"You look like shit."

Iida had been so out of it that he flinched at the sound of Bakugou's voice - apparently he hadn't heard him approach. "Bakugou?!" he said, turning his head to look but not lifting it. "How - why are you here?"

"To see if were even still alive, dumbass. The next step would've been a missing persons report. Why aren't you answering anyone's messages?"

As he approached the bed, Bakugou could more or less guess the answer himself. Iida was sick, that much was clear. The whole apartment had a stifling atmosphere, as if nothing had been moved for days. The shades on all the windows had been shut tightly, and the ones in Iida's room had blankets pinned over them. From the hallway light he'd flicked on, Bakugou could see that the bedroom was cluttered and messy, with a trash can and a bowl sitting next to the bed. Iida's face was pale and drawn, and although it had only been a week since he'd shown up to class, he'd visibly lost weight.

"How did you know where I live?" Iida asked, still lying flat on his back.

"The group assignment last semester. Remember, we all came over and worked on it here?" Bakugou knew Iida was trying to avoid answering his questions, and he wasn't about to let that slide. "Look, why are you still in your house? Have you visited a doctor?"

"Not since…" Iida pushed himself up into a sitting position, or tried to; he seemed incredibly weak. Bakugou felt his gut twist just looking at him, like he was seeing something private, something he wasn't supposed to see. "Did you hear about the attack?" Iida asked, voice soft.

"Yeah."

"I visited a doctor right after that. He stitched me up and gave me antibiotics. The wound healed, but I…"

"You're still sick," Bakugou finished, taking another step closer. "I can tell just from looking at you. Why don't you go back?"

"Bakugou," Iida said, his voice hard. "I was attacked at night by a man who drank my blood. Ever since then, I haven't been able to keep anything down but water - I throw it up immediately. The first night after, sun came through my window and it - it burned me." He laughed. "Look at my hand, Bakugou, it still hasn't healed yet. I swear that's from the sunlight. Try it again if you want. Open the shade and see what happens."

If it had been anyone else, anyone else in the entire world, Bakugou would have gotten mad at them, told them to stop their bullshitting, maybe yelled in their face to stop pulling his leg. But Iida? Iida wasn't like that. Iida wouldn't do this as a joke. So that meant-

"I'll do it myself, to show you," Iida said, apparently misinterpreting Bakugou's silence. "I don't know how to explain this, but I don't want you to doubt-"

"I believe you!" Bakugou said, closing the distance between them to stand between Iida and the window. "Stop!"

Iida hadn't actually made it out of bed, just sat up and swung his legs over the side. He looked so fragile, so skinny, that Bakugou felt physically sick. "So tonight, go to the doctor then," Bakugou said. "After dark. If the sun burns you."

"Bakugou," Iida said.

"Yeah?"

Saying his name, Iida's voice had taken on a strange tone - harsher, more guttural, like nothing Bakugou had heard from him before. But now Iida said nothing, just looked at him; the room was too dim to see much besides the vaguest shape of his face, and Bakugou couldn't make out its expression. "Yeah?" he said again, shivering.

Iida shook his head. When he spoke again his tone was clearer. "There's a little box on my dresser. Can you grab that for me?"

As Bakugou carried it over, it rattled. Iida opened it, and although the two white shapes inside weren't immediately recognizable, Bakugou felt a deep sense of revulsion - almost fear - when he saw them.

"Two of my teeth fell out that first night," Iida said, his tone too calm for the words.

"Why are you showing me this?" Bakugou clenched his fists, fighting off a wave of nausea. "Fuck, I don't wanna see that!"

"No, look," Iida insisted, holding one up. "It wasn't from the attack. My mouth wasn't injured. The teeth lost their roots, like baby teeth, and just fell out."

Bakugou stood still, his hands clammy.

"And new ones grew in. -It was my canines. Look."

Iida opened his mouth and bared his teeth, a very un-Iida-like gesture. His canines weren't missing, but they were different - long and curved, like a predator's.

Iida insisting the sunlight burned him hadn't been too much to take, but this, this somehow was. Bakugou shook his head. "You're fucking joking," he said. "Those are fake teeth, and you're playing a practical joke on me."

"For what?" Iida said, still holding the box open. "Look if you don't believe me." He reached a hand up and rubbed one of his own teeth. "Touch them, I don't care."

"Can I turn on the light?" Bakugou felt distant, as if he was looking through someone else's eyes from very far away. There was no way he was going to believe any of this. Not from Iida or anyone. It didn't make sense-

"Sure," Iida said. "The artificial light doesn't burn, but my eyes are sensitive to it. So I'll just keep them shut."

