Archive of Our Own ^beta

“ Q? Just calling in to say that 007 and 003 have been extracted are slated to return at nineteen hundred hours as scheduled. ” 

“Thank you, Asui. I’ll be down before then.” Shouto clicks the button on his desk phone and takes a sip of his tea as his work phone chimes on his desk.

Calendar Event: (now) Take tylenol.

As if I need a reminder for when those two are scheduled to come back from the field , Shouto thinks fondly, opening the drawer of his desk to reach for his well-loved pill bottle.

Shouto is downstairs and at his worktable in the main office, going over one of Hatsume’s latest ideas on the big monitor. His fingers move rapidly over the keys on his keyboard while his heterochromic eyes flit across the massive screen in front of him. UA is in an almost constant need for new field tech, and as part of Shouto’s role as Quartermaster he has to keep track of all the projects his engineers are working on. Shouto doesn’t even need to turn around when the intelligence services' most problematic double 0’s enter, because everyone in the workroom can hear them from the moment they set foot in the Q sector.

“—you wouldn’t have destroyed your entire fucking back, dumbass.” 

“Well, I didn’t see you about to make that jump!”

“Because it was entirely unnecessary!”

He hears thudding on the table behind him as the agents deposit their gear.  “Evening,” Shouto says placidly, sipping from his mug while the other hand continues to type. He finishes up the line he was working on before glancing over his shoulder. Oh so predictable.

“Would it kill you to return anything in functioning order, Bakugo?” Shouto abandons his tea next to the computer and takes a few steps to the other table.

003’s reputation in the field leads to Shouto getting few equipment returns, and this time is no exception. Shouto’s not even sure how the beretta on the table could’ve acquired its current barrel shape, the spiked steel knuckles have blood on them still, and the loose coin grenades Bakugo tossed carelessly onto the table make the hair on the back of Shouto’s neck stand up.

“They had to dig the comms out of my ear in medical, so you’re not getting that back, just by the way,” Bakugo says as Shouto tenderly sweeps the coin grenades into his palm, reaching under the work table for a padded box. 

Shouto sighs. “You could at least avoid bringing a biohazard to my office.” He eyes the steel knuckles pointedly, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

“ You could at least appreciate all I do for our national fucking security, Q.” Bakugo spits, crossing his arms and turning around to lean back against the table, finished with the conversation.

Shouto’s eyes shift to the other agent. “And what have you done this time?”

“I’m sorry, Q! I know you hate it when the handles get scratched,” 007 turns red as he’s put in the hot seat of the Quartermaster’s attention. “This one really couldn’t be helped, that Australian had a serious grip.”

How Izuku Midoriya ever managed to keep up his persona as one of UA’s most efficient and calculating double-0 agents is still beyond Shouto, considering the fact that he becomes a saccharine, apologetic mess the minute he’s removed from the field. Shouto can hardly associate the man who comes into his office every week sporting a new bandaged appendage with the licensed-to-kill agent he hears over the communicator during a mission, the one who sends the cut and dry text messages to him at four in the morning.

Shouto chooses to roll his eyes in favor of slapping his own forehead.

“Midoriya, I’m talking about you .”

“Oh.” Midoriya’s fingers brush over the gauze wrapping his left hand, and there are more bandages he can see peeking up over under his dirty fieldwork clothes that undoubtedly wrap around his entire torso, supporting this not-so-mysterious back injury Bakugo was just referring to. “Nothing major this time. Just a rib and a few discs out of place!”

“And the hand.” Bakugo grumbles.

“But that was just—” Midoriya hisses.

“And the hyperextended ligaments.”

“It’s not that—“

“And the likely concussion.”

“Katcchan!”

“The two of you are absolutely impossible.” Shouto gratefully gathers the neat stack of weaponry and tech Midoriya has so lovingly repacked into their travel boxes and hands them off to a waiting Hatsume who has appeared at his side. “R, I think 003’s gun is unsalvageable, I’m afraid.”

Hatsume’s eyes begin to water at the sight of the mangled beretta. “That’s not one of my palm-print activated babies, is it?”

“Those are now standard issue for 00’s. Don’t worry, I’m sure you can get over the loss.” Shouto waves the agents out the door, no doubt their next stop is a chewing out from M. Bakugo’s angry mutters chastising his partner’s self-preservation follow them out the door. 

Shouto has paperwork to fill out for Bakugo’s missing items (he forgot to give Hatsume the box of coin grenades, slipping them into his bag to return when he drops by the store room next time), then he finishes going over Hatsume’s project (extremely ambitious and over budget, but very cool nonetheless). He indulges himself in a cat facebook video and actually thinks he might return home before one in the morning.

Shouto is on his way to the parking garage when he encounters Midoriya. “On your way home, 007?”

Midoriya, who was engrossed in his phone, jumps a little as Shouto joins him in the elevator. “Huh? Oh, hello again, Q.” He’s changed out of his dirty, bloody field clothes and taken a shower. Covering the bland smell of UA’s generic soap is Midoriya’s signature cologne. It always follows him and likes to hang in the air of Shouto’s office when he drops by. His emerald hair is also returning to fresh ringlets in the wake of his shower, looking extra bouncy. Shouto catches himself staring and quickly looks away.

