to see the edge of an auburn flannel peeking out the bottom of the crate is to know.
impulse wants to haul - ass to denki’s door. by - pass stairs entirely and launch himself onto his balcony and ask him why he's being squirrely about the whole thing. always quick to demand answers for someone that keeps his own heart tucked safely in the breast pocket. rationale slows him; it is obvious. he is meant to have the private moment to figure that out for himself. to make of it whatever he wants. drags eyes back over the bestowed treasure trove - crate - filled with an array of presents. puzzle pieces.
presumably the full picture is supposed to say i remembered, happy birthday. maybe it is — that would be enough. katsuki can’t shake that it feels surface level. denki is so prone to romance that it seems hardly a hunch and more a probability. could just be his own bad habit of taking things apart to see how they fit back together. he’s over - thinking, jumping in front of the gun before he’s checked for bullets.
dissembling, he removes items one at a time and places them in order on the bed from right to left. then goes down the line.
surface level to sea bottom:
spicy chips, an easy favourite. something denki couldn’t stomach the taste of.
a moleskin journal, half full up. katsuki thumbs through the pages greedily, eager to see what’s tucked into the pages; colour and words and flowers, scattered like a pattern of thoughts.
a familiar tape - player, knowingly unnecessary and thus purposeful, cassette already loaded. this is the piece that takes the longest to get through - patience lent by motivation to hear what denki means to tell him. he listens, the way denki intends for him to, eyes closed in the middle of his room while the sun bleeds out through a crack in the curtains. seventeen tracks later, he rewinds the tape and sets it back in its place.
half a train ticket doesn’t tie to a sense the way the other items do, ruining his running hypothesis. he flips it over, confused: almost didn’t and is relieved at the impulse when he sees what he would have missed in scrawled words on the back. a memory jotted down from their first date. i wanted to remember, he can almost hear denki say it. i did remember.
it still doesn’t feel like the point of the whole.
he reaches for the piece that had initially caught his attention and holds it, folded in his hands like an open book. there is no mistaking the flannel for anything other than denki’s go - to. the favouritism is evident in the fade of color and looseness of buttons in equal measure to its infinite - wash softness. katsuki doesn’t know what else to do with it but put it on. he wonders after the intention of it; whether it is meant to be borrowed the same way the tape - player is, something for katsuki to wear to know more about denki, or whether it is switching ownership permanently. either way, he’ll be hard - pressed to let it out of his possession any time soon. he shrugs it on, suddenly aware of the weight in the breast pocket.
a hand runs over the open front, smoothing out invisible wrinkles and landing right over the solid bump. he doesn’t have to fish it out to guess what it is; doesn’t have to hold it up to the light to know, but he does. impossibly red, a dead match for equally improbable eyes.
there he is, tucked into the heart adjacent pocket of denki’s favourite flannel. laid out in pieces on the edge of his bed. some kind of metaphor. it is not what he thinks, though — gently placing the glass back in the flannel’s empty space on the bed. what he thinks is this: denki knows him. in colour and sound, by trigger words and in memory. in touch and taste and favouritism. denki knows him enough to pick the pieces of him out and hand them back. denki knows him better than he knows himself, even and loves him just the same. it might not be the full picture intended but it is the one he sees. it is the one he chooses to believe.
katsuki uses the stairs, knocks twice and waits.
perfectly content to seal away all communication from the world outside this dormitory for the rest of his teenage life , denki steels at the sure sound of presence at his door step .
finding a way to occupy yourself in times of awaiting some kind of answer is just about the hardest first - world thing there is to do . what’s worse is that he isn’t even all that sure there even was a question to be answered at all , or if he’d simply just thrown his garbage on katsuki’s bed and said do with this what you will , bye . hard to recall ; he most definitely blacked out during that whole shebang .
either way , denki can’t say he was all that successful in running out the anxiety , himself .
his room is left in towers behind him : all his mugs and books and figurines and candies , all his shoes and pillows and jars of homemade scar cream , all his cd’s and books he’s yet to read , all his games , all the half - eaten everythings and half - starving plants he’ll probably get better at taking care of some day .
it’s a lot like that scene in poltergeist --- he knows the one . and he’s bummed that it works , that he succeeds in scaring the shit out of himself when he finally looks back at the world’s most organized freakout . if he knocks into one or more of the stacks on his way to the door to send the foundations flying back to their individual parts , well , it’s not really an accident .
so that paranormal spell quells itself to something of uneven breath , pushed through pursed lips with one hand on the knob . when he opens his eyes again --- were they shut ? no , just the one , squeezed tight , wincing --- there’s a person there to occupy them .
❛ shit , ❜ he says when he actually means hi , smile spreading crookedly in place nonetheless . no one is capable of greeting their lover without one , afterall .
eyes then drop to something familiar , something he’d worn just one last time before proudly ( ? ) ( worriedly ) ( desperately ?? ) proffering ownership this very morning . ❛ oh . shit , hi . ❜
brows pop as if impressed , smile stirring just a bit sweeter . it’s a good sign . and an even better look .
a tiny sprout of hope pops up through the tension physically rolling off the surface , unfortunately backed by nothing particularly charming or witty to really seal the deal here . ❛ soooooo ... happy birthday ? ❜
