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On the third month of living together Katsuki comes home to find soil trailing from the front door, through the carpet in the living room and out onto the tiny balcony that looks out over a depressing view of the alley below.
“Ei.” he says, following the trail and looking down at Eijirou who has a large wooden box on his knees and a slumping bag of potting soil at his side. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Planting a garden.” He says it simply, looking up at Katsuki with large innocent eyes.
“Ah.” Katsuki says, like he understands, though he really does not. He points at the trail in their apartment. “You made a mess.”
Eijirou puffs up his cheeks and nibbles at the side of his lips. “Yeah. Sorry. The bag tore. I was gonna have it cleaned up before you got home. Got distracted though.”
Katsuki frowns down at the arrangement of seed packets that are littered around Eijirou and his mess. “What inspired this?”
Eijirou shrugs, so Katsuki shrugs and heads back inside. He’ll clean up the soil but first he’s taking a shower.
The mess is semi cleaned up when he returns and Eijirou is staring proudly at his Popsicle stick labeled garden. Katsuki supposes, as he tracks down a vacuum, that a little soil in the house is worth it.
“How do you even know they’ll grow?”
Thunder rumbles outside and rain lashes the windows. Eijirou is hovering by the doors that lead out onto the balcony. Watching his little planter flood. He turns and smiles a little sadly at Katsuki.
“I don’t.”
He replants in the morning, only lingering for a short while in remorse for the swamp the rainstorm had turned his project into. Katsuki watches from the kitchen counter, hero costume on coffee in hand, lingering. He watches Eijirou sit down heavily and start to slop out water saturated soil. He talks to himself, or maybe to the seeds that are gone now. Katsuki finishes his coffee, makes a cup for Eijirou and slips out the front door.
Katsuki doesn’t get it. And still doesn’t when Eijirou is still caring for the box of dirt days later. He waters it just enough, never too much, never too little, and shifts the box for the best sunlight. He checks it every morning, no matter how late he may be running, and some nights Katsuki will hear him get out of bed and creep on loud feet to the sink before the balcony doors slide open. He doesn’t get it. But really he doesn’t think he has to.
“Look!” Eijirou had grabbed him almost as soon as he had walked in the door. He’s in his hero costume, but so is Eijirou. Hair spiked up, looking almost unnatural in their front hall. The hand locked around Katsuki’s wrist tugs him out of the front door and out of his thoughts. “Look Katsuki!”
Eijirou points a finger at the dark,vermiculite speckled, dirt. It takes Katsuki a moment but finally he sees it. A tiny green sprout, poking its way out from the dirt. Two tiny little leaves. Bright in their dark environment and reaching up with all the determination of new life for the sun.
“Huh.” Katsuki smiles, not because he’s overly happy about the little plant, but because Eijirou is absolutely ecstatic, his own beam threatening to crack the face piece he’s still wearing. “What is it gonna be?”
Eijirou puts a hand on his hip and considers the planter. “You know, I don’t remember.”
“Guess we’ll just have to see.”
A cat jumps onto their balcony the next morning and topples the planter off the ledge it had been on and down four stories.
Eijirou looks devastated, but he doesn’t yell at the cat or scare it off. Instead he finishes his breakfast and collects the fallen planter on the street below with an apology to a ruffled looking old lady who lived in the apartment that the planter had landed right next to.
He replants it that night and ties it to the ledge.
“I left precise directions on the fridge. You hear me, Katsuki?”
“Yes. For the love of god Eijirou, I hear you and I heard you the other twenty times. I’m not going to kill your garden.”
“Okay. I trust you.”
Katsuki huffs rubbing his fingers into his eyes. It’s early where he is compared to the mission base where Eijirou is going to be stationed for the next five days. His stupid best friend had called immediately upon landing to remind Katsuki about the intricate detailed directions for his garden, as if he hadn’t shown Katsuki twice and gone through it with him step by step that morning.
“You sound tired.”
“Yeah. It’s late.”
“Shit.” There’s shuffling on Eijirou’s end. “My bad Kats. I’ll let you go now. See ya in a few days!”