"Okay," Bakugou said. "Close them, then."

Bakugou could get a better look at him now. Iida's skin was so pale to be almost gray; his hair was greasy, and his glasses smudged. His eyes were clenched shut, and his mouth was open just a little. Waiting. Offering.

Bakugou felt a sense of unease fill him. Everything about the situation was fucking weird. Probably Iida had gotten some kind of traumatic brain injury when he'd been attacked, and thus wasn't in his right mind. Bakugou couldn't believe he was falling for any of this, but he approached the bed anyway. He did not linger on the box in Iida's hand; he took it only to set it on the bedside table, not wanting to look inside. Instead he took Iida's jaw in one hand and opened his mouth. Iida, pliant and responsive, let him, and didn't even flinch as Bakugou raised a finger to touch one of Iida's teeth.

It certainly seemed real. Bakugou could trace it all the way from gums to tip without finding a seam or crack that suggested otherwise. It was a shade paler than Iida's other teeth, and sharp: Bakugou pressed the pad of his finger against the point and felt it puncture his skin, needle-like. Iida inhaled sharply and Bakugou, startled, pulled his hand away. The moment over, Bakugou turned around and flipped the light off once more.

"You don't have to believe me," Iida said, opening his eyes again only once it was dark. "I know I'm telling the truth. I don't need to convince anyone."

"You've been sitting here in the dark for a week," Bakugou said, stepping towards him again. "Not eating, not going to the hospital… what do you think is going to happen?"

"He had teeth like this, too," Iida said. "I didn't think it was real when it happened, but I do now. I feel different."

"Iida, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"No, I'm not. I eat something every day," Iida said. "If one day I keep the food down, I'll try going in the sunlight again. If that doesn't injure me, I'll go to the doctor. But I truly believe I-"

"You're going to die," Bakugou said. "You need a doctor, you fucking idiot, you're going to die."

Iida looked at him, expression impossible to make out. "I only believe any of what I'm saying because I feel different. That's the one thing that convinced me. It's not the teeth or the sunlight. I just feel different. My senses are different. I can't - I can't describe it with words. I know it's impossible to believe, Bakugou, and I apologize for wasting your time. I do not think I should go to the doctor."

"You're content to die?"

Iida said nothing.

"I think you were hoping someone would come by. You left your door unlocked."

"I must have forgotten to lock it."

Bakugou didn't buy his tone. "You don't actually want to die, do you."

Again, Iida said nothing. Bakugou took a step closer. Why did it have to be Iida? he thought. He'd thought the same immediately after the attack. Had heard the campus-wide announcement and rolled his eyes - it's a big city, weird shit happens, whatever - but when he'd learned the victim's identity, Bakugou had felt sick. He'd refreshed the news over and over looking for an update, had checked Iida's social media, had eventually sent him emails and texts when he didn't show up for class. Are you alive? And it was that silence, and the fear he felt in response to it, that had brought Bakugou to Iida's door. That's what had encouraged him - against his better judgement - to try the handle. He'd half expected to find a body inside.

They'd been lab partners two semesters ago, and despite arguing every single class period, Bakugou had come to respect Iida's work ethic and intelligence. They kept each other in line. And even though Bakugou had most likely annoyed the shit out of Iida, they'd kept studying together even after the semester was over, thanks to their overlapping schedules. Bakugou wasn't sure when exactly it had happened, but they'd become friends, although they'd never spent time together when school was not involved.

Until now.

Bakugou wished this hadn't been the first time. Wished they'd gone to a movie together or something, gone drinking, just hung out. Maybe Iida would have listened to him better if that had been the case. "You're pissing me off," Bakugou said, grimacing. "I should call an ambulance."

"They would take me outside, and I truly think I would die," Iida said, his voice too stupidly calm.

"Tonight then!"

"I believe I'm well enough to refuse. I'm certainly not in critical condition yet."

"Then I'll wait until you can't refuse anymore!" Bakugou said, stamping his foot. "You're driving me crazy! I should just leave you to die!"

"You certainly could," Iida said. "In fact, I never anticipated you coming around at all. I saw your messages, of course, but-"

"But you just decided to ignore them, huh?"

"What exactly was I supposed to say? I didn't want to lie to you, but I couldn't exactly tell you all this via text, either."

They stared at each other, Bakugou strangely out of breath. It hit him then that Iida really, truly believed this. If it was a lie, he'd managed to deceive himself.

After thinking for a long time, Bakugou decided Iida wasn't going to budge on this - it would be more productive to try a different approach. He decided to ask the question he thought Iida wanted him to ask, and in any event he was curious too: "When you said your senses are different, what did you mean?"

