Chapter Text
“I swear to God, every time you bring him in here I want to tear my hair out,” Katsuki grumbles.
In the pen in front of him, the sheep is struggling, trying to pull away from the needle in his hand and, without even looking up, Mitsuki reaches across the metal fence of the pen to smack him across the head.
“Maybe if you didn’t have that goddamn look on your face,” she snarks at him. “You know Midoriya’s always been a little nervous and you sneering at him like a gremlin isn’t helping.” She’s busy stroking her hands along the sheep’s wool in an effort to calm him down and Katsuki growls at her.
“That’s because he’s a fucking weakling and he knows it,” he hisses.
At his voice Midoriya pulls harder at the halter securing his head to the fence, his hooves scrambling and bucking against the floor until the metal rattles with the force. Both of them angle themselves away as much as they can without letting go because as much shit as Katsuki’s giving him, he knows from experience that those hooves hurt .
“Katsuki, I swear,” his mom grumbles, “you’re a great vet but you have a sucky bedside manner.” As she talks, she reaches under Midoriya’s head until she can hold him just behind his jaw and press , massaging the pressure point there. Even with all the noise her movements are calm and sure, and eventually Midoriya quiets under her hand.
“You’re the one that asked me for help,” Katsuki grumbles. But he still peers at her out of the corner of his eye, watching without trying to look like he’s watching. Mitsuki’s lips tilt up.
She nods her head at him and he leans forward to probe at the sheep’s thigh, applying pressure before inserting the needle and depressing the plunger. Midoriya starts slightly, bleating as he shuffles to the side, but Mitsuki murmurs at him and, at least in this, Katsuki’s movements are just as confident as his mother’s.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mitsuki says as she works the halter off. She begins to gather their things and Katsuki’s not sure if she’s talking to him or the sheep but he still shoots Midoriya the evil eye.
“Goddamn pain in my ass is what it was,” he growls and Mitsuki swats him again.
“You’re just mad he kicked you so many times,” she laughs.
“That little shit does it on purpose!” he yells as they walk out of the barn to where Inko is waiting for them.
“How is he?” she asks. Her hands are wringing her sunhat and Mitsuki immediately gives her the brightest smile she can and a thumbs up.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be just fine,” she says, then turns to eye Katsuki. “Right?” she asks, nudging his shoulder and he grumbles, snatching his arm away. He’s uncomfortable with this part of the job, much more interested in the mechanics of solving the issue than the customer service, and she knows this, but looking at Inko’s watery eyes he can’t muster up his usual snark.
So instead he scrunches up his face and mutters out an affirmative, kicking at the ground so he doesn’t have to look at her. Inko beams at him anyway, like he’d just told her the best news ever, and he huffs, waiting impatiently for his mom to wrap up the business of billing.
“You’re going to have to get used to that if you want to start your own practice,” she tells him as Inko leads Midoriya out of their barn and to the carrier attached to the back of her car. She waves at them before pulling off and Mitsuki waves back.
“I don’t need that shit,” he says, turning around to walk back to the main building of their clinic. It’s small but busy, the only clinic in Musutafu for as long as Katsuki can remember. He has memories of hanging out there as a kid after school, watching his parents treat everything from turtles to horses until he was old enough to help out, and he wants that for himself, wants a clinic of his own to rival all others. “I’m the best vet in this town, they’ll have to recognize me.”
“Katsuki!” she calls, but he doesn’t answer. They’ve had this conversation a thousand times and he knows what she’s going to say before she says it, so once he gets inside he busies himself putting away their equipment hoping that his mom will take the hint.
She doesn’t.
“That won’t mean a damn thing if people are too afraid to approach you,” she says, following him to the counter as he walks behind it to grab the paperwork. It’s the end of the day and the place is deserted, only the soft sounds of his dad working in the back to break the silence. Normally he would embrace the stillness but now he’d give anything for a distraction.
“If they’re too chicken shit, that’s their problem not mine,” he hisses.
He shoves the paperwork across the counter at her so violently it almost tears, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to yell at him some more. But she only sighs.
