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Katsuki finds Shouto in the same place he finds him every time he falls asleep: in a hedge-walled garden, centered around a crystal-clear pool with a fountain in the center.
Shouto smiles when he sees Katsuki. “I’ve been waiting for you. Couldn’t sleep?”
“So goddamn impatient,” Katsuki teases, stepping out from the maze of hedges to join Shouto near the fountain pool. “I had to take first watch.”
Shouto hums. “I’ll forgive you. You’re traveling today?”
“Yeah. Some princess is gettin’ married, I guess. Ma said it was disrespectful to our allies if we didn’t go.”
“A wedding? That sounds so lovely.”
“You like weddings?”
“I like the idea of weddings,” Shouto says, before his expression falters. “I can’t remember if I’ve been to one.”
It’s strange how dreams work. Katsuki can’t say he knows anything about them except the things he’s figured out himself. If you’d asked him three years ago if dream-walking was real, he’d have said no damn way. But one night, in the middle of winter – closer to his 19th birthday than his 18th — he’d fallen asleep and found himself in the garden. After a bit of wandering, he stumbled upon a man with red and white hair and mismatched eyes who looked as surprised to see Katsuki as Katsuki was to see him.
And every night after, Katsuki returned to the same dream, with the same garden Katsuki’s never stepped foot in during his waking hours, and the same man he’s never seen before.
Katsuki’s new dream companion wasn’t exactly forthcoming company. Katsuki didn’t know if that was a quirk of the dream or a purposeful evasion, but he only ever answered half the questions Katsuki asked. Which was fucking annoying, to say the least.
And when Katsuki voiced this opinion, Shouto would pout or glare and say something scathing about Katsuki’s manners in that bland, unaffected tone, and Katsuki would wake up with a start in his own bed, unable to fall back asleep.
It took weeks of repetitive nagging, hours spent wandering the endless (possibly exitless) maze, and very abrupt wake-ups before Katsuki became more cognizant that it was, in fact, a dream, and… well, it took a little doing, and a lot of accepting that arguing with Shouto led to nowhere but insomnia for Katsuki, but they’d slowly learned to coexist.
And even more slowly, they’d become friends.
After the rocky first few weeks of dreaming, it became easier and easier to be comfortable in Shouto’s company. Katsuki found him to be earnest and quite smart. Educated, clearly – he knows more about sword-forms than anyone Katsuki’s met, except maybe his dad, who had trained as a knight before he’d married Katsuki’s mother. Shouto once spent a week’s worth of dreams telling Katsuki about a book he’d once read, so vividly it felt like Katsuki had read it himself.
He’s certain Shouto must be a real person outside of the dream, but if Katsuki asks for too many specifics, the dream starts to get hazy. Once he asked about Shouto’s family and Katsuki simply woke up in the next instant, a cold sweat across his brow deterring him from asking again the next night.
So Katsuki bites back his curiosity and questions and the itching desire to meet him under the sun, and instead just enjoys the company of the only person who doesn’t expect anything of him until someone shakes him awake at dawn.
--
They arrive at the castle around midday. They’re greeted by a quiet staff and while the rest of Katsuki’s party unpacks, he and his right-hand-man are ushered to meet the king.
Katsuki doesn’t much care for Enji Todoroki. He thinks there are things he could learn from him, maybe, but more that he could improve upon. He does his best to keep their meeting brief, and it’s mostly a cursory greeting from the monarch of one kingdom to the recently ascended chief of another one anyway. It’s all pleasantries and formalities and Katsuki can’t wait to get out of the stuffy, echoey meeting hall.
Then another staff member leads them toward the wing where they’re staying and Katsuki spots something strange out of the corner of his eye as they pass through the courtyard.
The tip of a tall, stone fountain, surrounded by a hedge of rose bushes. Strangely familiar, in a very unfamiliar place.
Katsuki abandons following the maid to trace the hedges toward the fountain. The center is easy to find, but it’s astonishingly recognizable. The maze he’s seen night after night in endless dreaming is nowhere to be found, but the ring of rosebushes around the wide stone pool is unmistakable.
On the far side of the pool, there’s a glass observatory, tucked under the shade and shelter of the castle walls. It’s there in his dreams, too: empty, and always locked. He’d skipped a rock too far once, shattered a pane and woken instantly. The observatory in his dreams is given a wide berth in the same manner as probing questions about Shouto’s life.
