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Chapter Text

No one had inhabited this place for years. Possibly decades. Centuries, to be ambitious, and Bakugou was always ambitious. He wouldn’t have agreed to move in with a bunch of humans if he wasn’t.

He turned, positive he’d gotten the address wrong, but his taxi had vanished into thin air. He suppressed a shudder. He’d never heard it drive off. 

Okay. Reason #1 this was a mistake. 

A concrete wall loomed in front of him, shadowed and stained, sprawling green ivy choking away its last breaths and leaving dark fissures behind in its surface like a broken vase. The small strip of grass along the wall’s perimeter was yellowed and sparse, the mailbox covered in moss and leaning precariously left, like a drunk. Bakugou tilted his head back, one hand on his baseball cap. Over the massive wall he could just see the top of the dark shingled roof, the edge of a window cut out of the black-brown wood framing. He looked just in time to catch a human-shaped shadow duck out of view. Slick.

Dragging his suitcase behind him, he found the iron gate that marked the only entrance through the concrete fence. He pressed the buzzer, and waited.

The voice that came through was steady and uninspired. “Are you delivering something?”

“Myself,” he answered. “I’m Bakugou. I’m moving in today.”

“Oh.” He heard a cymbal crash. “So you’re the reason they brought us that drum set.” 

Bakugou paused. Last time he checked, that drum set was meticulously packed away in a heavy box along with styrofoam and an entire colony of packing peanuts. “You unboxed my fucking drum set?”

“It was a big box. I was curious.”

Bakugou thought he might just kick this gate down. He wouldn’t have been able to six months ago, but ever since a giant bear-wolf-dog had taken a chunk out of his arm, he was doing all sorts of things he didn’t do six months ago. “Let me in now before I burn this place down.”

“Sure. Welcome in.”

Reason #2.

The gate clicked, and Bakugou shoved against it with his shoulder, the door creaking on his hinges as he entered. Clearly the owner of this place—some guy named Todoroki, if he was remembering right, who’d inherited it from his father—had updated the fancy automatic gate and just about nothing else. The wooden exterior was dark with age and grime, a few suspicious holes in the panels just above the stone foundation. An overgrown cobblestone path guided him up to the porch, which had only one working light. Puddles of muddy water lingered in the base of the stone water features that flanked either side of the front door.

Reason #3. He had a feeling he was going to keep finding more and more of these. And easily.

Bakugou’s suitcase had just thudded up the last porch step when the front door slid open. The man who stood at the threshold was shockingly pale, as if the sun feared ever touching his face. Despite the ecological chaos that was his front yard, this man was polished, his split-toned hair combed and lustrous, turtleneck tucked spotlessly into a pair of straight-cut slacks. A reddened burn scar splashed over one eye, but unlike the scars Bakugou knew, this one made you want to look at him longer. It was a notch in the surface of a pearl—far more distinct that way.

Bakugou had the annoying and persistent thought that the stranger was stupidly pretty, and this was terrible news to him. Thankfully, soon after, the man opened his mouth. “1,273.”

He stared blankly at Bakugou as if waiting for a reply, but Bakugou was too busy trying to withdraw any meaning from that statement to do so. “What?”

“The amount of packing peanuts in your drum set box,” he explained. “1,273.”

Bakugou stared at him. Partially because he was waiting on him to laugh and tell him this was some extremely alternative form of hazing. Partially because he was waiting on him to get any less pretty.

Neither happened. Bakugou asked, “You counted them?”

The man blinked. “Of course I did. Why else would I open the box?”

Reason #4.

Another cymbal crash split the air then, this one twice as deafening given the fact it wasn’t meshed through the static of a call box. “Todoroki!” a voice called from somewhere within the house. “Todoroki, would you— catch her!”

Bakugou hopped the threshold, leaving his suitcase behind on the porch. He’d stepped barely two feet into the foyer before he found a black cat attached to his face.

It took both the cat and Bakugou a second to understand their sudden proximity to each other. Once the cat did, it yowled and flung a clawed hand at Bakugou that he narrowly dodged. It jumped to the ground, skittering out the open door before Todoroki could slide it shut.

“Should someone go after her?” Todoroki asked, though he huddled comfortably in the shadows of the genkan, giving no indication he intended to be that someone.

Bakugou’s head swiveled back towards the foyer, where his second roommate now knelt in the middle of the floor, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion. He was on the smaller side, wild green hair sticking up in all directions, a dust of freckles across his cheeks. “No point,” he said, getting to his feet and dusting off his knees. His oversized jeans pooled around his ankles. “She’ll be back. Neko’s just like that.”

Bakugou took off his hat, hiding his face in it. “Please don’t tell me that’s the cat’s name.”

Todoroki said, “I think it suits her.”

“She’s normally pretty fond of people, too. Something about you freaked her out for some reason, but I’m sure she’ll come around,” said the green-haired man, and held out his hand. “You’re Bakugou, right? Midoriya. Sorry about your drum set. Besides Neko, no one actually messed with it much.”

“It’s out of its box,” Bakugou said, ignoring Midoriya’s hand and shooting a dismal look towards the living room, where the set sat disassembled atop the tatami. “That’s messing with it plenty.”

“I’m sorry,” Todoroki started. He had the suitcase in his hand, and he wheeled it slowly towards Bakugou, who snatched it away from him with a barely concealed growl. “But you have to admit 1,273 is an impressive—”

“Shut the fuck up about the packing peanuts, please,” Bakugou snapped. “Would one of you idiots just show me where my room is?”

———

Midoriya chewed on the end of his pencil until the pockmarked eraser resembled a tiny nub of graphite-stained Swiss cheese. He had grades to put in and essays to look over, but those could wait. He was on the edge of a breakthrough here, and he could sense it.

