Tyger Lyli's Magic Cottage

What was taking the rescue crew so long? The systems had automatically, and successfully, sent the distress signal as soon as the malfunction happened. The blinking red light in the corner of the room, just above the heavy sealed door, was all the confirmation you needed to know that the signal was still doing its job.

You feel Bokuto’s arms press weakly around you. He knows you’re overthinking the late rescue situation again. He worries that you’re still wracking your pretty little head with what ifs that involved only one of you stepping inside the station’s last node, the one before the airlock that had malfunctioned and, in turn, had caused said node to auto-lock while on standby for the repair team to arrive in order to protect the rest of the unprepared crew in case whatever that was malfunctioning were to cause the airlock to suddenly open and suck out the poor souls into the vacuum of space.

Because if only one of you had gotten accidentally locked into the node, the other could potentially have gotten help faster. If only one of you had been inside, the other could have overridden the lock from the outside and you’d both be breathing plenty of air.

You can’t even remember how you got here in the first place. Your head is pounding and your body feels like you’ve struggled to run 2 marathons back-to-back. Worse yet, you don’t remember why Bokuto was with you. Or maybe you had gone with him. Maybe it was a two-person job you were heading to.

But the room is eerily empty. It’s only the creamy white metal walls and your two floating bodies. No equipment bag, not a tool floating around that could have been used to open up a panel or to force the communicator to work.

If there is a communicator. You can’t see one next to the doors where you’d expect them to be. It’s odd.

Who cares, really? The end result is the same.

You’re cold. Bokuto’s hands don’t feel nearly as warm as they should around your waist, regardless of him usually being your personnal human space-heater. You raise one hand to grab onto the front of his suit, and you notice that your nails have turned a concerning purplish-blue.

You look up at Bokuto, your head swimming so hard that you feel yourself squinting up at his face. He offers you a sleepy grin, lips blue against pearly whites, blood vessels glowing under the thin ghostly skin under warm amber eyes. The gold speckles of his irises don’t seem to shine so bright anymore though.

Your heart jumps in your throat and you wish it could close your airways just enough so that you wouldn’t need to breathe so much.

So you could keep sharing what little air was left in this airtight node that, for some unknown reason, had shut down the oxygen system. Because for some unknown reason, it was taking forever for the rescue crew to reach the both of you, so that you had used up nearly all the breathable air contained in this deathtrap of a space tin can. How long does it take for 2 people to breathe all the air in one space node? It couldn’t be anything less than a good few hours, so why hadn’t the rescue crew shown up yet? Why hadn’t they attempted to make contact with you?

Were they just waiting for you to…?

You hiccup, and bite the inside of your lip, chastising yourself for wasting oxygen like that. You didn’t know how long you had left being able to share this invisible yet necessary resource with Bokuto.

Your hands were growing numb from the cold and exhaustion; you couldn’t tell if you were still holding on tight to Bokuto’s suit or if the only reason you weren’t drifting away was because his own arms were anchoring you to his body, or if it was because both of your bodies were growing stiff from the cold piercing through your muscles to itch at your bones.

This was a nice place to fall asleep though. Right there, with your cheek resting against Bokuto’s chest, where you could listen to his heart still beating beneath the layers of strong muscles and bones. In the arms of the man you loved more than anything.

If you fell asleep there, the headache would go away, just like it always did when you’d enjoy a nice nap with Bokuto when you were struggling with a migraine.

If you fell asleep now, maybe Bokuto would have a chance.

And if you were lucky enough, the rescue crew would make it in time before the damage to your brain would be irreversible.

At the very least, you wanted them to be able to save Bokuto.

“Hey,” calloused fingers cupped your cheek, thumb hooking under your chin to tilt your head up so your eyes would meet his once more.

The corner of his lips were always curled up when Bokuto kissed you. This wasn’t any different. It was nice too, if tethering on the edge of desperate.

At that moment, Bokuto Kōtarō proceeds to breathe into you, to fill your lungs with whatever little breath he had left in him.

Your eyes snap open. The arm around your shoulders trembled lightly, but didn’t quite let go, likely too stiff already to do so.

Bokuto Kōtarō died with a loving smile on his face.

You couldn’t see it clearly, because the tears blurred your vision and the zero gravity kept the salty water in your eyes, but there was not a doubt in your mind about it. Because that’s just the kind of man Bokuto Kōtarō is.

Was.

Bokuto Kōtarō was also a fool. And he died with one last proof of his love pressed to your lips.

You gasp with what little air remained around you and use Bokuto’s last breath to finally let out all the anguish you had been collecting in every cell of your body for the past hours, hopefully powerful enough to be heard outside the node.

And if you were lucky, the stars would take pity on you and take you to join them to wherever they had taken your Kōtarō to.

You stir with a jolt. Your hand reaches for the crust keeping your eyes shut before your consciousness is able to reconnect with your body, and when it finally does, you’re overcome with a nauseating wave of pressure going around your skull.

How fun, waking up with a migraine!

Thankfully, the room is quiet (aside from the humming of electricity going to whatever devices were scattered about) and, more importantly so, it is dark. Not a single ray of light powerful enough to pierce through your lids, but you keep your hands over your eyes just in case; just because the warm pressure of your palms against the squishiness of your eyeballs feels somewhat grounding.

It takes a few moments longer for your memory to load back in: Kōtarō, the blinking red light above the heavy sealed door of the space node, the rescue that never came.

Then it’s like every nerve in your body is electrocuted at once: you open your eyes painfully wide to take in the darkness of the room you’re in, and your breath catches in your throat. The ceiling you’re currently staring at is surprisingly plain. And flat, though you’re not quite sure what you were expecting it to look like.

