touko/touya battle royale! au drabble for chessshipping day.
i'm a bad person.
771 words.
His smile is a jagged gash slashed across his face, harsh against the soft curves, but now Touko can see the slight cave of his cheekbones, the sharp arch of his jaw, that tiny bead of sweat that slowly drips lower and lower until it finds it way to his well-defined collarbone. It's at times like this that she has to remind herself that this skinny, skinny boy should and is her enemy.
She crouches behind the door of the living room, the gun in her hand slowly slipping from the sweat on her hands. Her torn skirt catches on the splintering, brittle wood of the door and crimson blooms from the polyester skirt scrap wrapped around her left arm. Touya knows she is there, crouching and waiting; her breath is labored considering she's been running for god knows how long.
The island is four miles wide, three miles long, and thirty miles away from Nuvema Town, yet it's all so suffocatingly close. Touko's been running all her life and the fatigue is just catching up now. Her father's voice rings in her head: "You are our last hope, Touko." He is probably dead by now, along with the rest of her family. She hasn't yet cried for them; her throat is parched and her last bottle of water was emptied a long time ago, amid a skirmish of bullets, blood and screaming.
Touya shifts and looks back, a smirk on his well-endowed face and gun in his suit pocket. A bloody bat lies near his feet and Touko wants to laugh and laugh, because here he is, the baseball star, who minutes earlier, has just killed two people. It's so insane because he's supposed to be gentle and calm, but then Touko supposes that's why he went off the deep end, yeah, that's why probably. There's a dripping sound and she looks around for water, but red catches her eye and the rag around her hand is seeping with blood.
"I know you're there," Touya murmurs, his gun cocks and Touko's hairs raise. No matter how many times she's heard that dreaded noise through this past week of utter hell, she's still not used to it. She stands up. He turns around fully and there's no expression on his face, only a soft smile in his eyes, a playful thing, like "Oh, you're here, why are you not dead yet? Frankly, I expected less from you."
Bile forms in her throat and she spits out a few expletives before walking to the worn, plastic-covered couch (this house probably was owned by old people) and sinking down into it. She knows that he could shoot anytime, but he doesn't and she knows exactly why. Fiddling carelessly with her own handgun (his is a semi-automatic), she brings her eyes to the same level as his. Brown meets brown. Red meets red. There's a wound on his chest that's permeating through his clean, bleached white collared shirt and Touko smiles; he's been through the same shit she has too.
"You do realize you could shoot anytime and be done with me? It's not like we can both get out of this hellhole," Her country drawl oozes playfully through her question and she paints a happy, high-school vision of studying and ditching class with Touya. That happened and that never will again. Her heart falls a little, but only a little.
"Do you really think I want to shoot you?" He bounces back, and she hates when he does that; he's supposed to be easy to read, the stupid boy in love, the one with blushes dusted across his cheeks when he's around her. But he's not and the gun in his hand proves that.
"Answer the question, Touya." A slight frown pulls his mouth down and he casually scratches the back of his neck with the gun. "You know, don't you?" She's sick and tired of this same repeated loop of conversation over and over again, but now with a gun, she is more powerful.
Touko cocks the gun and raises it between Touya eyes. The familiar click rings through the empty, dusty house and a gunshot rings somewhere else on the island, reminding them all too well of how much time they have left. Touya raises his gun as well and aims it downwards, towards her, one long finger resting lightly on the trigger. "I love you, Touko." Touko smiles and it's the first she's smiled for the past week, possibly even the last year. "I love you too." They both press the triggers. Touko doesn't have to worry about that dreaded sound anymore.