Chapter Text
Suna’s ears were ringing. His face ached sharply where the man’s fist had collided with his cheekbone, and his neck hurt with the force of the blowback. His hands were tied tightly behind him, and he was sure that if not for the chair beneath him, he’d have collapsed after the last hit.
“I’ll ask again,” the man said, looking bored even after all the work he’d put into making Suna confess. “Where’d you put the money?” He was big and burly - Tanaka Saeko rarely did her own dirty work, Suna had heard. Though it wasn’t unheard of for her and her younger brother to beat someone beyond recognition when they were angry.
Suna shrugged, and the guy sighed. “This is about to get much worse for you,” he explained, gesturing vaguely to the towel and bucket of water someone had thoughtfully brought in. Suna swallowed thickly, but he didn’t waver.
Suna had been ready to take a little more of the beating, but the waterboarding setup made Suna realize that he needed to leave as fast as he could. He hadn’t realized exactly how much danger he’d been in.
“Fine, don’t say I didn’t warn ya,” the man said. He was just turning to call for help from the cracked door when Suna took his shot.
He’d been hoping to get out of this without revealing his secret, but it looked like there wasn’t much of a choice. He really didn’t wanna get waterboarded.
While the guy’s back was turned, Suna focused, and between one moment and the next he was shrinking, narrowing, into his other form.
By the time the man was turning back around, Suna was a fox. He sprang from the chair, bolted across the filthy, smelly floor, and was scraping through the crack in the door as soon as the man raised the alarm.
From there, it was just sprinting for his very life and trying to ignore the way each breath spiked pain through his chest.
“Shoot him!” somebody yelled behind him, when Suna swerved around a corner and into the street.
He was in the Underground still, that much was obvious. The road was muddy and foul, the buildings were too close together, and everything had a wet, dank feeling to it. The only light came from a distant hole in the surface and from the old yellow lamps some of the buildings had on their corners.
He heard a gunshot behind him and flinched at the explosion of brick next to his head. He ducked into an alley, and was glad to see it wasn’t a dead end. Another shot sounded behind him, and his hip lit up in agonizing pain. It was like fire, hot and alarming, and all Suna could do was hope it wasn’t as bad as it felt, that it was a graze, and not the life-threatening wound it felt like.
He was fast even when injured, but they had numbers, which meant it took much longer for Suna to reach the surface than he wanted. He made sure to steer clear of Kiyoko’s shop, just in case, but it took hours of darting through crowds, crawling between houses, and hiding in corners before he reached one of the smaller paths that would take him above ground.
The well-traveled staircase was out of the question - they would have sent men there first, waiting for him. This route though, the overgrown, out-of-the-way single track that led up switchbacks until finally emerging at the corner of the city, was free of would-be fox murderers.
As Suna climbed, his heart finally began to slow from the skip-fast rhythm it had been in since he’d realized he would have to run.
As the adrenaline wore off, the pain blossomed. His face and his ribs complained with every beat of his heart, but worse still was the wound on his hip. It pulled with every step, making his hind leg shaky and weak. He must have looked pitiful - a filthy, limping, blood-stained fox at the corner of the great city, looking back only once to make sure he wasn’t followed, before slipping into the shadow of a building and disappearing.
Suna ached. His lungs rattled with every breath, he was limping, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could slink around before somebody finally caught him. They must have realized by now that he wasn’t in the Underground. At least, that would have been the smart conclusion. They could be anywhere, watching, waiting to report sight of him. Still he ran on, dodging people in the streets and cars, ducking around buildings, hiding under dumpsters to catch his breath.
At least he was above ground, now, not darting through the muddy alleys of the Underground that too-often ended up cornering him.
His fox form was small, and fast - that helped. But if they hadn’t known he could shapeshift before, they certainly did now.
Suna peered out from under a large dumpster. It was getting dark now, the purple hues of evening fading to the blues of night, and it meant there were fewer people around for Suna to be wary of.
He took a moment to collect his thoughts. Even though he was beginning to relax, his heart was still pounding - had been since they first cornered him and dragged him to some basement to beat the shit out of him - and his whole body hurt, but he could run, and he wasn’t going to die or anything. He was a fast healer, anyway. His injuries were already starting to feel better, comparatively, despite how they pulsed with agony with every step.
