Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

1.

Katsuki loudly snaps his gum. He always goes for a new stick in between the back-alley blowjobs. It's only in part because the taste of condoms is foul. More importantly, it makes johns coming to his street think opening the transaction with a blowing joke (that surely has never, ever been made to Katsuki before) was their own unique and clever idea. It saves him the time of introducing the topic himself and gets the whole thing over faster.

It's always clearly chewing gum, but the men who skulk around the low stroll streets at night aren't in the running for the brightest.

That's why the downright deluxe-if-not-showy kind of car that's slow-cruising like a buyer down the street towards him is making him so-- not anxious. Alert. He's not the only one. The handful of girls have all cottoned on and are milling somewhat warily.

Katsuki doesn't know jack shit about car brands; no point when he can't drive. The high-security youth detention center he was already in by his sixteenth wasn't particularly eager to loose their charges onto the streets to give lessons on controlling functionally death machines. 

It only takes eyes to pick up this is one of the plush ones, though. The man inside is another immediate anomaly, being young-looking, clean, and dressed like a young professional. The type of guy who could get a higher class of hooker, if that's what he wants. But apparently what he wants is here.

Mid-twenties, dark and curly hair, not a regular, Katsuki notes as the john comes closer to where he's leaned backed against the rough brick wall of his corner. He'd already memorized the license plate the moment it became clear this was a buyer and not some poor, lost civilian. He adds it all to the mental profile he's started drafting. It prepares him for the repeat customers and gives him something solid to warn the others about for the bad ones.

Instead of just flashing his lights at Katsuki while carefully looking only at the bricks behind him like a normal faceless john, this guy clearly didn't get the memo. Rich John (it'll work as a stand-in) stares at Katsuki straight on-- meeting his eyes, even, what the fuck-- smiles at him, gives a little wave-- the fuck-- and beckons, actually beckons him over. Definitely not a regular, Katsuki amends.

One thing's for sure, at least. This can't be the cops getting their rocks off again with yet another organized sting. No one would actually set something up this impossibly bad.

Still, if Katsuki's gonna be the pick for poor little chair-warmer's first dive into degeneracy there's a real chance he can crush the negotiations and wring the nerd dry for it in the way he actually enjoys. He slowly detaches himself from the wall and saunters over, a long-familiar routine that emphasizes first the line of his body and then the length of his legs paired with the slight swing of his hips.

Rich John's big eyes get wider the moment Katsuki kicks off and prowls forward. He shoots a quick and furtive-looking glance up and down Katsuki before he swallows dryly twice. The obvious interest's a good sign, but then after he practically wilts from what looks like real guilt, which is a bad one. 

Usually, Katsuki tells the first-time cowards who waste his time expecting some sort of pep talk through facing their scandalous gay thoughts that they can either pay him the exorbitant fees of a therapist or they can fuck off. Spineless limpdicks who want their hand held by a whore are more likely to panic or back out or both, anyway. Not a big loss.

But there's a chance he could be pulling the rest of his personal quota for tonight in one go. Eager nerds like this one are an open wallet soon as they're the slightest bit sex-addled. And Katsuki can stand a little lying through his teeth before he opens up his throat.

He leans over into the car's open window frame to rest one forearm on top of it, ducking his head in closer and snapping his gum before flashing a sharp smile. He knows it's a good one: Katsuki has fucking great teeth. He's kept them and his general health and hygiene scrupulously maintained through all the shared ratholes and drug dens he's slummed in and been chased from. He has zero intention to drop what money he can spare on a dentist. The benefits of keeping good teeth in his regular returns to hooking is more fringe benefit.

Katsuki's close enough now to get a real look at Rich John. He flicks his eyes over him in a way he knows looks inviting and makes it easier to get in a cold read. Dresses like a nerd, but it's well-fitted and the pieces are all flattering. Promisingly rich. Downright good looking, in the way that has less to do with his plain, boyish features and more with the natural attractiveness of the young, fit, and healthy. Red flag, but the clear insecurity at the situation runs counter. Freckles, and Katsuki decides that's what he'll call him. Limiting the "Rich John" label to only one client seems defeatist.

"Sixty and I'll blow you," Katsuki says without preamble. It's already twenty over his usual, but he knows Freckle's into him and there's no way the guy's overly familiar with this street's going rate. Anyway, that's still a downright bargain price for how he looks and how he fucks. It's a combination that keeps the steady stream of customers in his pants and out of his business.

That's when Freckles vaults directly into his business with the first words out his mouth. "Bakugou Katsuki?"

"Never heard of him," Katsuki says smoothly.

Too smoothly, apparently. "You didn't even stop to consider."

"'Cuz you're gonna pay me to suck your cock, not to think. Sixty dollars, and I'm raising the price by ten for every dumbshit question you ask."

Freckles shifts in his seat and purses his lips slightly. "You're Bakugou Katsuki, aren't you?"

"Seventy dollars. Who's asking?"

"Midoriya Izuku," Freckles says, and actually extends a hand towards him to shake. Katsuki stares down at it until Freckles retracts his arm, face reddening. Downright hilarious the guy's apparently more embarrassed at being scorned by a hustler than he is approaching one. "Bakugou-san, can I talk to you?"

Katsuki snaps his gum. "Eighty dollars. I don't know, can you?"

The red returns with a vengeance. Freckles (because Katsuki has already pointedly forgotten his name) flails a bit like a self-conscious teenager. It's way out of place around here.  "Oh, um, I mean, may I--"

"Ninety dollars. No."

"About the Hedoro trial--"

"Never heard of it. One hundred." Katsuki flatly interrupts.

"That wasn't even a question!" Freckles protests.

"You actually could'a fucked me for that hundred, you know," Katsuki drawls as he lounges lazily to the side of the car's open window. He makes a real show of the whole thing. He suspects doing so will make Freckles choke on his own words.

He's right, of course. "Nk-- Will you just-- look," Freckles says, "If I pay you five hundred dollars, can I-- may I-- have an hour of your time?"

Katsuki jerks up and out the window to standing. "Five hundre-- what the fuck? No."

"What!?" Freckles says. "But that's so much more than sixty dollars!"

Katsuki rolls his eyes and pulls a string of gum to wrap around his finger before popping it back into his mouth. He doesn't often do that, because the germs make the act objectively disgusting. Still, it makes him look incredibly insolent, and sometimes that's just more important. 

"Yeah, and not enough to make up for the price of being dismembered in five garbage bags dumped over three state lines. What freak pays five hundred cash for a street hooker without a snuff sex dungeon involved?"

"Bakugou-san, please. I'm a journalist for--"

"I know you're a journalist, asshole," Katsuki says. "You're not subtle."

"Then why have you even been pricing me for a, the, the oral sex!?" Freckles asks. His expression's deeply vexed, but mainly it reminds Katsuki of an angry pug. It'd be kinda ugly-cute, if he weren't a john and a fucking journalist.

"Hungry for a scoop doesn't mean you're not thirsty, sweetheart," Katsuki snaps his gum obnoxiously loud before he leans back into the car window and gives Freckles another perfect smile. This time it's slow and with a swipe of tongue over his lips, just to watch the nerd blink rapidly and redden again. He follows it with another loud snap of gum. "You're not getting shit from me 'bout any of the Sludge Incident, but you could tell all your friends you managed to get your dick into the child mastermind behind it. All for a reasonable one hundred ten."

"I don't want to-- why did you raise it again!?" He's red now for a different reason, but it's still pretty funny.

