Ch. 51 Team Work Makes the Dream Work

"You asked that fucker to keep an eye on her, too? I can't fucking believe this."

"Well," Hawks tried to weigh his words to Bakugo carefully. The situation in his office was already tense enough. "You couldn't go near her at the hospital or after so someone needed to. It wasn't like she would talk to me."

Bakugo turned to Todoroki, fires already starting in his hands. "So how did 'keeping an eye on her' turn into a forced engagement, asshole?"

Shoto sat calmly in his chair, but had the decency to at least stare down at his hands awkwardly. "Maybe I got carried away..."

"You fucking think?"

Hawks checked again to make sure the door of his office was closed and said a tiny prayer in the hopes that all three of them would leave the room alive.

He turned around, surveying the situation. Bakugo paced back and forth, refusing to sit down, while Todoroki sat in one of the big office chairs, his expression unreadable as ever. The calmer Todoroki was, the angrier Bakugo was becoming.

"I'm not apologizing if I blow this whole place up!" Bakugo shouted. "Which I'm about to do if I have to look at his smug face for another fucking minute."

"Jealousy isn't a good look on you, Bakugo," Shoto said calmly.

"I should murder you right now for even breathing the same air as me."

Obviously this was going great so far.

Hawks purposefully moved so that he was standing in-between the two men, spreading out his wings to force a greater distance between them.

"We have a common goal," Hawks tried to say, "and there's no reason why we can't all get -- "

"Y/n is safe with me, every night, Bakugo, and has been for weeks," Shoto said. "Could she say the same before that? Because if I remember correctly, she ended up in the hospital, and if I also remember correctly, you never once even visited her."

"I wonder whose fault that was!" Bakugo yelled at him. "I had no idea you were this big of a piece of crap!"

"Enough!" Hawks yelled at both of them. "All of us want to help y/n so sit down and shut up. Shoto. You're up first. We need to talk about the recent developments."

"You're right, we do. I don't know how much longer he's going to be satisfied with just the files. He asked me to meet him tonight and —"

"Who the fuck are you talking about?" Bakugo interrupted.

Shoto looked to Hawks who shook his head just the tiniest bit.

"The villain Dabi," Hawks said for him. "Shoto has been helping us with some undercover work."

"What? Why?"

"Shoto, your main job was to help us apprehend... the villain. That's what the commission approved. That was your role in all of this, as it's been since the beginning."

"I know, and I've been working on that, but—"

"But you have apparently lost your damn mind." Hawks held up his phone, an article about your engagement on the screen. "This was not part of the plan. She is not part of the plan. I expressly told you that you were to keep an eye on her and that was it."

"But I'm getting y/n away from all of this," Shoto said quickly. "We're leaving after the party on a trip I have planned out. I'll flying her far away until all of this blows over, giving you plenty of time to arrest... him."

"She's not going anywhere with you," Bakugo growled.

"Right now all you need to do is create the situation where Dabi is alone and we can get to him. I'll do the rest," Hawks told him. "We're ending this. All of this, and that includes this weird fake relationship."

"It's not fake, I love –"

"Don't even say her name right now," Bakugo fumed. "You know damn well that you can't blackmail her into getting married to you."

"I wasn't, I was –"

"Shut up!"

"Enough, both of you." Hawks knew this meeting needed to end. "I've already spoken with the police commissioner and they're working on creating an offer of immunity for her if she helps us apprehend Dabi. Y/n had a couple ideas of her own so we're exploring multiple plans at the moment. This is going to be difficult, but we can do it."

"If you expect me to yell 'go team' right now, you can think again," Bakugo scoffed.

"The engagement party will –" Hawks started to say.

"Fuck that party."

"The engagement party will be the perfect draw for the League. So many heroes in one place, they won't be able to resist. Shoto, make sure they know about it and are there. Especially him. I still have a couple of the quirk canceling drugs, so our best bet will be to make sure he's taken them before we try to apprehend."

"What about a different night?" Shoto asked. "I don't want to mess up that night for her."

Bakugo groaned. "Oh my god, can you shut up? The night was messed up the moment you were part of it. She isn't marrying you, you idiot."

Shoto ignored Bakugo. "I'll make sure they know."

"Bakugo, your job is to keep y/n from doing something stupid. Maybe she'll actually listen to you."

"Doubtful. I'm out." Bakugo headed for the door, but before he got there he stopped and pointed his finger at Shoto. "If you put your grimy hands on her, you're dead. Do you understand?"

