Chapter Text
Katsuki ran when he was fifteen. He could have when he was eleven and twelve and skip thirteen and skip fourteen. He had planned for sixteen. Because a sweet sixteen is all any teenager wants, right? But April twentieth that year had not come soon enough before he found himself waking up to the smell of rain and sewage.
No matter.
Katsuki’s always been told he’s smart. By rich men and rich women. Not his rich old man or his rich old hag, though. He’s dumb to them. Dumb, little, stupid little Katsuki. Which is fine. He knows who to believe.
Himself, of course. Who else?
Standing in the rain, though, soaked to the bone through his shirt and blinking water out of his eyes, he tells himself maybe he isn’t so smart.
And if he’s telling himself he’s dumb, well. . .
Fuck it, he’s never been a quitter.
He’s committed.
“Are you planning on getting out of the rain or should I leave you to brood for a bit longer?” A low voice drones out. “Because I can come back later if you need a moment.”
“Fuck off,” Katsuki spits instinctively. Dammit.
Halfie raises a single eyebrow, the walking turd miraculously dry under his umbrella.
“I mean,” Katsuki grits out. “I can come inside now.”
“Good.” Halfie turns around and unlocks the door with his umbrella balanced between his shoulder and jaw. “I have to go back in the morning. Will you be okay without me-?”
“Fuck you, I’ll be fine,” Katsuki growls, hunching his shoulders and stepping under the awning. Albeit, standing uncomfortably close to Halfie’s cold shoulder. Alas, he’s tired of being cold and wet. Sue him.
Halfie pivots towards him, half an inch, head tilted to the side, a little pinch in his brows like he’s trying to process the whopping two emotions running through his head at the moment.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
The door is hanging awkwardly ajar, lights off inside, dark outside, the only light from streetlamps and car headlights shattering off the slick ground.
“Do you-” Halfie scrunches his face like he’s constipated. God, those two emotions probably multiplied to four. A new record. “I mean- Are you really okay? I-”
He gives up after the third stutter and just presses his mouth flat, eyes dull and unblinking.
“I’ll be fine,” Katsuki mutters after a quiet moment.
He shoves past Halfie, intentionally bumping his very wet shoulder against Halfie’s very dry one. He receives his reward in the form of a disgruntled squint and a dainty little scoff.
He also receives a bill in the form of a, “I’m noticing a distinct lack of the present tense.”
Katsuki valiantly ignores him in favor of surveying his new home. . . for the time being at least.
It’s depressingly empty, a firm building in the center of the city. It looks like it used to be a restaurant, wide open space decorated in tile and a counter near the back.
“Th’ fuck is this dump?”
“Free.”
“My apologies, your highness. ‘Whatst in the fuckest ist thine-?’”
“Technically, it used to be a ramen place.”
“The fuck you mean ‘technically’? It seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Well, ‘technically’-” Katsuki silently applauds Halfie’s brave use of hand quotation marks. Points for self-expression and sarcasm. “-it was also a front for an illegal money laundering business-” “What kind of money laundering isn’t illegal?” “-which was inevitably shut down by my old man because it fucked with his territory. And to answer your question, the kind your parents do.”
“Haha. Yeah. Fuck them.”
“You benefitted from the money laundering. You bought me a car. I can’t drive.”
“I was dealt a hand in life so I played. Don’t be jealous.”
“I could’ve bought the car myself. I’m richer than you.”
“Yeah, but the hag was trying to find out who ‘stole’ the money for months.”
“Didn’t she beat you for that?”
“Yeah. It was so fuckin’ worth it.”
Halfie sighs, flicking the lights on. Katsuki hisses at the sudden flash but surges forward regardless.
“There’s a kitchen behind that doorway-” Halfie points to a curtain-covered hall. “-and a breakroom in the back that has a door to the alley.” Easy exit, he doesn’t say but Katsuki can hear the words in the break. “And a space above you could probably make into a small apartment.”
Katsuki eyes the prior residents–ghosts of spiders and oil stains. “He’ll find out you’re using his money.”
