Katou (katoustheshit) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-07-15 14:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, setsuna mudou, yue katou |
Who: Setsuna and Katou
What: Setsuna runs into his old high school bully
When: Today?
Where: The street
Ratings/Warnings: High for language, references to familial abuse, incest, drug use and bullying
Status: Complete
The Badass Rock of Doom had been on Katou's mind ever since he'd brought it back from the Amazon. Sure, it was just a rock, probably magical, though Katou hadn't been able to make it actually do anything, but it was the prettiest damn rock he'd ever seen, and he was eager to finish his errands so he could go back home and admire it some more.
He caught sight of the boy from the corner of his eye, and hesitated, all thoughts of the stone wiped from his mind. Aside from his dreams, he hadn't seen Setsuna since high school, and for a minute he was sure that he was just seeing things like he had when he'd been dreaming. He didn't know exactly why Setsuna had left school, and while he'd tried to track the other boy down once he'd started dreaming of him, Setsuna's father had never returned any of his phone calls.
Either way, he was sure Setsuna was long gone, and had almost convinced himself his eyes were playing tricks on him when the crowd parted again and there, right in the middle of the sidewalk, was Setsuna. In the flesh.
Katou's heart leapt to his throat, and before he was even aware of what he was doing, he ran to him. "Setsuna!" He called, seconds before wrapping his arms around Setsuna's shoulders in a tight hug.
Setsuna had been minding his own business, hidden in the crowd. He almost felt comfortable, finally free of the psychiatric hospital. Too much time in there had caused stagnation and complete discomfort. Being around more people felt better - especially his anonymity. He would have been happy to know no one back at high school knew what became of him.
His freedom came with a huge price - no father to care for him any longer. He had turned his back once Setsuna became an adult and told Setsuna he needed to care for himself. The facility had wanted to keep Setsuna a little longer, but they could no longer argue with the stubborn 20 year old. Setsuna’s father didn’t care to return Katou’s calls, moving on with his life and leaving most of it behind. His father had his own issues, and his own memories and demons to vanquish.
If Setsuna had known...he would have called Katou back just to cuss him out. He knew, ultimately, Katou wasn’t at fault for anything that went down in the beginning of 2015. Oh, Katou started it, but Setsuna made his own dumb choices, destroyed or not, that landed him in a mental ward. He could barely remember all of it, but after years of abuse through junior high, he recognized Katou’s voice, even then, eyes widening when his name was called.
Dressed in lightweight long sleeves, even in the burning sun, Setsuna’s whole too thin body tensed up, preparing for fight immediately. It wasn’t just because it was Katou, either. Years of bullying and abuse had taken a toll not even four years of condescending gentle treatment and help could completely erase.
It still wasn’t complete rage that left Setsuna’s mouth, which almost surprised him, even as he yelled, “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Get off me!” and physically started to push Katou off of him. He was stunned, in the back of his mind. Katou had just hugged him? What was wrong with this guy? He had always thought Katou kinda hated him. And he hadn’t seen him in years!
For a brief moment, Katou was confused, and his grin turned to a concerned frown when he was pushed away. As far as Katou was concerned, Setsuna was one of Katou's best friends, but it only took a moment of searching his face to realize that he had been confusing the dreams with his real life, and only a moment longer to remember why Setsuna would be so unhappy to see him. Much of his first few years in high school, and middle school, for that matter, had been lost in a fog. Whether it was the drink or the junk, Katou hadn't been sober for a lot of it and he was generally happy to let himself forget about it. But seeing Setsuna now, chunks of it came rushing back. The beatings, or egging on his gang members to do it for him. And, Katou remembered suddenly and vividly, a cyber bullying campaign over Valentine's Day four years ago, before he'd been taken in by Wendy and Jack.
His heart plummeted from his heart to his stomach, and he nearly wanted to vomit, but he covered it up it with a mask of cold indifference and looked off to the side until he could collect himself. Katou didn't apologize; if he started now his list of sins was so long that he'd never stop. But he had to make it right somehow. Of course, starting by attacking Setsuna with hugs on a busy street probably wasn't the best way to do it. Especially not with the way people were looking at them now.
