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The doors to the grand hall slammed open, and then quickly closed. “Let us begin,” began the queen’s booming voice, filling the lofty hall. A boy dangled between two guards, shirtless and very obviously bruised, with his feet barely grazing the ground. The queen shuffled a small pile of papers, and then gazed down beneath her golden spectacles to read the words on the page.
“State your name,” she boomed, gazing down upon the captured boy.
Almost immediately, his head snapped up. “Fuck you,” he shouted, his voice echoing off of the walls.
“I said, state your name.”
“Fuck you. No.”
The queen nearly hissed. “Do as I say, rat.”
“Like I said, fuck you. No.”
The prince, sitting to the right of the queen, stared at his hands. He really hated court. The queen and the boy continued arguing, and eventually it became so loud that the prince had to cover his ears. The castle staff and townsfolk present were beginning to make quite a ruckus. “Mother,” he said, leaning toward the queen. “This isn’t worth your time. State his sentence and send him back to the jails.”
“Mm,” the queen began, silencing the crowd, “Prince Eijirou makes a good point. You have proven yourself unworthy to be pardoned. You have been accused of four counts of assault and four counts of battery. And, due to your behavior in my courtroom today, you shall also be charged with slander and insulting the royal family. I decree that your sentence shall be one year in the castle dungeon. Now, guards, take him away.”
The guards, eager to be out of the courtroom, hastily dragged the boy away.
The courtroom emptied quickly, like water draining from a cracked pot, and the queen and the prince were alone.
Soon, they were gone, too.
Eijirou was tasked with taking meals to half of the prisoners every day. He didn’t mind too much; most of them were pretty nice, and he never had to deal with any of the really scary ones. Most of them just seemed to be grateful for the meal.
However, this one prisoner never wanted to even talk. And Eijirou wasn’t even sure if he ate, or if he just threw the food down the toilet hole in the back of his cell, because he refused to ever touch the food Eijirou brought him. At least, when the prince was there.
Every day, that prisoner was the last one Eijirou visited. All the previous prisoners said hello, asked how the weather was outside, and asked about the news. He’d answer their questions as much as he was allowed to, gave them their meals, and then left. In the end, he rolled around to the cell at the very end of the hall, and, in response to his greetings and pleasantries, got nothing.
Today, though, things seemed to be different. The boy looked agitated.
“Hello,” Eijirou said, smiling his big, bright smile. “Are you hungry? I hope so, because I brought you extra today. You look like you’re losing weight, and I didn’t want you to starve.”
The boy growled, like some sort of wild animal. “I don’t need your pity.”
“Oh, it’s not pity! I just wanted to help you out.”
“Oh, it’s definitely pity,” the boy spat. “Why should you care about a prisoner? You’re a prince, for god’s sake. You have better things to care about.”
“Actually,” Eijirou said, his smile bleeding into his voice, “I don’t have better things to care about. Just take the food, this once. Please?” He slid the tray of food through the hole beneath the bars.
The boy looked warily at the meal. He noticed that it really was more than usual. Slowly, he approached it, eyeing the prince to make sure he didn’t make any moves. Finally, he sat down before the prince, before digging into the meal.
“Ah! You’re eating. That’s good,” Eijirou said, sitting down a little way away from the bars. “Hey,” he began, “what is your name? I know you wouldn’t say it in court, but I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
The boy eyed him. Why did he want to know? It was all very suspicious. But the boy’s mind was a bit hazy from hunger, and it wasn’t fully back to normal yet.
“Katsuki,” he said. “My name is Katsuki. Don’t wear it out, short stuff.”
Eijirou grinned. “That’s a manly name. I like it.”
Katsuki glared and looked away, going back to stuffing his face.
There was never anything big going on in Eijirou’s kingdom; the biggest thing that had ever happened in his lifetime was the queen announcing to everyone that he was engaged.
Oh, yeah. That, Eijirou thought to himself. He didn’t quite like thinking about it. The idea of being engaged to someone he didn’t even know made his stomach do a couple of laps and a somersault or two. And not only that, but his fiancé was missing. Like, literally a runaway. And that didn’t exactly sound like fiancé material to Eijirou.
But there was no point in getting hung up on that. He didn’t have a choice in the matter, and his mother had already made that incredibly clear to him.
He had begged and pleaded to not have to go through with the marriage. He wanted to pick who he was marrying. He wanted to get to know his future husband, to go through all the ins and outs of courting (whatever that entailed) without the forced-marriage thing hanging over their heads. But his mother was having none of it, and locked him in his room for a week until he came to his senses.