The unfortunate part about being a witch was the breadth of information magic required in order to wield it—even more so if you were unlucky enough to have not discovered you could use magic at all until you were fourteen (and Midoriya was the most unlucky person Midoriya knew). To cast a spell was to have at least a working knowledge of whatever it was you were rearranging or shifting or altering, and to simply use magic to cut the remaining corners. In the broad scheme of things, this meant anything and everything in the universe was potentially useful, including the strange habits of his human roommates:

Todoroki Shouto. Male. 24 (probably, though no one has ever seen his driver’s license or even a dated childhood photo. It is uncertain whether or not either of these exist). Eclectic rich person who has just discovered he might be poor, and seems to be having trouble dealing with that. Likes to count things in his free time. Never seems to pay attention to current events and probably wouldn’t know what day it is if you asked.

Bakugou Katsuki. Male. 24. Drummer for some obscure band he insists is going to hit it big one day. Voracious appetite like he’s eating for two (three? four, more like it). Hates chocolate though (concerning). Outdoorsy—makes preparations for what looks like a long hike once a month. Neko hates him, and he hates Neko. Reconciliation seems unlikely.

Midoriya had spent the bulk of his life avoiding humans—according to his mother, it was safest that way—so maybe he just knew nothing about them. Still, he had the feeling he knew enough to classify these two as extremely strange.

“Is that for a class of yours?”

Midoriya slammed his notebook shut, pencil clattering from his mouth. He could’ve sworn the faculty office had been empty a second ago, but a woman leaned against the edge of his desk, her eyes round and politely curious. At the look on Midoriya’s face, she laughed and arced a section of her short brown hair behind one bejeweled ear. Midoriya squinted. Suddenly it was as though he was inhabiting the same room as the literal sun.

“Didn’t mean to startle you.” She held out her hand. “I’m Uraraka, the new counselor starting today.”

Midoriya shook it, trying not to think about how sweaty his palms must have been. “Midoriya. I teach physics.”

Uraraka shuddered. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, then, but I absolutely hated physics when I was in school.”

Midoriya recalled being quite peeved when he found out he had to know the rules of something just to not follow them. “Honestly? I did, too,” he admitted. Uraraka laughed again, not seeming to know or care what it was doing to Midoriya’s heart health, and then a brief silence settled. If he said nothing, she’d turn around and leave and the conversation would end. After a few more seconds of mental anguish, Midoriya managed: “What did you like, then? I mean, in school.”

Uraraka hummed to herself, considering it. She pivoted so her back rested against the desk, facing the broad wall of windows that overlooked the city skyline. “Literature,” she answered after a while. “Japanese. English. Didn’t matter the language or the region, really. I loved all the stories, especially the horror ones—about good and evil and creatures of the night crawling out to prey on those of the day. You know?”

Midoriya let out a brief, surprised huff. Humans were creative, he’d give them that, but the errors in their stories got old pretty quickly. Unless his hair counted, for instance, he’d never seen a green witch before (barring the one traumatizing time he’d accidentally turned himself into a tree frog). “There’s enough horror in the real world.”

The moment was quick, but not quick enough that Midoriya didn’t catch it. For that split second, the mirth in Uraraka’s expression vanished, her smile somehow emptying itself without moving from her face. “I know,” she said. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”

Midoriya stiffened.

“By the way,” Uraraka started before he could ask or even decide how to. “There’s twice as many restaurants here than there were outside the city. Maybe you could give me some recs? We could even go together.”

Only half of Midoriya’s brain was still caught up with this conversation, the other half left behind wherever the rest of Uraraka’s smile had vanished for that second. He scarcely nodded his head, and Uraraka emitted a squeal of thanks. She brushed his shoulder, and then she was gone, waltzing back out into the hall.

———

It was beginning to dawn on Todoroki that he had not thought this through.

Granted, he’d stopped thinking things through about seventy-five years ago, once he realized that in the sweeping realm of his immortal existence, most consequences of his actions were achingly temporary. This included the idea to invest a large chunk of his money in a tech company who made robots that did nothing but make perfectly-shaped noodles and ask about your day in 27 languages. Just because Todoroki would love a robot like that, apparently, didn’t mean any sizable market would.

 Renting out the spare bedrooms in the house would cushion him a bit until he could make back the rest with his ghostwriting. He just hadn’t considered what moving in with a drummer would do to his sleep schedule.

The small green one kept to himself when he was here, usually shutting himself in his bedroom and only emerging to feed his elusive cat or himself. The loud blond one, on days he didn’t practice with the rest of the band, spent hours crashing away at his drum set. While Bakugou clamped a pair of clunky headphones over his own ears, hair jutting up from around the headband in sharp tufts, he provided no hearing protection for anyone else, of course. 

Even without a vampire’s sharpened hearing the noise would have been deafening. Now, during daylight hours he would’ve spent sleeping before, Todoroki lay on the floor of his bedroom and contemplated the ceiling to the tune of a generous snare drum. Moving in with a human or two was necessary, he reminded himself. For money, of course—and for camouflage. He had lived long enough to know that sometimes it was being alone that caught people’s attention.

Too late, Todoroki realized the vibrant percussion had stopped. The knock on his door a moment later didn’t wait for a response. “Your plants are gonna die, by the way.”

Todoroki did a quick mental scan of his bedroom before remembering his meal for the night was safely shut in the mini refrigerator in the darkest corner of his closet. His eyes craned back to look at Bakugou, who was not any less loud or blond upside down. “Most things do eventually.”

“Please stop doing crack,” Bakugou said, resting a hand against the door jamb. “I mean they’re going to die tonight. There’s a freeze coming.”

Todoroki sat up, slowly. He told Bakugou, “One second,” and strode to his bedside table, where he pulled out a drawer filled entirely with tubes of sunscreen. Once he’d aptly covered himself, he turned to find Bakugou watching him with the measured caution of a disillusioned attendee in the audience of a freak show.

“Is that where all your money went?” Bakugou asked. “Sunscreen?”

“No, but it’s always good to invest in self care,” Todoroki said. He nudged his shoulder on his way out into the hall again. “Give me a hand?”

For a while they worked in silence, shuffling in and out of the open door and nestling the potted ferns in a safe, warm corner of the genkan. There were much more of the plants than Todoroki remembered, but he supposed he didn’t visit the front porch that often anyway. He had probably opened this door more during the move-in a few weeks back than he had his entire time here.

