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Eijirou runs the club as a front for his true business. The kind of simple, breezy business he never gets tired of. A word in the ear of a talented tattoo artist, sulking in the corner on the right night. A talk with a shy florist nursing a beer just a few stools down. A touch of his magic, a touch of love , at the right moment.
He leaves them making gooey eyes at each other over the bar, a swell of warm, comfortable satisfaction in his chest as he steps back and rinses a martini glass.
He’s been a bartender before. Many times over, in fact. But the nightclub scene is new to him and he feels slightly out of touch with the crowd’s taste in music. It’s always a thrill, starting something new - a new profession. A new name. A new face. Blundering through unfamiliar territory in a delightful and thoroughly human fashion.
The world is bright and exciting and full of new experiences, and Eijirou loves it.
It isn’t till after he’s mixed himself an obscenely dry martini and tears his eyes away from the giggling florist now hanging off the tattooist’s arm that he notices the man.
The club is a tapestry of emotions, the air humming with feelings - lust, contentment, anxiety, adrenaline. All of it whirling around, whizzing back and forth as people talk and laugh and connect.
And there in the corner at the edge of the bar, a man sitting by himself in his own quiet, tense cloud of feelings. Bitter, angry, and radiating loneliness.
Eijirou knows loneliness. It sets his teeth on edge and raises the fine hairs along his neck. It’s his opposite and it draws him in like a magnet, his feet carrying him across the bar towards the man.
The man is lonely - has been lonely for so long that it no longer registers, that he’s accepted it as his natural state. And yet he still aches with it.
It makes Eijirou’s chest tight and his breath catch, that loneliness. His gums itch with the need to make it better, to complete him and make him happy and whole, to see him loved. He wants to look at the man and have him understand he will never be lonely again.
The man is alone, and he is beautiful. Eijirou pauses a few feet away and pretends to be focused on spearing olives for his martini as he studies the man’s profile, the line of his jaw, his wine red eyes. It amazes him sometimes that humans can be so beautiful and yet still be lonely.
Really? he thinks, chewing thoughtfully on an olive. No one’s ever wanted to keep him forever?
He finishes the olive and chases it with a deep swallow of gin and juice before placing the empty glass to the side. He tips his head like a bird and blinks, changing the color of his eyes at will to match the quiet man’s own. Perhaps they can bond over it. Behind him, his glamoured wings shiver with excitement before tucking themselves tightly against his back, invisible to the human eye.
He thinks, I’m going to fix you, sad boy. I’m going to make you mine.
Aloud, he says, “I like the way you brood.”
*
Bakugou Katsuki.
The name tastes like burnt caramel on Eijirou’s tongue, hot and sharp, with a fiery personality to match. But he isn’t afraid of a challenge.
He is afraid of getting his human body killed - very afraid, as it happens, considering the impermanence of death does absolutely nothing to stop it hurting - and the downright murderous look Bakugou levels at him before Eijirou manages to charm down his defenses and get his name nearly has him taking flight.
“I want to be alone,” Bakugou says. He pushes a freshly made tumblr between his hands, a special cocktail Eijirou had made just for him to help soften the edges.
“Good, good!” Eijirou plants an elbow on the bartop and cups his chin, his smirk devilish. “So do I. My name’s Eijirou. Let’s be alone together.”
Bakugou shoots him a look as if to say, you’re a special kind of stupid, aren’t you? But he’s a touch amused. Eijirou can feel it, a bright spot amidst the miserable cloud.
“Do you always come out to nightclubs alone?” he asks. “There isn’t anyone waiting for you at home?”
“No.”
“Must be lonely.”
Bakugou scowls, and the way he scrunches up his nose reminds Eijirou of an angry little rabbit.
“Don’t you have a job to do?”
Eijirou smirks wider and tongues the edge of his teeth. You’re it , he thinks. Without breaking eye contact, he straightens and calls over his shoulder.
“Mina!”
She materializes behind him as if she’d been waiting for a summons, and judging by the bug-eyed look she gives him, she probably was. She can sense it the same way Eijirou can; the change. The feelings. He’s been with humans before - they both have, countless times over thousands of years. It’s what they were created for, to make love and spread love in an otherwise loveless world. They know all these feelings. They live in these feelings.
But they’ve never had them for themselves before.
He grins at her, excited by the unknown. “Think you can hold down the fort for a while?”
Her eyes flick to Bakugou and back again, startled. “If you don’t come back, I’m selling the bar and moving to the Bahamas.”
“You have more class than that,” he chides. “At least spring for Bora Bora.”
She shakes her head as he plants his hands on the bartop and hops over to land next to Bakugou. The blonde stares at him as if he’s lost his mind.
“What are you doing?” he demands, but Eijirou senses that spark of eagerness breaking through the misery, a piercing beam of light fissuring out behind those beautiful red eyes.
“I have no idea,” he admits, and takes Bakugou by the wrist.
He’s never been afraid of a challenge.
*
It takes some doing, of course.
A lot, actually.