"What isn't?" Katou asked, looking back at Setsuna and managing a weak grin to turn it into a joke. "Long time no see. What's it been, four years or something?"
Setsuna was already disarmed by physical touch that wasn’t violent, that didn’t come from his sister. His mind brought her back up, heart wrenching at the mere thought of how bad he missed Sara. But the addition of Katou jesting with him with self-deprecating humor, trying to talk to him like they had ever been on anything than the worst of terms, Setsuna was left speechless and unable to move right away.
Any of the anger he wanted to shove into Katou’s face was momentarily side-stepped, and while part of him wanted to initially punch Katou just having to see him, Setsuna physically didn’t react. There was something in Katou’s pause, face indifferent or not. The disconnect between when Katou first saw him, and his words. Setsuna couldn’t place it, but Katou’s face had almost looked to be beaming at first. It had been an expression Setsuna couldn’t have imagined on Katou’s if he wanted to, and certainly he couldn’t feel himself make that face at seeing this person.
While he managed to not physically engage with his boiling rage, the tone out of Setsuna was a red-hot poker, the words meant to be vicious barbs, an aggressive protective barrier he threw up with narrowed eyes and an angry expression twisted his pretty features.
“Not long enough,” Setsuna snipped as he stepped back, hands shoved into his blue jean pockets. “What do you want? Ruining lives back in high school wasn’t enough for you?”
At least most of the crowd started to move away when nothing interesting took place after the initial hug; less eyes.
Katou opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He could argue that he was different now, that he'd changed over the last four years, but how true was that really? He might not be bullying people anymore, but hadn't he nearly ended the world in January? He was still ruining lives.
A part of him told himself to make some flippant remark and turn and leave, but this was Setsuna and he couldn't do that. Maybe this Setsuna wasn't the Setsuna from the dreams that he loved and admired, but there had been something about Setsuna even in high school that has drawn Katou to him. He hadn't handled it well, but Katou rarely handled anything well, especially not back when he'd been high. He pulled a pack of cigarettes and pulled one from the pack with his lips before turning the open pack toward Setsuna.
"I leave my life ruining to special occasions these days," he said, not smiling anymore. He shrugged. "That or people who deserve it. You don't deserve it." He lit his cigarette and took a drag. "You never really did."
When he wasn’t punched, and no caustic remark returned, Setsuna, wide-eyed once more, blinked. His shoulders were slightly raised, pulled close to his body as possible, but he didn’t move back any further. His eyes flickered to the offered pack of cigarettes, then back to Katou’s face as if expecting him to be playing a prank.
It took his words to catch up to Setsuna’s mind. Maybe he should have been more gracious? Most people change in short periods of time, at least that was something he saw in the mental hospital. Let alone four years…? Maybe he was being - NO! He wasn’t ready to accept letting go of his protective measures.
But he did reach for a cigarette, still flickering his eyes between it and Katou’s face, waiting for a hit, to have the package pulled away, or his hand smacked. When nothing cruel happened he snatched it quickly.
There was some pain in Katou’s words, maybe not his tone, but his word choice was the kind of guilt Setsuna found echoing in his own mind. He had nearly ruined Sara’s life, after all.
“Well, I kinda did. I was trying to bang my sister, right?” Setsuna eased off of Katou, his anger and emotions turning inward, as they had been for four years. “Anyone would have done what you did.” They had worked so hard to get Setsuna to focus on “healthier” relationships. Sara was still all he thought about - they couldn’t cure him of that. But they did verbally beat it into his head that other people would see their relationship as disgusting. And Sara would have had such a hard life.
“You saved Sara, if you wanna look at it that way.”
Still unsure, Setsuna lifted the cigarette up, eyes quickly scanning to make sure his sleeve didn’t dip too low as he did; “So did you lace them with something?”
Katou frowned a little at Setsuna's words. Trying to bang your sister was generally frowned about in polite society, but Katou had dreamed enough to know that it was more than that with Setsuna and Sara. He flicked on his lighter so that he could light Setsuna's cigarette for him.
