Black in white

it’s not so bad if it’s a fight, but this kind of thing- covert, observational missions, reliant on stealth and smarts- doesn’t require big flashy quirks, just discretion, and todoroki is both extremely recognisable and terrible at subterfuge. bad enough that he’s wearing a ridiculous sports cap like that isn’t disguise 101, but he sticks out like a sore thumb no matter where he is, with the icicle up his ass and the blankness of his expression.

katsuki blames their current predicament entirely on him, as a result. he only got distracted because he was occupied seething over todoroki, so it’s not his fault they lost the target.

(aizawa won’t buy that for ten seconds. katsuki won’t entirely blame him.)

“this is a fucking disaster,” he hisses at todoroki, redirecting his ire at the proper target as they sprint down the street. todoroki, keeping pace easily with his obnoxious long legs, blinks in vague annoyance.

“i’d noticed.”

“yeah? you didn’t notice the target hauling ass earlier, so i figured i’d point it out this time!”

todoroki at least frowns at that, though he doesn’t go down easily. “you missed him too.”

the problem is that he’s not entirely wrong. they were doing a fine job of tailing their target until the guy stepped back into mob territory and assumed he was golden, which made him sloppier, which made them relax their focus, which made todoroki get distracted, which made katsuki get distracted; by the time they’d noticed the guy high-tailing it out of the area they’d been forced to follow him way deeper into mob territory than they’d intended to go just to catch up. now the guy’s in their sights again, but they’re in the part of town where people shoot first and with enthusiasm, teenagers be damned.

because ua is fucking insane, they don’t even have their quirks on hand. “this is an observation mission,” aizawa had said, monotone, during explanations. “do your job correctly and no fighting will arise.” which is all well and good for the other flops, who got sicced various petty criminals, but he and half ‘n half got an actual mobster, with an actual mob, who have actual guns. all they have to save their skins are shitty disguises, their fighting abilities, and a dumbass emergency help button, which boils down to the first two because katsuki will eat lead before he hits anything called an emergency help button.

“do your observing well and you won’t need to worry about fighting,” aizawa had said, unbothered, upon this concern being raised, and then proceeded to pair him with icyhot, he of the unfounded conspiracy theories and recognisable facial disfigurement.

currently, their potential deaths aren’t pulling his focus; he’s watching their target, who’s finally within reach again at the end of the street, dawdling at a crossing. having tracked him throughout his activities, all they need to do is bug the asshole, but it’s not easy; until now he’s been way too paranoid, and now there are eyes everywhere and they stand out, two teenagers loitering the streets midday.

“motorbike,” todoroki says, abrupt. “isn’t this near where he parks his vehicles?”

it is; katsuki curses himself for being beaten to the chase. todoroki has a point- if they can beat him there and bug his bike, they’re good to go.

“i remember the way,” he says, mentally pulling up the maps they’d studied and overlaying them with the winding streets around them. “c’mon.”

he starts off at a normal pace, breaks into a sprint as soon as they’re out of sight. this way around they won’t cross paths with him, but they’ll have to be fucking fast.

luckily, neither he nor todoroki have issues with speed. they reach the parking lot (grey, grimy, gross) in record time, grinding to a halt at the entrance so they can spot security cameras and enter accordingly.

“less than a minute until he gets here,” katsuki estimates, zipping his bag open to extract the bugging device. “where the fuck is his bike?”

“hm,” todoroki says, which is fucking alarming, so katsuki bolts upright, follows his gaze to-

“oh, you gotta be shitting me.”

two identical bikes, side by side.

they run up to the bikes, katsuki cursing as they go; upon approach they are even more indistinguishable, red and silver and black leather seats. this is a fucking joke. thirty seconds to decide.

he crouches low, stares at every inch of the stupid shitty bikes looking for differences, then stops.

“oh,” todoroki says. katsuki’s head throbs. there is a pride sticker on one of the bikes’ back wheel.

several hours of high-stakes tracking through the seediest criminal underbelly of the city, and this is what their success is coming down to. whether a mob lackey is a fucking gay rights supporter. his life is a sick, sick joke.