"Asked a dumbshit question. One hundred twenty."

Freckles presses his eyes shut and pulls a hand through his already-messy hair. "Please, Bakugou-san. I need to talk to you." He opens his eyes and makes an aborted move to reach out again before dropping his hand. "It's about clearing your name."

It's not a new tactic to get him to talk, but it's not often one tried nowadays. "My name." Katsuki actually laughs. It's been a long time. The taste's acidic. "What's fucking left?"

"That's why we need to talk," Freckles pushes, politeness underlaid with force. "I've been researching the Incident and your trial evidence and I'm writing an article about it-- about you-- I think could really change things."

Katsuki rolls his eyes. "If your world-changing argument is that minors should really be forgiven the unforgiveable transgressions of their youth by the oh-so-charitable, I'm walking right now." He's already skimmed a few of those, but he tends to be excluded from the example lists of the weeping repentful anyway. 

Katsuki had never confessed to his part in Dr. Hedoro's crimes. He didn't because he hadn't done it. He knows, and he knew at the time, that the apparent lack of accountability and remorse was only making the public angrier and angrier. Being right isn't worth jack shit if the rest of the world thinks you were born wrong.

That'd been made more than clear enough halfway through the public trial, when Katsuki's own court-appointed defense attorney had backed him into a stairwell and grabbed him by the collar. He can still remember near-perfectly the cold from the concrete against his back, the stench of his lawyer's breath, how his hands were shaking with his rage but only his neck had gone red, the spat words 'Just admit you did, you depraved little prick.'

But he hadn't done it, and he'd stuck to that. Even as that truth kept digging him in deeper and deeper. Even as it still clings to him now, never stops teaching him there's always, always a further down.

"I don't think there's anything to forgive," Freckles says quietly. "I think you were framed."

Katsuki lets out a breath like he's been punched, squeezing his eyes tight before he catches up to it being way too much of a tell for the vulture in front of him. He snaps a sneer into place. "Fuck you, and fuck your damn feature," he says lowly, gripping the frame of the window and pushing himself back on his heels. He wants to scream it, to feel the comforting warmth from the anger that still always builds like a wildfire in his chest.

Katsuki reins it in and suffocates it out with another breath. He'd learned the hard way attracting too much attention like that was a straight path to getting ID'd and having to find a new city.

"Bakugou-san, I believe you," Freckles says. 

Katsuki might throw up. If he does, he's aiming it straight onto the floor of the nerd's fancy car.

"You think you're the first fucking journalist?" he snarls. His voice spikes jaggedly as he tries to keep wrestling his volume down. "You think I don't know this isn't about getting your exclusive confession and dirty details? Paying me now so you can skip back to the forever-harpies and regale them with the ways I'm paying for it-- I'm leaving. Goodbye forever, asshole--"

"Bakugou-san, please!" Freckles is struggling with the seatbelt he'd left on like an idiot. "Please, I'll pay you the five hundred dollars if you'll just talk to me--"

"What, about your hard-on for violating notoriety-for-profit laws?" Katsuki stops and turns only because he wants to get some last digs in. "Upstanding fucking journalism, warrior of truth."

He feels-- it's just shitty. Having to deal with yet (always) more of these creeps is just shitty, and it ruins his whole fucking day (which don't ever tend towards stellar in the first place) when it doesn't also ruin his whole current living situation. If he's going to be pissed and exhausted anyway then damned if he's not going to take Freckles down with him.

"Violate the law-- you were literally just trying to sell me sex! That's incredibly illegal!" Freckles protests.

"And you were soliciting it, so that puts you at two and me at one and at least I don't pretend I'm respectable for it. But why bother to do your job when you can be a worthless hack who waves money around for fucking shock schlock! What's more honest than paying for your 'honesty', ah? Get over yourself, shit-for-brains. Were you always this pathetic, or s'it new like the car that being garbage and making garbage paid for?"

"It's not for an interview! Or it is, but not one about those things you didn't do-- or it is, but it's about how you didn't do the things you did-- which you didn't do but everyone thinks you did-- please, Bakugou-san! Five hundred dollars, or-- or-- but just please don't leave the city! I've tried so hard to find you!"

Katsuki does move, and moves often. The scandalous contents of the Sludge Incident case had gone international even before the court order to suppress his identity as a minor, and that itself had been a joke, barely followed even in the only country it covered. Someone always recognizes him eventually, and then that's when the creeps, the real creeps, and the stalkers of both gross-ass flavors cockroach their way out of the woodwork.

He actually prefers the encounters with the hard-on heroes determined to "punish" him for skating under the age of criminal responsibility (There'd been efforts to lower the age of the law, after. What a fucking legacy.) with their pathetic microdick-of-justice-or-whatever over the ones who consider themselves fans of his "work". Once, some woman Katsuki had never even met before she tracked him down had proposed to him, breathless and unblinking. He'd never skipped a town so fast in his life, packed and out of there by the end of the hour.

There's things he could do to make himself less recognizable. A lot of things. But the idea of doing them always fills him with a thick and sickening feeling he honestly suspects might be dread. Dread that if he gives in to anything, even if it'd make it a little easier, even if it's just that one little concession, he'd topple like a house of cards and never stop giving in until there wasn't anything else in him he could give but give up.

"Well now that you've just shouted my name to all in range with neon lights I'm gonna need that five hundred to tide me over to a new city," Katsuki hisses, stamping back towards Freckle's car. "Great job, you absolute motherfucker."

"Just-- Bakugou-san, please," is all Freckles says.

Katsuki's gum has hardened a bit when he finally bites down again. "Two fifty upfront. Rest of it stacked on the passenger dash to take whenever I leave. Door's open and stays open, that's non-fucking-negotiable."

Freckles bobbles his head in a nod of giddy relief, then pauses. "When you leave-- what if you just leave the moment after you sit down?"

Nice catch. Katsuki doesn't acknowledge it and rolls his eyes. "I believe you," he mocks back, imitating Freckle's higher and more childish tones. Katsuki tilts his chin up contemptuously. "I believe in making rent. Five hundred ten dollars."

"All right, all right!" Freckles hurries. "Done!"

Katsuki crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. "And you're not going to haggle me on this."

"So now you're complaining that I'm not--!? Look," Freckles says. He reaches out with one of his (surprisingly scar-gnarled) hands and tries to set it onto Katsuki's shoulder. Katsuki immediately smacks that shit out of his face. "--ow, okay-- look."

"I will pay you five hundred and fifty dollars in total if you get in here right now and you don't give me a blowjob," Freckles says fervently. "I will pay your hourly rate for ten minutes with you, and I swear on my mentor and everything else that I've ever held dear all I really just want from you is to talk."

It's not 't-th-the oral sex' anymore, Katsuki notes clinically. Riling Freckles up just seems to make him bolder, even though he's still only been playing defensive. It's an unpredictable paradox of character Katsuki's not sure at all he likes.

He pockets the advance. "Keeping that much in cash around here means you're a dealer or insane, by the way. Two seventy-five on the dash," Katsuki directs Freckles curtly. He circles the car and pops the passenger door open, ducking in. Inside the mid-level luxury look is still clear. Katsuki feels almost insulted by how comfortable the seat is as he settles into it.

Freckles bows his head low to Katsuki in thanks when he does, and he's still deciding on whether that was also an insult or not when Freckles hands him a small white business card.

Katsuki squints down at it. "What the hell, your actual name is Deku?"

"What? No! It's Izuku!" Freckles, who Katsuki is absolutely calling Deku now, leans over to look at his own business card. "I already told you it was Izuku!"

