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When Katsuki comes home and is met only with silence even though the door was unlocked, he knows Hitoshi’s mission didn’t go over well.
“Fuck,” Katsuki mutters as he toes off his shoes and then takes the time to throw on a ratty shirt and soft sweatpants before he goes to find Hitoshi in the bathroom.
Just like Katsuki knew he would be, he’s curled up in the bath, pressed into the far end, his arms around his legs and his face buried in his knees. It’s still unbearably hot in the bathroom, so he can’t have been there for long yet, which means that Katsuki wasn’t that far behind him.
Good.
“Hey,” Katsuki says and sits down next to the bathtub, reaching out to card his hand through Hitoshi’s damp hair.
“Go away,” Hitoshi mumbles and it makes Katsuki snort because they have done this enough times for Hitoshi to know that Katsuki isn’t going anywhere when he’s like this.
“Mission not go well?” Katsuki asks even though he knows the answer, because why would Hitoshi be in here otherwise, but sometimes it helps him to talk about it.
“Fuck off,” Hitoshi grumbles out and okay, fair, but it’s also clearly not a talk about it kind of day.
“What do you need?” Katsuki asks because for how often they have done this, he is still incredibly shitty at figuring out what kind of help Hitoshi needs at any given moment.
Katsuki just knows that until Hitoshi tells him to please leave him alone, he’s needed here.
“Don’t know,” Hitoshi whispers, pressing his face more firmly against his knees and Katsuki slides his hand down his neck and rests it in on his shoulder.
“Okay,” Katsuki nods. “Alright. How about I tell you about my day then and when you get bored you tell me to fuck off again?”
“Didn’t do me any good the first time.”
“Ah, important things need to be said three times, don’t you know that saying?” Katsuki teases and just like that a fraction of the tension in Hitoshi’s shoulder’s bleeds out.
“Fine,” he eventually gives the go ahead and Katsuki jumps straight into a play by play of his patrol today.
Nothing really exciting happened, but Katsuki is enough of a hater to work himself up over some small stuff a random citizen or one of the sidekicks at the agency did and by the time he’s done, Hitoshi is a wrinkly prune but he has picked his face out of his knees and he even cracked a smile or two.
Katsuki calls it a win and so when Hitoshi starts to shiver in the noticeably cooler water he doesn’t hesitate to flick his head.
“Let’s get you out of there.”
“I’m not done moping,” Hitoshi argues, but the does stretch out his leg to get the plug out.
“You can continue moping on the couch, where I can keep an eye on you while I make food,” Katsuki says with a roll of his eyes and Hitoshi blinks up at him with huge eyes and Katsuki just knows that the asshole is going to test him.
“Aw, you do care, you sweet little man,” Hitoshi coos out and Katsuki tries to smother him with the towel he was in the process of handing him.
“See if I ever care again,” he grumbles, but Hitoshi doesn’t even say anything because they both know that when Hitoshi ends up back in the tub because a mission went to shit Katsuki will be right there.
“Yeah,” Hitoshi sighs out and takes the towel from him. “Yeah, I think we will see.”
~*~*~
Katsuki is still shaking when Hitoshi somehow manages to shove him into the apartment. Sure, Katsuki got checked out by medical, but even they can’t do anything about—shock, or whatever the hell this is and so he was released with strict instructions to take a few days off.
Fuck that shit.
“Let’s get you into the bath,” Hitoshi says, as he tries to take off Katsuki’s jacket and Katsuki snaps at him like a rabid dog.
“Like hell,” he growls out and kicks off his shoes.
“Katsuki, you need to take a bath—
“And breathe? Yeah, fuck that shit, I’m not some whiny ass bitch like you are,” he snaps out and he knows it’s unfair and he will need to apologise for that later but right now his hands are still shaking and he can still feel that body crumble in his hands.
“No, but you’re goddamn filthy and I will not let you track a trail of blood through the entire apartment,” Hitoshi snaps right back and it’s just vicious enough to make Katsuki blink and pause.
“Fine,” he eventually relents, but still shrugs off Hitoshi’s hands when he tries to steer him into the right direction because Katsuki is not some invalid who can’t do this alone.
They get into the bathroom and Hitoshi doesn’t hesitate to run a bath for Katsuki, who watches him from his position at the door.
“Get undressed,” Hitoshi says with a look over his shoulder and Katsuki snarls at him before he slowly gets to peeling his clothes off.
They are uncomfortably wet, still, and Katsuki doesn’t look down at all the blood that must still be sticking to his body.
Hitoshi doesn’t have any qualms about that because he points towards the shower.
“Rinse off, you’re covered.”
Katsuki gives him the middle finger, but it’s more out of habit than any real feeling because he can no longer muster any kind of emotion. It’s as if stepping into the bathroom has sapped him of all his energy and Katsuki makes quick work of the shower, because he’s swaying on his feet and he will not give Hitoshi the satisfaction of falling flat on his face.
By the time he gets out of the shower, the bath is done and Hitoshi simply stands there as Katsuki submerges himself into the almost scalding water.
He doesn’t mention the heat though, because it feels good and clearly Hitoshi must know that, given how many hours he already spent in the exact same position.
“And now what?” Katsuki snaps out after a moment and Hitoshi shrugs.
“Now either you tell me how you’re feeling or you listen to me blabber on about the most inconsequential things. Your choice.”
“And if I want you to fucking leave?”