“Damn right you will and your garden is gonna be in full yield.”
It goes fine. For the first few days. But on the day Eijirou is set to return, disaster strikes. Katsuki had been out late the night before. Something major popped up and kept him from the apartment until the earliest of the morning when he’d finally tripped sluggishly through the door, kicked off his boots and collapsed onto the couch.
He wakes up hot and uncomfortable. His hero costume dirty and straining on his body from the awkward position he’d twisted himself into as he slept on a smaller surface than he was used to. The sun streams right into his face and his mouth feels gross and ashy. Also, and perhaps most importantly, Katsuki has a clear view of the balcony, Eijirou’s planter, and the birds that hop around its interior.
“No.” Katsuki breaths, stumbling to his feet and fumbling with the balcony doors. He flings them open and shouts at the birds. A fat one has the audacity to cock its head at him, the tail end of a tiny sprout disappearing into its beak, and blink like it can’t possibly fathom the crime it’s committing. “Get the fuck outta here you flying rats!” he shouts again, stomping towards the planter and fluttering his hands at the birds. They take flight in a flurry, leaving behind a few tiny gray white feathers, and an empty planter. Not a single budding plant left. Nothing. All gone.
“Fuck.” digging his hands into his hair, Katsuki surveys the damage. There is nothing he can do. “Oh, Eijirou is going to fucking kill me.”
Eijirou doesn’t kill him. He lets down his bag slowly, smile dripping off his face when Katsuki shows him the devastation done to his garden.
“M’sorry Ei.” Katsuki mutters, standing behind Eijirou who is frozen on the balcony. Katsuki isn’t sure what he’s expecting. Maybe tears, which he can barely take on anyone else but on Eijirou make him want to die. Maybe yelling, unlikely because it’s Eijirou. Maybe, and most probable, Eijirou turning to him with a small grin and reassuring him it’s okay.
“Hey man,” Eijirou turns to him with a small grin. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” Katsuki deadpans. “I really am sorry. I promised I’d take care of it and I didn’t.”
Eijirou laughs, reaching out to hug Katsuki, something they had failed to do upon Eijirou’s return. “Pigeons are crazy dude. Glad you just let them have it.”
“What? Why?”
Eijirou pulls away long enough to look at him very seriously. “They might have wanted something more.”
It startles a laugh out of Katsuki. The serious way Eijirou says it. “Like what?”
Eijirou leans in close. He smells like travel and whatever kind of soap the hotel he stayed in provided. Warmth leeches off of him and sinks pleasantly into Katsuki’s bones.
“Your nose.”
Katsuki laughs again, louder, pushing Eijirou’s face away from where he’d whispered the words into his ear. “That’s so dumb!”
When Eijirou replants it, Katsuki sits out with him and reads aloud the clues for one of the crossword puzzles in his American style game book.
“What has eight letters and exists only in the future?” Katsuki looks up from where he’d already penciled in the answer, watches Eijirou’s nose scrunch and his tongue run over his top teeth as he thinks. The last rays of sunlight catch his loose freshly washed hair and the cicada song is loud even in the city.
Eijirou’s big hands handle tiny seeds gently, and pat down soil firmly over and over again. Katsuki looks away from the methodical planting to see the moment he gets it, the way his eyes light up.
“Tomorrow.”
Katsuki is starting to think that maybe Eijirou’s little garden is cursed. It barely gets past the sprouting stage before some terrible misfortune strikes it. A villain ices their apartment. A strong wind blows all of the top soil and seeds away. Bugs eat away at what little growth there is. The cat comes back and uses the planter as a litter box when they aren’t around. Many many times. And with each misfortune Eijirou replants it. Over and over again. Seeds show up on the grocery list more and more.
Now Katsuki isn’t a believer in giving up and he knows Eijirou isn’t either, but this, he thinks as Eijirou chips ice off his planter with a hardened hand, a bag on soil already at his side, is getting ridiculous. So Katsuki, in the straightforward way he says everything, asks.
“Why do you keep replanting it?”
