katsukity - Tumblr blog

katsukity · 3 years ago

Text

the ritual of leaving - k. bakugou

—/—

Katsuki walks through the door, and you can see it in his eyes. He doesn’t have to say the words, but he does anyway. He approaches soft, feather-light on feet that usually stomp, hands coming around your shoulders.

“I’m sorry.” He says. “I’ve gotta - they’re sendin’ me out.”

“For how long?”

He can’t meet your eyes. Your stomach drops through the floor.

“Couple’a weeks. Two, three, maybe?”

You know him like the back of your hand. Like an ascetic knows a life of devotion. So you close your eyes then. Start praying the moment you crush him to your chest.

Because his mouth says a couple of weeks, but his eyes say much longer. That he’s doubtful of the commission’s estimation and can’t bear lying to you.

“It’ll be okay.” You breathe into his neck, voice catching as his hands smooth over your back. “Couple of weeks is nothing - I won’t even have time to miss you.”

“Don’t go replacin’ me, alright? I’ll fuckin’ slaughter ya.”

You nod, gently touch your forehead to his when you pull away. You want to hold him close, but know you need to let him go. There is still dinner left to be plated, and you don’t want to cry yet.

You set out for the plates, and he grabs the cups, and when you back up, you run right into his chest. The kitchen is small. It’s small because you both prefer it that way, regardless of his salary. You think there’s something comforting about running into him every other second, about being so intertwined in a space by nothing but your own combined will. You wonder why that will only ever seems to be enough in this room, why it becomes frail and diminutive the moment he steps out your front door.

“Careful.” He says, stabilizing you with a hand on your lower back. “See what happens to ya if you drop my plates.”

You just laugh. Look down at the plates in your hand, the ones you brought from your old apartment. He’s right, you suppose, they are his now - just like every other little piece of yourself. There is no place where he ends and you begin, it’s all the same.

Dinner is a quiet affair, it always is when he’s leaving. Katsuki tries his best, tries telling you about all the new gear he has. About how there’s not a person alive that he’d consent to loosing to. They’re just words, though, just hypotheticals and they don’t make you feel better as much as just the sound of his voice does.

You think he knows that too. Because when he leaves, he surrenders to small talk in a way he’d usually rather be caught dead doing. You wonder how he knows. You’d never told him.

He gathers the plates in a pile after you’ve finished, hands them to where you’re waiting by the sink. You start the water, begin scrubbing, and he’s circled around to the other side of you with a towel in hand.

It’s mindless, really. The routine of it all. You try not to think about the last time Katsuki left, about when you really had dropped one of his plates. It’s not your fault, you reason, he’s the one who insists on doing the dishes together - so, he’s the one responsible for when you hand off a plate to empty air.

He flicks water at you. Stares at the floor with a flat expression when you look at him.

“You’re the only other person in this house,” You can’t help but smile. A smile the widens when you catch him trying to tamp down his own. “I know it was you. You always do this!”

“Do what?”

“You know what.”

You jostle your shoulder into his. Hard enough that the towel Katsuki had been using to dry slips between his fingers. But, you’re used to this routine to, and you catch it before it can touch the ground.

“You make my life a living hell.” You smile, draping the damp towel over his face in revenge.

He lets you. You know he lets you because you’ve seen his reflexes. Katsuki is quick, quicker than you, and if he really wanted to stop you, he would. But he just lifts the edge of the towel, eyes closed, smiling like he’s won something.

“You’re irritating.” You laugh, can’t help yourself. You yank the towel off his head, press it into his hand. “Finish your dishes.”

“You started it.” He shrugs, head tilted down while he gets to work. You know what’s coming next. “Bitch.”

You smack him, square on the chest, and the laughter that peels out of him is almost enough. It almost makes everything worth it when he presses wet fingers into your sides, and suddenly there is no place where his laughter ends and yours begins, and it’s all the same.

“If you don’t get your hands off of me,” You squeal, pressing at his chest. “I will bite them off.”

“Ya sound like me,” He says, equally breathless. “Think you’re tough now or somethin’?”

“I have to be. I live with - you!”

Katsuki throws you over his shoulder, evidently through with the dishes and with your kitchen. You know this part of your routine too, know down to the second just went he puts his hand on the back of your head. He rounds the cabinets with you in his arms, and though you’ve never once hit your head on them, he’s still got a hand there. Just in case.

You think it’d break his heart is he knew just how many times you’d accidentally clipped those cabinets while he was gone.

Katsuki dumps you on the bathroom counter. Tells you to sit and stay while he grabs towels. You consider getting up, but then he’s already back, and the thought disappears like it was never there.

“So, hypothetically, if-“

“No.”

“You didn’t even hear what I was gonna-“

“Don’t need to.” He cuts you off again, turning the shower on. His side on cool, and yours on hot. “The answer is no.”

“What, you think I can’t handle myself?”

“No, I know, you can’t handle yourself.” He turns toward you, begins shucking off his clothes at the same time you do. “I can barely fuckin’ handle you, and I’m me.”

“Which is why those villains would never see me coming.”