"No, I've been more or less clean these last three years." Well, if you didn't count his relapse at the beginning of the year, after he'd nearly ruined everyone's lives. Or the fact that he still smoked weed and drank. "No need to worry about me lacing much of anything these days."
He took a drag of his cigarette, and rubbed the side of his head, his cigarette still caught between his index and middle finger, then exhaled. "You ask me, being in love with your sister is probably better than giving her a black eye on the night before her wedding." Or that he'd attempted worse in the dreams. "I don't think Sara needed saving. Not from you, anyway."
Gratefully, Setsuna leaned forward, cigarette in his mouth, and lit the tip. His fingers lightly gripped the stick, and he breathed in heavily, letting the smoke fill his lungs. He regretted it, only to cough after, forgetting he had been parted from even those for four years. Sure, he had snuck a couple when he could, but he had to take it easy every time. He probably wasn’t going to be chain smoking in the near future - he had always been pretty good about just having them occasionally, anyway.
Setsuna wouldn’t count weed and drinking - also things he hadn’t done in a while. His expression went blank of thinking of Katou as clean. It felt like he should feel more, but he just didn’t. He would have given more compassion to the others at the psychiatric ward in the same position, but this….
As soon as Katou tried to say Sara didn’t need saving, as soon as they were talking about her again, Setsuna breathed in, more carefully, and his eyes trailed to the ground.
Exhale.
“Thanks for the cigarette.” Setsuna didn’t even say Katou’s name.
Setsuna turned on his heel and started to walk away - his eyes were burning. Another word of this, and it felt like he might cry.
Katou worried his lower lip. He didn't need the connection he had with Setsuna in the dreams to know that he'd fucked up, but even replaying his words he couldn't figure out what he'd said.
Well, aside from the obvious, which was that Setsuna was still upset from the way Katou treated him in high school, which… was entirely fair. He was used to thinking of Setsuna as a bit of an idiot who was entirely too forgiving, but that was a different Setsuna, with different circumstances, who was technically an adult and probably hadn't gotten very far with that naive forgiveness act that usually, somehow tended to work out for him in the dreams.
"Wait, Sets," Katou called, and jogged the few feet that Setsuna had gotten ahead of him while Katou had tried to muddle his way through everything. He fell into step beside him. "Listen, I was an ass to you in high school, and that's putting it mildly. I ain't proud of it, but I don't remember much of it. Not because it wasn't fucking awful but because I made it my business to not remember much of anything back then." He rubbed the side of his head, pretty sure that he was muddling up this whole apology thing someone. "I'm not like that anymore, and, you know, I was kinda hoping we could be friends or something. You can even take a free swing at me if you want."
When he was younger, he lived in Japan, and there using family names - last names - was a way to show respect. He had tried to adapt to the American way of using given names when his family moved to California, but since everything that happened, Setsuna had resorted to family names again. This time, it was to maintain a distance.
He turned when Katou spoke to him, his eyes glassy, clearly about to brim over, but his tone was annoyed, voice a bit thick.
“Don’t call me that! We’re not close,” he said, and it sounded harsher than he meant to.
Setsuna’s expression softened after, looking almost pained. “Sorry…. For snapping.” Hearing Katou’s offer, it was clearly an apology, and an attempt at making amends. He felt guilty for losing his patience, considering that. But why did Katou seem so desperate to be friends? Why was this so important to him?
“Look, we all did stupid shit in high school. I put a couple o’ guys in the hospital myself,” Setsuna admitted, sheepishly putting his free hand through his hair, down behind his head. This conversation, at least, was helping him keep the tears from falling. “What you did started a chain reaction of events that ended badly for me.” His tone was stern. But, like his expression, the edges softened out when he spoke again.
“But how it ended wasn’t your fault. I don’t know about friends, but I forgave you long ago. Don’t go beating yourself up about it, okay?” As tempting as Katou’s offer to punch him was, he wasn’t going to take it. What was the point? It was all in the past, right? Sometimes he wasn’t sure where that line of thinking came from - not from therapy - but there were times it helped him get by. This was one of them.
