Chapter Text
He spots him from across the bar. It is not the first time he does, but it is the first time their eyes meet and he knows. Really knows. That gaze wide and fleeting touches his, and that’s all it takes. He’s moving.
Deku couldn’t have been older than 5 when it happened, so Katsuki couldn’t have been either.
His feet deliver him to the opposite end of the bar, right next to the figure leaning into the shadows. “Where have you been?” He asks, and he tries to do it softly but it comes out a demand.
“And you are?” The man answers back, and it has none of what he expects. No gasps, no confusion. A gloved finger runs up a short glass, smudging the condensation there, and in following it with his eyes, he realizes he’s left his own drink behind, abandoned across the way.
Deku was sleeping over, tucked into Katsuki’s twin-sized bed beside him. Katsuki watched the drool shine from the corner of his mouth in the nightlight.
“Mind if I sit?” He tries again, and still the man hasn’t looked at him. After that first glance he retreated into the dark hoodie that covered him from head to palms to thighs, and now he hunches even further into it.
Why Katsuki was awake, he no longer remembers. Perhaps he hadn’t drifted off yet, or perhaps Deku had let out a noise that startled him. Or, like he suspects even all these years later, maybe he’d just known to grit his molars together, to reach his hand out and lock it around Deku’s wrist; maybe he’d just known to be ready.
“Free country,” he gets back, and with that inch, he takes a mile, sitting right up against the hooded figure, no seat in-between.
There hadn’t been enough time for Deku to wake up properly when it happened. His big green eyes, shot wide, latched onto Katsuki’s. Katsuki, ready, had read the plea for what it was. He gripped his little fingers hard enough to bruise, dug his feet in and pulled as the sheets shifted under him. He’d held tight over the sounds of Deku’s distress, over his mother yelling about them just being kids, over his own frustration pouring hot and salty over his cheeks.
He gestures at the bartender now to get another of what he left behind. It helps to have something to sip, to get his mouth working properly.
Deku had grasped back, had whined his name like a stake in Katsuki’s heart and lead weights in his limbs. That big fingered grip still ripped Katsuki’s hope and comfort from him, taking those green eyes smattered with tears out of the room. The finality of it. Of that big hand colliding against his cheek, full open, sinking Katsuki down into his pile of discarded blankets. Of the door slamming, leaving Katsuki sparking from empty palms, having dared to think it could’ve ended differently.
“They told your mom you’re dead,” he grits out, eventually. He watches the other man out of the corner of his eye, sees his fingers clench against his glass. “She didn’t want to believe it. Came to ask me eventually because. Well. Fuck knows why, really, but she did.”
There was a lot of sobbing that night. A lot of smoke in the air, a lot of blood in his mouth. His face stung and so did his pride.
“Sir,” he gets back and the word is gravely. Nothing like the boy he remembers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nothing after that had ever been the same.
He feels his throat working, unsure where to go next. Anywhere but back, he supposes. The memories only got worse. “You must think I’m crazy,” he settles on, and there’s no one reason he says it. He knows he deserves the sharply inflected ‘yeah’ he gets in response.
He feels the man shuffle and twist, sees him drop money beside his unfinished drink, watches him slide off the bar stool and slink out the door.
Katsuki doesn’t give it 15 seconds before he follows.