Chapter Text
The thing about Eijiro is that he’s too kind. Soft, his father would say, curling his lips over his teeth in a disgusted snarl. Princes, future kings, they aren’t supposed to be soft. They aren’t supposed to remind their fathers of their wives, too gentle to be considered anything other than stupid by the brutes who call themselves their husbands.
Eijiro loves his mother, but he’s not allowed to see her much, except for those walks on the beach outside the palace when the sun is setting. It’s the only time she seems happy, really. Away from the palace, away from her husband who doesn’t even glance her way. She runs after the waves, screaming like a child when the salty drops of sea water kiss her feet, laughing at the sky as the orange sun paints her features gold. Eijiro likes that his mother is kind. He likes that she uses her hand to hold his instead of slapping it across his face, like his father does. He likes that her voice feels like honey being poured on a slice of fresh cheese, instead of sounding like Zeus’ thunder during storms.
Eijiro is not what a prince is supposed to be, but he gets to forget it whenever he’s with his mother. She braids his hair, dark like hers and adorned with soft waves that hold only a faint resemblance to his father’s thick curls. She puts flowers in the braids, and he has to remember to let his hair loose again before he gets back to the palace, before he shows up in front of the king. Flowers are soft, and he knows that softness isn’t appropriate behavior for a prince.
“That’s how a prince should be. How a son should be” his father says, one hot afternoon during Eijiro’s eighth summer. Kings, princes and nobles have all traveled to their island; his father is hosting his yearly sports competition, and the strongest and fastest men came from all over Yuuei to display their abilities, under the scorching sun flooding the beach in front of Eijiro’s home.
Some men swim, others fight, others jump and run, their muscles tensing and glistening under the sweat, tan skin reflecting the sun rays. Eijiro admires them, looks at them with something akin to adoration in his reddish brown eyes; he’s small even for his age, boney legs and small shoulders, the size of his body taken by the other boys at the palace as permission to pick on him, to bump into him in the corridor, to steal his dices.
“That’s how you should be” his father says again, and Eijiro follows the line of his thick dark finger, pointing at the other side of the beach. There, Eijiro sees a boy about his age, maybe a little bit older than him, talking to a man that Eijiro assumes is his father, given the likeness of their features.
The boy, however, looks like a polished version of the older man. His skin is lighter than the other athletes’, but has a golden hue to it that makes it look like he keeps his own source of light within him. His hair is a wild mess of honey-coloured curls, and his smirk is wild, confident, dangerous. It might feel odd to see that kind of expression on such a young child, but for some reason it doesn’t really look out of place among his features. From the distance, Eijiro can’t see the exact color of his eyes, but he can swear he sees a glow of red when they dart in his direction for a fraction of a second, before focusing back on the track he’s about to run.
The blond boy is the youngest among the runners, the presence of his youth betrayed by the roundness of childhood softening his otherwise sharp features. Eijiro doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone so beautiful. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be that beautiful. A pang of rage goes through his little body, eyes going from the boy back to his father’s pointer finger. That’s how a son should be.
The boy runs. He wins, and Eijiro hands him a crown made of laurel and orange flowers. Up close, the boy looks even more breathtaking, almost otherworldly. He takes the crown from Eijiro’s hands, and then turns around and smiles at his father, who looks at him proudly and raises a fist in the air.
That’s how a son should be.
“What do you have there?”. Eijiro is alone in the forest outside the palace, seeking relief from the afternoon sun under a tree. He recognizes the voice as belonging to Tomo, the eldest son of one of his father’s advisors. He’s older, almost thirteen years old, and taller than him by a head, with short dark hair and a constantly unamused expression on his pimple-ridden face.
Eijiro holds his little wooden statuette to his chest protectively. It’s one of the only gifts his father ever gave him, and it represents Crimson Riot, one of the greatest heroes of all time. Nobody knows his real name, but it doesn’t matter: Eijiro would like to be like him, one day.
“It’s mine” he says.
Tomo rolls his eyes and holds his palm up, as if he’s expecting Eijiro to give in, to let him hold his precious toy. “Come on, let me see”
“No!”.
Tomo’s eyes are narrowed to slits now. He’s not used to being denied things, and it doesn’t matter that Eijiro is the prince. Tomo knows how little the king thinks of his own son, he knows he won’t ever punish him for bullying a boy too soft to ever be able to stand up for himself.