After that, he’d learned to keep his mouth shut about it. He just had to hope that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Eijirou kind of wished that interesting things that weren’t detrimental to his life plans would happen sometime.
Eijirou was good at making friends. He made friends with just about everyone he met. So, he had a lot of friends, and after a while, Eijirou decided that he and Katsuki were friends.
Or, at least, Katsuki was talking to him. So, maybe not friends, but definitely on speaking terms, and Eijirou decided that was good enough for him.
“Hey!” he chimed as he approached Katsuki’s cell. “Delivery!”
Katsuki growled, “Stop sounding so damn cheerful all the time. This is the last fucking place to be cheerful,” and took the tray of food from Eijirou’s hands.
“Oh, but it’s the best place to be cheerful! The dungeon’s so dreary that it’s a nice change of pace to see a bright, sunny face like mine, don’tcha think?” Eijirou was grinning from ear to ear, his sharp teeth on full display, and somehow his smile managed to be too bright for Katsuki to look at. He turned away.
“Yeah, sure,” Katsuki mumbled through mouthfuls.
Eijirou sat down outside the bars, like usual, swaying back and forth. “So, any new life story to tell me?” he joked.
He hadn’t expected to actually get anything.
“Y’know, those dickheads who got me thrown in here ought’a at least be in here too,” Katsuki hissed. “Those fuckers were guiltier than me.”
“What?” Eijirou asked, tilting his head like a dog. “What’dya mean?”
“The guys I beat up. Y’know, ‘cause that’s what I got thrown in here for? They were pickin’ on me, saying that I was a pipsqueak, that I was too weak to take ‘em on. They were saying they were gonna beat me up and rob me. What else would you expect me to do but beat some sense into ‘em?”
Eijirou was stunned. “You mean it was self-defense?”
“Yeah. Who the fuck goes around just beating people up for no reason?”
Eijirou laughed. “I dunno, you look like the type to do that.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Katsuki barked, glaring daggers at the prince.
“I dunno. You’re just really manly, y’know, and you look all rough-and-tumble and all that. It’s really not a bad thing, though, promise!”
Katsuki huffed and sat back, pushing the tray that Eijirou had brought him back under the bars. “If you say so.” He paused, as if he wanted to say something, but stopped. “Don’t you have better shit to do than sit here talking to a prisoner?”
“Yeah, sure I do, but I’d rather do this.”
“Fuck off,” Katsuki said, joking but not seeming like it. “Go do whatever the fuck. I’ll be here tomorrow.”
Eijirou got up off of the dungeon floor, grinning, and said his goodbyes, heading up the stairs and back up into the castle.
There were some things Katsuki missed about home, and a lot of things that he didn’t. But one of the things he really missed was a soft bed. And internal heating.
It was really cold down in the dungeons. He figured that the royal family didn’t care enough about their prisoners to heat the dungeons as well as the castle, and why would they? They would probably be happy if some of the prisoners got hypothermia in the winter and died. Less prisoners to deal with in the spring.
But they really could at least give them blankets or something.
He wanted his bed back.
Damn those stupid fucking street rats.
One day, when Eijirou was visiting, Katsuki noticed that he was shivering.
“Hey,” he barked. Eijirou looked up from his bright pink hands. “You’re cold, aren’t you?”
Eijirou looked almost guilty. “Yeah. I probably should’ve worn something warmer down here. But I felt kinda bad doing that, since all of you don’t have anything warm down here, so why should I?”
In the middle of the night that night, Katsuki was woken up by the sound of shuffling in the corridor outside his cell, and the sound of something rustling.
“Who’s there?” he growled.
“Just me,” Eijirou whispered. “Keep it down. I brought you something.”
Katsuki heard a soft thud near the cell bars. He got up, joints creaking, and felt around on the floor for it. It was soft beneath his fingers.
“Did you… bring me a fucking blanket?” he mumbled, low and crackly. The winter hadn’t been good to his voice.
“Yeah,” Eijirou mumbled, and Katsuki could practically hear him rubbing the back of his head. “You looked… really cold. And I couldn’t just leave you down here to freeze, y’know?”
“Sure, whatever, Mr. Charity.” Katsuki paused then, hugging the blanket close because he knew Eijirou couldn’t see. Then, so quietly he wasn’t sure if Eijirou heard it, he mumbled, “Thanks, short stuff.”