“Yes. Well, maybe. It’s sometimes hard to unwind after being on for a while, you know?” He runs his fingers across the fresh bandages on his knuckles absentmindedly, proving his point.

Shouto does know. It’s a feeling he remembers all too well. He glances towards Midoriya’s phone as it lights up in his hand, a hidden message from an unsaved number. “She can probably help.” 

“What? Oh—this, it’s not—that’s not quite, what I’m—” Midoriya struggles as Shouto exits the elevator, tossing him a look over his shoulder.

“Have a good night, 007.” Shouto says breezily, squashing the feelings jumping up his throat deep down into his chest.

Once at home, Shouto feeds the cat and showers. He has more tea and prepares a bowl of soba while he contemplates his career at UA. It’s a line of thinking he finds himself following down every few months or so. He finds himself in a happy rhythm in the Q sector, tucked safely behind his desk and work he understands, that he’s good at. Then Midoriya will come back, smelling like fire and the field with twenty different injuries, leaving Shouto baffled as to how he’s still standing with a smile on his face. Or he’ll find himself on comms with Bakugo or Kirishima, eyes on a screen full of CCTV feeds getting to feel the familiar adrenaline from the security of UA’s basement. His fingers itch for something that’s not his keyboard.

Too bad Enji ruined that for him. Shouto picks at his soba, staring out at the sight of Tokyo glittering with life in the earliest hours of the morning. He if his phone will light up with a message from Midoriya, or if he’s too busy to bother with Shouto another late night .

Across town, Izuku’s fingers that are on the functional hand are twitching over Todoroki’s contact name, but never touching the glass. He’s just one train stop away from Toshinori’s home. It’s just the residual uneasiness from three days straight on the job , he tells himself. His entire back aches when he stands to exit the train car. Stupid Katcchan, always right. Izuku really needs to stop slamming into buildings. He adjusts the cap he put to cover his unmistakable green locks, his jacket to hide the bulk of his bandages heavy in one pocket with his gun.

Four turns and a few dark alleys later, Izuku presses the morse code pattern into the worn out buzzer. The button works so poorly Izuku makes a spelling mistake every other visit these days, but he’s almost certain that he’s Toshinori’s only visitor with a long code word, so it can’t matter that much. Even so, when the first time doesn’t grant him an opening lock on the complex’s door, his guard is immediately up. Yes, it’s nearing three AM at this point, but Izuku’s buzzed enough buzzes to wake even the heaviest sleeper from their bed. Izuku punches the code a second time to no response, and decides to switch tactics.

“I’m sorry to wake you so late, obaasan. I’m just worried about him.”

“It’s alright, darling, I can never complain seeing a young man like you caring about his grandfather so much.” The downstairs neighbor who often sends Izuku home with pork floss buns lets him in, and insists on accompanying him upstairs even though every one of Izuku’s job-fried nerves are lit up like a neon sign. “Have you heard from him at all? I don’t think he’s been out, but I heard someone walking around up here earlier…”

Izuku stalls knocking on the door. “No one else came by today?”

“No, no one.” The older woman wraps her noragi around her a little tighter. “Is it serious? Should we call someone?”

Izuku can find it deep in himself to think it humorous how average people think to call the police, while a UA agent with one of the reddest ledgers stands in front of them. “No, don’t worry about that.”

Izuku distracts her by assuring her she can go back to her apartment so she doesn’t see him pick the lock instead of using a key. She shuffles back downstairs and Izuku lets the door creak open to the apartment. All is dark. He glances down the hallway on either side one last time before stepping in and closing the door behind him, pulling his gun from inside his jacket. 

He slows his breathing down, letting every hum and creak of the apartment fill his ears. Izuku flicks the light next to the entryway, the yellow glow replacing the weak moon beams that had previously lit the living room. Only the muffled sounds of Ms. Sato on the floor below can be heard. Nothing immediately looks amiss, but Izuku cautiously makes his way to the bedroom.

Toshinori is not home. Izuku’s brain starts to assess every surface. Bathroom and bedroom in normal state of disorder— no signs of struggle or breakaway at any of the windows or doorways. He rifles through the medicine cabinet and closet. No duffle bag and missing toothbrush. 

So he left, then.

Izuku returns the gun to his jacket and tears the sheets back from the bed and upturns the cushions in the den, turning up nothing but a few coins and dry ramen crumbs. He’s about to take a seat and do some deep thinking when the lightbulb comes on in his head.

Back in the bedroom, Izuku strides to the bedside table and grabs the top book on the stack: the first notebook in a series that Izuku has thumbed through a million times. Izuku lets the book fall open in his hands, and sure as shit, an envelope is tucked into the middle of the crease. Just behind the stack is an unlabeled flash drive that is in a tacky American stars-and-stripes pattern. Izuku pockets the drive and rips open the seam on the envelope, taking a seat on the bed. He’s just unfolded the paper and started to read when the silence envelops him again when footsteps are heard in the hall that are much heavier than Ms. Sato’s house slippers. 

The front door unlocks again aggressively as the lock is picked again. It’s too late to turn off the lights and Izuku has already ripped through the apartment, and he considers the window just behind him for a quarter of a second before deciding against it. He swaps the letter in his hands in favor of his gun again and closes the bedroom door slightly, moving to wait behind it in a few quiet steps.