“I said” the taller boy says, moving closer to where Eijirou is sitting “give it to me”.
“And I said no!”. Eijiro is standing now, and he gets up just before Tomo lounges at him, catching the wooden figure between his sticky fingers and trying to pry it from Eijiro’s hold.
Eijiro’s little arms strain with the effort of keeping the toy close to his chest, even when Tomo starts hitting him on his head, on his face.
A pang of sharp pain goes through his right eye, and warmth starts flooding from his eyelid, running though his eyelashes like a river streaming down rocks, darkening his vision.
Pain and fear make adrenaline rush in Eijiro’s body, and, gathering a strength he didn’t know he had, he puts one of his palms on Tomo’s chest. And he pushes.
The boy stumbles and falls backwards, and Eijiro’s expression of victory quickly turns into horror when he sees red. So much red. Too much red to only belong to the cut above his eye.
The red is pooling under Tomo’s head and over the rock that went right through it, surrounding his skull like a halo. He can see in the boy's eyes that his thread is about to be cut by the three Fates, and he doesn’t want to see it happen, so he turns around and runs, his wooden statuette pushed so hard against his chest it will leave an indent.
It’s a blur, after that. His father is disgusted with him, and Eijiro isn’t sure if it’s because of what he did or because of his reaction to it. He threw up and cried and begged for forgiveness. He’s only nine years old and acting like a child in front of something way bigger than him, but his father doesn’t understand.
“You have to leave” he says “you dishonored me, and the boy’s family wants you dead. Before sunset, you’ll be on a ship, and you’ll be an exile. You’re no longer my son, nor a prince”.
Eijiro doesn’t get to say goodbye to his mother. Before he knows it, he is being put on a ship by his father’s rough hands, and left only with the clothes on his back and his blood-stained toy hidden under his tunic.
He’s been traveling by sea for two days when Eijiro realizes he doesn’t know where he’s going. He has felt in a daze ever since that afternoon in the forest, living in a cycle of nightmares infested by Tomo’s bloody face and waking moments spent staring at nothing.
The crewmen don’t really consider him. He’s too small to even be useful scrubbing the deck or helping with the ropes.
There’s a sailor busy cutting up vegetables and bread in the far right corner of the deck. His hair has been bleached by the sun, and his tan skin is covered in faint freckles. When he hears Eijiro’s steps, he looks up and smiles, and the corner of his eyes crinkle. When his face relaxes again, Eijiro notices that the inner parts of the wrinkles around his eyes are lighter.
“Hey there, boy” the sailor greets him. His voice is deep, powerful, but it doesn’t sound as threatening as his father’s. It rumbles, but in a way that is comforting, like when he’d hear the meat stew boil in the big grey pot in the palace’s kitchen.
“H-hello” Eijiro says. He’s not used to talking to adults. Well, he’s not used to talking at all. His father never deemed his thoughts worthy enough to hear, and the other children either avoided him or picked on him. Either way, there was never much room for conversation.
The man chuckles. “What are you looking so uptight for? Name’s Taishiro” he says. Eijiro doesn’t say anything, and his hesitation makes the man laugh again and slap a hand on the softened muscles of his belly.
“That would be your turn to introduce yourself” he continues, nudging Eijiro with the side of the knife he’s holding.
“O-oh! I’m Eijiro Kirishima, princ-”. EIjiro cuts himself mid sentence, and the man raises a blond eyebrow, studying the child in front of him.
I forgot I’m not a prince anymore, Eijiro thinks, and that I can’t use my family name, either.
“Kid?”
“I’m Eijiro. Just Eijiro”.
The man chuckles again. Eijiro is starting to think he laughs more than he talks.
“Alright, “just Eijiro” it is. Wanna help with lunch?”. The boy nods and sits down next to the man, who hands him a knife and some vegetables, and starts cutting.
Taishiro doesn’t seem bad. Eijiro sits in silence, mostly, while the sailor rambles about the places he saw, the people he met and the weird fish he’s eaten. He doesn’t seem bothered by the boy’s silence, either, jumping from one topic to another with practiced ease, and Eijiro starts to feel his shoulders relax for the first time in days, or maybe in years.
Taishiro doesn’t really pay him any mind, but it doesn’t feel bad like it did back at the palace.
