A Comfortable Existence - #2 [The Bathroom]

[Part 1]

Katsuki sighed as he reached into the linen closet, picking up his biggest, softest towel. He’d spent the better part of an hour on mentally preparing himself to shower, partly to find the energy and motivation to get up and walk there, but also largely because he knew Izuku had been in there first.

When he’d been sharing an apartment with other people, he’d had to keep all of his toiletries in a little plastic basket in his bedroom, to make sure no one would mess up his stuff. Every day like clockwork, he’d carried his basket into the shower, tried his best to ignore the hair in the drain that hadn’t been cleaned out and the spilled products all over the tiled floor, and found space on the edge of the bathtub to squeeze his products one-by-one into a little line where he could reach them from under the hot spray of water. When he was clean, he’d had to reverse the whole process, drying off his bottles and carefully stacking them back into his basket, to carry back to the safety of his bedroom.

One of the best parts of living alone, he’d discovered, was being able to just leave stuff, and know he’d come back to find it exactly the way he’d left it. And sure, sometimes that kind of sucked – if he didn’t feel like washing dishes and left them in the sink for the night, he was guaranteed to find them still waiting for him in the morning. On the other hand, though, when he left things clean, like he usually did, he got to come back to them that way, too. His toiletries now owned a little shelf on the shower wall, where they stood in a neat line, every cap closed, exactly the way he’d left them the last time he’d showered. Every day he walked in and found them there, waiting for him to use. And every day he left them there after his shower, to come back to the next time.

Izuku being there, borrowing his stuff, meant that his line was not going to be impeccable. Katsuki was yet to share a bathroom with anyone who didn’t fuck up his stuff, and that included his own damn parents who had somehow felt the incessant need to move things around, even though they’d had plenty of other space to use. Obviously he couldn’t blame Izuku for needing to borrow shit, that sure as hell wasn’t his fault, and Katsuki wasn’t going to get on his ass for putting a bottle back in the wrong place or facing the wrong direction – he wasn’t that petty – but he still had to mentally prepare himself to deal with it, find the patience somewhere deep down inside of him that would keep him from snapping when he inevitably found his soap bar weirdly soggy and stuck to the plastic of the shelf from not being put back in the one spot where it could drain properly.

With his favourite towel in hand to at least provide him with a little bit of comfort, he braced himself and stepped inside, barely resisting the urge to squeeze his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to see it. He hung his towel on the heated rail, stripped off his dirty clothes, and reached for the shower handle, freezing in his tracks. Where he expected chaos, instead he found... nothing. Everything was exactly where he’d left it, as if it hadn’t even been touched, even though Izuku had thanked him a dozen times for letting him borrow it so he knew it had been used. In fact, Katsuki quickly realised, it everything was better than he remembered – the bottles had been cleaned before they went back, and the shelf beneath them had been wiped down, something Katsuki had been meaning to do for a week and still hadn’t gotten around to.

For a moment, he just had to stand there and stare at it, piecing things together in his mind. Izuku was a good person, sure – of course he was, he was a hero – but he’d always seemed so weirdly oblivious to things like cleaning, when they’d lived in the dorms. He had a tendency to put things down and just completely forget they’d ever existed, resulting in little trails of dirty laundry or dishes that had just been abandoned in his wake. He had to have been making a massive effort to keep things tidy for Katsuki’s sake, which was honestly a little touching, except for the fact that Katsuki felt a little bad about it, about making Izuku feel like he wasn’t welcome, like it wasn’t his home. And sure, technically it wasn’t his home, but he still hoped Izuku was comfortable enough with him to act like it was.

As he stood under the hot water, he found himself staring at his shelf again, wondering if maybe he should clear some space for Izuku to store his things, too. Maybe not in the shower, he could use the bathtub or the windowsill for that once he bought his own shit, but at least at the sink, for his toothbrush and deodorant or whatever. Not that Izuku had bought himself anything new yet anyway – he was busy too, after all. And it wasn’t like Katsuki really minded; despite popular belief, he’d gotten an A+ in sharing back in kindergarten. As long as people respected his shit, he didn’t mind letting them use it. The problem was that most people didn’t respect his shit. Those were the people who made him say fuck sharing.

All of that was a job for another day, though. All he wanted to do in that moment was soak in the hot water, get himself clean, and finally collapse to get some decent sleep.

After all, he still had to do it all over again in the morning.

———

Izuku paused at the end of the aisle, looking down the row of brightly coloured bottles. Katsuki’s bottle of shampoo had been feeling low, when he’d picked it up to wipe the shelf. Katsuki had been so generous to him; despite adoring his privacy, Katsuki had welcomed him in without hesitation, had picked him up straight off a ten-hour shift and driven him home, had made him feel welcome and included like it was no big deal. The least he could do was buy a new bottle of shampoo before it ran out – especially since he’d used at least a little bit of the contents. He hadn’t read the name on the bottle, though – he only knew that it was brown, with a black lid and a white label. How many of those could there be?

He made his way slowly down the aisle, pausing at every brown bottle before quickly moving on again. Could he even get Katsuki’s shampoo at a supermarket? It wouldn’t have surprised him if Katsuki used something too fancy, that he had to buy from a salon or whatever. Then again, he was too busy to make special trips to buy one item, it wasn’t efficient enough for Katsuki’s tastes. Maybe online, then, in which case he’d have to look it up when he got home. In the meantime, he probably needed to buy his own, so he could stop using up Katsuki’s. He didn’t have a preference for his own, though; he generally just bought whatever was cheapest – his hair was always a mess anyway, cheap shampoo didn’t change that.

Right when he was ready to give up, he finally spotted a familiar label, taking a moment to just stare at it, in case he’d missed something that was going to prove him wrong. He picked one up, turning it over in his hand, but everything looked familiar, looked accurate. Worst case scenario, he supposed, he could use it himself and buy Katsuki a new one from whatever pretentious store made it easy enough for him to get.

He hesitated, then picked up a second bottle, placing them both carefully in his cart. He was at least ninety percent certain it was the right one, and seeing as he didn’t care about his shampoo, it probably made more sense to just keep sharing a bottle. No need to double-up on a product for no reason. He grabbed the matching conditioner to go with it – not that he ever bothered with it, but Katsuki had always cared about conditioner, so he figured he may as well grab him one while he was already there. It was weirdly sweet of Katsuki to share his things along with his space – sure, any of his friends would have done the same, but somehow it felt extra special when it came from Katsuki.

With a tiny smile playing at his lips, he turned down the next aisle, hunting for a blue bottle of body wash.