Iida smiled, and Bakugou felt a fresh wave of anger - that Iida should be sitting there, obviously unwell, smiling like it was just a big joke to him. "I'm much more sensitive to light," he said, rubbing his forehead as if fighting a headache. "I'm able to get by just fine with no lights on at all, even at night with the shades closed. And smell-" He inhaled deeply. "I can tell you that you had ramen for lunch based on the smell of your breath. And that you have a pack of mint-scented gum in your pocket."

"What the fuck."

"I'm not lying." Iida had said earlier he had no need to prove it to anyone, but it seemed as if he was trying to make Bakugou believe him anyway. "And…" He laughed. "If I don't drink blood, I think I'm going to die."

"You're crazy," Bakugou said, although he wasn't sure what was real anymore.

"This is why I'm not comfortable going to a doctor," Iida said. "All of this. I may very well be crazy. Alternately, I may be a vampire."

It was the first time either of them had said the word aloud, and it seemed to have a weight; after Iida finished speaking, they were silent for half a minute or more. Bakugou crossed his arms, thinking. Finally he spoke.

"You can drink my blood," he said.

Iida looked at him sharply. "You're not serious," he said. "You don't actually want that."

Bakugou felt a flush creeping up his face, and wondered if Iida could see it. Or smell it. "If you don't get better after that, then I'm really calling the doctor," he said. "I'm serious. You really can't stay in here forever." I'm not going to let you die, he thought.

Because, just as Iida was the only person Bakugou would believe this sort of story from, Iida was the only person he could even think of offering himself to in this way. Bakugou's crush on Iida had been a thorn in his side since their lab partner days; he'd been hoping it would go away on its own; unfortunately it hadn't. But there was no way in hell Bakugou would ever act on it, except-

"I promise," Iida said, "that if we - if I do this, and I throw up or feel worse or don't feel better…" He took a deep breath. "Bakugou, are you serious?"

Bakugou could see that his offer was having a real, physical effect on Iida; he was breathing more quickly, and he'd sat up straighter in bed, his hands tightly gripping the sheets beneath him. "I'm serious," Bakugou said. "You're fucking crazy, but somehow you've convinced me. I don't know how."

Iida took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I hate this," he said. "I feel-" He shook his head. "Never mind. Look, Bakugou, I can't say what this means to me."

"What else are lab partners for?"

Iida laughed. Then he looked up at Bakugou, his eyes huge and dark in the dimness. "Come here," he said, his voice a whisper. "Please."

Bakugou came and sat on the bed next to him. "Now what?"

"Maybe not your throat," Iida said after a moment. He touched his own neck, where there was still a bandage on his skin. "It would be very visible. I wouldn't want you to answer questions."

"Uh-huh. So…"

"Wrist? -no, also visible. It's too hot for you to wear long sleeves all the time." He swallowed. "Femoral artery."

"What-"

"Your leg. It's-"

"You can't be serious," Bakugou said, burying his face in a palm. God, what the fuck was he doing? "You want to suck blood from my leg? You? Iida Tenya?"

"I understand if-"

"Whatever," Bakugou cut in. He had already agreed to this, and he was going to follow through. He felt hot as he took off his pants, standing in front of Iida in only a T-shirt and boxers. "Now what?"

"Maybe lie down," Iida said slowly, scooting to the side to give him more room.

The bed smelled like Iida. Bakugou felt a shiver pass through him. "Look," he said, staring up at the ceiling, "if you really are a vampire, won't I turn into one, too?"

He half expected Iida to laugh at him, but he just shook his head. "The man who did this to me," Iida said, gingerly touching his own neck, "he - killed me. He drank all of my blood - what little he didn't get, I lost on the street where I was lying. I died of blood loss. I felt myself die." His voice shook; he took a breath to steady himself. "I won't do that to you. If you change your mind, or you think I've gone too far, just shove me off - I'm sure you're stronger than me."

Iida came over to Bakugou on his hands and knees. Bakugou was torn between looking away in embarrassment and watching everything out of curiosity. Iida lowered his face to his inner thigh, close enough that Bakugou could feel his breath.

"You're certain?" Iida asked.

"Yes." Bakugou decided not to watch after all.

He felt Iida put his mouth on his leg, almost like a kiss - Bakugou shivered - and then the bite came. It hurt very badly for a second - Bakugou's entire body jerked; he very nearly kicked Iida in the face - but then the pain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, like an anesthetic had suddenly rushed into his bloodstream. But Bakugou wasn't numb - he still felt Iida on him, felt the steady tapping of his pulse around the injury and his blood flowing from his veins into Iida's open mouth.