He doesn’t feel his eyes sting like when his father would ignore him, or whenever the other children would leave him behind or never asked him to play. It felt comfortable, like the sailor was respecting his space and his time, confident that he would talk whenever he felt ready to. At the same time, Eijiro felt like he still acknowledged him by constantly talking.
For the first time in what felt like his entire life, Eijiro felt worthy to have around. This sailor who had never met him before had asked him for help and decided he was someone he wanted to tell his stories to, and it felt good. Before even realizing it, Eijiro’s lips were curling into a smile, and after a while he was chuckling along with Taishiro, chuckles that would turn into full-blown laughter soon enough.
“Where are we going?” Eijiro asks abruptly, taking advantage of a moment of silence while Taishiro turns around to grab his shirt and wipe his eyes, watery after yet another fit of laughter.
For a moment, he sees something in the man’s eyes. Joy, maybe? Or pride, perhaps.
“Shit, kid, ever heard of Kamino?” he asks, and Eijiro shakes his head.
“Well, I’m not surprised, it’s only a tiny little island after all. But maybe you’ve heard the story of the king, Masaru?”. Eijiro shakes his head again.
“Well I’ll be damned!” Taishiro laughs, slapping a huge hand on Eijiro’s back and making him fold forward. “I know what to talk about while we eat dinner”.
Kamino. As Taishiro said, a tiny little island, nestled among bigger ones, covered in olive groves and little creeks; a nice place, seemingly peaceful, but definitely nothing to tell home about.
What made the island famous was, however, the royal family. It was said that the king, Masaru, had married a goddess, Mitsuki, ruler of light. Together, they had a son, who was not only beautiful, but destined to do great things, to have his name and his deeds sung and passed down from generation to generation, never to be forgotten.
And Kamino was going to be Eijiro’s new home.
He stands, petrified, before the wooden walkway that would lead him from ship to dry land, from his former life to his new one, one he will have to live alone, without a name nor a home.
Something nudges his back, and as he turns around he’s met with Taishiro’s belly. He didn’t realize how big the man was when he was sitting, but now that he’s standing Eijiro realizes that his entire body is probably the size of one of his legs.
Eijiro cranes his neck to look at him in the face, and sees that the sailor is looking down at him with a raised eyebrow and a curious expression. “So?” he asks “legs stopped working?”. Eijiro swallows. “No, it’s just -” “Oh, come on, boy!” Taishiro booms, and before Eijiro knows it, he’s being hauled over one of his shoulders and carried to the other side of the walkway.
“So, that bad?” Taishiro asks, good-natured, as he puts him back on the ground. Eijiro shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything.
Taishiro furrows his brows, as if he’s trying to read his expression, but before he can open his mouth again, a man with a royal flag approaches them, and Eijiro knows he’s there for him.
“Thank you for telling me your stories” he tells Taishiro, the bitter taste of something that resembles sadness on his tongue, before he turns around and starts following the man who is already walking back towards the palace. “Of course, but…”.
Taishiro’s voice follows him even as he’s leaving.
“Will you be alright?”. Eijiro doesn’t answer and keeps walking, not knowing that he’s leaving a worried looking sailor behind him.
“The king isn’t at the palace at the moment, so you have to introduce yourself to the prince first” is the only thing the guard tells him, before leaving him in front of a big wooden door.
The palace is nice, simpler than the one Eijiro grew up in, albeit bigger. Or maybe it simply felt bigger because of the lack of unnecessary decor; after all, their queen was a goddess, they didn’t need mundane things to prove their worth.
Eijiro doesn’t know how to introduce himself to people; his father always simply quickly introduced him as his son and just as quickly dismissed him. He sighs, and knocks on the door a little too hard, scraping his knuckles.
A voice comes from inside the room, telling him he’s free to enter.
Eijiro’s hand trembles on the metal handle. What's the prince like? Is he older? Younger? Is he kind, or will he slap and mock him like all the other boys did back home? He probably needs to make a good impression, since he’s a guest in his palace. He’ll have a much harder time if the prince decides he doesn’t like him.
Eijiro sighs one last time and pushes the door, entering a white room decorated only with a simple bed, a cabinet, and a wooden lounge chair. A boy is laying on the chair, playing with the string of a slingshot. He doesn’t get up when Eijiro comes in, but turns his head to look at him, brown eyes shining red in the afternoon light. The look on his face is curious, sizing Eijiro up and down.
That’s how a son should be.
