InsaneJournal

Who: Setsuna and Katou (with some background Michael Glass)
What: Setsuna has a bad Dream, calls Katou
When: Mid-August, while Katou and Michael were in Hawaii
Where: A hotel room in Hawaii, the homeless shelter Setsuna's staying at
Ratings/Warnings: Violent Dreams and Setsuna interrupts some quality Michael/Katou time
Status: Complete


It was the middle of the night, and not all that dark, or a very private setting, but Setsuna still managed to sleep, almost accustomed to the humdrum of one of the few homeless shelters that allowed overnight guests. He didn’t sleep for long that night.

Setsuna woke up with a shiver, breath rapid, as sweat beaded down his face. He sat up in his sleeping bag and looked around the room, stunned. No one seemed interested in him, so he took that mean he didn’t scream, at least. Over the years of fights, bullying and abuse, Setsuna was no stranger to hyper-real violent dreams. This one, however, caused him to put a hand over his mouth while he tried to calm down.

Sure, Katou had roughed him up in high school; a few other guys had, too. Setsuna had also dreamed of having a fight with Katou in a cafeteria - not one he had ever been in before - but that was high school. It was years ago, and, more importantly, ever since they had run into each other, Katou had been - for Katou, at least, even if Setsuna hesitated to use the word - sweet. The dream he had was more like a nightmare, and confusing. If he left out the odd part about someone taking over his mind, and someone else in Katou’s mind, he had just dreamed about murdering Katou.

He could still feel the hilt of a sword in his hands, see the frightening amount of blood splatter and spill. Where there should have been guts were wires, and he could still feel Katou’s body grow cold in his arms.

Horrified, Setsuna ducked into his sleeping bag and wrapped his arms around his stomach and tried not to vomit. Eyes closed, he tried to get rid of the sensation of his world tilting and spinning. Was he really such a horrible person he subconsciously wanted to murder this guy? Someone he was beginning to want to call a friend? What the Hell did the wires even mean?

Once he was no longer dizzy, before he could register the act, Setsuna had his phone in his hands, Katou’s name tapped on the screen, and could hear the familiar buzz of ringing in his ear. Only then did he consider the timezones. Hawaii was a little behind them, though, so it should be okay, right? Crap. He should have just sent a text. This was going to be weird, wasn’t it? It wasn’t too late to just hang up and send a text, he told himself.

It would figure that Katou’s phone would ring just when things were starting to get good. Not that things ever weren’t good when he had Michael’s hands all over him like this. He was so lost in the Micahel of it all that he almost missed it when his phone rang.

He swore, breathlessly, and reached for his phone. If it was work or something else unimportant, he swore to god he was going to throw his phone in the goddamn ocean after he called whoever it was back and yelled at them about learning how to use text messages. He wasn’t expecting the name that showed up on his display instead. Oh, sure, he had told Setsuna to call him if he needed anything, but he hadn’t actually expected Setsuna to follow through. Whatever it was that had prompted Setsuna to call him, it obviously had to be important, and for the first time on their idyllic vacation, Katou cursed the fact that he wasn’t home to keep Setsuna safe.

“It’s Setsuna,” he said, putting a hand on Michael’s chest and pushing him away. “I gotta take this.” He tried not to feel too guilty, or disappointed, when Michael actually rolled off him, muttered something darkly, and made his way to the balcony with Katou’s cigarettes.

“You don’t even -” Katou started, but he cut himself off. Michael probably deserved a smoke or two, whether he smoked or not, and Katou turned his attention back to his phone.

“This better be important,” he said into the phone, not quite able to hide his breathlessness or his irritation.

At first, the sound of Katou’s voice relaxed Setsuna’s distress; the dream faded to mere background noise. Right, this had been a dumb idea, like most of his impulsive actions. It was just a dream, and Katou was perfectly okay.

The right word combination with Katou’s agitation, while mild, made Setsuna wince. Yeah, a text would have been better, but it was a little late now. He was, no matter what, still a terrible liar, but he tried to make his voice sound as neutral as possible, though there might have been a quiver in his tone at the start. The slight pause while he sorted himself out was likely obvious, too.

“Ah, no. It’s not. Sorry about that,” Setsuna said, quickly, then aimed to hang up before Katou could respond. At least, that was his intention.

Instead, in his flustered frustration, Setsuna’s finger hit the speaker button before he, annoyed at himself, tossed his phone to his sleeping bag. He sat on the edge of it, curled up, and hissed out, “Fuck.”

Did Setsuna just… try to hang up on him? First he’d interrupted Katou at the worst possible moment, and now he was trying to hang up on him?