Then it turned good. Bakugou couldn't describe the feeling in words. It was only partially sexual, but that part was undeniable. Bakugou wanted to arch his back and moan, but he held himself back, just groaning a little in a way he hoped would be mistaken for pain.

Finally Bakugou gathered the courage to look down. Iida had his face pressed to his thigh, but when he paused for a moment to catch his breath Bakugou could see the actual wound: smaller than he'd expected, definitely not large enough for him to bleed out. Iida's hands were clenched around Bakugou's leg, and his lips and tongue were dark with blood.

When he put his face down again Bakugou felt another rush of pleasure, heady and sudden. It coursed through his veins, centered at the wound but traveling through his entire body, bringing with it heat and warmth. Bakugou felt himself getting aroused in a way that felt almost inevitable; he couldn't even try to think of anything bad to try and tamp down the feeling, because his mind was so utterly blank. He couldn't think of anything at all except the nameless feeling that coursed through his body.

It seemed to last a long time, but also no time at all. Bakugou felt himself growing tired and realized that, even though the wound had been small, he really had lost quite a lot of blood through it - Iida kept worrying it with his teeth, not allowing the blood to clot. At the same time, Bakugou felt Iida gripping him with more force, and Iida seemed to actually grow - it was like he'd regained all the weight he'd lost in just those minutes. Bakugou felt very small beneath him.

After an eternity, Iida pulled away, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. As soon as he was no longer making contact with the wound, the pleasure began to fade, leaving Bakugou feeling ashamed and sick. It was far too late to hide his arousal, though; he shivered, flat on his back on the bed, hiding his face in the crook of an arm.

"I was going to ask if it hurt too badly," Iida said, his voice wry. "But I guess I didn't need to worry."

Bakugou looked up. Iida was sitting there, a smile on his face, the blood more or less gone from his lips. He didn't look bothered - in fact, he looked some combination of amused and relieved.

Bakugou sat up, leaning over as if that would hide his erection. "It was weird," he said. "It only hurt at first. Then it felt good." He knew he wouldn't be able to describe the feeling any better than that. "Did I, uh. Taste good?"

"Bakugou," Iida said, coming closer to him again and taking one of his hands, "I have never tasted anything so good in my life."

Bakugou blinked, a little startled at the enthusiasm.

"This is probably not the time to tell you I'm in love with you," Iida went on. "The entire week, I was hoping you would come through that door. I had no idea any of this would happen - I was only hoping to see you before I died."

"This is too fucking weird."

"I apologize." Iida backed up, and Bakugou grabbed his arm.

"No," he said, "not that. Just - this whole thing. Everything."

"Oh! I understand. I certainly feel the same, though of course I've had more time to come to terms with it." Iida pulled out of Bakugou's grip and jumped to his feet. "You must be hungry! Let me get you something to eat and drink. I'll return in just a second."

It was - well, it was as if Iida had sucked the energy out of him. When Bakugou had arrived, Iida had been so morose, so slow-moving and sleepy and weak - but now he was full of life, movements more confident and voice louder. And Bakugou could do nothing but sit on the bed, tired and a little cold.

Iida returned with a glass of juice and some protein bars, which Bakugou ate ravenously. While he was eating, Iida spread some kind of cream on his leg and stuck a bandage on it. "If it does become infected, do see a doctor," Iida said, once he was done. "I know that's rather hypocritical of me to say-"

"No shit."

"-but I would feel guilty if it did have any complications. I should have brushed my teeth beforehand, but I didn't even think of that!"

Bakugou looked at him, then began to laugh when he realized Iida was being serious. A vampire, worrying about brushing his teeth - it had to be the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard of. And he'd heard a lot of ridiculous things that day.

"Look," Bakugou said, once he'd finished laughing, "you're going to leave, right? You're not going to stay here forever?"

"I'm going to clean my apartment first," Iida said, looking around as if just he'd just noticed the mess for the first time. "I'm ashamed you had to see it in this state. And that you had to see me in this state," he added, smoothing down his hair, which was stringy with grease.

"Look," Bakugou said, trying to make himself sound forceful, "will you at least text me to let me know how you're doing?"

"Absolutely," Iida said, his grin radiant.

Bakugou got to his feet, putting his pants back on. "That really did help, didn't it."

"It did. I genuinely feel as if you may have saved my life."

"Look," Bakugou said, "you can, uh. You can do it again."

Iida looked at him sharply. "What?"

"Next time you get hungry," Bakugou said, "you can do it again."

Iida smiled, and Bakugou decided right then that the new teeth were maybe not that bad.