Chapter 6: Smoke and Mirrors
Shinsou x Reader x Bakugou 3PP
The sponsors had already begun, their voices weaving through the sterile room before she even crossed the threshold. Overlooked again, the way she had been cut out of the family interview. They didn't pause for her arrival, didn't rise, didn't so much as acknowledge her presence at first.
But one pair of eyes did.
Shinsou was already seated at the far end, posture deceptively loose, one hand braced against the table as if he'd been holding it steady while the rest circled. Violet eyes lifted when she entered, catching her in a glance so brief it might have been accidental—except it wasn't. A flicker of recognition, an anchor placed in the room. He hadn't been overlooked. And he hadn't overlooked her.
She took her seat, folder clasped too tightly against her ribs, expecting knives disguised as concern. She got them immediately.
"Forge promised exclusivity, safety, elite-level oversight," one sponsor was saying, voice smooth as glass. "And yet here we are—an athlete in a hospital bed. Why should we tie our brand to a place that can't deliver on its own rules?"
Shinsou's reply cut clean. "Rules only protect the people who choose to respect them. Forge wrote every line, enforced every clause, and still someone thought they were bigger than the contract. That's not negligence. That's arrogance. And arrogance always collapses under its own weight."
On paper, a defense of Forge. But arrogance was weighted, sharp. His eyes cut to her for just a fraction before sliding away, as though to remind her the word had more than one owner.
Sensing an easier target, a sponsor leaned forward, questions barbed in velvet.
"Tell me," one said, voice honeyed but lethal, "when the public sees a young man nearly die on a gym floor, do you expect them to care about contracts? Or will they care about the fact that he trusted Forge and almost didn't come home?"
The words hung like a guillotine. Every angle was designed to trap her: admit negligence, or admit she was cold.
She smoothed the folder in front of her, spine straight. "The public cares about recovery. About resilience. That is the story worth telling. He is alive because protocols were in place, because response was immediate. Forge didn't fail him. Biology did."
A clean, clinical truth. Too clean. She knew it the second the silence spread—her voice had sounded like law, not like mercy.
That was when she felt it.
At first just a brush of leather against her calf. Then it lingered. Shinsou's knee shifted, the deliberate press of his leg anchoring against hers. Not sudden. Not accidental. Intentional.
Above the table, he dismantled their concerns with surgical calm: negligence didn't apply, contracts stood, Forge had weathered worse storms. His words were law. His posture was law. His eyes flickered to hers only long enough to lace the double meanings tighter—you know what I mean.
The sponsors heard steady, unflappable logic. She felt possession pressed under linen, silent and undeniable. He didn't move away. He didn't need to. The point wasn't pressure. It was presence.
Another challenge came, slick and sharp. "Forge is bleeding. Surely that's proof of fault?"
Shinsou smiled faintly, like he'd been waiting for it. "Bleeding isn't proof of failure. Sometimes it's proof of survival."
He didn't glance at her this time. He didn't have to. The line sank deep enough without his eyes.
"Negligence," he said, smooth as a blade, "is a word that implies willful disregard. There was none. What happened was tragic. But tragedy is not liability. And liability is not negligence."
His eyes flickered to hers just long enough to lace the words tighter—you know what I mean. The warmth of his leg still pressed steady under the table, pinning her in place.
"Not all who are bound by contract—written or verbal—bear the burden of liability for those who shoulder the weight of their own choices." His voice was calm, but the cadence sharpened with every word. "Are you asking her to carry a man's burden for his own well-being? When he catered to a selfish exception that cost him to cash a check he almost couldn't pay?"
He never looked at the sponsor as he spoke. His eyes stayed locked on her, violet and unflinching, as if the entire statement was meant for her alone. Only at the end did he turn, slow, deliberate, and let the venom slide into his final word: "Pay."
The room bristled. The sponsor shifted, unsettled, as if the challenge had been aimed like a blade across the linen.
It was meant for them. It was meant for her. What it meant, she wasn't sure—but it made her weak in a way she hadn't been allowed to feel in gods only know how long.