Eijirou kept up his prince duties, as always. Nothing really changed about his daily routine. But every day, his heart jumped up into his throat as he made his way down to the dungeons. This, at first, seemed incredibly odd; why was he getting excited to go to the dungeons? But after a couple of days of this, he realized that it was because, at the end of it all, he’d get to see Katsuki again. And he found himself going through his everyday prince duties (meetings, meetings, more meetings, and finally, even more meetings) with Katsuki lingering at the front of his mind. He found that he was beginning to look at the clock, counting the hours down, each and every day. And finally, when it was time, he wandered down the dark, narrow hallway, carrying an unreasonably large stack of trays, with the sound of his heart beating in his ears.
He chose to ignore this. Or perhaps he just didn’t think all that much of it.
“Hey, Katsuki!” he’d say, at the end of his long routine, before sliding the last of his trays under the bars. “You doin’ okay?”
“If by ‘okay’ you mean freezing my ass off, sure.” There was a teasing snark in Katsuki’s voice, and it was familiar to Eijirou as if he’d been hearing it his whole life.
“Less freezing than everyone else, though, I’m sure,” and he’d smile, looking pointedly at the gift he’d brought to Katsuki weeks before.
“I dunno. Still pretty fuckin’ freezing.”
Eijirou laughed, sitting down, and waiting to see if Katsuki wanted to make small talk or if he just wanted to eat his meal in silence.
“Want some?” Katsuki offered, holding up a spoonful of rice toward the bars, and Eijirou wondered if he was joking or if he was actually being nice. As if he had any reason to be.
“No, no, I’m good,” Eijirou replied, brushing it off. “I’ve got plenty of food elsewhere.”
Katsuki huffed and turned his attention back to shoving food down his throat.
“Hey,” Eijirou piped up, trying to get Katsuki’s attention. Katsuki looked up, and Eijirou balked. “Oh, uh, nevermind.”
Katsuki gave him a puzzled look, but went back to his meal all the same.
In the end, Eijirou and Katsuki simply made small talk, as usual, and Eijirou went on his merry way with a smile, as always, heading back up into the bright light of the castle.
That night, when Eijirou curled up in his bed, he thought about Katsuki. He wondered where the mysterious boy had come from, and what he had been doing picking fights on the streets.
He wondered if, at that moment, he was cold.
Down in the dungeon, Katsuki was wondering the opposite. Was Eijirou warm, wherever he was, far, far above him? Probably. And Katsuki kind of wanted to be there with him.
“Hey,” Katsuki said first, as Eijirou approached his cell bars.
“Oh! Hey,” Eijirou replied, grinning. “Are you in a good mood today or something?”
“No. Just bored out of my mind,” Katsuki replied, waving Eijirou off.
“Oh. Well, I brought dinner, as usual,” Eijirou said, sliding the tray under the bars as usual and taking a seat on the old dungeon cobblestones. Katsuki dug in as usual, with Eijirou sitting there and smiling his traditional toothy grin.
“Hey,” Katsuki began, looking up. “What were you going to ask me the other day? It’s been bugging me.”
Eijirou’s face lit up. “Oh! I didn’t think you noticed.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I was just… um, curious. About something. But I figured you probably wouldn’t want to tell me, and I thought maybe it’d be rude if I asked, so I didn’t.”
Katsuki looked at him pointedly. “Well? What the fuck was it?”
“What? No, I just said—”
“Yeah, I heard what you said. Nothing bothers me. Just ask it already. I wanna know.”
Eijirou sighed, defeated. “Ah, fine… if you’re sure…
“I was just… wondering where you came from. Like, why you were fighting people on the streets and stuff. That’s not normal commoner behavior, y’know? So I assumed there was probably some backstory there, and I was kinda curious… ‘cause, y’know, I’d like to think we’re friends at this point—”
“We’re not friends,” Katsuki blurted, and Eijirou looked like a kicked puppy. So, Katsuki amended, “You’re the guy that brings me food, and I’m a prisoner. That’s not a friendship. But maybe, under other circumstances, maybe I’d say you were my friend.”
Eijirou’s face lit up again, and his smile fitted back onto his face. “So, anyway, about my question…”
Katsuki sighed, grimacing. “Mm, not quite sure I’m ready to answer that, short stuff.”
Eijirou backpedaled immediately. “Oh, that’s fine! Don’t wanna pressure you! It’s totally fine! I was just curious! And I should probably get going, anyway, ‘cause my job’s done and I don’t want to be late for… something…” He was already up and moving, heading toward the staircase.