"And that was your real name? Just call yourself John like a normal pervert, fuck's sake."

Deku pauses. "There are normal perverts?"

Katsuki flicks the card away. "You tell me, nerd-perv. And if this actually is your dumbshit convoluted gambit to get a hooker who won't be missed alone in your snuff sex dungeon? Don't think I won't be adding murder to my record. Well," he rolls his eyes. "More murder, anyway."

"That's what I wanted to talk about. Your record," Deku says. "I've been looking into it and it just doesn't add up."

Katsuki laces his arms behind his head and kicks back on the insultingly comfortable seat. "The dog-beating and the baby-eating get double booked?" he asks the air lazily.

Deku's laughs brightly. "That's a busy schedule!"

Katsuki rears back up, offended. "Don't fucking laugh."

"But," Deku blinks. "You made a joke?"

And nobody else has ever been in on the joke. Sharing in it with anyone, let alone someone he hadn't even himself allowed inside, makes it feel like it's going to be taken from him.

Katsuki always hates that feeling more than anything.

"Just don't," he says instead. "It's gross."

"Ohh-kay," Deku says, confused but willing. "Well, I'll try? Here," He gestures behind him, where in the dark Katsuki can see a briefcase (because of course he brought his briefcase to the low stroll.) "I've been pulling together the records. Because you never acknowledged responsibility and pled guilty--"

Bakugou slams his palm on the dashboard. "I don't have some debt to society. I don't owe anyone shit. You owe me two seventy-five." He crumples the crisp bills in his fist and turns to kick open car door wide.

Deku grabs Katsuki by the back of his shirt to prevent him from leaving. Usually that'd be worth an immediate and vicious decking in the face, but it's pretty clear that whatever fucked up jollies Deku is getting, this part's not actually sexual.

Case in point when Deku follows it with "Will you just let me-- If I just pay you for the blowjob will that keep you around long enough for me to at least finish?" He's the picture of tolerant exasperation, like Katsuki's the one being unreasonable here.

Motives be damned, he feels like punching Deku for it. "Finish? One thirty cash for a whole ten seconds?" He sneers and rakes a hand through his hair. "Fucking deal. Unzip, motherfucker."

Deku hurriedly covers his groin with both hands. "Bakugou-san you don't have to be like this!"

Katsuki stuffs the wad of bills into his pocket and twists to lean into Deku's lap, reaching for his belt. "Tough shit, you're getting your money's worth."

"But I paid you for no blowjobs!" Deku wails. "I paid extra!"

And he's right, the little bastard. Katsuki pulls back with a grumble. Deku slumps in relief and cautiously lifts his hands.

"Bakugou-san, all I want from you is your trust," Deku says, like that's not the biggest thing he could ever ask for. "And-- I don't know if this will help or harm my chance by telling you this, but you've always-- you inspire me. You inspired my search for the truth. When I found the final piece of evidence that proved your innocence without a doubt I-- I've always known, I know how you dedicated yourself to the truth no matter what. Since the start I thought and after meeting you I think you're incredibly strong and just-- beyond amazing. You're one of my heroes, Bakugou-san."

Deku takes a breath, which reminds Katsuki he should also take one too. "I want to bring the truth to the world no matter what, because you inspired me to. Bakugou-san," he says, with that itching, uncomfortably direct gaze he's had from the start. "I'm going to run the story with your input or not. But I'd-- I'd like more than anything to work at your side."

Katsuki's silent for a long moment, trying to grasp and sift through exactly what the fuck he's supposed to say to that when the rest of his brain has also turned to sand. He grabs at what seems like the safest option.

"You are being way too gay for someone you just fucking met," Katsuki says flatly. "And I say this as a male prostitute."

"If you d-don't want me to laaaugh don't make me la-a-augh!" Deku hiccups through his sudden loud coughing fit.

Katsuki tensely waits for him to settle before he asks the question that's always behind it all. "What are you getting out of this?"

That's always been the question. That's always been why he won't ever trust fucking journalists.

"It's wrong," Deku says. "It's wrong that it happened to you. That it's still happening to you. And," he looks down at his joined hands. "And, right from the start, I thought-- you looked like you needed saving."

Katsuki swallows dry. "You really fucking think you can save me."

"Maybe I can't," Deku looks up, and just like the first time, he meets Katsuki straight in the eyes. "But I can try."

They agree they'll meet up at a nearby 24-hour diner to discuss it further.

"Or anywhere else you'd prefer in public," Deku says.

"In public," Katsuki says scornfully. "Don't wanna be with me alone? What do you think I'll do to you?"

"You keep taunting me about trying to get you somewhere isolated," Deku points out. "The idea clearly distresses you."

At Katsuki's mutinous silence, Deku bites down a smile. "I am pretty good at the journalist thing, you know."

"Eat shit. And park somewhere further than here unless you want to drive a car-shaped skeleton home," Katsuki says brusquely, stepping out of the car. "I'll walk."

"Bakugou-san. Can I count on you to show up?" Deku asks seriously.

"I belieeeeve you," Katsuki whines nasally back at him before he straightens out his tight-fitting shirt.

Deku opens and shuts his mouth a few times in response. Katsuki finds he enjoys making him gape like a fish. He snickers into his palm. It's been a long while since he's done that.

Deku's smile blooms up into his crinkling eyes. "I really do, Bakugou Katsuki."

Deku drives off towards the diner.

Katsuki considers leaving the city without even packing his bag. To just start walking in the other direction from the diner and keep walking until he can't walk any more. It's not the first time he's thought of it, but it's not laced with the usual bone-deep weariness. 

There's something almost-- nervous about it, itching beneath his skin like Deku's unwavering eyes had felt. Like he's about to open up something that he knows, he knows he won't be able to shut again. That even the slightest crack in what he keeps safe locked in there and it'll all leak out of him until there's nothing of him left.

But what has he even got left to lose?

He spits his gum onto the curb, turns in the direction of the diner, and takes the first step.

2.

Izuku finds the 24-hour diner, even though its sign has burned out to only a single, flickering letter. The inside is grubby and smells like cigarettes, a real rarity in the No Smoking era. There's a reason the residents call this the bad part of the city, reductive as it is.

A blonde woman who's probably the waitress is on one of the stools, smoking a cigarette and scrolling on her phone. She waves a lazy hand at him without looking up, so he assumes the tables are free-for-all. He picks the furthest booth, leaving enough space between him and the tired-looking vagrant passed out in a booth and the two young men already grizzled from a hard living who are definitely conducting a drug deal that Izuku opts to carefully not notice.

He sits on the cracked upholstery of the seating and sets his briefcase on the center of the table. Then he grips his knees and breathes deeply a few times. 

Izuku tries to just process his first overwhelming encounter with the firestorm named Bakugou Katsuki.

Perhaps he should have minded the constant stream of digs and insults Bakugou uses as a blind. He doesn't, though. He's watched the interviews more times than he can estimate; he knew who he was meeting. And it makes sense for Bakugou to be so-- he isn't the first person Izuku's made a connection with who turns their defensiveness into a blistering offensive. But he's definitely the first one who could unleash it like that. 

It had felt like he was suddenly besieging a bristling fortress. Only the fortress was constantly firing back in an endless barrage that either hit him with one hundred percent accuracy or missed him entirely by miles while still triumphantly declaring it a hit with absolutely no in-between.