His apartment was in the Underground. His friends, his community - he hadn’t stayed above ground for more than a day since his childhood, and it was weird and foreign up here. Things were too bright, even now that the sun had set; the streetlight on the corner illuminated an intersection, the buildings stretched up higher than he could see, and the whole city seemed to glow.
If he went home, they’d find him. If he tried to get back down there at all, even to stay with Kiyoko, they would know.
But he didn’t have any connections above ground. No family, not anymore. No friends. He was alone, and hurt, and didn’t have time for self-pity.
He had to find a target, someone dumb but kind, a real himbo that he could trick into taking him in at least until he was healed and could sort his shit out.
The first person he considered was tall and had pink hair that looked dyed, but one could never be sure in this city. He pulled a half-smoked cigarette from his lips, ground it out against the wall, and slipped it into his pocket. He started walking. Suna trailed him for two blocks before he met up with an even taller man and linked hands with him. Someone single would be easier to hide his secret with. Fewer eyes to watch him. Suna hurt. He was tired. He watched them turn the corner, hand in hand.
The next person was a young woman, looking too happy for her own good in a city this dark. Her smile, when she aimed it at a shop clerk, was bright. Suna did a double-take. Was it just him, or was she glowing? Suna followed her. She stopped in a bakery, and Suna thought of Yachi’s picture-perfect cupcakes lining the window. He thought of his last birthday, when she and Kiyoko showed up unannounced at his door with a fresh, tiny cake and a pint of almond ice cream. How had they known he’d been lonely?
Suna saw the way the bright woman changed those around her. He watched a grumpy sales clerk blush. He watched a crying kid pick herself back up when the woman offered a hand. He wanted to pick her, but he was almost sure she had magic, which would mean a higher possibility of identifying a shifter like him. Eventually the woman turned onto a busier street, where Suna couldn’t follow without being seen by countless eyes.
He settled onto his haunches, tired. It was dark, in his mind and outside. He wanted a nap. He wanted to die. No, he didn’t.
Across the street from him, an old woman struggled to carry the weight of the many grocery bags hanging from her elbows. As Suna watched, she tripped just a little, barely enough to unbalance her. The bags tugged her down and she fell onto her knees on the sidewalk. She cried out. A bell pepper rolled into the street.
Then, like the world was conspiring to give Suna just what he needed, a man appeared. He was tall, visibly strong, and wore a baseball cap covering half his face. He knelt by the woman and helped her up, dusting off her jacket. He bent to collect the vegetables into the bag.
When she gestured to take it back, he shook his head with a smile and offered his arm to her. She beamed.
The universe couldn’t have landed a more perfect victim in front of Suna if it had tried. The type of man that crosses the street to help a pathetic-looking old woman carry her bags would certainly be the type to help out an injured animal. Or so he hoped.
Taking one last look around to make sure none of his pursuers were around, Suna left the comfort of the dumpster and ran across the empty street. He trailed them for two blocks, then waited while the man took the old woman all the way to her apartment.
Afterwards, Suna followed him to a food stand. He apologized to another worker and tied his apron on, smiling his big dumb smile at everyone who came to buy onigiri. Suna’s own stomach growled, but he ignored it. There wasn’t much he could do about it right now, anyway.
The sky turned black, the night rolled in fully. Suna curled up behind a trash can, trying to keep warm in the encroaching cold. The coworker took off, and by the time the man was shutting down the food stall, there was nobody around to buy food anyway. Away from customers, the man’s shoulders sagged a little. His movements were slower, lethargic, and the smile was gone. Under the brim of his cap, his eyes looked tired. His impressive eyebrows were low.
Suna took a deep, rattling breath, and uncoiled himself. The cold of the stones had seeped into him, numbing some of his pain, but leaving behind a stiffness that hadn’t been there before. His bones felt creaky and fragile.
The man was on the phone with somebody when Suna got close enough to hear.
“No shit? Checks out though, Bokuto said he was good. Better ‘n us in the beginnin’, that’s for sure.”
Suna put on his best pitiful face, emphasizing the round sweetness of his eyes, the limp, the pain in his body, and stepped into the pool of light behind the food stall. He froze there, waiting for the man to notice him.
