Crossing Fates : Book 1 - Escape (BakuDeku)

18 - Distress Brought By The Dead

Katsuki leaped forward, hard arms snaking around Izuku before he could collapse.

He eased the boy onto a bar stool and pushed his head down. He kept one hand at the back of Izuku's neck. With the other, he buried it in those green tresses.

Izuku asked, muffled, "Did you kill him?"

"No. Nor did my people," the skin at the back of Izuku's neck was chilled. Katsuki felt the shiver ripple through his thief's body. "They found him earlier today. Bad death."

"Damn that poor idiot. I tried to warn him," Izuku covered his face with his hands.

Jealousy spiked.

Katsuki's lip lifted in a silent snarl.

Izuku was his thief, nobody else's.

"You love him."

"No," Izuku said, wretchedness in his voice. "Yes. I don't know. I thought I did once, but he wasn't who I thought he was. After I broke things off with him, the jerk blackmailed me. I knew he was going to get himself killed. I even tried to warn him but he wouldn't listen to me. He got what he deserved, but it's still hard to hear about someone I used to care about," he clenched his fists. "Let me up. I'm not going to faint."

Katsuki released the pressure he had been putting on his neck and released his hair.

Izuku sat upright in the bar stool. He looked composed but his skin was ashen. There were goose bumps along his bare arms.

"You are too cold," he said. "That means shock, I think. We will change that," he noted the bottle of scotch on the counter by the sink. He retrieved the bottle along with a coffee mug from the cupboard. He poured a drink and shoved it into the boy's hands. "Drink that while I find a blanket."

Izuku looked at him askance as his fingers curled around the mug.

"Yes, I know," he said, impatient. "I am going to rend you from limb to limb. Someday. When I feel like it. In the meantime, you will not faint, you will get warm and you will stop being distressed," his nostrils pinched. "I don't like how it smells."

Izuku's pretty mouth fell open. "You don't... like... " a hysterical giggle bubbled out and turned to outright laughter. He listed on the bar stool, the coffee mug tilting.

Katsuki covered Izuku's hands with one of his own, steadying the mug, and pressed a finger against the boy's lips. "Stop that."

"Sure," Izuku hooted. "Whatever you say."

Katsuki wasn't by any stretch of imagination an expert on emotions. Scowling, he tapped Izuku's lips.

"I'll just, I don't know, be happy until you decide to start rending," Izuku hiccupped. "How will that do, Your Majesty?"

"I was being sarcastic," he said.

"Which is very reassuring, coming from a pissed-off dragon," Izuku told him. "Kinda like the whole 'tell me what I want to know and I'll let you go' joke. Definitely has its own charm. I bet all your other prisoners love it."

Izuku's body continued to shake. The boy was out of control. Katsuki would get no sense out of him as long as he was this overwrought.

Katsuki cupped Izuku's chin. He stared into his emerald eyes, intending to beguile him into a sense of calm.

Instead, he came up against a mental barrier. Intrigued, he inspected it, feeling along the borders.

The barrier seemed to be both natural and intentional.

There was the echo of a feminine Power interwoven in it, a subtle presence very like Izuku's own and yet separate. It was an altogether beautiful construction, an elegant citadel that protected the greenette's core.

This was why Izuku was able to break the beguilement in the dream.

Katsuki could batter that wall down if he wanted to, but that would be like taking a sledgehammer to an opal. There would be nothing coherent left to salvage of the boy afterward.

"Stop it," Izuku whispered. His body had stiffened, straining away from his touch. "Get out of my head."

Katsuki held fast and used his voice instead of his mind.

"Quiet," he murmured. "Be quiet now."

*****

Katsuki's deep voice murmured.

Tendrils of the sound curled into the air and wrapped around Izuku. It soothed and reassured. His breath shuddered and he grew still.

He stared in Katsuki's warm crimson eyes. Impossible depths existed in those brilliant pools. He could fall into the man's gaze and never come out.

"Valium's got nothing on you," he murmured. "Bottle that, and you could make another fortune."

"You are calmer now," Katsuki said. His severe dark face was inscrutable.

"Yes," he wrenched his gaze away and stared into his coffee mug. He forced himself to say, "Thank you."

Katsuki let go of Izuku's chin and hands and stepped back. "Drink."

Izuku looked up as Katsuki disappeared into the hall. Then he raised the mug to his lips and drank it all down. Scotch napalmed his veins, hitting him all the harder since he hadn't eaten well the last week.

He put the mug on the counter and inspected his hands, felt along his jaw. He had taken a battering when Katsuki slammed him into the ground, but the man's handling of him since then had been quite careful.

How remarkable.

What did it mean?

Katsuki strode back into the kitchen, the light blue hoodie Izuku had bought earlier bunched in one hand.

The man nodded at the empty mug and dropped the hoodie in his lap. Izuku shrugged it on as Katsuki crossed his arms.

Perched on the low bar stool as Izuku was, Katsuki towered over him than he would if the man were standing upright.

He had thought the house was quite spacious until Katsuki had walked into it.

"We will begin again," Katsuki declared.