So the rescue-?

The ceiling gets drowned in salt water.

Why had they even bothered to save you? What was the point if your Kō wasn’t-

Movement to your right. Your neck feels stiff when you force it to turn.

The sound that finally makes it out of your mouth is somewhere between a wet gasp and a whimper.

Because you’re currently looking at a breathing Kōtarō.

There’s that peaceful small curve to his lips he always seems to fall asleep with, and he’s breathing. In… and out… steady… In… and out again… and again…

You refuse to look away from him, just in case doing so would cause him to suddenly turn on his back with his smile frozen in a mask of confidence barely covering pain and regret. You don’t blink in fear that he’ll dissolve like a dream too good to be true, and you’re almost thankful that your tears are keeping your eyes hydrated, even though they distort his features and the contour of his shoulders raising up and down, steady, up… and down again…

And you don’t mean to sniffle then. You don’t mean it to be so loud (to be fair, your ears are still buzzing with the headache that’s only been made worse as all the pieces jumble together in search for their own place in the puzzle of events, and you can’t really hear anything well above the whistling of your dripping nose), so when Kōtarō stirs, pressing his nose to his pillow as he takes a deep breath in, you hold on to whatever air that’s left in your lungs.

There’s a rumble in his throat when his brows pinch momentarily on his forehead before he peers at you with one eye.

Your tears are burning rivers on your cheek and across your nose because the gold specks in Bokuto’s eyes are shining again, despite the fact that he’s barely half-awake and you can see the cogs painfully jumpstarting in his brain.

Poor man has no idea why you’re crying in the middle of the night, but he’d be damned if he left you to suffer like that any longer: “Babe?” The sounds are a little garbled from the sleep, but he tries again, “Baby, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

You practically nuzzle into the palm of his hand, calloused and warm, when he brushes away a new tear from sliding across your nose. When you sniffle again, you can faintly smell the warm amber scent of his shower gel clinging to his skin and the fresh citrus profile of his shampoo coming off both of your pillows (because Bokuto has a bad habit of clinging to your pillow until you join him in bed to take its place in his arms, and so your pillow ended up smelling like a mix of your hair products).

He’s instinctively curling his body around yours, creating a shield between you and the world and hopefully whatever had hurt you and made you cry, when he tries asking you again what’s wrong.

“’s just a nightmare, Kō-chan, I’ll be okay now,” you manage a small wobbly smile before you scoot into the safe space between his arms and press your wet cheek against his chest, where you can feel his heart beating against his ribs, strong and steady, like it should.

The hand on your cheek slides to smooth the wild hair on top of your head where he presses his lips. “Promise?”

Bokuto’s strength surrounds you, and the healthy weight of the pile of muscles that makes up your man is grounding you into reality. Because you’re not in some space station, and you’re not waiting for a rescue crew that will never come; you’re in your shared apartment in Osaka, Japan, on Earth, where oxygen isn’t a scarce resource.

“Promise.” You mumble into his chest. It still takes you a few more minutes of quietly crying in pure relief, Bokuto’s heavy hand pressing careful shapes into your back and allowing you the time to find your baseline again, but the tears eventually dry up.

You think he’s fallen back asleep by then, since his hand had stopped moving a little while ago, his fingers only brushing tiny circles on your back at irregular intervals, and it’s probably for the best, really. It would be a shame to have kept him awake this whole time, seeing how he needs all the restful sleep he can get to stay in tip top shape for volleyball. Honestly, you were ready to slip back into slumber yourself, so long as it didn’t put you back in a weird space dream again and you wouldn’t wake up with the same migraine in the morning.

“Will you tell me what your nightmare was later?” The words rumble in his throat and against the top of your head, startling you a bit.

You pout, even though he can’t see it. “But I dun’ wanna think ‘bout it anymore…”

“I wanna help you fight your fears, whatever they may be.” His voice is surprisingly quiet, a sign that he’s fighting the drowsiness from staying awake this whole time to comfort you. “But you’ll need to let me know what I’m up against, y’know. Give me fighting chance. Like, what if I’m supposed to square up against some really nasty demon? Would spiking a ball of his face even hurt him? What if it’s a ghost and the ball goes straight through?”

His chuckles mingle with yours when he feels your shoulders shake in his embrace.

“There’s no monster to fight, Kō,” you nuzzle his collarbone and settle more comfortably against him now that all the cortisol seems to have left your body heavy with sleep. “We’ll be fine, so long as we don’t go to space I think.”

“Could we even afford to do that?”

“Nope.”

“So Hokkaido is still fine for our next trip?”

“Very much so.”

“Good. I’m glad then. So long as you’re happy with me, I’ll be happy too.”

“Thank you, Kō. ‘love you.”

“’love you too, Baby Owl.”

“You promise there’ll be no crazy monsters to fight? I’m sure I could get the boys to help me out and we’d crush ‘em on the volleyball court, Space Jam style.”

“As entertaining as that would be, I promise there’s no monsters this time.”

“But you’ll tell me if there’s ever one, right?”

“Yes, Kō, I’ll tell you if you need to fight my sleep demons.”

“Okay. Good. I’ll beat them all, promise. Because our love will overcome everything. Like some crazy super boost to my natural power.”

You hum along to his sleep-deprived rambles about defeating dream monsters with the power of your love and a volleyball, the low rumble of his voice steadily lulling you back to sleep.

Safe and sound into his arms.

So you breathe, as does Kōtarō.

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