“To be honest,” began Todoroki, shoving aside a pair of bright red tennis shoes to make space for another heavy pot, “You don’t strike me as the sort to have a green thumb.”

Bakugou knelt, sweeping up a swinging elephant-eared plant with ease. “I don’t; my mom does. I’m just—” He paused, as if his train of thought was interrupted, or had gone in a direction he didn’t care for. “I don’t know. I’m used to helping her, I guess. Sometimes it seemed like that old hag cared about those damn plants more than me.”

Todoroki hesitated, weighing the chances of his next question actually getting an answer, and it actually being true. “Where is she now?”

“Home.”

An obscure concept. A bitter part of Todoroki wished he still understood it. “You ever visit?”

“I…” Bakugou chewed his lip, casting a glance towards the sky. “I haven’t been back in a while, no.”

The longer Todoroki lived, the less he understood humans, but this part made the least sense. Their time was finite, and unlike many living things, they were lucky enough to know that. Yet they still wasted so much of it worrying over nothing. “You want to go back,” Todoroki said, stretching to get the last plant, hanging in a wooden basket. He didn’t bother explaining how he knew, because he didn’t. It was a thrum in Bakugou’s heartbeat, a note in his voice. It was something Todoroki felt rather than knew. “You should.”

Bakugou stared at him with an expression a few beats away from anger, just as Todoroki wrapped his hands around the wooden basket and was met with a sharp jolt of pain.

He gasped, drawing his hand back. He hadn’t noticed the broken weaving in the basket until it had already sliced into his palm, and now a trail of cold blood trickled down the inside of his wrist.

“So your ferns fight back,” Bakugou said, laughing tonelessly. “What the fuck happened?”

Todoroki stared at the jagged shard of the broken basket, one sharp wooden edge still bright with a drop of his blood. It was trivial, equivalent to a papercut, but somehow the sight of it still made him sick to his stomach.

Bakugou was reaching for his hand. Todoroki flinched, shoving it into his pocket just as he felt the skin knit itself back over again. “It was just a splinter,” Todoroki assured him, and swiveled the basket so the jagged edge faced away from him. He lifted it gingerly from its hook. “I’ll pull it out later.”

Bakugou’s eyes on him were leery, questioning, but it only lasted a moment.

“Don’t forget to clean the cut,” he said, slamming the door shut behind him. “Unless you want termites living in your skin or something.”

———

That night, Bakugou skipped dinner. He would have skipped it even without the fierce nausea of the impending change twisting his stomach into knots, to be fair. Turns out if your entire body was soon going to disassemble and then reassemble itself like a lego set in the eager hands of a masochist, that sort of thing was much better to do on an empty stomach. 

It didn’t mean he wasn’t starving. As he packed his duffel for the night—several raw chuck roasts packed in ice, chains, spare clothes, a towel to bite down on, and half a bottle of painkillers—the slick iron scent of meat left him salivating, the hunger pangs an ache that reverberated through every muscle, every bone. These pangs had ebbed and flowed over the week as the full moon drew near, but all day they had been at their worst.

Bakugou staggered out into the hall, correcting his stance, forcing himself to stand up straight. He had to make it through the door, through the drive. Then he could give up, let it take over him, worry about the rest in the morning. 

He was lacing his boots when the front door slid open, and Midoriya announced his arrival. He was still in his outfit from work, backpack slung over his shoulder, though the slight flush to his cheeks suggested the teachers had all gone out for drinks after school again. The smell of alcohol on him was faint. The smell of crushed peanuts and soy sauce yakitori was much stronger.

Midoriya’s eyes scraped Bakugou’s duffel bag and the thick-soled boots half-laced up his ankles. “Camping again?”

Bakugou slid his duffel closer to him. He opened his mouth, but waited to speak until he was sure his voice would be steady. “Yeah. There’s another sunset trail I wanna try.”

“Bakugou,” Midoriya said, and as he stepped inside, shucking off his shoes, a chilly breeze slipped in with him. “There’s a cold front. It’s gonna be below freezing tonight.”

That wouldn’t be a problem; fur, as many grievances as he had about its unorthodox introduction to his life, was very insulating. Not that he could say that. “I’m aware,” he said, gesturing to the miniature plant nursery that was currently the front hall. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll dress warm.”

“Do you go with your friends, or something?” Midoriya asked, letting his backpack drop from his shoulders. “It’s dangerous to go alone. Maybe one of us could go with you—”

“ No. ” Bakugou coughed until the growl in his voice was gone. He tried again: “Fuck no. You and the peppermint would just slow me down.”

Midoriya’s brows pinched in frustration, and when he brushed Bakugou’s shoulder, Bakugou shivered and shoved him off. His skin was already on fire, as if tiny hot needles were pricking him from within.

“Speaking of the peppermint,” he said, hefting the duffel and praying the clink of the chains within it wasn’t as audible to Midoriya as it was to him. “Make sure he eats something. I’m not sure I’ve seen him ingest anything but coffee and he seems to think that’s good enough.”

“Bakugou—”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he snapped, and then he was gone.

———

Uraraka’s breath left her mouth in wispy white clouds, the cold dancing on its tiptoes across her cheeks and the edge of her nose. She sat suspended on an old swing set, nudging herself back and forth with the toe of her boot. A freezing wind sent the pile of wet leaves at her feet scattering across the empty playground, but she hardly felt it. 

Both the watch on her wrist and the pitch black sky indicated it was near midnight, well past the bedtime of the target demographic of her current location. She needed the fresh air. She wasn’t yet used to the arranged claustrophobia of the city, the insistence that everything and everyone be as close together as possible. If she spent another moment in her tiny closet of an apartment, she worried she might just tear her hair from her scalp.

The proximity of everything also meant she was bound to find who she was looking for here. Rather, what.

