Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing about demon summoning is that it isn’t meant to work.

Demons aren’t real, see. Neither is magic, nor ghosts, nor hell or heaven in Katsuki’s not-so-humble opinion. Demons aren’t real, and old ritual books your dumbass friend finds in the basement of his house are most likely just insane ramblings of old lunatics which someone decided to write down to mess with the future generations. You can light as many candles as you want, you can draw pentagrams in red chalk and chant ridiculous Latin spells, and none of that is meant to do anything. Which is why Katsuki agrees to it in the first place – it is just harmless fun, a way to rattle everyone’s nerves in the middle of winter break.

Besides, all of his friends are a bunch of cowards, so he goes along with it just to see them shake in their boots.

But of course, because all of his friends are a bunch of cowards and he is the only one who doesn’t believe the bullshit written down in Kaminari’s grand-grand-grandmother’s dusty spellbook, Katsuki ends up being the one performing the actual summoning. In his bedroom.

A terrible idea, in retrospect. But Ashido brings the chalk and the candles, and Kaminari hauls the dusty manuscript over in his bag, and Sero drags Deku along, Katsuki suspects, just to annoy the living hell out of him, so he definitely isn’t about to chicken out. He sighs and flips through the withered book pages, careful not to fold them too much – do that, it seems, and they’ll crumble to dust.

“Well?” he demands, looking over at Mina who’s fiddling with the chalk. “If I have to be chanting the spells, you’re gonna be the one to draw the demonic bullshit.”

“On the floor?” Ashido asks hesitantly.

“It ain’t like anyone else will give a shit,” Bakugou shrugs. “Old hag never visits, she rather I drag myself all the way to her place. My living space, my rules.”

Mina shrugs – “Suit yourself!” – and tugs the spellbook towards her, copying the pentagram onto the floor with great precision. Kaminari lights the candles, putting them into the corners of the star, and Sero watches the entire thing in cautious amusement. Deku shuffled closer to Katsuki.

“You sure you want to do this, Kacchan?” he says, voice full of familiar hesitation. “These things are no laughing matter.”

“Stop being a baby, Deku,” Bakugou scoffs. “You don’t have to be here if you’re gonna piss your pants the moment we start this bullshit.”

Deku looks away and retreats to the floor, helping Kaminari arrange the candles. Katsuki gives him a smug smirk.

Finally, after ten minutes of preparation and arguments about the details of the particularly hard to discern symbols, they are done. Katsuki joins the others on the ground and inspects the pentagram critically, then hums – at least Ashido seems to be able to copy down basic shapes. He takes the book out of her hands and rest in on his knees.

“Still want me to do it, you nerds?”

They nod, in equal measures excited and apprehensive. Sero pulls the curtains closed and hits the lights. Katsuki tries not to scoff at Kaminari’s obvious trembling.

Reading in candlelight isn’t exactly easy, let alone reading in Latin, so Bakugou is sure he botches at least half of the words (not that he would ever admit to doing so). His voice is rough, not used to the inflections of the language, and he can’t help but add dramatic flare to some words just to watch Deku curl in on himself some more. Katsuki knows that this entire thing is stupid, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying it.

He enjoys it enough, in fact, to practically yell the last line. Enough to slam the book closed (perhaps a little too hard) after he finishes reading the incantation. Enough to almost start laughing when Mina shrieks.

Except, he doesn’t start laughing.

Because the candles suddenly go out.

Mina shrieks louder.

When the wicks flare up again, the fire is no longer a soothing, familiar orange. It’s red now, crimson red and dark burgundy intertwining inexplicably with each other, and the shadows that dance across the walls look decisively out of place, not bound to anything in Katsuki’s room.

But then, the flames or the shadows are the last thing any of them are looking at.

Because in the middle of the pentagram there is a man.

Or – well. Katsuki supposes “a man” may be a little generous – what with the... teeth. And the horns. And the thin whip of a tail with a feathery brush on the end. And oh, did he mention the eyes? The eyes, burning a crimson brighter than the candles and the pentagram and the flames?

Yeah, “a man” is certainly too generous as far as descriptors go.

“No fucking way,” Katsuki blurts out, because aside from roaring flames, the room is silent. This was not meant to work. This was not meant to–

“Who summoned me?” the – demon? – asks. His voice echoes inexplicably, and there is a rasp to it, a little hiss on the “s”, but Katsuki is stunned to discover that he doesn’t sound... scary. Okay, sure, the entire situation is a goddamn mess to put it lightly, and he knows, rationally, that he should be freaking out, but there is curiosity in the demon’s voice, and a certain warped playfulness to the quirk of his lips, and Katsuki finds himself remarkably not frightened.

Relatively, of course. He’s never been this terrified before in his life, but given the context, it still doesn’t seem enough.

“That would be me,” he says, because his friends all seem tongue-tied. For once he honestly can’t blame them.

“Really?” the demon says and he sounds amused. “You don’t seem too sure about that, kid.”

“Hey, fuck you!” Katsuki says before he can think better of it, because first of all this – demon – doesn’t actually look old enough to call him a kid, and secondly, what right does he have to mock him?!

Kaminari squeaks at his outburst somewhere to his left. The demon looks in his direction.

“You related to the old witch?” he asks. Denki looks too frozen in fear to move, but the demon doesn’t seem to wait for a response. “Never met her myself, but heard she was strong.”

He prods at the pentagram a little and cringes when the flames shoot up to the ceiling.

“Good job drawing this, too,” he says, gaze flitting towards Mina. He sounds genuinely impressed, Bakugou realises. “I don’t remember seeing one so well done in the past thirty years or so.”

Okay, maybe, on second though, he is old enough to call Katsuki a kid. Not that Katsuki is going to let him, of course. He looks at the demon again.

“So–“ he begins.

“Want to give me your name, kid?” the demon interrupts, curiosity mixing in his voice with something darker. Bakugou thinks, logically, that maybe telling him his name will put an end to the condescending monikers.

“Ka–“

“Kacchan!”

Deku’s voice as he interrupts is loud and clear despite the trembling. Bakugou looks over at him with a scowl, but Deku barely notices.

“You can call him Kacchan,” he repeats, drilling holes in the demon with his gaze before turning to Katsuki. “You don’t just hand out your names to demons! Especially not when they word it like that!”

Katsuki wants to ask him what the fuck does he think he knows about any of that shit. The demon doesn’t let him, shifting over a little closer to Deku – as much as the pentagram would allow.

“I do miss being summoned by people who know what they’re doing,” he says, which is ridiculous given how – well, they absolutely fucking do not. “And what may I call you, then?”

“Deku,” Deku says. “And you would be...?”

“Call me Red Riot,” the demon smirks, showing off those fangs of his, razor-sharp and almost unnaturally white. “So what does Kacchan want of me?”

Bakugou thinks that this is getting ridiculous. Or rather that it has gotten ridiculous already, and now it is getting to absolutely new levels of absurd – ones he didn’t even suspect existed.

“Nothing, really,” he says. “You can – you can go.”

That turns out to be the wrong thing to say, because the almost-smile turns into a smirk as the demon’s tail flits restlessly back and forth.

“You think so?” he says. “Does the witch’s boy want to tell you why I can’t? Or Deku? Or you two quiet kids?” He looks over to Mina and Hanta who are clinging at each other for dear life. No one seems in any haste to respond – probably because, Katsuki thinks, they don’t actually know the answer. “On second thought, I suppose you don’t know what you’re doing after all. Shame, really – I almost miss being summoned properly.”

“You can tell me yourself,” Bakugou says. It’s mostly to get the demon to look away from Mina who seems half a second away from fainting. “The fuck’s your deal?”

“My deal, Kacchan,” the demon says, and wow, Deku really had to use that shitty nickname, didn’t he, “is that we don’t have one. A deal, that is. You know how it goes. Or, well, you don’t, I suppose.” He chuckles. His chuckle sounds... surprisingly normal. Katsuki decides that it makes the entire thing even more strange. “You summon a demon, you don’t get to get rid of them until you make a deal. And you don’t seem to have anything to ask for.”

Bakugou narrows his eyes.

“Can’t we just have something nominal?” he asks. “You give me ten yen and I give you a corn chip or whatever?”

Mina hiccups a laugh. It sounds almost hysterical.

The demon regards his words for a moment, then shakes his head.

“In theory – we could, of course,” he says. “But frankly, I’m insulted by the idea. You summoned me, Kacchan. It wasn’t even a bad summoning. The least you can do is offer a worthy deal.”

“Fuck if I’m gonna sell my soul,” Bakugou tells him. The demon raises one eyebrow and Katsuki holds his gaze, feeling the crimson flood his vision. Tears sting in the corners of his eyes, but before they can spill, the demon smiles lightly – it actually seems like a smile this time – and turns away.

“We’ll see about that,” he says, then yawns demonstratively, running his black tongue over his fangs. “I’ll see you later, Kacchan. Oh, and may I suggest that you don’t want to rub this off?”

His tail snaps at the pentagram, but doesn’t cross invisible border, because the flames blaze up again.

When they fall, suddenly settling into familiar orange candlelight, the demon is gone.

This time, when Mina screams, she’s joined by at least three other voices. Katsuki isn’t proud to admit it, but his is among them.

Then again, to be fair, he thinks he has the right. The thing about demon summoning always has been that it isn’t meant to work.

Except, apparently, it does.

Chapter Text

Katsuki doesn’t run away from his flat that night, thank you very much.

He just chooses to make a strategical retreat because he doesn’t quite fancy being woken up by a literal fucking demon showing up in the middle of his room – if he manages to fall asleep at all, that is. He doesn’t know how the whole being haunted by a demon thing works – can he just show up whenever he feels like it? Are there rules? – but he figures that better safe than sorry.

(For all that he makes his thought process sound completely rational and cool, for the record, it is decisively not that).

So yes, he doesn’t run away, but he makes a strategical retreat, and his friends follow him, clinging onto each other tight enough to leave bruises and flinching at every little noise on the streets. None of them want to spend the night on their own – even though Mina suggests, voice hitched and trembling, that the demon is probably tied to the pentagram, they don’t wanna take their chances facing him alone – so after a minor argument they all pile into Sero’s apartment a few streets away from Katsuki’s. Hanta turns on every light he has.

Deku has been entrusted with carrying the spellbook – forced to do so by Kaminari, really – so as soon as they find their way to the cramped living room, he collapses onto the sofa, flipping through the pages in search of anything they should have most definitely looked up before performing the ritual. But then again, the fucking ritual wasn’t meant to fucking work, so can anyone really blame them for not being thorough?

Ashido hijacks Sero and drags him over to the kitchen to see what meal they can throw together from whatever Hanta keeps in his cupboards. Kaminari tries to cling onto Bakugou, is pushed away, and snuggles up to Deku instead. Katsuki scoffs and pretends he doesn’t sound hysterical. For a moment, all of them are silent, apart from rattling of dishes in the kitchen and the sound of book pages being turned.

“So are we gonna address whatever the hell that was?” Mina asks finally, voice loud enough to be heard from next room over. Bakugou totally doesn’t jump at that – fuck you.

“I mean, we summoned a demon,” Deku offers, weakly. Katsuki scoffs again:

“Tell us something we didn’t fucking know, nerd.”

Deku gestures towards the spellbook in his hands and raises his eyebrows, as if to say that if that were an actual invitation, he could well have done so. Bakugou supposes that’s fair, but he isn’t about to give the nerd the pleasure of admitting it, so he grabs the manuscript out of his hands with a huff.

“Anything useful in this shitty excuse for a book?”

“Careful, Kacchan!” Deku chastises. “This is quite possibly the only resource we have!”

“Yeah, and the fuck’s up with that anyway?” Katsuki grumbles. “Pikachu hadn’t told us that his grand-grand-whatever was an actual fucking witch!”

“You think I knew?” Denki complains weakly, eyeing the spellbook with suspicion. “Besides, you were the one who said the whole magic thing is total bullshit!”

He’s got a point. Katsuki scowls and stares down at the cursive writing dumbly. It’s hard to read – what with the old-fashioned language and subscripts which are decisively not in Japanese – but he manages to catch the gist of it. Apparently Red Riot wasn’t just spouting bullshit – demons, after a summoning, really do have to fulfil a deal before permanently returning to their own realm.

Apparently Deku wasn’t just spouting bullshit either – giving your real name to a demon can result in an awful lot of undesired consequences.

No, really, an awful lot.

Possession and death included.

Katsuki sort of feels like he should be thanking Midoriya now, but fuck that.

He keeps turning the pages until Mina and Sero make their way back into the room, balancing cups of instant ramen and mugs of hot chocolate in their hands. Then he scoffs and chucks the book back into Deku’s hands.

“None of this is remotely fucking useful for getting rid of him,” he grumbles. Midoriya catches the book and straightens the pages carefully.

“I’m sure there must be something,” he says, helping Ashido distribute the drinks. “I mean, I doubt we’re the only bunch of people who summoned a demon out of sheer curiosity, right?”

Deku’s met with silence, because, to be fair, no one actually knows the answer. He sighs and buries his head in the manuscript again, careful not to spill his drink all over the old paper. Bakugou glares.

Next time someone speaks up, it’s Sero. He sets his cup of noodles aside and wraps his arms around his shoulders before sighing.

“So, assuming we didn’t hallucinate this entire thing,” he says, “we just summoned a demon in Katsuki’s flat. And the demon wants his soul or something.”

“Yeah, I think we already went over that,” Bakugou snarls. “Kaminari, you better have some more freaky literature in your basement, because I need to get rid of that shit before the break ends, and the book we have is fucking useless.”

“You read, like, two pages of it!” Deku complains weakly. “At least let me finish it! But, Kaminari-kun, if you could see whether you can find something else, it might be useful too.”

Katsuki is ready to bet a lot on the fact that the nerd is just geeking out over the supernatural. But then, as long as it helps to get rid of the whole... predicament, he supposed he can let it slide. Denki nods hesitantly.

“I suppose I can look,” he says. “Although to be honest, dude, I don’t want any part in this. I mean, what the hell!”

Bakugou shares the sentiment. But then, the demon is bound to his fucking bedroom, so he supposes he doesn’t really have a choice.

Mina groans. Loudly.

“Anyone gonna mention the fact that demons are apparently real now?” she asks. “I mean, how the hell am I supposed to sleep ever again?”

Bakugou shares that sentiment too.

They sit quietly for another minute.

“Well, it says here he shouldn’t be able to leave the pentagram,” Deku says, then. “Unless the drawing itself is damaged in some way, he won’t be able to get out of it and cause any harm. But still, until you two actually seal some sort of deal, he’ll always have the passage between... whatever his realm is and our world. Either that, or until – uh, until the one who summoned him dies, but-but that’s not happening, of course!”

The nerd looks strangely worried about the idea of him dying given everything that ever happened between them, Katsuki thinks. Deku’s always been prone to unhealthy attachments.