“I’ll go to Yuuei.”
Katsuki startles and turns to look at the back of Halfie’s head, opening his mouth but cut off.
“He might turn a blind eye if I cooperate. And it’s only water bills, electricity, and grocery for one person. Barely a dent in his bank account.”
Katsuki wants to argue, so he does. “Are you fucking crazy!? What the hell do you mean, ‘I’ll go to Yuuei!?’”
“I mean I’ll apply to Yuuei,” Halfie says smartly, shaking out his umbrella and balancing it against the wall.
“Fuck off.” Katsuki grinds his teeth together. “Why the hell would you do that!?”
“I just told you-”
“No, fuck you, you can’t- that’s not- fuck!” Katsuki tugs on the back of his hair.
Halfie turns to look at him, blank as ever, expressive as ever. There’s a heaviness to his eyebrows and his jaw and Katsuki knows. Halfie doesn’t want this either.
Katsuki swallows his anger, turns to a whisper. “You don’t have to go. Not for me.”
“What would I do if you died out there? I can’t have that on my conscience.” Halfie says it like he’s thought about it for too long.
Hell, he probably has. He’s probably had this planned since skip thirteen and skip fourteen when Katsuki called him for the first time because he hates calls but his hands wouldn’t hit the keys he wanted.
“What would I do if you died out there?” Katsuki croaks.
They’re standing closer. Katsuki is hyper-aware of the rain pattering outside and his hair dripping on the back of his neck and Halfie’s smell of clean linen and Katsuki’s own breath.
“I’ve never been able to run,” Halfie says, voice barely above the pouring rain. “You know that. I’m stuck where I am, Katsuki. It was going to happen either way, so I might as well do some good while I’m at it.”
“Fuck you,” Katsuki chokes through the pebbles in his throat.
Halfie looks at him like nothing. He doesn’t comfort Katsuki. Doesn’t raise his arms for a hug or say sweet words.
He breathes heavy and slow instead, flicks his eyes down and holds his palm out to Katsuki.
Katsuki curls his pinky around Halfie’s ring finger.
“You can’t die.”
“Neither can you.”
. . .
Embarrassing moment of weakness aside–Katsuki’s a real man, he doesn’t cry or any of that pussy shit. Obviously he knows about the toxic male standard, he’s just. . . an unwilling participant–Halfie helps him find a musty futon to roll out on the soft wood upstairs.
Katsuki has no phone–left it behind at the hag’s–so Halfie tells him he’ll drop by tomorrow afternoon with a new one. Katsuki chooses not to argue this.
Lying on his back, tucked under the futon while Halfie fumbles and curses at an old lamp, Katsuki thinks it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that he’s free.
“Hey. Bastard.”
Halfie grunts in response.
“Are you staying the night?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
. . .
When Katsuki was young, maybe three, maybe four, and he didn’t know better was an option, when the bars of his cage gleamed like gold, he met Halfie.
Or. Well. He wasn’t quite ‘Halfie’ back then. He was Shouto. Shouto with black, black hair and big, round, mismatched eyes.
“Katsuki, this is Shouto.”
Tiny little Shouto, dressed to the nines like the brick man standing beside him.
“He’s your new friend.”
They got on awfully. Katsuki was too loud, too bright, too brash, while Shouto was too silent, too dim, too polite.
Which was fine, Katsuki himself took it as a challenge.
He thinks the original intention of their introduction was for Shouto to influence Katsuki into being a more obedient child. Which, if you know anything about him, would really only backfire.
So when Shouto went home repeating ‘fuck you’ as easily as it left Katsuki’s lips. . . well, predictably, people were angry.
It was too late, though. They were already attached to the hip and it would probably take surgical removement to separate them.
. . .
When Shouto was thirteen and Katsuki was skipping thirteen, he dyed his hair for the first time.
A shock of white and red, an awful, awful split-dye supposedly paying homage to. . . something unexplained by Shouto himself.
People were angry, of course. As they tend to be. But Shouto played his cards right and was able to trap his father into a media corner.
