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Katsuki watched the messy green curls fade into the hustle of the city nightlife. He knew this was how it going to go. How couldn’t he? After all the things he’s done?
Fuuuuuuck.
He took a long breath, dragging his course hands down his face—he probably looked like shit right now—and dug around his pants pockets for the half smoked cigarette. He picked it up from the sidewalk outside his dingy apartment complex. A old (stupid) habit he developed, and thought dropped, back in Junior High when all he worried about was impressing his scumbag “friends.” The group of boys would pass around thrown out anything and relished in the twisted idea that they were cool.
Katsuki was never cool. He was never anything now that he thought about it.
He shakes the memory out of his mind— throws the cigarette on the ground before making his way to the liquor store he passed on the way. The urge to forget this embarrassing moment burned in his chest. What better way than burying it with some bourbon?
———
He thought about moving states. It’ll save him and Izuku the trouble of ever seeing each other again. Katsuki’s fucked-up life could never blend so seamlessly with the well adjusted, well planned out, life of Izuku Midoriya. He thought about calling him too, seeing if he changed his mind in the last three hours. He knew better.
Somewhere along the fifth to seventh glass of bourbon he realized that their dream of being heroes together was fruitless at best and fucking forgetful at worst. Izuku never imagined their lives continuing to intertwine past high school and Katsuki knew he was pathetic for ever believing he did.
Somewhere along that same line he realized that what he was doing was wrong. He was being selfish. Katsuki had no right to blatantly demand Izuku to join an agency with him—to fulfill a dream they made before they even had quirks. Izuku has always drawn his own path and it was wrong of Katsuki to assume he’d make an exception. To himself especially.
Still, the anger, the outright entitlement, clawed its way into his chest and demanded to be let out. His throat became sore from all the unsaid words from earlier and from the countless glasses of alcohol being poured down his throat. Katsuki was self aware enough to knew what he was doing to cope, with something unneeded of a coping mechanism, was possibly the worst thing he could do for himself at the moment. The other part of himself didn’t care enough to stop it.
He liked the burning sensation in his throat. He liked not remembering. Hell, he liked the excruciating headaches and nausea he got the morning after. Anything to numb the guilt of fucking up in more ways than he can count on his hands.
So, Katsuki sat there, in his small apartment, throwing glass after glass back. Trying to ease a pain he knew deep down would never go away.
There are many underlining issues still unnoticed and uncared for that Katsuki doesn’t care enough about to attend to; but at least his hot throat and shaking hands let him know that he’s still real. That none of this is a dream, as much as he wishes it was tonight. But that’s enough for Katsuki to crawl into bed, the alcohol automatically relaxing muscles he didn’t know were tense, and making him warm enough to fall into a restless sleep.