Also, the fortress kept trying to leave forever, which admittedly stretched the already-thin metaphor. He'd try to figure a better one out, but he's honestly still reeling from the full experience. No grainy filmed interview, no matter how carefully analyzed, could compare to this.

One thing that was a constant in all the profiles on the boy who'd had his entire life wrecked just out of his pre-teens was the word "volatile". Quick to anger, quick to rejection, quick to flip to a sullen silence up until he was angered again.

Bakugou was still just as quick. No, being quick on the draw didn't even begin to cover it.

Izuku had known that, of course, but with all the captivating untangling of discrepancies and piecing back of evidence, it'd slipped past. He can admit now, looking back, he'd put Bakugou on a pedestal. In Izuku's mind, Bakugou Katsuki had become an almost-mythical figure, crafted from honor and forged with endurance. 

And he was, still. Izuku was sure in a way he's not often that it was still within him. But it's apparently been shoved deep, deep within him, and then locked in a barbed-wire cage made of chewing gum and spite.

He'd expected Bakugou Katsuki to be difficult and rude and far too stubborn. He'd have been a fool not to. But he had really, honestly thought that when he offered Bakugou a chance at the true redemption of full exoneration, Izuku wouldn't have to convince him.

He looks over at the smoke-clouded wall clock.

He wonders what he'll do if Bakugou Katsuki doesn't come.

He wonders what he'll do if Bakugou Katsuki does.

Izuku is left waiting for far longer than it should take the brief walk. But the dark tendrils of being rejected by someone so (so so so) important to him don't creep in and dredge that old self-doubt right back into his heart. Even as the clock ticks a quarter hour past any reasonable estimate of Bakugou's arrival, he waits.

A journalist has to balance instinct with objectivity. No person can be profiled by your gut. Assumptions are the worst way a journalist can be tricked, because then you've only been tricking yourself.

But sometimes Izuku's instinct overrules all else, and when that happens, he's never been wrong. It was that instinct at thirteen years old that drew Izuku into the Hedoro case in the first place.

It's that instinct right now that starts blaring inside his head with TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST.

Izuku immediately hops up, leaving his briefcase where it is, and dashes to the door. He shoves it open with a violent jangle of the bell above and steps onto the street, whirling around.

Bakugou's there in a beat-up leather jacket (of course he wears a leather jacket, oh no), leaned up against the wall of the diner just to the open side of the door. 

It's like when Izuku first found him, but it really isn't: Bakugou had oozed sex when he was insouciantly draping himself against the bricks at the street corner. Like this, shoulders drawn up and hands shoved deep in his pockets, he just looks cold and tired.

"I was waiting to see if you'd come," Izuku says.

Bakugou snaps his gum, his face impassive. "I was waiting to see when you'd leave."

The gum's clearly a newer habit he's picked up, and Izuku can't say he expected it. But for all that Bakugou Katsuki had met his expectations and more, he's somehow still not what Izuku expected at all. Case in point.

"I wouldn't leave," Izuku says, pointing back to where his briefcase is still on the counter. "I thought you might be out here."

"Took you twenty minutes."

"Sorry," Izuku says, though it's definitely not something he should be apologizing for, all considered. "I was occupied by my-- thoughts." (don't say about you don't say about you--)

"About me," Bakugou says with complete certainty. Izuku winces.

"Well. Yes," he admits. When that doesn't seem to sway Bakugou's resting scowl one way or the other, Izuku chances holding the door open and gesturing towards the inside.

"Would you like to come in? I've already gotten us a table, and it's a lot warmer in here."

"Would you like to come in. S'not your diner, you dork," Bakugou says, but promisingly kicks out of his lean against the wall and strides towards the door. He scoffs loudly when Izuku holds the door open for him, but doesn't protest further.

Bakugou dumps himself into the booth with all the grace of a pile of dropped laundry. He then spreads out over the bench opposite to Izuku with a long, leonine stretch before he settles down into what still looks like a magazine spread. It actually probably isn't meant as a gesture of seduction, but Izuku's throat still goes dry. Don't be thirsty, he scolds himself. Not the time, not the place, definitely not the man. 

The incredibly handsome man who only half an hour ago was hovering close enough that Izuku could almost feel the burn of his eyes with the heat of his breath all while imperiously demanding Izuku to unzip, motherfucker. 

It really had been possibly the worst time in the world to awaken that previously undiscovered fetish. Izuku had already made the conscious choice to not play that memory on repeat, though he knows he's just putting it off for later when he had the space and time to (shamefully, but also finally) jack off to it.

He's gotten deep in his own head once more, but this time Bakugou is there to notice. Izuku could tell because there was a sudden shift, a tug at his open jacket to rearrange it to showcase his still-pebbled nipples through his far too thin shirt as he slowly lets his knees fall open. With that, Bakugou had gone from unintentionally seductive to oh no he's definitely trying to seduce me again followed by but specifically for his own shit and giggles.

Izuku's guilty glance and immediate look away makes the corner of Bakugou's smirk turn sharp in a way that isn't sultry, just smug and pleased with himself. For some (bizarre? but it feels right) reason it's that "specifically for his own shit and giggles" part that makes Izuku feel the most seduced. 

He finds he doesn't particularly mind. He'll never take Bakugou up on it, given the massive conflict of interests, but he'd like to see Bakugou laugh like that again. If it's at his own way-too-gay expense, so be it.

Izuku's definitely not only ordering the water he so desperately needs, though. That would make the mockery way too easy.

He waves towards the waitress who'd been ignoring him throughout. She still doesn't notice until he also loudly clears his throat. She sighs through her nose, slowly lowering her phone and stubbing her cigarette.

"Do you want anything?" Izuku asks Bakugou.

"I'm not paying shit for something I can make cheaper and better," he answers tartly.

"...I could pay? Oooorrr I won't pay," he concedes immediately upon Bakugou's sudden change of expression.

Bakugou crosses his arms and leans back. He says nothing, but he really does have a unique talent for chewing gum hostilely. 

The waitress finally meanders over. "What're you having, then?"

"Um," Izuku says, "I never got the menu?"

The waitress and Bakugou roll their eyes almost in tandem. "Fuck's sake, it's a diner," Bakugou says. "Do you seriously not know what's on the menu of the most interchangeable restaurant in existence."

"Yeah, that," the waitress says, nodding at Bakugou.

Izuku flushes. It's something he's never been able to get over, getting flustered like this when he's first caught out of his element. At least, he reflects, no one's reaching for his dick. "Oh, um. Then... scrambled eggs, I guess? And an ice water."

The waitress waves a hand and wanders off. Izuku turns back to Bakugou and rests his hand on the briefcase. As soon as he does, Bakugou suddenly goes completely still, no sign of even the most general ambient movements of life. It doesn't even look like he's breathing. 

He's tensed, Izuku realizes, but in a way that makes the nature of it less obvious. Izuku slowly retracts his hand from the briefcase.

Bakugou doesn't fully relax, but the sudden strain in the air abates somewhat and he at least starts chewing his gum again. His full attention is on the briefcase now, but he's looking at it with all the intent caution of someone squaring off with a swaying cobra.

"So it's all in there," Bakugou says, voice gone even more rough. He clears his throat. "Your evidence."

"Yes. But don't worry, of course I've got more copies, and everything's backed up! You could actually take this with you if you want--"

"Fuck no," Bakugou says, uncrossing his arms and pressing further back into the booth seat in a full recoil. He grimaces and crosses his arms again. "Just-- put that shit under the table."