He looks like he wants to say something else, so Sero gestures at him to continue.

“But, um, but apparently he isn’t able to leave this world for too long as long as Kacchan is here. I mean, he can go back to – hell, I guess? – for a couple of hours each day or so, b-but it seems he’ll be sticking around for most of the time until, ah, until the condition is satisfied,” Midoriya rattles in one breath. “And – well, this is kind of vague, so I’m not sure if it actively hurts a demon to stay away from their realm for so long, or if they just dislike it – but, uh, yeah, that’s a thing too.” He pauses for a moment to take a sip of his hot chocolate, then shrugs weakly. “That’s as far as I’ve got.“

“Jesus,” Mina says weakly. “Well, at least my pentagram drawing skills were good?”

“Yeah well maybe it wouldn’t have worked if they were a little shittier, so don’t go off being too fucking proud of yourself”, Katsuki sneers. Ashido crosses her arms and looks away.

Sero nudges him in the ribs.

“Your Latin wasn’t stellar either,” he reminds him, “and yet here we are. Who knows, maybe Riot would have outright slaughtered all of us if it wasn’t for Mina.”

“Sero-kun’s probably right,” Deku chimes in. “I think as long as we actually performed the correct steps, the quality of the ritual only affects its consequences, not the summoning as a whole.”

“Whatever,” Bakugou scowls. Ashido sticks her tongue out at him and cuddles up closer to Hanta.

They sit in silence some more.

They don’t talk much that night in general, to be fair – or sleep, really. They just sort of hang out in Sero’s living room, take turns making coffee and listen to Deku occasionally recounting some useless bullshit he finds in the spellbook. Nobody seems all too eager to leave – hell, Bakugou still notices them all flinch at the smallest sounds. He thinks he would be totally fucking happy to live his life thinking demons weren’t real, thank you very much. He thinks all of them would be.

Finally, when the sun is already up fairly high outside the window and they’ve all had at least four mugs of coffee, Deku closes the manuscript and yawns.

“I guess I gotta go home,” he says hesitantly. “Mum wants me back for lunch, so... Kaminari-kun, you mind if I take the spellbook for now?”

“Please,” Pikachu nods all too eagerly. “I’ll give you any other magical shit I find too. Mina, wanna walk home together?”

“Oh, definitely,” Ashido sighs in relief. Their houses aren’t too far from each other – it’s how they became friends in the first place – so it’s awfully fucking convenient, Katsuki thinks.

Sero turns to him.

“You can stay here for now,” he offers. “Midoriya is bound to find something useful eventually.”

Bakugou scowls because he doesn’t run from his problems. Even if his problems are a literal fucking demon in the middle of his bedroom. Maybe especially then.

“I’ll pass,” he says, getting up and stretching. “I’m sure I can figure out some way to get rid of the fucker myself – knowing Deku, he’ll take ages nerding out over this shit instead of finding a solution.”

“Hey!” Midoriya crosses his arms with a pout. Bakugou flips him off because he’s right and he knows it.

They take their time putting on shoes because for all their bravado everyone’s still reluctant to leave the safety of numbers behind. In the end, Katsuki is the first one out of the doors because he isn’t some fucking coward and he doesn’t run from his problems – not for long, at least. So he makes his way down the streets, ignoring the gabble of conversation from the crowd around him as he approaches his apartment building, and fumbles in his pockets for the keys. Then takes a breath. Then unlocks the door.

The living room is eerily silent. The kitchen, which he peeks into (not at all because he’s trying to stall entering his own room, fuck you) is exactly the way he left it, what with a couple of dirty plates and a half-open window. The bathroom, when he looks inside and turns on the lights, is as small and empty as usual.

He looks at his bedroom door furiously for a long moment, then sneers and slams it open.

The candles have long since gone out. The curtains are still drawn, and the light is on from when the Mina slammed against the light switch last night. The pentagram is still on the floor, a little faded, but impeccable otherwise.

The demon?

The demon is sitting cross-legged in the middle of it.

“Oh, hi!” he grins when Katsuki walks in. His teeth are still sharp and his eyes are still bright crimson, but under the light of electric lamps he looks less supernatural and more like a very dedicated cosplayer. “And here I was thinking you ran away for good, man!”

Katsuki doesn’t run away from his problems, of course.

But sometimes he really, really wishes he did.

Chapter Text

“Seriously,” Katsuki says. “Ten yen for a corn chip. The offer still stands.”

The demon chuckles. His chuckle sounds surprisingly human – none of that echoey shit that his voice had to it last night. Bakugou suspects he only sounded like that in the first place to show off, or maybe to intimidate some kids into giving him their names or their souls. Well, tough. They’re smarter than that.

“I’ve been around for a while, Kacchan,” he says. “Not once has anyone offered me a deal quite that... condescending.”

Bakugou scowls. He finds himself doing that a lot recently.

“I just want you to get the fuck out of my flat,” he deadpans. The demon shrugs and tries to lean backwards, but is forced to straighten his back again as the pentagram begins glowing a cautionary red.

“And I want your soul,” he tells Katsuki. “Honestly, do you know how long it has been since I’ve been summoned? I’m getting kinda hungry!”

“I’ve offered you a corn chip twice already,” Bakugou says flatly, barely looking up from his book. “You’re the one refusing.”

For a moment the room is quiet, and he thinks that maybe he went a bit too far with the jokes, because the demon sports an unreadable expression like no one else. Katsuki opens his mouth to ask him what the fuck his deal is – surely a supernatural creature can handle some fucking comebacks, especially after invading his home like that, seriously! – but then the demon snorts, pressing his palm to his mouth in a half-assed attempt to hide his growing grin.

And then he bursts out laughing.

And the laughter sounds surprisingly human too.

Katsuki doesn’t even hide the fact that he’s staring now, because the demon looks so genuinely goddamn entertained that he can’t bring himself to look away. Aren’t these creatures meant to be emotionless? Terrifying? Murderous monsters, feasting on the souls of the mere mortals?

Can you be prejudiced against demons?

Listen, Katsuki didn’t even know they existed until last night, so give him a fucking break.

“The fuck’s so funny?” he grumbles in the end. The demon wipes his eyes with the feathery brush at the end of his tail – it’s more demonstrative than anything, Bakugou isn’t convinced he’s actually capable of tears, even those of laughter – and shakes his head.

“I just forgot how great humans are, man. You haven’t seen some of my buddies – they’re all dull like heaven.”

Dull like heaven carries so many implications within it that Katsuki isn’t even sure how to begin to unpack them, so he doesn’t. Instead he flips Red Riot off.

“We ain’t your personal entertainment monkeys,” he says. The demon giggles and shakes his head.

“Of course not. But since I’m here already, I might as well take what I can get, don’t you think? It was hella boring before you came back, let me tell you!”

“You literally do not have to be here”, Katsuki rolls his eyes. “You told me last night your deal doesn’t have to involve my soul, so whenever you choose to stop being a stubborn asshat–“

“Theoretically!” Red Riot interrupts, throwing his arms up. “Theoretically, Kacchan. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“Enlighten me,” Bakugou says, crossing his arms. The demon doesn’t grace him with a response, just hums cryptically and rests his elbows on his knees as he tries to find a comfortable position inside the pentagram.

Alright, Bakugou figures, conversation over.

Apparently not.

“I can offer you a lot of things, you know”, the demon tells him. “Money. Power. Fame. Love is harder, but doable too. I’m not picky about the terms, Kacchan.”

Bakugou thinks that this all sounds very standard, very by-the-book. He thinks that he’s probably watched a movie like this before, probably with Deku by his side, because Deku is the one who is a fan of ridiculous supernatural horror flicks. He thinks all of that, but what he says in the end is,

“Fuck off, Shitty Hair.”

The demon actually looks offended.

“Hey!” he huffs, baring his fangs. “What do you think is wrong with my hair, Kacchan? As if yours is any better!”

“You actively look like you were trying to make it as edgy as possible,” Katsuki deadpans. “I thought it was teens who are meant to go through a rebellious phase – how old are you again?”

He’s actually somewhat interested in the answer, for the record. Riot looks his age, as much as he can considering the demonic attributes, but judging by his previous remarks he has to have been around for at least half a century.

He doesn’t get an answer, of course. The demon responds with a strange glare –half amused half offended – before turning away to look out of the window, but at least he doesn’t bother Katsuki again for the next two hours, so he considers it a win. He finishes almost half of his book at the time, sends a bunch of lazy texts to their group chat (yes he is still here. i don’t fucking know what to do about it, ask deku, he nicked the damn book), and then finally hauls himself up to his feet – it’s well past lunch time.

The demon twists around to look at him.

“Leaving again?” he says. He tries to sound neutral, but there are notes of disappointment to it which Katsuki finds almost funny.

“Unlike you, I have to eat normal human food,“ he scowls, then scolds himself for answering – ignoring the demon is probably the best course of action – and stumbles out into the kitchen. He spends more time than strictly necessary on cooking, constantly distracted by his friends’ pestering, and then stays in the kitchen for another hour or so, scrolling dumbly through his Twitter feed. The demon in his bedroom is surprisingly quiet, completely silent even, and it would almost be easy to forget about his presence if it weren’t for his friends’ messages pinging every couple of minutes.

(yes i’m planning to stay in my flat tonight, ashido. he literally cannot leave the pentagram, i will be fine. the most he can do is not let me sleep, and even then i can just chuck a book at him or something. stop fussing so much, jesus fucking christ!)

Katsuki thinks that winter break is possibly the worst time for this, because he has absolutely nothing to do apart from moping in his apartment or going out somewhere with the rest of the nerds. He sighs and sticks the plate in the sink, resolving to wash it later, maybe after dinner or tomorrow or whenever the fuck he feels like it, and drags himself back to his room.

Red Riot is, naturally, still there.

He looks like he hadn’t moved actually, his elbows resting against his knees, his gaze glued wistfully to the street outside. But as soon as Katsuki enters, he spins around, offering him a grin.

“Oh, hey, you’re back!”

In a really absurd way it reminds Bakugou of a dog who’s greeting its owner after a long day at work. The parallel is so ridiculous that he can’t help but scoff.

“I didn’t leave, Riot.”

“You weren’t in the room, were you?” the demon shrugs. “It’s so dull here alone. Do you humans really live like that?”

“Sorry I can’t offer you any of the demonic entertainment,” Bakugou scoffs. “I swore off torture and murder in high school, you know.”

It’s not even a lie. That doesn’t stop the demon from snorting with laughter.

“You’ve got a really warped perception of us,” he complains. “The last time I murdered someone was, like, last century, man. It’s not even fun – way too messy.”

Katsuki isn’t entirely sure whether Riot is trying to make a joke or not, and he decides that he will sleep better if he doesn’t try to clarify it. Instead he just rolls his eyes, marching over to his desk and shoving some books around under the guise of cleaning up.

“Then I’m not sure what you want from me,” he says. “Apart from my soul, that is, because you’re not fucking getting it.”

“I told you, Kacchan – we’ll see about that,” Riot hums. “Seriously – I’m open to almost anything. Wanna be able to fly? Set off explosions with a snap of your fingers?”

“No,” Bakugou tells him. Then tells himself that he really needs to learn to be less curious, goddamnit. “But could you do that? Theoretically?”

“Oh, sure!” the demon nods. “I mean, I’m a little rusty – most of my recent summoners just wanted money or fame, kinda boring if you ask me – but it’s not impossible!”

Katsuki tilts his head.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” he asks. “There must be some limitations.”

(He tells himself that he asks it for Deku’s sake, because Deku is a moron and will certainly try to get the answers on his own if Katsuki doesn’t tell him, and who’s to say that that the nerd’s got any self-control?)

(He also realises that it is a horrible excuse, thank you very much. But least he has one).

Riot thinks for a moment.

“I can’t raise the dead,” he says, finally. “Time manipulation is hella hard the longer ago we’re talking about. I also couldn’t kill another demon, or wipe an entire country off the face of the planet. A moderately large city is fair game though,” he smirks. “As is pretty much anything else. Come on, dude, I’m offering some good terms here!”

“I still need my soul, Riot, so go to hell,” Katsuki rolls his eyes. Then stops to think about it for a moment. “Wait, is ‘go to hell’ technically an insult for you? Would ‘go to heaven’ be worse?”

Riot shivers visibly.

“I don’t wanna think of going to heaven,” he says. “That place isn’t just dull – the angels hate us. It ain’t like they’re much better, you know? But they act so morally superior, as if any of this is our choice – as if they don’t know it isn’t.”

He sounds bitter. Katsuki opens his mouth to question further, but decides against it – he can see the flames dancing around in Riot’s eyes, and he doesn’t want to know what might happen if they flare up too far.

Instead, he says,

“Well then, fuck you.”

Riot laughs again.

Katsuki thinks, completely out of place, that Riot must really like laughing.

“Why do you even think you need your soul?” the demon asks a couple of long moments later. “You humans hardly have any use for it. It’s not like you’ll die if I take it.”

That is... a good question. Katsuki doesn’t think about it for too long – he doesn’t tend to with good questions, after all.

“Maybe not,” he shrugs. “I didn’t fucking know demons are real until last night – I sure as hell don’t know what souls do. But it sounds like something really goddamn important, so I ain’t about to trade it for some magic powers. Hell, I’m gonna be famous because I get there myself, Riot – not because Pikachu is a fucking moron who somehow managed to rope us all into some demon summoning ritual. Stick your deals up your ass or take a corn chip and get the fuck out.”

He doesn’t know why he’s so hung up on this. Or why he suddenly got so fired up about something he’s hardly given thought to before. Souls, demons – what is it with the whole occult bullshit, really?

He also doesn’t know why Riot’s smile suddenly turns wistful, a broken, strained parody on the playfulness of just a few minutes ago.

He supposes it shouldn’t really matter.

He doesn’t know why it does.

Chapter Text

Kaminari finds another manuscript in his basement, as well as a couple of loose sheets of paper with creepy sketches of decisively not human creatures, and he hauls all of them over to Deku’s house the next day. Deku, then, proceeds to nerd out about them for a couple of hours in the morning – Katsuki totally called it – before finally deigning to call Bakugou and invite him over. At this point, frankly, Katsuki would take just about any excuse to get out of the house, so off he goes, red eyes following his every move until he closes the room door behind him.

The demon disappears in the morning for give or take two hours – Bakugou doesn’t time it, thank you very much, he just happens to glance at the clock when the figure in his room suddenly dissolves into thin air – and when he returns, he stays eerily quiet, tugging on the loose strands of his hair as he watches Katsuki stumble about his daily holiday routine. It’s distracting as fuck, not to mention infuriating, so Deku’s call really is somewhat of a blessing, even if Bakugou would never admit it out loud. He tells Riot to behave – the first words spoken between them that morning – and slips out of the door into the cold winter air.