But here in the waking world it isn’t empty, and it isn’t locked either. The doors are wide open, and there’s a strange, glass box laid out in the center with shallow stone steps leading up to it. Katsuki furrows his brow, but as he draws himself up the steps beside it, the slow realization of what he’s looking at dawns on him. A coffin.
Stained glass sides painting rainbows in the candle-lit shrine, with a clear glass top under which nothing is hidden. Katsuki nearly recoils, every nerve in his body protesting that the dead should not be displayed in the open like this, but he stops short as he lays eyes on the body lying still and pale beneath the glass lid and recognizes him.
It’s Shouto.
Katsuki’s heart drops out the bottom of his stomach and he thinks he might be sick.
He stumbles backwards, eyes locked in horror on Shouto’s still, pale face. Quick footsteps approach behind him as Izuku and the maid rush closer. “Oh, Chief Bakugou, my apologies,” she says. “I know the sight can be quite unsettling if you aren’t expecting it.”
“Oh my,” Izuku whispers quietly, making a goddess sign over his chest out of respect.
“Why the fuck is he on display?” Katsuki bites out. He’s seen his man every night in his dreams: smiling, frowning, laughing, teasing. Shouto – or at least the spirit of him who haunts Katsuki’s dreams – is so expressive and vivacious and it pains Katsuki to his very core to see him so… lifeless.
“On the king’s order, my lord,” the maid says. “Or, well, the queen’s request, really. Out of the way, but easily visitable. The happiest medium they could agree on, I suppose.”
“Is it your tradition to keep your—your dead out in the open?” Izuku asks quietly.
“Oh no, he isn’t dead, my lords,” the maid says quickly. Katsuki snaps his head toward her, brows furrowed. “He’s just sleeping, bless his soul,” the maid elaborates. “Cursed sleep, but... sleep.”
“Cursed?” Izuku asks.
The maid glances around the garden as if to see who might be listening. “Tragic thing, that. Poor boy right collapsed after breakfast on his 18th birthday and never woke up again. The mages that the king’s brought here to try to break the curse say that he’ll only wake to the power of true love’s kiss.”
Izuku starts muttering under his breath too quietly and quickly for Katsuki to hear.
“How long ago was this?” Katsuki demands, though he thinks he may already know the answer.
“Oh, well over three years now, my lord. It will be four on January the eleventh.”
“So he’s just been asleep out here in a glass coffin for three fucking years?” Katsuki spits.
The maid nods her head. “On occasion, visiting nobles to try to wake him, if they’re so inclined. You’ll need to speak to King Enji if you aim to try, though.”
Perhaps reading the look of horror and disgust on Katsuki’s face, Izuku leaps forward and bodily puts himself between Katsuki and the maid. “That won’t be necessary, thank you! Can you please show us to our rooms?”
Katsuki casts one more look at Shouto’s sleeping face and swallows the nausea roiling in his stomach as he follows the maid out of the garden and back into the castle corridors to their sleeping quarters.
--
For the first time in his life, Katsuki is afraid to go to sleep.
He’s…
He doesn’t know how to see Shouto in his dreams now that he’s found him in real life. Katsuki has spent years wondering if he would ever find Shouto outside of his dreams, and now the ugly truth has been revealed to him.
Cursed.
Katsuki’s stomach churns at the thought of all those who ‘tried to wake’ the prince before. Those who thought they were good enough to save him without Shouto’s knowledge or- or permission. He can’t be one of them. He won’t.
Izuku reads his foul mood like a sixth sense and finds him easily on the balcony where Katsuki had stolen himself away in the hopes he might have a few moments peace without the looming threat of a bed in his periphery.
“Are you okay, Kacchan?”
Katsuki grunts a non-answer, still staring out at the immaculate gardens below them. He’s walked these gardens with Shouto at his side. He could navigate the labrynth of hedges and rosebushes with his eyes closed. It looks so different from above. He can’t see the fountain from here, but he can hear the water.
It makes sense now: why Shouto’s in the garden. But what Katsuki can’t wrap his head around is how hewound up a part of this.
“Kacchan? Is it about the prince?” Izuku asks softly.
Katsuki turns his head just far enough to look at Izuku. It’s not quite a glare, but the set of his frown brings it close. “They just fucking— put him on display? In what world is that not fucked up?”
