『A Tiger's Path To The Jungle』

One night while out on a walk, Katsuki Bakugou meets Eijirou Kirishima, a walking, talking, breathing fairy. He flies around, being a bother... Though, honestly, Katsuki doesn't really seem to mind..?

- qrt, do NOT reply
- short-is thread with happy ending
- minimal to no angst
- krbk au, no other side ships

It's always so cold outside, but that's what jumpers are for. Katsuki keeps pacing forward, one foot after the other. He's not cold, not one bit.

Few cars go by. Each one that does sends the tiniest gusts of wind up the back of Katsuki's All Might sweater. He doesn't shiver. He suppresses it.

Walking around at night is considered dangerous in most places, but Katsuki feels there can't be anymore dangerous than the place from which he's just come. He can't stop walking and he won't. Why people call it running away, he doesn't know.

The streets are lit orange and black in intermissions. Katsuki counts the cat's eyes reflecting back to him - eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one - to pass the time. They're all watching him, Katsuki thinks, waiting for him to lose his confidence. He strides onwards.

Nothing is going to deter him from his journey to the jungle.

-----
Fairies, Katsuki thinks, don't exist. They can't exist. They're things of the imagination, objects of fiction used to promote delicacy and wisdom. It's hogwash, the lot of it.

Katsuki's mom read him a story with fairies in it, once. That's when he wasn't him and his mom actually spent her time with him with genuine care in her words and touches. Just like her, the fairies are fake. Plastic, made up, entirely fictional.

In that case, Katsuki once argued with himself, I can decide what fairies look like and I wouldn't be wrong.

He made them as ugly as the ugliest things in the world, but even uglier. Large, gnawing teeth and stringy, piercing eyes. Their stares would be cold and uninviting. In their tiny bodies, held up only by fragile wings, they would withhold eons of violence and terror.

Surely with this image in mind, Katsuki would be petrified of fairies. He's made them terrible and awful and every other bad name under the Sun. There's no way he could like fairies any more than fairies are real.

It's a shock. It's a real shock, Katsuki thinks, and he just has to ask.

He has to ask why..? Why is this red-haired, golden-glowing, bare-footed boy walking beside him with the words "I'm a fairy, of course!" slipping out of his pretty pink lips?

That's not what a fairy looks like.

"But you're not ugly," Katsuki responds. "And where'd you even come from anyway? You weirdo."

"I'm not a weirdo!" the boy huffs. "And why couldn't I be a fairy if you thought I was ugly? That doesn't even make sense."

"Yes it does," Katsuki mutters. "Fairies have to be ugly, like a fish."

The boy pouts. "But fish aren't ugly, either..."

Katsuki glances over to the boy. His eyes are downcast and his bottom lip is pushed out as far it can probably go.

"That face makes you look ugly," Katsuki comments. "Maybe you are a fairy after all."

"Well of course I'm fairy," the boy says with a frown. "I don't understand why you think I'm lying."

"I already told you. All fairies are ugly."

-----
The boy hasn't said anything for sometime. Katsuki thinks he's getting kind of annoying, walking beside him like that. This kid thinks he can just turn up out of the blue and act as though this silence is comfortable. Not on Katuski's watch.

"Why are you following me?" Katsuki asks.

"I don't know," he responds immediately. "Why are you running away from home?"

Katsuki furrows his brows. "Cause. How do you even know that?"

"I happened to see you leave through your window. You were really quiet. I hope your parents realise before you get too far away."

"Tch, I don't," Katsuki mutters. "They don't love me. I can tell. They think I'm a screw up. There's something wrong with me."

The boy scrunches up his nose. "Oh... I'm sorry to hear that."

Katsuki doesn't reply. He kicks a rock from the centre of the footpath onto the street.

"Do you wanna be friends?"

The boy's question catches Katsuki off guard.

"What?!" he splutters. "I don't even know you! Plus you're weird."

"My name's Kirishima Eijirou." Eijirou holds out his hand for Katsuki to shake. "What's yours?"

Katsuki looks back and forth between the boy and his hand. An eyebrow is cocked up and his mouth is twisted into a scowl. He wants to say something mean, but instead he sighs and takes the boy's hand. It's soft and delicate, pure and pale, gently glowing in the darkness.

"Bakugou Katsuki."