Work Text:
Art by @WindyEngel
“Ba ha ha ha!” The intruder cried out gleefully, colorful sparks and wisps of smoke from his spell still lingering in the air around him. “Who are the fools now? That’s what you get for disrespecting the noble heritage of wizards and the larger magical creature community!”
“What the fuck,” Hitoshi said.
“Mmf,” Katsuki agreed, mouth full as he sucked blood from the horrifying yellow Pikachu-man hybrid that had formerly been Denki in a yellow tee shirt and face paint.
“Stop that,” Hitoshi scolded as he swatted Katsuki away from their mutual friend.
“Shit, yeah,” Katsuki wiped a messy smear of sticky red across his face with the back of his hand. “You okay, Sparky?”
“Chuuu…” Denki wheezed weakly.
The wizard was still cackling maniacally as the party guests crashed into each other in various stages of drunken panic. Kirishima howled forlornly in the corner as Sero yelped and stumbled back from him, tripping on his long furry tail. Mina was a miniature pink figure fluttering above the chaos, sprinkling some kind of sparkly fairy dust as she went. “My eyes!” someone cried in pain as Mina’s glitter drifted into their face.
See, this is why Hitoshi usually doesn’t come to these things.
All things considered, it hadn’t been too bad of a party. Only Neito had given Hitoshi crap for “dressing as himself”. The other guests were just happy to see Hitoshi, since he was well known for doing his best to avoid this sort of thing. Halloween was, in his opinion, better spent with the lights off and a new horror game.
Weighed in the consideration of the success of this party was Katsuki’s Halloween costume. Anyone who thought the blonde would be too aloof to bother with putting any real effort into their costume had never spent more than five minutes with the hyper-competitive man. The moment he’d heard that the party would include a costume contest, Katsuki had gone all in. His vampire costume was nothing short of luxurious, all plush red velvet and midnight silk, with gold chains and earrings dripping with crystals. He’d even glued fangs to his teeth. The final product was absolutely mouthwatering, and Hitoshi had decided it was worth attending just to watch Katsuki preen.
It was a testament to the authenticity of Katsuki’s costume that the wizard’s spell had hardly altered it.
“Oi, you bastard!” Katsuki roared, Pikadenki limp and pale in his arms. “Turn us back to normal!”
“Ha!” The wizard seethed. “That kind of othering language is exactly what I’m talking about! So you’re all normal, are you? What does that make someone with a gnome for an aunt and a seventh toe?”
“What, seven total?” Todoroki asked, appearing out of nowhere. Oh, right. He’d taken the lazy Charlie Brown approach and dressed as a sheet ghost. Todoroki hovered next to Hitoshi, insubstantial and transparent. “Or do you have five toes on one foot and seven on the other?”
“That’s not the fucking problem, Half n’ Half!”
Todoroki looked down at (and through) himself morosely. “I think it’s just Half, now.”
“No need to fear, citizens! For I am here!”
“Izuku?” Todoroki asked.
“All Might at your service!”
They gaped at him.
Midoriya had beefed up a fair bit during high school and hadn’t stopped working out since. He was a fit guy. But this was ridiculous. Now Midoriya towered over them all, green curls slicked back in the same hairstyle as his favorite comic book character. The lovingly handmade costume in red, blue, and yellow he’d worn that evening was now Marvel budget, and Midoriya’s ship-deck broad shoulders, snatched waist, and (Hitoshi couldn’t help notice) plump ass filled it out perfectly.
“Holy shit,” Todoroki whispered. “Gimmee.”
He wailed a ghostly wail as his hand passed right through his boyfriend’s butt.
“Fuck off, Deku.” Furious, Katsuki shoved Denki at Hitoshi before launching himself at the wizard. “Undo your bullshit spell, pointy hat asshole!”
“Oh ho ho, I don’t think so,” the wizard sneered. With a wave of his cheap-looking white tipped wand, he summoned a thick puff of smoke. Everyone except for Todoroki reeled back from it, coughing.
“Fucker!” Katsuki swore as the smoke cleared to reveal a disappointing absence of wizard. He wasn’t entirely gone, however - his voice echoed around the room, impossible to pinpoint.
“You have until dawn to find me and break my spell. Otherwise, you will remain in your new forms forever! Forever!... Forever!... Forever!...”