And he was gone before Katsuki could say a word.
Eijirou didn’t come back for a few days. Some guard came by and gave everyone their food instead. The guard carelessly shoved the food under the bars, spitting insults at any prisoner who tried to speak to him.
“That stupid prince treats y’all too good. Your dirty asses don’t deserve it,” he hissed at them as he shoved the trays through, making quick work of the job and leaving just as he’d come.
Katsuki wondered if he’d done something wrong to scare Eijirou off.
Their last conversation hadn’t really gone as well as he’d hoped it would. He’d hoped that Eijirou’s question was something stupid, like what his favorite color or food was. But instead, Eijirou wanted to know where he was from. What he was doing here. And it was hard to decide whether he could tell Eijirou, or if that would get him sent home.
Frankly, he preferred this cold, smelly dungeon to home.
He curled up in his blanket that night, and looked at his palms. They were calloused and scarred. He stared at them for a long time.
Katsuki began to think. What if he’d really screwed up, and Eijirou was never coming back? What if he’d screwed up the one glimmer of happiness that he’d had in the last six months of living in this dungeon? He was furious with himself. He could’ve just answered the question. He could’ve lied. He could’ve… he could’ve…!
Suddenly, a loud crackling sound began near his face. He focused back on his palm, and noticed that it was popping with sparks.
“Shit…!” he whispered loudly, covering one palm with the other. He willed the popping and sparking to stop, hoping that no one else in the dungeon was awake to hear it. Eventually, it subsided, and he was plunged back into the darkness of his cell. And slowly, he fell asleep, thinking of Eijirou and hoping that he would see him again.
The next day, at the same time as always, Eijirou turned the corner toward Katsuki’s cell, carrying one last tray.
“Hi, Katsuki!” he chimed, approaching the bars.
Katsuki thought he’d never been that happy to see someone in his life.
When there was nothing better to do, it became pretty interesting to pay attention to every single little detail of another person. Or, at least, that was how Katsuki rationalized it. But, for months, he had been trying to spot any details about Eijirou that he hadn’t already spotted whenever he came down to visit. It had almost become a game that Katsuki played.
And after those few days when Eijirou didn’t show up, Katsuki had started noticing other things: Eijirou had nervous ticks. He licked his lips when he was thinking. He rubbed the back of his neck when something made him nervous. He jumped, sometimes, at small noises. He had a scar that Katsuki couldn’t quite make sense of.
Through this process, though, Katsuki started to realize that he thought a lot of these things were… cute.
And that wasn’t something he really wanted to address. So he didn’t.
But that didn’t stop it from being cute.
“Hey,” Katsuki asked one day, “where did that scar come from?”
Eijirou jumped. It had been silent for a few minutes. “What, the one over my eye? I got that when I was a kid. It’s from, uh…” He trailed off, licking his lips. Then, he held up his arm. “It was from this.” And his arm suddenly hardened, as if it had turned to stone, and Katsuki had to force himself to look confused.
“What…?” Katsuki asked, continuing to feign ignorance.
“It’s… a royal family thing. ‘Cause we’re descended from dragons, or so I’m told. My ears are pointy because of that, too, y’see?” Eijirou pulled back his hair to show off a full ear. “The hardening thing is kinda like scales, I guess. My whole family can do it. It was just, when it manifested for me, I was kinda sleepy, and I rubbed at my face…” He reached up and pointed to the scar. “It cut me pretty bad. My mom really freaked out. But in the end, it really was no big deal, and I just have this little scar from it.” He put on his signature grin, and let his hand fall back to his lap.
“Hmm,” Katsuki grunted, looking back to his food so he’d stop staring so intently at the scar over Eijirou’s eye. “I guess that makes sense.” He looked up again, because Eijirou was silent. He noticed the prince’s hands shaking.
“Hey, Katsuki?” Eijirou lifted his head, meeting Katsuki’s gaze. “Um, about what happened the other day, with the question I asked, I just, uh… I wanted to tell you to just forget about it. It was no big deal, really, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to answer it.”
Katsuki sighed. “Look, short stuff. It wasn’t a big deal, promise.” He’d finished off his meal, so he shoved the tray aside to scoot toward the cell bars. He was much closer to Eijirou than he’d ever dared to get, assuming that Eijirou would make up for the scoot forward with a scoot back. But instead, the prince stayed still, and held Katsuki’s gaze. Up close, there was so much more of Eijirou to see; he had freckles, all over his face. Katsuki nearly had to look away to keep himself from staring. “Here, listen. I’ll answer your damn question if it means that much to you.”