The man laughed into the phone, hefted a bag of rice into a locker, and turned. His mouth dropped slightly open. His eyebrows were impossibly thick, drawn together in concern.
“Oh shit,” he remarked, still standing frozen. Suna made his puppy-dog eyes even more dramatic. His face hurt. “Uh, Atsumu, lemme call ya back.” He stuffed his phone in a back pocket and crouched, not approaching Suna, but holding a gentle arm out anyway. His thighs were also impossibly thick, it appeared.
“Uh, one sec.” He stood again, popped open a takeout container, and crouched back down with a piece of salmon in his thick fingers.
“Comere.” His voice was softer now, low and warm. It was cute, Suna thought, the way the man tried his best to appear non-threatening when Suna was the one about to take advantage of him and his naive kindness.
Suna whined. He made sure his limp was very obvious when he crept forward and ate the piece of fish right from his hands. It was hard to keep his eyes open so wide, but it would pay off. He was growing more confident by the second that this man would be his savior.
It was delicious, and his stomach gave another rumble. He nosed into the man’s palm, earning a quiet laugh, and the man fed him more.
Before he could register what was happening, before he could remember the precarity of his safety, the man launched forward, wrapping an arm to scoop Suna up, and cradled him tightly to his chest. Suna almost freaked out, before he remembered this was actually exactly what he’d planned.
Like taking candy from a baby.
Suna growled a little for show and ignored the soft reassurances the man murmured.
He struggled a little, just to check, but the man had him tight with one bulky arm. Too tight, actually, and it hurt even more to breathe now. The whimper he let out wasn’t fake this time, but the man didn’t loosen his hold at all.
With his other hand, he pulled his phone back out and dialed. “Hey, you have a vet friend, right?” he asked immediately when the other person answered with a cheery “yullo.”
And that was how Suna realized he’d miscalculated exactly how stupidly kind his chosen victim was. Because he didn’t just feed him and take him home, he took him to the shitty little apartment of some loose acquaintance who happened to be in vet school, a point which the guy emphasized immediately after introducing himself.
“You’re Osamu? Atsumu called. You know I’m not even a vet yet though, right?”
“Yer the best I’ve got,” Suna’s man - Osamu, apparently - pleaded.
“I’m barely in vet school.” He looked angry, but Suna thought maybe that was just his face. The black earrings and the black stripes around the back of his bleached blond head added to the aura of pissed-off-ness the guy exuded. Suna liked him, even if he was a little extra about his appearance.
“Can ya just take a look at ‘im? Yer the only one I know who knows anythin’ about animals, Kyoutani. And that’s only ‘cause Atsumu said ya did.” This was all a waste of time - Suna would be fine in a couple days, probably, but it wasn’t as if he could explain that. The lack of control he had over the situation put Suna on edge, but anything was better than the alternative. He thought of the bucket of water, of the not-yet-wet towel, of the anger Saeko must have been harboring.
Kyoutani scratched his head. “Fine. Come in.”
Suna endured far more manhandling than he’d signed up for, only to be told what he already knew. Osamu seemed relieved though, and if it meant he wouldn’t take Suna to a real vet clinic - where Saeko might have ears - he supposed it was worth the trouble.
“He’s pretty beat up, but he’ll be fine. I can’t tell if his ribs are broken or just fucked up, but his lungs are okay. The wound on his hip is pretty bad, but it looks like it’s healing well enough without stitches. Just make sure he’s eating, and check for infection every day.”
Suna translated that to mean: his ribs had, in fact, been broken, but were now healing, and his hip had been more dangerously injured than he’d known, but was now mostly-fine. The extra-fast healing was convenient, as always.
“Thanks, Kyoutani. I owe ya one.” Osamu had Suna in his thick arms again, squished a little more gently against his pecs. Suna was wiggling, trying to look like he was trying to get free. In reality though, even if he wasn’t looking for refuge in some poor guy’s house, Suna wouldn’t have minded being in such close proximity to Osamu’s body. It was easy for Suna to admit that Osamu was very attractive. And built. And kind, and stupid, and all the other things Suna had chosen him for, but the most immediately important trait was his firm-yet-soft pecs that Suna’s head currently rested on. His eyes were closed, and for the first time in what felt like days, his pain was fading into the background. The painkiller Kyoutani had fed him must have been stronger than Suna had assumed.
