Katou (katoustheshit) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-03-25 20:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kanan jarrus, yue katou |
Who: Katou and Kanan
What: Katou runs into someone unexpected
When: February
Where: Some restaurant bar
Rating/Warning: Teenish/Mentioned of child abuse.
Status: Complete
Katou hadn’t seen much of Kanan lately, but he understood it. Dutch was important to him, and she was laid up right now. Still, it was nice to have Kanan to himself for the night, and going out for dinner seemed like a good way to spend it. He was walking a little bit ahead of Kanan, looking back over his shoulder as they walked up the sidewalk toward the restaurant door.
“Excited to eat something other than hospital food for once?” he asked jovially.
If nothing else, Kanan was loyal to those he cared about. He didn’t understand how The Master’s powers worked in Dutch’s Dreams and it infuriated him. Dutch didn’t deserve to be rendered unconscious. Kanan wished there was something he could do to help her, but all he was capable of doing was visiting her in the hospital, talking to her and hoping against hope that she’d open her eyes, sit up, and talk back. Even the Force seemed incapable of helping. The whole thing was maddening.
Katou’s suggestion they go out for dinner was exactly what Kanan needed. He smiled slightly as he followed after the younger man. “Yeah,” he answered. “I’m looking forward to eating something that has actual taste to it.”
“I bet,” Katou said. He should probably think about making Kanan some food to take with him to the hospital. It wouldn’t be that much work, and Kanan would no doubt appreciate having some real food to eat while he was sitting around watching daytime TV and twiddling his thumbs, or whatever the hell he was doing at the hospital.
The two of them were brought to a table, and Katou sat on one side of the booth, leaning against the wall that made one side of the booth and propping his feet up on the rest of the booth on his side of the table. “What’re you thinking? Drinks?”
“Drinks,” Kanan nodded. He could use a drink or two. He didn’t pause to look at the drink menu before raising his hand to flag down their waitress.
He envied Katou’s relaxed posture, but it made him grin slightly anyway. Katou’s way of meeting life with constant casual disinterest was somehow relaxing and coaxed Kanan to relax and let go of some of the weight that was hanging on his shoulders. A drink or two would go a long way to take off more and Kanan could feel somewhat normal again.
When the server came by, Katou ordered himself a cosmo, deciding he wanted something sweet and not so boozy tasting. He had to flash his fake ID, but it had actually been made by a guy he used to deal for at the DMV way back when.
“How’s Dutch doing anyway?” he asked a little tentatively. He didn’t want to bring it up, not when he was taking Kanan’s mind off the whole thing, but she’d kind of warmed herself to him when Kanan had been bleeding from the eyes, and he was a little concerned. Just a little.
Kanan raised a brow at the fake ID and smirked slightly. He’d had a fake ID once. God, that seemed like such a long time ago. Janus didn’t seem to care much about the legal drinking age, so long as his protege wasn’t falling down drunk. Kanan figured this was the same situation.
He appreciated Katou asking about Dutch, but he couldn’t help that his smile faded considerably before he answered. “Dutch is…” Kanan sighed “I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s doing better, worse, or what. She’s just…” he shook his head. “All I know is that it has to do with her Dreams. I has to. In the Dreams there is this being called The Master and when she heard his voice she…” Kanan trailed and shook his head. The last time he spoke with Dutch, her Dream Self hadn’t woken up from the coma the Master’s voice had put her in. Kanan didn’t want to think that was the way her Dreams ended and how it may be the way her life here ended as well.
The waitress came back with their Drinks. Kanan took a long pull from his before the glass had a chance to even rest on the coaster. Once he’d gotten a few mouthfuls down his throat, he set the glass down. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Tell me a good story, Yue. Something funny.”
Funny stories were something that Katou could do, and it was way better than talking about depressing dream comas. He was glad to change the subject, especially if it meant making Kanan smile again. “Alright, well, you know my friend Caleb?” he asked, not sure if Kanan did and trying not to remember that Kanan’s real name was Caleb too. “Anyways, I guess in his dreams there’s some old Caleb from like, a million years ago. So I-” Katou started. He was momentarily distracted by a drunk guy who stumbled into someone else’s table, and was now apologizing to the man whose drink he had spilled onto his lap, but he didn’t immediately let that stop him from telling his story. “- decided that -”
It was about then that Katou caught sight of the man’s face. Those thin lips, the pale, sickly pallor of his skin, those cruel eyes unfocused from the alcohol. He had only seen the man once before, seven years ago in a photo that would now be almost twenty years old, but the image was burned into Katou’s mind and he recognized him instantly. Not least because all of those features were the same ones Katou had, and would still have once he was that man’s age. Katou blanched, a stricken look on his face, and he fell silent.
Kanan knew who Caleb was. He’d heard Katou talk about him before. Little strange that Katou’s best friend just happened to have the same name as Kanan himself. Strange, but amusing. He smiled wanly as Katou started his story. The Dreams were always a good place to hear some really freaky stuff. So long as it wasn’t happening directly to him, Kanan usualy found them very amusing. However, when Katou began to falter, Kanan’s brows furrowed.