Eijirou’s face brightened. It was so bright, it nearly hurt Katsuki’s eyes. “Really?” the prince asked, and he sounded so hopeful and happy that Katsuki couldn’t possibly turn back now.
“Yeah, sure, short stuff.” Katsuki shifted, realizing that the cobblestone floor of his cell was less comfortable the closer to the bars he got. Not that it was comfortable in the first place. He thought for a moment about how to phrase this story. “I ran away. From home. My mom tried to set up an arranged marriage for me, with a girl, even though I’m only into guys, and she knew that. And I was tired of being forced to wear stuffy clothes and go to annoying meetings and gatherings and dinners and whatever. My mom acted like I was her trophy son, but that just wasn’t my style. So I ran away, and somehow ended up in this stupid fucking cell. That’s it.”
Eijirou had been listening so intently that when Katsuki was finished, he looked like he was snapping out of a trance. “That’s it?”
“What, did you want some crazy fucking marauder story or something?”
“No, I just thought… since you didn’t want to tell me, that it’d be some huge secret or something,” Eijirou said, rubbing the back of his neck.
Katsuki scowled. “Nah, not really. But, god, can you really see me, marrying a fucking princess?”
Later that evening, after everyone else in the castle had gone to bed, Eijirou was lying in bed, trying to sleep. His mind was wandering, as usual, when suddenly, something clicked.
He shot up in bed. “Wait just a fucking second!” he near-shouted, staring down at his hands. “He said princess. Nobody’s allowed to marry a princess unless they’re also royalty… which means…” Eijirou looked like his head was about to explode. “Wait a sec. But there haven’t been any reported runaway princes… except… oh shit. Really?!” He held his head in his hands. “There’s no way… right?” He laid back down. “I’m gonna have to talk to Mom tomorrow. Holy shit.”
The next morning, bright and early, Eijirou burst into his mother’s office. “Mom, I gotta talk to you.”
“Eijirou, you know I’m very busy—”
“This is absolutely more important than anything else you have to do.”
The queen set her papers down, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “All right. What is it?”
“Did you tell my fiancé that I was a princess?”
“Eijirou…”
“Did you?”
“The only way that I could get someone to set up an arranged marriage with you was if I did that. No ruler would be willing to send their child off if there were no potential grandchildren involved…” The queen met Eijirou’s gaze guiltily.
“You could’ve just told them I was trans, Mom. Wouldn’t that have been good enough? But, agh, whatever, anyway. Have there been any other runaway princes aside from my fiancé?” Eijirou was starting to realize that he was exactly right.
The queen sighed, looking sidelong at the stack of papers on her desk. “No, Eijirou, there haven’t.”
“And what was my fiancé’s name, again?”
“Katsuki Bakugou. Eijirou, what is the point of all of this?”
Eijirou turned back toward the door. “I gotta go ask someone something first. I’ll be back!” Then, he was gone, the door slamming behind him, with nothing left behind but the sound of his footsteps retreating quickly down the hall.
“Katsuki!” Eijirou blurted loudly as he approached Katsuki’s cell. “I gotta talk to you!”
Katsuki sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Damn, you’re early, aren’t’cha? What the fuck do you want, short stuff?”
Eijirou quickly sat down in front of the bars. “Okay, I have some questions, and I need you to answer them honestly because it could get you out of here. Cool?”
Katsuki sat down in his usual spot a small distance away from the bars. “Yeah, sure.”
“First off,” Eijirou began, holding up his hands and counting off his questions on his fingers, “are you a prince?”
Katsuki’s eyes widened. “I guess.”
“Is your full name Katsuki Bakugou?”
“Yeah. How the fuck do you—”
“You were supposed to be married to a princess of this kingdom, correct?”
“…Yeah. What the fuck does all of this have to do with anything?”
Eijirou was grinning by now. “There’s no princess of this kingdom.”
Katsuki blanched. “What?”
“Just me!”
“What the fuck do you mean there’s—?”
Eijirou laughed. “My mom marketed me as a princess so that she could get an arranged marriage for me. I’m not really happy about that, ‘cause, like, I don’t have, uh, ‘certain parts’, but, y’know, whatever! I’m still just as manly!”