Something's clearly going on in Bakugou's head, and Izuku has no idea where to even start untangling it. "Bakugou-san," Izuku tries tentatively. He has a sudden pang of empathy for on-call bomb squads. "I'd like to go over the documents with you--"

"I'm not doing that bullshit while you're eating scrambled eggs," Bakugou snaps. That's an excuse, but for what Izuku still isn't sure. When he stares at Bakugou in an attempt to puzzle it out, Bakugou immediately kicks at the center leg of the table. The table itself is heavy enough it's mostly just sudden and loud, which Izuku hopes was Bakugou's ultimate intent. "Put it away."

Izuku still doesn't understand what this is about, but he doesn't wait. He promptly tucks it down by his feet.

There's a suffocating silence between them. Izuku's gearing himself up to probe gently as possible into getting his briefcase back up and at least open when the waitress shows up. She drops his water and an entire heaping plateful of scrambled eggs in front of him.

"Finally," Bakugou says to her. "How long does it take you to make eggs?"

"Yeah, yeah. Eat a dick, Katsu," the waitress easily snipes back, lit cigarette hanging from her mouth. There's a small deposit of cigarette ash on the far side of Izuku's eggs, he notices.

"Pay me, bitch!" Bakugou calls after her. Izuku's honestly glad it looks like he's managed to find at least one genial (if you could call it that?) relationship. He'd known the whole time Bakugou was going through incredible hardship-- it'd been his strongest source of motivation to save him by far-- but meeting the man and seeing it for himself only makes him wish he'd worked harder, solved it sooner, saved him earlier.

Izuku pokes at his eggs, carefully separating the ashed bits from the rest of his plate. "So--"

"Eat your damn eggs," Bakugou demands with a loud snap of his gum.

"There's too much for me to eat," Izuku says, gesturing to the small mountain of food in front of him. "If we get another plate, I could--"

"Get fucked," Bakugou snarls, the flashfire of his anger abrupt as Izuku had known to expect. "I'm not your fucking charity case."

He stands, and Izuku's stomach is seized with such desperation of no please don't keep leaving forever he doesn't notice what Bakugou has in his hand until he slams it palm-down on the table and drops back into his seat.

Izuku looks down and sees the crumpled pile of bills he'd given to Bakugou less than an hour ago. He has to suppress the urge to groan; he has the feeling it'd be the worst possible reaction.

Bakugou leans back on the bench, pulling a leg up to lounge more fully. At least he's not trying to seduce Izuku with it this time, unless he thinks Izuku is into defensive posturing and murderous glowers (which, honestly-- oh no.)

"Do what you want," Bakugou says with a sneer. "But I don't owe you shit for it."

Izuku waves his hands frantically, trying to salvage the situation Bakugou seems yet again determined to turn into another entirely unnecessary battle. "You don't, Bakugou-san! Of course! I'd never imply-- but please, even if this goes nowhere after all--" (it will, or izuku is going to rework the entire justice system with his own two hands, but he's willing to say just about anything right now if it will make bakugou katsuki stay) "--You really should keep the money. If it makes anything for you easier, then that's what I'd consider you paying me back--"

"Fuck off," Bakugou says. "You think I need it?"

"Bakugou-san," Izuku says, his exasperation making it into a scold. He's definitely going in the wrong direction, but he can't help it. Bakugou is by far the most frustrating person he's ever met, and Izuku's met a lot of frustrating people in his line of work. 

He has never fought this hard just to give someone money in his life. Why would he ever even have to, until Bakugou Katsuki? "There's pride and there's being ridiculous! I know you've been living in a--"

"Yeah, iiidiot," Bakugou drawls out as he slides the money further towards Izuku with a violent sweep of his hand before holding the same hand up to count down on it. "I pull in an income, I live on a shoestring, I don't have dependents, I don't have a drug problem." He drops a finger at each statement, though he ticks off his thumb so it's only the middle finger that remains up. It's very him, Izuku thinks absently as he tries to follow where this is heading. "Where the fuck do you think the money goes?"

Izuku feels like whatever his answer could be, it's definitely the wrong one. "Where… does the money go?" he asks instead, already feeling foolish for it.

Bakugou slaps the table loudly with a palm. "My savings, you utter jackass."

Scratch feeling foolish, Izuku is a full-on fool with a jester cap atop. He feels himself go red, scrabbling around for a good way-- or any way-- to apologize.

Despite the fact that making those sorts of assumptions like he had about Bakugou's handle on his own life just because of his situation was not okay, the man himself seems to have briskly burned through it like it was any other of the many, many things Izuku says he finds annoying. (all the things? it sure seems like it.)

"I'm a hustler," Bakugou continues with a snap of his gum over Izuku's internal crisis. "That shit's on a timer from the start. You think I'm gonna be young and pretty forever? I don't live like this 'cuz I can't afford to live better, I'm doing it so when I'm aged out I won't have to live worse."

Izuku blinks, processing the rapidfire barrage of information he has to sort from the insults. "That's... actually very reasonable," he finally says.

"Hah? You saying I'm not reasonable?" Bakugou accompanies this (unreasonably) harsh accusation with his fully bared teeth.

Izuku realizes this is where he has to make a choice. He can capitulate to Bakugou's entirely unreasonable overreaction, assure him that isn't true, and live in hope this will placate him into compliance. 

Or he could go with the actual truth and point out Bakugou is, in fact, very unreasonable.

This feels like the turning point, two paths of approach to try taming a wild thing (if he could ever be tamed, but just long enough, just to set him free). Izuku can tell that both of them could go terribly, terribly wrong, but which was the the right way--

Izuku hears a loud snap echoing over his thoughts. 

Not your fucking charity case.

He picks his path, swallows, and then takes a drink of his water before he speaks. "I did have to pay you fifty dollars specifically not to-- service me."

When the response isn't an immediate attack followed by an immediate retreat, he sure he's picked the better one. "That's right," Bakugou says, and shuffles through the collection of Izuku's bills until he finds a fifty, triumphantly snagging it from the stack. "You owe me for that."

Izuku could really argue here that the spirit of the agreement had been entirely violated, (lidded eyes, a hand raked through his riotous hair, unzip, motherfucker-- no no no no worst possible time no) but he's honestly just happy he'd gotten Bakugou Katsuki to take some of his money. Getting him to take the rest would probably take hours of tug-of-war, so Izuku sighs and returns the bills to his wallet.

Bakugou tucks his own bill away somewhere in his far-too-tight jeans before looking back up. "So you're enough of a creep to track down where I'm living-- by choice, shitstalker-- but you didn't even manage to get my financials? Weak shit, award-winning journalist."

Izuku immediately brightens. "You looked me up?"

Bakugou snaps his gum, throwing his head back against the bench's upholstered top. "That a fucking crime?"

It's that arrogant gallows humor of his again. It's clearly more reflexive than intentional at this point, but Izuku still can't hold in his quick, undignified giggle.

Bakugou's head shoots up and he stares at Izuku just like the first time Izuku had laughed. There's the same blink-and-you'd-miss-it moment when his face goes slack, helplessly lost and rattled.

No one else has ever laughed before, Izuku realizes in that split-second before the mask of belligerent contempt slams down over it.

It'd be a strong cover, but Izuku honestly is good at being a journalist. He's seen all sorts of poker faces in his time. He can tell Bakugou's particular tactic is one of immediate compartmentalization. It reminds Izuku in particular of those anti-theft roller shutters jewelry stores pull down at night so no one can make off with the treasures inside.

In this case, it's clear what Bakugou finds precious enough to protect isn't culpability. It's vulnerability.