The younger man seemed very interested in something going on behind their booth. Over the last year, Kanan had gotten fairly good at being able to read Katou’s subtle social cues. It was rare for him to broadcast to the entire world when something had him freaked out, and whatever was going on behind Kanan had him freaked.
Kanan raised a brow, “Yue?” He looked cautiously over his shoulder. He saw the older man stumbling over his own feet, very clearly drunk. Kanan didn’t understand at first why that would have bothered his protege. Kanan knew Katou’d had his own issues with substance abuse. Was this some kind of trigger? No, that didn’t seem right. Katou was buddy-buddies with Carolina’s younger brother and he was an alcoholic, so what was going on here?
The older man’s attempts to wipe up the mess he’d made (which mostly consisted of sloppily smearing said mess over the table) did not impress the couple whose dinner he’d interrupted. Kanan finally got a good look at him when he was shoved away. There was something a little familiar about the man. Kanan couldn’t tell why at first, and then it dawned on him. There was an obvious family resemblance between the drunk and Katou. And knowing what he did about Katou’s relationship with his family, Kanan figured that was what had him so unnerved. Couldn’t blame him there.
“You know him?” Kanan asked, looking back at Katou. “You want me to step in?”
“No, I’ve never met him,” Katou snapped, tearing his eyes from the man. Part of him wondered if the man would recognize him, but then Katou realized that he probably didn’t even know Katou existed. After all, Katou hadn’t known he existed until he came across the photo of him in his mother’s drawer. Up until then, he’d thought the father who raised him, the father who beat him, was his biological father. When he’d learned the truth, well, suddenly the elder Katou’s behaviour made sense. Suddenly, Katou knew why the blood that ran in his veins was bad.
“You know what, this bar blows anyway. You ever been to the Hanged Man? They’ve got this badass chocolate stout float thing, and it’s great. And like, these tasty fucking spiced potatoes. We should go there instead,” he said, quick enough that his words almost ran together, alread pulling himself out of the booth. The man probably didn’t know Katou existed, and even if they had hung out a hundred times before, he was probably drunk enough that he still wouldn’t know who he was, but Katou didn’t want to take the chance of him recognizing him beforehand.
Kanan wasn’t sure what to make of Katou’s reaction. He drew back when he snapped at him, but nodded his head. It was obvious that Katou did know him, or at least recognized him. Why else would he be staring like that. But it was also obvious that what was going on was making the young man extremely uncomfortable. Probably a good idea to get out of here, move on to somewhere not here. “Yeah,” he said carefully. “Sounds good.” He got up from the booth. He tossed a few dollars onto the table to cover the drinks they’d already ordered before following Katou out. He cast one look over his shoulder at the drunk, who was now being confronted by one of the wait staff. Brows furrowed again for a moment before Kanan turned and walked out.
Once the two of them were outside and had but some distance between them and the restaurant, Kanan glanced at Katou. “You want to tell me what that was about?”
It must have been the stuffy restaurant air that had made Katou’s breath so difficult to come by, because once he stepped outside he found that he was able to breath a little easier. His heart was still jack-hammering in his chest, to the point where he if he didn’t know any better, he’d swear he was having a heart attack, but that too was slowing down to a more reasonable pace.
With his fake arm, glamoured by Zee to look human, he pulled a cigarette out from his pocket so that Kanan wouldn’t notice just how much his other hand, stuffed into his pocket, was trembling, and once he lit the cancer stick, he filled his lungs with that sweet, sweet tar. He shrugged, attempting, but not quite managing, to arrange his face into something resembling indifference. “Nothing,” he said unconvincingly. “I just thought we should go someplace less stuffy, ya know?”
And Kanan wasn’t convinced. “Mmmhmm,” he answered skeptically. He had two options here. First option: to call Katou out on his rather feeble attempt to cover up the fact that the drunk in the restaurant had rattled his cage. Second option: to play along and act as though nothing was rong. Kanan wasn’t a fan of either. He wasn’t Katou’s boss anymore. He couldn’t use that as an excuse to get the kid to open up. There was something obviously bothering him deeply, and Kanan didn’t think ignoring it would help. Or be healthy.
There was a third option…
Kanan dug the keys to his Dodge Challenger Hellcat - his new pride and joy - from the pocket of his coat. He looked at them carefully for a moment before glancing at the young man. He trusted Katou. He was one of the small few handful that Kanan trusted with his life. That was not something to be taken lightly and something that probably should be demonstrated every now and then. Kanan looked up at the young man smoking in the parking lot before tossing him the keys.
Katou hadn’t been expecting Kanan to throw him the keys, and he reached out with both his hands to catch it, his cigarette clenched between his lips and his eyes wide with surprise. He fumbled with them once, twice, and then managed to catch them a foot from the tarmac.