It’s him. The prince is the boy who won the running competition almost two years before, the one who took the crown made of laurel and orange flowers from his hands, the one his father wished was his son. The one Eijiro decided he was going to hate for being everything he couldn’t.
“What's your name?” the prince asks, and his voice is clear and sharp, deep for his age. For some reason, it makes Eijiro even angrier, and he pushes his nails into the palms of his hands until they leave pale, crescent moon shaped indents.
“Eijiro” he answers. The prince nods, as if he agrees, as if there was a right answer to his question, and Eijiro got it.
“I’m Katsuki” he says, before going back to playing with his slingshot “you can go now”. Eijiro leaves.
The first few weeks in Kamino are uneventful. Eijiro sleeps in a big room with all the other boys that have been taken in by king Masaru, and during the day he trains in the palace’s backyard. He hasn’t made any friends, really, but this time his loneliness isn’t unwelcome. If before it was due to the other children seeing him only as someone to pick on, this time it was because the other boys found him odd. Eijiro suspected that it was because the true reason why he was in Kamino had gotten out, and while most of the children avoided him, they wouldn’t bully him, maybe for fear of getting hurt themselves.
They leave him alone, mainly, and he spends his free time playing with dices, or climbing trees trying to spot bird nests.
He almost never sees the prince - Katsuki - only at dinner. Apparently, during the day he receives a private education, too noble to mix with the rejects; sometimes Eijiro forgets that he’s not only a prince, but a demigod as well.
At dinner, Katsuki never talks to him, and Eijiro for sure doesn’t make an effort to get closer to him, unlike all the other boys.
They know the prince will soon have to pick a companion, a therapon, someone who will always be by his side, fight alongside him and advise him in future political decisions, and they all hope they’ll be the one to be chosen. Being a prince’s therapon is already a privilege, and they can’t imagine the glory of being the companion of a demigod.
Katsuki basks in the attention. He’s nice to everyone, for the most part, as a prince should be, but sometimes his words are sharp and almost rude. When it happens, all the other boys suck in a breath, but none is ever brave enough to call him out for that.
So Eijiro eats alone, sleeps with only the ghost of Tomo to keep him company, and the days go by.
The first time Katsuki addresses him is during a game. It’s one of those rare occasions when the prince has decided to play with the rest of the boys instead of spending the day doing whatever godly things he does, and they have settled on a relay race.
The yard isn’t too long, so they’re splitting in pairs. Eijiro isn’t expecting to find someone willing to play with him, so he simply stares at the other boys, busy yelling at each other to pick the teams.
Almost all of them are gathered around Katsuki, begging him to run with them. “Please, you’re the fastest!”
“I’m fast too, prince Katsuki, we’ll win for sure!”
“I’ll give you my cheese for a month!”.
Eijiro snorts, and feels something on his foot. A small, emerald green lizard has decided to climb his foot instead of walking around it, and its little feet tickle his skin, making him giggle.
He watches as his new friend gets down from his foot in favor of a nearby rock, where it perks up to examine its surroundings.
“You”. A voice makes him raise his head. It’s Katsuki’s, he’s looking at him, and so are all the other boys around him.
“Me?” Eijiro asks. He’s sure he’s missed part of the conversation.
“I want you to play with me”. What?
“What?” asks a boy with crooked front teeth. The other boys look just as incredulous as him. And, well, Eijiro does too.
Eijiro swallows. “Sure” he manages to say, although his throat has gone dry.
Katsuki makes a pleased expression and signals the boys around him to move so he can walk closer to Eijiro.
“I’m, uhm… I’m not that fast, prince Katsuki” Eijiro says.
The blond boy looks at him with his reddish eyes, too bright to be entirely human, as if he’s studying him.
“I’m fast enough for both of us. And you have long legs. You’ll manage”.
They run. Katsuki is faster than any boy, man or animal Eijiro has ever seen. He tries his best, too, and he runs until his feet bleed and his legs hurt. They win.
At dinner, Eijiro catches Katsuki looking at him, one, two, three times. He looks like an owl, perched up on a table, a curious look in his wide eyes as he studies him.
He’s playing with some berries, throwing them in the air and catching them in his mouth, making the other boys cheer.
“Eijiro!” Katsuki yells, out of the blue, and throws one of the berries at him. He catches it between his teeth, and the boys cheer again.
