Chapter Text
He's a maroon blur in front of you in this wild race, and you struggle to keep up as he sneaks deep into the maze of abandoned, dark alleys that constitute this closed-off part of Belobog.
You scurry after Sampo as fast as you can, flying behind him– but he is dancing, gracefully bouncing into sharp left and right turns with the precise, angled kick of a trained ballerina. You take note, impressed, but you don't think you could ever pull it off with such panache. You never thought that hightailing it could be an art.
March 7th and Dan Heng got separated from you in the chase, so it’s up to you and Sampo now to find them again without getting caught. He said to follow, and you, surrounded by five units, did not have time to decide whether he was trustworthy. You sent one flying with the bat, and scrambled. You wonder where to.
He stops so abruptly that you give yourself credit for your reflexes, screeching to a halt a mere inch from his wide back, and you realize he somehow heard it before you did: a lot of heavy footsteps marching at a beat, and getting closer down the narrow street you were about to enter. You’re prey, runaways hot off the press, and that’s enough Silvermane guards to guarantee your demise.
He's clearly not a local, but the conman must have these backstreets memorized, because he two-steps around you, grabs your forearm, and pulls you with him to the side. There, the brick wall dips back in an awkward corner, a perfect hideout... for one, because it's not very deep at all. Two people can't push themselves into this silly little corner, but he will try anyway.
His big arm envelops your waist to glue you to him– his weird metal arm band, the one that resembles a prong dog collar (yes, you'd been wondering), digs into you. Panicked and losing it, you breathe out to make your ribcage smaller, feeling the burn in your lungs from the run. You feel two crazed heartbeats shake your chest, and you can't tell which is yours.
You're both too anxious to think anything racy about the physical closeness, but then you inhale and you think it. Sampo emanates a layered scent that your brain decomposes in half a second, leaving you reeling a bit: you get smoke, then metal, then fresh, bright sweat– then soap and a perfume you can't identify but that latches onto your brain in a pleasant way, nagging at you, demanding to be recognized. It's cold here, because the heaters are off in this part of the city, but you can feel how his skin burns under the thin jacket. The Silvermane guard patrol squad reaches the crossing.
And keeps going.
Sampo releases his iron grip and you step back into the cool air, overwhelmed with everything that just happened. Neither of you move for a couple of seconds, hearing the guards' steps fade into the distance. Your ribcage suddenly has too much space to expand into and it kinda hurts.
He huffs, relieved, and you can feel a classic Sampo Koski third-person boast coming. But he opens his mouth, blinks, and snaps it shut, making hesitating eye contact with you. You eye him back. It throws you off to see Sampo, of all people, look doubtful and indecisive. It’s uncomfortable as hell. You need to lift the silence, and you inhale to say something.
And then his entire demeanor changes and his head snaps to the side, with an expression so sharp and so chilling that you can't impose it over his goofy face even though it's right there in front of you.
And again, the terror takes you. Metallic footsteps, no, stomping, hard and heavy and fast approaching. A robot, a big one, coming for you.
Frantic, Sampo envelops you again, closer, harder, but you're still looking up at his face.
This close, he towers over you.
Your gaze catches the beads of sweat under the blue wisps of hair, the eyebrows pinched together, the deep, green, droopy eyes, wide and anxious, and you’ve but glanced at the long line of his jaw when a big warm hand pushes your head into his chest –or the chest into your face, into the brick wall?–, your face pressed against the leather straps that cover it. Your nose gets smacked and, surprised, you let out a quiet whimper.
You notice the heat in your belly, where your shirt has rolled up and why is he so warm all over but straight up searing hot down there? Your hands are on fire, clinging to his sides for balance. And you can't think about it anymore, because it's there.
The robot is there.
It gets to the intersection. It fucking stops to a standstill, and you know it's right there, looking into the alley, suspecting, considering. You hear the quiet whirring. You're losing it. Sampo holds his breath, but it’s not going so well for you.
Sampo Koski, looking straight down at your face and tilting your head just right, holds your gaze like he would hold your hand, the last thing keeping you from falling into the abyss. It’s so difficult to keep it together.
His thumb moves, though. Slowly, gently, it caresses your hair, the tip brushing your ear by sheer accident and carefully avoiding it on the next pass. It comforts you more than you let yourself think it does. It makes the stressed strain in your chest fade to the background, and a new, different pain appear.
Dark spots start to flicker in the edges of your vision and force you to breathe in, so you finally do so, quietly but deeply, and he holds you through it, breathing with you. Sampo's scent floods your lungs and makes you even dizzier.
And finally, the robot leaves.
You sense him move aside and look up again in time to see Sampo rest his head on the brick wall, his eyes closed in exhaustion and relief. His Adam's apple, his flushed cheeks, his dry lips gasping for air and then letting it out slowly.
He's forgotten to let you go, his hand still on your head protectively. You breathe in hard and intoxicate yourself again. You feel like the cat that got the cream.
This is all fucking concerning, to say the least.
You don’t really have any confused feelings to process about this almost-encounter (until it assaults you by surprise, months later, in your loneliest moments) because not two minutes later you’ve run into the crew– and into Bronya. And then the son of a bitch is dropping gas bombs on the Star Rail crew, leaving the lot of you unconscious without a single warning. That pisses you off for good, bet.