Izuku easily takes down the first intruder by slamming the corner of his gun handle into his temple. The second doesn’t even notice his partner has gone down, since Izuku grabs the first man by the collar and lowers him to the ground almost silently. When Izuku comes around the corner, firearm raised, he finally has the sense something is amiss. Even though Izuku has the draw on him, he decides against firing a bullet. He has no suppressant and the element of surprise is already on his side. The second man lunges at him and Izuku side steps, swiping a leg out to catch him off guard. He’s a little faster than Izuku expected, and the bandages around covering his body make his movements a little stiffer than usual. The man catches Izuku’s jacket and makes a reach for his gun, but a swift knee jab in the right spot sends the man crumpling into Izuku’s chest. Izuku fists the man’s jacket collar into both his hands and slams him forehead-first onto the edge of the counter, then throws him back onto the disheveled couch cushions. Blood is trickling down the side of his head, but Izuku can’t find it in himself to care.

He investigates the man he left in the bedroom first. He rifles through his pockets and takes the magazine from his gun. The second man is almost as bare, but has a burner cell phone in his jacket and a very nice knife in his belt Izuku thinks Ochako might like to add to her collection. Other than that, both are very bare of identification and other clues, so he snaps a photo of both their faces, swipes a box of pocky from Toshinori’s cabinet, and takes his leave, being sure to lock the door behind him.

Ms. Sato pokes her head out of her door when he comes down the stairs again. “Was Toshinori all right, dear? That was quick! I heard some thumping.”

“Just fine, obaasan. A little disgruntled I woke him up, but that’s what he gets for ignoring my calls all day,” Izuku jokes. He pulls the burner phone from his pocket, opening up the messaging feature. “Oh, and you might want to change these locks before tomorrow,” he adds as he leaves.

Izuku walks back to the train station, the cheap orange glow of the stolen phone illuminating his face. He hums to himself before slipping his own phone out of his pocket, scarred fingers opening up a conversation with Todoroki with sureness this time.

Shouto awakes after a short stint of sleep, arriving at UA in the rush of other normal morning commuters. On the train, Shouto drums his fingers against his computer bag anxiously, for a couple of reasons. One is a stranger is staring at him from across the car, but that’s not entirely unusual given the nature of Shouto’s hair. The other is that last night his wish for a text from Midoriya had come true. 

Unfortunately, it was not the mundane late night message Shouto often finds himself fantasizing about. He really needs to start re-evaluating his manifestation specifics. Or hope for something normal, like a pay raise.

His phone dings with an Outlook notification as he walks in the building that makes him sigh. An M summons is the last thing he wants to have to deal with this morning.

Shouto makes his way to the glassy, inner sanctum of UA, wading through the desks of all the caseworkers to get to M’s office that overlooks the room. M—Aizawa, but Shouto was sure that he was one of maybe three people in all of UA who knew his real name, and so never referred to him as anything but his codename—sits behind the desk, long dark hair about his face and looking tired as ever. Not that anyone ever saw much evidence of M outside the agency, if ever, but Shouto would bet several thousand yen that he ate, slept, and lived in this office.

“Morning, Q. Thank you for coming.” M unsuccessfully bites back a yawn, sipping from a cup of black coffee and shaking a blue pill seemingly from his sleeve. “Please sit down, it’ll just be a moment.”

Shouto perches on the edge of one of the leather chairs, setting his bag on the ground and adjusting his cardigan while M swallows the pill with a drag of coffee. M is a man of his word, and if he says their meeting will be brief, Shouto is inclined to believe him.

“How’s R’s project coming?”

“Slated to start sometime today.” Shouto saw that M had approved his Deputy Quartermaster’s new idea overnight, the email waiting in his inbox timestamped for 4:45 that morning. More proof to Shouto that he never stopped working.

“Excellent.” M steeples his fingers together, glancing at his computer screen. “Before you hear this from anyone else, I wanted to tell you I’m putting 003 on the Endeavor case.”

Shouto’s breath feels knocked from his lungs. He can’t even begin to form a response, let alone a coherent thought.

M has clearly expected this response and seems unphased. “I’m making Yayurozou his contact. You won’t have to be involved in the mission whatsoever. Both for integrity’s sake… and your own.”

Shouto pushes himself fully into the chair, letting the leather support him as he processes. He knew that UA had been compiling intelligence on his father. Shit, he’d helped collect most of it in some way or another, but the day they would finally put together a mission for him seemed so far away. And now Enji was finally going to be dealt his last hand, and Shouto wouldn’t even have to be there for the round. 

Mixed feelings were a light way to put it.

“Is 007 going, too?” He finds himself saying, out of the hundreds of combinations of words from what’s in his mind.

“No. In fact, one of the reasons I’m keeping you off the Endeavor case is that I need you to keep an eye on Midoriya for me. You... know how he gets sometimes.” M sounds tired when he says it.

Reckless. Obsessive. Narrow minded and dangerous to himself. Shouto does know, and his phone with a certain text message on it is starting to burn a hole in the leg of his slacks. 

“Why me?” Shouto plays dumb.

M leans back in his chair, looking to his monitor again and clicking with his mouse. “Did you lock your office, Q?”

Shouto’s brow furrows. “Of course? I always do.”

“Well, someone’s using your computer to look through some classified files as we speak, and I have a pretty good hunch as to who it is.”