“I know, Kacchan,” he says, drawing closer. “I wonder if there’s anything in Toshinori’s notes about curses like this. Though I’d need to know the source or intention behind the curse. Vengeful curses are a lot different to break than other types of malicious curses.”
“Who the hell would—” Katsuki stops himself short. The spirit that visits Katsuki’s dreams might be the most gentle-hearted person Katsuki’s ever known, but he doesn’t know anything about Shouto’s real life. He doesn’t know if he has enemies or grudges. The very fact that he’s a prince could inspire malice against him.
“Kacchan?”
“I know him,” Katsuki says after a long moment.
“The prince? How could you know him? You never traveled this far abroad before you became chief, and he was already…”
“Do you remember a while back,” Katsuki begins, slowly. “I told you about a dream I was having. The same setting every night. No real… purpose behind it.”
“Sure.”
“There was a man there. In the garden in my dream. Every night for the last three and a half years, I’ve dreamed of him. Of… Shouto.” Katsuki swallows hard and meets Izuku’s eye. “Every night since he fell into his cursed slumber, I see him in my dreams. We stand in this garden every single night.”
Izuku’s jaw swings wide. “Kacchan—”
“I didn’t know he was a prince,” he interrupts before Izuku can launch into an interrogation. “Or cursed. Or—or from here. Any time I tried to ask too much about him, I’d just wake up. Which – gods. I can imagine why he didn’t like fucking talking about it now that I know where he’s really been this whole time. He’s been in this godsdamned garden the whole time.”
“You… you seemed like it really upset you when you saw him, so you must… care for him?”
Katsuki’s scowl deepens as Izuku says it out loud, but he can’t deny the truth in the words. He says nothing, and that says enough, to Izuku.
“So you… well, if Kacchan cares for him, maybe you should try what the maid said and—”
“I won’t,” Katsuki says harshly. “He’s had no say in any of it. I won’t be just another nameless noble who tries to lay claim to him. Not when—” Katsuki cuts himself off again, unsure where the sentence ends.
Not when I’d have to face him every night knowing I couldn’t save him.
Not when I love him more than I should love anyone I’ve never touched.
Not when I’m too afraid of disappointing him to try.
“Then maybe Kacchan should tell him about the curse?”
“And how the hell am I supposed to do that when I wake up as soon as I ask him anything about his life?”
“Well, how long has it been since you tried last?” Izuku asks.
The furrow in Katsuki’s brow deepens as he looks away. There’s a squirrel scaling one of the stone statues in the garden. “A few months after it started, I guess.”
“Maybe it’s time to try again? Kacchan wouldn’t like to talk to strangers about his personal life, either.”
Katsuki turns his glare back on Izuku. “And you think he trusts me now?”
“You trust him, don’t you?”
And well… Katsuki can’t deny Izuku has a point there.
--
Shouto beams when he sees Katsuki step into the garden. His smile is small and reserved, but it lights up his whole face. “Hi Katsuki.”
“Hey Sho.”
“What’s wrong?” he asks immediately. “You look upset.”
Katsuki seats himself on the short, stone wall around the fountain beside Shouto. “Yeah, I am.”
“Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to be distracted?” Shouto asks, and Katsuki’s heart clenches. When he finds out which motherfucker cursed this sweet, thoughtful man, he’s going to wring their fucking neck.
“I don’t think a distraction will work all that well,” Katsuki admits. “It was…”
Shouto watches him with concerned attention, silent and waiting for Katsuki to continue.
“I saw you today,” Katsuki says, finally meeting Shouto’s eyes. Deep, endless eyes Katsuki could get lost in. One ice blue and one storm gray. He looks nothing like his father, though Katsuki recognizes the coloring of his left side now.
Shouto blinks. “You saw me?”
Katsuki nods. “Yeah.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell? What do you have to be sorry for?”
“You said it upset you,” Shouto says.
“No, I said—seeing you wasn’t what upset me,” Katsuki says. “I mean it was, but—“ Katsuki huffs in frustration as his emotions trip up the words he’s trying to say. “I’m not upset that I saw you, Shouto, I’m upset about what happened to you.”
“Something happened?”
“You—do you remember anything from when you were awake, Shouto?”
Shouto nods. “Yes.”
“And did you know you’re… cursed?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t want to talk about that once in three and a half years?”
