AO3 Anon

A/N: Slight manga spoilers. Tamsy is especially creepy in this one. Thank you for bearing with me as I try to figure out his character! Feel free to send me any criticism. This is just a small portion of what I’m working on.

The off-roader had no business moving at this speed.

Enjin had both hands on the wheel and the expression of a man genuinely enjoying himself, which was the most dangerous configuration possible. The vehicle lurched over a ridge of compacted waste and came down hard, rattling every body inside it against every other body inside it.

"Enjin—" Riyo started.

"Relax."

"You just took that at—"

"I said relax."

The boarding had been quick. Tamsy had been one of the first to the vehicle, assessed the seating with the economy of a man who did not appear to be assessing anything, and then stepped aside when Rudo came around the front — a small, unhurried movement that opened the middle naturally. Follo had taken the far back. Tomme had settled in beside him. Riyo had already claimed the passenger seat beside Enjin on the grounds that she wanted to be close enough to scream at him if necessary.

Which left Dove at the door, with Rudo already in, looking at the remaining space.

She climbed in without comment and pulled the door shut.

She leaned slightly into Tamsy as she settled, caught herself, and straightened. "Sorry."

"Not at all," he said.

She reached down for the seatbelt.

Nothing. She felt along the seat edge. The buckle slot. The floor.

Nothing.

The car lurched forward and she grabbed the dash.

Enjin drove like he had somewhere important to be and very little respect for the terrain between here and there. The road — if the corrugated strip of pressed garbage and exposed earth deserved the name — threw the off-roader sideways every thirty seconds. Dust bloomed against the windows. Riyo had given up trying to watch the path and was simply bracing. Follo knocked into Zanka and was elbowed back.

"Is there a reason you're—" Tomme began, gripping the handle.

"Fastest route," Enjin said.

"To what? Your own funeral?"

"There's a beast sighting near the northern wall and I want to get there before the trash cloud comes around." He took a corner. The whole vehicle shuddered. "We get there first, finish the job, then get out before the trash fall.”

"We get there first, we get launched through the windshield," Follo said.

"Have some faith,” he says looking back at him through the rear view mirror.

Riyo's hand shot out and grabbed the dash.

"Enjin." Her finger jabbed at the windshield. "Enjin—“

A figure crossed the road ahead. Enjin hit the brakes.

The sound was exceptional. The skid was worse. Every person in the car went forward in a single ugly lurch, and Dove, beltless, hit the dashboard edge with a sound that had no business being as loud as it was.

A sharp, dull thunk.

Then silence.

Then she slumped.

"Ow," said Follo, leaning off Zanka.

"Get off—"

"Is she—" Rudo was already turned toward her, eyes wide. "Dove?"

"Oh dear," said Tamsy, raising his oversized sleeve to his mouth.

Oh yes.

His inner self settled back in its chair with the long, quiet satisfaction of a man watching the opening scene of something he had been anticipating for some time.

"Enjin, what the hell!" Rudo snapped.

"There was a person—"

"Drive like that again and I'll—"

"She going to be alright?" Tomme craned forward, alarmed.

"She's breathing," Riyo said, already reaching over the seat back.

But Tamsy was closer. He moved without announcing it, one arm coming around Dove's shoulders, his other hand bracing her at the side before she could slump further toward the dash. He drew her back against him, steadying her with the calm efficiency of someone who had simply been in the right position at the right time.

"You should drive a little more carefully, Enjin." His voice stayed pleasant.

"Oh yeah?" Enjin glanced in the mirror with a grin and zero remorse. "You gettin’ real comfortable back there, Caines?"

Tamsy produced a handkerchief from within his sleeve and pressed it gently to the split at Dove's hairline, dabbing the thin line of blood.

"Comfortable enough."

More so than expected, actually.

She was lighter than he'd imagined. Warm through the fabric of her capelet. And there was a scent — clean, faintly sweet, something that did not belong in a vehicle that smelled of dust and exhaust — that arrived when she leaned against him and made him pause behind his own face.

He kept the handkerchief steady.

Riyo and Tomme exchanged a glance across the seat.

Tomme pressed her fingers to her mouth. Her eyes were doing something involuntary.

Riyo mouthed: Holy shit?!

Zanka, to his credit, looked at the window. His jaw tensed once in the particular way it did when he found something mildly insufferable but had decided not to dignify it.

Rudo was staring at Dove's forehead with the sharp, unblinking focus of someone taking inventory of damage. He glanced once at Tamsy's hold and then back at the bruise already darkening at her hairline.

"She's going to have a lump," he said tightly.

"Unfortunately," Tamsy agreed. "She hit it rather squarely."

Rudo directed a look at Enjin that communicated several things, none of them friendly.

Enjin had the grace to look slightly apologetic, which for Enjin meant he stopped grinning for five consecutive seconds.

The vehicle stopped at the edge of a wide lot, a flattened stretch of compacted waste with the northern wall visible through the haze. The beast was already audible — a low, grinding resonance that rattled the windows.

Doors opened. Feet hit ground.

"How bad?" Enjin asked, scanning the distance.