It's horrendous, how the trial and its coverage had distorted Bakugou so entirely wrong. Izuku had witnessed his white-knuckled grip on his innocence through the mire of public opinion. He sees now how Bakugou had reshaped himself not to the mold of their false accusations but into a protective shell curled around the true victim.

Even if Izuku hadn't meticulously sorted and prepared the exonerating evidence himself, he thinks if they'd met before this he still would have believed in Bakugou's innocence. He doesn't know how the rest of the world could not have, when it's the clearest Izuku has ever seen.

Bakugou is already continuing on, voice flat. "You got the One For All in your early twenties for taking down a yakuza organization."

Izuku can feel himself going violently red, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. "W-well, I'd been paying attention, but! I had a lot of capable people working on my side when I actually got started in earnest, so I really can't say it was all actually me--"

Bakugou stares at him, expression now as flat as his words. "You're acting more embarrassed over receiving one of the highest honors in journalism than you were when I was trying to suck your dick."

Izuku laughs awkwardly. He'd argue it is more embarrassing, but in both cases it'd been made much, much worse by the participation of one Bakugou Katsuki. There's a difference between grappling with horrified lust over the figure of your enduring admiration crawling into your lap and having your history and accomplishments laid out to be personally judged by them. One's a weird sex dream and the other is a potential nightmare.

(oh no, he's totally going to start having weird sex dreams about bakugou katsuki, isn't he? of course he is.)

Bakugou leans over the table, resting his forearms on it. He looks amused, and it's not even overlaid with drippings of scorn. "You got a One For All and you didn't think to lead with that?"

"Ah," Izuku says, gingerly pushing his uneaten plate of cold scrambled eggs to the side and gripping his water. "I'm sorry, Bakugou-san, it really wasn't anything I was trying to keep from you. It's a-- habit, I guess. People can act pretty differently if they know you're a One For All recipient. My work's always depended most on the candidness of my subjects, and that sort of high expectation can work as a wall between us. And not everyone reads the news, of course."

"You got that right," Bakugou says. He leans to the side, resting his chin on his palm. "Shit, I probably used your award-winning exposé for draft insulation and deodorizing huffed paint fumes."

Izuku pauses, wondering how to phrase the next question carefully enough before deciding there was simply no way to get around it but through. "You said you didn't do drugs, Bakugou-san."

The response is again not nearly as fraught as Izuku was fully braced for. Bakugou just flicks his free hand dismissively and rolls his eyes. "Not me, asshole, the trash I room with. I've never done drugs."

It's the first opportunity to steer them back to the briefcase under the table; it hadn't escaped his notice that Bakugou Katsuki seemed more willing to talk about just about anything else over his own life-changing exonerating evidence.

"I believe you, Bakugou-san," Izuku says. If he'd learned anything from their previous conversation, it was Bakugou Katsuki had a fixation on that.

But it makes sense. It's also why Izuku, no matter how (very, just so much) frustrated Bakugou makes him, doesn't demand why Bakugou always expects the absolute worst of him. He knows exactly why Bakugou does; he's functionally made it his life's work.

Izuku presses both hands to the table and keeps his voice as non-accusatory as he could possibly make it. please, he thinks, and speaks. "But that's not what it says in your case file."

"Yeah," Bakugou says, "Well. I haven't done a lot of things."

It's the closest Bakugou has ever gotten to a direct acknowledgement of his lack of guilt, oblique as it was. He's turned his head to the diner window and doesn't look at Izuku. As soon as he says it he goes utterly still again, the perceptible tensing he definitely thought Izuku hadn't noticed. Like he's preparing for a fight. 

Or to be attacked.

There's a quick, cutting glance towards Izuku when no attack comes, more aggressive suspicion at his potential reaction than when he was accusing Izuku of wanting to murder him in a sex dungeon.

They really are incredible eyes, and only more so when they're fully focused. It's not just the simple fact they're pretty, or their unique smoke-red color. It's the single-minded intensity to them, how there's no build up at all to being pinned by his full attention that might ease the total impact. Every time Izuku thinks he's finally gotten used to it Bakugou shoots him another look that might as well be a real gunshot for how it feels in his chest.

It'd been those eyes that had instantly attracted his attention, the face of a boy his own age staring straight at Izuku from the seething mugshot on the front page of every newspaper and tabloid. Those eyes had caught everyone's attention as the case had gone more and more public and the furor swirled to fever pitch.

In truth, Bakugou being such a handsome youth attached to such heinous crimes had made everything all that much worse. The kinds of media more eager for eyes on the page than the truth (or even the most basic rights of minors, which still makes izuku just as angry today as it'd made him at the start) plastered that picture all over the breathless recounting of his accused crimes. There was no article that hadn't at least mentioned his looks (izuku would know, he'd tracked every one down to be carefully pasted into his scrapbook) and far too many of them that treated it as a further strike against him.

The contrast between his age, his looks, and the stories coming out only stoked the flames. Izuku knows studies that proved beautiful people are considered more moral and more trustworthy, regardless of their actual character. Bakugou's model inheritance and alleged participation was deemed a worse betrayal to the public than the real crimes of the hideous-looking Hedoro by the public who had only seen his constantly blared face and list of charges.

Izuku almost considers telling Katsuki about the studies, how Izuku thinks his physical attractiveness had influenced his case for the worse but how they could use it tactically now for the better. There's also studies on how beautiful people get far more shots at redemption (though it's exoneration, not redemption) than those who aren't. It'd be a powerful angle to use.

It's not particularly fair, but Izuku's learned well that nothing in life is really fair, no matter how much he wishes it could be. But life being unfair is statistically reliable, too, and if Izuku clung too hard to his vision of how it should be he'll never actually get there.

He decides not to immediately. Bakugou's already had to use his looks to survive more than enough already.

Izuku really, really hoped it wasn't just Bakugou's looks that had drawn him in. It hadn't been helped at all by the paralyzing realization upon his first time finally seeing Bakugou Katsuki in person that here was Izuku's personal hero and oh no he's hot. Izuku would feel worse if he wasn't entirely certain this was objective fact. It wasn't his fault that he was, as Bakugou had uncannily diagnosed, way too gay.

It's honestly-- incredible, how Izuku had studied Bakugou on paper for years but still keeps saying the exact wrong thing while Bakugou has him either nailed on sight or is so far off the mark he's groping around outer space. He'd exceeded even Izuku's expectations of his sharp mind and animal instinct, and Izuku is aware (has been made aware, anyway) that when it comes to his heroes his expectations can be a bit much. But here in the flesh, Bakugou Katsuki really is amazing.

His own instincts suddenly flash how Bakugou looked when Izuku had told him that. Entirely adrift, eyes practically glazed, without any of the cold suspicion underpinning that hot temper to get in the way.

It's been a long, long time since anyone had told Bakugou Katsuki he was amazing, Izuku realizes. Suddenly, he sees the path.

"I have all your interviews in here, Bakugou-san," Izuku chirps, reaching down ostensibly to only pat his briefcase and snagging the handle. "They were impressive enough when I was a kid, but every time I've come back to them over the years I find something more to be impressed by! With all the interrogation and entrapment tactics-- some of them definitely weren't legal, it was a travesty how they rushed the case just to scapegoat the public opinion--" 

Bakugou's finally looking at him, gone glazed again like Izuku is revealing to him that aliens exist and live amongst them. Like this, Izuku has been able to slowly inch the briefcase up higher, using his cover (though is it a cover if you mean every word?) of extolled enthusiasm. It's easy to do; it's not like he'll ever run low on things he admires about Bakugou Katsuki.