“It still seems dangerous to me,” said her father’s voice in her ear, the steady glow of the phone screen warming the side of her face. “The monsters here are lowbrow. Forest sprites. A vengeful ghost or two, maybe, but nothing some rock salt can’t handle. But in the city? ”

“That’s the point,” Uraraka said, and laughed. Her father did not join her. “I am never going to learn a thing if I keep handling the same small-time cases, Dad. Something about the city attracts them—the bigger ones, the ones that hide in plain sight. I’m going to find them, and I’m going to find out why they’re here.”

“Ochako.”

She tightened her grip on the swing’s iron chain, folding one leg into her lap. Even just the whistle of the wind in the trees sounded different to her here—imbued with something obscure and other than. There was magic in this city. She was sure of it. “I’ll be careful.”

She heard him sigh. “That’s not what I’m worried about. If anyone can do this, it’s you, Ochako. Just—keep your eyes open, is all I’m saying. These beings are sophisticated.”

She knew sophisticated. She’d trained for sophisticated. She wasn’t expecting any less.

“I’ll talk to you later. Love you, Dad. Give Mom a kiss for me,” she said, and hung up, burying her face into the safe, warm depths of her scarf.

Uraraka stood up. A low, guttural howl interrupted the relative silence then, and Uraraka hesitated, listening, the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up. Something about it was too mature, too haunting, to be someone’s over-excited guard dog. There were no wolves in Japan.

Uraraka smiled to herself. Pulling her scarf tighter around her mouth, she marched back down the street.

Chapter Text

Bakugou returned well past ten in the morning, feeling and looking like shit. He found Todoroki asleep in the living room, lying flat on two oversized cushions with his arms crossed over his chest like a corpse. As he wanted nothing more than to rinse off the layers of dirt and dried blood and existential shame his furrier counterpart had acquired over the course of the night, it was Bakugou’s full intention to tiptoe past him to the staircase undetected.

He made it one step when Todoroki asked without opening his eyes, “How was your trip?”

Fantastic, Bakugou thought. My mouth still tastes like deer carcass. “Fine,” he said, before he realized that word was far too charged not to warrant suspicion. He added, lying through his teeth: “Very relaxing.”

Todoroki’s eyes opened then, and at the sight of Bakugou, he frowned. “Are you sure?” he said. “You look…” He caught the warning on Bakugou’s face, and settled on: “Unwell.”

“Says the guy who’s lying there like he’s practicing for his own fucking burial,” Bakugou said, dropping his duffel at his feet and kicking it towards the stairs with a huff. This proved to be a mistake, the movement too sharp and too forceful for his exhausted body to manage. With a stifled grunt of pain, he reached for the banister and missed. He should’ve hit the ground, but when he blinked he was against Todoroki’s chest, the other man’s arms holding him steady.

Though somewhere in his subconscious he recognized it, Bakugou didn’t have much time to consider the implausibility of a normal person making it across the room that fast. As he lifted his head, he was far too busy realizing how close his face was to Todoroki’s. Bakugou had never noticed the unique shape of his mouth before, or his feather-like lashes that matched his two-toned hair.

Reason, as blurred as it was, rushed in. Bakugou jolted back. “Get off of me,” he snapped. “Your hands are fucking freezing.”

Todoroki stepped back, utterly unoffended. He still lingered an inch closer than Bakugou could stand. “I think you should maybe take a break from hiking,” he said, cautiously, like the words would trigger an explosion. “I mean. At least from doing it to the extent that it…does this to you.”

Bakugou wanted to brush it off, to snarl at him that he was wrong, it did nothing, he was fine. He tasted the words on the edge of his tongue.

For some reason, he swallowed them. “Believe me,” he said, his voice gruff, the words spoken almost under his breath. “I wish I could.”

Bakugou was up the stairs and behind the shut door of his bedroom before it dawned on him. It wasn’t just that Todoroki’s skin had felt like touching a car window in January. Bakugou had been closer than ever, close enough to kiss him, and he had not heard nor felt a single beat of a pulse.

———

No sense of self preservation. 

The meeting was probably important. From the one or two words per sentence Midoriya was bothering to pick up on, he thought it had something to do with the autumn fair the school was putting on towards the end of the week. The principal was saying something ambitious and righteous-sounding about community engagement. Midoriya thought it probably had more to do with the extra money and an excuse to drink hot chocolate in excess.

Mentally ill? Midoriya added in his notes, and then scratched it out, figuring it was probably poor form to speculate about the mental stability of someone he only knew from awkward hallway conversations and the occasional doubly as awkward house movie night. (Not, he allowed, that going on a solo camping trip during an overnight freeze was something a very mentally stable person would do.)

Midoriya tapped his pen against his teeth. He paused, and then he wrote one word: chains?

He had considered everything else the sound could have been. A gaudy necklace, maybe, but the extent of Bakugou’s accessorization was his collection of baseball caps and his smart watch. It could have been an obnoxiously large water bottle clinking against something, but Midoriya had noticed Bakugou’s obnoxiously large water bottle in the sleeve outside his backpack. He thought maybe it was ice. That idea didn’t hold up for long. Who just brings ice with them on a hike?

At some point Midoriya had to accept it. He knew what chains sounded like. What he didn’t know was why Bakugou would bring some with him into the middle of the woods.

“Midoriya. Midoriya?”

Midoriya blinked, and the rest of the world funneled in again. Unbeknownst to him the meeting had ended, and some filed out of the conference room while others lingered to chat and pilfer a few more donuts from the refreshments table. Uraraka stood behind him with one hand braced casually on the back of his chair, her brows pulled in close.

“It’s over already?” Midoriya said, scooting back in his seat. “Sorry—I’m super in my head these days, aren’t I? You’d tell me if I missed something, right?”

“Midoriya.” Her tone darkened somewhat, and Midoriya remembered that his journal still lay open on his lap. He snapped it closed, but it was pointless. She was already looking at him, knowing. “Can I talk to you for a second? In private.”

—

No was a very valid and powerful word, and though he should’ve probably used it, Midoriya didn’t for multiple reasons. One, he had never really gotten good at using it in the first place. To him, it always felt like an excuse. Two, somewhere in his brain he had the feeling it would bring him to a situation like this. An empty classroom. A shut door. A woman whose big brown eyes occasionally made him forget how to breathe.