When he gets to Deku’s house, it’s his mum who opens the door, and he greets her politely. He’s known the woman for most of his life – just like he has Midoriya, he supposes – so she lets him him with a warm smile and polite smalltalk, ever kind, as if Deku has never told her shit about middle school.

Inko asks him if he wants tea. He shakes his head and skips up the stairs to Midoriya’s room.

“Kacchan!” Deku smiles, looking up from a book he’s holding. It’s leather bound, just like the manuscript Katsuki remembers holding in his own hands, but this leather is a little darker, a little less worn. “How are you? How’s... Riot?”

“What do you think, Deku?” he sneers, plopping down next to him unceremoniously and looking over his shoulder. “He’s damn annoying, that’s what he is. I’m not selling my soul to him – doesn’t he get the memo?”

Deku shrugs sheepishly.

“I guess not,” he says. “Kaminari’s grandma – grand-grand-grand... you know who I mean – she didn’t really keep meticulous notes on these things. Still – I think the demons need souls. Like, to survive. Wherever they stay – whether it’s hell, or some unidentified realms, or purgatory – that place drains energy. At least Kaminari-san assumed so. And they don’t get the souls out of just... killing humans, straight up. Riot did say he hadn’t been summoned competently in the last thirty years or so. It’s possible he’s just... you know.” He shrugs again. “Starving, I suppose. Or maybe I’m putting too much thought into this, I don’t know. Again, these aren’t really meticulous notes.”

“We can’t all be like you, Deku, overanalysing every little thing we write down,” Katsuki grumbles. “So what, we just keep him around starving for a bit and he kicks the bucket?”

Deku gives him a horrified gaze. Bakugou thinks it’s a fair question.

“It doesn’t work like that!” Deku says. “I mean – I suppose it does, but – it takes longer. I’m talking possibly longer than you’re gonna live, Kacchan. And – imagine just slowly starving to death! Imagine going home, wherever your home is, and constantly suffering there because it drains your literal life energy! And don’t you dare joke about your childhood right now, I’m being serious!”

Bakugou also thinks that Deku’s empathy is going to get him if not killed one day, then at least severely injured. We’re taking a couple of broken bones injured here, and at least a week in a hospital bed. He’s kind of glad he’s been the one to perform the ritual – god knows Deku would just give away his righteous little soul after a little sob story.

“So what?” he demands. “Ain’t like I can do anything about it. He, on the other hand, can accept some nominal deal, leave me the fuck alone and wait until someone summons him with purpose in mind!”

Deku looks down at the old pages.

“How long would he have to wait, Kacchan?” he says. “No, really. You don’t hear about demon summonings often, you know? I looked it up, website after website, none of the methods, the words are even close to what we did!” He sighs quietly and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I guess you’re right, you can’t really do anything. It’s not like we can just post the instructions online so more people can do it, can you imagine what kind of chaos that would be, and obviously you can’t give away your soul – Kaminari-san doesn’t really say much on why those are important, but they must be – of course! It’s just...”

“It’s just that the idea that you can’t help everyone in this world breaks your poor little heart, Deku,” Katsuki scoffs. “You think I don’t know that?”

Katsuki knows he’s right. Deku knows he’s right too. That doesn’t stop him from looking like a kicked puppy as he flips through a few book pages carelessly.

“But there must be another way,” he says after a few moments of silence. “You think not? You think it’s just... do or die? This or nothing? Is that really how life works, Kacchan? I mean – you talked to him! Tell me he sounded like someone who deserves to just... wither away!”

Bakugou scowls at him. Deku has a penchant for being dramatic, a honest-to-god fucking talent for speeches, and Bakugou doesn’t know why he chose to study criminal justice over a career in acting or some shit like that. Well, okay, he does know – it’s because Deku is hellbent on being a hero and saving lives and what-fucking-not, and it’s not like Katsuki doesn’t get him, but... still.

A demon? Really? Fucking really?

“Please tell me why I agreed to this bullshit in the first place,” he mumbles. “Seriously. Next time Kaminari comes up with a fun bonding activity, remind me to deck him real fucking hard.”

“You wouldn’t,” Deku giggles despite himself. Katsuki thinks that it sounds better than when he’s being all mopey. “Listen, I’m – I was thinking of going to the library. I mean, Kaminari-san can’t have been the only one who left behind some manuscripts! And-and the library is as good of a place to start as any, I mean, and I haven’t been there in a while, so I kinda missed it, so, um, if you wanna–“

“Quit fucking rambling,” Bakugou tells him. He will never get to the point otherwise. “Get dressed. You have five minutes, and then I’m leaving without you.”

Deku grins at him. Katsuki absolutely does not grin back.

***

Their time in the library is entirely unproductive.

Katsuki supposes that was to be expected – after all, finding actual legitimate magic books in public access is statistically unlikely. Then again, finding a set of working ritual instructions in an old basement is also really statistically fucking unlikely, so can anyone fault them for hoping? Yeah, he didn’t think so.

Deku knows his way around the library shelves and all the librarians by name. Familiarity, of course, doesn’t stop them from giving him weird stares when he asks what material they have on all matters supernatural. That, for one, is fair – an aspiring police inspector snooping around for magical bullshit really makes general public worry about their safety.

“What do you fucking think? We accidentally summoned a demon and we need help getting rid of him,” Bakugou snaps after the third person tries to be a prying nuisance instead of doing their literal goddamn job. Deku gives him a horrified look, but it gets the librarian off their back, alright.

In the end they are directed to a musty shelf close to the back wall and left the fuck alone. The shelf has nothing of use, of course – just some faded Tarot manuals and self-published fantasy novels. That doesn’t stop Deku from muttering as he buries his head in three books at the same time, and Katsuki hops up on the desk, watching him darkly.

“You do realise you won’t find anything remotely useful here?” he demands. Deku hums non-committally and pushes another books towards him. Bakugou barely gives it a glance. “Seriously, what the fuck is this shit? It’s been published six years ago, it hardly has details on demon lore!”

“Well, what do you suggest then?” Deku pouts, looking up. “It’s either this, or go be nice to Riot and wait for him to tell you how you can get rid of him!”

“Riot is a stubborn little shit,” Katsuki scowls. “Doubt that’ll work. Laughs way too fucking much too.”

He doesn’t know why he adds the last bit. Judging by Midoriya’s intrigued gaze, Midoriya doesn’t know either.

“Well, you’re stubborn too, Kacchan,” he reasons. “I’m sure you can annoy him into spilling his secrets.”

Katsuki stares at him, not sure whether that was meant to be a veiled insult. Deku smiles angelically and looks back down at the book.

They spend two whole hours in the damn place and find absolutely nothing. As they leave, Deku apologises to the librarian and Katsuki bitches. He has all the rights to do so – that’s two hours of his afternoon wasted in the company of this nerd.

“Well I don’t know what you’re suggesting we do!” Deku huffs, jogging after him, his breaths fogging the winter air. “Come up with a course of action first, then tell me I’m being useless!”

“You’re perpetually useless, Deku,” Katsuki deadpans. “Are you just following me home now? Gonna annoy the shit out of Riot too?”

“I thought we decided that’s your job,” Midoriya pouts. He pouts a lot – the nerd never grew out of shitty childhood habits.

Katsuki scoffs.

“Whatever. I suppose as long as you two annoy each other, you could leave me the fuck out of it.”

When Bakugou opens the door, the flat is as quiet as usual. Deku takes off his shoes, putting them carefully side by side, and sneaks towards the bedroom.

“Just get the fuck inside,” Katsuki snorts, storming past him. “Riot, you still occupying my living space?”

“Kacchan!” the demon perks up. He’s still on the floor, still cross-legged, his eyes a little dimmer in daylight. “Oh, and Deku’s here too!”

“Hi,” Midoriya smiles. “I hope you don’t mind me being here – but just tell me if you’d rather I leave, because I don’t wanna intrude!“

“Why the fuck didn’t you ask me for permission?” Katsuki scowls indignantly. “I own this flat! Shitty Hair over here isn’t even paying fucking rent!”

Midoriya and Riot exchange a look, then burst out laughing.

Bakugou thinks, fuck, they’re gonna get along.

Chapter Text

Katsuki hates being right.

Well, he loves being right most of the time, but not when it comes to annoying little assholes, one of whom is his childhood friend and the other – a literal goddamn demon. And especially not when it comes to said assholes getting along like a house on fire – not literally, thankfully, because Katsuki only got this flat two years ago as an eighteenth birthday present, and he’d rather it didn’t burn down to the ground. Deku is a sucker for any knowledge, no matter how irrelevant, and Riot, it seems, just loves to blabber. Not about anything remotely useful to the case, of course – definitely not about how to get rid of him – but that doesn’t seem to bother Deku in the very least. Katsuki is left to chuck pillows at them – mainly Midoriya, because he doesn’t want to risk it – and scowl to himself.

Deku leaves just before sunset. Smiles at Riot, all very polite, very proper, as if saying goodbye to an acquaintance rather than a supernatural creature, then waves at Katsuki. Bakugou walks him to the door, mainly to tell him again just how much of a waste of everyone’s time and specifically his nerves this day has been.

“You’re welcome for the help, Kacchan,” Deku rolls his eyes. “I’ll see if I can translate some of the Latin documents Kaminari-kun gave me – they might contain something useful.”

“You coulda spent your afternoon doing that instead of gossiping with Shitty Hair,” Bakugou tells him. Deku laughs and flicks him on the nose, then skips down the stairs before the rightful retribution befalls him.

Katsuki sighs and closes the door.

“I like him,” Riot tells him as soon as he enters his bedroom again. Bakugou rolls his eyes.

“I don’t.”

“He certainly doesn’t have your attitude,” the demon chuckles. “But, listen, just so you don’t waste your or his time – you can’t get rid of me, man. It’s not how this works.”

Realistically, he probably knows what he’s talking about, Katsuki thinks. Realistically, they are all dabbling in something they don’t understand and probably won’t ever understand given the limited number of resources they have. Realistically, Riot is probably right.

He thinks all of that, but what he says is,

“Fuck you.”

Riot snorts with laugher.

“Is that all you ever say, Kacchan? I could swear humans had more in their vocabulary than just insults the last time I’ve seen one. Take Deku’s example for one – a very nice kid to chat to!”

“I am absolutely not taking that nerd’s example in anything,” Bakugou grumbles. “Also, I have all the rights to want you to fuck off. You’re invading my living space.”

“You summoned me!” Riot flails, his tail twitching uncomfortably as his arm hits the invisible wall that is the pentagram outline. “You really don’t get to be annoyed about it, man. I should be annoyed you’re basically keeping me trapped in a tiny circle.” He crosses his arms with a pout. Somehow, despite the horns, despite the glowing eyes, it manages to look pathetically harmless.

“I don’t have a fucking death wish yet, so you might have to deal,” Katsuki shrugs. “One of us is gotta give at some point, Riot, and it ain’t gonna be me.”

The demon gives him a doubtful stare. Bakugou glares back as hard as he can.

“What, you think I’m lying?” he demands. “You think anything is stopping me from just leaving this flat forever and going to live with Se– with a friend until I can get another place and leave you to rot here until I die? Think fucking again.”

“Se-who-now?” the demon narrows his eyes lazily, then shakes his head. “See, that’s the thing, Kacchan. Go do that. Leave me here. Leave me here, and spend your entire life looking over your shoulder, hoping, praying that no curious kid decides to break into here. Oh, I wonder what the pentagram on the floor is for? Wonder what happens if I rub it off, huh?” he mocks in a squeaky voice. “Leave me here, and wait until I find you.”

Katsuki really wants to look away, but he doesn’t, because he is a stubborn bitch and not too proud to admit it. So there they stand, staring into each other’s eyes and scowling. Well, Katsuki is scowling. The demon just sort of half-smiles, a little curious, almost condescending.

Then ducks his head.

Then laughs.

“But I’d much prefer if we didn’t have to do that,” he says. “Seriously, you seem like a cool dude, and I would really hate for it to have to come to that. I wasn’t joking before – I hate murder.”

He sounds surprisingly cheery – nothing like the big bad demon vibe he was trying to project just a second ago. It makes Katsuki all but snort.

“Ain’t I lucky,” he says. “Well, fuck. We’re stuck like this then, it seems.”

“It seems so,” Riot echoes, tugging on a spike in his hair, the one just above his left horn. Bakugou stares at him in consideration, then plumps himself down onto the bed.

“So wanna tell me what the fuck the deal is with souls, then?” he says. He thinks he sounds like Deku, but Deku hasn’t asked this questions, he doesn’t think, so fuck it. “Why do I need it? Why do you need it?”

Riot grins and leans back, just enough to let the tips of his hair scrape the invisible wall.

“Loaded questions, bro,” he says. Bakugou almost sputters at the familiarity, but manages to stop himself in time. “You don’t need it. Not really. Not to survive. Like, if I take it right now, you’ll still live the rest of your life and then die just like you would, and in conclusion, you should really consider.”

Katsuki tries to look unimpressed. He succeeds, of course, because with friends like his he’s mastered the unimpressed look in kindergarten.

“You only answered half of my question, asshole,” he says. Riot chuckles.

“Maybe I did. What of it?” He pauses, then shrugs. “I need it because unlike you I need it to live, Kacchan. It’s a very prosaic reason.”

Katsuki also hates it when Deku’s right. Unfortunately for him, that happens most of the time, but he isn’t about to admit that out loud.

“And what happened to your own soul?” he asks instead. “Do you have one? Did you ever have one?”

He hears the genuine curiosity in his own voice and silently congratulates himself on going completely mental and also Deku-like. The demon sighs quietly and wraps his tail around his forearm.

(His tail, for the record, is something fascinating. But Katsuki isn’t staring at it, and he certainly isn’t wondering what it would feel like to touch, so whatever).

“Does it matter?” the demon says. “I don’t, now.”

Now, Katsuki thinks. Which means that he used to. And that matters quite a lot – see the context.

“Which is why,” he snaps “I’m not giving you mine. I have no fucking desire to end up a pathetic creature who is so almighty on paper and yet is forced to scramble around and beg people to sell their souls just so you don’t kick the bucket.”

His words are followed with a few seconds of ringing silence. Something dark flashes in Riot’s eyes before he blinks it away. Something dark looks suspiciously like pain – he knows how to recognise that look, alright – and Bakugou thinks that he hit the mark. He also thinks that he could have been a little bit nicer about it, and then frowns, because since when does he care about being nice?

Riot sighs and looks out of the window again.

“You’re quite a straightforward one, aren’t you?” he says with an awkward, forced giggle. “I like humans like you. They sure keeps me on my toes.”

Katsuki frowns deeper, because for a demon, Riot is absolutely shit at lying. (Then again, are demons meant to be good at it? Is it prejudice again?)