“You know I can still hear you, right?” Katou said, hoping that Setsuna could still hear him. “Now tell me why you actually called or I’ll kick your ass when I get home.”

Setsuna tensed, wide-eyed as he looked at the phone and realized, yeah, he hadn’t actually hung up.

He gave another round of, “Fuck!” but with more emotion, took the phone off speaker and picked it back up. Setsuna took a deep breath to calm down, then tried to put some cheer in his voice as he said, “Look, really, I just wanted to make sure things were going well. You should go back to whatever you were doin’. You sound like you need a vacation.”

There was no time wasted on fighting Katou’s threat.

“Oh yeah, you just called me out of the blue in the middle of the night because you wanted to see how I was doing, I definitely believe you,” Katou said, the sarcasm dripping off his voice. “Now spit it out now or I’ll catch the next flight home and make you tell me.”

“Stop threatening me! Or I will hang up on you!” Setsuna snapped back, finally less shaky. But he still didn’t threaten Katou in return. Maybe that dream affected him a lot more than he thought, but the idea of Katou kicking his ass felt...fair. At the very least, he couldn’t bring himself to fight it, even in jest.

“Just go back to relaxing. I’m fine. I just got stupid for a moment, okay?”

“If you hang up on me I’ll just call you back until you pick up,” Katou scoffed, but he’d take Setsuna at his word for now. He was too stubborn to be threatened anyway. He sighed, rubbing the side of his head and glancing out the balcony door at Michael. It was tempting to just let Setusna hang up, but knowing him he was probably lying in a ditch somewhere bleeding to death while trying to tell Katou everything was fine.

“Listen, Sets...una. If you don’t tell me I’m just gonna be thinking about whatever it was until I get home and I’m not going to be able to relax,” he said, almost surprising himself with his candor. “So if you don’t tell me what it is, you’re just going to ruin the rest of my vacation anyway and then I’m going to be pissed.”

He didn’t care if Katou was pissed at him, but if he really did make Katou’s time difficult? Setsuna would hate himself. At least, more than he already did.

Setsuna ran a hand through his hair and decided to just make it quick so Katou would go back to whatever it was he was doing before. Curled up in a ball, he readjusted the phone, and closed his eyes, his mouth ran off before he had a chance to think about his words.

“It was….” Another pause while his throat tightened. “I just had this fucked up dream about hurting you. I didn’t think I still had that much animosity toward you, so I felt guilty. It was super real, too. I guess I kinda wanted to hear your voice and make sure you were okay.”

Damn, now that he said it, he sounded pathetic, and he wished he hadn’t, but he was too tired to keep arguing. And Katou really had him worried he would ruin Katou’s vacation.

“See? Really stupid. And I’m fine. I feel like an idiot now, so let me go,” Setsuna muttered into the phone, hoping no one else in the shelter heard him.

Katou was silent for a long time. Maybe there was a chance that Setsuna would have called him if it had been just a regular nightmare about hurting him, but Katou suspected that probably wasn’t the case here. “This was the first weird dream you had?” he finally asked.

Setsuna was unnerved by the silence and about to break it before Katou spoke.

Tone somber, Setsuna explained, “What do you mean by weird? I had nightmares all the time about our fights in school. But I haven’t had any years. And this one was just...more violent than those were. I was just shocked. That’s all.”

“I mean weird, as in felt real,” Katou said, rubbing the side of his head, not really knowing how he was supposed to respond to the fact that Setsuna used to have nightmares because of him. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still made him feel uncomfortably guilty. The fact that Setsuna was even still talking to him after all of that was a small miracle. “Well, I’m fine, so you ain’t gotta worry.”

There was a sigh from Setsuna, then quickly, he insisted, again, “It was just a dream. Nothing real about it.” But at this point, he might as well have been trying to convince himself as much as Katou. Nothing real about it - except for the detail and feeling like he was far away from himself. The punches from the cafeteria scene had hurt, more than mere memory. Distant or not, he could still feel Katou’s body in his arms. There was relief Katou was okay, though.

A frustrated pause, then, tone building to irate, dripping with ill-ease, “Can I go now?” It was just a dream. It was just a stupid dream!

Katou rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t going to argue with him. Especially not when Michael was standing out there on the balcony, smoking his cigarettes. “Yeah, you can go. We’ll talk once I get home.”

Setsuna winced at Katou’s words, not looking forward to Katou’s return so much, not anymore. Any phrase like that was never followed by anything good.

He managed a soft, “Bye. Hope you have a good time,” before hanging up, not giving Katou a chance to say it back, then clutched the phone to his heart.