She leaned back against the chalkboard, arms folded across her chest. The pencil skirt that hugged her ample hips made Midoriya notice things that he had noticed before but had trained himself to stop noticing. As much. “First of all,” Uraraka said, “It’s really not what you think it is.”

There was a weird taste at the back of his throat. He thought it might be disappointment. “It’s not?”

She shook her head. “So you can stop looking at me like that.”

“No,” Midoriya coughed. His face burned. “I can’t.”

A smile flickered across her face, as genuine as it was quick. “Listen. I think I owe you an apology. I’ve sort of been…lying to you.”

Midoriya shoved his sweaty hands into his pockets, his eyes darting out the window for a second, where a group of students were engaged in a spirited game of kickball. “We barely know each other,” he said, careful not to let his own guilt creep into his voice. “You don’t exactly owe me the truth.”

“Maybe not, but I feel like you deserve it. At least, I want to tell you,” she said, and he looked towards her again, her gaze catching his. Beyond something earnest and raw there was something else he saw in her eyes—worry, he thought. An anxious need for this, whatever this was, to be the right decision. “Can I?”

The air was suddenly oppressive. To lighten it, Midoriya laughed. “What are you, a serial killer, or something?”

“Well?” She considered it. “Depends who you ask.”

Midoriya’s stomach dropped. Midoriya was concerned he might not have a stomach any longer. “I’m sorry?”

“If you ask the monsters I’ve spent my life hunting, then yes, maybe. But I like to think of myself as a protector. A guardian,” she said, and giggled. “God. That sounds haughty, doesn’t it? Sorry.”

Midoriya barely heard her. The significance of the words monster and hunting appearing in the same sentence was beginning to dawn on him, as was the fact that he might be in danger. Whether or not he considered himself a monster, which he didn’t, was irrelevant. If Uraraka knew about him, if she knew he was more than human, then she had clearly already made up her mind.

His mind spun, running through his collection of spells for any spell at all that could save his life in the next few seconds. “Uraraka, I—”

“I know,” she said, and when she stepped closer, Midoriya flinched. “I know I probably sound like a madwoman, but clearly you’re already thinking like I do. That’s why you keep all of those notes, right? You see things in people. Things that aren’t like us—that aren’t human.”

The more she talked, the more Midoriya’s grip on his situation slipped and continued slipping. He blinked at her. “Uraraka. Now would be a good time to explain, maybe?”

“There’s a werewolf in this city,” she said, “and I think you live with him.”

“A—a werewolf.” Midoriya scoffed before he could catch himself. He was passively aware that they existed, he supposed, though they were scarce here and he had never met one himself.

“You don’t believe in them?” Uraraka pressed, mistaking his scoff for complete disbelief. “Come on. Your roommate goes on monthly overnight hiking trips, really? Even in the freezing cold? And he packs chains in his bag, but have you ever seen him pack a tent or a sleeping bag? What do you think is going on?”

Midoriya lifted his chin. “Whatever his kinks are is really none of my business.”

“Pretend it’s real for a second. That magic is real, all of it. What conclusion would you draw then?”

Midoriya wanted to throw up. Instead, he turned so his body fully faced the window sill, his hands digging into it until his  knuckles were pale. Could it be true? He’d thought Bakugou was strange, and the longer they lived together, the stranger he got. But never once had he let himself think that maybe he wasn’t the only nonhuman living under that roof. He didn’t know whether the possibility was more terrifying or freeing.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll check. If last night really was a full moon, then I’ll believe you at least might be onto something.”

“Sure,” she said, and there was already a proud grin on her face. “Be my guest.”

Witches had their own ways of knowing the phases of the moon that involved spells and not the internet, but for the sake of not getting burned at the stake, Midoriya trusted his thumbs and his search bar.

Uraraka said, “Well?”

Midoriya slipped his phone back into his pocket. It made sense. He hated that it made sense, and that it hadn’t made sense sooner. “I still won’t believe it until I have proof.”

Uraraka grinned, nudging his shoulder. “That can be arranged.”

———

“No,” Bakugou said.

“Bakugou,” Todoroki said from where he sat at the kitchen table, counting out a bag of frozen peas that grew mushier by the second. “Be civil.”

“Okay. Fuck , no.”

“It’s not just for the students,” Midoriya explained, watching the counting of the peas with interest that had turned into confusion and then into concern. He flicked his eyes back up to Bakugou, who was leaning against the refrigerator. “It’s like—a community thing, you know. Lots of people of all ages will be there. It’s not like I’m making you help with setup or anything. I just think it’d be fun.”

“You think it’d be fun to trounce around a random high school?” Bakugou could not imagine anything less fun than that. “And do what, exactly?”

Midoriya shrugged. “Drink hot chocolate. Apple cider, if you’re weird. Eat candy apples. Maybe win a goldfish or two?”

“What use do I have for a fucking goldfish?”

“Are they edible?” Todoroki asked.

Both Midoriya and Bakugou looked at him. Neither said another word, and they didn’t have to.

Todoroki frowned. “That was a genuine question.”

“Fine,” Bakugou snapped. He whirled and yanked the fridge open, snatching himself a bottle of iced tea with far more aggression than the iced tea probably deserved. “I’ll go if the hermit goes.”

Todoroki didn’t so much as pause counting his peas. “No thanks.”

“Well, why not?” Midoriya asked, his eyes wide and green and imploring. “Bakugou has a point; you hardly ever go anywhere. It’d be good for you to get out of the house.”

“Exactly.” Bakugou’s grin was dangerous, as keen as the edge of a knife. “Before the townspeople appear at our door with fucking torches and pitchforks.”

Midoriya shuddered, but Todoroki just laughed. It was a short, clipped sound, like he’d left the rest of it somewhere. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“What?” Midoriya said, his voice small.

“Just put on your stupid sunscreen and suffer with me,” Bakugou said, and he swept closer, bracing his hand on the remaining empty chair. He nudged the dish of cold mushy peas out of the way, and Todoroki’s eyes finally landed on his. Somehow they held both incredulity and a challenge at the same time.