The room bristled. The sponsor shifted, unsettled, as if the challenge had been aimed like a blade across the linen.
It was meant for them. It was meant for her. What it meant, she wasn't sure—but it made her weak in a way she hadn't been allowed to feel in gods only know how long.
She forced her mask to hold. Smoothed her folder. Let the silence settle like she hadn't just been cracked open in the middle of a negotiation. The sponsors turned back to their notes, their polite frustrations disguised as nods. Someone closed a folder with too much force. Another cleared his throat like the taste of venom lingered.
She rose with the others when the meeting broke, her movements crisp, deliberate, as though she were still in control of every step. But inside, something shifted. Her balance was off. Every click of her heels on the marble floor echoed strange, like she was walking through water or glass. She told herself it was fatigue, pressure, adrenaline. She told herself it wasn't him.
The elevator ride down was worse. She caught her reflection in the steel panel: posture perfect, lips steady, eyes not steady at all. Violet had been burned into them, the sound of pay still running like static in her skull. Her breath wanted to stutter. She didn't let it.
By the time she stepped into the garage, the silence felt like vertigo. Her pulse still hadn't settled; her hands were too tight on her folder. She told herself the distance to her car was short, nothing more than a hallway, nothing she hadn't done a thousand times before.
Leaning against the driver-side quarter panel of her sedan like the garage had been built for this moment. One hand buried in his pocket, the other scrolling idly across his phone. Too casual to be chance. Too exact to be anything else.
Her stride faltered once before she forced it steady. The click of her heels carried her closer until the sound was unavoidable, until even the concrete announced her arrival. Only then did he pocket the phone, slow and deliberate. His violet eyes lifted under the fluorescents, locking on hers.
Her heels clicked closer, sharp and defiant, but each step sounded like admission. When she was within earshot, he pocketed the phone. His eyes lifted, violet under the fluorescents, and locked on hers. Still casual. Still controlled. But unyielding.
"Didn't want you walking into another ambush," he said, voice pitched low, almost offhand. "Seems to be the theme lately."
He moved only enough to ease her path, but his presence filled the space, turning the simple act of opening her car into choreography. His hand was already there, pulling the door open for her with quiet assurance.
The words were harmless. They landed like possession.
She didn't slide into the seat. Not yet. He leaned closer, shoulder nearly brushing hers, his body filling the open space of the doorway. Heat radiated from him—low, banked, patient. Not wildfire, not Bakugou's blade. This was ember-heat, meant to last.
"You handled them," he murmured, pitched only for her. "Even when they didn't deserve it."
Her throat tightened. "Handled, not convinced."
"Convincing them isn't always the point." He tilted his head, studying her face with that lawyer's precision that felt too much like intimacy. "Sometimes survival is the win."
The words slipped deeper than they should have. They lodged in the cracks Bakugou had left raw, places she'd tried to keep closed. Her breath betrayed her, hitched uneven, and she knew he registered it.
He leaned, almost imperceptibly, the wool of his suit brushing her sleeve. It could have been coincidence. It wasn't. Silence swelled, heavy with everything neither of them said. She felt her body tense, not in rejection but in recognition.
For one suspended second, she thought he might close the distance—touch her arm, her shoulder, something that would collapse deniability.
He didn't press. He didn't need to. The silence between them did all the pressing for him, thick enough that she could hear the faint hum of the fluorescent light overhead, the low tick of her car engine cooling. Too close. Too steady. His nearness was deliberate, patient, like he was proving a point Bakugou never could: that he could reach her without raising his voice, without demanding a single thing.
Her hand flexed against the folder still tucked under her arm, a flimsy barrier between them. He noticed that too—she could tell from the slight curve at the corner of his mouth, the fraction of a lean that shortened the already narrow distance. His shoulder brushed hers, just once, subtle enough to look like accident, certain enough not to be one. Heat bled through the wool of his jacket, a contrast to the sterile chill of the garage.
"You don't always have to fight," he said quietly, his voice pitched for her alone. "Sometimes you just... refuse to break."