"--the way you kept navigating around their questions, leaving no space to counter you was-- and all on the spot! It was so-- amazing, truly amazing. It's always reminded me of the trial transcripts of Joan of Arc!"

Also something he really means, but as he predicted it's the way-too-gay enough for Bakugou to snap himself out of his daze. "Joan of fucking Arc," he finally echoes, with contemptuous incredulity that's made fainter from his attempt at a quick recovery.

Izuku has taken the opportunity while Bakugou desperately grasped at his equilibrium to jerk the briefcase up the rest of the way and onto the table before lacing his hands together and smiling.

Bakugou rights himself mentally and then does an abrupt double-take at the briefcase before refocusing on Izuku with a scorching glare. Beyond that, the only reply is a sudden but sullen snap of his (has to be entirely flavorless by now, but that hadn't stopped him the last time) chewing gum.

Just as Izuku predicted, Bakugou would rather pretend he hadn't been duped than confront it. Instead of demanding it be put away again, he physically draws back, shoulders raised and his resting scowl slammed down over the clear discomfort broadcasted by his body.

Or maybe the Joan of Arc thing had been coming on too strong (by an actually reasonable standard, as opposed to bakugou's.) "Sorry," Izuku says awkwardly, in case. "I've just always had so many things I wanted to tell you."

"Always. When you were a kid, you said," Bakugou says, eyes burning a hole into a spot just to the left of the briefcase. "How long have you been obsessed with me?"

It's hardly the first time he's been accused of obsessing over Bakugou Katsuki and the happenings of the Sludge Incident. He could lie, but there's no way someone as observant as Bakugou would not ferret out the truth, and then would no doubt dissolve into smoke on the wind and disappear from Izuku's life forever.

"I started to look into your case when I was thirteen," Izuku admits.

"I was thirteen," Bakugou says.

"You were. That was one of the things that drew me into it, I think."

Bakugou has started tapping his fingers frenetically onto the table. It's a nervous tell like Izuku thought Bakugou didn't have, which speaks to how nervous Bakugou must be.

"You done shit like that for every story?" Bakugou asks like he's making an accusation.

Izuku feels himself flush. "Oh. Um, a-a few of them," he says, feeling rather self-conscious. He really doesn't think it's too strange for a hobby, but he knows more than enough people don't think the same. "I've, well-- always liked gathering information on certain criminal cases, so I have a lot of material."

"You're acting like that's more creepy than you just creeping on me only," Bakugou says, his fingers stilling for a moment. "Voice of experience: it's not."

"That's true!" Izuku says. It might not have been meant to cheer him up, but it's a truth he'd never considered before and it does make him feel better about it.

"So are there pictures of me in there with my eyes scratched out?" It's another of Bakugou's question-accusations, but he's at least finally shifted his attention towards the briefcase.

Izuku considers his next words carefully.

He spins the briefcase so the clasp faces Bakugou, choosing to ignore how he flinches and jerks back his hands. Then Izuku pops the clasp, sits back, and laces his hands again.

"I suppose, Bakugou-san," Izuku says, his smile and tone scrupulously excised of all challenge, "That you'll just have to find out."

There's a long silence. Izuku patiently waits.

"You're kind of a little fucker, Deku," Bakugou finally says.

"D-Deku?" It's enough to break through Izuku's neutral front. "Bakugou-san, I keep telling you my name is Izuku!"

"Tough shit, you're Deku to me," Bakugou dismisses with a snap of his gum and reaches over to finally, finally open Izuku's briefcase.

It's packed. Izuku had been gathering evidence on Bakugou's case since the start. He has folders full of scrupulously examined accounts, picked-apart evidence, and his first to his final attempts at making a cohesive timeline. Izuku had known what the puzzle would look like when he'd found all the pieces, but it was only two months ago he had stumbled upon the one fact that unified everything with a glorious click.

He'd put all his other journalism immediately on hold. From there it's been a deliriously satisfying whirlwind of compiling it all together, the perfect feeling of all the pieces finally, finally snapping into something airtight. 

Bakugou snags the first stack of printouts blindly and immediately starts flicking through it, like if he gets it over quickly enough it won't catch up to him. Either he's skipping large chunks or he's absorbing it all incredibly fast. At this point, Izuku's certain it's the latter.

While Bakugou's occupied with the evidence, Izuku finds himself occupied with Bakugou. This isn't the first time Izuku's brought someone the truth that could save them. He's seen all sorts of reactions: shocked, ecstatic, sobbing with relief, overwhelmed into silence. It's most often the best part of his job.

This is the first time Izuku has seen a chance at vindication make the victim look like they're going to be ill. Bakugou is getting paler with each page, starting to sweat and looking only more distressed the further through he gets.

Izuku doesn't know how Bakugou's going to react when he reaches the end of it, but he knows there's going to be a real reaction. He braces himself.

Bakugou flips the last page. He presses his eyes shut too tight and slowly breathes out.

Then Bakugou's all movement, crumpling the packet one-handedly. He slams it to the table, then rocks back, curled into himself like he's in physical pain.

He presses both hands hard over his eyes. "Where were you?" Bakugou chokes out, the rawness of it scraping his throat. "Where were you when all this, this was-- why would you fucking even, when-- it's too late, you fucker, you-- why would you show me this. Shit."

Bakugou pushes himself out of the booth and staggers towards the door like a wounded man.

Izuku wastes precious seconds grabbing the briefcase and frantically pawing through his wallet for the twenty he drops on the table. Then he dashes after Bakugou, the diner door's bell furiously jangling again as Izuku shoves through it.

"Please, wait! Bakugou-san!!" Izuku calls, looking around frantically. From around the corner of the building, he hears the sound of dry heaves.

He skids to a stop at the corner. Bakugou has both arms braced against the wall, his gob of chewing gum on the concrete with the darkened spatter of nausea saliva. It's still running down the corner of his mouth as he spits more on the ground.

He pulls back from the wall and scrubs his jacket sleeve roughly over his mouth. Then he turns. His face is screwed up into something agonized, moreso because Izuku knows he'd never let anyone see him looking like this if he had his choice.

"Just fuck off," he says hoarsely, giving Izuku another one of those bullet-glares that's entirely lost the impact when he just looks miserable. "It's too late."

"It's not too late, Bakugou-san," Izuku says quietly.

"What's fucking left? It's over, Deku."

"It's not," Izuku says, chancing a step forward and a slow and carefully telegraphed raise of his arm to rest it on Bakugou's back. "It's not over, Bakugou-san. I'm going to prove it."

"What if I don't let you," Bakugou suddenly demands, turning suddenly to grab Izuku's wrist in his sweating grip. "What if I told you not to run it."

It's an entirely unprecedented demand Izuku had never encountered before. Why would he? What reasonable person would run from their own rescue?

But then, Bakugou Katsuki's exceeded and defied every other one of Izuku's reasonable expectations.

Izuku lays his free hand over Bakugou's grip on him. "You're not my charity case, Bakugou-san," he says, as gentle as he can make it to a man who rejects gentleness on contact "And-- that goes both ways. I'm going to do what's right."

He squeezes the top of Bakugou's hand once, then tries to loosen it from the bruising grip on his wrist. "I'm going to publish this."

Bakugou only grips him tighter, Izuku fighting a wince as he can almost feel his bones grinding from it. "Shit," Bakugou hisses, "Shit," and then bodily manhandles Izuku further into the alley between the buildings.

