no major warnings apply. brief violence. 741 words.
Tetsurou will, once he gets his hands on Bokuto Koutarou, kill him if he is actually dead. He keeps his gun out and doesn’t move, barely blinks when the lights of their own ship flicker off, engines dying. Standard enemy ship boarding procedure--cut the power and watch them panic.
It’s not like he didn’t know about the dangers of this life when he’d set out, two years ago, with nothing but the clothes on his back. It’ll be fun, Koutarou had said, wide golden eyes still innocent and bright in the theater of Tetsurou’s mind. Just you and me and everything in space to see. “I am a good--kind of decent--person,” Tetsurou sighs under his breath, gritting his teeth. “I do not deserve this.”
He can hear footsteps, approaching him at eight o’clock, and whirls (elbow to the nose, good) and watches with an air of sweet satisfaction when the guy goes down. “Get off my ship,” he says conversationally, and stuns him unconscious.
One down, three to go.
Koutarou will maintain, to his dying day, that his ship is the best, biggest, most beautiful thing in the universe. It is at times, he allows, unable to accommodate extra-large cargo and will, sometimes, refuse to obey the order that he, its master, commands. But his ship has character. “It’s broken,” Tetsu had quipped once, and taken a punch to the arm for the trouble.
It is, at the moment, also infested with a five-man boarding party that Koutarou would like to see gone from his sights. “Don’t you think that I’m too pretty to die?” Koutarou has seen old movies about situations like these, and knows that sometimes, if prompted, the baddie will describe his plan. The click of a primed blaster answers him. He sniffs, scrunching his nose up at the reply, and frowns. But he has to give these guys credit--whoever they are, and the odds are that Koutarou has met them before--they’re efficient about the takeover, at least. He can barely see the hostile in the cockpit’s dark.
He doesn’t like being tied up--or, for that matter, tied down--and prefers zero gravity to anything else. The plastic ties around his wrists are digging into his skin, but Koutarou will wait. He can break out of these with the right amount of force, has done it before, and settles down to ignore the slow trickle of dread that freezes against his spine.
“So, tell me what it is that you want,” Koutarou tries again, and grins when he hears something at the door. “Oh. Time to go,” he chirps, and when the hostile pulls the trigger he ducks, pulls at the plastic strips around his wrists until they break open. Tetsurou blows the doors off the cockpit with something that looks like the mega-launcher gun they'd borrowed two months back, from Ushijima's personal store. Something burns. “Nicely timed, man.”
Tetsurou peeks cautiously into the cabin, bedhead first. “It’s dark in here.” Koutarou sighs and rubs at the raw skin on his wrists. “You okay?”
“Yeah. All hostiles gone?” And in the dim glow of the ship’s safety lights, Koutarou watches a sharp, keen smile grow on Tetsurou’s face.
“Neutralized.” Koutarou shares a fistbump with him, wiggling his fingers while Tetsurou sighs in relief and does the same.
The thing about war is that it never truly leaves anyone. It seeps into Koutarou’s dreams and drives him to search for zero gravity, where fighting happens all the time but at least it is justified. It gives a truly lethal edge to Tetsurou’s instincts and keeps him awake at night, makes his hands shake while he dismantles the boarding party’s guns and stockpiles them for later trades. Koutarou puts his hands over Tetsurou’s and waits for the tremors to die, kisses him slow in the bright lights of their cargo bay.
“Wait, Oikawa Tooru--” Koutarou yells, six days after they’d left the unconscious bodies of the surprise boarding party in a heap. Remote moon, several miles from an oasis. Totally doable. “But I thought we were friends!”
Tetsurou thinks about the look on the diamond merchant’s face when Bokuto had taken a look at his merchandise and frowned, dude, my balls are bigger than these. “Yeah, no. He shot you.”
“Yeah, a little--” Koutarou pouts, and gives Tetsurou that wide, innocent smile. “You wanna go say ‘hi’?”
FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
741 words.
Tetsurou will, once he gets his hands on Bokuto Koutarou, kill him if he is actually dead. He keeps his gun out and doesn’t move, barely blinks when the lights of their own ship flicker off, engines dying. Standard enemy ship boarding procedure--cut the power and watch them panic.
It’s not like he didn’t know about the dangers of this life when he’d set out, two years ago, with nothing but the clothes on his back. It’ll be fun, Koutarou had said, wide golden eyes still innocent and bright in the theater of Tetsurou’s mind. Just you and me and everything in space to see. “I am a good--kind of decent--person,” Tetsurou sighs under his breath, gritting his teeth. “I do not deserve this.”
He can hear footsteps, approaching him at eight o’clock, and whirls (elbow to the nose, good) and watches with an air of sweet satisfaction when the guy goes down. “Get off my ship,” he says conversationally, and stuns him unconscious.
One down, three to go.
Koutarou will maintain, to his dying day, that his ship is the best, biggest, most beautiful thing in the universe. It is at times, he allows, unable to accommodate extra-large cargo and will, sometimes, refuse to obey the order that he, its master, commands. But his ship has character. “It’s broken,” Tetsu had quipped once, and taken a punch to the arm for the trouble.
It is, at the moment, also infested with a five-man boarding party that Koutarou would like to see gone from his sights. “Don’t you think that I’m too pretty to die?” Koutarou has seen old movies about situations like these, and knows that sometimes, if prompted, the baddie will describe his plan. The click of a primed blaster answers him. He sniffs, scrunching his nose up at the reply, and frowns. But he has to give these guys credit--whoever they are, and the odds are that Koutarou has met them before--they’re efficient about the takeover, at least. He can barely see the hostile in the cockpit’s dark.
He doesn’t like being tied up--or, for that matter, tied down--and prefers zero gravity to anything else. The plastic ties around his wrists are digging into his skin, but Koutarou will wait. He can break out of these with the right amount of force, has done it before, and settles down to ignore the slow trickle of dread that freezes against his spine.
“So, tell me what it is that you want,” Koutarou tries again, and grins when he hears something at the door. “Oh. Time to go,” he chirps, and when the hostile pulls the trigger he ducks, pulls at the plastic strips around his wrists until they break open. Tetsurou blows the doors off the cockpit with something that looks like the mega-launcher gun they'd borrowed two months back, from Ushijima's personal store. Something burns. “Nicely timed, man.”
Tetsurou peeks cautiously into the cabin, bedhead first. “It’s dark in here.” Koutarou sighs and rubs at the raw skin on his wrists. “You okay?”
“Yeah. All hostiles gone?” And in the dim glow of the ship’s safety lights, Koutarou watches a sharp, keen smile grow on Tetsurou’s face.
“Neutralized.” Koutarou shares a fistbump with him, wiggling his fingers while Tetsurou sighs in relief and does the same.
The thing about war is that it never truly leaves anyone. It seeps into Koutarou’s dreams and drives him to search for zero gravity, where fighting happens all the time but at least it is justified. It gives a truly lethal edge to Tetsurou’s instincts and keeps him awake at night, makes his hands shake while he dismantles the boarding party’s guns and stockpiles them for later trades. Koutarou puts his hands over Tetsurou’s and waits for the tremors to die, kisses him slow in the bright lights of their cargo bay.
“Wait, Oikawa Tooru--” Koutarou yells, six days after they’d left the unconscious bodies of the surprise boarding party in a heap. Remote moon, several miles from an oasis. Totally doable. “But I thought we were friends!”
Tetsurou thinks about the look on the diamond merchant’s face when Bokuto had taken a look at his merchandise and frowned, dude, my balls are bigger than these. “Yeah, no. He shot you.”
“Yeah, a little--” Koutarou pouts, and gives Tetsurou that wide, innocent smile. “You wanna go say ‘hi’?”