"Mid-size, looks mobile," Zanka said, squinting. He had his staff out already. "We all set to go?”

Riyo was already rolling her neck. "Rudo, you coming?"

Rudo hesitated. He looked back at Dove, still unconscious against Tamsy's shoulder.

"Go," Tamsy said. "I'll stay with her until she wakes. She hit her head — someone should be here in case she doesn't come around cleanly."

"You're support type anyway," Follo said, practical, already pulling his mask up.

Rudo looked at Dove once more.

"Go," Tamsy repeated, quieter, and smiled. "I have her."

Rudo went.

The doors closed. The noise outside swelled and then shifted direction as the team moved toward it.

The off-roader went still.

He waited a moment after the last footsteps faded.

Then, in the filtered, dusty quiet, he adjusted her.

She settled against him more fully when he shifted his arm. Her head came to rest near his collarbone. Her breathing was soft and even, the rhythm of it something he tracked without meaning to.

He looked at her face.

The bruise was coming up ugly, a plum-colored mark just below her hairline that he had already cleaned as well as the handkerchief allowed. Her lashes rested against her cheek. Her lips were parted slightly.

Sleeping, something in him noted. Or near enough.

He let his hand rest at her side, thumb resting against the fabric of her capelet. He turned his face slightly, enough that her hair was close. The scent again — that clean, faint sweetness — arrived with more clarity in the silence.

His other hand moved, slow and unhurried.

Underneath the edge of her capelet. Beneath the hem of her shirt. His palm settled flat against her stomach — warm skin, the soft rise of her breathing underneath his hand — and he held it there.

Just curious, he told himself. Harmless. Only seeing what she feels like.

He did not interrogate the space between that thought and the act.

In his inner theater, there was no popcorn. No performance. His inner self simply sat facing forward, very still, watching in the attentive silence of a man who has been given something he had not calculated into the plan and finds it, upon receipt, considerably more affecting than projected.

So that's what you feel like.

If someone walked in right now—

His inner self tilted its head.

—we'd look like lovers.

The word landed without the revulsion he expected. He turned it over the way you'd turn a coin between fingers, waiting for it to produce the correct response. Disgust, maybe. Clinical detachment. Some appropriately sardonic annotation.

Instead, something warm moved through his chest that had no business being there.

His thumb pressed slightly into the fabric of her capelet.

Lovers. Her head at his collarbone. His hand against the warmth of her skin. Her breathing against him, slow and trusting, in the particular way of someone who had no idea they were being held.

His pulse picked up. He swallowed thickly.

Fascinating.

He was aware of it with the faint, detached alarm of a man who has just noticed a crack in load-bearing architecture and is choosing not to look directly at it. The excitement was real. The warmth was real.

Both arrived without his permission.

In his inner theater, his other self sat very still.

Just a man in white, in the dark.

He held her like that for a while. The sounds of the fight outside reached them muffled and remote, and the light through the dusty window was amber and still, and Dove breathed evenly against him, and he allowed himself the full measure of the moment.

She stirred.

A small shift, her chin moving first. Then her hand, pressing against the seat. Then her eyes opened, unfocused, and he watched her take stock — the ceiling of the vehicle, the light, the arm around her — and he felt the precise moment she understood where she was.

She sat forward.

He let go immediately. Both hands withdrew. He created distance without comment, easy and clean, nothing that looked like retreat.

Dove pressed a hand to her forehead and winced.

"Easy," he said.

She looked at him. Then at the empty vehicle around them. Then back at him with the wariness of someone whose instincts had fired before her reasoning caught up.

"Where is everyone?"

"Fighting." He nodded toward the window. Distant, the sounds of impact carried faintly. "You hit your head when Enjin braked. I stayed with you in case you didn't wake well."

She touched the bruise at her hairline carefully.

"I cleaned it as best I could," he said. "There wasn't too much blood."

A pause.

"Thank you," she said.

She meant it. He could hear that she meant it, and it landed with more texture than it had any reason to. She did not give that tone to everyone.

"Is your vision clear?" he asked.

She looked at the window, the door handle, the far seat. Testing. "Yes."

"Any ringing?"

"No." She pressed her fingers to the bruise again and exhaled through her nose. "That's going to be terrible tomorrow."

"Enjin drives like he has a death wish," Tamsy said mildly.

Something moved across her face. Not quite a laugh. The almost-version of one, honest and involuntary, there for a half-second before she tucked it away.

"Yeah," she said.

The sounds outside shifted. A heavy impact, then quiet. Then voices — Rudo's, somewhere distant.

Dove reached for the door handle.

He watched her go.

The capelet shifted as she moved, the gold compass rose catching the amber light for a moment before she dropped out of the vehicle and the door swung shut behind her.

The silence she left was different from the silence that had been there before.

Tamsy sat with it.

He had known she might end up in the middle. He had made room at the right moment, said nothing, let the geometry of boarding do the rest. He had known about the seatbelt for three days. He had known how Enjin drove.

He had wanted proximity.

He had gotten it.

Thank you, he thought, for sating my curiosity.