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Their argument had started from thin air, as per usual.
Well, it technically wasn’t out of nowhere for Osamu, but for Ryuunosuke, who couldn’t decipher what his boyfriend was thinking half of the time, those sudden venomous words dripping in honey seemed to emerge out of the blue.
One moment, the car was silent– peaceful, almost. Or at least, as peaceful as the atmosphere could ever be with someone as unpredictable as Osamu. Ryuunosuke had been scrolling through his phone absent-mindedly in the front passenger seat while Osamu was beside him, driving with one hand and tapping his thigh with the other, eyes on the road with a bored expression on his face.
The next moment, the question came. In hindsight, Ryuunosuke should’ve seen it coming. Osamu never fidgeted unless something was on his mind.
“Ryuu,” He started, so, so, quietly that the black-haired man almost didn’t hear it.
“Mmm..?” Ryuunosuke made a small noise of acknowledgement, eyes still glued lazily to his phone.
His first mistake.
“Are you stupid?”
“Excuse me?”
His second mistake.
Unfortunately, Ryuunosuke had registered Osamu’s tone of voice far too late. It seemed casual on the outside, genuinely curious almost, so, with his already distracted mind, he replied in his usual callous manner.
The very same callous manner that he adopted when speaking to mostly everyone else but the brunette beside him. Osamu liked feeling special, see.
Well– No. Not exactly. It was childish in a way, but what Osamu really wanted was confirmation that Ryuunosuke was truly only himself around one person. Which was.. Sweet, right? He just wanted to be the closest to his boyfriend. Right.
At least, that’s what Ryuunosuke had convinced himself over the years.
“Ryuu...”
Once again, Ryuunosuke had gotten lost in his thoughts due to the sudden panic that surged in his chest, earning Osamu’s disappointed hum.
Fuck. He should reply. He should. But replying when he didn’t know what was wrong was always a gamble.
Especially since they were in a moving body right now.
Thankfully– or moreso unfortunately– Osamu continued.
“Where were you last week on Monday?” He said, voice so so light yet so so menacing.
Silence.
So that’s what this was all about.
It’s okay. He could fix this. This was fixable. It was. It had to be. He had finals this week. He couldn’t afford to lose any time due to Osamu’s ‘tantrums.’
Slowly, Ryuunosuke gulped, letting his shoulders rise and fall with each steady breath so that he could control his hammering chest.
He wet his desert-dry throat.
“What do you mean? Class, then your house.” He forced the words out as firmly as possible, as if their stability could make the lie any more true. Speaking anything other than an apology right now felt wrong, but if he could salvage the situation without admitting his faults, he would.
Of course he couldn’t.
“Tsk.”
Osamu’s tutting barely had time to take hold of his fear when an arm snaked around his back. A hand rested on the nape of his neck, turning his neck to look at the side.
There he was. His boyfriend in all his glory. How unfair, he looked incredibly pretty even in moments like this. Such a sharp jaw…
Those thoughts quickly dissolved once Ryuunosuke’s head was manhandled once again, this time to look up.
And make eye contact.
Oh. Oh no. Oh no.
Osamu wasn’t right in the head right now. That eerie expression couldn’t belong to anyone who belonged to this world; it just couldn’t. Whenever he was in one of these moods, the best strategy was to just… Let it play out. Listen. Say sorry. Hang out with him for a few days.
…Apologising seemed to fly out of Ryuunosuke’s potential plans as soon as the car began to speed up.
His eyes widened.
“What– What the fuck??” He spluttered, attempting to look at the road. However, the grip on his neck only tightened.
“Are you daft?” Osamu hissed indecorously, eyebrows furrowed like he was being wronged. “Stop lying.”
See, the night was empty. It was well after midnight, and the route they were taking home was rarely ever populated, and Osamu must have taken that specifically into account when deciding when to bring this up. Alas, attempting to rationalise the probability of actually hitting someone didn’t do anything to ease Ryuunosuke’s sheer and utter terror.
“No– I–” He stammered. With each struggle to move, Osamu moved closer until their foreheads were touching. With each movement, the car sped up.
There was no way they’d die, right? Right? Yeah, Osamu always had this twisted view of death, but he had grown out of asking for a double suicide. That wasn’t even in the cards, right?
Both of their seatbelts strained against their chest once they sped past a particularly big speed bump.
For a moment, both were floating.
And that’s when Ryuunosuke got his chance.
“LOOK ON THE ROAD!!” He screamed. Although not on purpose, the timing coincided just barely with Osamu glancing away for a moment and loosening his grip, at which point Ryuunosuke yanked the hand off his neck and pressed his back against the car door beside him.
Silence fell upon the two once again. The car slowed down slightly. Not back to its original speed, but certainly not the breakneck velocity it had been reaching earlier.
Ah, Ryuunosuke had made his upteenth mistake.
His chest rose and fell dramatically in violent spasms, eyes wide and skin looking even more sickly in the pale moonlight.