“any insight?” he grates out, because he’s pretty sure they’re going to have to guess this, and the thought is making him want to kill himself.

“no,” todoroki says, predictably. “there was nothing on file about his sexual proclivities.”

“fucking superb,” katsuki grits out. he shuts his eyes. they’re down to fifteen, ten seconds, probably. what was on the file? habits, food taste, clothes- karaoke bar attendance.

he slaps the bug under the bike.

“how do you know-”

“call it a fucking hunch,” katsuki snaps, not willing to reveal that the deciding factor here is a love for belting pop tunes. they don’t have the time. “we need to get the fuck out of here.”

he’s only midway to his feet when he catches sight of their target in a corner mirror and dives sideways towards the nearby pillars, todoroki in tow. it’s pointless, though- there’s nowhere to fucking go. the nearest exits on all sides are back the way they came. with some leeway they could have hidden behind a car or some shit but the closest car is at least a few pillars away and the guy will undoubtedly see them running for it. and he has a fucking gun.

his pulse is racing loudly with adrenaline when he turns to todoroki, watching the guy advance out of the corner of his eye, knuckles cracking. “we’re gonna have to fight this fucker.”

“he has a gun,” todoroki says, like an asshole, and katsuki bristles and wants to yell at him but doesn’t because the guy is coming closer and he’s going to have to launch himself at him and assume his reflexes aren’t as good as his, but then todoroki gets this weird glint in his eye like maybe he’s going to try and get there first, and-

todoroki shoves him up against a pillar, and for a moment katsuki thinks he’s as fucking stupid as he acts sometimes, that he somehow thinks they’re out of sight just because they’re in shadow, but before he can strangle him todoroki’s face is far too close for comfort and then not far at all, and katsuki is too shocked to even move.

todoroki lays one on him mid-mission seconds away from some dipshit mobster, and it’s-

he thinks his brain breaks, or something. todoroki is kissing him and it’s- it’s a plan, he understands, it’s the worst fucking plan in the world, but it’s too late to change tracks now so fuck it, right. he grabs todoroki by the neck and drags him in close enough that todoroki makes a startled sound and stumbles, then gives as good as he got.

he knows they both hear the guy come to a halt like a foot away from them because they double down on the whole ridiculous PDA schtick, and for what it’s worth he thinks they do a stellar fucking job, because for like ten good seconds even he forgets they’re actually there on a mission and his primary goal here isn’t to swallow todoroki’s tongue or whatever. (also, the tongue. very convincing. good initiative, whoever did that.)

the guy clears his throat and they fall apart, with impeccable and frankly unexpected acting skills, flushed and breathless, katsuki scowling automatically. their target raises his hands slowly like he thinks katsuki’s pissed at being interrupted instead of- uh, whatever he’s actually pissed at.

to cover his bases he barks a “what?” that’s only slightly off, and the guy (of all things) smiles, all condescendingly amused.

“you realise there are better places for this sort of thing, kid?”

“we don’t want any trouble,” todoroki offers, dutifully, begrudingly, like some rich kid off gallivanting with ruffians for a kick. credit where it’s due, it’s very effective: katsuki wants to punch him in the mouth.

“yeah, i’m sure,” their target snorts. “just make sure you don’t get caught by someone who cares.”

“whatever,” katsuki grumbles, defensive, and the guy chuckles and shakes his head, gets on his bike.

they watch him go, none the wiser to the device stuck soundly to the underside of his bike. katsuki is struck with the uncharacteristic urge to sag against the pillar.

he doesn’t, of course. instead they wait for him to vanish from sight, then wait some more just to be sure he’s not circling back. then katsuki grabs todoroki by the strings of his dumbass borrowed hoodie and yanks him after him through the nearest back-door, down two alleys and into a residential block’s lobby, where he releases him only long enough to kick him in the stomach.

“ow,” todoroki says, reproachfully, pushing off the wall he smacked into.

