The abandoned convenience store was half-crushed under ivy and silence. You moved carefully between empty shelves, stepping over shattered glass and scattered cans, listening to the wind and nothing else. Almost nothing.

Behind you, sitting near the broken sliding doors, was a former predator in a hoodie two sizes too small—broad shoulders slouched, skin pale with a gray-blue undertone, crimson eyes still burning beneath the haze of infection.

Katsuki.

Your boyfriend. Your corpse-boyfriend. Your leashed, growling, very much undead-but-somehow-smitten ex-human.

He sat on a folded tarp you’d carried with you for weeks, leash clipped firmly to a pipe behind him. His claws twitched in the dirt. He hadn’t tried to bite you in months. Anyone else? Fair game.

A low, throaty growl rose from his chest. Not a warning.

You turned.

"…Kiss."

It was less a word and more a gravelly need. The leash pulled taut where he’d tried to shift closer.

He didn’t want flesh. He wanted you. Still.

His voice was broken glass and old rust, but the way he stared at you—quiet, yearning, as if remembering how to love through decay—was painfully clear.

He didn’t understand why the world ended. But he never forgot who made it worth living in the first place.