After that, Katsuki smiles and retires for the night, followed by the rest of the boys soon after.
Eijiro.
That night, Eijiro dreams of Tomo once again, but this time, the memory of a clear voice chanting his name brings him back to the living.
Days go by, then weeks, then months, and Eijiro doesn’t seem to be able to get a full night of sleep without having Tomo, with his head split and bleeding, come to him in his dreams. He understands that it’s his right, that it’s understandable that he wants revenge on the living boy who ended his life too soon, but still, Eijiro wishes he’d stop. He’s not even eleven years old, and he’s alone in foreign land, facing things that are too big for his bright eyes and thin shoulders.
He hasn’t talked to Katsuki, either, not since the afternoon of the relay race. He kind of wishes he could hear Katsuki say his name again, his voice like the soft stream of a mountain creek, his southern accent rolling the syllables of Eijiro’s name on his tongue just as though he was singing.
Eijiro shakes his head as if he could push the thought of the other boy out of his ears. He doesn’t care about the prince. He hates him, actually, he has hated him since the athletic competition at his former home so many years back. He hates that he’s beautiful, he hates that he’s strong and capable, and he hates that his father is proud of him. He hates that he’s still a prince.
Eijiro walks the corridor from the great room to the backyard, where the other boys are already getting ready for a day of training. He’s alone, since the others ate his breakfast quickly and ran out to play before Eijiro had a chance to finish his honey-covered bread and his milk.
As he walks, he spots a small door reserved to the palace’s staff, and he sees a small strip of grass connected to the forest, where some women dressed in long white tunics are hanging laundry on a rope tied between two trees.
Eijiro gets an idea.
He doesn’t want to train today. He hasn’t slept well, Tomo’s bloody figure branded on the inside of his eyelids by Morpheus’ hand.
He can’t go back to the room he shared with the other boys, that would be the first place where they would look for him once they found out he’s skipped training.
But he could run. He could run past the women and go into the forest and spend the day climbing trees and spotting bird nests and hearing the seagulls chant over the sea.
Who knows, maybe he’ll meet his lizard friend again.
Determined, Eijiro approaches the door, waiting for the women to be distracted. He doesn’t think they’d stop him, but maybe they’ll tell a guard about the kid running full speed towards the forest, and they’ll find him and he’ll get caned before he even gets to have some fun.
So, when two of the women turn around to pick up more laundry to hang and another is busy making eyes to a stable boy, Eijiro plants his feet and sprints. He runs past the women with ease, even if they squeak in disapproval when he slams face first into the freshly hung laundry, making a cloth fall on the ground.
“Hey! Boy!” he hears one of them yell, but he ignores her. He’s too drunk on the feeling of freedom, of disobeying for what seems the first time in his life, his legs taking him further and further away from the palace that is yet to feel like home, closer to the shaded peace offered by the trees hiding the view of the sea from the palace.
You have long legs, he remembers. He grins.
“My father said that Sekijiro wants to whip you”.
Eijiro gasps, almost letting go of the tree branch he’s dangling from. “What are you doing here?” he asks, lowering himself back onto the ground and coming face to face with curious red eyes. Prince Katsuki shrugs. “I was visiting my mother and I saw you. From the cliff” he answers simply, pointing in a generic direction beyond the trees.
His mother. Goddess Mitsuki, ruler of light. Eijiro sees the royal family so little that he sometimes forgets that his mother is not a mortal, and therefore doesn’t live at the palace.
“What are you going to do about it?” Katsuki continues.
Eijiro is dumbfounded. “About what?” He croaks.
“About Sekijiro”.
Sekirjiro is a huge man with salt and pepper hair, a former army general in charge of the boys’ training. The training Eijiro decided to skip earlier that morning.
Eijiro shrugs. “I don’t think he will actually whip me. He screams a lot but I think he’s secretly kind” he says.
Katsuki is still staring at him, a gaze so intense it almost looks like he isn’t blinking.
“I don’t know, my father said he was really angry at you” “If you’re that worried, then cover for me”. The prince raises a blond brow. “What do you mean?” “You’re here now. You can say that I’ve been with you all day and that’s why I didn’t attend training. Your father will forgive you, and Sekijiro won’t whip me”.
Katsuki looks like he’s thinking about it, a small crease between his eyebrows being the telltale sign of him weighing Eijiro’s words, before shaking his head.