“It’s not about them fearing you,” she says as she bends over the forms. “It’s about them fearing what you’ll do to their animals. If they wouldn’t go under your knife how could they surrender their livestock? Their pets?” She glances up to lock eyes with him and hold his gaze, searching. For what he has no idea. Whatever it is she must not find it because she just sighs again and turns back to her work. “It’s hard to trust someone with something precious,” she finishes.
It’s a different spiel than her usual and he feels a little like he’s been skimmed by a bullet - shaken but missing the full impact of what she’s saying.
He has no idea how to respond.
So he doesn’t, just clicks his tongue at her and stomps away to the backrooms. It’s darker back here, quieter, and he lets it press in on him and the stinging in his chest.
“Arguing again?” a voice calls and Katsuki whips up to see his dad watching him from his office, illuminated by the soft light of his desk lamp.
“You deaf? You got ears don’t ya?” he growls. His fists keep clenching, he can feel them where they’re pressed against his jeans, and he wants a fight, something he can actually win instead of all of this hypothetical bullshit.
But his dad only stretches until his back cracks and stands up.
“You’ll have your own clinic soon - a successful one. But until then you’re welcome to work at ours as long as you want,” he says as he steps out of the office to where Katsuki’s standing in the hallway. “We’re lucky to have you.”
He sets a hand on Katsuki’s shoulder and the warmth of it seeps through Katsuki’s shirt. He scoffs.
“You think I don’t know that?” he says. But he doesn’t shrug off his dad’s hand and Masaru smiles at him.
“I’m making curry if you want to swing by,” he says. And then he walks off down the hallway. Katsuki listens to the soft noises of his parents talking in the waiting room then the sound of the front door clicking shut before turning to walk out the back door.
Their clinic is at the edge of the forest, on the outskirts of the noise and pollution of the town, and it’s cooler out here now that the sun’s set. It’s never silent, not completely, but the rustling of the leaves, the droning of the cicadas, all of it helps to focus the static buzzing under his skin.
He takes off his shirt and drops it by the back door, letting the air pebble his skin as he walks further into the trees. It’s a full moon out, and even with the shade of the canopy there’s just enough light to find his usual path through the underbrush. He follows it, letting the frustration from earlier build up again, until he stops in front of his punching bag.
It’s not really a bag, more like a thick mat wrapped around the base of a tree. But it’s perfect for wailing on.
It’s been a while since he last raged and the first punch sends pollen flying out in a cloud around him. He doesn’t stop though, doesn’t even pause, letting loose one punch after another until it’s a flurry of impacts. His arms, knuckles and back are screaming by the time he’s done but at least his mouth isn’t.
He turns around, sweating and panting, and slumps down against the tree until he hits the ground.
It’s irritating.
It’s irritating to have all the skills, all the technical know-how and then some, and still be found wanting. It shouldn’t matter that Inko is the only patron he can talk to - and not even well at that. His work speaks for itself so who gives a damn what people think. If they can’t get over themselves enough to get help for their animals, maybe they don’t deserve them, maybe their animal should die and teach them a lesson-
His hands throb and he clenches them to cut off his thoughts with the pain.
“Some fucking vet you are,” he says. Nothing answers him but silence and he closes his eyes.
When he opens them a while later, there’s a wolf staring at him.
He jolts.
It’s huge, black paws and snout fading into red fur and even redder eyes - an unusual coloring for a wolf but he’s sure that’s what it is, it couldn’t be anything else. It’s less than five feet from him and terror seizes his muscles at the thought of it sneaking up on him without him noticing.
For a long moment, neither of them move.
The wolf’s not snarling - in fact, it actually seems to be going out of its way to make itself seem smaller - but Katsuki’s mind is still running a million miles a minute, doing everything from planning escape routes to wondering how the fuck a wolf wandered into Musutafu’s forest.
It only comes to a halt when he notices the blood.
It’s hard to see with the way it blends into the red fur but now that he’s looking there’s a shocking amount, matting the wolf’s coat and running into its right eye. The wounds must be deep too judging from the way the animal’s holding itself.
It whines at him and Katsuki blinks.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, slowly easing onto his feet. He’s pretty sure in situations like this, people are supposed to make themselves seem bigger and back away. And if this wolf is injured, well that sucks for it but just works in his favor.
