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“You’re like a dog,” Shouto says, measured.
Katsuki rips his gaze away, and finds too-understanding silver and turquoise. It unnerves him to take his sights away from green.
Izuku could look any second, and he’d miss it.
The music is loud, their friends are louder, and Katsuki showed up to the party for one reason and one reason only.
Not really. But it made the invite unrefusable.
“Waiting for a bone,” Shouto adds helpfully, like Katsuki can’t put metaphors together by his damn self. Like he doesn’t know that.
His stomach drops anyway. His heart sinks with it. Izuku is otherwise preoccupied, like always, and he knows Katsuki is here. He just — doesn’t gravitate.
Not like Katsuki would.
“You’re an asshole,” Katsuki counters, but his gaze can’t hold. It falls flat.
Shouto frowns, and Katsuki pretends not to see.
He wouldn’t talk to anyone else here, if Izuku tore himself from that conversation for him. He already doesn’t want to. He half-wishes Shouto would go away, if only because he’s visibly longing, and anyone watching can see it, and how embarrassing it is to be so caught up in anyone at all.
The half he wishes would dominate is almost comforted.
“He’d try if you told him,” Shouto says. Izuku laughs, and it’s a blade to Katsuki’s insides. His head fogs with the rising torment.
It wasn’t a sound caused by him. Someone else did that.
Shouto’s voice is fully gutting. Katsuki swallows, and tastes bile.
“I know that.”
Katsuki does know. He knows.
Izuku would, he would try for Katsuki — but not because his affection is matched. Not because it’s equally as painful for him to be away from him. Izuku would give it his best effort if Katsuki let on that it wasn’t enough, but it’d be apologetic. It would fall short. It would put a strain on him, and he’d call quits, and he’d say I’m sorry, Kacchan, but I just can’t.
And Katsuki would be left with nothing at all. Because he knows Izuku, and he knows he’d try, but he wouldn’t be able to stomach the guilt. So he’d run.
Katsuki prefers the slow death to that.
Shouto chews his lip next to him, and quiets. There’s the clink of glass, and the twist of a cap. Katsuki accepts the shot he slides his way in silence, barely a nod, and lowers his eyes from the arm that slings easily around Izuku’s shoulders.
His stomach sours. He could do that, but then it’d sit too heavy. Izuku might brave through that discomfort, the knowing of the meaning of more, but he’d feel it.
Katsuki feels so consumed by him. His skin feels rubbed raw, his body left unbalanced. Izuku once watched him so much more than he ever does now.
He taps his cup with Shouto’s when prompted, then off the countertop. He doesn’t drink enough to know the clear liquor for its taste.
It burns going down, but it doesn’t shake everything else.
What he wouldn’t give for it all to mean a little less. To maybe go back in time, and steal the words from his own mouth. It’d felt so good to say them then, when he’d been so sure, and Izuku wasn’t the equivalent of a set of blinds shut tight.
“I wish he didn’t know,” Katsuki says, without really meaning to. It’s not his first shot, and the alcohol has loosened his tongue, half-warmed his limbs.
He’s rarely appreciated Shouto’s brand of friendship more, because he only nods. Stands solid and quiet at Katsuki’s side, and helps him look less like he’s sulking.
Izuku might wander over when Katsuki stops some of his yearning. When his posture opens up, and he doesn’t look quite as kicked as he thinks he must.
When the pressure’s off.
So Katsuki will do that. Because some of Izuku is better than none at all.