Bakugou did love a challenge.

Todoroki looked away, towards Midoriya. “All right,” he said. “What’s the dress code for this sort of thing?”

“Don’t answer that,” Bakugou said. “He’s only asking so he can ignore it and outdress everyone.”

“Last time I checked,” Todoroki said, “that isn’t a crime.”

———

Though Todoroki was sure he’d rather pull out his own tongue than admit it, Bakugou was obviously having fun.

Todoroki stood there partially zoning out as Bakugou spent thirty minutes at the same bottle-shooting minigame, letting out a noise that sounded almost too much like an inhuman growl every time he missed. Todoroki’s eyes drifted. The local high school’s front courtyard was a multicolored, zig-zagging labyrinth of food stalls, minigames, and exhibitions, the trees and bushes strewn with flags and paper lanterns lit gold from within. As Midoriya had promised, everyone from waddling toddlers to well-aged people hunched towards the ground moved through the maze in either direction, flowing in a constant stream. 

Todoroki could not remember the last time he had been around so many living people at once. He’d forgotten they could be so loud. Their heartbeats were deafening, something more abstract, something he didn’t have—vitality, he thought—bleeding from them all in ceaseless waves. His head ached; he ran his tongue along his teeth.

“Ha!” Todoroki turned at the sound; it was a noise of prideful victory, which he’d noticed was Bakugou’s favorite noise. Sure enough, in Bakugou’s hands was a velvet plush bat, its eyes beady and red. “That game was fucking rigged, and I still won.”

Todoroki glanced at the watch strapped to his wrist. “Sure. It only cost you thirty-four minutes and all of your change.”

“That’s not true,” Bakugou insisted. “I have like, a hundred yen left.”

Todoroki didn’t lift his eyes. “Thirty-five minutes, technically.”

“Fuck you.” Bakugou shoved the bat plushie into his chest. “Do you want it or not? It’s Halloween-themed, or some shit.”

Todoroki took the plushie, holding it gingerly, as if it might flutter up and out of his hands at any moment. Its plastic eyes seemed to watch him, following him no matter how he turned his head.

“Look at it,” Bakugou said. “It’s gloomy as hell. Suits you perfectly.”

Todoroki looked up. Beneath the glow of the lanterns, Bakugou was all gold, gold skin and hair and everything, his voice spun with it. All at once Todoroki realized he had never really met a person like him. He wasn’t sure what to do with this information.

Hugging the bat closer, he asked, “You think I’m gloomy?”

It was clearly a question that didn’t need answering. Bakugou shrugged. “There are much worse things to be.”

Bakugou’s nose twitched and he tensed, glancing over his shoulder just as Midoriya jogged to meet them. He was dressed in work clothes, a thin-striped dress shirt and slacks, lanyard dangling from around his neck. “There you are. Didn’t I tell you to text me when you got here?” he said. “Oh. And one of you fed Neko before you left, right?”

Bakugou rubbed his hands. To Todoroki’s surprise, there was genuine annoyance in his voice. “I filled her bowl. Whether or not she’ll eat anything I’ve touched might be a gamble, though.”

Midoriya chuckled. “I promise she’ll—”

“Midoriya, it’s been months,” Todoroki interrupted, slipping the bat plush into his inside jacket pocket. “Don’t give him false hope.”
Bakugou grumbled, half under his breath, “I’m much more of a dog person anyway.”

Midoriya eyed him, a bit wary. “Yeah. I’m starting to see that.”

Bakugou shot Midoriya a look that probably would’ve liquefied him if he had the ability. Before Bakugou could find an alternative method, Todoroki cleared his throat. “Midoriya. You said there was a haunted house, or something?”

It was half a moment, half a second, really, but Todoroki saw the blank confusion on Midoriya’s face before he manufactured it into excitement. “Oh, right! Yeah, it’s just inside the school. I think they’re still setting up, but come on. I’ll show you around.”

In general, schools were one of those deceptively mundane places that became eldritch at night, like the abundance of shadow and the lack of voices changed it into a different thing altogether. Heavy doors banged shut behind them, and even Todoroki shuddered as the hubbub of outside softened. At some point Todoroki realized there was no one setting up to be seen. He detected only three heartbeats.

“There’s no one here, is there?” Bakugou groaned, his hands shoved deep in his pockets as he walked and his posture something abhorrent. “If this is some fucking prank—”

Wait. Three?

Todoroki whirled, but the action was belated. He caught nothing but a blur of movement and a cloud of fine dust that glistened like glitter, which he sidestepped just in time. When the haze cleared, Bakugou was on the ground, coughing and spitting onto the floor below him.

“Is that enough proof for you?”

Todoroki lifted his eyes at the sound of the female voice. Sure enough, a woman stood there as if she’d simply materialized from the shadows. On a first judgmental glance she might have seemed non threatening—her eyes kind and her face cherubic, both the lanyard and puff-sleeved blouse she wore suggesting she was one of Midoriya’s colleagues. Then, of course, there was the gun she was pointing at Bakugou’s face.

“Uraraka!” This was Midoriya, stepping forward as if to play peacemaker. “You said we’d talk about it first.”

“His reaction to the silver powder proves he’s a werewolf. We should kill him before he kills anyone else, or worse.” She cocked the gun, and Midoriya stifled a yelp. “There, we talked. Can I get to the exterminating now?”

“I’m not—” Bakugou lifted his head, slowly, still quivering there against the tiled floor. “I’m not a werewolf. If anyone’s the monster here, it’s that peppermint vampire motherfucker.”

“ Vampire? ” said Uraraka and Midoriya in unison. The gun swung towards Todoroki.

“Wait,” Todoroki said, lifting his hands in surrender. He could tell from the smell of it that the bullets were silver, which would certainly return him to the grave for good if they hit him in the right spot. He shot a glance at Bakugou. “You knew?”

For some reason, Bakugou looked just as shocked as the rest of them. “Well, I—I was sort of just trying to save my own ass here. But like. Actually?”

Todoroki almost wanted to laugh. “Having a witch in the house was enough. Now I have a mortal enemy?”

