Katou (katoustheshit) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-06-17 14:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, caleb rivers, yue katou |
Who: Yue Katou and Caleb Rivers
What: Katou runs into Caleb and decides to tag around
When: Mid-May, before Katou left on his mission
Where: Out and about
Ratings/Warnings: Low/none
Status: Complete
Katou didn’t especially enjoy running, but ihelped keep his mind off of drugs, which was increasingly hard to do now that Wash had gone and followed Kanan and Carolina. Katou knew that at this point, he should just expect all the people he loved to up and leave him, but it still stung. Wash had been his oldest friend in the county, and he’d come to expect his presence at work and outside of it. Frankly, at this point, he was surprised Michael hadn’t decided he’d had enough too.
He was running pretty fast, and almost didn’t recognize the man he blew past, but belatedly, the face resurfaced in his memory. He’d only met the guy once, but he’d enjoyed his company well enough. Besides, running was a lot of work and he was already tired of it. He doubled back, running to catch up to the other man, and then slowed to a walk once he’d caught up again.
“Hey,” he said, grinning. “Frank, right?” He was pretty certain that wasn’t the name what’s-his-face had introduced himself as, but he whatever that name had been was long gone by now.
Caleb sometimes got so involved in what he was doing on his laptop that he lost track of time. Not to mention he forgot to take care of himself. Like eat. That was until his stomach growled and growled reminding him it was time for a break. Probably time for some fresh air too.
There were some food trucks set up at a part near his apartment, Caleb decided to check them out. Have something different to eat and get out of the apartment for a bit. He was walking through the park heading towards the food trucks when someone ran past him, turned around and came back. “Sorry?” Caleb replied having no idea what the guy was talking about. “I think you have the wrong person.” Although the guy did seem vaguely familiar. Caleb frowned trying to remember where he had seen him before.
“Naw, I definitely don’t,” Katou said. “We definitely had drinks sometime. I told you about the Network.” He frowned to himself, the name on the tip of his tongue. Cathy? Corbin? He brought his fist down into the palm of his hand in sudden realization. “Caleb, right?”
Oh right. The guy that introduced him to the network of dreams. Caleb felt a little bad that he had forgotten. But then he had called him the wrong name. It wasn’t even close to the name on his fake ID either, the one that.. Katou had spotted. “Yeah,” he replied. “And you’re Katou, right?”
“The one and only,” Katou said, grinning, which wasn’t necessarily true. There were a few other Katou’s, even in the county, his mother being one of them, though his sister was an Anderson these days.
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and put on in his mouth, and lit it before offering the open pack toward Caleb. There really was nothing better than a cigarette after a run. “So, where ya headed, Caleb?”
Caleb raised a brow as Katou pulled out the cigarette. Seemed to contradict the whole running thing. But who was he to judge? At least the guy was running. More than Caleb did.
“There’s supposed to be food trucks,” Caleb replied answering Katou’s question. “Figured I’d check them out.”
When Caleb didn’t take a cigarette, Katou shrugged and put the pack back in his pocket. He thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged. “Yeah, I could probably go for some grub. I ain’t been to check out the food trucks in years. You ever been?”
Wasn’t exactly an invited but why not? Caleb could use the company. Besides it looked like he was going to be staying in Orange County for awhile. He might as well make some friends. “Nah,” Caleb replied heading in the direction of the trucks. “I’m still new around here.”
“Well, hopefully we don’t find someplace that’ll leave us sick for a week,” Katou said cheerfully. Not that he’d heard too much about food truck food poisoning, or even that he was entirely sure he could get food poisoning anymore. He was, after all, already dead.
“So, how you adjusting to the Weird County?” Katou asked. If Caleb was on the Network by now, no doubt he’d already experienced some of the special brand of entertainment that the OC seemed to bring.
Food trucks were just as clean as any restaurant if you asked Caleb. He wasn’t at all worried about food poisoning. “I think we’ll be alright,” Caleb replied with a small nod.
“Well I met a guy who looked exactly like me,” Caleb began in response to Katou’s question. “Only older and with shorter hair. So there’s that.”
“That is weird,” Katou said. He’d never run into anyone who looked like him - well, except for the one time when he and Kanan had run into a man who Katou suspected might have been his biological father. Katou hadn’t stuck around for conversation though.
Katou took a moment to study Caleb’s profile, and then, when he was sure that Caleb’s eyes were elsewhere, he transformed into what he assumed an older, shorter-haired Caleb would look like. “You mean, like this?” he asked, and the voice that came from his mouth was Caleb’s.
Caleb’s eyes were on the food trucks debating which one he wanted to go to, when he heard his own voice. Turning he saw what looked like Alex standing right where Katou had been. “What the fuck?” Caleb questioned confused about what the hell was going on.
Katou smirked, a wide, shit-eating grin. Oh, that never got old, as far as Katou was concerned. But it was hard to keep up someone else’s face and they might start attracting attention if he kept it up, so he shifted back to his own face. “Neat trick, huh?”
“No,” Caleb said shaking his head eyes wide. “Not a neat trick.” Doppelgangers were one thing. But a guy that could literally shapeshift into anyone they wanted? That was a bit too much for Caleb. “The fuck was that?”
Katou frowned, but a moment later he grinned and shrugged, brushing the comment off. For one, it was still funny, but for another, he guessed he couldn’t really blame Caleb for being shocked. Anyway, Katou was never really one to let negative comments stick to him. “This body of mine has all sorts of neat tricks,” Katou said. “It’s one of the byproducts of these dreams. You been getting them yet? The dreams?”
What was it with people and changing their body? Vanessa could go invisible. Now apparently Katou could shape shift. There didn’t seem to be any sort of powers in his dreams. At least that he knew of. It was just high school. “Yeah,” Caleb confirmed deciding on getting tacos he made his way towards the truck. “A few.”
“Oh yeah?” Katou asked. “What are they like?” he asked.
“Just being back in high school,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing all that exciting.” Minus the whole spying on his girlfriend part.
Katou snorted. “Can’t tell if you got lucky or not with that one.” Katou didn’t have very strong feelings about high school one way or another; for one, he couldn’t remember very much of it. It had been a shitty time in his life, but it hadn’t had much to do with school itself.
“Judging by the shit everyone else seems to talk about? I’d say lucky.” Not that it was that much of a pleasant experience for Caleb in real life. But it seemed to be going better in the dreams for the most part. Again before he had spied on Hanna.
“For now, at least,” Katou said. After a rocky start, Katou had thought his dreams were pretty great. Sure, he’d died four times in rather fast succession, but after that it was pretty great. Just fighting, protecting Setsuna, and hanging out with two of the best people he knew in either world. It beat his real life, and his dream life, and his dreams had gone a long way to showing Katou that he had some worth.
Of course, near the end of the dreams, it seemed like they had just become one long, continuous nightmare where he never had time to come up for air at all. It seemed like he wasn’t the only one who had something like that happen too.
Katou had followed Caleb to the taco truck, and then he grinned. “Tacos, huh? Good choice.”
Caleb left the comment about dreams at that. He didn’t really have much to say about them. They were a little strange, sure, but they could be a hell of a lot worse. He had nothing to complain about. And honestly he was still getting used to the whole everyone dreams of another life thing.
“Glad you approve,” Caleb said with a small smirk. But really, who didn’t love a good taco?