He wanted to leave, again, after saying that, but Setsuna couldn’t get himself to walk away, not after Katou already chased him down. The least he could do was give Katou a chance to respond. He took another drag of the cigarette to stall; an attempt to be aloof.
Katou bit his lip. He'd seen people on the Network wondering about how to treat people that they'd dreamed of, who hadn't dreamed of them, but he'd gone so long without the experience that he had assumed it was never going to be one he'd have; he had a whole new appreciation for their troubles now.
"Right," he said, a little awkwardly. He'd grown up in America, but had gone almost exclusively by his last name, Wendy, Jack and Kanan being the exceptions, ever since he had been hit by a car when he was a kid and learned his father had only named him Yue so that he'd die young. The revelation probably shouldn't have surprised him so much, given that the kanji he'd used was generally a marker for the deceased. At least in America he never needed to use the kanji for his name.
"Setsuna, then," he said. Even the thought of calling him by Mudou, like he had in the early dreams, felt wrong and he wasn't going to do it.
He wanted to ask exactly how things had ended for Setsuna, and where he'd been the last few years, but he had the feeling this wasn't the time or the place.
"Give me your phone," he said, holding out his hand, not giving much room for argument in his tone.
He didn’t see the point in making an issue about being called Setsuna, as long as it wasn’t so affectionate as Sets. That was too much.
Setsuna exhaled, his smoke slow and steady. He tried to take his time with everything, but when Katou asked to see his phone, he offered it out without pause. Only after did he consider he should have made sure Katou wasn’t going to run away with it.
On the other hand, if Katou was up on his tech, he might notice it was three years old, at least, and the connection icon in the top right hand side was crossed out - he wasn’t on a network, unable to afford it at the moment. Setsuna’s phone was currently nothing more than a telephone book, and had some notes in it. It also made a great alarm clock. Considering that, Setsuna figured if Katou ran off with it, it wasn’t much of a loss. That, and Katou had seemed so sincere, he couldn’t help but believe he had no ulterior motive.
Katou wasn't terribly up to date on his technology, but he did notice that Setsuna's phone wasn't actually connected to anything, and he frowned. When he'd been homeless, he'd only had an old flip phone that used duct tape to keep the battery in place, but at least he'd had a connection. Of course, he'd needed it with his "job" back then.
"Pathetic," he snorted, even as he opened up Setsuna's contacts. He only used his right hand to use the phone. While the glamour attached to his watch kept his left arm looking and feeling like it was made out of flesh, he still couldn't use touch screens with it, but he tried to make it look busy with his cigarette. Even one handed though, Katou was pretty quick at entering in his number, and he shoved the phone into Setsuna's chest. "You need anything, you give me a call," he said, and then frowned, wondering if Setsuna was even able to phone people. Were payphones still a thing?
With one hand holding his cigarette, Setsuna used the other to give Katou his middle finger for his commentary. He didn’t bother defending his situation, though. He didn’t want to discuss that. The phone was the last thing his father left him with, and it would have to do. He did, however, blow smoke in Katou’s general direction.
Payphones or no payphones, Setsuna had no plans to call Katou for anything. He was doing his best not to rely on anyone, especially after he had been cut off the way he had. His isolation was taking a toll.
Setsuna gave a quick, hollow, “Sure,” to Katou’s offer. He put the phone in his back pocket. If nothing else, he wasn’t going to delete the number, though.
Katou's lips quirked at Setsuna's one finger salute, but frowned again at Setsuna's completely unconvincing 'sure'. He didn't buy it at all, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it. Except maybe track Setsuna down himself later, but that sounded like a whole lot of unnecessary work. "I mean it," Katou said, hoping Setsuna would at least remember that, even if he didn't listen.
“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” Setsuna grumbled, but he noted Katou’s insistence. It pulled at him, and he almost wanted to contact Katou later. Almost. He didn’t want to dump his issues on Katou, if he could help it. No one deserved to get pulled into his bullshit.
It was best if Katou just never saw him again, Setsuna told himself as he walked away.