The sentence appeared to buffer in their minds for a second.

“ Witch? ” said Uraraka and Bakugou in unison. The gun swung towards Midoriya.

“Wait! Wait wait wait.” Midoriya’s gaze switched between them all with a frenetic urgency. “Uraraka, listen, okay? We can talk about this. We can talk about this! And Todoroki—how…how the hell did you know, anyway?”

Todoroki looked at him blankly. “I thought everyone knew. It didn’t seem worth mentioning.”

“And Bakugou, too?” Midoriya gasped.

“Oh, no. The werewolf thing is a shock. I just thought he really enjoyed hiking.”

“My head hurts,” Bakugou groaned, letting his forehead fall against the floor. “Actually, everything fucking hurts. Was throwing silver at me really necessary?”

“ Yes ,” Uraraka insisted. “I was doing my job and I’m not apologizing for that. Speaking of which.”

She lifted the gun again, but there was a new hesitance that hadn’t been there before, and Midoriya took advantage of it. He said, “I’m sorry,” before he stretched out his hand, the gun fumbling at the edge of Uraraka’s fingers and firing off a round as it flew into the air. As they all shrieked and ducked for cover, Todoroki slid behind Uraraka in the midst of the chaos, forcing her arms behind her back.

She wriggled, fighting him, but there was no way she could win a battle of strength with the odds supernaturally stacked against her. “Let…let me go !”

“Sorry,” Todoroki said, and he meant it. This had been the last way he was expecting this evening to go. “I can’t really do that until we know you’re not going to kill all of us.” 

She kept fighting him, but Todoroki lifted his gaze, looking over the top of her head. “Midoriya? This seems to at least be partially your fault.”

“Thanks,” he said, kneeling next to Bakugou and helping him sit up, though Bakugou swatted at his hand. “I realize that.”

Todoroki asked, “What do we do?”

The air between Midoriya and Uraraka seemed heavier then, as if they both held a thousand words they wanted to say, but never would.

“I don’t know,” Midoriya said, finally. “I think, at least…we all owe each other some explanations.”

“Fuck that,” Bakugou said, and though the silver had left his voice raspy and uneven, the sound of it still boomed from his chest. “I was promised apple cider.”

The exhaustion on Midoriya’s face melted away, just for a second. He laughed. “Yeah. That too.”

———

They got apple cider. It seemed to temporarily disable Uraraka’s kill drive.

Cups in hand, the unlikely bunch retreated to the high school’s empty baseball field, spreading themselves out amongst the bleachers. The trio sat little more than an arm’s length away from each other. Uraraka sat almost square on the other end of the bleachers, looking more and more like she was questioning her entire existence.

Not that Bakugou cared. He was too busy sucking down one cup of cider, and then a second, and then a third—anything to stop the burning in the back of his throat and get the metallic, bloody taste of silver out of his mouth. The sensation lingered anyway. He probably needed Benadryl. “Let me get this straight,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at Midoriya. “Uraraka told you I was a werewolf, and because you suspected it yourself, you were just going to let her kill me?”

“No,” Midoriya said. He was sitting in the sunken place where your feet were supposed to go, his feet propped up on the seat in front of him. “ No, Bakugou, that was not the plan.”

Bakugou scoffed. “Oh, pray tell. What the fuck was the plan, then?”

“I—I just wanted to see proof of it first. Even if she tried, I wasn’t going to let her kill you. What good would that do me, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that damn cat told you to do it.” Bakugou ignored the glare this earned him. “Look. Couldn’t you have just asked me? Like a normal person?”

Midoriya looked at him for a long time. Finally, he said, “Are you serious?”

“He has a point, Bakugou,” Todoroki offered. “You definitely wouldn’t have told him. You would have said something like Get the fuck out of here, you stupid, stupid asshole and slammed a door in his face.”

Unfortunately that did sound like something he would do. Bakugou sighed. “I wouldn’t say stupid twice. I don’t repeat myself.”

“Enough!” 

The exasperated noise had come from Uraraka, who was done sulking in the corner. She stood up, and though her shoulders were square, Bakugou could sense fear and confusion and something else wafting from her direction, a muddy, intensely human scent. “Midoriya,” she said, with a gentleness that was almost out of place. “You lied to me.”

Midoriya pulled himself up and sat on the bench’s edge, fiddling with his hands for a moment before he looked up. “I sort of lie to everyone,” he said mournfully. “That’s what it means to be a nonhuman here, Uraraka.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t let you live. I can’t let any of you live.”

A bitter laugh tore out of Bakugou’s chest before he could stop it. “Let me guess. Because we’re dangerous? Because we’ll terrorize the town? Have you any idea all the terrible shit humans do everyday? I would know. I was one a few months ago. You can’t just decide who’s good and who’s bad this way, Uraraka. It’s not that fucking simple.”

“But you kill—”

“And you do, too.” Midoriya stood, taking the bleachers two at a time until he reached her. She hesitated, flinching backwards, but didn’t run. “Maybe some of the monsters you’ve slain were real threats, sure. But do you wanna wager how many of them were just trying to make a way for themselves?”

Pain flashed across Uraraka’s face like she’d taken a blow. She closed her eyes, breathing in. “The other hunters, my family even—they’ll all think I’m a joke.”

“For a while,” Todoroki said. “But I’ve noticed it’s quite hard for humans to exist very long without change.”

Uraraka opened her eyes then. She met each of their gazes in turn, a contentious, silent war raging behind her eyes. When she looked at Midoriya, she lingered.

The silence had become hard to breathe around when she said, “Okay. I won’t report you. But I have conditions.”

———

Weeks later, it was Halloween and Midoriya’s room was freezing.

The logical part of Uraraka’s brain, the part that was always searching for a threat, warned her that this usually meant the presence of a foreboding, life-threatening energy of some kind. Technically speaking, that wasn’t wrong. Midoriya was messing with something at his desk, muttering to himself and clinking things together. Every few moments a multicolored spark jumped over his shoulder and dissipated again, leaving the air smelling of smoke and a sweet, burnt sugar smell she had learned was the scent of pure magic. 