“Why is he repeating himself?” Todoroki asked.
“Dramatic effect, I guess,” Hitoshi sighed. “I hate it here.”
After an unnecessarily lengthy debate, Hitoshi, Katsuki, Mina, and Iida were elected to track down the wizard and… Bargain? Defeat him? Sucker punch him and call the police? Hitoshi wasn’t really sure.
Initially, Midoriya was supposed to be the ‘muscle’. That strategy was shot down when they discovered he could not, in fact, fit through the door. Midoriya had offered to tear out the door frame, and the casual way he suggested it had Todoroki wheezing something about a spectral boner. Sero, whose parents owned the house the party was hosted in, hissed and scored long claw marks down Midoriya’s back.
“Dude, no!” Sero yowled. “Forget this curse or whatever, my folks will murder me!”
“Sorry, Hanta,” All Midoriya apologized, gently plucking Sero off his back and setting him down on the floor with a soothing pat between his pointy black ears.
“I volunteer to accompany you in Izuku’s stead,” Iida proclaimed formally, chopping his shiny silver arm through the air.
“Guess a tin man’s better than nothing,” Hitoshi shrugged. Katsuki scoffed.
“Wha’eve, ‘ust bucket. I’on’t ca’e. I’m ‘oing ‘oo ‘uck dat wizar’ up o’ my ow’.”
“Get your mouth off my neck, Kats. I said no,” Hitoshi reminded him. He hoped his friend’s new vampiric abilities wouldn’t pick up on the way Hitoshi’s heart raced at the feel of Katsuki’s mouth.
“Right, right, sorry,” Katsuki cursed, pulling his head back from Hitoshi’s skin, which was now generously coated in vampire drool. “Fucking bat instincts.”
The four of them set out with the party goers still capable of verbal speech cheering their encouragement behind them. They’d barely reached the sidewalk when someone turned the music back on and bass thudded out into the night air. Apparently they weren’t going to let a few sudden magically-induced mutations stop the party.
“Come on, guys,” Mina called, flapping her delicate little wings determinedly ahead of them. “We’ve got an evil wizard to defeat!”
“Out of the way, Pinkie Pie,” Katsuki snarled, his cape billowing behind him as he strode up the street.
“Did you just out yourself as a brony,” Hitoshi asked, grinning.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Wait, wait,” Iida clanged as he caught up to them. “We don’t know where we’re going! We need a plan!”
“If you don’t know where to go, you haven’t been paying attention,” Katsuki shot back, not slowing in the slightest. “Only one place an off-broadway Wicked reject like that loser would go.”
Oh, of course, Hitoshi realized just as the others came to the same, painfully obvious conclusion.
“The old cathedral!” Hitoshi, Mina, Iida, and Todoroki all chorosued.
Wait.
“Aaargh!” Mina screamed. Hitoshi was too collected to betray his fright with a scream, but he did give Katsuki’s shoulder a gentle pat to indicate he could set Hitoshi back down after Hitoshi had leapt into his arms.
“Jesus Christ, Shouto!” Mina gasped. “When did you get here? Wait, why are you here? You were going to wait with the others!”
“I’ve been here the whole time,” Todoroki pouted ghostily. “It’s just too hard, being like this.”
“Transparent?”
“Incorporeal?”
“Having the physique and charisma of a fart?”
Todoroki glared at them with all the menace of a fogged bathroom mirror. “If this doesn’t work, I am going to haunt all of you until you die,” he promised.
“Me first, please.”
Mina smacked Hitoshi.
The cathedral was on the other ass end of the city, next to a sprawling graveyard that ran out of real estate decades ago. They had no choice but to walk (or in Mina's case, fly) since they'd all been drinking (in Katsuki's case, blood). And none of them bothered suggesting calling a cab. At one in the morning on Halloween, the wait for a taxi would be so long the sun might actually rise before it ever came.
So they marched, fluttered, stomped, slouched, and drifted in the direction of the old cathedral, traveling through neighborhoods full of jack-o-lanterns, orange strings of lights, skeletons on porches and white fabric ghosts hanging from tree branches.
Things were quiet for a time, until Iida, quite out of nowhere, said, "Bakugou."
"What?" the vampire snapped.
"Your personality is nearly as unappealing as your face. You look like a Pomeranian that was struck by lightning and rose from the dead to harass the ankles of postmen and piddle on trees. It is truly astonishing that your cantankerous, aggressive self has never been on the news for the wrong reasons."
