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The night had started out phenomenal. They’d left their baby girl in charge of closing down the shop as they trucked off to Izuku’s new place. He’d finally returned from the city, whether from running out of money or running into trouble, Katsuki didn’t know. He’d been glad to see his friend return, really glad. Izuku was terrible at writing him back, but when he did it was pages and pages of updates. He’d met a girl. He’d lost his girl. He’d met a guy, the guy stole his money and ran. He started a new job. He missed everyone.
The usual.
So when he’d burst into Katsuki’s store earlier, blabbering on and on about how he needed help fixing up an old mechanic shop he’d just bought with his business partner, Katsuki couldn’t help but get a terrible gut feeling.
“Everything okay?” Eijirou looked over, concern knitting his brow together. Of course Eijirou could tell Katsuki was uneasy, he practically lived in his head.
“Fine,” he bit out, nerves making his tongue quick and his words sharp. Regret stabbed through his lungs and he placed his forehead in his hand, taking a deep breath. “I’m just worried.”
“Don’t worry darling, Etsuko will have the shop locked down no problem, she’s done it with us thousands of times before,” Eijirou grinned, placing a hand on Katsuki’s thigh and grinning brightly. Katsuki smiled back, lightly. Tightly. He placed his hand on Eijirou’s, squeezing back.
He should’ve trusted his gut.
Because when one of the girls Izuku had invited turned vamp and sucked the soul out of Rody’s body, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but curse himself and the damn monster giggling at them from outside the shop, her blonde hair glowing beneath the lone bulb outside the door. Eventually she got tired of taunting them and wandered off into the night, her white dress disappearing all too quickly into the evening fog.
“We’re leaving,” Eijirou whispered to him, his red eyes wide and sincere. Katsuki could only nod, his eyes locked on Rody’s body. He hadn’t known him, but he knew Izuku. And he could see the way that Izuku sat curled over his body, slowly growing colder and colder as the minutes passed.
“I’ll go get the truck,” Eijirou squeezed Katsuki’s shoulder lightly. Katsuki quickly grabbed his wrist, his eyes wild and teeth bared.
“You’re not fucking going anywhere ,” he snarled. Eijirou just pulled him in and pressed their foreheads together, taking a deep breath as Katsuki seethed.
“I’ll be quick. We can’t leave Etsuko alone,” Eijirou stared into his eyes. Pleading.
And Katsuki broke. For the love of his life and his daughter, he would yield every time.
He nodded once. Slowly. “Be careful.”
Eijirou pressed a searing kiss to his lips, ignoring the gasps of the crowd around them. They’d been more than careful up until this point, but Katsuki couldn’t bring himself to care anymore, mind frazzled and every nerve on edge, waiting to jump.
“Always am,” Eijirou grinned as he pulled the keys from his pocket, jangling them lightly before stepping out of the doorway and into the night. Katsuki watched him go until he couldn’t anymore.
He never should’ve let Eijirou out of his sight.
Regret sat heavy in his stomach as he stared at his lover through the doorway of Izuku’s shop. His usually warm and kind eyes were cold, callous. Sharp in ways Katsuki hated with every fiber of his being. When he grinned it wasn’t comforting. Red stained his teeth, and Katsuki felt bile rise in his throat.
Because that wasn’t Eijirou.
That was something wearing Eijirou’s skin, parading as his lover. Eijirou was dead. Blood stained the collar of his shirt, once white now red.
“Come on Katsuki, won’t you let me in?” Kirishima cooed, leaning his forearm against the doorway, staring into Katsuki’s soul with the eyes that were but were not his. All Katsuki could do was clamp his jaw shut and try to ignore the way tears stung his eyes. He felt Izuku grab his forearm, his calloused palm familiar. His arms began to tremble, his muscles clenched tight as he stared at what remained of his lover. His heart cracked into two and began beating on the floor, blood leaking from it with every horrendous squelch.
“Katsuki, please darling, let me in,” Kirishima pleaded. Katsuki shook his head, stepping backwards. “Don’t you love me?”
“No,” Katsuki’s answer was immediate and firm. He watched Kirishima recoil, hurt flashing through his eyes in a way that made Katsuki feel like he was being stabbed with millions of needles. Because that was Eijirou. But as soon as it was there, the flicker was gone. Replaced by that sickening empty look. “I love Eijirou. You’re not him.”
“I can be him for you, baby,” Kirishima drawled, his voice taking on a suggestive tone that made Katsuki want to crawl out of his skin.
Katsuki shook his head again, taking another step back. “Get the fuck away from me. Eijirou is dead. If you come back here again I’ll have to kill you myself for pretending to be him.”
“Ooh, don’t threaten me with a good time,” that crusty bitch from earlier came crawling out of the shadows, one hand shielding his eyes from the light. He threw an arm around Kirishima’s shoulders and hung off him, like they were friends. Anger lit like fire in Katsuki’s gut. “I’d love to watch you two kill each other.”
“This is your fucking fault you damn vamp,” Katsuki sneered, stepping forwards. “I have half a mind just to kill you right here you crusty son of a bitch.”
“Kacchan!” Izuku exclaimed. Katsuki turned his gaze to his best friend, fully ready to lay into him just as he was about to lay into the head demon. But when their eyes met, he froze. Izuku was looking up at him with a pleading, broken look in his watery green eyes. “Please. Please, I can’t lose you too.”
What a sobering sentence.
Katsuki felt like someone had poured ice water down his back. All the fight left his body faster than water behind a broken levy, leaving him cold and empty, aching for someone that was gone forever.
