, Bakugou stood up. He’d unconsciously shoved his shirt sleeves up to his elbows, and Todoroki felt a flutter of lustful nostalgia at the revealed tattoos. “Tonight.”

“Tonight’s no good.”

Bakugou sputtered in vague annoyance, then exclaimed, “Now who’s dragging ass? You’re not curious about who’s trying to murder you?!”

“Keep your voice down,” Todoroki hissed, standing up as well. He tugged impatiently at one of Bakugou’s bunched sleeves. “And put this shit away-”

“This shit?! Bite your tongue before you call my tattoos shitty!”

“The gang shit, hide it, hide it-”

In a stroke of luck that made Todoroki believe in miracles, there was a loud commotion in the lobby. Some day drunk salaryman wasn’t coming quietly, and the whole office rubbernecked to try and get a peek. Todoroki used the distraction to drag a still-bitching Bakugou away from the desk pit and down the hallway to the interview rooms.

“It’s like you want to get arrested.”

“Hell no.”

“Could have fooled me.” Grabbing him by both shoulders, Todoroki shoved Bakugou backwards into the push bar of the emergency exit.

They tripped through the door together, ending up in the barbed wire enclosure of the reserve car parking lot. It was a well-known, well-loved blind spot of the security camera grid, usually utilized for too-long smoke breaks. The door bolted behind them with a neat magnetic schoomp. Todoroki backed against it, grabbed the locked handle to anchor himself.

“I’m not going on a date with you, Bakugou.”

“We don’t have to call it a date.”

“Well, I’m not gonna...be in a room with you. You and me and no one else.”

Bakugou snorted. “You’d rather die?”

“I’d rather die.”

“Then let’s get together anyway. Clear all the kinky shit off your bucket list.”

“How fucking stubborn-”

Snatching him by the lapels, Bakugou yanked Todoroki in for a nose to nose staredown.

“Very fucking stubborn.”

A flat-handed push to Bakugou’s chest got him back at a safe distance. Not before Todoroki felt two heavy barbells digging into his palms. Fuck those nipple piercings.

“I can’t believe you’re leveraging my life to get laid.”

“Is it working?”

“Rrrgh!” Todoroki shoved a hand into his hair and looked to the sky for guidance. Nary a cloud, much less one shaped like an answer to his problems. “Yes.”

“Tonight, then.”

“I…”

It would have been a bad idea to say yes. Todoroki went for an even worse idea; actually meeting Bakugou’s eyes again. Even battered asymmetrical by a street fight, he was glossy magazine handsome. The kind of handsome that made Todoroki wonder what the hell could have ever gone wrong for Bakugou. Doesn’t a genetic cash-out like that make your life a free ride?

Beyond the hometown hero jawline, the big biceps in long, out of season sleeves...there was that look in his eyes. Todoroki had seen it before, while Bakugou was fucking him, while Bakugou was watching him cum, when they’d first sized each other up in that pool hall.

He looked like he was starving.

Like he’d never been satisfied. Never would be. Todoroki feared it as much as he understood it. He’d had that same hunger for more, never quite knowing what he wanted more of. Given the opportunity, Todoroki was sure, he and Bakugou would keep taking big, greedy bites of each other. What a dark, delicious symbiosis it could be, if Todoroki would allow it. If he could get smart enough to be stupid again.

“Ok,” Todoroki relented, steadily holding Bakugou’s gaze. “Tonight.”

Bakugou smiled too big, too fast, then cursed when his lip cracked red in the middle.

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“M’ fine,” Bakugou said, smudging the blood away with his knuckle. It was close to pathetic, like he was a roughed up juvie freshman in a starched jumpsuit.

“Your place or mine?”

“Neither.” Bakugou sniffed. While he spoke, he kept dabbing his bloody lip with the pad of his thumb. “Like I said, they know where you live. And you’d stick out too much in my neck of the woods. So we have to go to a neutral location.”

“Restaurant?”

“Too public.”

A quick, internal process of elimination led Todoroki to the truth. He sighed, all shoulders.

“A hotel, then.”

“Cheap, skeezy hotel on the corner of 5th and Boulevard. 10 o’clock.”

“You’ve got this all figured out.”

“I’m...a planner.”

“Opportunist is the word you were searching for.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Or loser.”

“Call me a loser again, jerkoff.”

“You’re a loser,” Todoroki repeated, punctuating with a raised eyebrow. “Now what?”

No retaliation came. Gentle around the eyes, Bakugou approached, circled Todoroki’s waist and held him close. Murmured on warm air into his ear:

“We can go Dutch on something classier.”

“I’m probably poorer than you.”

“No way in hell. What’s your hourly?”

“Few dollars over minimum wage.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Ugh,” Bakugou huffed with what sounded like genuine offense. He nuzzled a kiss to Todoroki’s neck. “Yeah, you’re poorer than me.”

“Always wanted a sugar daddy,” Todoroki said. There was a low, excited hum against his collar as Bakugou nosed it out of the way, brazenly laying the groundwork for a hickey with a swirled tongue. “Bakugou, I was joking.”

“Yeah, yeah-” Bakugou added a toothy scrape to every lick, sending tingles up to the crown of Todoroki’s scalp. “Fucking hilarious.”

“Ah, ah, okay- you’ve gotta stop.”

“No way. Wanna hear you make that noise again.” On the topic of noise, there was a sucking one, then a popping one, then a throaty growl against the new mark on Todoroki’s skin. “Oof, you bruise easy. This’ll be a good one when I’m done.”

Whining, Todoroki all but kneed Bakugou in the groin to get him to back off. He straightened his collar. Tightened his tie enough to tweak his windpipe.

“You need to leave.”

Undeterred, Bakugou bumped Todoroki back towards the door, canted the brim of his own hat up, and pinned him there with a slow, heavy kiss.

“Before I make you cream your slacks?”

“Before someone recognizes you and cuffs you and reads you your goddamn rights.” Hopeless to pretend he hated the first one, Todoroki craned into another kiss. Then he yanked Bakugou’s hat down over his eyes. Side stepping out of Bakugou’s reach and shooing him with full arm sweeps, “Go, you scumbag. I hate you. Go.”

“The mouth on you,” Bakugou chuckled. He righted his hat and shoved his hands in his pockets. Demon eyes peeked out from the slivered skin between his cuffs and his jeans. He was already turning to leave. “Tastes like strawberries.”

“Yours tastes like blood. And you smell like weed.” Todoroki planted the sole of his loafer on Bakugou’s ass and shoved. “Go.”

“I’m going!” He barked, strolling backwards towards the open gate and tacking on a- “See ya, dead man walking.”

“Go!” Todoroki shouted. Waving was a polite reflex. Returning Bakugou’s flicked bird was just turnabout. He extended his retractable key card to unlock the building, let it zip back into his belt. “...See you later.”

Once he was inside, out of the sunlight, out of sight, out of what he knew all too well was harm’s way, he leaned against the door. Forehead to cool metal. Humming, tapping his smiling lips, he murmured:

“Strawberry. That’s it.”