When he straightened up, his eyes shifted first from the car, then to Kanan, and then back to the car. “What, you want me to drive?” he asked, not bothering to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“I trust you not to wrap the car around a tree,” Kanan smirked. He took a drag off his cigarette and blew out the smoke. “Besides, you’re in charge of finding us a new place for food and drinks, makes sense if you drive.” He motioned to the car with his cigarette. “Shall we?”
Katou’s lips twitched a little at Kanan mentioning that he trusted him, and slid in behind the wheel. He put the keys in the ignition, started the car, and placed his hands on the steering wheel. His right hand was still shaking slightly, and he turned to Kanan, his face for once not sporting his usual grin. “That was kind of weird in there, wasn’t it?” he asked hesitantly, testing the waters.
Kanan finished his cigarette and snuffed out the butt before getting into the passenger side of his car. Truth time, here. This was the first time he was a passenger in his own car and it was a little weird. Not so much because it was Katou driving - he wasn’t lying when he said he trusted Katou. It was just weird being on this side of the car, foreign.
He noted Katou’s hand still shaking, but didn’t let his eyes linger there very long. He sat back in his seat and glanced over at the young man behind the wheel. “Little bit, yeah,” he agreed, leaving an open invitation should Katou decide to actually tell him what was going on.
“Alright, well,” Katou took a deep breath. He didn’t talk about his childhood. It was a subject he avoided as much as possible, something that was much easier now that he wasn’t a teenager living in an old abandoned warehouse. He’d told Wendy a couple years ago, he’d never talked about it with anyone else. “My old man didn’t like me much,” Katou said, shrugging, his voice flat, his eyes gazing out the front of the car and very purposefully not looking at Kanan. “Actually, my earliest memory is my mom telling him to stop hitting me because he’d kill me if he didn’t. It weren’t that he were a bad dad; he loved Sae. He was always smiles when it came to her, always remembering to get her things on his business trips and giving her hugs and complimenting her and shit.” Katou had hated her.
“But like, no matter what I did I wasn’t good enough. I tried real hard, was a real suck-up. All I wanted was my old man to like me, and the only thing he’d ever given me was my name. I thought it was something special, but I found out later he’d only named me Yue ‘cause he hoped it’d kill me. I couldn’t ever figure it out, ‘til I found the photo of my mom and some other man. A man who looked just like me. Like the dude in the restaurant.” He’d managed to get through the whole thing without his monotone voice cracking and without his forward gaze wavering.
Kanan listened and said nothing until it appeared as though Katou had finished talking. A frown pulled at the corners of his mouth and his eyes narrowed darkly. He didn’t have to ask, it was clear to him who that the man in the restaurant was. Katou’s behavior made sense now and Kanan kicked himself for not putting the pieces together before now. Some fucking mentor he was.
Kanan’s concept of family was what he saw other people have and experience in their lives, but even he knew just how fucked up Katou’s family was and it really explained a lot about the young man. If Kanan crossed paths with this man, this person who was supposed to be Katou’s father figure, he would kill him. Not very Jedi like, but Kanan was not your average Jedi.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was low, but it was soft, full of understanding - his own childhood had not been a picnic, but he figured he had lucked out. The man who had beat him had never been his father. His father had abandoned him in a box somewhere. “I don’t really know much about family, or what they’re supposed to be like, I’ve never had one. But I know that’s fucked up and it pisses me off. You’re a good kid and you didn’t deserve that. You’re the only family I have, so...” He paused for a moment as a thought hit him. He’d been calling him “Yue” for months, and now he felt like shit for doing so. “Would you rather I not call you Yue anymore?”
Katou’s eyes suddenly, inexplicably burned. Quickly, he rubbed the tears from his eyes with the back of his right arm. Weirdly, once he was sure that he wasn’t going to burst into tears like some pathetic child, he realized he was smiling. He’d thought of Kanan as his family for months now, but the words still made his heart ache. “No,” he said. His voice wavered and he attempted to swallow the frog in his throat. “No. There was a time I woulda hated it, but back then I wouldn’ta told you what it was in the first place. But it’s alright now. My name’s part of me, and after the second or third time you die you stop caring about stuff like that.” And Setsuna called him Yue in his dreams. It wasn’t such a bad name when people you cared about said it.
There was something to that, and Kanan understood where Katou was coming from. He himself had been born Caleb, but he’d gone by Kanan for so long now that the name seemed more his than Caleb ever had. He couldn’t help a bit of a grin himself. “Alright,” he declared, “Yue it is then.” Until Katou told him otherwise.
They’d come a long way, this odd pair, from the punk Kanan had “rescued” from shop lifting charges posing as his “Uncle Chester”. From Mentor and protégé to family. What a weird wonderful world they lived in.
Kanan clapped a hand on Katou’s shoulder. “Should we get going then?” He asked. “Find a suitable bar?”
“Yeah,” Katou said, softly smiling. “Yeah, let’s go. I could really use a drink.” Or ten.