Wow.
Hitoshi had never seen anyone literally choke on rage before.
Katsuki coughed and sputtered, red eyes wide and fangs elongating. Hitoshi reached out and snagged Katsuki by his cape before he could physically throw himself at Iida in retaliation.
“Todoroki, get out of there right now,” Hitoshi ordered tiredly.
The sulky-looking ghost emerged. “Fine.”
“That was you?” Katsuki snarled, finally capable of speech again. “You’re fucking lucky I can’t hit you right now.”
Iida shook his head, coming out of his stupor. “Did you just possess me, Shouto?”
Todoroki shrugged. “I was bored and it was very easy. Did you know you’re actually hollow right now?”
“That wasn’t very nice, Shouto!” Mina scolded in a tiny voice, wagging a finger the size of a grain of rice at him.
“Yeah, asshole, where do you get off calling m-”
“You shouldn’t possess people without their consent!”
“Oi, that’s not the only issue here, Tinkerbell!”
“It’s alright,” Iida offered magnanimously. “I am sure Shouto is struggling more than any of us right now.”
Todoroki nodded mournfully and Mina patted him on his head, only phasing through it a little. Katsuki rolled his eyes, still grumbling to himself.
“Can we please just get this over with?” Hitoshi groaned. “I was supposed to be in bed by now.”
“Not like you were gonna be sleeping,” Katsuki pointed out as the group resumed walking/haunting/etc. “I know you got a new game, Eyebags.”
“Yeah, and I’m never letting you cancel my plans again.”
“It’s not all bad,” Mina sang, settling on Hitoshi’s shoulder to give her wings a break. “At least it’s a nice night!”
“More like a nice wight,” Shouto chimed in.
“Oh my fucking god, don’t do this,” Hitoshi pleaded.
“No need to be such a witch about it.”
“It’s not even funny, or clever-”
“Really? I thought it was fangtastic.”
“As soon as you get your body back I am going to fucking murder it.”
“Fuck yeah, that’s exactly what I’ve been saying!” Katsuki looked over his shoulder at Hitoshi with an approving smirk, and Hitoshi felt a twist of pleasure low in his stomach. Shit, he was so far gone for this jerk.
And the rest of their journey across the city might have progressed pretty much just like that, with banter between friends and red-eyed butterflies relentlessly battering their wings on the insides of Hitoshi’s guts.
But then they chose to take a short cut through a dark, grimy alley, and found that they were no longer alone.
“Hey, guys,” a coarse voice cackled in the dim. The back of Hitoshi’s neck prickled as he peered through the gloom to make out the source. “Aw, would ya just take a gander at these cuties…”
A man, tall and broad, straightened up from where he had been leaning against the alley’s brick wall, semi-concealed by a dumpster. He sauntered up to them, and behind him, Hitoshi could see the man’s friends emerging to accompany him. “You going trick or treating, baby?”
This sleazily drawled question was directed at Katsuki, who snarled and bared his fangs in response. The man laughed, unintimated.
“You’ve even glued on the fangs. Isn’t that sweet, ” he sneered, eyes unsubtly raking up and down the length of Katsuki’s form fitting costume. Something snapped inside Hitoshi and before he knew it, he was standing between them, nudging Katsuki behind him with a firm hand.
“Just coming from a party,” Hitoshi said conversationally, trying not to break his own teeth from how tightly his jaw was clenched. “Have a good night, guys.”
Hitoshi made to step around the man but he just grinned, shifting his massive body to block Hitoshi’s path. The guy really was huge. Had nothing on All Midoriya, of course, but he was easily a head taller than Hitoshi and twice as wide. His three buddies, who were decidedly not smiling, were no pipsqueaks either.
“Hey, I've got a trick,” the man chortled, sounding very proud of his own cleverness. “Imma make your wallets disappear.”
Hitoshi grimaced as the thugs spread out in front of them. Was it worth a fight just to hang on to their cash? He could hear Katsuki growling into his shoulder, clearly itching to throw a punch. What were the chances Katsuki had super vampire strength or something? There’d been no evidence of that so far, but maybe…
His internal debate was cut off by an angry pink blur buzzing past his ear like a bullet.