Katsuki was nearly speechless. “So, you mean to tell me that you’re my fiancé?”
“Sure seems like it,” Eijirou replied, trying to hide his excitement and failing.
Katsuki huffed. At that point, he was actually speechless. Eijirou pushed himself up, his cape dragging on the cobblestones, and turned toward the stairs.
“I’ll be back for you as soon as I can. Trust me!” And then he raced off, a red flash that disappeared into the dark stairway.
“Mom!” Eijirou shouted, slamming the queen’s office doors open for the second time that day. “You know that kid that you threw in the dungeon, like, six months ago for fighting some people on the streets?”
The queen nodded. “What about him? And can you please hurry, I still have a lot of work to do.”
“He’s my fiancé,” Eijirou stated, grinning from ear to ear.
“What?” the queen exclaimed, standing from her chair and slamming her hands on her desk. “What do you mean he’s your fiancé? You mean to tell me that the missing prince has been in our dungeon for months, and no one had any idea?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. You remember those questions I was asking you earlier? They were about that kid. I’ve been talking to him in the dungeon for months, and finally something clicked and I realized. He said he was a runaway, was in an arranged marriage with a princess, and his first name was Katsuki. I kinda put it together from there.”
The queen sighed. “Well, I suppose we’ll have to do something about him, then.”
Eijirou felt like he was flying as he raced down staircase after staircase. He slid down banisters adorned with gold, hopped down marble staircases, ignored servants asking him questions, and gleefully slammed open doors. Finally, he pushed through the door to the dungeon, revealing the familiar dark passageway and the staircase that led to his final destination.
The prisoners, who were awake and knew their meal would be coming soon, watched as Eijirou flew past them. Their eyes followed the bright flash of red as it flitted across their cell bars. Finally, he reached the cell at the end. And there, waiting for him, was none other than Katsuki Bakugou.
Eijirou was grinning so wide that it felt like his jaw was going to pop. Finally, with a jingle of Eijirou’s keys, the door to Katsuki’s cell swung open, and the prince was free.
“So, I’m allowed out, huh?” Katsuki asked as he stepped out of the cell. He had the blanket that Eijirou had given him held tightly in one hand. He glanced back at the cell.
“Yeah! My mom put in a special order to terminate your sentence early, so she sent me down to let you out. Now, come on! I’ve got a whole castle to show you.”
Katsuki mentally said a huge fuck-you to the cell, and turned to follow Eijirou out of the dungeons.
Eijirou and Katsuki spent the rest of the day exploring the castle, Eijirou leading Katsuki by the hand. Katsuki saw kitchens, servants’ quarters, bedrooms, ballrooms, and courtrooms, all of which looked practically identical to the ones back at home but seemed somehow brighter with Eijirou there. At one point, he was forced to see that bitchy queen who’d thrown him in the dungeon again, and although it was clear everyone in the room wanted him to apologize for his behavior in court, he refused to. She threw him in the dungeon, so he decided they were even.
Finally, Katsuki was led up to Eijirou’s room. Earlier that day, Eijirou had had some servants fit clothes for Katsuki, and some ridiculously soft pajamas had been left on Eijirou’s bed that fitted Katsuki perfectly.
Next to those was the blanket Eijirou had given Katsuki, freshly washed and fluffy. Katsuki waited for Eijirou to go change before he picked it up and embraced it, burying his face into the mountain of soft fluff.
He’d really gotten attached to the thing during his time in the dungeon. But Katsuki only allowed himself to cling to it for a moment, before he put it back where it had been left and headed off to change. He told himself that it would be there when he came back, and grabbed the stack of pajamas that was there for him.
In the bathroom down the hall, after he’d showered (which was the best thing in the entire world, Katsuki had decided, after having not showered for six months), Katsuki pulled the pajamas on and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked absolutely ridiculous. But the pajamas were so soft, and warm, and they smelled so good that he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He was a little bit pissed off at how much he was starting to care about these tiny things. They didn’t fucking matter to him before, so why should they matter now?
Six months in a dungeon. That was why. Right.
He went back to Eijirou’s room. For whatever reason, the queen had decided that they were to sleep in the same room, which Katsuki was pissed and embarrassed about at first. But when he walked into the room, and Eijirou was there, in ugly, bright red pajamas, curled up around the blanket he’d given Katsuki, and drooling, Katsuki stopped being pissed for once in his goddamned life. The kid was so fucking cute, and for once, Katsuki didn’t have the heart to be mad about it.