“what the hell is wrong with you?” katsuki demands, feeling his palms crackle ominously. which shouldn’t even be possible, because they’re on quirk blockers for the mission- normally he’d take a moment to preen at his badass innate powers, except the only reason it’s even happening is because he’s that incensed by todoroki, so he can’t even bask in it. he wants very badly to slam todoroki’s dumb pretty head through the lobby mirror.

“it was a strategic move,” todoroki shrugs, at least not playing dumb. he adds, pointedly: “i had a hunch.”

“you couldn’t have come up with an alternative?” katsuki snaps, still furious and not particularly willing to listen to reason. so it worked, whatever, his outrage is the moral kind. “you could just have punched me or pretended to be buying drugs or some shit!”

“like i said, hunch. based on yours, actually.”

“where did you even get the idea for this shit?” katsuki demands, now doubly outraged because todoroki had the nerve to co-opt his good instincts and pervert them. “some shitty k-drama or something?”

todoroki blinks, then looks away.

“are you joking-”

“well, it worked, didn’t it?” todoroki interjects, mildly frustrated now, like katsuki is the one being unreasonable when his asshole partner laid one on him because of some shit he saw on netflix. “he wasn’t suspicious and we completed the mission. and neither of us is even injured.”

which is all well and good, but katsuki is aggrieved, goddamnit, he has the right to nuture his grievances here. so he grits his teeth and racks his brains and settles on: “and you couldn’t have fucking warned me before you planted one on me?”

for a single moment, todoroki pauses, looks actually uncertain, worrying at his lip (the same lip that may or may not be split from earlier, katsuki isn’t paying attention) like he might actually concede the point. then his expression settles into well-maintained neutrality. “if i had warned you you wouldn’t have let me do it.”

“hah? says who? i’m a professional, asshole!” katsuki snaps back, and half expects todoroki to say some dumb shit like actually we’re both in high school so he can justifiably beat him up, except todoroki assumes a long-suffering explanation and then pushes off the wall, obstinate glint in his eyes.

he walks forwards, then forwards, then forwards some more, and then he’s well past close enough and katsuki only reigns in the instinctive urge to punch him through the ceiling because he suspects that is the point the bastard is trying to make. todoroki keeps going, though, leans in too, so that in the end they’re so close katsuki is sure he’s about to get slammed in the forehead by todoroki’s dumbass baseball cap, and his fingers are twitching murderously by his sides.

“bakugou,” todoroki says, after a beat, like maybe he’d forgotten how exactly they got up close and personal. his gaze is all impenetrable. “i’m going to kiss you now.”

somehow, this is fucking worse than the first time around. it’s really possible that he’s having some kind of minor heart attack, katsuki thinks distantly. he’s sweating enough to power a small nuke and he feels weirdly frozen, some kind of adrenaline rush in his chest. it’s fight or flight, most likely; who wouldn’t want to punch boy wonder when he’s two inches away from your face?

aloud, he grits out: “then fucking get on with it already.”

he’s made his point, obviously, displayed his stellar self-control. except for one inexplicable, endless moment, neither of them fucking move. he just stands there and has the horrible thought that gravity is dragging todoroki slowly towards him, and in another five seconds they’ll be touching, and he really should be moving sometime soon. todoroki is close, and katsuki is watching his mouth, because he can feel him breathe, winter cool even though it’s late spring, and ain’t that fucking fascinating?

on record, this is how their mission went: they tailed their target like fucking professionals, came up with the idea of bugging his means of transport for durability, staged a drug deal when time became an issue, then got the fuck out of there just in time for their ride to ua to show up.

on record but not really, katsuki mutinously admits that the drug thing was more of a frisk, and aizawa promptly shuts him up and offers not to mention the lying so long as they keep lying about it forever and never make him hear about it again.

off record, somewhere between the garage and their pick-up point, there are five minutes unaccounted for, where they could have been up to anything. katsuki isn’t saying shit, and he especially isn’t fucking thinking about it.

it’s not so bad if it’s a fight, but this kind of thing- covert, observational missions, reliant on stealth and smarts- doesn’t require big flashy quirks, just discretion, and todoroki is both extremely recognisable and terrible at subterfuge. bad enough that he’s wearing a ridiculous sports cap like that isn’t disguise 101, but he sticks out like a sore thumb no matter where he is, with the icicle up his ass and the blankness of his expression.

katsuki blames their current predicament entirely on him, as a result. he only got distracted because he was occupied seething over todoroki, so it’s not his fault they lost the target.

