Chapter Text
When Hitoshi charges towards him, Hizashi instinctively tenses his limbs and inhales sharply, filling his lungs in preparation for—
But all Hitoshi does is run past him, hands covering his face to hide his eyes, leaving Hizashi rooted into place with his heart in his throat.
His wings start quivering, mind revolting against the idea of hurting Hitoshi. His breath quickens at how close he came to liquefying Hitoshi from the inside, how he almost sank his talons into unfeathered skin. He feels rotten down to the very core. There’s nothing more despicable, more cowardly, more abhorrent than someone who intentionally wounds a youngling.
Did Hitoshi notice? Was the hitch in his shoulders due to fear?
Hizashi doesn’t know for how long he stands there, but Hitoshi is running through the ship the entire time, the floor vibrating under each panicked stride. Under usual circumstances, Hizashi would be able to follow the exact path Hitoshi is taking. Right now, the sandstorm raging in his brain, pelting sand through his stomach, makes thinking too difficult.
The hatch, which had closed automatically at one point, whirs open.
“Have you seen—“ Shouta’s scarf suddenly billows out, fur standing on its ends in alarm. He scans the room, putting his back to a wall. “Zashi, what’s wrong?”
I messed up, he wants to say. All that comes out is a croak.
Shouta quickly inspects him, scarf fluttering over Hizashi, pressing against his head, his stomach, moving clinically against his extremities.
Hizashi wants to push him away. He wants to tell his mate to not waste his time looking for injuries, not when he doesn’t deserve this careful attention. Hitoshi is the one who needs help. Instead, he points toward the evidence of his failure.
Shouta’s head snaps toward the dropped padd. His ears pin down in confusion. Reluctantly, his bondmate parts from him to walk toward it. He picks it up, glancing at Hizashi, and opens it.
Shouta stills. There a long, horrified silence. It stretches thickly over them, oily and unpleasant.
Finally, the tension breaks.
“You’ve been watching his fights,” he states. It’s not a question.
“Yeah,” Hizashi whispers anyways.
Shouta’s ears press themselves further back. “Has he seen this?”
Hizashi can’t make himself answer. His mate starts tapping the padd. He’s erasing everything. Without saying a word, Shouta places the padd back down, before sitting with a tired huff, a few tails apart from Hizashi. His scarf starts rubbing the space between his eyes. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” The space behind his chest tightens in anxiety. Hitoshi could be anywhere on the ship. He presses closer to the ground, but the ship stays silent, apart from the occasional light vibrations from the mèos. “I’ll go find him.”
Nausea threatens his empty stomach. He needs to give Hitoshi some semblance of explication, but how can he justify this? He might have been sent the first holovid, but he looked for the rest himself.
He’s really no better than the people paying to see Hitoshi’s death matches.
His bondmate grabs him before he can take a step. “I think he needs some time for himself.”
It goes against everything Hizashi knows. No see’krtsh young willingly wants to be left alone in moments of distress.
“What if he’s hungry?” Hizashi signs weakly.
“I’ve fed him a tone ago and left some food in the scullery and the share room.” Shouta adds, “Leave him be for a while.”
Hizashi begrudgingly settles. He’s the last one Hitoshi will want to see anyways. Furthermore, Hizashi has to admit that Hitoshi does have a tendency to isolate himself when he needs to deal with his emotions.
He’s been stepping all over the nestling boundaries, hasn’t he? Hizashi preens his wings harshly. With the way Hitoshi is so tight-gestured about everything, Hizashi has to do better, has to be more careful, because Spirits know Hitoshi won’t say if he makes him uncomfortable. He’ll wait for Hitoshi to come to him.
If he ever does. The panicked expression Hitoshi had worn transcends language. His wide eyes, stuttering breathing, and blood-drained skin is seared in Hizashi’s brain. All because he can’t get it through his head that Hitoshi isn’t dangerous to him. He doesn’t deserve to be considered pack.
He could look at the cameras. Just to see where Hitoshi is. Nothing more.
Hizashi ruffles his crest. No, he’s already invaded Hitoshi’s privacy. He can wait.
Hizashi paces and glides through the room at least seven times before moving onto rearranging his and Shouta’s nest, fluffing the pillows and folding and refolding the covers. Hitoshi’s wrinkled cot catches his eye, and he almost goes to smooth it out before remembering at the last moment that the nestling might not appreciate if Hizashi touched his things without his presence, so he goes back to working on his own nest until his entire frame shakes from nerves and he catches himself looking toward the hatch for the sixteen time.
“I’ll go find something for him to eat,” Hizashi announces. Shouta’s left ear flicks skeptically, but before he can voice his disapproval, Hizashi quickly heads to the scullery. If he takes the long way there, lingering in front of every room with his sternum pressed against the floor, well that’s only for him to know.