“Shit,” Shouto breathes out, pulling himself out of the depths of the chair and reaching down for his bag.

“I know he has trust in you, Q,” M says seriously. “Don’t break it. But I can’t have him out of control again.”

Shouto pauses with his hand on the door. “I know.” He squeezes his eyes closed for a second, reveling in the color change from red to white to black behind his eyelids. Foolhardy Midoriya. M doesn’t say anything else, so Shouto hustles from the room and closes the door behind him, headed to the elevators.

He finds Midoriya seated behind Shouto’s desk, tailored suit jacket thrown over the back of the chair while it’s owner leans his elbow casually on the desk. “You really ought to get a harder password to crack, Q,” Midoriya says, typing away at who-knows-what, clicking around documents Q himself probably barely has access to. His cologne has already filled up the room as usual, sinking into the carpet and upholstery fibers to haunt Shouto later.

Shouto lets the lock click behind him and Midorya finally glances up at him. He’s got a lighter bandage stretching across his knuckles today, and the top two buttons of his unnecessarily tight dress shirt are showing just enough skin to betray he’s ditched the body wraps. Shouto sort of wishes he could see more. “Interesting reading?” Shouto asks instead of demanding to know how Midoriya could crack his UA-security-approved computer password.

“What do you know about Toshinori Yagi?” Midoriya returns.

Shouto is shocked again for the second time this morning. He thinks back to his and Midoriya’s texts last night:

007: Will you come back to UA?

Q: Absolutely not. You should be sleeping, too, you know.

007: Have something I need you to look at in the morning. Maybe some facial analysis as well.

Q: Is this for your paperwork for the Osaka job?

007: Nope.

And that was where he left it. Shouto had not expected Toshinori Yagi to be the subject of Midorya’s investigations. “He was the previous 007 before you, removed from active field duty due to injury. Why?” Shouto abandons his bag in one of the chairs in front of his desk, joining the agent behind the computer. He’s pulled up all of the sealed documents on Toshinori, about 5 different windows open across the dual monitors. Shouto doesn’t miss the downloading bar in the bottom corner, but chooses to keep his mouth shut and leans against the desk, leg almost brushing Midoriya’s.

“He’s missing. Gone from his apartment last night.” Midoriya reaches around and pulls an envelope labeled with his given name from the inner pocket of his suit jacket, holding it out to Shouto. “I’ve been seeing him on a pretty regular basis. It’s how I’ve been getting outside information on the League. He had connections with Shimura Nana.”

Shouto can’t stop his eyes from bulging out of his head. “Shimura? Midoriya, Toshinori was under some of our most thorough retirement protection. He shouldn’t have been dabbling in League intel, first of all. How did you find and meet with him on a regular basis without UA noticing?” He takes the envelope from Midoriya, running a finger over the torn top.

“From one double 0 to another, it wasn’t that hard to work out, Q.” Midoriya teases. 

“Fine, then, how the fuck did he go missing without UA noticing?” Shouto turns to the monitors, brushing Midoriya’s hands away from the keyboard and mouse, stepping into his space. He misses the titillated up and down look the agent gives him at his sudden intensity. Shouto’s fingers fly across the keys, the envelope abandoned on the desk.

Midoriya reaches between Shouto’s arms, re-inserting himself into the space between Shouto and the screen. “That’s what I was just looking for. There’s nothing. There hasn’t been a single documented report on Toshinori in almost eight months.” 

Shouto’s hands still. He didn’t have to look very hard to see that all the tabs Midoriya has already opened are all the ones left in the file. Had there been others, deleted? By who? When? Why? Midoriya’s face, freckled from time in the sun and field, is very close to Shouto’s. The agent reaches out a scarred hand to push back gently on Shouto’s chest. “I need your help finding him, Q.”

In front of him is not Izuku Midoriya. With his earnest eyes and leaning into Shouto’s space, close enough to taste the mint on his breath and feel the weight of his hand over Shouto’s heart. This is the 007 that manages to seduce his way into and out of situations on the job so effortlessly. Of course the only word out of Shouto’s mouth is—

“Okay.”

Midoriya has them out of UA and into an agency car in under twenty minutes. Shouto’s entirely sure that this was not what M had in mind in the slightest when he told Shouto to prevent Midoriya’s reckless behavior, but at least he can say he isn’t unsupervised. Shouto has his laptop open resting on his legs, typing away, avoiding looking at Midoriya’s hand wrapped around the shift knob. 

“The burner is basically empty,” Shouto reports, plugging the stolen phone into the cord coming from the computer. “The numbers in the history are probably also throwaways, so the best I can get you is a cell tower trace… hm, looks like it’s just in the city,” Shouto decides as the dots pop up on the map.

Midoriya shrugs, reaching over to pull a pair of sunglasses from the glovebox. “Run the facials. If there’s nothing on the phone then maybe they’re nobodys.”

Shouto unplugs the cheap phone and swaps it for Midoriya’s sleek work phone. “You are aware this is nearly pointless if they’re dead, don’t you?”

“They’re not!” Midoriya insists. “Well, at least that’s not how I left them.”

Shouto looks over the paper letter while he lets the program run. “Shit,” he mutters, eyes flying over the page.

“And I haven’t even gotten into this yet,” Midoriya produces the American-themed flash drive from inside his suit jacket. 