(aizawa won’t buy that for ten seconds. katsuki won’t entirely blame him.)

“this is a fucking disaster,” he hisses at todoroki, redirecting his ire at the proper target as they sprint down the street. todoroki, keeping pace easily with his obnoxious long legs, blinks in vague annoyance.

“i’d noticed.”

“yeah? you didn’t notice the target hauling ass earlier, so i figured i’d point it out this time!”

todoroki at least frowns at that, though he doesn’t go down easily. “you missed him too.”

the problem is that he’s not entirely wrong. they were doing a fine job of tailing their target until the guy stepped back into mob territory and assumed he was golden, which made him sloppier, which made them relax their focus, which made todoroki get distracted, which made katsuki get distracted; by the time they’d noticed the guy high-tailing it out of the area they’d been forced to follow him way deeper into mob territory than they’d intended to go just to catch up. now the guy’s in their sights again, but they’re in the part of town where people shoot first and with enthusiasm, teenagers be damned.

because ua is fucking insane, they don’t even have their quirks on hand. “this is an observation mission,” aizawa had said, monotone, during explanations. “do your job correctly and no fighting will arise.” which is all well and good for the other flops, who got sicced various petty criminals, but he and half ‘n half got an actual mobster, with an actual mob, who have actual guns. all they have to save their skins are shitty disguises, their fighting abilities, and a dumbass emergency help button, which boils down to the first two because katsuki will eat lead before he hits anything called an emergency help button.

“do your observing well and you won’t need to worry about fighting,” aizawa had said, unbothered, upon this concern being raised, and then proceeded to pair him with icyhot, he of the unfounded conspiracy theories and recognisable facial disfigurement.

currently, their potential deaths aren’t pulling his focus; he’s watching their target, who’s finally within reach again at the end of the street, dawdling at a crossing. having tracked him throughout his activities, all they need to do is bug the asshole, but it’s not easy; until now he’s been way too paranoid, and now there are eyes everywhere and they stand out, two teenagers loitering the streets midday.

“motorbike,” todoroki says, abrupt. “isn’t this near where he parks his vehicles?”

it is; katsuki curses himself for being beaten to the chase. todoroki has a point- if they can beat him there and bug his bike, they’re good to go.

“i remember the way,” he says, mentally pulling up the maps they’d studied and overlaying them with the winding streets around them. “c’mon.”

he starts off at a normal pace, breaks into a sprint as soon as they’re out of sight. this way around they won’t cross paths with him, but they’ll have to be fucking fast.

luckily, neither he nor todoroki have issues with speed. they reach the parking lot (grey, grimy, gross) in record time, grinding to a halt at the entrance so they can spot security cameras and enter accordingly.

“less than a minute until he gets here,” katsuki estimates, zipping his bag open to extract the bugging device. “where the fuck is his bike?”

“hm,” todoroki says, which is fucking alarming, so katsuki bolts upright, follows his gaze to-

“oh, you gotta be shitting me.”

two identical bikes, side by side.

they run up to the bikes, katsuki cursing as they go; upon approach they are even more indistinguishable, red and silver and black leather seats. this is a fucking joke. thirty seconds to decide.

he crouches low, stares at every inch of the stupid shitty bikes looking for differences, then stops.

“oh,” todoroki says. katsuki’s head throbs. there is a pride sticker on one of the bikes’ back wheel.

several hours of high-stakes tracking through the seediest criminal underbelly of the city, and this is what their success is coming down to. whether a mob lackey is a fucking gay rights supporter. his life is a sick, sick joke.