He inevitably arrives at his destination with no hint of Hitoshi. Disappointed and slightly relieved, Hizashi pulls out some jelly pouches, taking care to choose the flavours Hitoshi seems to prefer. As he closes the drawer, he senses a wave of vibrations through the metal.
Pausing, Hizashi holds his breath. It doesn’t take long before it happens again, the pattern organic and entirely different from the mechanical hum of the ship and its components. Hizashi follows the vibrations, until he stands in front of one of their airtight cabinets.
The jelly pouches slip through his slack talons. His brain goes quiet for one single blink, before it catches up to what Hizashi has realized. The cabinet door is wrenched open before the pouches even hit the floor.
Horror shakes him when he finds Hitoshi unnaturally folded in the cabinet, as if he’d been stuffed in there. The vessels in his eyes look on the verge of bursting, dilated by his increased efforts to breathe. His fingers are curled around his garment, whitened and tight in a typical rigor mortis' grip. For a click, Hizashi believes Hitoshi is already gone.
Fortunately, miraculously, it is not Hitoshi’s time yet. He bursts into movement, furling so suddenly and tightly onto himself that it reminds Hizashi of a ship imploding. His shoulders hitch as he gasps for air, hiccups making his whole body shake. Hizashi wants to say something, but his words catch on his bones when he blinks and sees the afterimage of small bodies curled onto themselves, younglings trying to escape ship fires by unknowingly locking themselves in closets and storage containers.
“Go away,” Hitoshi signs, blindly reaching for the cabinet door. Thankfully, he doesn’t manage to grab it. His gestures are sharp and thrown widely when he yells, “Leave!”
Hizashi whistles to get the nestling’s attention, alarm making his talons grind unpleasantly against the metal. “Please come out,” he begs. “I’ll leave, but you can’t stay in there.”
He needs oxygen. The way he’s gasping, with his irregular broken sounds in between each inhale, even though he has access to air again, is worrying.
Hitoshi gives up on trying to enclose himself in his makeshift tomb. He buries his face in his upper limbs and somehow twists until his back is to Hizashi.
“Please,” Hizashi pleads, reaching one wing out, stopping right before his talon makes contact with Hitoshi. Self-loathing crashes into him in waves at his own hesitation, at the way his heart thunders in his chest as snippets of Hitoshi’s fights unwillingly bully themselves to the forefront of his mind.
He pushes through, closing the space between them until his talons wrap gently around Hitoshi’s limb. a part of him he can’t completely silence keeps wanting to recoil, in case Hitoshi becomes violent in his displeasure and accidentally—or perhaps not so accidentally when he’s taken by frustration—injures him.
Hitoshi tenses for long unbearable clicks, before he turns his head just enough for one wet eye to peek out between folds of fabrics.
“I’m so sorry.” Hizashi’s words are coming out all wobbly. He wants to add more, wants to spin a speech that’ll somehow end with both of them—or at the very least Hitoshi—feeling better, but all he can manage is, “I shouldn’t have looked for those holovids.”
The eye watches him for a long time, the small pupil roving over his face, moving to his wings and his talons, before rolling back to his face to start the cycle all over again. It’s disturbing and creepy; it looks so much like the way Hitoshi would evaluate an opponent, right before pouncing on them at the gamemaster’s signal. Hizashi forces himself to hop closer. “It was wrong of me.”
The skin around Hitoshi’s eye suddenly scrunches up in pain.
Hizashi squawks. His wings flutter over Hitoshi’s huddled form. “What’s wrong?”
“I,” Hitoshi starts, interrupting himself to rub his eyes, body spasming, “I want—”
He stops to inhale, water leaking at an alarming rate out of his eyes. Hitoshi had said this was a physical reaction to feeling too much, didn’t he? But back then, Hitoshi hadn’t looked like he was choking on air, hadn’t been clutching at his garment, right over where his human heart would be.
If distress can make his eyes water, what else could it do? It’s already affecting his breathing, making him shake and hiccup, pulling out awful sounds at every other exhale.
Hizashi, with barely a click of hesitation, starts petting Hitoshi’s back, just like he did back in that cell. He coos too, adding a low tone rumble that usually helps comfort hatchlings.
Hizashi’s body tensing is the only warning Hizashi gets before he’s grabbed.
The upper half of the nestling’s body is hanging out of the cabinet, just enough to fit his upper limbs around Hizashi. His beak is pressed almost painfully against Hitoshi’s shoulder bones, his feathers bent uncomfortably. Still, even with predator teeth near his carotid—right on the edge of being too close to his neck, still suffering from fantom sparks and the ache of a collar—and Hizashi’s instincts blaring warnings throughout his entire being, he spreads his wings, exposing his vulnerable stomach, and slides them around Hitoshi.