Midoriya was a witch. This was undeniably true. Uraraka was falling in love with a witch. This was also unfortunately true.

She sat on the floor, the wall against her back and a black cat nestled in her lap, and watched him work. She was fascinated by him, the crackle of magic between his fingertips, the excited tilt to his shoulders, the way his eyes shone—literally, lighting up with green fire—every time he casted. She doubted any malice existed in him at all. He didn’t use his spells for the aim of luring children to early deaths or placing horrid curses on unsuspecting passersby. Midoriya used magic for the love of it. Because it was air, and he couldn’t force himself not to breathe.

“That should do it.” He stood up straight; there was something in his fist. “Uraraka, close your eyes.”

She hesitated, still stroking her fingers back and forth across Neko’s ink black coat. “If you put another toad in my hand, I swear—”

“Ochako,” he said, which made both of them flush. “Please?”

Uraraka closed her eyes.

There was nothing at first. Just her breath, his breath. She heard him kneel in front of her, sensed his body heat as he leaned close. He took her hand and held it, coaxing her palm open with gentle fingers. He placed something smooth there, like cold plastic. 

“Okay,” he said. “You can open them.”

She did. Curled up in her palm was a tiny toy replica of Neko, it looked like, all black, the inside of its ears a baby pink. It resembled one of those miniatures popped from the capsule of a gacha gacha at first, until she looked closer, and realized its little back was rising and falling. 

She gasped.

“It’s not actually alive,” Midoriya clarified, his tone matter of fact. “Just enchanted. When the sun is up it’ll just be a figure again.”

Uraraka tried to stifle a laugh, and couldn’t. “I’m pretty sure Toy Story already did that, Midoriya.”

One edge of his mouth perked up into a smile. “You’re using me for information? This is also information. Creating new and interesting enchantments is hard, and I will take my inspiration wherever I can get it.”

“Midoriya,” she said again, lifting one pinky finger to brush it along the toy cat’s back. It stretched and emitted a high pitched purr, then fell back asleep. “It’s adorable. I’ll take good care of it.” 

The real Neko got up then, blinking her leery eyes at Uraraka as if she’d something to offend her, then skittering across the room. Uraraka turned her head to watch her go, hopping up to the sill and out into the night, and when she turned back, Midoriya was closer.

She smiled and brushed a hand through his hair, no thought involved, the action automatic. “Tell me. What other enchantments have you been working on, Midoriya?”

He furled his hand over the one that held the tiny toy cat, and moved it aside. His voice low, he said, “Try again.”

Uraraka inhaled. “Izuku,” she said, and he smiled at her, knowing he’d won and she’d let him. Then he kissed her.

———

The moon was nearly full, but not quite, like a flower not yet bloomed. Bakugou glared at it, as if he could scare it into submission. It didn’t appear to be working.

The front door slid open behind him with a hiss, emitting a pale beam of yellow light from within the house. He knew without turning who it was—not by his scent, but the lack of one. A scent would have meant, after all, that he was alive.

“Finished with your rat dinner?” Bakugou asked as Todoroki sank down onto the stoop next to him. “I swear. One of these days you’re going to catch the bubonic plague, and if you do I’m kicking you out.”

“Same to you if you ever bring back fleas,” Todoroki said without pause. “They’ll spread to Neko.”

Bakugou quit glaring at the moon to glare at the vampire instead. “Everyone cares about that fucking cat more than me.”

“Well. She is cuter.”

Bakugou’s glare intensified. “You two-toned leech —”

“Though not by much.”

They looked at each other, both trying to act like that was a normal thing to say and that it meant nothing at all. When neither could keep the act up, they looked away.

The night was alive with shouts and laughter and merriment, and though the epicenter of the festivities was far off in the center of the city, they sounded to Bakugou like they came from the next house over. A while ago he would’ve clamped a pillow tight over his ears, just for a single moment of silence. It was no longer as easy to deny what he was.

“Bakugou,” Todoroki said then, as if he knew what he was thinking. “You were human last year. You said that, right?”

Bakugou gave an affirmative grunt. 

“I’m sorry,” Todoroki said, and when Bakugou looked at him, his eyes were trained straight ahead, half sheened in the gold porch light. “That must’ve been strange. And then to come here, thinking you were settling in with human life again, just for all of us to—I’m sorry.”

He should’ve brushed it off with a scoff; he was good at that. Yet this time, inexplicably, he couldn’t. “It’s not your fault for being what you are. It’s not any of our faults.”

Todoroki was quiet for a time. Bakugou watched his profile, the arc of moonlight on the bridge of his nose. “I envy you,” Todoroki said, glancing sideways at him. “I don’t remember much from before I was turned.”

At that, he did scoff. “Memories are hardly a blessing.”

Todoroki just smiled, a timid, breakable thing. “You’re wrong about that. You’ll see.”

Bakugou had the sudden and unbearable thought that if he could preserve that smile, douse it in amber and wear it around his neck, he would. He was pondering where the hell that thought had come from when he heard footsteps, and turned around.

A bowl of candy was levitating toward them, Midoriya and Uraraka not far behind it. 

Todoroki caught the bowl out of the air, frowning.

“What?” Midoriya said, nudging Bakugou out of the way and squeezing in next to him. He took Uraraka’s hand, pulling her down with him. “It’s not Halloween without candy.”

Todoroki said mournfully, “All of this will taste like nothing to me.”

“Eat it for the texture, then,” Bakugou said, snatching the bowl from him. He clawed a generous hand through it, taking all the most vibrant, gummy things that looked safely chocolate-free. “What were you two doing up there, anyway? Was Round Face experimenting on you again?”

As Bakugou passed the bowl to them, the two exchanged a look he wished he had not seen.

“Sure,” Uraraka said, popping a caramel in her mouth. “Something like that.”

Miles away, the city drank and shouted and partied itself into oblivion, trading stories of the monsters and beasts that habitually lurked in heavy shadow.

And in the swell of the porch light, the stories themselves chased the night their own way.