“any insight?” he grates out, because he’s pretty sure they’re going to have to guess this, and the thought is making him want to kill himself.

“no,” todoroki says, predictably. “there was nothing on file about his sexual proclivities.”

“fucking superb,” katsuki grits out. he shuts his eyes. they’re down to fifteen, ten seconds, probably. what was on the file? habits, food taste, clothes- karaoke bar attendance.

he slaps the bug under the bike.

“how do you know-”

“call it a fucking hunch,” katsuki snaps, not willing to reveal that the deciding factor here is a love for belting pop tunes. they don’t have the time. “we need to get the fuck out of here.”

he’s only midway to his feet when he catches sight of their target in a corner mirror and dives sideways towards the nearby pillars, todoroki in tow. it’s pointless, though- there’s nowhere to fucking go. the nearest exits on all sides are back the way they came. with some leeway they could have hidden behind a car or some shit but the closest car is at least a few pillars away and the guy will undoubtedly see them running for it. and he has a fucking gun.

his pulse is racing loudly with adrenaline when he turns to todoroki, watching the guy advance out of the corner of his eye, knuckles cracking. “we’re gonna have to fight this fucker.”

“he has a gun,” todoroki says, like an asshole, and katsuki bristles and wants to yell at him but doesn’t because the guy is coming closer and he’s going to have to launch himself at him and assume his reflexes aren’t as good as his, but then todoroki gets this weird glint in his eye like maybe he’s going to try and get there first, and-

todoroki shoves him up against a pillar, and for a moment katsuki thinks he’s as fucking stupid as he acts sometimes, that he somehow thinks they’re out of sight just because they’re in shadow, but before he can strangle him todoroki’s face is far too close for comfort and then not far at all, and katsuki is too shocked to even move.

todoroki lays one on him mid-mission seconds away from some dipshit mobster, and it’s-

he thinks his brain breaks, or something. todoroki is kissing him and it’s- it’s a plan, he understands, it’s the worst fucking plan in the world, but it’s too late to change tracks now so fuck it, right. he grabs todoroki by the neck and drags him in close enough that todoroki makes a startled sound and stumbles, then gives as good as he got.

he knows they both hear the guy come to a halt like a foot away from them because they double down on the whole ridiculous PDA schtick, and for what it’s worth he thinks they do a stellar fucking job, because for like ten good seconds even he forgets they’re actually there on a mission and his primary goal here isn’t to swallow todoroki’s tongue or whatever. (also, the tongue. very convincing. good initiative, whoever did that.)

the guy clears his throat and they fall apart, with impeccable and frankly unexpected acting skills, flushed and breathless, katsuki scowling automatically. their target raises his hands slowly like he thinks katsuki’s pissed at being interrupted instead of- uh, whatever he’s actually pissed at.

to cover his bases he barks a “what?” that’s only slightly off, and the guy (of all things) smiles, all condescendingly amused.

“you realise there are better places for this sort of thing, kid?”

“we don’t want any trouble,” todoroki offers, dutifully, begrudingly, like some rich kid off gallivanting with ruffians for a kick. credit where it’s due, it’s very effective: katsuki wants to punch him in the mouth.

“yeah, i’m sure,” their target snorts. “just make sure you don’t get caught by someone who cares.”

“whatever,” katsuki grumbles, defensive, and the guy chuckles and shakes his head, gets on his bike.

they watch him go, none the wiser to the device stuck soundly to the underside of his bike. katsuki is struck with the uncharacteristic urge to sag against the pillar.

he doesn’t, of course. instead they wait for him to vanish from sight, then wait some more just to be sure he’s not circling back. then katsuki grabs todoroki by the strings of his dumbass borrowed hoodie and yanks him after him through the nearest back-door, down two alleys and into a residential block’s lobby, where he releases him only long enough to kick him in the stomach.

“ow,” todoroki says, reproachfully, pushing off the wall he smacked into.