“You’re taking him home, right?” Suna heard Kyoutani ask, barely, because he was falling asleep. “He’s obviously tame, probably abandoned by his owners.”The rest of what Kyoutani said didn’t reach Suna’s ears. Against all instincts, he felt safe, and there was little he could do to fight the wave of sleep cresting gently over him.
He dozed as Osamu walked home. Maybe Suna should have been paying better attention, looking for danger, for a pair of beady eyes in the night, but he couldn’t help how heavy his eyelids felt and how soothing the rhythm of Osamu’s footsteps was. So he slept, and he didn’t fight, even when Osamu set him on the second pillow of his bed and changed into pajamas, then climbed in beside him.
He didn’t question why he was on Osamu’s pillow instead of on the couch or the floor. He didn’t question anything at all. He just slept, with the gleeful knowledge that Osamu had fallen for his trick as easy as could be.
Suna woke up startlingly close to Osamu’s face. His heavy eyebrows were relaxed, and his hair was smashed unattractively from his hat. He must not have showered. He was such an idiot, letting an ostensibly wild animal sleep right next to his face. What if Suna wanted to kill him? It would be so easy - just a little chomp chomp on his neck, right there, stretched at an angle, smooth skin illuminated by morning light.
His eyelashes were surprisingly long, delicate. Osamu wasn’t wearing a shirt. His blanket reached only to his waist, and Suna didn’t feel an ounce of guilt taking in the sight of Osamu’s body, his muscles, his tan skin, a peek of his treasure trail leading under the covers.
Suna looked away.
He stood from his pillow, uncurling from his position and wincing at how stiff his body was. It was true he was a fast healer, especially as a fox, but the gash on his hip pulled at his skin when he stretched. It would probably scar. His ribs still hurt when he breathed, and the muscles under his skin were weary and sore.
Looking down at the pillow, Suna saw a rough circle of dried mud and dirt. He was filthy, after his rabid escape through the gutters of the Underground, and then the hours he spent crouched under various dumpsters. He was doubly shocked, then, that Osamu had put him on his bed.
Bits of dirt tumbled off the pillow and into the sheets when Suna slipped off the bed to the carpet below. He couldn’t wash himself, not with Osamu here, so he resigned himself to staying filthy even though it made him want to pull his fur off.
He explored, while Osamu slept. In the bedroom, there was a desk with a computer, a dead plant on the windowsill, and a pile of clothes - dirty, by the smell - in the closet right next to an empty hamper. Suna wrinkled his nose.
The bathroom was similarly disappointing, with a can of Axe body spray on the counter that Suna decided he would throw away, a toothbrush with toothpaste crusting the bristles, and a singular comb. The shower had a half-empty bottle of 3-in-1 soap. Suna held back a whimper.
The living room was better, presumably because more people saw it than saw the bedroom. There was a shelf with pictures - a group photo of a bunch of boys with Osamu and an identical boy next to him with yellow hair. He wondered if that was Atsumu. Then there was one of just the two of them, wearing suits and looking very uncomfortable. There was one with an older woman and a kind smile. There was also a framed photo of a loaf of bread, which Suna didn’t question.
The couch smelled kind of bad, but only if he dug his nose in between the cushions. There were crumbs down there, lots of them.
Suna wandered to the kitchen, stretching halfway there to try to get some of the ache in his muscles to ease. It made his ribs hurt.
His stomach rumbled more, and he remembered that the only thing he’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours was the salmon Osamu had fed him. He pried the fridge open, but the only thing he could eat without turning into a person was vegetables so he shut the fridge again.
He wondered if he had time to turn into a human, scarf down some food, and change back by the time Osamu woke up. If he saw a naked man in his kitchen, it would be over faster than Suna could try to explain. He stayed as a fox.
Luckily, he didn’t have to wait much longer before he heard grumbles and shuffled footsteps from the bedroom. He waited by the bedroom door.