Osamu, on the other hand, was looking rigidly at the road once again, his jaw tight and gaze narrow. Scowling.
Shit.
“I–” Ryuunosuke started.
“Shut up.” Osamu cut through, not even glancing at him, though both of his hands gripped the steering wheel even tighter.
Despite himself, anger surged up in Ryuunosuke’s chest, bubbling up like the monster it was.
“Let me out.” He said, half-panicked and half-enraged. Though, of course, only his fear coated his voice and face alike. He really needed to get better at hiding that… Not that he would. Osamu liked seeing his raw reactions.
No response.
“Osamu. Let me out.” He repeated, this time more firmly.
This earned a laugh from the brunette. A low, mean chuckle.
“And let you wander out here in the middle of nowhere, at one in the morning?” He scoffed, voice practically dripping in venom. No attempt to hide his displeasure.
Ryuunosuke clenched his fists.
“I’ll figure something out away from you.” He babbled. “Just leave me alone.”
No response for a moment, before–
“Fine. Be my guest.”
And with that, the lock of Ryuunosuke’s side car door clicked, faintly audible over the car engine.
….Yet, he didn’t slow down.
Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. The car kept rolling down that lonely, long stretch of road that seemed almost never-ending, only lit up by the occasional flickering streetlight.
Somehow, unlike other occasions, time did nothing to quell the thrumming in Ryuunosuke’s heart. Did not calm him down one bit.
Likely, because he had no clue what Osamu was going to do. The unknown scared him, especially with his boyfriend.
Of course he knew that this wasn’t right. But what was he supposed to do when even the clothes on his body were funded by yours truly? When the only reason his younger sister and he hadn’t grown up without a mother was because of him? When the only person he could ever talk to further than on a surface level was him, despite always needing to walk on eggshells?
And so, in a split second, he made an impulsively reckless decision. A decision even Osamu wouldn’t have predicted– Or well, expected. He had surely already thought of every possibility and ranked their probability.
He opened the car door with one hand while unlocking his seatbelt with the other, and jumped.
….In a way, he was glad he didn’t have to look at Osamu’s face when he did so, though he could probably imagine what it was. Shock, of course, but in that minimal way of his that made you want to punch his face or pepper it with kisses. Okay, maybe that was just his bias leaking in.
Instantly, his hands and knees met with the rough concrete below, his left shoulder soon connecting with the ground as he began to roll uncontrollably in a direction he couldn’t even decipher. His phone that he had shoved in his pocket earlier flew right out, landing quite a way away, while he finally came to a stop near a road sign.
Oh, everything burned. Perhaps this was a bad idea. No. This was a bad idea. A terrible one, even. Proving something to Osamu was never worth it, and he seemed to forget this and relearn it the hard way every single time.
He’d be lucky if he had no permanent injuries.
…Vaguely, he recalled how moments before he did this reckless act, the car had slowed down once again.
As if that bastard anticipated this.
…Ah.
Ryuunosuke snapped out of his agony when he became aware of the lack of noise made by a car engine. There was no way that Osamu hadn’t stopped, so that meant–
A door slammed in the distance, and footsteps began approaching.
Despite the agony that slit through his body every time he moved, the black-haired man began to crawl. Hands dug into the concrete below, reddening even more with every passing bid for escape.
Vaguely, he became aware of an odd crunching noise some way behind him.
The sound of someone stomping on a phone.
He tried to speed up. He really did. But before he knew it, fingers tangled into his dirtied hair and yanked him up.
A strangled cry left his throat, hands trying uselessly to defend, flailing for a bit before dropping down limp due to the sheer pain that movement generated.
“You really didn’t think that through.” Osamu mumbled quietly, though Ryuunosuke could barely focus on whatever damn speech he was giving. “You never do. You never think. To think I believed I taught you better… How disappointing.”
Each and every word cut through Ryuunosuke worse than his current injuries. Well, whatever he could hear amongst his own yelps and pained gasps while he was dragged by the hair back to the car, of course. His scalp burned, but he knew that was the least of his problems to complain about.
Once they reached the car, Osamu opened the passenger side door and unceremoniously pushed Ryuunosuke in. When the shorter man protested, attempting to step out somehow once again, Osamu tsked.
“Ryuu.” He warned, lip twitching, as he strapped Ryuunosuke into his seatbelt– not exactly gentle, but not very rough either. Firmly? Yes.
That didn’t quite make Ryuunosuke stop, but he had now lost the ability to unbuckle himself, eyes turning glassier by the second. He didn’t feel like he had any crazy injuries to warrant this, but perhaps he did. Who knew. The quiver of Osamu’s lips did seem to convey that, at least, Ryuunosuke seemed in pretty bad shape. From the outside, at least.
Maybe it was the slowly waning adrenaline causing his vision to go black.
At this point, he didn’t care.
He just hoped he’d be able to give his finals.