“Back off, pal!” Mina squeaked, tiny hands on her tiny hips as she scolded the ringleader of this cheery band of assholes.
The man blinked at her, bewildered. “What the fuck kinda toy do you got here?” He asked, grabbing for Mina with one of his meaty hands. She nimbly dodged it, tinkling furiously.
“I’m a genuine fairy, buddy!” She shouted, flipping him the bird in a very un-Disney-like manner.
“Ain’t no such thing,” one of the lackeys grunted, speaking up for the first time.
Strangely, Mina gave a little gasp of pain at the words, pressing her hand to her chest. Her busy little wings faltered, and she nearly dropped from the air before recovering.
“Oi, you okay Pinky?” Katsuki barked, catching the movement.
“F-fine,” Mina reassured them.
The man was looking less and less amused.
“Enough of this shit.” He stepped forward menacingly, and Hitoshi felt Katsuki tense behind him and heard the creak of Iida’s tin as he came up beside Hitoshi. “Hand over the cash and valuables now, or we’ll mess up your pretty makeup. Got it?”
“We want the little flying toy, too,” the lackey from before added, eyeing Miya greedily. She winced again, pink glow dimming. “Could finally get the ex off my back if I showed up with that for the kiddos.”
“Gross, you’ve reproduced?” Hitoshi threw the insult out carelessly. This was unwise.
“I think we’re done being nice,” the hulk scowled down at them as behind him, the deadbeat dad roared his agreement. Hitoshi flinched and braced for impact as a fist with knuckles like walnuts swung towards his face.
CLANG
Hitoshi opened his eyes to see that Mina, Katsuki, and Iida had all leapt to his defense. But it was Iida’s arm that took the blow. He continued to hold out the dented limb in front of them as the thug hissed and shook out his hand.
“Fuck! Does that hurt?” Hitoshi asked. The tin was crumpled inward at the point of impact. Iida shook his head.
“I appear to be immune to pain in my current form.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t get your shit wrecked, you stupid tin can!” Katsuki yelled at Iida, face twisted and fangs looking sharper than ever.
But there was no more time to discuss whether damage to Iida’s tin body would translate to grievous injuries once the spell was reversed. The men attacked them as one, all four rushing forward with eyes and clenched hands promising violence and pain. Hitoshi wheezed as a fist drove into his stomach, and he heard cursing to his left and right as Katsuki sank his teeth into one thug’s arms while another discovered just how painful it was to punch a man made of metal.
Hitoshi sunk to his knees, breathless, and stared up at the boss thug with watering eyes. The man drew back a leg to literally kick Hitoshi while he was down, the coward, and Hitoshi willed his useless body to do something , to at least roll away-
And then the strangest thing happened.
The man pivoted at the last moment and sharply kicked one of his comrades with his heavy metal-toed boot instead.
Wha-
“About time, shitty Casper!” Katsuki roared, wiping blood from his lips as his rather pale victim whined and scuttled away from him. Todoroki used his new meatsuit to flash them a peace sign before resuming his brutal takedown of the man’s former friends.
In a macabre grand finale, Todorki casually walked up to the dumpster, leapt in, and then slammed the lid down on top of his unwilling host’s head before his spectral form slipped back out.
Hitoshi groaned and got to his feet. Katsuki offered Hitoshi his hand without making eye contact and Hitoshi took it gratefully, holding on slightly longer than was really necessary to regain his balance.
He surveyed the troops. Everyone looked slightly worse for wear, with torn clothes and dented tin and blood smears, not to mention the general dirty muckiness from scuffling in an alley. Even Mina was looking distinctively droopy, despite not actually having been hit or snagged out of the air.
A moment later, they found out why.
“Fuck this!” The boss thug cried out angrily, eyes crossed with what was likely at least a semi-concussion as he struggled to climb out of the dumpster. “Fuck you and your hocus pocus bullshit! Ain’t no magic, just dirty tricks! And,” he added, sounding more than a little manic as one of his dilated pupils managed to land on Mina, “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FUCKING FAIRIES!”
"Oh," Mina whispered, voice soft and weak. Then her little light went out and her wings stopped and she dropped like a pebble out of the air.
“MINA!” Katsuki threw himself forward with arms outstretched, catching Mina just before she hit the ground.