Osamu came out looking mostly-asleep still, and Suna almost felt guilty for keeping him up so late before he remembered that he didn’t really know Osamu, and didn’t particularly care about him either. Unfortunately, Osamu had put a shirt on.
“Oh, hey,” Osamu greeted him, adjusting himself idly in his sweatpants. Suna looked away, to avoid hyper fixating on the outline of Osamu’s dick through his pants that was now even more obvious. Either his cock was enormous, or he was half-hard. Could be either. Suna wasn’t looking.
Osamu ambled to the kitchen, and Suna followed close behind. “I haven’t gotten any dog food for ya, or whatever, so I’ll just make extra,” he explained, pulling out eggs and veggies from the fridge and grabbing a pan.
Then he paused, squinted down at Suna, and frowned. “I’m talkin’ to an animal.” He scrubbed his face with his hand and didn’t say anything else for the duration of cooking breakfast.
Osamu made Suna eat out of a bowl on the floor, and shoved him off the chair when Suna tried to join him at the table, which was unbearably rude.
After breakfast, things got much, much worse.
“Yer filthy, an’ I gotta wash my sheets now because of ya, so just -” Osamu gritted out, arms wide. He was low to the ground, trying to anticipate which way Suna would go. He had him cornered, but Suna had put up quite the fight.
“Yer gettin’ a bath whether ya want one or not,” Osamu growled, and lunged. Suna’s poor, injured body couldn’t take it anymore. After fifteen minutes of being chased around the apartment, Suna gave up and let Osamu catch him.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be clean. He very, very much wanted all the blood and mud and dirt and dust and bits of plant matter out of his fur. He just didn’t want to be given a bath. After Osamu bopped him in the face for trying to bite, Suna stopped struggling and resigned himself.
Osamu dumped Suna roughly into the empty tub and closed the door to the bathroom.
Then, to Suna’s horror of horrors, Osamu stripped his shirt off, revealing exactly how ripped he was. He didn’t have the lean, dehydration-accentuated musculature of an underwear model, but it was obvious he had impressive strength built into the bulges of his biceps, the hardness of his abdomen, and the cut of his pecs.
Suna wasn’t looking as Osamu bent to remove his pants as well, wasn’t thinking of how long it had been since he’d gotten railed as Osamu revealed a sharp v defining his hips, and the beginnings of hair below his waistband. Then Suna actually looked away, feeling a little too voyeuristic.
Luckily, the absolute horror of being washed by another person while in fox form overshadowed any crisis Suna was having about a naked Osamu. His thick fur soaked up so much water it felt like he’d gained fifty pounds, the spray kept getting in his eyes, and Osamu used his over-scented 3-in-1 soap on Suna, which made him sneeze. And sneeze, and sneeze, and sneeze, until Osamu finally took the hint and put it away.
As soon as he was mostly-rinsed, Suna shook off Osamu’s insistent hands and jumped out of the bath onto the mat outside.
“Shit!” Osamu yelled, ripping back the curtain to see the enormous, growing puddle of water that Suna was spreading across the bathroom floor.
Suna didn’t care how much of a mess he made, he had just known he needed to get out of the stifling heat and closeness of the shower. The bathroom floor, even as he got water all over it, was a better alternative.
Osamu glared at him. “Stay right the fuck there,” he growled, and closed the shower curtain again. Suna did stay, but it wasn’t because Osamu told him to. He stayed because when he lay down and rolled a bit, the bath mat soaked up a lot of the extra water weighing him down. And, because as much as he didn’t care about Osamu’s bathroom, something bothered him about the idea of getting water everywhere.
Osamu came out a few minutes later and grabbed a towel. Suna backed away. Osamu followed. Suna tried to dart around the toilet, but Osamu tackled him, towel and all. Osamu was rough in his drying movements, making Suna dizzy and overstimulated, but when he finally pulled the towel back, Suna could feel how much lighter and cleaner he was.
He shook, cackling internally at the startled yelp Osamu let out. He was just being dramatic - Suna barely had any water left on him to fling around.
“Yer a menace,” Osamu grumbled, but it sounded strangely fond already. Suna didn’t read into it, the same way he didn’t ogle Osamu while he dried himself off and strutted to his room for clothes, cheeks bouncing.