Shoto's face was expressionless as Bakugo stormed out.

"Shoto, before you go, email me your tickets," Hawks told Shoto. "For this trip. now."

"Why?"

"I'm keeping them as ransom. You're not going on vacation when we're chasing a murderer. Make this happen or I'll have the trip canceled. The end."

--

"Shouldn't you be at work or something?" Dabi asked Shoto.

He wandered around Shoto's penthouse, his rough fingers touching the expensive decorations and furniture. Everything was too clean, too sterile, too purposefully curated to evoke a certain aesthetic. Rich and boring.

Disgusting.

Dabi picked up a random vase and held it in his hand, debating whether or not to throw it against the wall simply so that he could watch the broken pieces litter the white carpet.

"I have people to do my work for me."

"Brilliant. Look at you," Dabi shook his head as he watched Shoto pour three more drinks. "Such a waste. A hero drinking the night away while his sexy little fiancé is away at work. She's not here, right? Maybe I'll come back and pay her a visit. It's been too long since I've been between those legs."

"Y/n's at work."

"Still letting her work? You really do have a lot to learn about breaking a girl in. Once they finally realize that you're all they have, they'll even turn to you for help. It's fucking pathetic, but damn, it turns me on."

Taking a seat on the couch, Dabi pulled the poor girl he had brought with him into his lap before she could get away. Shoto felt a moment of pity for her as he handed her and Dabi their drinks, wondering if she had known who Dabi was before tonight or if she even cared. Not much he could do about it now.

"Y/n's not like that," Shoto said, sitting down in a chair near them. "She's not pathetic."

"Not yet," Dabi said, the girl gasping and almost spilling her drink when his hand slid up her shirt. "We've got time to work on that. Let me remind you that I'm the one who marked your little wifey first."

"And I'll have that disgusting thing removed as soon as possible. You promised to stay away as long as I continued giving you..." Shoto didn't want to say too much in front of a stranger. "As long as I kept up my end of things. Which I have. Now why are you here?"

"Because I hate you."

Shoto grabbed the arm of the girl in Dabi's lap, roughly yanking her away from him.

"Calm down, hero," Dabi said. "I hate you because you actually did it. You actually got y/n to agree to marry your boring ass."

"Thank you," the girl whispered to Todoroki quietly. But he didn't let her go, he simply moved her to his lap instead, despite her protests.

"I'm impressed," Dabi said, his eyes watching the two in the chair. The girl squirmed in Todoroki's lap, obviously nervous about the way Dabi was staring at her. "When do I get to welcome my new sis to the family?"

"Never."

"Come on. I've been good. I've given her space, but I'm over it. Do I at least get to throw a bachelor party? Think she'd strip for us? She's stripped for me before."

"Shut up."

"Why are you so mad? You got the girl. You're going to get to fuck her tight little hole for the rest of your stupid life. Your whole disgustingly perfect existence is becoming even more perfect."

"You don't know anything about my life." The girl in Todoroki's lap squealed as he grabbed her hip particularly hard.

The open way Dabi was speaking around her made Shoto realize that Dabi wasn't worried about her saying anything, possibly because she wouldn't be alive tomorrow to tell anyone.

"Well, if you think a ring is going to keep me away, you're wrong." Sharing pussy with his younger brother wasn't exactly his idea of a good time, but Dabi wasn't above it, either. He'd done worse, much worse.

"That's one reason why we're going away," Shoto said. "I've booked a trip for us after the engagement party. I need to put some distance between her and all of this before she starts to suspect anything."

"How romantic. You're having a big party?"

"Of course. It's part of keeping up appearances. We're inviting all of the top tier heroes. What do you want, Dabi?"

"Your information is shit. I went through that flash drive. There's nothing in there that isn't already publicly known. If I wanted to google, I would have done it myself."

"But you didn't."

"Look, bro, I carried out a large scale destruction so you could get your dick wet. I'm going to need better than that shit you brought me. I'll give you another day and then I'm coming to collect my girl. That engagement party sounds like it will be fun to crash."

Dabi reached for the girl in Shoto's lap, but Shoto held her firmly, keeping her away from him.

The girl looked up at Shoto with big, stupid eyes, and he almost felt bad for her. There was no way she had known who Dabi was, he decided. She'd been unlucky. But lucky for her, he was a hero.

"Then get out. Obviously I have work to do. But this one is staying with me," Shoto said. "I've got a few hours before y/n gets home."