Hitoshi hesitates briefly before he shrugs again.
“Then you tell me to leave and mean it. I will.”
Katsuki already has his mouth open, but no words are coming out and so instead he buries his face in his knees. His position is an exact mirror of how he usually finds Hitoshi when he’s in here and just like Katsuki always does, Hitoshi reaches out to card his fingers through Katsuki’s hair.
“Alright,” Hitoshi mutters and then starts recounting his entire day, while keeping the soothing motion up.
It does wonders to relax Katsuki; the warm water and the gentle fingers sapping the tension right out of him and Hitoshi’s deep voice keeping him tethered in this bathroom.
It’s—good, Katsuki has to admit and he tilts his head a bit, just enough to blink up at Hitoshi.
“I hate that this is working,” Katsuki mumbles and Hitoshi snorts out a laugh.
“Yeah, I’m not usually in there for the fun of it.”
“It doesn’t help with everything, though,” Katsuki says and flexes his fingers because he can still feel the blood on his hands.
“I know,” Hitoshi sighs out. “At first I thought it would; get the water scalding enough and it would burn off all the failure of my skin, but it doesn’t work like that.”
“Then why not just take a shower and be done with it?” Katsuki wonders, but he already knows the answer.
It’s so much more complex than that.
“Cause that doesn’t help either. It’s—a combination of things, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“You’re important for that combination,” Katsuki whispers out because he doubts that any of this would work even half as well if Hitoshi wasn’t there, scratching at his neck and trying to take his mind off things.
“As are you,” he easily gives back. “I think—if I knew you would do the same for me on the couch, I’d be okay with just a shower after a mission gone bad, but when I’m in here I just know you’ll come in and you’ll stay until I’m ready to leave.”
Katsuki flexes his hands, watches how they are pruning already and thinks maybe this set up sucks.
“You never said. You never asked.”
Hitoshi huffs out a breath.
“Because it’s not that easy. Could you have asked for any of this right now?” He doesn’t even wait for Katsuki to shake his head before he goes on. “I can’t either. Asking for help in a situation like that is—I don’t think I could do it. I just need you to know that something is wrong and when I’m in here you do. And then you do something about it.”
Katsuki hides his face back in his knees, because he gets it but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.
Silence settles over the bathroom as Hitoshi continues to card his fingers through Katsuki’s hair and even when Katsuki’s haggard and uneven breaths start to echo in the room, he doesn’t say anything.
He’s just there and Katsuki is glad for it.
They stay like this until Katsuki starts to shiver in the rapidly cooling water and then Hitoshi squeezes the back of his neck.
“You ready to come out yet?”
Katsuki wants to snap at him, wants to hiss ‘No’ at him, but he finds that he actually might be. Nothing has changed, that death is still on his hands because he wasn’t fast enough but it’s already a little bit more distant now and Katsuki almost hates how well this works.
“Yeah,” he sighs out and gets out of the tub when Hitoshi hands him a towel.
He dries himself off and then throws on some clothes Hitoshi hands him and before he knows it Katsuki is bundled up on the couch. It’s different from being in the bath, but not bad and when Hitoshi sits down next to him Katsuki finds himself relaxing.
“We could come up with a sign,” Katsuki says apropos of nothing and he can basically feel the confusion radiate off Hitoshi.
“Like what?”
“Like—that ugly ass cat statue your dads gave you,” Katsuki says and he’s glad for the spark in Hitoshi’s eyes because it means Katsuki gets to take his mind off things for a little while longer.
He doesn’t doubt that Hitoshi will make him talk about things later, because it’s what Katsuki does to him, too, but for now, easy banter is kind of what Katsuki needs.
“Excuse you!” Hitoshi says and shoves Katsuki. “My papa made that during his pottery class.”
“And it looks like shit,” Katsuki gives back but he can’t deny that he’s fond of the stupid statue, otherwise he would have long thrown it out.
“It’s a masterpiece.”
“Of shit, maybe,” Katsuki shoots back and when he laughs at Hitoshi’s outraged expression it doesn’t even feel forced.
“And you wanna use the shitty cat statue as a sign?” Hitoshi brings them back to Katsuki’s original point.
“Yeah. Set it on the table if one of us is doing badly. Like that we don’t have to prune in the bath but we also don’t have to ask.”
Hitoshi hums in thought, his eyes fixed on the statue but eventually he nods.
“Sounds like a plan,” he agrees and then dumps a blanket on Katsuki’s head. “But for today, we’re already here.”
“Yeah, we are,” Katsuki agrees as he bundles himself up under Hitoshi’s watchful eyes and Hitoshi seems to understand that Katsuki is not yet ready to talk about anything because he switches on the TV.
“Now, baking or something going boom?” he asks and Katsuki snorts out a laugh.
“Baking,” he gives back because he knows it will make Hitoshi groan, and he does exactly that.
“Ugh, shouldn’t even have asked,” he grumbles under his breath but he finds Katsuki’s favourite show with ease and Katsuki does notice that the episode that starts to play is not the one where he left off.
Katsuki narrows his eyes at Hitoshi, who keeps his glued to the screen but in the end, Katsuki decides to let it slide.
Instead of starting a fight he lists to the side until he rests against Hitoshi’s shoulder and they settle down like this.
It’s not perfect and Katsuki will have nightmares for a while but it is good. And Hitoshi’s presence is making up for way more than half of that.