He backs up a few steps in the direction of the clinic, mindful of roots on the path and maintaining eye contact.
The wolf limps after him.
He immediately stops, tensing up in case of attack. But the wolf just stops too, whining again and Katsuki’s brows furrow. He takes another step back. The wolf takes a step too. He stops. It stops.
When he came out here he had no idea he was going to be playing red light, green light with a wolf and yet here he is.
“Don’t fucking follow me,” he says, his earlier terror fading into exasperation, and it cocks its head slightly, one of its ears flicking at the noise. “Go back into the forest, you stupid wolf.”
But the wolf just whines at him, edging closer, and Katsuki steps back. He has no idea what’s wrong with this animal but he can think of better things than spending all night with it in the forest. So he backs up, keeping a close eye on the wolf following him, until he makes it to the tree line. He half expects the wolf to stop then, too afraid by the lack of cover to pursue him, but it doesn’t, padding after him all the way to the back door.
“What the hell do you want from me?” he finally asks. The wolf is visibly shaking now, leaving a trail of bloody pawprints on the grass behind it, and Katsuki wants to yell at it, tell it to go somewhere safe where it can rest and lick its wounds instead of following him like an idiot. “I’ll leave you out here, I swear to God.”
It doesn’t answer of course and Katsuki fumbles the door open, slamming it behind him before the wolf can get in. It scrabbles at the door, a much weaker, quieter sound than it should be, and even though Katsuki’s finally safe now, he still feels like his chest is seizing.
Then there’s a thump and silence.
He waits for a couple moments, seconds drawing out into what feels like hours, but there’s nothing, no whines, no footsteps padding off. There’s something clawing up from his seizing chest to his throat and it feels like dread but that doesn’t make sense because it’s just a fucking wolf .
He opens the door.
He’s slow about it, cursing himself to hell and back but still cautious just in case the wolf’s waiting to tear his face off. But when he peaks out the wolf’s passed out on the ground, blood threading through the grass surrounding it.
“God fucking damn it,” he breathes.
He's going to regret this, he just knows it.
It’s too dangerous to move the wolf in its condition so he brings his tools outside. It's miles from a sterile environment but it’s the best he can do and from the look of things he doesn’t have much time. Blood is strange - it always looks like there’s too much even when there’s barely any at all. Not this time though. If he doesn’t fix this, the wolf is going to bleed out. It’s bleeding out already.
There are gashes all along the wolf’s side, one of which that stops just short of its right eye, that need tending to and it occurs to him as he works that this is what he would have thought of as his ideal situation only a few hours ago. No people to deal with, no need for consolation, just a problem that he needs to fix and a deadline to fix it in.
He hates it.
“Don’t you fucking die on me,” he breathes, and even though his voice is a little shaky his hands aren’t. “If you die on me I’ll turn you into fertilizer and feed you to the grass so sheep can eat you. How’s that irony for you?”
By the time he’s done, he’s shaking from exhaustion.
He finishes what he can and then works on bandaging, cleaning the wolf up as much as possible. Then he runs to get a gurney, gently levers the wolf onto it, and wheels him inside to the recovery room. It’s relatively small and lined wall to wall with cages, all unoccupied but for one.
“I know, I know, shut up,” Katsuki hisses as Iida immediately whips up to bark at him. The dog’s still got a cone on his neck from his operation and he looks ridiculous. “Barking my fucking ear off.”
But even though Iida’s overzealous he’s also obedient and he quiets, choosing to pace around his cage and stare at them disapprovingly as Katsuki wheels the wolf to the storage closet at the back of the room. There are more cages inside, among other things, but this closet is relatively unused and the wolf should be fine here.
“Your body’s gonna be hurting like a bitch tomorrow,” he grunts as he locks the wolf inside a cage. But even as he says it, he’s not sure there will be a tomorrow. It’s good work, possibly some of his best, but it’s still a toss up if the wolf will survive the night.
He slumps against the opposite wall and slides to the floor, watching the steady rise and fall of its chest. He should clean himself up, get a shirt, call his parents.
He’s asleep before he knows it.