And then he was Halfie.
. . .
Morning comes, slower than any other. Maybe Katsuki’s a spoiled rich brat. The hard wood is uncomfortable after plush mattresses and pillows. He doesn’t feel so bad, though, after he hears Halfie walking around at ass-o’-clock, restless.
After the third time he hears a thump and muffled cursing, Katsuki decides he’s had e-fuckin’-nough and screams bloody murder at the top of his lungs–fuck the neighbors.
Halfie comes running, the dumb fuck. “Katsuki!?”
Damn, poor guy sounds actually worried.
Halfie drops to his knees next to Katsuki’s futon. “Are you okay!?”
Instead of answering, Katsuki latches on to Halfie’s arm and yanks him down to the ground, swiftly smothering him in the blanket.
“Go the fuck back to sleep,” Katsuki growls, doing his best paralysis demon impression.
Halfie grunts but doesn’t protest, rolling over onto his back so they’re shoulder to shoulder.
“What’s even the point?” He mutters.
“Okay, scene queen.” Katsuki kicks his knee under the blanket. “It’s called being healthy.”
Halfie sighs, eyes fluttering closed. “What time is it?”
“Two.”
“Dammit.”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“No, actually, I haven’t seen her since I was five.”
Katsuki wrinkles his nose, studies the grains of wood on the ceiling.
There are some things Halfie doesn’t talk about.
One, his scar. It’s kind of self explanatory. Katsuki might’ve skipped thirteen and skipped fourteen, but Halfie skipped five. Showed up one day in bandages and all he did was cry. Katsuki, small and uncoordinated, patted his back stiffly and taught him how to make chloroform from scratch.
Two, love. It’s a little weird, but Katsuki doesn’t care that much. They both like rom-coms, so it’s come up a little. Under piles of mismatched blankets, late like half-formed thoughts, Katsuki might have whispered something about what it must feel like to be loved. And Halfie turned to him with something weird in his eyes. And Katsuki fell asleep after. When he woke up, Halfie acted odd for a day or so, so he’s learned to avoid the topic. He knows how to take a hint.
Three, his family. Dad is fine. It’s all ‘my old man’ this and ‘the bastard’ that, but as soon as anything about a brother or a sister or a mother comes up, he’s silent. From snippets of the nothing Halfie offers, Katsuki’s gathered that Halfie’s the youngest of three. Four? He doesn’t remember. His mother. . . exists. But he doesn’t know a single thing about her.
“That’s a shame.”
Halfie snorts, the first unrefined sound coming from him in years. “I’m not so sure she agrees.”
“Why not? I’m sure your kisses are fine.”
Halfie is silent for a second too long, then his voice comes out a little wrong. “I mean. I think she hates me.”
“Who could hate you?”
“You.”
“Ridiculous. I’m much too refined for that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
. . .
Katsuki wakes warm. Not cold like empty queen-sized beds tend to be or hardwood floors. He wakes up slowly. Weird but somehow right.
He hears a soft breath by his ear. Weird but somehow right.
He frees himself from blankets and limbs and shuffles out to the kitchen. Weird, weird, weird.
He makes tea for one. He hates tea. Five sugar cubes. He hates sugar.
Makes coffee for one, nothing else in it.
Hears a voice by his ear, soft with sleep and something else.
“It's too early. Go back to bed.”
He responds without thinking. “Fuck off, I'll be fine. Sleep without me.”
A muffled laugh pressed into his shoulder. “You need your beauty rest, love.”
“Right, right.”
“Love you.”
“. . . Love you too.”
. . .
Katsuki wakes warm.
Halfie is asleep, turned on his side and curled up to Katsuki's side. Like a cat.
Katsuki filters his dream through reality. It's ridiculous, honestly.
Him and Halfie have never been ones to love or be loved. They're just not really built for that. As much as Katsuki can imagine a thousand times over warm mornings together and tying each other's ties and reading the paper or falling asleep in each other's arms–its just not realistic for someones like them.
Katsuki buries the emotion he doesn't want to identify and gets up.