Chasing Tinkerbelle (BakuDeku)

42 - Inviting Tinkerbelle

"Of course," Mitsuki said, smiling warmly. "We're taking our family trip in October and we'd love for you to join us."

"We can't go, Mom. I'm sorry," Katsuki said, wondering when his mother was going to start listening to him.

He didn't want to go on a trip where he was forced to pretend that the fact that his father couldn't stand looking at him, didn't make him want to shove his fist through a wall.

He'd already made that mistake once and that had been enough.

Two weeks after the last surgery on his leg, he'd foolishly allowed his mother to convince him that a trip to Oscor was a good idea.

For whatever reason, she'd thought that being cooped up all day in a cottage by the water was a good way for him to overcome his differences with his father.

What she hadn't counted on was his father renting him his own cottage down the beach and avoiding it like the plague.

He'd spent the entire trip sitting on the cottage's small stone patio with his leg propped up, staring at the ocean.

Since then, he'd refused to join his family on their annual trips and his mother refused to listen to him.

Every year, she bought him a ticket, reserved a room for him and pretended that she didn't hear him when he told her that he didn't want to go.

He never went and she always seemed to forget that he never showed up the next year when she started to plan their trip.

"Your Uncle Toshinori already said that he'd approved your time off so you can go," his mother said with a pleased smile.

He nodded, never taking his eyes off his mother, because he'd learned long ago never to show weakness to this woman when she was busy meddling with his life.

"I took the time off, but I'm not going on the trip."

"Of course you are," his mother said, quickly dismissing him as she refocused all of her attention back on Izuku, who was sitting there, clearly trying to resist the urge to get up and flee from the table. "Now, how about you, dear? Do you think you'll be able to get the time off from work?"

"Umm," Izuku licked his lips nervously as he shifted in his chair, throwing Katsuki a pleading look that he was helpless to ignore, but he knew that there was nothing that he could say that would save Izuku from this line of interrogation.

"Mom, we can't go," he said, but not surprisingly, she ignored him and continued.

"Since everyone will be having some time off," she said, pausing to shoot Hitoshi, Tenya and Mirio a pointed look, "at least for some of us, we've decided to take a trip to Disney Planet."

"Disney Planet?" Izuku asked, squishing his face up adorably as everyone at the table suddenly looked at him hopefully.

His mother nodded. "We're heading down there in a month and we'd love it if you could join us."

"Thank you very much for the invitation, but I haven't been working at the library long enough to get vacation time," his little Tinkerbelle explained with a blush and a smile.

"But, if you were able to get time off?" his mother asked with a familiar gleam in her eyes that Katsuki knew all too well.

"Then I would still have to decline, because a trip to Mecresh is out of my budget at the moment," Izuku said with that same smile, but that blush...

It deepened.

"Oh, sweetie, we wouldn't expect you to buy your own ticket," Mitsuki said with a reassuring smile.

"I'm sorry, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with that," Izuku said softly, shifting his attention down to his plate in an attempt to hide his embarrassment, but Katsuki saw it.

He saw everything.

He knew that Izuku made good money, was frugal, never so much as bought a candy bar without planning it into his budget, but he also knew that he was broke.

He was barely getting by and was living paycheck to paycheck.

He made every cent count, but he was still struggling and Katsuki didn't know why.

"Neither would I," he said, picking his fork back up to push a corn kernel around his plate. "I'm more than capable of taking care of our tickets."

"So, you'll go?" his mother asked, perking up.

"No, I'm sorry."

"Then why are you taking the time off?" Eijiro, the bastard, asked.

Because Katsuki had been looking forward to two weeks without his family, without anyone fussing over him, calling him a thousand times a day to make sure that he was okay, that he was eating enough, that he was taking his medication and getting enough sleep.

As soon as his mother had announced their annual family trip, he'd gone to Uncle Toshinori and requested the time off with plans on staying in his apartment with his books and beautiful silence.

But now...

Now he wanted to spend those two weeks in bed with Izuku, but that wasn't going to happen.

They were taking things slow... very slow...

No matter how much it was killing him or how badly he needed to tear Izuku's clothes off and slide inside the boy, he was going to take this slow and do this right.

Just thinking about all the things that he wasn't allowing himself to do to his Tinkerbelle had him shifting discreetly in his chair.

"I made plans," he said, looking up to give his mother an apologetic smile and wishing that he hadn't seen the hurt expression on his mother's face.

"Oh," his mother said, giving him a trembling smile as she looked away, but not before the expression on her face made him feel like the biggest asshole to ever walk the face of the planet.

He ignored the way that his brothers, sister and cousins were looking at him and focused on the woman that had cried over him, held his hand, wiped his face and arms down with a cold cloth when his fever got too high and the medication stopped working.

This was his mother and he was breaking her heart.

He sighed heavily, already regretting what he was about to say before the words left his mouth.

"We'd be more than happy to go, Mom."