Eijirou looks over at him. Food stuffing his mouth as he hurries to get a good breakfast in before a long day of hero work and maybe no lunch breaks.
“My garden?”
Katsuki would seriously question if it counts as a garden. He nods. Eijirou swallows his food.
“Well I-”
Their phones suddenly blare with an emergency. Cutting off whatever Eijirou was going to say. Katsuki wishes he had stopped him for just a second longer to let him finish.
The next time he sees him he looks dead. Hooked up to copious amounts of machines, barely breathing, a chunk torn out of his side.
‘That weapon grazed his heart’
‘Lucky. Very lucky’
Katsuki had stopped listening to the nurses after that. He hates when people say that. As if being immobilized in a hospital bed is lucky. Machines breathing for you, pumping your heart. Some luck. Really though nothing really seems to hit Katsuki until Eijirou is rushed back to the ICU as his body begins to reject treatment and die . It's there, outside of those doors, that Katsuki falls to pieces. Where every unsaid word becomes agony in the back of his throat, and every memory is tinged with I didn’t have enough time. I want more. I need more. He cries and begs. Pleading with anyone or thing that will listen, that Eijirou won’t die. That Katsuki won’t have to go back to his home and watch it slowly become a house. Please . He stares at the ceiling, the white and blue tiles. Eijirou had once asked about painting a sky on their ceiling in the living room. Please . He needs to tell Eijirou. Needstotellhimneedstotellhimneedstotellhim.
“Hey mom. You still have the key to my place? Yeah? G-good. I need something.There’s a planter on the balcony and a list on the fridge...”
Eijirou wakes up. Exhausted and sick. Weak and weary. But Katsuki is there. Crying openly kissing his knuckles, climbing into the sparse room on his bed. Over the time in the hospital they had shorn his head. Leaving behind black fuzz that Katsuki cards his hands through.
“Eijirou.” he says, relishes the name on his lips as he relishes the living beat of his heart. “ Eijirou.”
“I’m here Katsuki.”
“I know.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course.”
Katsuki touches at his face. Swipes his thumb across protruding cheekbones and the swollen purple under Eijirou’s eyes.
“I love you.”
Eijirou’s lips tick up. “I know.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course.”
Katsuki swallows and breaths, pressing his forehead to Eijirou’s. “And you?”
“Are you asking if I love you?” Eijirou’s voice has fallen. Rasping out of his throat, scraping past chapped lips. “Katsuki.” Soft, chiding. “How could I not?”
“Say it?” Katsuki presses his lips down Eijirou’s face to hover over his mouth.
“I love you.”
Katsuki kisses him.
There are plants tangling the planter when they finally come home. Tomatoes hanging green but fat down past the barriers they were planted inside. Premature peppers and peas unfurl in folds of pastel and dark green. Katsuki watches as Eijirou fawns over his plants, hugs Katsuki’s mom for taking care of them before turning and kissing Katsuki with a smile.
“Why did you keep replanting it?” Katsuki asks again as they lay on the mattresses they pushed together on the living room floor. His arms are around Eijirou’s stomach, keeping them pressed together.
“Remember when you asked me how I knew it would grow?”
Katsuki grunts, “You said you didn’t.”
“Right. And I never did. Once those seeds were in the soil, I had to simply believe that they would grow if I took care of them.” he turns slightly to look at Katsuki. “Our jobs are perilous. I fear losing people I love everyday. And sometimes it gets hard to get up and fight. Life could end any day, but I planted those seeds and I believed they’d come up one day. Not the day I planted them, but tomorrow.” he pauses, searching Katsuki’s face, “Am I making any sense?”
“I think so.” Katsuki says quietly. He thinks back to those days of uncertainty in the hospital. Tomorrow had seemed daunting more often than not and Katsuki had lost sleep making sure that Eijirou’s heart monitor didn’t flat line. He suddenly thinks he understands completely. To plant a garden is to believe that the sun will rise to nurture the growing seeds and will keep rising until tomatoes are silky red, and peppers have unfurled their entire length.
To plant a garden is to think, tomorrow will be better.