Shouto takes the piece of plastic and turns it over in his hands. “Classic.”

Midoriya glances out of the corner of his eye to the passenger seat. “I shared about how I know Toshinori. What about you?”

After a brief internal conflict that is shortened mostly in part to Midoriya’s intense jade stare while they wait at a red light, he remembers what M said about trust and decides he can come clean.  “I knew him when he was still working.”

Midoriya frowns. “But I’d been 007 for a year before you replaced the old Q.”

“I had a recovery period before they let me back at UA, and then the Q position was about to become available.” 

“Recovery from what?”

Shouto points to the scar on his left eye. “I used to be 005 before Uraraka. Couldn’t pass the physical after this.”

Now it’s Midoriya’s turn to look shocked. “You were a double 0?”

“Not for very long, I was only about six months in when the eye thing happened. But you know, double 0’s aren’t really known for career longevity.” 

“I do,” Midoriya replies without any bite.

Shouto shifts in his seat, the facial recognition results finally loading on the computer. “Hard to imagine me in the field?”

“No! No not at all, I…” Midoriya falters. “I just find it hard to see you as anyone else besides Q. That is, you’re so good at your job, it’s like you seem like you’ve been doing a lot longer than you have actually. Not to say you’re old. or old-seeming! Or anything, just that you have, erm, the experience?”

Ah. Shouto was wondering when the chattery Midoriya he loved so much would make his appearance. “You’ve got a green,” Shouto just points out, gesturing forwards.

Midoriya steps on the gas pedal a little abruptly. “Not that I don’t think you’d be a good double 0, Todoroki.” Shouto stiffens at that involuntarily. “Can I call you that?” Shouto watches Midoriya grip and loosen his hands on the steering wheel repeatedly, the only thing that’s betraying his nerves at bringing this up.

God, please do . Shouto wills his heart to be still. “After you hacked my computer I can’t say I’m not surprised you didn’t come across my name.”

“And I’m not surprised it’s such a secret.”

That just reminds Shouto of the other half of his conversation with M just hours ago, which he is actively trying to put out of his mind so he can focus on the task at hand. “Just don’t go around telling everyone,” he says. “Now, do you want to hear about these men you assure me are still breathing and our interesting cell tower ping pattern?”

One of the men is a nobody, perhaps a new member or just some outsourced muscle. The other is Hanzo Suiden, who does appear to have League connections. Cell tower pings, while notoriously useless when it comes to exact location, can still create an area that is less than a mile wide when in a place as dense as the city of which the caller could be located. Coupled with some of Midoriya’s sense for the abandoned and unsavory, they begin their search. Before they move into the quadrant Shouto had laid out on the map, Midoriya pulls up outside a bland and broken down looking apartment complex and tells Shouto it’ll just be a moment.

Shouto ignores the pinging sounds his computer is making as emails (no doubt from Hatsume asking where the fuck he is) fill his inbox in favor of ogling at Midoriya’s figure as he crosses the street. Jesus, his ass looks good in those dress pants.

Midoriya disappears around the side of the building and appears a few moments later, beckoning Shouto to join him in the alleyway. He snaps his laptop shut and returns it to his bag, getting out of the parked car and swiftly crossing the street. 

“This is Toshinori’s apartment,” Midoroya explains once he reaches him. “I was worried overnight about the landlady but I took a look in her window and she seems fine.” He confidently strides toward the dumpster, slamming the lid closed so he can jump on top of it. With Midoriya’s height, he can just reach the sill of the second-floor window. He shakes his lockpicks from their spot in his sleeve, prising the wood apart.

“If the landlady is fine can’t she just buzz us in?” Shouto asks from below.

“I already had to have her let me in last night,” Midoriya grunts, finally breaking the lock of the window, pushing it open. “Besides, she’s only ever seen me in plain clothes, and I feel like the work uniform is a little conspicuous for a visit to my ‘grandfather’.”

Midoriya lifts himself into the open window silently as if he weighs nothing, and Shouto scrambles up on top of the dumpster after him. He’s not as tall, and Midoriya offers him a hand to pull him up and inside the apartment.

The window opens up into the living room, which is an absolute mess. “Did you leave it like this?” Shouto asks. Midoriya just shakes his head.

Midoriya stands in the ruined apartment with his arms crossed while Shouto picks around. Cabinets are thrown open, the lights still on, and even a couch cushion is ripped open. “Why would they bother if you’d already taken what Toshinori left you?”

“And why did they leave obaasan alone?” Midoriya muses with him. He disappears into the bedroom, and Shouto examines the dried blood on the edge of the counter. He’s halfway to wondering if a blood sample could be of any use to UA from anyone with a League connection when Midoriya calls from the other room. “Q?”

Midoriya is standing in a mess of torn papers, a nondescript looking notebook in one hand but looking out the bedroom window which faces the street. Shouto follows his line of sight, where a man in a hoodie is loitering on the street. “I think we have a tail already.”

“Wait,” Shouto narrows his eyes, creeping towards the window but careful to stay out of sight. Like he told Midoriya earlier, his sight isn’t what it used to be, but with his glasses on and the magic of anxiety, Shouto doesn’t have to be close to be sure. “I think he was on my train this morning.”

“Did he follow you to UA?” Midoriya comes to stand behind Shouto, watching as the man investigates the tinted windows of their parked car.