Eijirou spends most of the night trying to get Bakugou to crack a smile, something that sounds easy in theory when Eijirou first drags them out of Cupid’s , but turns out to be one of the most difficult endeavors he’s ever attempted over the course of his many lives.
When it finally happens though, when that exquisitely prickly facade finally crumbles just enough that Eijirou manages to coax out a gravelly bark of laughter, it feels as if the heavens have suddenly opened up and his brother angels are singing him home again.
But then Bakugou’s eyes dance , sparkling like fireworks in the refracted moonlight bouncing off the river they’re walking alongside, and it hits Eijirou like a shovel to the back of the head that this is much more beautiful than anything heaven could ever offer him.
In fact, he’d snap his harp all over again if it meant he could hear that laugh even one more time.
“Here, dumbass,” Bakugou says, and thrusts a half-eaten chocolate ice cream cone under his nose. Eijiour’s own cherry scoop melts into the ground between them where it was unceremoniously dropped as a result of Eijirou’s elaborate hand gestures.
He takes the cone with numb fingers.
“When can I see you again?” he blurts, and Bakugou snorts.
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m not,” he says honestly. He can’t get drunk. He doesn’t need to eat, either, or to sleep, despite enjoying the act of doing all three - a byproduct of celestial efference, or whatever. Except he wonders now if he might be, a little. Drunk, that is. He’s felt lightheaded since he laid eyes on Bakugou at the bar.
Bakugou studies his face, looking, perhaps, for some sign that this is a joke. Finding nothing but earnestness, he stands up a little straighter and says, “Why?”
“High metabolism?”
Bakugou clicks his tongue. “No, I mean, why do you want to see me again, idiot?”
Because I want you , and I have no idea what that means.
“I think I like you,” he says instead. “I think I like you a lot.”
Bakugou’s face goes a little red at the confession. He wants Eijirou back, Eijirou feels it just like he can feel the first touch of warmth on his skin as dawn starts to break over the cityscape behind them.
He wants to close his eyes and lose himself in how good it feels. He wants to set heaven on fire over how good it feels.
“Can I kiss you?”
Bakugou’s eyes widen and his face reddens even further at the request. But he noticeably doesn’t say no, and he doesn’t move away when Eijirou steps into his personal space and brings their faces closer together.
There aren’t a lot of human things Eijirou hasn’t done in his very, very long existence. He knows all the things love and lust involve and how it all feels from the inside out and from the outside in. His experiences have ranged all across the board and back again, and yet when his nose brushes against Bakugou’s, his nerves jangle as if he’s never so much as held another person’s hand before.
It’s exhilarating.
“Nervous?” Bakugou is smirking slightly at him, his tone unfairly teasing.
“Yes,” Eijirou admits.
But moreso than anything else, he’s filled with a tingly anticipation. A restlessness. A fluttery feeling in his stomach.
And he wants even more.
He tosses the forgotten ice cream to the side, not caring where it lands, and takes Bakugou’s face in his hands. Eijirou kisses him before he can complain about being wasteful, smothering the words before they’re fully formed.
It’s soft and only lasts a moment, but for Eijirou that moment feels like a thousand lifetimes rolled into one. It takes his breath away, knocks every thought out of his head, and leaves him standing there stunned and impossibly vulnerable.
But then Bakugou loops an arm around his neck and pulls him in deeper, kisses him back, and Eijirou’s chest is filled with beating wings. He feels Bakugou go loose and shivery in his arms, and it feels - so good. Glorious. Almost holy.
Bakugou shivers again, and Eijirou realizes belatedly it’s because his actual wings are flapping around them in full view and stirring up the chill morning air. Which also means his eyes have probably reverted back to their natural state as well, marking him for the devil he’s not quite ready to reveal.
He wraps his arms around Bakugou, deepening the kiss, and wills his glamour back into place before he’s forced to give up the ghost. Bakugou responds beautifully to the distraction, pressing a hand to the back of Eijirou’s neck and catching his lower lip between his teeth, biting down just a little.
Eijirou’s glamour nearly slips a second time.
His wings give a final flutter, causing Bakugou to raise up onto his toes and lean into Eijirou even more to escape the wind, before folding back with an invisible swish.
When they finally break apart, Eijirou looks like any other dumbstruck human who's just been hit with Cupid’s arrow. A lovestruck fool. Bakugou glances skyward with a frown, as if expecting to see storm clouds forming above them, and Eijirou has to bite his cheek to keep from laughing.
“How about a coffee date to warm you up? Or,” he lets his hands wander a little lower, delighting in the way Bakugou squirms against him in response. “We can keep doing this instead?”
Bakugou shoves him away with a flustered growl, though Eijirou feels a bloom of happiness swelling in the very same place that cloud of loneliness had occupied at the beginning of the night.
“Fine. But you’re paying. You dropped my ice cream,” Bakugou says, and shoves his hands into his pockets before storming away.
“It would be my pleasure ,” Eijirou says, falling into step beside him.
As they walk a block to the nearest coffee shop, Eijirou wonders if it’s too soon to offer Bakugou his whole life.