Shouto shakes his head. His gaze has slid from Katsuki’s face to stare at his knees, like he’s ashamed.
Katsuki blows out a breath. “Shouto, who cursed you?”
Shouto glances up through his lashes, eying him warily, and for a moment Katsuki braces himself for the abrupt jolt into the waking world that always follows Shouto’s refusal to continue a conversation. “It was an accident,” Shouto says finally. “I don’t want to tell you if you’re going to blame her, because it wasn’t her fault.”
“Shouto—”
“If you’re going to blame anyone, blame my father,” Shouto says sharply, lifting his chin to look Katsuki in the eye. “He drove her to it.”
“Shouto. Who cursed you?”
“My mother,” Shouto says, and Katsuki feels his heart splinter into a hundred painful pieces. Shouto draws his knees up, heels tucked against the stone, and wraps his arms around them. “She didn’t want more children, but my father insisted.”
“So she cursed you?”
“I told you it isn’t her fault,” Shouto insists. “She…she’s a good mom, but I snuck up on her and she thought I was him so it’s my fault.”
“Shouto, it is not your fucking fault,” Katsuki says harshly.
Shouto buries his face in the hollow between his knees and his chest and says something Katsuki can’t make out. Katsuki gently grasps Shouto by the arm.
“It’s not your fault,” Katsuki repeats, softer.
Shouto draws in a breath and lifts his head, his gaze drifting toward the water. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Three and a half years.”
Shouto nods slowly. He looks resigned, despair written deeply across his expression.
“Shouto, I—I want to help you. How do I help you?”
“You can’t,” he says. “There’s no way to break it. Mom tried to undo it for ten years and she couldn’t. And now I’ve been asleep for three more, and I bet there’s still no one who can. Right?”
The hundred splintered pieces of Katsuki’s heart shatter further.
Thirteen years, and even a mother’s love couldn’t undo the curse brought about by the hatred she felt for her husband. Not even to mention Shouto’s father, or siblings. How much love could possibly exist in this family when it’s choked out by that kind of hatred?
“I’ll figure it out,” Katsuki promises, chest aching with the need to do something. “I’ll find—someone. My friend was the student of the greatest mage on the continent. We’ll find someone who can break it. I’m not gonna let a hundred randos keep kissing you for no fucking reason.”
Shouto’s eyebrows raise as he turns back to look at Katsuki. “Kissing me?”
Katsuki swallows a wave of nausea. “They’re… they say true love’s kiss will break the curse,” he explains haltingly.
“Oh. Love,” Shouto says, like the word is foreign to his mouth. “I guess that makes sense why it’s been so hard to break.”
Katsuki’s shoulders slump. “Shouto, that’s so much worse,” he groans. “Don’t you see how fucking awful that is?”
Shouto shrugs his shoulders. “What am I gonna do about it? Nobody’s falling in love with some guy who’s been asleep for three years.”
Katsuki’s breath catches in his chest. I am, he wants to say. But if Shouto’s own family failed to love him enough to break a stupid curse, who the hell is Katsuki to say he’s enough?
“You deserve better,” he says quietly, instead of all the other words pounding fists at the insides of his brain.
“Will you kiss me?” Shouto asks.
Katsuki blinks, alarmed at the question as if he hasn’t been thinking about it for hours now. “Me?”
Shouto frowns and looks away again. “It’s okay if you don’t want to or it’s too awkward. I won’t hold it against you. I just thought… well, I thought maybe we were friends, at least.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Katsuki tries to explain. “I don’t want it to be something that is done to you.”
“You don’t want to kiss me because I’m asleep?”
“I mean, isn’t that fucked up? That they’ve been letting people you’ve never fucking met kiss you while you don’t even know it? Like true love is something you can have with a fucking stranger? Even if you believe in destiny or fate or whatever, it doesn’t mean someone is just… entitled to you.”
“It’s nice that they’re trying, I guess,” Shouto says, though he doesn’t sound much enthused about it. He meets Katsuki’s eye and bites his lip. “What if we kissed here, first? I’ll kiss you here, in our dream, and then you can kiss me out there, and then we’ll be even.”
There’s a strange emotion building in Katsuki’s stomach. “You want to kiss me?”
Shouto nods, like the answer is that easy. “Yes. You’re very handsome and you’re being very sweet about all this because I think you can tell that I hate to talk about it. And I always look forward to seeing you when you fall asleep.”