“That’s lying. Princes don’t lie” he says, and his tone is final.
Eijiro shrugs. “I’ll get the whip, then”.
It’s only when the sun starts setting behind the horizon that Eijiro decides he should go back to the palace. The sun rays are getting colder on his back, and the orange hue painting the trees and the rocks is losing its warmth, turning into a dull blue as Nyx covers the earth with the heavy cloak of night.
As he approaches the palace, fear starts setting in the pit of his stomach. He acted brave with Katsuki earlier, before he left, but now the reality of his punishment is getting closer and more tangible.
Will Sekijiro actually whip him? Will he do it tonight, as soon as he steps foot into the palace? Tomorrow morning, at dawn, for everyone to see?
When he reaches the palace’s main entrance, he’s met with the sight of the same soldier who accompanied him from the port to the palace all those months before. The man has a tired expression on his face, and when he sees him, he sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“You’re making me work overtime, boy. Now hurry up and follow me, the king wants to see you”.
The king wants to see me? Eijiro thinks. This is bad… will he be the one to whip me? Will he send me away?
The boy follows the guard, the rhythmic clack clack clack of the man’s sandals beating on time with the thrumming of his heart, which was threatening to jump out of his chest the more he got closer to the door that led to king Masaru’s room.
The guard knocks on the door, and when from the other side comes an affirmative response, he opens it, nudging Eijiro in with his free hand before closing it behind him, leaving him alone in the presence of the king.
Eijiro has never been alone with Masaru before. He’s rarely at the palace, and when he is, he spends a lot of time in his private rooms, talking to advisors or, Eijiro assumes, teaching his son how to rule.
The few times he’s seen him, it was from afar. The king seemed noble, with his tall and lithe figure, but personable enough. He smiled to nobles and servants alike, and spoke with a soft voice, lacking the sharpness present in his son’s tone.
But now, the king was in front of him, sitting in a wooden chair covered in sheepskin, his soft features rendered hard and tired by the shadows cast by the torches hung on the walls on metal hooks.
Up close, he doesn’t seem as imposing as he did from afar. His body is thin, his hands veiny, and his age is starting to show in deep lines surrounding his eyes and his mouth.
If from afar he and his son look very much alike, the likeness dissipates once you take a closer look at the king.
Where Katsuki is sharp and plump with life, Masaru is weighed down by age and responsibility. Where Katsuki shines as if he’s holding Orion in his very hands, Masaru is dull, his mortality casting a dusty veil on his person.
Katsuki is red and gold and light, and his father is brown and dreary like ground after a drought.
“Eijiro” the king greets him, his thin lips pulling in the resemblance of a smile. He sounds about as tired as he looks, and for a moment Eijiro feels guilty for having caused nuisance to the man who opened the doors of his house to him, who clothed and fed him even though he was an exile and a murderer.
“K-king Masaru” the boy answers, trying - and failing - to mask the quiver in his voice. His eyes are looking frantically around the room. A bed, a writing table, several cabinets. No whip, no cane. Eijiro allows himself to breathe.
“Katsuki has told me why you weren’t in class, today”. He did?
Princes don’t lie, he remembers. The feeling of dread that partially lifted when he didn’t notice any weapon in the room settles back in his stomach, as if a god had his organ in their grip, clutching, clutching, clutching.
“He did?” he squeaks. Masaru nods.
“Katsuki” he calls, and a figure comes out of the shadows near Masaru’s throne. Eijiro had been so focused on the king and his punishment that he hadn’t noticed Katsuki, sitting patiently on a stool next to his father, partially hidden by the evening darkness.
“I think you should apologize to our guest” he continues, and his son nods.
He turns around to face Eijiro and grabs his hand.
“I’m sorry I took you away from your training. It was my fault you got in trouble. Please, accept my apology”. Eijiro’s jaw goes slack, and the inside of his head is chaos. So Katsuki didn’t tell the truth to his father?
Princes don’t lie, he said. But he did. Katsuki lied for him.
“Eijiro, do you accept?” Masaru asks, rubbing his eyes. He’s growing more tired by the minute, clearly wanting to cut the meeting short and get some rest. Eijiro nods.
“I accept” he says.
“Very well. You’re both dismissed”.
“One moment, father!”
“What is it, Katsuki?”
“I’ve made a decision. I want Eijiro as my companion” the prince says.