Izuku doesn't know what Bakugou's doing beyond something undoubtedly unreasonable. Still, he lets Bakugou direct him about until he's pressed to the wall at the end of the alley and Bakugou suddenly drops to his knees between Izuku's legs.

Oh no, is all Izuku can think as he lets go of his briefcase and his brain goes full panic, already wincing by proxy from the sound of Bakugou hitting the pavement. Then oh no, oh nooooo as Bakugou hooks his fingers around Izuku's belt and presses the side of his face into Izuku's upper thigh.

Bakugou looks up at him in a way Izuku is certain he never has for any of his actual clients, desperate and beseeching (oh no). "You should be fucking me," he says, taut with zinging nerves he didn't have the last time he offered himself to Izuku like that. "I can't pay you for this, you're not getting anything from it, I should be--"

"Bakugou-san, no," Izuku manages to get out through the panicked panoply of every emotion he could possibly have about this encounter crashing into him all at once and resolving into the overarching feeling of no no no no no. 

"Please," Bakugou grates out like it's hurting but he has to. Izuku would bet money that word's another first never offered to his clients, which: oh no. "I'm good at this. Anything you want, anything you fucking want from me, I'll--"

Izuku can't listen to this any longer with how it's hurting his heart, seeing Bakugou pushing himself like this. "No, Bakugou-san," he says firmly, trying to prise Bakugou's hands from unbuckling his belt. "I don't want this."

"Cut the shit," Bakugou snarls, gripping on him harder. "You think I don't know that you want me? Spotting it on sight is half my damn job--"

"That doesn't matter!" Izuku nearly yells, still trying to wrestle Bakugou from managing to get his belt off. 

"At least give me the fucking chance," Bakugou yells back, both of their raised voices echoing through the alley he'd dragged Izuku into.

"No!!!" Izuku shoves Bakugou back from where he's been (no no no no) determinedly palming at Izuku' dick through his pants. It's not often Izuku uses all his strength like this. The sudden, unexpected force of it is enough to make even Bakugou detach, sprawling back on his knees with his eyes wide and shocked.

Izuku grabs at the brief respite from the incredibly beautiful man trying his hardest to suck Izuku off. "I am attracted to you, Bakugou-san!" he gets out in a rush. He keeps his hands defensively in front of him, in case Bakugou goes for his dick again.

"S-sexually, and--" and more, he doesn't say, because never mind before THIS is definitely the worst possible time, "--but! It's not something I'd ever want you to have to do because you feel like you owe me!"

Bakugou scrubs his sleeve over his mouth again. "I don't owe you fucking anything."

It's a complete reversal of what he'd just said (--begged, and izuku hopes with all his being he never has to see bakugou like that again--), but Izuku's learned by now that sudden and immediate contrasts are very par-for-course when it comes to Bakugou Katsuki.

"You don't, Bakugou-san," Izuku agrees, with all the assurance he can possibly pour into it. "You don't owe me anything, not for the truth."

At those words, Bakugou curls into himself again on the concrete. It's deeply disconcerting to see the brash, confident man who'd previously filled every space he was in made into something so small.

"The truth isn't worth jack shit, Deku," he says into his knees. "It never--" he takes a short breath. "It never was."

"It is," Izuku says. "Bakugou-san, I can do this. I can." He gasps through it, because even though there's a complete lack of tears from the man with most reason to cry the emotions are still so thick in the air Izuku feels woozy from it.

He staggers down to sitting on the dirty concrete, because he values his kneecaps, and meets Bakugou at where he's sunk. "Bakugou-san, I'm good at this. I believe you. I'm here for you."

"Shut up," Bakugou says. He doesn't look up from where he's still curled in. One of his hands grasps out and feels forward until it finds Izuku's shoe, scrabbling up to seize the hem of his pant leg and hold it.

Izuku takes the obvious clue and keeps where he is. He'd expected Bakugou to take at least five minutes, even as incredibly resilient as Izuku knew he was, but he manages to get over his utterly silent full emotional breakdown in (an impressive, but also hugely worrying) two minutes at most.

It's anticlimactic. Bakugou pushes fully back, jerking his hand from Izuku's pant leg, and unwinds himself. Then he grimaces. "Ah fuck, my knees," he groans, as if this is the first time he'd actually felt the pain from hitting the concrete like that. It might've been, honestly. 

Izuku rises to his feet, picking up his briefcase and carefully adjusting his rumpled waistband. Bakugou's previous pattern of behavior tells him that ignoring everything that just happened is the wisest path to take. He straightens his shirt and clears his throat. "B- Bakugou-san, will you walk me back to my car? I don't know the neighborhood."

Bakugou grabs at his cue and scoffs. Rather than making another attempt up again, he shuffles through his clothes until he finds a half-empty pack of gum, unwrapping and cramming two sticks of it into his mouth. "I'll have to, with how long we left that cash on the table," he says around his mouthful, flexing his legs testingly. "You know everyone thought we were doing a drug deal, right?"

"Thank you," Izuku says, extending a hand down to help him up.

"Fuck you," Bakugou snipes, hands stubbornly down.

"Should I pay you another fifty dollars?" Izuku asks, pushing his hand directly into Bakugou's face.

"Fuck you, you fucking deku," Bakugou says and takes Izuku's hand, pulling himself up.

Their walk back to Izuku's car is almost entirely silent. Bakugou just keeps his hands in the pockets of his jacket and doesn't look at him.

When they're a block away from Izuku's car, he decides he'll just have to be the one to push. "Bakugou-san, do you think you can work with me on this?"

Bakugou's response is immediate but absent. "Don't know. I'm thinking. Get fucked." There's not even any venom to the curse.

When they're only steps from his car, Bakugou stops abruptly. "I can't do that again," he says to Izuku, terse but desperate. "If, if it doesn't-- I can't."

"Bakugou-san," Izuku says, risking a reach out to Bakugou's shoulder and hoping he won't get smacked for it again. "I'll be with you. Whatever you choose, I'll be with you."

Bakugou sneers at it, but allows Izuku's hand. "I've been fine on my own so far."

Not by any reasonable standard, but that's Bakugou Katsuki. "And now you're not on your own, anymore," Izuku says, "Because I'm here."

Bakugou quickly turns on his heels and silently stalks towards Izuku's car. When Izuku follows after and clicks the car lock, Bakugou grasps the driver-side door and yanks it open for him. It's such unexpected behavior from Bakugou that Izuku just stands there in confusion for a moment, prompting Bakugou to growl. "Fucking just get in and give me another card."

Izuku's still trying to find the catch (his instincts say there has to be one) in the opened door and almost misses the second part. "Another--?"

"Your card, Deku," Bakugou demands. My contact information, Izuku thinks with a sudden giddiness that matches when he'd found that final fact to solve it all. This is it, this is really it.

Izuku fumbles around until he finds one, hurriedly shoving it at Bakugou. "Contact me any time!" he says eagerly. "I'll be waiting to hear from you, Bakugou-san!"

Bakugou takes the card between two fingers and then waves his hand dismissively at him. "Dial it back, nerd."

Whatever Izuku planned to say in response is cut off when Bakugou slams the car door shut, smacks the roof like it's the flank of a horse, and saunters off.

When Izuku gets home, still in honest shock-- it's going to take a lot of analysis on his part to even begin to dissect what happened between them tonight-- he closes his car door and finds a wad of chewed-up gum stuck under the handle. It's disgusting, not to mention incredibly immature.

Izuku laughs anyway. He can't help it.