“Whatever,” he grumbles. “Forget it.” And then: “What did Deku ask anyway? I cannot physically listen to that nerd for longer than a couple of minutes at a time, but you seemed to be pretty fucking content blabbering away about some shit for hours. And yet here I am having to practically pry every word out of you, the hell is that about?!”

This time, when Riot looks back at him, he smiles. His smile is surprisingly innocent for someone with fangs and horns and burning eyes, innocent and gentle, and Katsuki thinks to himself, What the fuck.

He doesn’t develop that thought any further – doesn’t dare – because he thinks if he did, he might have to physically die.

“Well, if you wanna listen to stories about early twentieth century wizard wannabes and their biddings...” Riot drawls. His tail swishes from side to side like that of an excited puppy.

Katsuki sighs and figures he wasn’t planning on being too productive this evening anyways.

Chapter Text

Naturally, they don’t figure this shit out before winter break ends. Katsuki isn’t even surprised – Deku has never been of much use when it came to productive solution finding, and he himself would much rather play the game of who blinks first. The disadvantage of that, of course, is that when both players are stubborn assholes, the game can drag on for weeks. So it does.

He comes back to his room in the evenings or afternoons, chucks his bag on the bed and rummages through the drawers in search of whatever textbook he needs to complete tonight’s assignment. He cooks himself dinner, or gets takeaway if he doesn’t feel like it, or just goes the evenings without food if he can’t be bothered at all. He reads his books, he stockpiles his dishes in the sink and he tries to keep his desk from becoming an irredeemable mess.

And he talks to Riot.

That, frankly, is just about the only change of the routine. One would think that having a literal fucking demon in your bedroom would shake things up a little more. Apparently not.

Also, Riot, for being a literal fucking demon, is surprisingly terrible at academics.

“What do you mean you don’t speak English?” Bakugou demands one night, gesturing around with a brand new copy of some nineteenth century British novel he has no idea why he has to read. Seriously, he’s studying to be a police detective! There is absolutely no need for him to know anything about the intricacies of Victorian era romance! “You are a demon, Riot.”

“And?” Riot raises one eyebrow, his tail wrapped around his arm. “I’m Japanese, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Didn’t know demons have fucking nationalities,” Katsuki grumbles, skimming through the pages grimly. “What if I was an American? What if I summoned you from some shitty little town in Texas, and then you’d show up and tell me you don’t speak English?”

Riot rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kacchan,” he says. “I’m not remotely from Texas – I wouldn’t be summoned to there!”

Bakugou looks at him for a moment, then decides that this is probably somewhat more fun than reading about three sisters who got married (how dull of a book plot...) and sits up.

“Where are you from, then?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“You just said you’re not remotely from Texas. Where are you from?” he repeats.

Riot blinks, slowly.

“I don’t know what you mean, bro,” he says with a nervous little chuckle, the one he does whenever Katsuki treads on uncomfortable grounds. “I’m a demon. I’m not strictly from anywhere, you know? I’m just–“

“And yet you just told me you were not from Texas,” Bakugou rolls his eyes, because hell if he’s gonna lay off. “And that you’re Japanese. If you’re Japanese, then you’re at least from fucking Japan!”

“Okay – sure,” Riot says, his tail curling up at his side, the feathery brush of it sweeping frantically across the floor. Bakugou finds himself thinking – again – that it must be soft to the touch. “Japan. Yeah, that’s it.”

“Japan where?” Katsuki asks, because he is not letting this go. “This ain’t the United States, but it’s hardly a tiny country. Musutafu? Osaka? Tokyo?”

Riot gives him a look. His looks are hard to read – surprisingly so, for someone who is otherwise shit at hiding any kind of strong emotion. This one in particular seems a painful mess of confusion, nostalgia, worry and apprehension, as if the demon doesn’t know what to say in response, doesn’t even know how to feel about the question.

Katsuki glares back. Riot blinks first. Then sighs.

“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I don’t know, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I’m from somewhere, I have to be from somewhere, probably Japan because it’s not like I speak any other language – limited Latin doesn’t count, it probably just comes with the package.” He gestures at his horns and tail, then shrugs. “I’m from somewhere, Kacchan. That’s the best I can do.”

Katsuki looks at him for a moment longer. Scoffs. Picks up the book again.

“Whatever,” he says, watching the demon’s shoulders relax in almost comical relief. “I’ll just ask you for maths help instead.”

Not that Bakugou needs any maths help, what with being practically the top of his years. Not that, if he needed any, Riot would provide it.

“For an all-powerful being you’re terrible at just about everything, Shitty Hair,” Bakugou informs him on a later night, in February, fuck, it’s February already, as he scribbles away the solutions to calculus problems. “I start regretting letting you stay here.”

“As if you have any choice,” Riot laughs. “Also, English and maths, really, Kacchan? As if those are everything there is to life.”

“Those are a damn good way to get where I want to be in it,” Katsuki deadpans. “I’m gonna graduate with fucking honours and be the best police officer this shitty town has ever seen, just you watch me.” Then, when Riot opens his mouth: “And no, I don’t need help with that. I can do it without selling my soul to a demon, because what’s the fucking point otherwise?”

Riot hums, resting his head on his palms.

“I like your outlook on these things,” he says. He sounds sincere. “I mean, I don’t like it as someone who wants your soul – obviously – but I appreciate how manly it is, wanting to get everything through your own hard work.”

Bakugou scoffs not looking up from his assignments because he is absolutely not flattered by the words. Riot laughs again.

“You don’t like compliments, do you, Kacchan?”

Katsuki doesn’t know how to respond to that. He does, however, know that he has a question. It’s even somewhat relevant.

“You know your name thing?” he says, writing out a long string of trigonometric functions and pointedly looking down at his work. Riot hums in confusion. “The whole shit about not giving out your names to demons because they can possess or control you otherwise, or whatever the fuck?”

“Oh yeah,” Riot agrees easily. “If you’re wondering, I have no idea why it works, but I suspect it’s because names are tied so intrinsically to human identities – maybe even to your souls, man. It’s like, if we know what you’re called, we can give commands directly to your... existence, or something.” He chuckles. “I’m not making much sense, am I?”

“Not a fucking inkling,” Bakugou tells him. “Also, not what I was asking. It’s just hella fucking annoying to be called by a moronic childhood nickname all the time.”

Riot tilts his head confusedly. Bakugou realises that to have seen that he must have looked up from his paper at some point and hastily returns his gaze to the questions.

“Deku calls me Kacchan,” he clarifies, even though that’s hardly what Riot is confused about. “I’ve known the damn nerd since we were children, he was an infuriating thing – still fucking is – and... not my point.” He shakes his head in frustration, because this entire conversation is getting ridiculous. “My point is – for the whole possessiony control bullshit, would you need a full name?”

This entire conversation is getting ridiculous, and Bakugou has no idea why he is doing whatever the fuck he is doing. That is fucking frustrating because usually he does know what the fuck he’s doing, and–

Ugh. Whatever.

Riot blinks.

“Um, yeah,” he says after a moment. “Yeah, I would. Say, if your name’s, like, Yume, there’s probably a couple thousand other Yumes scattered around the world, so even though you’re right in front of my eyes, I couldn’t really do much with it. Now, obviously there are people who share a name and a surname, but there’s way less of those, so it’s way easier to– Ah, whatever. Probably also not what you were asking,” he shrugs, and he tries to chuckle, but the chuckle just comes off a little bewildered. “I mean – what are you asking?”

Bakugou doesn’t know what he’s asking. Well, okay, he does, but he doesn’t know why he’s asking it, or why he’s being this irrational, or why the fuck couldn’t he just deal with being called Kacchan by another smiley bastard. He does know that Riot might well be lying – he is, after all, a literal demon, and he probably wouldn’t mind being able to possess a human body or whatever the fuck he would do if given the opportunity – but for some reason that doesn’t register like a real possibility in his mind.

Sure, he may be lying, Bakugou thinks. But it’s Riot.

“Well then do me a fucking favour and call me Katsuki,” he blurts out. He thinks of using his surname instead, briefly, but it’s not like the demon doesn’t know the first syllable of his name already, and how many names starting with “Ka” are there, really, so better safe than sorry. “I get enough nicknames from shitty Deku.”

Riot looks at him. Riot looks at him for a very long time, and Katsuki tries to focus at the maths, but that’s a godforsaken task under the gaze of those bright red eyes, so he sneers and sets the paper aside.

“What?” he demands. “Or don’t if you don’t want to, I don’t fucking care. Stop staring at me, Shitty Hair, it’s weird.”

“You know I could have been lying to you just now?” Riot says. His voice is... strangely flat. “How do you know I wasn’t?”

“I mean, I ain’t fucking possessed yet, am I?” Bakugou shrugs defensively. “Also, you’re shit at lying, Riot. I haven’t once seen you even hide emotions properly.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” Riot tells him, and Bakugou is sort of surprised he knows what an oxymoron is. “If I was hiding my emotions properly, you wouldn’t know that, would you?” And then, after a pause: “Katsuki?”

Katsuki thinks that the name should sound strange in the demon’s raspy voice. Weird, or unnatural, or at least unnerving – hell, considering to what length he has gone to keep it from him until now, it would be only fair to be concerned.

Turns out it doesn’t sound weird, or unnatural, or unnerving. Instead, it sounds...

Nice?

“That is – not my point!” Bakugou sputters after too long a pause in an attempt to ignore whatever ludicrous trail of thoughts his mind decides to stupidly follow. On second thought, maybe Riot was lying, because he feels his face heat up, and that is completely fucking irrational from a logical standpoint. “My point is that you ain’t an asshole, Shitty Hair. Wanna prove me wrong?”

Riot blinks again. Then shakes his head. Then laughs.

“Not really,” he manages through loud giggles, his tail wagging around the pentagram circle. “Not that I can, because, yeah, not a lie. Couldn’t do a thing to you even if I wanted to.” He pauses for a second to catch his breath, then smiles again, wide enough to expose the rows of sharp teeth. “Katsuki, huh? You, Katsuki, are something else.”

Bakugou doesn’t really know what to say in response. Bakugou settles on,

“Fuck you,”

because apparently that’s his go-to answer to anything. Not like it isn’t the best possible answer, might he add. Certainly gets Riot to leave him alone.

(Or that’s what he would like to say. Instead, Riot bursts out into another fit of laughter, and Katsuki doesn’t actually know why his face still feels so hot).

Chapter Text

“And you fucking told him your fucking name?!”

Bakugou Katsuki swears a lot. He isn’t ashamed of it – hell, by now it is such an integral part of his speech, that if he suddenly shows up one day and manages to go a couple of sentences without swearing, he’s pretty sure people are going to start questioning whether he’s okay or not.

Ashido, however, is a different case entirely. At least usually. At least when she doesn’t decide to take issue with something that was Katsuki’s own conscious decision and yell at him for it in the middle of the university cafeteria.

Katsuki supposes that’s just Ashido for you. That doesn’t stop him from rolling his eyes.

“Would you lay off?” he grumbles, leaning back against his chair and trying to simultaneously glare at all four of his friends who are staring at him with incredulity in their eyes. “Yes, I fucking told him my fucking name. And would you look at that? Still here.”

“But– but– but!”

Mina flails her arms around in frustration, only stopping when Sero grabs her wrist and takes a plastic knife out of her grip. She smiles at him sheepishly, then shakes her head and stabs a finger in Bakugou’s direction instead.

“But that’s ridiculous!” she says, finally. “I mean, what if he lied to you? How do you know he hasn’t? Izuku is the one with Denki’s books, it’s not like you could have checked!”

“They’re not strictly mine,” Kaminari murmurs. Ashido waves him off. Deku rummages through his bag which he slung over the back of his chair, then gets out one of his notebooks, a battered thing with only a dozen or so pages left blank.

“I don’t remember Kaminari-san clarifying whether they needed to be full names,” he mumbles, flipping through it. “I wish she kept more detailed notes, it would make things easier... Oh, here, names! Uh, control, possession, yeah, I’ve mentioned that already, demon names, souls...”

Katsuki nudges his foot under the table. Midoriya squeaks, but has the decency to look somewhat guilty.

“You’re rambling, nerd,” Katsuki tells him. “Stop. Also, Riot wasn’t fucking lying – end of discussion.”

“I mean, I guess since you actually aren’t possessed yet...” Deku ponders, then gets a pen out of his coat pocket and scribbles something down in the margins. Katsuki rolls his eyes.

“Stop noting down every bit of information you can find,” he scoffs. “You ain’t planning to become a paranormal investigator, so leave that shit to other witches.”

“How do you know I’m not?” Deku grins. “Also, if you know some other witches, Kacchan, please introduce me to them. I have so many questions – I mean, again, the notes leave a lot out, and–“

“Midoriya. Eat,” Sero deadpans, glancing at the clock. Midoriya’s ears go red and he closes the notebook hastily, shoving it back into his bag.

“Right. Sorry,” he laughs nervously, stuffing rice into his mouth. “It’s just, this all is really kinda cool.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mina shivers. “Don’t think I slept without nightmares for the past couple of weeks, seriously. Katsuki may get all heart-eyed about Riot, but he’s still, like, a demon!”

What the fuck.

Heart– What the fuck.

Bakugou stares at her. He doesn’t know whether he manages to convey his sheer bafflement with his stare, but judging by how Kaminari pushes his chair a couple of inches back, at least he’s got the righteous fury down. Sero, of course, just snorts with laughter, because he is a traitor, but Ashido doesn’t flinch, just raises one eyebrow at him in return.

“Ashido,” Bakugou says, very slowly, in case he didn’t manage to get through to her. “What the fuck.”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” she shrugs. “First of all, how long before literally any of us – Izuku doesn’t count – were allowed to call you by your first name? I swear Denki and I were around you for at least a year at that point. And your demon gets preferential treatment after, what, four weeks?”

“Four and a half,” Hanta adds, pedantically. Katsuki throws him a glare because first of all that’s not what they’re talking about, and second of all what the fuck.

“He already knew what my fucking name starts with!” he bristles. “It would be completely moronic to give him my surname, because who’s to say he wouldn’t have fucking guessed – Raccoon Eyes, what the fuck are you getting at?!”

“Oh, haven’t heard that one in a while,” Ashido laughs. Bakugou glares even harder because what right does she have to laugh, goddammit? “Also, sure, whatever, try to justify it. Still doesn’t explain why you wouldn’t just stick to Kacchan.”

“Because Kacchan is a stupid fucking nickname and I hate it!” Katsuki growls. Then sighs, loudly, because Deku visibly hunches over in his chair, his eyes flitting down to the unfinished bowl of rice. “Stop fucking looking like that, nerd. You’re allowed.”

Ashido snorts in delight, because she is goddamn insufferable like that. It’s probably kind of worth it, because Deku stops looking like a kicked puppy, but Katsuki still very much itches with a desire to throw something moderately heavy in her face.