He shut his mouth and turned away from the door, grabbing Izuku’s wrist and tugging him further into the building.
“Come on, we’re in for a long night.”
And a long night it was. While the vampires were throwing their own damn party outside, he sharpened scrap wood after scrap wood, fashioning them all into stakes just as Mina had instructed. He stared out the window, watching all of the vampires sing and dance and spiral into madness. He scoffed, eyes glued to the scene in front of him.
Suddenly, a familiar red head blocked his view from the window. Katsuki flinched back, tripping over his feet and falling to the floor with a thud, scrambling backwards on all fours as Kirishima laughed at him from his place behind the window. The main vampire shoved him aside, laughing just as hard.
“Oh that was too good. Mighty Bakugou Katsuki, reduced to a quivering mess as soon as you get a hold of his little lover,” he chuckled, wiping his eyes as if tears were falling from them. Katsuki quickly forced his face into a snarl, rising to his feet and approaching the window again. He slammed his fist against the glass, his anger flaring even more at the fact that the vampire didn’t even flinch.
“You don’t know shit about me!” He shouted. The vampire laughed lowly, grabbing Kirishima’s head and pulling him back into the window.
Katsuki wanted to puke.
“Oh, I know everything about you, Katsuki. I know you parade around as this untouchable strong-man, but inside you’re just an insecure little bitch. I know you love spicy food, and hate when Eijirou here is sad. I even know how you like to take it up the ass and have Eijirou-”
Katsuki roared, his fist flying into the wood beside the window. He ignored how his knuckled screamed at the impact, just screaming louder to drown that perverted fuck out.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” He screamed. His throat felt raw from it but he didn’t care. This was primal. Animalistic. Human. “You shut your god damn mouth before I go out there and fucking kill you myself you perverted bastard!”
“Ah ah!” the fucker tutted, waving one finger from side to side, like Katsuki was a naughty child being scolded. “I wouldn’t say that if I were you. Because Eijirou here was kind enough to lend me your address, along with the heartwarming information that your daughter is home alone right now. And wouldn’t any good daughter invite her father’s best friend in if he showed up at their doorstep covered in blood?”
The vampire grabbed Kirishima’s face and squished his cheeks together in an attempt to make him look cute. Fear stabbed through Katsuki, whole and cold and so very real . Because he knew that vampire was right. Etsuko would open the door for Eijirou in a heartbeat. And then that damn beast would kill his daughter, the light of his life.
Anger and fear vortexed in Katsuki’s stomach. He whipped around to Izuku, eyes wild. He probably looked crazy. He didn’t give a fuck.
“How long until sunrise?" he shouted.
“Kacchan, let’s think about this,” Izuku tried to reason, holding his hands out, as if Katsuki was a wild animal. Maybe he was.
“I am thinking about this! That damn demon is going to kill my daughter, that’s what I’m fucking thinking about! So tell me, how long until sunrise, Izuku!” Katsuki’s voice broke, shaking and wavering like the tracks when a train was rumbling its way up them. Warning of what was to come if people didn’t get out of the way.
“Three hours.”
Three hours. That solidified it.
Katsuki strode away from the window, grabbing one of the Molotov cocktails they’d assembled earlier in one hand, snatching a wooden spear from their pile with the other. The others tried to grab him, tried to hold him down, but he was unstoppable. The train was coming, and you couldn’t stop a locomotive with some reassuring words and a heel in the dirt.
“You want it so bad then come on in and fucking get it you bastards!” He shouted.
Katsuki watched a sick, sadistic grin twist the main vampire’s mouth, pulling at the dried skin and scars of his lips enough to make it look painful.
“Thank you!”
The shop descended into chaos. Vampires flew in through the windows, poured in through the doors, tried to pound their way in from the goddamn roof. Katsuki didn’t care. He only killed them if they got in his way. He screamed as he fought, his eyes never leaving his target. His target grinned, fighting his way towards Katsuki.
Katsuki threw off another one of the bastards trying to rip his throat out and charged his target, chucking the Molotov directly into his chest.
Kirishima stumbled back, screeching as the fire ate away at his clothes and skin. Burns bubbled and blistered on his skin, the smell of burning flesh pungent in Katsuki’s nostrils. Katsuki didn’t hesitate. He charged. He slammed his body into Kirishima’s along with the wooden stake in his grasp. He felt the flames lick at his own clothes and hair, the eager fire consuming everything in his path.
It hurt like hell.
Hell, it hurt worse than hell.
All Katsuki could do was scream as the fire consumed him and Kirishima. Kirishima’s jaw was locked open, charred black already. His eyes were wide and terrified . Katsuki saw Eijirou surface one last time before the life in Eijirou’s eyes was replaced by fire. His lover was dead. And Katsuki was too. The fire bit and gnawed at his flesh. He let it. It consumed them both, piled on top of each other as chaos reigned around them.
The burning of Katsuki’s skin slowly turned from insufferable to pleasantly warm. A familiar weight wrapped around his shoulders. He turned his head, shocked to see Eijirou smiling up at him and not charred to coal beneath his body. His eyes were bright and his face was glowing, red rubies glinting in the gentle dawn light, tears slowly falling down his cheeks.
“I love you, Katsuki,” he whispered, tightening his arms around him. Katsuki smiled as his lower lip wobbled, tears burning in his eyes.
“I love you too, Eijirou,” he whispered. Their lips met in a sweet, salty kiss as they were blown away, the wind carrying their ashes far away from the burning mechanic shop and the world beneath them.