There was a distant bang as the man lost his battle with consciousness and fell back into the dumpster. No one spared a glance in his direction. They all huddled concernedly around Katsuki, who carefully cradled the unconscious Mina in his hands.
“What’s wrong with her?” Shouto asked, bending through Hitoshi for a closer look. Hitoshi shuddered at the uncomfortably chilly sensation.
“According to my research,” Iida began in that pompous Dorothy Ann way of his.
“Research?”
“According to what I learned watching films with my niece,” Iida amended, “Fairies require belief to live. Having her existence so vehemently denied may have caused a bit of a shock to her system.”
He held out a hand, and after a moment of hesitation, Katsuki transferred Mina to it.
“We will wait here for you,” Iida said. “Good luck.”
“Eh? You giving up already, Campbell Soup?” Katsuki taunted. Hitoshi tugged at his elbow.
“That’s not it, Kats,” he whispered, eyes fixed on Iida’s joints.
Rust grew from then, staining his silver tin red. Iida smiled at them ruefully.
“Yes, the infamous weakness of the Tin Man,” Iida said. “I do not have a canister of oil to grease myself with. I think I might have just enough motion left in me to get Mina and I a safe distance from these ruffians before they recover. I am glad…”
Iida paused. Even his voice had begun to creak. But he persisted, ever the reliable class president.
“I am glad I was... able to be useful to you all… if only... for a short… while.”
As they watched, rust creeped over Iida’s fingers, causing them to stiffen around Mina in an unmovable grasp. Iida smiled down at her, then slowly turned to stagger out of the alley the way they had come.
“At least… I can...not drop… her.”
The vampire, the ghost, and the human standing between them watched solemnly as Iida shakily rounded the corner and then left their sight. Silence pervaded for a long moment. Silence, that is, but for the pained moaning of the men at their feet and the heavy breaths of Katsuki at Hitoshi’s side as he fought the rise of anger and helpless Hitoshi felt sure they shared.
Then Todoroki spoke up.
“Cowabummer.”
Hitoshi rubbed his temples, fighting a sudden headache. “I hate you so much right now.”
Todoroki chuckled, hollow and faint. “Sorry. Izuku got me on that clock app. The sounds live in my head mortgage-free.”
“Oh my g-”
“Let’s go,” Katsuki interrupted fiercely. He turned on a dime, red cape swirling around him. “We don’t have time to waste. Keep up or don’t, extras, but I’m off to see the fucking wizard.”
“The wonderful wizard?” Todoroki whispered, like he couldn’t help himself.
Hitoshi rolled his eyes, and together they followed their vengeful vampire.
The streets were mercifully empty after that. They walked through them, each lost in their own thoughts, or possibly in Katsuki’s case, their own dark musings of bloody revenge. For as much as Katsuki scowled and shouted and shoved everyone away, Hitoshi knew what his friends meant to him.
They meant the world.
It was one of the things Hitoshi lo-
Admired about him.
As they neared the old cathedral, Hitoshi checked his phone. There was a series of increasingly incoherent messages from those still at the party, and no messages more recent than an hour old. Made sense. It was almost four in the morning, now. Anyone still awake was probably too drunk to function.
Except them.
The chosen ones, on their ridiculous quest, with their impossible bodies.
Hitoshi looked at Katsuki and then to Todoroki - but where had the antagonistically playful ghost gone? He squinted. There! Was he always so insubstantial, so transparent? It was as though Todoroki was fading from view more and more with every passing moment. Hitoshi was about to give voice to his growing concern when Katsuki suddenly stopped and Hitoshi nearly fell on his ass after colliding with Katsuki’s back.
“We’re here,” the vampire announced gruffly.
And so they were. The cathedral towered above them, grim as any horror movie set. Cracked and warped wooden siding covered everything but the broken stained glass windows and the wind-blown shingles. The rounding hills that flowed like a sea out from behind the cathedral were dotted with crowded clusters of gravestones. A raven cawed portentously from a dead, crooked oak tree, despite being what Hitoshi was fairly certain is a diurnal animal.
Put together, the picture rather reminded Hitoshi of his only remaining blood relative - an old, bitter aunt who sat surrounded by photographs of their equally bitter dead relatives and insisted on wearing her heat-damaged wig and the same set of costume jewelry with more glass gems missing than not.
And yet, it seemed like it was missing something -
“BA HA HA HA HAAA!”