“Well, okay, Kacchan’s reserved for Izuku, sure,” Kaminari chimes in, because of course he fucking does. Katsuki thinks that he might actually throw something at him, because he is a guy, and as such is not off-limits. “Still, dude – you actually smile when you talk about Riot. It would be kind of precious were he not, you know, an abomination from hell.”

Bakugou stares.

Bakugou thinks the words over for a moment in the silence that befalls their table after Denki shuts his mouth. The smiling comment doesn’t matter – it’s fucking bullshit anyways, and if his friends want to see whatever the fuck they want to see, they can hardly be deferred from doing so. Besides, since when is Katsuki not allowed to smile? Exactly.

The rest, however...

Riot is a lot of things. Bad at maths. Probably Japanese. Surprisingly not awful to talk to. A demon – fine, sure.

But Kaminari doesn’t get to call him an abomination.

“Take that back,” Katsuki says. He notices, out of the corner of his eye, Mina mutter something like “Oh, shit,” but it doesn’t matter, not really. “Take that back, Kaminari.”

Kaminari shifts his chair further back from the table as he presses his back against it, eyes wide. Katsuki thinks, Good.

“Jesus, fine,” Denki blurts out defensively. “Protective much? I mean, he’s a demon, what the hell else am I supposed to– ouch!”

Sero gives him a hard glare. Bakugou thinks that he personally would have gone with something more than a nudge under the table, but that works, too.

“Riot,” he says, very steadily, “is no more of an abomination than any of you assholes. And if I choose to tell him my name then I can damn well do so, Ashido, because it’s my fucking life, and I decide what I do with it, and if I want to trust demons, then I’m gonna trust demons, and it’s none of your goddamn business. Especially if said demons are nicer than all of you put together anyways.” He goes quiet for a moment, then, after making sure that none of them are about to make another stupid comment, clicks his tongue in satisfaction. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

“Damn,” Sero mouthes. Katsuki glares at him.

“You wanna fucking go?”

“No, I think I’m fine,” he shrugs, stealing some rice out of Deku’s bowl. Midoriya is too busy staring at Katsuki to notice. Katsuki gives him a stare back.

“What?” he huffs. “If you got something to add, nerd, just say it.”

“I think I’ll take my life, thanks,” Midoriya laughs sheepishly, and, huh, maybe he did get some common sense in the past couple of years after all, Bakugou thinks. “Just thinking that Mina actually had a point, I guess.”

Or, on the second thought, not. Bakugou throws a plastic fork in his face, because he probably won’t kill him with a plastic fork unless he’s very lucky, and Deku ducks out of the way with a snort. Ashido grins wider, but when Katsuki turns to glower at her, raises her arms as if surrendering.

“Not a word,” she promises. She’s still smirking, but Bakugou supposes that if she at least puts some effort into making it seem like it isn’t directed at him, he can let it slide.

Sero gets up.

“Well, we gotta go to a lecture,” he announces. “Izuku, you coming?”

“Yeah!” the nerd beams, hopping up to his feet and scraping some rice grains off the table into his bowl. “See you later, guys, Kacchan!”

“Of course you get a special mention,” Mina sighs. “Denki, come on, you promised me hot chocolate. Katsuki, see you around!”

As they leave, Kaminari has the decency to throw him an apologetic glance. Katsuki thinks that he’s gonna have to try a little harder than that, but at least there’s some effort. He sighs and gets his phone out, leaning against the back of his chair, because he doesn’t actually have a lecture for another half an hour.

Oh. Huh.

His mother doesn’t actually text him often – too high and mighty for that. She prefers to just call him and yell for a couple of hours straight about how he never visits anymore. Nevertheless, there is a notification on his screen announcing that she deigned to grace his phone number with some, no doubt, obnoxious nagging. Katsuki rolls his eyes and opens the app.

old hag: Popped in to say hello just now and you weren’t even there! Who knew I’ve raised such an inconsiderate little brat!

Bakugou scoffs, because, truly, who knew.

You: coulda taken the time to inquire if i’m gonna be busy or not. your own fucking fault.

old hag:Shut your mouth, you foetus. Is that how you speak to your mother? Also, I cannot believe you live like that. Have you washed your dishes in the past month?

You: i live however i want to live. i moved out for a reason, you witch. also, i don’t need you fucking around with my dishes!

old hag: Well, tough, because I wasn’t just gonna let them get their own fucking microflora. Even though they were suspiciously close to doing so.

Bakugou rolls his eyes again because of course he was right about the nagging. Her whole deal with cleanliness has never stopped getting on his nerves. And since when did she have the key to his apparent anyways? He almost sends her a text asking, because seriously, he doesn’t remember giving her a spare, so what the fuck, but she beats him to it.

old hag: Also, what the fuck was up with the pentagram? I thought you grew out of your emo phase in middle school, but that shit was just distasteful. Hard to scrub away too, honestly, brat.

And just like that, Katsuki freezes.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Katsuki skives the rest of his lectures.

There are only two, and one of them he shares with Deku, so he can get the notes off the nerd later. The other is English, and, again, he sees absolutely no merit in analysing novels about cousins marrying each other. He would probably skive it even without an apparent threat to his life.

But as it stands, there is an apparent threat to his life, because his mother is a bitch who cannot keep her nose out of his business and interior decor choices. Seriously, even if the pentagram wasn’t there for the explicit person of holding in a literal demon, the old hag still didn’t have any rights to touch it!

Katsuki’s flat is a twenty minute walk away, so he sprints, fast enough to be there in half the time. He’s a stubborn asshole, of course, so he doesn’t do shit to inform his friends of his potential sudden death, but he figures that if he doesn’t contact them for a while they’re bound to come knocking on the door eventually, so whatever.

He thinks that, for someone who is quite possibly about to face a demon, he is remarkably calm. But then he thinks that it’s Riot, and as such in a way is isn’t surprising at all.

He opens the flat door. Walks in. Hangs up his coat on the hook by the door, then checks the sink (no more dirty dishes, naturally). Runs his hand through his hair, then scoffs at no one in particular, because Bakugou Katsuki is a lot of thing, but he isn’t a coward.

Then slams his room door open.

The pentagram is gone, of course. He isn’t actually sure why the hag was complaining – Mina drew it in fucking crayon, how hard could it have been to wash off, really? The pentagram is gone, and the books on his desk are sorted on the shelves all very neatly, and Riot is lying on his bed.

“Oi,” Katsuki says. “Did I give you permission?”

He thinks he should probably say something else, or maybe scream, or grab a chair to defend himself. But then, screaming will piss his neighbours off some more and they’re barely on friendly terms as it stands, and a chair will hardly work as a weapon against a demon with who knows what powers at his bidding. So he settles for a glower and a snark.

“Your mum is really nice,” Riot says casually. He doesn’t get up.

“The old hag is a bitchy nuisance who thinks she has some sort of business in how I live my life,” Katsuki scoffs. “Also, what the fuck, have you seen her?”

“I saw her,” the demon nods, sitting up a little, his tail wrapping around his arm. “But she didn’t see me, don’t worry. I’m not about to go around scaring people to death.”

“I wish it were that easy to get rid of her,” Katsuki sneers, then uncrosses his arms and takes a step inside the room. “But yeah, I’d fucking hope you’re not about to go on a killing spree.”

And that’s as much as they talk about that.

As he slings his bag over the back of his chair, Katsuki thinks there should be more to say. More actions on his part, more frantically texting Deku and asking him to flicker through that shitty notebook of his, definitely more freaking out. More reaction from Riot, more words, more attempting to get close, dangerously close, to bare his teeth, to do – whatever it is demons do when they are let out. There should be more.

But there isn’t.

In fact, it’s all surprisingly dull. Same old, what with Katsuki whizzing though some statistical analysis set as an assignment from the morning lecture, with Riot just hanging around – still on his bed, Katsuki would like to point out, didn’t he get the fucking memo?

Katsuki suspects there’s something wrong with his demon.

“There is something wrong with you,” he blurts out, spinning around on his chair, because some day he’s going to learn how to work his brain to mouth filter, but that day isn’t gonna be today.

Riot casts him a lazy gaze, then sits up. Now that he’s out of the pentagram circle, he’s all wide, sweeping motion, all shuffling from place to place and tracing figures of eight with his tail – so much so, that Bakugou thinks it must have been torture for him, being confined to one spot.

(Bakugou also thinks that he could touch the tail now, see if it is as soft as it seems. And also that he’s probably gone mad, and, irrelevantly, that Ashido should keep her pink mouth shut).

“Oh?” Riot says. “Like what?”

“Fuck if I know,” Katsuki shrugs in irritation, his voice rough. “I haven’t met much other demons in case you didn’t realise. Ain’t like I can do an accurate comparison.”

“So...” Riot drawls in confusion as he flops back down onto the bed, his face half-turned to Bakugou. Bakugou grimaces, because he doesn’t actually have a point, doesn’t know how to continue or whether he should, but fuck if he’s gonna back away now.

“So whatever,” he says. “I don’t need to have seen other demons, Deku has his notes. The nerd is freakishly organised with these things, and what with how much he mutters, you can imagine I know enough about this shit.”

“Sure”, Riot hums, squinting at him. Bakugou gives him the best sneer he can muster, because what the fuck is his deal with one-word answers?

“So,” he continues, “I figured you demons will be more into the whole idea of murdering people. Especially if they’re pretty damn adamant about not giving you their souls. Can’t imagine it being the nicest thing, just hanging around here for shit all.”

“And your point is..?”

“My point is,” Bakugou scoffs furiously, “that you haven’t murdered me yet, and that’s weird.”

For a moment there’s silence between them. Katsuki considers spinning the chair right back around and continuing with his work, as if this entire mess of a one-sided conversation never happened, but then, he suspects it isn’t gonna work out. Not with Riot staring at him like that. So he glares back, and smirks victoriously when the demon blinks.

“Would you prefer I did?” he laughs softly. “Murder you, that is?”

“Fuck no,” Bakugou scoffs. “But you’d think you’d take the chance to fuck with me. Do the whole thing with fire, try to intimidate me, scare me into submission, whatever the shit it is that you do.”

Riot laughs louder.

“Fire out of nowhere isn’t my forte,” he admits. “Now, this guy I know – demon, whatever – he’s got fire and ice, the whole package, he can be intimidating, sure. Me though? Not so much.”

He shakes his head with a grin. Bakugou wants to say that he’s underestimating himself, what with the horns and the tail and the teeth, but then thinks about it for a moment and concludes that, huh. He can’t actually imagine being... scared. Not by Riot. Not anymore.

“Besides,” Riot continues, “you don’t strike me as a guy to be easily intimidated, Katsuki. You’d probably tell me to piss off and clock me in the face.”

Bakugou thinks that he’d go for stronger language, but overall, this is a rather accurate assessment. He clicks his tongue.

“Whatever, Shitty Hair,” he says. Riot laughs again.

They sit in relative silence for a while longer. Riot nicks a book off Bakugou’s shelves – some old horror story Deku got him in second year of middle school, Katsuki doesn’t know why, they didn’t even talk in their second year of middle school – and buries his head in it. Katsuki tries to plan out an essay without sneaking glances at him. When he fails, he tells himself it’s purely out of caution – Riot may sound friendly all he fucking wants, but for all Bakugou knows, he could just be a really good liar.

(He tells himself that, and then has to bite back on a snort, because what a bunch of bullshit).

The sun sets.

Katsuki finishes up two whole paraphrase of an essay, dismisses Midoriya’s concerned texts over him skiving the lecture (just send me your notes, nerd, don’t think i can’t catch up) and figures he should make himself something to eat. When he stands up, Riot follows him with the gaze of scarlet eyes.

“I’m making dinner,” Bakugou tells him. He doesn’t know why the fuck he tries to justify himself, but then, as it has recently turned out, there is a whole bunch of shit he doesn’t know. “Come along if you wanna, I don’t give a fuck.”

It’s kind of ridiculous, inviting someone into the next room, but that doesn’t stop Riot’s face from lighting up with a grin. Katsuki scoffs under his nose and rushes to the kitchen so he doesn’t have to see that particular sight for longer than necessary.

Riot watches him as he cooks.

He isn’t of much help, of course, as someone who doesn’t need to or perhaps can’t even eat human food, but he still watches, his head leaning against the table as his tail sweeps across the floor. Katsuki glares at him over his shoulder. He isn’t sure why. He also isn’t sure why this feels so... so...

Normal?

He tries to glare at the water in the pan instead to force it to boil quicker.

“Hey, Shitty Hair,” he says without turning around. Riot doesn’t respond, but Katsuki knows he’s listening. “I’m still not offering you my soul, but I wanted to know – the fuck happens if we do agree on a deal?”

“What do you mean?” the demon confirms. The water begins to bubble reluctantly. Katsuki shrugs.

“You know,” he says. “Say we agree on something. You take me up on ten yen for a corn chip,” (he swears he hears Riot snort), “or we settle on some other shit, whatever. What happens then? A handshake? A kiss to seal the deal? Would you linger around for much longer?”

He doesn’t know why he adds the kiss bit. He tries to make his voice sound sarcastic, and he’s even pretty sure it works.

“O-oh,” Riot hums. Katsuki doesn’t know if he imagines the hesitation or if it’s really there, and he isn’t too keen on turning around to find out, even if he can blame the flush in his own cheeks on the heat from the stove. “No kisses needed, unfortunately. No handshakes either. As soon as a deal is fulfilled, I’ll just kind of... vanish.” He chuckles, and there are notes to it Katsuki doesn’t quite manage to discern. “I get out of your hair, you go back to your normal life, stuff like that.”

“Right,“ Katsuki says, watching the water turn into vapour. “Good, I mean.”

He thinks he should turn down the heat.

He also thinks he really doesn’t want Riot to vanish.

Chapter Text

Katsuki doesn’t hate his friends. He would even go so far as to say he likes them, marginally, on good days, and somehow manages to tolerate them at all other times. But by gods, are they ever annoying pricks.

He storms into his flat and slams the door shut behind him for little reason other than the satisfaction it brings to hear the bang, then throws his bag across his hallway and straight into his bedroom. He’s pretty sure there’s nothing fragile enough to break in there.

“What the fuck’s their deal,” he mutters under his nose, stomping over to the living room, then flops face down onto the couch and tries not to scream into his pillow. For the record, he is aware that he is acting fucking childish, thank you very much. He doesn’t give two shits.

“Uh,” Shitty Hair’s voice says from the vague direction of the kitchen. “You okay, bro?”

Bakugou isn’t, but fuck if he’s gonna admit it out loud. Fuck if he even knows why he’s so furious in the first place. But honestly, when out of his entire friend group Deku is the one being the most reasonable, there’s something deeply amiss.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice muffled. And then: “Some assholes just can’t keep their nose out of my business.”