The king raises one curious brow, interest sparking up in his otherwise dull eyes.
“You want Eijiro to be your therapon?”. Katsuki nods.
He wants me as his therapon? Eijiro thinks. His companion. The prince wants him to be his companion, his closest friend, he wants him to train and eat and sleep and study with him. To be his counselor, his advisor when he will be king. He wants to trust him with his life.
Masaru looks at a loss as much as Eijiro feels, but he hides it quickly.
“I’ve recommended many of the strongest boys to you, Katsuki, and you’ve rejected them all. What made you change your mind?” he asks. His real question is clear. Why him?
Eijiro doesn’t feel insulted, not really, because he feels the same. Why him? A scrawny rejected prince with no family and no kingdom, too weak to fight and too odd to charm.
“I want him” Katsuki answers simply, as if he’s talking about what’s for dinner and not if he’s about to change Eijiro’s entire life with his words.
Masaru looks at his son with an unreadable expression for a few seconds, and then pulls his lips in a tired smile. “Very well. Eijiro, you’ll sleep in Katsuki’s room from now on. I’ll send a servant to prepare a bed for you while you gather your things. Dismissed”.
“What's that?” Katsuki asks, once they’ve settled in his room. Eijiro is sitting in his new bed, right next to Katsuki’s, albeit a bit smaller. He raises his head and sees that the prince is staring curiously at the toy he’s holding in his hands.
He brought it with him to Kamino island, but the first time he removed it from its hiding spot under his bed in order to play with it, he noticed how some blood stains seeped into the wooden figurine.
He saw terrified eyes, a red halo, and heard gurgling breaths. He threw up in the basin next to his bed that he kept to relieve himself at night, then shoved his toy back under his pallet and tried his best to forget it.
Eijiro shrugs.
“You can keep it, if you want. Or burn it. I don’t want it anymore” he says even as his heart aches, placing the toy in Katsuki’s expecting hands.
If the boy notices the stains, he knows better than to point them out.
Eijiro solves the mystery of Katsuki’s secret daily activities soon enough. He expected to find him busy with an education worthy of a demigod, but for the most part, the prince would just play. He did, however, have a tutor named Toshinori, an incredibly tall man with wrinkled skin and dark shadows under his eyes. Eijiro heard that when he was young, he could carry a cow on each arm, and he was so handsome that most women and men would swoon over him.
Now, he was a tired old man who would sigh and run a shaky hand through his straw-colored hair whenever Katsuki skipped his classes.
“That’s not how a prince behaves, young Katsuki. You have to honor your status as a future king and as a demigod, and you can’t do that without a proper education” he would say.
“You’re even making it difficult for young Eijiro to attend his lessons!”.
And Katsuki would nod, apologize, and then shoot a mischievous grin to Eijiro, before grabbing his hand and sprinting through the palace, through servants and guards, to go climb trees, or to play dice, or swim in the sea.
And through those days filled with laughter and play, Eijiro starts to really know Katsuki. The hate he harbored for the perfect prince, for the embodiment of everything his father wanted him to be but couldn’t, started melting under the warm rays of the afternoon sun, rinsed away by the salty water of the blue sea.
Through those days, Eijiro learned that Katsuki likes to watch the sun come up in the sky. He often wakes up before him, nudging him with his foot at first, and then jumping on his bed, smushing their faces together. “Come on, Eijiro, I want to do this and this and that today! And that too!”.
He learned that he visits his mother often, climbing the cliff on the northern side of the beach, usually at dawn or when the sun sets and the light is more intense. The knowledge that Katsuki’s mother is a goddess, that he himself is a demigod, soon became normal in Eijiro’s life. He didn’t feel the need to treat Katsuki with deference, not when he saw him ripping his tunic while climbing a rock, or when he helped him clean his hair after a bird pooped on his head - an incredibly hard task when your eyes are filled with tears of laughter. Or again, when he learned that he pouts when he loses at dice. He wasn’t some otherworldly creature in Eijiro’s eyes anymore; he was just Katsuki.
And the prince seemed to like that. His feelings were betrayed by the imperceptible way his shoulders would relax and his expression become more natural whenever they left the company of the other boys, who would still try to flatter him in hopes that he would change his mind and pick another companion for himself.
He learned that Katsuki picks up things with ease, and while they attended probably only half of their classes with Toshinori, Katsuki would always pay undivided attention to their teacher when he was speaking.