“No idea. He was staring at me, but I didn’t notice what stop he got off at.” Shouto turns to look at Midoriya over his shoulder to see what he thinks.

Midoriya’s gaze flicks from the man to Shouto. “No wonder there.” He turns to leave the bedroom, leaving Shouto to think about that. “I’d say it’s time to go.”

Midoriya leads them out of the apartment through the door in the hall and down to the main level where there’s a door out the back. The car is obviously out of the question at the moment, and Midoriya makes some sort of quick decision about where they should go next, grabbing Shouto by the hand to make sure he keeps up. “Why would you come back here if there was a chance they’d be staking the building?” Shouto questions, avoiding thinking too much into the feel of Midoriya’s hand wrapped around his wrist.

“I figured if I’d never get any pork buns from Sato-san again, then I’d have two problems on my hands.” They walk in a line away from the apartment until they reach a construction site and Midoriya takes them through an opening in the chain-link fence, the two of them crunching across the gravel of the empty site to the concrete skeleton of the building. “Some high ground would be nice. Let’s see if he follows.”

A few flights up in an unfinished stairwell, Shouto rests on a step while Midoriya keeps a watchful eye on the sidewalks past the fencing. The car was left unlocked thanks to Shouto, with Toshinori’s letter out in the open on the floor of the passenger’s side. Careless , he curses himself. M put him in charge of Midoriya and here he’s acting like a fresh UA agent on his first job. There were probably more reasons besides his ruined eye that he’d been removed from the field. At least the flash drive and whatever notebook Midoriya grabbed from the apartment are with them.

“What is that?” Shouto nods at the book in the agent’s hands.

Midoriya turns from looking out at the street and runs his thumb across the cover of the book thoughtfully. “Toshinori compiled notes during his time as 007, about the League and who he thought was ultimately behind it. He wanted me to effectively continue what he started when I took over, so we would meet every so often to share information. He basically mentored me when I transitioned to being a double 0.”

Shouto thought back to the papers littering the bedroom floor of the apartment. “I guess Hanzo and whoever else was there last night destroyed the rest of the notebooks.”

“It seemed like it, but it’s not a loss. All of that information I’d already passed on to M over time, all the details are safely in the UA files.” Midoriya sighs. “I just grabbed this one because I felt… sentimental.”

Shouto let them lapse into silence. Shouto had never gotten to work with Toshinori in his time at 005, but he’d seen him in passing in the office as much as any of the other agents. Most double 0’s hardly interacted outside the sector. It seemed as though Midoriya knew Toshinori much more closely than he was letting on, and Shouto wondered about the extent of their relationship. Was it just a meeting to exchange information? Or had the mentoring he had mentioned been more in depth?

After a few minutes of tense waiting, Midoriya hums, sliding off the ledge he was sitting on. “Looks like our friend is bringing some company.”

Shouto gets up and peeks over the edge of the concrete. The man in the hoodie from before is making his way down the street, but he’s followed by three other men, all with the same hungry look in their eyes as they make their way towards the construction site. Shouto ducks away before he can be spotted. “Well?” 

Midoriya has already pulled his handgun from it’s holster on his chest and is checking the rounds. “Do you have a gun?”

“No,” Shouto admits, a little sheepish.

“No?” Midoriya echos.

“When you get pulled from the field for medical reasons, you lose a lot of weaponry privileges, don’t you know?”

“Q! You work for UA, and they won’t let you have a gun? What are you supposed to use to defend yourself?” Midoriya looks halfway to madness.

Shouto feels his face flame. “I have pepper spray.”

Midoriya looks unconsolable. “Holy shit am I going to have a word with M when we get back.” 

He shoves the notebook into Shouto’s useless hands. Down on the floors below, the men have begun shouting unintelligibly. There are footsteps on the stairs, echoing up and around.

“Quartermaster, doesn’t even have a gun,” Midoriya is muttering, leaning down into the central space of the stairwell. “Please stay behind me then, for God’s sake.”

Shouto can hear the footsteps clearer now, and finally hears one of them yell. “There!”

“Hi!” Midoriya shouts, aims his gun down a flight, and fires. 

The gunshot echoes ear splittingly in the tight stairwell, and Shouto cowers in the corner as a bullet misses Midoriya by what must be inches and ricochets off the stairs above.

“Out onto the floor,” Midoriya pulls Shouto behind him as he walks up the stairs backwards, gun at the ready. “I’ll need some clearer shots.”

Shouto doesn’t have to be told twice to turn around and run out of the stairwells and into the open building. The bare concrete is littered with plastic, metal beams for the upper floors, and trash. Unfortunately, some of the only cover besides a few piles of beams is the concrete support columns of the building, the rest of the area totally empty and the open walls leading straight out to a freefall from the fifth floor. Shouto dives behind the stack of metal while Midoriya stands to take aim.

He does feel a little dumb cowering while Midoriya is firing off shots, but all the same he’s not sure he has the same instincts he once did in the field. Shouto shoves the notebook into his bag he’s still got over his shoulder, when he notices movement in the far corner of the floor they’re on. “Oh, shit.”

Apparently there were more than the four guys in the stairwell. This is a woman, young by the looks of it, who scaled the outer beams of the building and was hoping to silently slip up the other side unnoticed. Her eyes meet Shouto’s and a scowl crosses her face as she realizes her element of surprise has been ruined.

