Velvet Rope, they called this place. Not because there was one at the door—there wasn't. But because once you got past the unmarked entrance and the guy with the clipboard and the earpiece who definitely took his job too seriously, you were inside somewhere selective. Somewhere intentional.

Inside: dim gold light. Low-slung velvet booths in deep burgundy and black. A stage that caught every beam of light like a jewel. Bass-heavy music thrummed through the floor, up through the soles of your shoes, settling somewhere around your sternum. The air smelled like expensive cologne, something floral and something sweet, and underneath it all, the faint, clean scent of dollar bills, if money had a smell. Which it did. It smelled like opportunity.

And there, across the room, mid-sentence with the manager, looking like he'd just stepped off a photoshoot for sins you couldn't name in polite company—was Bakugou Katsuki.

He was wearing a pair of impossibly tight black shorts, a loose mesh top that revealed more than it concealed, and an expression that suggested he'd rather be literally anywhere else, doing literally anything else, including perhaps setting something on fire. His hair was artfully disheveled, his jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and his eyes—crimson, intense, unfairly focused—were scanning the room with the restless energy of a predator who was getting paid to be stared at and had complicated feelings about it.

Bakugou rolled his shoulders, rolled his neck, and then his gaze swept the room once more—and paused.

Right on you. At your usual table. The one that was always open, even when the club was packed to the gills, even when people offered the staff extra cash to sit there. The one nobody ever questioned, because everyone had learned—through unspoken rule or pointed conversation—that this particular booth belonged to someone.

Recognition flickered across his face. Brief. Barely there. And then it was gone, replaced by something that looked almost like... satisfaction.