Chasing Tinkerbelle (BakuDeku)

3 - Future Husband

"I'm raising your rent," Tenya announced as he passed one of the large bowls of mashed potatoes to him.

"And why is that?" Katsuki asked, picking up the wooden spoon stabbed in the center of the thick white goo and scooped up a large amount.

"It's either raise your rent or let your future husband move out," Tenya explained as he squirted ketchup on his meatloaf.

At least, Katsuki thought it was meatloaf, but since Ochaco had cooked this meal, he really couldn't be sure of anything.

"He's not my future husband," Katsuki said, sighing heavily as he placed the bowl of mashed potatoes down. "You really need to quit that shit ."

"Then what is he?" Mirio, another one of his cousins asked as he gestured towards the bowl of mashed potatoes. "Pass the scalloped potatoes."

Frowning, Katsuki looked around the table, but he didn't see anything that even remotely resembled scalloped potatoes.

"That's rice," Tenya said tightly, shooting them a glare with the silent message to shut their mouths and not question the food, something that he badly wanted to do.

But since it would just end in a fistfight and with answers that he probably really didn't want, he let it go and answered his cousin.

"He's just the boy that rents the apartment across from me and that I torment for my own entertainment when I'm bored or I'm just in the mood to piss him off," which was every day, but he didn't bother to point that out since it would just encourage his cousin's bullshit .

"I see," Mirio said, sounding amused.

"I'm glad that you do," he said, glad that this bullshit was over wi-

"He's definitely your future husband," Mirio said, chuckling and pissing him off.

"We could have the wedding in our backyard," Nejire, Mirio's wife said, looking hopeful.

Ochaco sighed, shaking her head as she picked up the bowl of what appeared to be gravy and said, "Men like you don't have weddings. Weddings imply that some planning went into it and the bride was asked- when what it really comes down to, is a kidnapping, a terrified pastor, a quick ceremony and a race across town to have the marriage consummated before the bride comes to her senses and gets the marriage annulled."

Tenya gasped in outrage. "You said that it was the most romantic night of your life!"

"Oh," Ochaco said, blinking before she added, "It was," in a placating tone as she reached over and gave her husband's hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Keep your lies, woman!" Tenya snapped, sounding pissed, but when Ochaco sighed and tried to move her hand away, he quickly snatched it back and entwined their fingers together even as he continued to glare accusingly at her.

"Just because we didn't have a wedding doesn't mean that no relative of yours has ever had a wedding," Nejire pointed out, picking up a bowl of... well, Katsuki was at a loss at what the chunky, clear pink gunk was.

"Yes, it does, honey." Mirio said as he took the bowl from Nejire and with a discreet shake of his head, warned her away from the stuff that not even a puppy would take a chance on.

"There's only been three weddings in the family in the last two hundred years," Tenya said, picking up the bowl of pink goop and scooped some onto his plate.

"See!" Nejire said, sounding triumphant as she moved to pick up what Katsuki thought was gravy, but another discreet shake of Mirio's head had Nejire quickly passing on that to take a sip of water.

"And all three of those marriages ended with divorce in less than a month," Mirio added, receiving a nod of agreement from both Tenya and Katsuki.

"No worries," Tenya said, scooping some 'rice' onto his plate. "After the wedding, Aunt Mitsuki will throw a big party."

"My mother isn't throwing a party, because there's not going to be a wedding," Katsuki pointed out, doing his best not to let his cousins know how much they were pissing him off since it would only encourage them to keep this bullshit up.

"Well, maybe we should try to retaliate your 'no wedding' tradition." Ochaco said, sounding hopeful.

It was times like this that he was actually glad that he wasn't married, one of the few times he had to admit.

Unlike his cousins who had fought going to the altar with everything that they had, Katsuki was more than ready to settle down and start a family.

In a few months, he was going to be thirty-two years old and he was still alone. He'd always thought that he'd be settled by this point in his life with at least one kid on the way, but apparently, life didn't always turn out the way that you expected.

He certainly hadn't expected to do half the shit that he'd done so far.

When he'd been a kid, he'd always thought that he'd follow in his father's footsteps and go to medical school, join his father's practice and get married, but at seventeen, all his plans had changed when he'd fucked up.

He'd been a cocky kid, too damn cocky.

Not only hadn't he studied for the Entrance Exam because he'd been sure that he was going to ace the test right off the bat, but he'd also decided that he'd celebrate a pre-victory the night before, by stealing his father's beer out of the refrigerator in the garage and proceeded to get drunk.

Really drunk to the point that if his father hadn't found him passed out on the bathroom floor, that he probably would have died of alcohol poisoning.

After he was rushed to the hospital and had his stomach pumped, his father, angrier than he'd ever seen him before, dragged him to school and forced him to take the exam when all he wanted to do was to curl up next to a toilet and die.

One month later, he'd received his test scores and learned that he pathetically failed.

He could have taken the test over again, but that would have meant a delayed acceptance to college and starting school later than all of his friends. His pride had taken a hit with that score.

Unable to handle the embarrassment of that fuck up, he'd begged his father to sign a release so that he could join the Marines, but his father had refused.

His father didn't believe in fixing one mistake with another.