Midoriya slides behind the stack with Shouto, not taking his eyes off the doorway. “I got one in the shoulder and the other in the chest,” he mutters, yanking the empty magazine from his gun and discarding it on the floor before reaching under his pants leg where he has another strapped around his ankle under his sock. 

“Yeah, and now we have another problem.” Shouto tugs on his jacket cuff and points at the girl who’s making her way towards them. She doesn’t have a gun; just an incredibly sharp looking knife in each hand and a hungry glint in her eye.

“Shit.” Midoriya’s reaction is the same as Shouto’s was seconds ago. While they were both distracted one of the guys from the stairwell slipped out from behind the wall and started firing again, bullets pinging off the metal in front of them. “Alright, this one-gun thing is becoming really not okay very fast!” Midoriya aims at the girl and fires, but she anticipates and leaps behind one of the support columns just in time.

While their attention is on the girl, neither noticed how close the second guy from the stairwell had gotten until it’s too late. Shouto chokes as his shirt cuts into his windpipe as he’s dragged by the collar up and over the pile of beams, the raw edges scraping across his back before he’s slammed down on the concrete on the other side.

“Q!”

Shouto gasps for breath as he’s kicked in the stomach. He curls on his side, feeling ready to puke. He prepares to brace for another kick, but instead there’s a gunshot and a body falls beside him. It’s one of the two men left, dark blood already pooling on the concrete from his mouth and a bullet wound at his temple. Shouto quickly rolls to the other side, both to alleviate the pain in his stomach and avoid the gruesome scene. In his peripheral senses, he hears a metallic clatter that must be Midoriya’s gun falling to the ground. 

Shouto lifts his head and tries to scramble upright, just in time to watch Midoriya take a nasty punch straight to the jaw from the last man standing. Knife girl kicks Midoriya’s gun away from where it is near the men’s scrabbling feet. The guy must have clocked Midoriya pretty hard, because he doesn’t recover in time to fight back as he’s thrown down on the floor beside Shouto.

His eyes squeeze shut from the pain, one hand fisting in his hair and his back arching up off the ground. He doesn’t groan or cry out, but his actions are enough that Shouto remembers his muscular trauma and concussion that are still fresh from his last mission.

“Now, let’s stop the fighting for a second and have a quick chat.” Knife girl’s voice is surprisingly high pitched, and she slides one of her blades into the leather strap on her leg and picks up Midoriya’s gun off the ground and points it at them. Shouto breathes a sigh of relief internally knowing it won’t fire for her.

“You kick that bag over this way nice and slow, half-and-half,” the guy says. Shouto can finally see him now, blonde hair and an angular face, the first guy wearing a hoodie from earlier. Shouto reaches his arm out to his side ever so slowly to grab his computer bag.

“There you go,” the guy says as he kicks it into his waiting hand. “See, Toga? I knew it was in there.” He pulls Shouto’s laptop from the bag. “Hanzo and Victor couldn’t be trusted to find beer in a liquor store.” He turns the bag upside down and its contents spill onto the floor— Shouto’s work keycard, keys, and old receipts, but among the junk is the flash drive and Toshinori’s notebook, and a suspicious amount of loose change.

“Those reliable UA agents,” the guy continues. “If anyone could dig up Toshinori’s laptop it would be some of you.”

“Goto, are you finished?” Knife girl—Toga—whines, adjusting her grip on her knife, ready to stab. “There isn’t near enough blood for my taste! And besides, I’m pretty sure that’s Izuku Midoriya !”

Goto and Toga are both looking at Midoriya, and Shouto takes the opportunity to disguise his wiggling foot as just shifting his body a little. He feels the flash drive solid under his shoe, and doesn’t dare glance over to see if Midoriya has picked up on it, just trusting he has.

“Glad to hear I’m still popular,” Midoriya says. “Unfortunately, me and my colleague do have other business to attend to.” His shift in his body in a move to get up is all that’s needed to send everyone into action.

“I’m not done with you yet! ” Toga screeches, throwing the useless gun to the side in favor of throwing her knife.

In the same moment, Shouto folds forward to slide the flash drive to one hand and reach out with the other, while Midoriya grabs the coin nearest to him and chucks it hard onto the ground between the two parties. Shouto has the detonation time memorized, and curls into a ball at the last second.

3, 2, 1.

Shouto is thrown back almost all the way to the stairwell as the first coin grenade sets off it’s neighbors, causing a chain reaction. The blast created by one is small but powerful, but a whole handful creates an explosion much bigger than would be considered safe for such close use. Shouto is temporarily deafened, and half expects his hands to come away slick with blood when he pulls them away from his ears. Luckily, Midoriya has better anticipated the effects and is at his side in a second, scooping him up off the floor and into a run alongside him.

Midoriya is fiddling with his watch as they sprint towards the edge of the building. As they get closer, he pulls Shouto to his side. “Get ready to grab on!” His voice sounds cotton-y, like in a dream, but Shouto would trust Midoriya anywhere. A wire with a smartspike flies out of Midoriya’s watch and embeds into the concrete support at the corner of the building, and Midoriya steers Shouto to run with him off the edge.