“Wanna tell me about it?” Riot says, and Bakugou can imagine his eyebrows quirking up even without having to turn around. He groans and turns around anyways.

“It’s nothing fucking important,” he grimaces. It’s not even a lie. Ashido and Kaminari love being dramatic, Sero likes pretending to sound reasonable, Deku likes being... Deku, so nothing’s really out of the ordinary. He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much. Or maybe he does know, and that bothers him even worse.

“I mean, you’re clearly annoyed about something,” Riot shrugs, plopping himself down on the carpet in front of Katsuki. “I’m just curious, man.”

“Or you’re just trying to find leverage points to offer me a deal I would actually accept,” Bakugou mutters, and then watches Riot’s face morph into something... different. A little withdrawn. A little offended. A little – a little hurt.

And that’s the fucking problem, ain’t it?

“At least that’s what those pricks think.” He thinks he shouldn’t be calling his friends pricks, but then, has it ever bothered him before? “Mi– uh, Ash– fuck. Pink hair, drew the pentagram. That girl. She asked if she could come over tonight, and I told her, sure, what-the-fuck-ever, but be warned, there’s a demon roaming my flat, because she’s a coward and as such needs to be warned.” (Riot lets out a cautious chuckle. Bakugou scoffs). “But the problem is that I haven’t actually told them you were out of the fucking pentagram yet. Oh stop looking at me like that, it hasn’t been that long. They’re all pussies, I didn’t want them to freak out.”

“And?” Riot says, and somehow manages to convey his scepticism about Katsuki’s life choices in one word. Katsuki is kind of envious. “Did they? Freak out?”

“Too much, if you ask me,” Bakugou sneers. “Pinky went batshit crazy. Told me I’m a lunatic with a death wish, and also a gullible moron – says fucking she!” He scoffs and shakes his head. “Kaminari lost his shit too, as if he wasn’t the one to insist we– shit, fuck–“

He bites down on his tongue angrily. Riot waves him off.

“It’s not like I know which one of them is Kaminari anyways,” he shrugs. “Let alone a first name.”

“Yeah, well, whatever”, Bakugou grumbles. “Still remind me to never tell him I told you, because he is a little bitch. All of them are little bitches.”

That’s Katsuki’s entire sentiment towards his friends this afternoon. Shitty Hair looks unimpressed. (He also looks a little more withdrawn, a little more upset, about what Katsuki couldn’t fathom, but he chooses to ignore that. He doesn’t need to dig his grave any deeper).

“You don’t actually think that,” Riot says. “Besides, don’t tell me you don’t think they have a point. I am a demon, Katsuki. One looking for a soul, no less.”

“Oh please”, Bakugou rolls his eyes. He doesn’t actually know how to continue, because as a logical conclusion Riot’s words make sense, but fuck if he ain’t gonna disagree.

Riot gives him an understanding gaze. Bakugou thinks he doesn’t understand shit.

He gets up. He goes to the kitchen, brews himself a cup of coffee, then briefly considers making dinner, but figures that he might well set something on fire if he tries. He watches the kettle boil instead, too stubborn to turn back around, to meet Riot’s gaze, then grabs a bag of chips from a drawer and pours the water into the mug. Takes a sip. Tries to pretend he hasn’t burned his tongue. Walks back to the couch.

Riot looks, for all his restlessness, like he hasn’t moved an inch. Bakugou thinks he should find it unnerving. He opens the snacks instead, too loud in the silence of the room.

“What’s your demons’ deal with souls anyways?” he blurts out, when the gaze of red eyes gets unbearable. “Why the fuck do you need them?”

He thinks that he already asked this question. Something like it, in any case. He also thinks that he hasn’t as of yet gotten an answer, so fuck it.

Riot looks at him in consideration, then laughs. This time his laugh is a little hollow.

“Oh, you know,” he says. Bakugou doesn’t, actually, which is why he fucking asked, but he doesn’t interrupt. “Imagine – you have a home. Well, it doesn’t feel like home, because every time you’re there you feel like you’re suffocating, and it kinda hurts – not badly or anything, just an ache, an annoying little thing...” He shakes his head. “But it is what it is no matter what it feels like. You don’t like calling it your home, none of you do, but it’s not like you’ve got much choice.” His tail sweeps over the floor lazily. “Still, every time you go back there, it hurts a little more. It’s just how it’s meant to work. Always will. You think it’s a punishment for making wrong life choices. Back when you had a life.”

Katsuki wants to ask what choices. He doesn’t, because Riot’s gaze looks unfocused, scattered, and Katsuki wouldn’t dare interrupt.

“But you can make it not hurt,” Riot continues. “For a while. For long enough to almost make you forget that it hurt in the first place, before it begins to again – of course. And all you have to do for that is, what? Go around and try to convince some poor, lucky bastards to make the same mistake you once made?” He laughs bitterly. “It’s practically a steal.”

Katsuki thinks it’s good that he didn’t ask. Katsuki also thinks, distractedly, that hell, he should probably tell Deku. Nerd would love to know exactly how do demons come about.

“So we do it,” Riot says, quietly. “You won’t believe how easy it is sometimes, Katsuki. Easy enough for some to forget just what we’re sentencing the not-so-lucky bastards to.”

Bakugou knows without asking, almost without thinking, just from the way Riot’s voice wavers, from the way it trembles in badly hidden regret, that he doesn’t belong to the kind who forget. Bakugou isn’t surprised.

He watches the steam rising from his coffee until there is no steam anymore.

“Fuck,” he says. It’s hardly eloquent. It’s not enough to chase away the quiet which has settled in the room when Riot finished speaking. It’s the only thing he can manage right now.

“Fuck,” Riot agrees, and then laughs again, louder, warmer, almost enough to shatter the quiet completely. Almost. Katsuki looks at him instead.

“Then...” he says, and he’s never been good with words, but fuck if he doesn’t try. “Then what’s the point of going back?”

Riot tilts his head. Katsuki scrunches his face in frustration.

“Because, you know”, he says, and thinks that Riot probably doesn’t know either. “You could just stay. If a bunch of morons summon you one day, because they’re bored out of their minds and also are all idiots, did I mention that yet – you could just stay. Forget the souls, forget the deals. It’s not like anything is forcing you to come back. Is it?”

Riot smiles. He gets up to his feet, quietly, and then sits down on the sofa next to Katsuki, all cautious movements and small steps. His eyes don’t look like burning coals anymore, just like a sunset, warm and vibrant.

Katsuki touches the brush at the end of his tail. It’s soft. Softer than he thought.

“Nothing is forcing you to come back,” Riot echoes. “Not technically. But then, this world, the place you’ve been summoned to, the place you haven’t seen in – years and years and years – this place isn’t your home. Hasn’t been for a while. You don’t belong here. You are a freak of nature, a predator, a monster that can’t possibly exist.” Katsuki opens his mouth to argue, but Riot shakes his head, that smile still on his lips, that infuriating, sad, pathetic little smile Katsuki despises with his entire being. “This world is... beautiful, and alive, and it has a soul in itself, and you don’t. Not anymore. And you know what is the worst of it all, Katsuki?”

Katsuki shakes his head. He doesn’t dare try to speak.

“Worst of it all,” Riot says, “is that this world reminds you of all the things you can’t have.”

And then he leans in.

Katsuki thinks that it should be hard, kissing someone with razor-sharp teeth. Or he would think if if he could possibly do so right now, if he could focus on anything that isn’t the sensation of Riot’s lips on his, warm, gentle, scorching. The kiss is chaste, as innocent as it gets, and yet it still burns, it sets off explosions in his chest, rocking him to his core.

Katsuki has kissed people before. He thinks that he might as well not have.

Katsuki tries to grab onto this moment and keep it forever. The moment slips right through his fingers, a furtive little thing, a stolen tick of the clock which he never had any rights to in the first place.

Riot leans back, ever so slightly, and offers Katsuki a smile. It’s gentle, and sad, and so, so human that Katsuki doesn’t think he can handle it. He opens his mouth to say something, to make a joke, a quip, to demand the demon kiss him again, for god’s sake, but Riot shakes his head silently and presses something into his palm. Something small, round and metallic.

It takes Katsuki long, way, way too long to understand what it is. It takes him longer to understand what the implications are.

And when he does, he barely has the time to grimace, to say something, to scream before Red Riot suddenly vanishes in his grasp, slips through his fingers too, leaving behind nothing more than a burst of red flames.

Just like that.

Just like that.

He fades, and Katsuki is left there, with a half-empty fucking pack of godforsaken corn chips in his right hand,

and a small,

copper

ten yen coin in his left.

Chapter Text

Summoning demons is a game of Russian roulette. You don’t get to specify exactly who you want to see, which spirit you’re trying to attract with overdramatic Latin incantations. You draw a pentagram, you read out the spell, and you hope for the best.

Katsuki knows this because the first thing he does when Riot vanishes is call Deku.

Well, the first thing he does is throw his coffee mug against the wall and watch the dark stain seep its way into the wallpaper and the floorboards, but that doesn’t fucking count. He calls Deku, and Deku picks up, naturally, after a couple of rings.

“Hey Kacchan,” he says. He sounds a little tired but still bright, no less than usual, and it’s fucking out of place. “What’s up?”

Katsuki asks him,

“How do I summon demons?”

Which is how he learns all of the above. Learns that trying to get Riot to get his stupid ass back might actually put Katsuki into the hands of a different creature, someone way worse, because choices are a luxury medieval witches who wrote spells could not afford. Learns that once a demon is gone, gone like a fucking moron without even asking whether Katsuki wants him to go, there are no ways to get him back.

Katsuki thinks that before nobody has ever needed such a way. That before people must have been fucking ecstatic to get rid of whomever they summoned.

That before nobody knew Riot.

Really, truly knew Riot.

“But – he just left? Like that?” Deku rambles on the phone. “Without a soul, without anything, he just let you go?”

Katsuki growls, then considers throwing his phone against the wall too, for good measure. He doesn’t – of course – but it’s a tempting thought. Deku sighs.

“Sorry I can’t help,” he tells him. “I mean, I’ll snoop around the books some more, but I don’t think–“

“Whatever,” Bakugou says. “Fuck you.”

His voice sounds pathetically choked, too rough to be normal, and he knows Midoriya picks up on it, but the damn nerd is too considerate to call him out. Instead, he sighs again.

“Get some sleep, Kacchan,” he says.

Katsuki scoffs.

***

He doesn’t, of course. He doesn’t sleep the entire night, just wastes the hours staring at the coffee puddle until he can finally bring himself to clean it up. He cuts his palm open on one of the ceramic shards of what used to be a mug, then scowls at the blood as if that will make it stop. Or maybe because the blood is so red. Too red. There is a striking lack of red in Katsuki’s apartment.

He manages to sort of salvage the wall and the floor from coffee stains, and even to shower – at around four in the morning, but that’s semantics and as such doesn’t matter. He turns the water as cold as it can go and stands under it for a long time, shivering helplessly. He knows he’s being pathetic, but fuck it, he’s allowed.

Riot just– he did– and now–

Katsuki thinks that it’s unfair. That this entire thing is completely fucking unfair, and that the universe is a cruel little bitch whose rules make no sense and as such should seize existing. The universe, of course, doesn’t care about what he thinks, and so its rules keep firmly in place. When he gets out of the shower, the flat is quiet and dark, unnaturally so, and Bakugou wants to slam the bathroom door on his fingers for allowing himself to get used to the way things were the last couple of weeks.

It’s been barely two months, for fuck’s sake.

And Riot was a fucking demon.

Did Katsuki really have to go ahead and– and–

He doesn’t slam the door on his fingers, but he doesn’t put the bandage on the cut either. It doesn’t matter.

He gets dressed at around five, then sneaks outside and buys himself a cheap black coffee from one of the murky twenty-four-hour shops by petrol stations. The coffee tastes like shit, but he chugs it anyway, almost burning his tongue, and flips off the petrol station employees who look at him with poorly concealed amusement. They probably think he is some pathetic college student having a mental breakdown, but they work at a fucking petrol station, so they have no right to judge.

Speaking of college, he does go to lectures that morning, because he is a good fucking student, and some asshole with shitty red hair for brains will not screw him over like that. He sits through his English lecture and even takes notes. He answers the questions when picked on by professors. He skips lunch.

His goddamn buddies find him anyways. Deku looks vaguely guilty, and the faces of the rest are all sympathetic grimaces, so Bakugou supposes that at least he won’t have to recount the story again. He still wants to punch them, all of them, for daring to look at him with pity, because he doesn’t need their fucking pity.

He tells them that much.

Sero hands him a pork sandwich.

They sit on the grass outside the lunch hall, and Bakugou tries to glare at them, he really tries, but it comes out half-hearted. There’s only so much heat he can put in his gaze when Mina leans against his shoulder, snuggling closer, and when Deku begins mumbling again, flipping through his notebooks, trying to find solutions to problems that aren’t his own like the ridiculous nerd he is. There’s only so much, and, he thinks, it doesn’t fool them anyway, so why fucking bother.

“You really were in love, huh,” Kaminari says, eventually.

Bakugou takes everything back and lunges at him.

They don’t fight, not really at least, but a professor rushes up to them to pull them apart anyways, and they spend at least fifteen minutes trying to convince him that they didn’t quite intend to cause bodily harm. Sure, Denki has a fresh bruise on his cheekbone and Katsuki’s neck is covered in scratches, because the moron fights like a girl, but that doesn’t quite count.

In they end they are let go with a warning, and Hanta laughs his ass off about it, because Hanta is a piece of shit. Kaminari laughs too, mainly because he is an idiot, and speculates over whether he can convince Shinsou or Jirou that he got the bruise through some heroic feat. Bakugou suspects that neither of them are dumb enough to believe that.

“Katsuki,” Ashido says as Sero and Denki bicker about something inconsequential, with Deku trying and failing to act as a mediator. “Are you okay?”

He wants to tell her that he is and that she should mind her fucking business. He doesn’t, because this is Mina, and Mina may be a complete idiot at times, but she’s damn stubborn and even more perceptive.

“Not really,” he says. “But fuck that. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure you will,” she shrugs. “You’re you. But for as long as you aren’t, we’re here for you.”

He shoves her away because that’s enough sappiness for the day. She laughs too.

Katsuki thinks that maybe, just maybe, he tolerates his friends a little more than he thought. And that Riot is a fucking asshole, leaving like that, and that Katsuki wants him back, goddamnit, he’s not too proud to admit that either, but that as long as he has this bunch by his side, he’ll be fine. He doesn’t say that out loud, because he still has some self-respect, but he thinks that they know it anyways.

“Come on,” he says, getting up. “We’re getting ice cream. Nerd, don’t you dare complain about skipping lectures – I don’t give a fuck.”