Ah. There it is.
The wizard appeared before them, star-spangled robes billowing about him in defiance of the lack of any breeze whatsoever. Perhaps they were made of the same material as Katsuki’s cape, since that too swooshed dramatically away from him at all times.
“At last you have come to face me!” The wizard cackled and thrust his wand upward. Lightning and thunder filled the formerly clear night sky - or was it pre-dawn, now?- and Hitoshi could feel his already tragic hair expand even further in response to the electricity in the air.
“Game’s over, fucker,” Katsuki yelled, and if Hitoshi had any doubts before, he knew for sure that Katsuki was seriously angry now. Not even an attempt at a nickname? “We found you and the sun hasn’t risen yet, so undo your shitty spell already!”
“Well,” replied the wizard, “what have you and your little friends learned from this experience?”
Quiet.
It was deathly quiet.
They all three stared up at the wizard with unconcealed rage. “What?” Hitoshi asked in Katsuki’s stead, as Katsuki had been reduced to incoherent growls.
“You’ve learned your lesson, have you?” the wizard prompted. “About making light of magical beings by dressing in a mockery of them?”
“We had no reason to believe you actually existed!”
“I don’t see how that’s an appropriate defense,” the wizard frowned. “It sounds like you haven’t learned anything at all! Well. Guess I’ll have to take this matter into my own hands, then!”
And then the corny fuck summoned a pair of giant, glittery hands that rushed towards them.
And Hitoshi just stood there, watching them fly nearer heartbeat after rapid heartbeat.
What was the point of fighting this now? How could they fight what was impossible to begin with?
After everything they’d been through that evening, their efforts just hadn’t been enough. Mina, and Iida… How long would they wait for them? Forever? Would someone find them? Someone to oil Iida’s joints and believe in Mina’s magic?
Hitoshi closed his eyes. He heard Katsuki scream. He sounded furious. Good. It would be so much worse if Kats sounded scared.
What happened next was nearly indescribable.
Something settled inside of Hitoshi’s skin. It flexed his muscles experimentally before forcing Hitoshi’s eyes back open just in time to see one of the gigantic hands a mere gigantic fingertip away. Quite without his permission, Hitoshi’s body flung itself out of the hands path and it collided with the pavement instead, crushing a hole in the ground that coincidentally would have been the perfect size to bury Hitoshi’s body.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” howled Kats from his catlike perch atop his own gigantic hand, which had just carved a similar crater beneath him. “MOVE YOUR ASS, TOSHI!”
The thing that had so recently taken Hitoshi’s body as its own slipped free of it now, and Hitoshi could only just make out Todoroki’s wavering ghost above him.
“After everything we’ve been through tonight, what’s the point of giving up?” Todoroki whispered.
“Are you okay?” Hitoshi asked, barely aware of the monstrous iridescent hands pulling themselves free of the rubble on either side of him as he watched wisps of Todoroki’s spectral essence shed themselves to disappear on a wind that, again, was not a breeze Hitoshi himself could feel.
“Mister Stark, I don’t feel-”
“Do not quote Infinity War to me-”
“-so good,” Todoroki finished, a ghost of a smile on what remained of his face. “Looks like I’m out of ‘booce’-”
“Please don’t-”
“That’s ‘boo juice’.”
“-explain it.” Hitoshi sighed. “The puns are so much worse when you explain them.”
Rocks and dirt rained to the ground as the hands lifted up into the air once more. Katsuki was unsuccessfully trying to drain the non-existent blood from one of them with all the persistent unintelligence of a very nicely dressed mosquito.
“Good luck,” Todoroki said in a voice now quieter than Hitoshi’s own unsteady breaths.
And then he was gone.
Fuck.
Fuck this.
Fuck every fucking thing about it.
Hitoshi screamed.
“Toshi?!” Katsuki looked up in alarm to see Hitoshi running pell-mell towards the wizard, arms windmilling and feet tearing up chunks of dead grass and tears flying free from his rage-narrowed eyes.
For a single shining salty-grief moment, Hitoshi thought the strength of his righteous anger would be enough to carry them to victory.
The hand that plucked him off the ground seconds before he seized the wizard by his stupid throat brought him back to reality.
Whatever reality meant anymore, anyway.
In the corner of Hitoshi’s watery vision he saw the second hand clutching a ferociously struggling Katsuki.