“what the hell is wrong with you?” katsuki demands, feeling his palms crackle ominously. which shouldn’t even be possible, because they’re on quirk blockers for the mission- normally he’d take a moment to preen at his badass innate powers, except the only reason it’s even happening is because he’s that incensed by todoroki, so he can’t even bask in it. he wants very badly to slam todoroki’s dumb pretty head through the lobby mirror.

“it was a strategic move,” todoroki shrugs, at least not playing dumb. he adds, pointedly: “i had a hunch.”

“you couldn’t have come up with an alternative?” katsuki snaps, still furious and not particularly willing to listen to reason. so it worked, whatever, his outrage is the moral kind. “you could just have punched me or pretended to be buying drugs or some shit!”

“like i said, hunch. based on yours, actually.”

“where did you even get the idea for this shit?” katsuki demands, now doubly outraged because todoroki had the nerve to co-opt his good instincts and pervert them. “some shitty k-drama or something?”

todoroki blinks, then looks away.

“are you joking-”

“well, it worked, didn’t it?” todoroki interjects, mildly frustrated now, like katsuki is the one being unreasonable when his asshole partner laid one on him because of some shit he saw on netflix. “he wasn’t suspicious and we completed the mission. and neither of us is even injured.”

which is all well and good, but katsuki is aggrieved, goddamnit, he has the right to nuture his grievances here. so he grits his teeth and racks his brains and settles on: “and you couldn’t have fucking warned me before you planted one on me?”

for a single moment, todoroki pauses, looks actually uncertain, worrying at his lip (the same lip that may or may not be split from earlier, katsuki isn’t paying attention) like he might actually concede the point. then his expression settles into well-maintained neutrality. “if i had warned you you wouldn’t have let me do it.”

“hah? says who? i’m a professional, asshole!” katsuki snaps back, and half expects todoroki to say some dumb shit like actually we’re both in high school so he can justifiably beat him up, except todoroki assumes a long-suffering explanation and then pushes off the wall, obstinate glint in his eyes.

he walks forwards, then forwards, then forwards some more, and then he’s well past close enough and katsuki only reigns in the instinctive urge to punch him through the ceiling because he suspects that is the point the bastard is trying to make. todoroki keeps going, though, leans in too, so that in the end they’re so close katsuki is sure he’s about to get slammed in the forehead by todoroki’s dumbass baseball cap, and his fingers are twitching murderously by his sides.

“bakugou,” todoroki says, after a beat, like maybe he’d forgotten how exactly they got up close and personal. his gaze is all impenetrable. “i’m going to kiss you now.”

somehow, this is fucking worse than the first time around. it’s really possible that he’s having some kind of minor heart attack, katsuki thinks distantly. he’s sweating enough to power a small nuke and he feels weirdly frozen, some kind of adrenaline rush in his chest. it’s fight or flight, most likely; who wouldn’t want to punch boy wonder when he’s two inches away from your face?

aloud, he grits out: “then fucking get on with it already.”

he’s made his point, obviously, displayed his stellar self-control. except for one inexplicable, endless moment, neither of them fucking move. he just stands there and has the horrible thought that gravity is dragging todoroki slowly towards him, and in another five seconds they’ll be touching, and he really should be moving sometime soon. todoroki is close, and katsuki is watching his mouth, because he can feel him breathe, winter cool even though it’s late spring, and ain’t that fucking fascinating?

on record, this is how their mission went: they tailed their target like fucking professionals, came up with the idea of bugging his means of transport for durability, staged a drug deal when time became an issue, then got the fuck out of there just in time for their ride to ua to show up.

on record but not really, katsuki mutinously admits that the drug thing was more of a frisk, and aizawa promptly shuts him up and offers not to mention the lying so long as they keep lying about it forever and never make him hear about it again.

off record, somewhere between the garage and their pick-up point, there are five minutes unaccounted for, where they could have been up to anything. katsuki isn’t saying shit, and he especially isn’t fucking thinking about it.