Deku complains anyways, but when Kaminari latches onto your arm and drags you out of college gates, it’s kind of hard to resist. Besides, Katsuki’s paying, because he has some decency, and when did a student ever complain about free food?

They get ice cream. Deku chooses strawberry like a pussy, Bakugou takes wasabi, Mina and Sero have a long argument over whether hazelnut is better than chocolate, and Kaminari orders a milkshake because he always has to be special like that. They sit down by the window and play a ridiculous game of counting passers by – Bakugou is a little iffy on the rules, but that doesn’t stop him from yelling at Denki because Denki is definitely getting it wrong – and overall, he isn’t quite sure just why they aren’t kicked out in the first hour. Not that he’s complaining.

When they leave, the sun isn’t yet setting, but it is already scraping the rooftops of houses across the street. Mina and Kaminari’s places are a few streets down south, so they say goodbye as soon as they exit the ice cream parlour and then bolt down the road, Ashido chasing Denki because he steals one of the cookies she bought before they left, but the rest of them walk together for another couple of minutes. They manage to have a civil conversation, somehow, about internships and work experiences and whatnot, and Katsuki doesn’t even yell at Deku for being a teacher’s pet (because the nerd is, that’s how he gets all his internship offers and the permission to accept them). They have a civil conversation, and say civil goodbyes, and when Katsuki enters his flat that evening, he feels a little less lost than he was when he left it hours before.

Katsuki thinks that he’s really, really fucking mad at Red Riot. And that he’s stubborn enough to make sure the demon finds out. Stubborn enough to get him back, no matter how, no matter when or through what means. But, he thinks, if in the meantime he’ll have to be stuck with this bunch of loud idiots, well, it isn’t really too much of a sacrifice.

Chapter Text

Deku leaves next Monday.

Deku is a lucky bastard and the professors’ favourite, so he only needs to spend a few weeks batting his eyelashes at the university board to get permission to skip a week of lectures for an internship. (Katsuki isn’t fucking bitter, what are you on about?). He leaves on a Monday afternoon, and Katsuki even goes to wave him goodbye, along with Kaminari and the round-faced girl whom he doesn’t particularly like but who’s nice enough to Midoriya for him to tolerate her.

Deku catches a train to Hosu City, his bag of clothes lighter than the rucksack with textbooks, and Katsuki spends entirely too long watching the train disappear out of sight. The round-cheeked girl gives him an awkward smile and makes smalltalk with Kaminari, and Katsuki thinks, again, that Deku is a lucky bitch, what with payed internships. Not that Katsuki needs the money much, but it’s damn good as far as work experience goes.

Deku texts him once he gets there. Katsuki tells him that he doesn’t give a fuck about where he’s staying. It’s a lie and they both know it, so the nerd keeps him updated – tells Bakugou about the chief inspector of the police station he has been assigned to, recounts in vivid detail the horrid murder mysteries his temporary colleagues try to scare him with (he doesn’t get scared, of course, only more curious, because he’s a fucking weirdo), and sends pictures from inside inside the police archives, which, Katsuki thinks, is probably not even strictly legal.

And then Deku calls him, one night.

In retrospect, who knows why he spends his night in said archives. In retrospect, Katsuki wouldn’t have been surprised if he snuck in without permission because he is a ridiculous overachiever who doesn’t know when to stop. But then, in retrospect, it hardly matters.

Deku calls him, and Bakugou picks up.

“Deku, did you fucking look at the time? I–“

“Katsuki,” Deku says, and that sounds fucking weird, entirely unnatural, because he never calls him Katsuki. They don’t do first names.

“Who died?” Katsuki grumbles. He thinks that it is an entirely reasonable question.

“Well,” the nerd says with a laugh, except his laugh is anxious and trembling and not reassuring at all, “someone certainly did. At one point or another. I’m sending you a picture – look at it.”

He hangs up. Next second, Katsuki’s phone pings with an incoming message, and he doesn’t understand why the fuck did the nerd feel it necessary to announce it with a call.

Except he sees the picture, and he does.

The picture is all grainy, taken in dim light and a little blurred at the edges, as if Deku was in a rush to snap it. It’s a photo of a newspaper page, brown paper and faded ink, and though there is hardly enough resolution to read the words, the image accompanying the article is clear enough.

They boy in it doesn’t have spiky hair, nor sharp teeth, nor a tail, nor a pair of horns. But he has the grin, and the glint in his eyes, and Bakugou recognises him at a fucking glance because of course he does.

The caption under the picture says, blandly, carelessly, as if it wouldn’t be, in a century or so, turning someone’s world up-side-down, “Kirishima Eijirou, 19.”

Bakugou punches the wall.

***

He makes Deku send him a better picture of the article, of course. And Deku doesn’t even comment on the fact that it takes him twenty minutes, so, Katsuki thinks, maybe the nerd has learned to keep his nose out of other people’s business after all. Or alternatively maybe he didn’t even notice the time, too busy digging his way through old newspaper clippings on knife crimes. Why the fuck is he looking at knife crimes anyway?

(Not that Katsuki asks. Not that Katsuki even cares, right now).

He makes Deku send him a better picture and reads through it enough times to roughly remember the story off by heart. It’s a little over-the-top, kind of sensationalist, typical for the yellow press at the turn of the last century, perhaps, and whoever is writing the article doesn’t even pretend to be impartial, instead speculating openly on the identity of the – well, criminal.

Murderer.

Because there’s a murderer in this story.

Because Kirishima fucking Eijirou was murdered in a shitty alleyway one winter night give or take a hundred years ago. Stabbed to death, found with a gaping hole in the place of his right eye and a wound straight through his neck – the article doesn’t shy away from the gory details. And Katsuki should be used to the gory details, he‘s planning to be a fucking police detective, he’s seen hundreds of case files just like this one, but– fuck.

Riot was human.

Riot had a name.

And a family, if the article was to be trusted, and he wore his hair black, and he got fucking stabbed to death in some shitty alleyway, because that is at all fair, that makes fucking sense, universe–

Bakugou growls. Then takes a deep breath.

Riot was human. And, if Katsuki got his cryptic remarks correctly, he was a human who sold his soul. For what – Bakugou doesn’t know, simply can’t gather from one newspaper story, but he did, he must have, and after he... after he died–

Well, Riot.

“Kirishima,” Katsuki mutters under his breath, and it’s entirely pathetic, how his voice breaks. “Kirishima Eijirou”.

He doesn’t know why, but he thinks it’s a fitting name.

And then he thinks about it some more.

Names, huh?

Didn’t Riot – Kirishima, Bakugou corrects himself, or even Eijirou, fuck, can he call him Eijirou? – in any case, didn’t he mention names before? Didn’t he say that knowing a name – a full name–

Maybe it only applies to demons, Katsuki thinks.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

He won’t know if he doesn’t check.

He does get some sleep that night, somehow. Drifts off for a couple of hours with his phone still in his hand, and wakes up when the sun rays dare to pester him in the morning. He gets up, gets dressed, then goes to lectures like a goody-two-shoes student he is, but when Sero invites him to hang out in the afternoon, he shakes his head. He doesn’t miss the worried glance from Kaminari, or the way Mina opens her mouth to argue, but fuck those three. He has things to do.

And if by “things” he means a completely ridiculous, possibly dangerous, likely completely fucking futile plan, well, it’s none of their business is it?

Katsuki knows his way to Deku’s flat with his eyes closed. The nerd still lives with his mum, the same part of town they grew up in, so it doesn’t take him long to find his way over to the familiar concrete block of an apartment building and run up the stairs. When he knocks on the door, Auntie Inko opens it without hesitation – perks of knowing her for pretty much all of his conscious life. He comes up with some passable excuse, says Deku told him he may get his notes, and sneaks up to the nerd’s room, stopping in the doorway for no longer than a second to scoff at the decoration choices.

(He doesn’t call him a nerd for no reason, alright).

Katsuki doesn’t even need to snoop around the room for long. Deku keeps the spellbooks on his shelf, all very neat and proper, along with a bunch of other notebooks he filled out himself. Bakugou grabs the top one, flips through the pages until he finds the one with a familiar ritual to make sure it’s the one he needs, then shoves it in his bag. Thanks Auntie Inko. Skips back down the steps and out onto the street.

He still has chalk in his flat, he thinks, but he needs a couple of candles.

It’s not dark yet when he gets home, but he suspects darkness is more of an aesthetic choice than a requirement, and in any case, patience may be a virtue, but it isn’t one of his. Deku texts him – Mum said you popped in to get some notes of mine?? – but Katsuki makes an executive decision to ignore him, because if the nerd knew what he was doing, he’d probably freak out. He is like that.

Bakugou pulls the curtains shut and finds the page with the ritual again.

He draws the pentagram. It’s not as good as Mina’s, the lines are wobbly and the symbols are skewed, but it’s passable – it has to be. He draws the pentagram, he lights the candles and arranges them just so, just like they’re meant to be arranged, then turns off the ceiling lamp, watching the shadows jump around his walls in the fickle flames – too much orange, not enough red. He looks at the spell in the book for a moment, at the Latin words and phrases, and then shuts it with a loud thud.

He doesn’t need spells. Not this time.

His spell is a name.

“Kirishima Eijirou,” he whispers to the pentagram, fists clenched to the point where it would be painful if he had paid any attention to them. “Kirishima Eijirou, you hear me? I don’t care about how any of this shit works – just give me back my Riot, dammit!”

The candles go out.

And stay out. The little trails of smoke are barely visible in the darkness.

Katsuki sits like that for a while, the name still on his lips, nothing more than a bitter aftertaste. He counts down seconds in his head, keeps waiting for... something, but the smoke dissipates and dissolves, and he hears cars rushing past the building a few storeys down, and the room stays as quiet as ever.

He gets up. Reaches out for the light switch. The electrical lights floods the room, too unnatural after the soft flicker of fire.

The candles are molten down completely, no more than five puddles of wax with wicks of ash, and he thinks, absently, that this will be a bitch to scrub away.

But then, there is no pentagram on the floor. One less thing to clean later.

As far as messages go, Katsuki thinks, this one says rather clearly to stop trying.

***

You: i forgot to copy some shit down last time. stop freaking out about it, i’ll return them before you’re back.

shitty deku: Ah, gotcha!

shitty deku: By the way, Kacchan, I wanted to ask, are you... alright?

You: peachy. fuck off, deku. go nerd out over old crime statistics and let other people live in peace.

He shuts off his phone and buries his face in his hands.

Chapter Text

The first thing Kirishima Eijirou does is pet a dog.

Well, the first thing he does is freak out, because one moment he’s floating in the endless, familiar, painful void of the realm he has come to call his own in the years and years past, and the next he’s suddenly lying on the ground in an alleyway looking up at what is unmistakably the sky. He’d like to argue, very politely, that anyone would freak out in this situation.

He sits up, barely, leaning against a brick wall to his left and trying to blink away whatever mockery of a mirage this might be. The alleyway is quiet, but by no means silent – he hears footsteps, chatter, crowds flowing through the streets and people shouting. He also hears a strange pulsing in his ears, too loud, too persistent, almost maddening, and it takes him a while to realise just what it is.

Demons do not have a beating heart.

Red Riot does not have a beating heart.

So why– so how–

He feels himself slip back down towards the ground.

“Yo, kid, you alright?”

He flinches, then looks up. A man who approaches him looks a little concerned, and he’s tall enough to tower over him, hands hidden in the pockets of what looks like some sort of a uniform – police, if Riot had to guess. The man offers him a hand to pull him up, and Riot looks at it dumbly for far, far too long to be normal before he finally grabs it.

Riot. Or, well–

Riot does not have a beating heart.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the man frowns, tilting his face upwards and looking him in the eyes for a moment as Riot – Riot? – blinks helplessly. “You don’t look stoned.”

He tries to speak, to answer at least something, but all he manages is a feeble shake of his head.

“Look,” the man says, “I’m gonna take you to the station and at least get you some proper clothes, kid. What’s your name? Where do you live?”

That’s what I’m asking myself, Riot almost screams. He doesn’t actually scream, because the pounding in his ears is already loud enough, but he almost does.

That’s when he sees the dog.

It’s an Akita – trust him to recognise dog breeds while struggling to remember his own name – and it treads up to them confidently, wagging his tail.

“Nao,” the man says to it, strictly. “You’re meant to stay right next to me, you know that?”

“He’s precious,” Riot – not Riot! – says, and that’s the first thing he said, and his voice is all kinds of hoarse and painful, but he feels the air rushing out of his lungs and he couldn’t care less about the ache. “May I – may I pet him?”

“Go ahead,” the man shrugs. “As long as you don’t leg it from me.”

Riot – not Riot, we’ve been through this! – thinks that he doesn’t really have anywhere to go, so he bends down and pets the dog.

It’s very soft, but not very friendly. It bares its teeth at him.

He thinks that it reminds him of someone.

“Katsuki,” he blurts out. The man raises one eyebrow.

“Your name’s Katsuki?” he confirms.

He shakes his head. His name is not Katsuki, he knows that much.

His name is–

It is–

“Eijirou,” he manages, barely, feeling his throat tighten around the word. “Uh. My name. Kirishima Eijirou.”

The dog shuffles away from him with a sense of accomplishment in its eyes. Riot – Kirishima! – lets it.

“Right,” the man says. He sounds mildly confused and a little concerned, and Eijirou honestly can’t blame him. He straightens his back and blinks a few more times. The noise in his ears settles down – or maybe he just grows used to it, filters it back out of his perception of the outside world. “Come on then, Kirishima.”

The man leads him out of the alleyway. The streets outside are as loud as expected and yet infinitely louder, but Eijirou finds himself recognising them nonetheless. Sure, he remembers them narrower, quieter, not so full of people of all races and ages and genders, but...

But.

But he grew up here, didn’t he?

“Are we in Hosu?” he asks the man. The man gives him a gaze which is slightly more concerned.

“Yeah,” he says. “Are you stoned?”

Kirishima shakes his head. If only on oxygen, considering how he hasn’t – he hasn’t breathed in... in...

“What year is it?” he says. He remembers asking Katsuki the same question, of course, and he remembers the answer, but he can’t help thinking that he doesn’t know just how long ago was that.

The man tells him, then asks if Kirishima’s fucking with him. He shakes his head, but his shoulders slump in relief.

The year is the same.

The year is the same, and if the weather is at all an indication – the winds are cold and his breath creates small puffs of mist in the air – then it must still be winter. Late winter, maybe.

“And the date?”

“First March. Are you sure you’re entirely sober, kid?”

Or early spring.

Eijirou tried his hardest to swallow a hysterical laugh.

What– How–

“I’m sober,” he says weakly. “I’m just... you know.”

The man evidently doesn’t. His dog gives Eijirou some knowing gazes though, so he proceeds to glare back at it, because if it knows something, it should just go ahead and tell him.