“Oh fuck,” Shouto swears, no idea how loudly, as Midoriya pulls him into his chest and wraps a leg around him for extra protection as they go off the side. Shouto loops his arms around Midoriya’s neck so the latter can keep his hands free to grip the cable. The centrifugal force increases as they fall, feeling like the worst rollercoaster Shouto’s ever been on. Midoriya’s leg unwraps from Shouto as he tries to hit the ground running, but not quite since Shouto’s body is in the way. Midoriya releases the cable, abandoning it in favor of freeing his wrists to steady Shouto and keep them upright as they slow.

Midoriya spares a glance back to the structure before he’s husting Shouto forwards to the nearest break in the fence. “Two blocks,” he says.

After they reach Midoriya’s determined safe range, they slow to a walk to blend in with the crowds on the streets. Shouto’s ears are now at a dull but constant ring, and Midoriya’s once-immaculate black suit is covered in construction dust that he’s busying himself dusting off. Shouto’s sure he looks far worse, already having lost his glasses and finding at least two burn holes in his cardigan. “Well,” Midoriya begins. “That was quite productive!”

“You’d describe that as productive?”

“Oh, sure!” He says cherrily. “Loads of good stuff. I seem to have lost my phone though.” He pats at his pockets. “You have the drive?”

Shouto nods, un-balling his fist, revealing it in his palm. “And this—” He pulls the notebook from under his arm and cardigan.

Midoriya’s eyes go wide as Shouto offers him the two items. “Thank you, Todoroki!”

Shouto’s not sure if his knees are weak from the adrenaline leaving his body or the sound of his name leaving Midoriya’s mouth. 

Now in great spirits, Midoriya flicks his sleeve back to check the time on his watch. “Down for a sando? I’m starving now, I skipped breakfast this morning.”

“L-lunch?” Now it’s Shouto’s turn to stutter. “Midoriya, you just killed five people.”

“Only three, those last two were definitely a joint effort,” Midoriya corrects. “Also, you learn to have an iron stomach in the field with Katcchan. He’ll get ikayaki five minutes after he’s gutted a man alive like a fish, and then make fun of you for throwing up after either one."

Shouto certainly feels ready to hurl right now. “Maybe let’s go to a safehouse before we think about food.”

UA has safehouses in plenty of places across the city, and luckily they’re only a fifteen minute walk from one of them, thanks to Midoriya’s navigation skills. The door of what looks like a utilities crawl space behind a conveniently located noodle stand has a locked steel door that opens to them with an eye scan. Midoriya is able to acquire a new phone and set it up again with another eye scan, and they are both able to ditch their dirtiest clothes for a new set. Midoriya has pulled out the hidden desktop from the wall and has plugged in Toshinori’s flash drive when Shouto exits the bathroom, clad in a fresh pair of pants and shirt.

“I’m not sure the suit looks right on me anymore,” Shouto says, pulling at his collar self consciously, examining his reflection in the mirror. Midoriya is quite silent, and Shouto turns to find him staring, hands frozen mid-type over the keyboard. Shouto deflates a little “I’m admitting I’m aware, you could at least be nice about it.”

Midoriya’s mouth forms the shape of several words before anything comes out of it. “... it really looks. Quite okay.”

Shouto turns to look at his reflection again, still dissatisfied. Maybe there’s a sweater in the depths of the closet if he does some more digging, and he can ditch the suit jacket. He’s not a double 0, it’s not like he deserves to wear one anyways.

Midoriya clears his throat and turns back around to the screen as everything loads up. Indeed, Shouto finds a dated looking burnt-orange sweater vest in the bottom of a drawer of plainclothes, and slipping it on over the button down does make him feel better. He turns back to Midoriya whose eyes are glued to the screen.

“You’ve got some blood on your face.” 

“What?” that gets Midoriya to turn.

Shouto grabs his arm and pulls him into the bathroom. It’s tight, but not terribly so. From where Midoriya must have punched Goto, there’s a smattering of blood across his face, red dots mingling with the brown freckles he naturally has all over. Shouto would think it’s cute if it wasn’t a little gross. “Here.” Shouto wets the cloth hanging by the sink and brings it up to rub across Midoriya’s face with one hand, the other resting on his jaw to steady him. 

They stand in silence for a moment while Shouto cleans his face. “I’m sorry about your computer,” Midoriya says. 

“Not a problem. I can always get others.”

“But what about all the stuff that’s on it?”

Shouto shrugs, brandishing his own watch. “Wiped it as soon as we left the scene, just in case it somehow survived the explosion.”

Midoriya just hums in response. 

“You’re getting quite red.” Shouto says suddenly. “I’m not scrubbing that hard.”

“Oh, am I?” Midoriya’s voice comes out a little squeaky. 

“And do you always run this warm?” Shouto adds with concern. “Or is it from the running? You really overexerted yourself today after your injuries from yesterday. Make sure you take an ibuprofen from the kit.”

“Right.” The word almost snaps in half out of his mouth, it’s said so brokenly. 

Shouto’s heterochromic eyes are searching Midoriya’s clean face for any more blood for him to pretend to wipe away when the ding of the computer breaks the moment, both their heads turning to look.

Shouto takes the seat at the computer while Midoriya stands behind, one hand on the chair and the other on the desk, bracketing the other man in. Shouto clicks on the flash drive popup to load its contents.

The list of files loads, and they start opening them one by one.

“Holy shit,” Midoriya breathes.