His hand lifted, slow, deliberate—just enough to ghost the space near her elbow, as if he meant to steady her or close the last inch between them. But he stopped short. Hung there, not touching, suspended in a hesitation so subtle she could dismiss it later as a trick of her nerves.
Her pulse spiked, confused by the absence as much as the possibility. She opened her mouth, unsure whether to break the silence or surrender to it.
The sound slashed through the moment. She dropped her gaze, pulse hammering, to where the screen glared from her bag.
The name burned there like a brand.
Shinsou looked at it, then at her, his expression unreadable save for the faintest shift in the corner of his mouth. He bent, closing the distance until the heat of him pressed against her space, his voice brushing her ear like smoke.
The words weren't a plea. They weren't even advice. They were an order dressed as suggestion, velvet over steel.
Her breath stuttered. Her fingers hovered over the phone but didn't move.
He slipped a business card between his fingers as if it had been waiting there all along. With measured precision, he slid it into the breast pocket of her blazer. His knuckles skimmed the fabric where it lay against her collarbone, slow enough to be deliberate, quick enough to be deniable.
"Just remember," he said, his voice pitched low and dangerous, "if you need anything—even just to feel normal—call me. My private number's on the back."
His touch lingered a beat longer than necessary, the faint scrape of paper against fabric, the ghost of skin against silk. Then he withdrew, smooth as water, closing the door with a click that sounded final.
He didn't look back. His stride carried him into the shadows of the garage, unhurried, steady, leaving her framed in the glow of her dashboard, phone still buzzing in her hand.
Bakugou's name flashed and flashed. She didn't move. Didn't answer. Couldn't.
She stayed there too long, door half open, air still charged with his heat. When she finally pulled it shut, the silence pressed like a seal over her skin. The phone buzzed again in her bag—Bakugou's name flashing like a flare she refused to reach for.
She started the engine instead. The sound filled the garage, mechanical and ordinary, but it didn't scrape away the imprint of his voice in her ear. Don't answer it. The words replayed, low and velvet, threaded through with a steel she hadn't realized she was hungry for. They pressed against her thoughts the way his knee had pressed against her leg under the table, steady, unrelenting.
The drive home blurred. Streetlights smeared into white ribbons. Brake lights bled red across wet asphalt. She couldn't remember the turns, couldn't remember hitting green or red—only the way his words clung, reshaping the silence inside her head. She gripped the wheel tighter, as if pressure could anchor her back into her own body.
Her phone lit up on the passenger seat. Once, twice, three times. Calls turned to texts.
— You can't keep dodging me.
— You think ignoring me fixes this?
Each vibration was a spike, breaking the cadence Shinsou had left in her bones. She kept her eyes on the road, jaw locked, but the glow of the screen felt like accusation.
Another text rolled across the glass.
— Don't let them make you my enemy.
Her throat tightened. She nearly swerved, catching herself only when a horn blared in her periphery. She sucked in air, forced her grip steady, and blinked hard against the sting behind her eyes.
The phone buzzed again. She didn't read it. Couldn't.
By the time she reached her apartment, she felt hollowed out. Shinsou's voice still curled at the edges of her nerves; Bakugou's fury flashed bright against the dark. Two fires burning on either side of her, both refusing to let her breathe.
She killed the engine, sat in silence, and closed her eyes.
She had to call Bakugou. Had to. But the thought of hearing his voice—volatile, demanding, the sound of twelve years of unfinished wounds—felt like stepping into a blaze barefoot. Shinsou's steadiness still lingered, a low ember pressed against her skin, and she wasn't ready to smother it yet.
Why did that scare her? Why had one encounter with Shinsou left her steadier, more stable, than years of bracing against Bakugou's fire?
The phone buzzed again. Much like midnight striking in a fairy tale, the spell broke. But when she stepped out of the car, her heels didn't falter. When she climbed the stairs, her hand didn't shake. And when she shut her door, it didn't feel final. Not for all things.
Inside, the silence of her apartment wrapped around her, heavy but not suffocating. She leaned against the door, folder still pressed against her chest, and let herself feel the truth she couldn't name yet: she was caught between two men, two fires, two versions of herself.
And for the first time, she didn't know which one would burn her worse.