It does not.

They manoeuvre their way through the crowds in relative silence, and Kirishima notices some people give him weird gazes. He thinks it’s probably his clothes – he’s rocking a ripped shirt and a pair of trousers which have probably gone out of fashion at the turn of last century – but it may be the red hair, too. Although he notices quite a few splotches of colour in the sea of black and dark brown, so on second thought it’s probably not the latter.

He catches himself on trying to get his tail to wrap around his wrist loosely, a familiar, protective gesture. He doesn’t have a tail anymore, of course, so it doesn’t quite work. He settles for awkwardly fiddling with his fingers.

They approach a building.

The building has “Hosu City Police Station” written above the entrance, so Kirishima figures his assumptions were correct. The man ushers him inside, and the dog follows.

Eijirou’s given a shirt – black, perfectly impersonal, made of a soft material he can’t quite classify – but no trousers, so he figures his are not quite as outdated as he thought. Or maybe the police department just doesn’t want to hand out trousers to random people – people, humans, because he is a human now apparently, he can barely think about the subject without freaking out – who have a perfectly good pair of trousers themselves. He’s given the shirt and directed to the bathroom to change, and after he does, he’s presented in front of a man. The man is short – almost half Kirishima’s height – but his presence still feels intimidating, what with all the golden stripes on his uniform which Eijirou thinks must mean something in terms of the ranks.

“Kirishima Eijirou, right?” the man squints. Kirishima nods. “Egami told me he found you on the ground in an alley.”

“Yeah,” he laughs awkwardly, trying and failing to come up with a better response. “I was just kinda – uh, resting?”

The old man doesn’t look convinced. It’s probably fair.

“What’s your address?” he asks, and Eijirou tries even harder to come up with an excuse that will explain the fact that he doesn’t actually have one. Okay, sure, he can probably name his old one – the one from when he... when... – but what if they go knocking on the door? What if the house doesn’t exist anymore? Or the street has been renamed? Or–

“–and I’m not sure if it would be correct to just assume, but– oh, Sorahiko-sensei, hello! Yoarashi-san and I were just– uh– wait–“

Kirishima thinks that this voice sounds familiar. Very familiar. He turns around.

There are two people standing in the corridor. One of them is... tall, and that’s about as much as Eijirou notices or cares about, because the man next to him has a mop of unruly green hair and freckles on his cheeks, and Eijirou thinks he has seen him before. Recently, in fact. Very much so.

“Deku?” he blurts out.

The man blinks. Rubs his eyes. Blinks again.

“Uh,” he says, very eloquently. “Riot?”

“It’s Kirishima, actually,” Kirishima says, because what else is there to say. “Kirishima Eijirou.”

“Right,” Deku nods slowly. “Right. Um, Midoriya Izuku. My name’s Midoriya Izuku, I mean. Nice to – uh. Yoarashi-san, feel free to go, I’ll catch up later.”

The giant looks at him curiously but nods and walks off down the corridor. Deku – Midoriya! – steps into the old man’s office.

“You know this one?” the man asks. Midoriya nods quickly.

“Yeah, uh, I do, actually,” he says. “He’s my – well, not mine, um, he’s my friend’s... roommate?”

The way he says it, it sort of sounds like a question. The policeman raises his eyebrows.

“Are you sure about that?”

Midoriya takes a slow breath. Eijirou watches him shift on his feet, almost imperceptibly, and he suddenly looks way more collected.

“I am, sir,” he says, and he actually sounds more confident this time, a polite smile on his face. “I was just a little surprised to see him all the way in Hosu.”

Or alive, Kirishima suspects. Or human. Or at all.

“Yeah,” he laughs awkwardly. “I mean I’m from here, so I was, uh, visiting.”

He thinks, briefly, that he doesn’t actually have anyone to visit anymore. He thinks that he’ll think about that later.

“Ah,” Midoriya nods. It’s a very productive conversation they’re having. “Can you find your way back by yourself?”

“Probably not,” Eijirou admits. Not least because he doesn’t actually know where exactly to go back to. “Mind taking me?”

The old policeman doesn’t look confused, somehow, and Kirishima isn’t sure whether that’s because he’s seen it all before, or because he isn’t actually following the strand of the conversation. Midoriya turns to look at him.

“Sorahiko-sensei, would you mind if I leave for a bit?” he asks. “Just to Musutafu, there are trains there and back every hour or so!”

The man gives him a considering gaze, squinting a little to himself, then sighs and waves towards the door.

“As long as you’re back for duty tomorrow,” he says.

“Oh, absolutely!” Midoriya exclaims with a grateful nod. “I can even be back tonight if you want me to, sir, the train doesn’t actually take that long, so–“

“And have you snooping in my archives until morning again? I think I’ll pass,” the old man grins.

Midoriya goes bright red.

“I-I didn’t– Well, I mean I did, but–“

The man waves him off.

“Save your excuses. I admire eagerness, young Midoriya, but sleep is no less important. Now go on ahead.”

Midoriya salutes at him, still flushed up to his ears, and pulls Eijirou out of the station doors.

“So,” he says as soon as they’re out on the street, turning around to face him, and his voice is not unlike a confused squeak, all the faux calmness gone without a trace. “Um. What the hell?!”

“Wish I knew, man,” Kirishima shrugs sheepishly. “Not that I’m complaining, of course, but I honestly have no idea how – or why – or... you know.” He laughs. Laughing is strange, because he can breathe to go along with it now, and wow, does it ever feel great. “Still – uh – could you actually show me how to get to Katsuki’s place? If you think he wouldn’t mind seeing me, that is.”

As they make their way through the streets and towards what ends up being a train station, Kirishima can’t fathom why Deku bursts out laughing.

Chapter Text

When someone knocks at his door, Bakugou debates not opening. But whoever is on the other side of it, they are persistent as fuck, so in the end he gets up from the sofa with an annoyed grunt and walks into the corridor.

“Who the fuck?” he asks.

“Open the door, Kacchan.”

Now, Katsuki knows that Deku is a lucky bastard who’s currently on an internship in Hosu, but also that’s definitely his voice – almost playful, breathy with laughter. He narrows his eyes, because what the hell is the nerd doing here, seriously, but turns the key in the lock and swings the door open nonetheless, because he is nice like that.

He swings the door open, and then freezes in his tracks.

Deku is there, certainly, all but bouncing on his feet, sporting that wide, sly grin of his which had never once signified anything good. Deku is there, still wearing what seems to be a police uniform, as if he quite literally rushed here from his internship without taking the time to change.

Deku is there, but Katsuki can’t bring himself to give a shit.

Because the man next to him – the one with a sheepish grin, the one fidgeting with his fingers and looking down at the floor, the one wearing some pathetic old-fashioned excuse for pants–

“What the fuck,” Katsuki says, blandly. Again – a damn good response to default to.

“Hi,” the man says.

The man. Who is–

“Riot?”

It’s hard to pretend his voice doesn’t break, too hard, so Katsuki doesn’t try to. He stumbles backwards into his flat, leaving the door open, an invitation, almost a demand, and Riot – Riot? Or would he go by... – steps in sheepishly.

Deku doesn’t.

“Well, it was good to see you, Kacchan!” he smiles cheerfully. “I’m actually expected at work tomorrow, so I gotta go. You guy guys have fun! Text me later!”

He runs off back down the stairs after that, skipping over three steps at a time, but Katsuki couldn’t give a damn if he tried. Deku can fly off to fucking Bahamas for all he cares, and that wouldn’t be enough to make him look away from the man in his flat.

He doesn’t have the horns anymore, or the tail, or the rows of fangs. He does, however, still have red, spiky hair, and red eyes, no longer burning but still ever bright.

“Hi,” the man repeats. “Uh, it’s Kirishima, by the way. Or Eijirou if you prefer.”

He chuckles, an anxious little sound, and attempts a grin. Katsuki stares at it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

I know is just distant enough. I know doesn’t imply that he spent at least two night pacing around his bedroom, this exact name on his lips in what would be a silent prayer if Katsuki thought that powers above care about humans enough to listen.

“So you do,” Riot – Eijirou – says. “Good. That’s good.”

The following silence is heavy on Bakugou’s shoulders.

“What the fuck?” he says, again, if only to interrupt it. Eijirou bites on his lip nervously, adorably, Bakugou thinks, and then thinks, where the hell did that come from?

(Well, he knows the answer to that damn well, of course. But he still has some scraps of pride left).

“I don’t actually... know,” Kirishima says, words tumbling out of his mouth in an anxious rush. “I have no idea what – what happened, or how any of it– all I know is, one minute I’m there, the next I’m here, and– well, not here-here, I was in Hosu, but here as in like on Earth, and I am... I mean I think I’m human? Like, it hurts if I pinch myself, and my heart beats, and I breathe–“

“You didn’t?” Katsuki interrupts, because, he thinks absently, Eijirou needs interrupting before he talks himself into a panic attack. “Breathe? Before?”

“O-oh, no,” Kirishima chuckles nervously. “Not actually. I mean, there’s hardly any air in my realm, so it never bothered me, well, apart from in the beginning, but in the beginning everything bothered me, because I was a demon, and now I’m not anymore, and I can actually remember who–“

“What are you, Deku?” Katsuki grumbles. “Stop with the muttering.”

Eijirou smiles sheepishly and clasps his hand over his mouth.

Bakugou doesn’t know if he wants to scream, or punch the wall, or... or.

Or something.

He closes the door, finally, and leans against it, pinching the bridge of his nose with his left hand. When he digs his fingernails into the skin, it hurts, so he concludes this isn’t a dream. It can’t be.

So the name thing doesn’t only work for demons. Or maybe it does, but with exceptions. Or maybe this all is just some stupid coincidence, maybe it has nothing to do with any of his actions at all, and it’s not like he‘ll be taking any credit regardless, because he doesn’t actually know what the fuck happened, and neither does Eijirou, and–

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s thinking about this way too much.

Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter.

“Right,” he says, slowly. Steps away from the door. Watches Eijirou reel back a little. “Right. So this is a thing, now.”

“This is a thing,” Kirishima echoes. “Um, if you want me to get outta your hair, man, please tell me – Midoriya just told me I should probably come say hello, so, uh... yeah.”

He rubs the back of his neck nervously and laughs again. Katsuki thinks that he was wrong, before – only now does he sound human. Completely, utterly, painfully human.

And he is. Now.

Riot – not Riot, not anymore, but Kirishima Eijirou – is completely, utterly, painfully human, and he’s standing in Bakugou’s corridor, smiling like he always does, fidgeting with his fingers much like he would with his tail and looking Katsuki in the eyes.

Katsuki thinks that like hell is he going anywhere.

What he says is,

“I’ll get you some proper pants.”

Eijirou smiles. Katsuki finds himself smiling back.

Eijirou follows him into his room, then looks around, then sits down on the bed with a shit-eating grin. Bakugou tries to glare at him, he really does, but it ends up half-hearted at best – the scene in front of him is just too natural to complain about.

Too... good.

Two months, for god’s sake. Bakugou Katsuki never thought two months would be enough to get him positively fucking whipped.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” he grumbles. Eijirou tilts his head to the side, batting his eyelashes innocently.

“No idea what you’re talking about, bro.”

“Yeah, right.”

Katsuki chucks a pair of pants at him. Eijirou is only barely shorter, a centimetre or two, so, he thinks, these should do fine. And if they’re a little tight, well, fucking sue him. He deserves some sort of a compensation for all the emotional distress.

Speaking of which. The compensation, not the distress.

“So you’re back now,” Katsuki says slowly. He’s looking out of the window as Kirishima changes, watches the sun creep down towards the rooftops. Eijirou behind him hums affirmatively. Katsuki closes his eyes for a moment and takes a breath. “Good. Whatcha gonna do, then?”

“Oh, who knows,” Eijirou laughs. Bakugou hears him get up but doesn’t turn around, gaze glued to the orange sun rays darting around the street. “I suspect I don’t actually legally exist, you know. What with the whole having died a century ago. Besides, I don’t even know how things work anymore! There’s very limited information I have about the current state of affairs.”

“Oh please,” Bakugou says. “You’ve been watching my TV when you were still here. You know shit.”

Kirishima laughs again. He approaches Katsuki and leans against his shoulder, ever so slightly. He’s warm.

“It’s not like the TV has answered all of my questions,” he argues. “The news don’t have a tendency to catch people up on the past hundred years of developments before recounting the day’s story. Besides, I’d be lying if I said I watched the news, strictly speaking.”

Katsuki knows that. He’s seen him gape at the TV screen wide-eyed when they played The Age of Ultron.

(The Age of Ultron is just about the worst introduction to the franchise, Katsuki thinks. He should set Eijirou straight later).

(Or, well, not exactly straight).

“And even if that wasn’t a problem, I hardly know where to go,” Kirishima sighs quietly. “I don’t know if my house – the house I used to live in – if it’s even there anymore, let alone... mine.”

It probably isn’t, Bakugou thinks. Not in this fast-changing world.

“So?” he says, turning his head to meet Eijirou‘s eyes. He finds himself thinking that his eyes are way nicer than the sunset, and he can’t even bring himself to care that he’s turning into some cheesy idiot from Sero’s ever beloved romance books. “Are you trying to tell me that you need somewhere to stay, Eijirou? Someone to show you around?”

“That,” Kirishima says, and he’s blushing ever so slightly, but not looking away, “would certainly be appreciated, Katsuki.”

“Well, fuck,” Bakugou says, and he can’t stop himself from grinning if he tried, but he isn’t trying at all. “I guess you’re lucky I’m such a nice soul then, huh?”

“Nice?” Eijirou giggles. “Stubborn if anything, considering I never got the damn thing.”

“And aren’t you glad about that?” Katsuki smirks.

It’s meant to be a quip, a tease, since those are practically Katsuki’s first language by now, but does it ever fucking backfire, because Kirishima looks him in the eyes, way too gentle, too earnest for his own good, and smiles.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, I am.”

The sun is half hidden from sight by the skyscraper roofs now, and Eijirou looks so... fuck, Katsuki doesn’t throw words like that around lightly, but he looks so beautiful in the amber glow of the sunset, and Bakugou may have no idea where to go from here, because he’s young and sometimes a mess, alright, and Kirishima was a fucking demon for the past hundred years, and he doesn’t even legally exist, but fuck, does he ever look gorgeous, and hopeful, and happy with that little smile of his.

And there’s so much to do, so many roads to take from here, Katsuki thinks. He should introduce him to his friends – properly this time, god, Ashido will flip her shit – and maybe ask his professors about how to get a passport without any existing proof of identity, and definitely take Eijirou out on a date at some point, because they can do that now, they can go outside together, and maybe even hold hands or do whatever other sappy shit people do on dates, Katsuki doesn’t know, he hasn’t been on one–

But for now...

Well, for now what’s a boy to do but kiss him?