The wizard tsk’d.
“You know, you two are really no civil at all,” he informed them.
Hitoshi thought he might be sick. This monster was killing his friends, was probably seconds away from crushing Katsuki and himself, and he was going to lecture them on fucking manners?
“Hmmm… what to do…” the wizard mused. Katsuki let loose a string of utterly foul curses that nearly made Hitoshi blush despite literally everything going to hell. The giant hand adjusted its grip to muffle him, thankfully leaving Katsuki’s nose exposed so he could breathe.
At last the wizard came to a decision. “Time for a time out, I think!” he announced cheerily. At once the hands carried them up, up, up to the peak of the cathedral’s tower. The hands opened without warning and Katsuki and Hitoshi fell, barely managing to grab on to the sharply steepled roof in time. The hands dissipated, and they were alone.
“Shit,” Katsuki swore. Hitoshi found himself in fervent agreement.
They cautiously edged closer to one another, a few stray shingles slipping loose beneath their feet to crash ominously on the ground far, far below them. At last they were within each other’s grasp. It didn’t really help their situation any, but Hitoshi felt a little better all the same.
“Now what?” Hitoshi asked, mostly because he didn’t know what else to say.
“How the fuck should I know?” Katsuki snapped, and Hitoshi flinched. The urge to shoot back with something equally acerbic rose within him, but he pushed it back down, not wanting what might be their final moments to end with an argument.
Katsuki must have felt the same, because after a couple beats he swallowed audibly (his pride, perhaps) and said, terribly quietly, “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Not really,” Katsuki growled. “I’m a fucking vampire. I should have been stronger. Should have been able to protect you.”
“You only have those powers because of him. He probably would have taken them away if they were going to be a threat.”
“I guess,” Katsuki said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
They continued to cling to the cathedral's sharp spire. Soon Hitoshi’s body ached from the all over tension required to keep him in place. How long would the wizard leave them up here? Would things be even worse when he decided their “time out” was up?”
“What time do you think it is?” Katsuki asked after a while.
“There’s no way I can check my phone like this,” Shinsou replied, blanching at the mere thought of trying to retrieve it from his pocket. “Almost morning though, I think. The sky’s getting-”
His heart froze.
No.
No, surely not-
“The sky’s getting lighter.” Katsuki finished the sentence for him, as defiantly bold as ever.
His brave, fierce Kats.
Hitoshi didn’t say it. He didn’t need to. They were both thinking it. What else was there to think about? The last few stars winked out. The birds began their morning chorus. And the horizon grew rosy pink.
A red sun rises, Hitoshi imagined Todoroki whispering in his ear, his passive face secretly betraying his glee in managing to work in another popular culture reference. Todoroki was easy to read, really. You just had to know where to look.
Just like Katsuki. Someone who didn’t know him would simply describe his expression as ‘angry’, or possibly, ‘demonic’. They wouldn’t notice the tightness around his eyes, the way his lips were pressed together so hard that they were white with the lack of blood.
Hitoshi made a move.
Carefully, he crept closer and closer to Katsuki, and soon he was slotting his foot between Katsuki’s.
“The fuck are you doing,” Katsuki choked out, voice strained.
Hitoshi took a breath and then shuffled over still more, until his hands were gripping the shingles just over Katsuki’s hands.
“You fucking moron! You’re going to fall!” Katsuki whisper-shouted, and for the first time, he really did sound afraid.
“Just let me do this, okay?”
“It won’t even work. There’s no way you can block all the sunlight from hitting me with your scrawny ass.”
“I’m still going to try.”
The sky grew lighter yet. Any moment now, the sun would break free of the horizon. And what would happen to Katsuki’s vampire body then?
Everyone knows what happens to vampires in the sun.
Hitoshi adjusted himself slightly. He couldn’t let that happen.
His chin rested on top of Katsuki’s head, possible with only angling his neck back a little. Katsuki was a fair bit shorter than him, after all. Cautiously, he slid his hands down until they fully covered Kats’.
“Toshi?”
“Mmm?” Hitoshi inquired distractedly. His balance was more precarious than ever.
“There was a prize for the Halloween contest,” Katsuki said.
“Huh?”
“I was going to win it. The contest. The first prize.”
Okay. If Katsuki was making idle chit chat to distract from their impending doom, Hitoshi could play along.