He learned that Katsuki is good at playing the lyre, but has an even better singing voice. He learned that he’s afraid of thunderstorms, but that he likes the smell of rain.
Eijiro shares everything with Katsuki, and while he gets to be part of every aspect of the prince’s life, there’s something that’s forbidden to everyone, even him.
Mitsuki had ordered that none would ever see Katsuki fight.
Before he was born, Nana, goddess of premonition, magic, and protector of women, had a prophecy: Mitsuki’s son would be the greatest warrior ever born, and his deeds would be remembered for centuries to come.
Because of that, Katsuki would train alone, to forbid lesser men to steal his techniques or anticipate his moves. To make sure no man would ever come close to his greatness. The only ones allowed to witness, sometimes, were Masaru and Mitsuki herself.
“Would you like to become a god?” Katsuki asks, one warm autumn afternoon during his fourteenth year. Eijiro is about to turn thirteen, and he knows that Katsuki is drawing him a portrait of a lizard as a present, and is hiding it under his bed.
Eijiro snorts. Early adolescence had taken away his childhood’s gloom, turning him into a bright boy who smiles often and has a loud laugh. He’s not afraid to talk now, and has even made a few friends among the other boys, like Tetsu, who’s his age but twice his size, and has patches of white skin around his eyes.
Even his nightmares about Tomo are now few and far between, and he knows that even if he wakes up in a cold sweat and with a scream stuck in his throat, he will be welcomed by Katsuki’s warm presence in the bed next to his, breathing even and soothing and hair glistening in the silver moonlight.
“I don’t think it’s very likely, is it?” he jokes, and Katsuki chuckles too.
“No, it’s not”
“Why do you want to know?”.
Katsuki sighs, and looks like he’s weighing his answer before letting it roll off his tongue and into the air they’re sharing under the shadow of an olive tree.
“My mother” he says.
“Your mother?”.
Katsuki nods. “She told me she wants me to become a god”.
Katsuki, a god. He sure looks like one, Eijiro thinks, before almost slapping himself at the odd thought.
“Do you want to? Become a god, I mean” he asks.
“I don’t know. I like it here. I like this” Katsuki answers, and Eijiro swears that his hand moves imperceptibly closer to his. “I don’t even know how you become a god. Maybe it’s painful”.
Eijiro nods, and a second later Katsuki is on his feet, dusting off his tunic. Sometimes he moves so fast that Eijiro’s eyes barely catch him.
“Let’s go” he says, watching Eijiro expectantly.
He’s confused. “Don’t you have training?” he asks.
Usually, whenever Katsuki trains, Eijiro spends his time with Tetsu; his friend wants to be a blacksmith, so he watches him forge blades and swoon over the red-haired girl who works in the kitchen.
“She’s so pretty, man, you should see her. I’m sure she smiled at me yesterday, do you think she likes me?” he’d say, before sighing and dramatically slapping his open palm over his heart.
And Eijiro would chuckle and mock his friend.
He didn’t understand what the big deal was, honestly. He saw the girl before and while she was undeniably pretty, her beauty did nothing for him. But he enjoyed laughing at the expense of his friend, nonetheless.
It was normal, at their age, to start looking at girls, and thinking things. Eijiro knew that, but he didn’t share the same enthusiasm the other boys had. While his friends would find excuses to go to the kitchen and peek at the servant girls, he’d much rather hang out with Katsuki.
And if his dreams were sometimes scattered with golden locks and red eyes and fast legs, that was something only he and Morpheus ought to know.
“I want you to come see me train” Katsuki says, bringing Eijiro back into his body.
But your mother forbade it.
And while some part of Eijiro’s mind is retracting in fear imagining the wrath of the goddess of light herself, he also finds himself growing gradually weaker and weaker in front of Katsuki’s requests. If it was up to him, what Katsuki wanted, Katsuki got.
So Eijiro shoves the images of a furios Mitsuki in the most hidden recesses of his brain, and nods at Katsuki, letting himself be pulled up by arms already too strong for a fourteen year-old.
“Race you to the hill!” Katsuki says, and after a moment he’s gone, leaving only his laughter behind him.
“Bastard!” Eijiro yells, as he plants his feet into the grass and sprints forward, following that golden beacon of light up the gentle curve of the hill.
And as he runs and laughs and pants, he realizes that, maybe, he’s truly happy.