It bends his joints near their limits. Hizashi tries his best to hold Hitoshi the same way he’s sometimes seen him hold the mèos; one wing on his upper back, spread out to hide the fragile curve of his neck, the other protectively spanning the rest of his spine. His tail curls to gather Hitoshi’s lower limbs,
Hitoshi doesn’t lash out or push him away. He still trusts Hizashi enough to let himself be held like this. It makes Hizashi’s next breath stutter.
He squeezes Hitoshi to help contain his shaking, pressing him until his singular heart hammers against Hizashi’s, leaning back to coax the nestling out and onto the scullery floor.
It takes time, but eventually, they’re both sprawled out into the open, the cabinet’s door safely closed with a push of his tail. Hizashi tries to pull away to see if Hitoshi’s eyes are still bloodshot, maybe talk to him, but a desperate noise keeps him from doing so.
“You are okay.” His Humanish has great room for improvement. He preens a few sweaty strands of fur sticking to Hitoshi’s neck.
Hitoshi mumbles something back, words all jumbled up from feathers and Hizashi’s poor grasp on the language. Hizashi doesn't dare ask him to repeat himself. The sounds were pained enough already, Hitoshi’s fingers carving themselves around him until they burrow in his afterfeathers. The junction between his wing and his neck starts pulling from the weight of Hitoshi’s water.
He can’t do anything but keep him from falling apart. He doesn’t know if he succeeds.
Hizashi glances at Hitoshi.
The nestling’s downcast eyes are still slightly red-rimmed, but his breathing has slowed back to its regular pace.
Hizashi hadn’t noticed just how often Hitoshi made eye contact until now. He hasn’t looked at Hizashi since they’ve disentangled from the floor, Hitoshi pushing him away and wiping his face with his garments the moment Shouta stepped into the scullery. He hasn’t asked Hizashi why he’s been looking at his fights.
Instead, he quietly follows Hizashi, trailing after him exactly one tail’s length. He stays silent when they eat, for once slow as he clears his dish. When he finishes his medication without any of his usual scrunched up face-expressions, Hizashi brings him to the medbay. There’s nothing wrong with his eyes, no sign of brain fluid leak, lung wound or heart strain. Shouta keeps his distance, tail curved in discomfort as he tries to catch Hizashi’s expression.
“Is there something you want to do?” Hizashi tries to reach for Hitoshi, but the youngling leans away, face turning the other way.
Hitoshi shakes his head ‘no’. He’s hunched into a smaller form, his fingers have found the edge of his garments to twist and pull.
Hizashi swallows around the lump in his throat when he finally places the expression Hitoshi had been wearing this entire time. Shame.
Hizashi presses a wing against his sternum, where an unsteady sound keeps wanting to burst out. He wishes he’d never left his padd unlocked and so easily accessible. He wishes he’d never seen those holovids.
They eventually move to their resting quarters. Hitoshi slips into his cot without wishing them a good rest, ignoring the way the mèos paw at him. He turns until he faces away from them. Hizashi doesn’t think he imagines the way he’s moved farther away from them.
The mèos choose to sleep in the folds of Hitoshi’s cot instead of their own nest, draping themselves near his head, where they can puff gentle breaths into his fur and offer comfort with gentle teeth grinding.
Hizashi watches the Hitoshi-shaped lump until Shouta dims the lights.
He wakes to someone gasping to catch their breath as the floor rumbles under each of their quickening steps. It’s too dark to make out anything, but it’s easy to recognize Hitoshi’s two-beat walk and the accompanied click of beads. The youngling is prowling around the nest.
Fear, still slightly groggy from sleep, doesn't have the time to fully form. Not when Hizashi realizes that Hitoshi’s making a room sweep before his heart can truly take off. He feels the youngling’s breaths slow until they’re impossible to sense through the beddings as he twitchingly inspects every piece of furniture, every corner of the room. He even opens the hatches to look out into the hallway and the storage room for long tones, with his breath held and his body stone-still. Not still in the way hunters are before descending on their target, but in the terrified way prey usually is when it looks out for predators. The blinking indicator over the opened hatch allows Hizashi to make out Hitoshi's hunched outline.
A ball of emotion in his throat makes Hizashi's breathing more arduous than it should be. Hitoshi is afraid, enough to have woken up to patrol their room despite the many security measures.
He's about to get up to blindly open the lights, so Hitoshi can be reassured and go back to sleep, when the youngling finally breathes out and closes the hatches.
Hizashi waits until Hitoshi goes back into his cot. He’s still holding himself rigidly, tension making him look more frightening than he really is. Hizashi only dares to close his eyes when the nestling has stopped fidgeting under the warm cot and the mèos have grumpily repositioned themselves over him.