Katsuki just looks at you, fondness tilting his smile sideways. He knows this isn’t a real suggestion, just like you know you’d never follow him even if you could. His world is so far removed from anything you know, you’d only ever get hurt. But you ask, every single time he leaves, and he entertains it.

“If I let you out there, we’d have to let every villain go.” He grabs your hand, pulls you into the shower after him. “A single minute with you is like a fuckin’ life-sentence.”

“Hey!”

“Kiddin’ - chill out.” He turns around, but not before you can see the smile on his face.

You soap your hands up, tilting his head back until you can reach his hair. Eventually, the stretch is too much, and you’re shoving him down onto the bench you both had gotten installed just for this very occasion. His arms wind around your stomach, pressing his face to your skin.

He’s quiet while you wash his hair. Quiet while you run conditioner through it. Quiet while you run a sudsed-up rag over his body. Eyes fluttering, like he can barely keep them open.

“Don’t fall asleep.” You admonish, indulgent and soft. “I’m not strong enough to lift you out of here.”

“Figures. I get fuck all nothin’, huh?”

He says that, but he looks up at you and Katsuki’s eyes give him away. There’s nothing but contentment there.

“Yep, absolutely nothing. It’s what you deserve for being a mean, mean man. Now let me go, I’ve gotta wash up.”

“Nah, ‘m fuckin’ settled here. Here’s good.”

He’s got both arms wrapped around you, warm cheek pressed against your lower rib.

“When I rinse my shampoo out you’re going to get it in your eyes.”

“So? Small fuckin’ price to pay, don’t be an idiot.”

You look down at him, and Katsuki looks just as he always does when he’s being intentionally difficult. Unbelievably happy.

“Fine. See what your boss thinks when you go out on your mission blind.”

“I’m my fuckin’ boss.”

“Sure you are, honey.”

Katsuki just grumbles a little at that, wipes his nose on your sternum. Because he’s a child and he knows it’ll make you squeal just the way he likes.

True to his words, he really does stay exactly where he is. Even as you wash your body, even as your washing your face. He only gets up to turn the water off, to grab your towels.

Katsuki wraps you up, scoffing when you can’t help the hearts that flood your eyes.

“Don’t fuckin’ look at me like that. You’re gross.”

It’s like the words fly right over your head. Like you don’t hear them at all as you follow him back to your room.

Katsuki lays out sweats for himself, and a large t-shirt for you. You brush his hair out for him as he sits on the bed, and when you’re done you both pull back the comforter together.

He settles, pulls you close until your foreheads are touching.

“I know we try not to talk about it,” You start, and you can feel the way his eyebrows scrunch. “But I have to know. This isn’t - it’s not going to be that dangerous, right?”

You know how much he hates lying to you. It’s your very favorite thing about him in any other circumstance, but in this one, you wish he didn’t loathe it quite so much. Because the look on his face, the tone of his voice, breaks you.

“I’m sorry,” He starts, grabs your hand from under the blanket. “I’ll be fuckin’ careful. I promise. I’ll make it out.”

The words are quiet, whispered like a secret. Sometimes you miss the confidence of his younger days, when he was cockier, more self-assured. He’s not now - now he’s an adult and he’s watched people die, and being a hero is not what he always thought it’d be.

“You better.”

He just blinks at you, nods, and you pretend you don’t see his wobbling waterline. There is no sorrow there, and there is no crease in his eyebrow, and there is no giant, dangerous, looming thing threatening to steal him away from you.

For now, until the sun rises and calls him out, he is yours. So you tuck him into your shoulder, run your fingers through his hair. Tell him you love him. He’ll tell you to wait, to not say it because he should have to come home to deserve it, but you don’t agree. He’s home now, and for however long you have him, and even after, you will love him.

He falls asleep, perpetually unable to keep his eyes open past midnight. It’s something you love about him. Another one of those little things you’ll think about when he’s gone.

When he’s tucked away somewhere you can’t follow, you’ll close your eyes and imagine he’s closing his at the same moment - wonder if doing the same thing, together, even though you’re apart, will somehow create a tether that yanks him back home.

But, for now, he is home. So you look, and you look, and you look. He’s already got a face-full of little nicks, little scars and scrapes and wrinkles, and you try to map them out. Try to memorize the way he looks now, because you know that when he comes back, he will look different. He always does. Always comes back with countless new scars to join countless new wrinkles.

He shifts next to you in his sleep. Tucks his cheek to his shoulder until his hair is brushing your chin. He smells like your shampoo.

For now, he is yours. The rising sun will have to rip him from your fingers, and only when Katsuki tells you to let go, will you relent. He’ll put on his uniform and you’ll kiss his forehead and another cycle of leaving will start, but you will choose to love him anyways.

On the way out, he’ll tell you that he loves you. That he’ll always come back. You’ll believe it.

—/—

listen, in my defense, im in mourning and @glitterinmyc00chie badgered me into it. and also, if im in mourning?? im gonna put y’all in mourning too!!! so soz for the pain this caused,, rest assured it caused me twice as much to write it

that being said everyone put ur hands together and pray my sweet sweet little honeypie comes back,,, and if he doesnt, prepare for my mf funeral

327 notes · View notes