“What was the first prize?” Hitoshi asked gamely as sweat dripped down his back from the effort of holding them in place.
“Concert tickets. Two of them. I was gonna…" Katsuki took a deep breath. "Gonna ask you to come with me.”
Hitoshi's heart stopped in a way that was actually quite nice.
“Oh," he managed to reply shakily. "As… as a?”
“A date. Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“ ‘Oh? ’ That all you gotta say? Shit, fucking let me fry-”
“No, I mean." Hitoshi smiled, too wide and with far too much joy considering their dire situation. "I would have said yes.”
“As a-”
“Yeah. As a date.”
The sun rose. Hitoshi pressed himself even tighter against Katsuki's body. But it was in vain. Despite his best efforts, the sun reached a sliver of the curve of Katsuki's cheek.
No!
… Wait.
"Fucking seriously?" Hitoshi groaned. "Open your eyes, Kats."
He did. "Are you shitting my dick?" Katsuki swore.
Katsuki was glittering like a damn disco ball everywhere the sun met his exposed skin.
Hitoshi smirked, giddy with relief. "So are you an Edward or a Jacob kinda guy?"
"Why couldn't the sun have just killed me instead."
"Aw, don't be like that Kats. Your shimmery secret is safe with me."
"I am going to push you off this roof," Katsuki threatened, looking back at Hitoshi with his own lips curved in a grin.
And then they fell open in horror, as the movement of Katsuki merely turning his head proved enough to defeat Hitoshi's already weak grip.
"TOSHI!" he shrieked in pure furious terror, but it was too late.
Hitoshi was falling, watching Katsuki's panicked red eyes grow small with distance as he dropped through the air along with the bits of crumbling shingles that had failed him.
He was falling.
And then he wasn't.
Thankfully, it was not the unforgiving ground that stopped his descent.
"Got you!" Mina cheered, continuing to dust him with sparkling pink glitter. Hitoshi sputtered as some got in his mouth.
"Mina?" he asked in shock. Above them, he could hear Katsuki muttering oh thank fuck it's Tinkerbell oh what the fuck-
Hitoshi tried to fly up to him but only succeeded in turning himself upside down. "Mina?" he asked weakly.
"On it!"
She zipped up to Katsuki, tinkling merrily all the way.
"You sure you need help, Bakugou?" She teased. "You seem plenty sparkly all on your own!"
"Mina."
She jolted at the sound of Katsuki using her actual name. "Sorry. I've got you."
As soon as they were all on blissfully firm ground, Hitoshi seized Katsuki and pulled him into his arms, completely uncaring of Mina's excited tinkling.
"How did you get to us in time?" He asked Mina once he was sure of Katsuki whole and safe (if a bit red around the ears) in his embrace.
"A bar closed nearby," Mina explained. "Turns out, drunk people very sincerely believe in fairies. We have to go back for Iida though."
"Excellent!" a horribly familiar voice boomed above them. "I see you have finally all learned the true lesson: the value of friendship!"
"What?!"
The wizard smiled benevolently down at them. "Well done, all of you. I shall now release you from my little spell. Farewell…. Until next Halloween!... Halloween!... Hallo-"
"Please just undo the spell and go," Hitoshi pleaded tiredly.
He did. There was a showy flash and bang, and when the smoke cleared the wizard was gone and a full-sized wingless Mina fell on her butt with an "oof!" and Kats stopped glittering.
Hitoshi still held him tightly. He was too exhausted to be embarrassed.
"Hey guys," Todoroki waved at them from the sidewalk. "Can we go back now? I really need to fondle my boyfriend's perfect human-sized ass."
"Same," Hitoshi agreed with delirious optimism. He yelped as Katsuki bit his shoulder, face flushed red.
"Shut up," Katsuki growled.
"You mean you don't want me to?"
"Shut. Up."
"That's not a no." Hitoshi looked up to ask Mina and Todoroki to go on ahead and saw they were already walking away. Oh.
Right, then.
"Hey, Kats?" Hitoshi asked softly, gently tipping Katsuki's face to look up at him with a finger under his chin.
"What?"
"Can I kiss you?"
"Just do it already," Katsuki scowled.
Cute.
Who was he to argue with that?
Hitoshi kissed him.
All in all, Hitoshi decided, it wasn't the worst Halloween party.