Shouto looks down at his hands, palms upturned in his lap. “I don’t know why I ended up in your dreams, Katsuki – or maybe you ended up in mine – but I’m very thankful that I get to know you. If anyone was going to break the curse, I would like it to be you.”
Katsuki sucks in a deep breath and nods once. “Okay. Yeah. Here. You can kiss me here.”
“Really?”
The smile that curls across Shouto’s face when Katsuki nods sets off a swarm of butterflies in his stomach.
“Okay.” Shouto tucks his knee under him on the stone bench and shuffles closer to Katsuki. “I’ve never done it before, so please don’t make fun of me,” he says.
Katsuki just blinks like a stupid idiot as Shouto leans in and presses a sweet kiss against his lips. He’s soft and warm and perfect, and on instinct, Katsuki reaches to pull him even closer.
Katsuki’s eyes pop open in the next instant and he groans, hand falling from the empty air to cover his face against the too-bright light of dawn peeking in the window. His dream remains fresh, technicolor in his memory, and he sighs. He knew it was too good to be true when he didn’t wake up the instant he started talking about Shouto’s real life.
There’s a shout from outside his window that sets off Katsuki’s combat instincts, and he doesn’t even take the time to find his boots before he’s flying down the hall toward the gardens, Izuku and Eijirou on his heels.
There’s a dozen castle staff members gathered in the courtyard and Katsuki’s step falters as he realizes they’re crowded around Shouto’s garden shrine.
“What’s going on?” Izuku asks, voice cutting through the rising sound of chatter.
“The prince has awoken!” One excited butler calls out. Katsuki’s heart skips a beat in his chest and before he even thinks to act, he’s moving—pushing his way through the crowd to see for himself.
Shouto’s sitting upright in the open glass box, looking exactly as he does every night in Katsuki’s dreams. When he lays eyes on Katsuki, Shouto’s face lights up.
“Katsuki!”
Katsuki crosses the last three steps separating him and Shouto with a grin he can’t contain. “Hey Shouto.”
Shouto’s eyes are a little glossy but he looks so, so happy. “It worked.”
“You broke the curse,” Katsuki says with a nod.
“You helped,” Shouto says, and Katsuki melts. Shouto tips his head to the side imploringly. “Are you going to hold up your end of the bargain?”
Katsuki laughs, chest light, as he leans in and kisses Shouto with a tender hand on his jaw. A scandalized gasp rises from the crowd behind him, but Katsuki pays them no mind. Shouto’s lips are just as wonderful as they were in his dream, but the kiss is a thousand times better knowing he won’t wake up from it.
They part after a long moment and Shouto wraps his arms around Katsuki’s shoulders in a tight hug that Katsuki returns in kind.
“Help me out of here?” he asks after a few moments.
Katsuki nods and lifts Shouto easily out of the glass coffin with an arm behind his back and another under his knees. He turns and sets Shouto on the ground but keeps one arm protectively around Shouto.
“Shouto..?”
Katsuki and Shouto both look up to see the princess has pushed her way through the crowd, standing barefoot and trembling in a white dressing gown with rollers already in her hair, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Hi Fuyumi.”
The princess launches herself at Shouto and hugs him tightly. “Oh my gods, I can’t believe you’re awake. I prayed you would wake in time for my wedding.”
“You’re getting married?”
Fuyumi nods eagerly. “Yes! This afternoon!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Shouto says. “I like weddings.”
“We have to tell everyone,” Fuyumi says. “It will be double the celebration now that you’re awake. Oh Shouto, I missed you so much.”
Shouto smiles, a little wobbly around the edges. “I missed you too.”
“I’m gonna go wake Mom, okay? Don’t—don’t go anywhere.”
Katsuki turns his head as Fuyumi scurries off and presses his nose into Shouto’s silky soft hair. “’M gonna go get dressed before I freeze my balls off,” he says quietly against Shouto’s ear. “You wanna go see your family?”
“Can I go with you?” Shouto asks. “I can help warm you up.”
Katsuki snorts. “Cheeky for a man who’s been asleep since his 18th birthday.”
“I have a lot of missed time to make up for. I should have kissed you in your dreams much sooner.”
“You can kiss me any time you want, sweetheart.”
A bright smile that Katsuki will never get tired of lights up Shouto’s face. “I think will.”