Work Text:
“That,” Akito says, “is a terrible idea.” An is almost definitely already aware of that, but it’s his job to point it out anyway. “A store with only one exit, aside from some windows right next to said exit? Everything about that screams ‘bad idea’. If something happens, we’d be sitting ducks.”
“You think I don’t know that?” An huffs. She leans back further against the truck of the tree she’s perched in, the machine gun strapped to her back swaying slightly with the movement. “But it’s not like we’ve had any luck so far on this supply run, and it’s been hours. In fact, it’s almost time to start heading back, if we want to make it to the rendezvous point in time. So. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.”
Akito’s forced to concede the point. She’s right, is the thing. Almost every other place they’d checked either had been picked clean, or filled only with the moldy, dusty remains of food. There’s a chance that they’ll find something good here though, precisely for the reasons that it’s such a bad idea.
…It’s a bad idea. He knows it, An knows it. But it’s either this, or resigning themselves to returning to their partners with empty hands. Between the risk of danger and disappointing their partners? It’s really no question at all.
“Fine,” he says, hopping down from the tree, “but I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ if we run into anything.”
“Don’t jinx it,” An warns, joining him in a shower of dislodged red-gold leaves. She flicks a stray leaf out of her hair, orange stark against the blue tips.
Akito’s careful as he slides the door open, automatic doors stiff with no electricity left to power them. A precursory sweep around the entrance, where the store is still lit by the daylight filtering in through the windows, reveals that everything seems to be clear for now—though, of course, there’s no way of telling what’s lurking in the darkness beyond the first few rows of shelves.
“I’ll take the right,” An says, slipping out her flashlight. “Scream if you need anything.”
Akito rolls his eyes. “Please,” he says. “I’ll be done before you are.”
An laughs. “Bet,” she says, cheerful, as she vanishes around the corner of a shelf.
Akito creeps through the store with one hand resting on his machete, waiting for the other shoe to drop, ears pricked for any surprises, but there’s nothing. A good surprise, really, and Akito’s hardly going to complain. No sense jinxing it if Murphy’s law’s decided to take a break.
He sweeps past the first few rows on his side with no luck, nothing but bare shelves, metal racks with nothing left but a layer of dust. That’s only to be expected, of course. It’s no surprise that the outer shelves, the more obvious places, have all been picked clean by now.
In the fourth aisle, he finally strikes gold. There's still a handful of high-up and out-of-the-way racks with some nonperishables lining them, plenty enough to fill his bag. That there is anything at all can probably be attributed to the fact that this particular convenience store is fairly out of the way, on the outskirts of town; it’d taken them a couple days to even get here.
The metal shelf rattles as he hoists himself up to reach the topmost layer, almost deafeningly loud in the stillness of the store, and Akito freezes, listening. No sounds of shuffling, just the faint clicking of An’s boots against tile a couple shelves over. Not loud enough to attract attention, then. Good. Of course, it helps that zombies tend to be more sluggish during the day, especially around this hour of the afternoon, with the sun shining brightly in the sky—which is exactly why they chose this time to split up on the supply run in the first place. And why they set their rendezvous time to when they did.
Akito scans the row. Preserved ham, some cans of tuna. At least it’ll be a nice change of pace from beans.
…Sometimes, he really misses cheesecake, much as they can’t really afford to be choosy. He scoops everything up and keeps moving.
An finds him again at the back of the store, where he’s trying to unwedge a door that he suspects leads to the store’s inventory. “Stuck?” she says, setting down an armful of plastic bags filled with beans and dried fruit.
Akito gives the door another shove. He thinks it maybe budges about a centimeter. “Would be nice to have Kohane here right about now,” he grits out, words tight from exertion. “Lend me a hand?”
“You and your noodle arms,” An laughs, even though they both know that’s hardly true. Just because he doesn’t lug around a five pound plus weapon like the girls… “Budge over a little.”
Obligingly, albeit with a little grumbling mostly for show, Akito shifts left. Between the two of them, the door scrapes against the ground, the long-unused hinges groaning as they finally manage to shove the door open.
Inside is indeed the storage room, and it’s a veritable treasure trove. Plenty of nonperishables, with some expired (but likely still edible) snacks too as a bonus. And—score! Pancake mix. Just a bag, and they have no eggs, so at best they’ll have to mix it with water, but Akito could just about cry anyway. A huge relief after meals mostly consisting of beans, beans, and more beans the last couple of days. It’s more than they can carry even, meaning they’ll have to come back to get the rest.
All in all, he’d classify the run as a success. There’s one snag when Akito steps out of the storeroom and turns the corner of an aisle only to find himself face-to-face with a zombie, but a well-placed swing of his machete takes care of that (and no An, he did not yelp, and he will forever deny it if asked).
It’s as An is zipping up her bag and Akito is trying to figure out if he can fit just one more can in his that they hear the sound of growls in the distance. That’s their cue. “Time to go,” An says, and Akito’s on her heels as they exit the store, the rush of success thrumming under his skin.
They’re supposed to meet up with Kohane and Toya again right about now, anyway, before heading back to their makeshift camp together. Akito races through the streets at a steady pace, the beat of An’s footsteps just behind him, winding their way towards their designated meeting location while avoiding the small groups of undead they spot here and there.
The one thing about going so far out, though, is here, at the outskirts of the town, the buildings are spaced further out from each other, far enough that they can’t travel by parkour as they usually do, stuck running at street level instead. It leaves them more vulnerable than they are usually; the undead can’t reach them when they’re on the roofs, but being on the ground is a different story altogether.
It’s a risk they’d determined was worth taking a couple days back; with their packs now filled with some much-needed supplies, enough to replenish their dangerously low food supply and then some, Akito can’t say it was the wrong decision.
As they travel, green fades to gray, trees and grassy curb giving way to concrete pavement and brick buildings. Back to the denser part of the city, and it’s both at once a relief and a source of anxiety. More buildings and alleys mean it’s harder for zombies to spot them, yes, but it also makes it harder for them to spot the undead.
“Watch your step,” Akito warns, sidestepping shards of shattered glass. They’re at what might’ve once been a bustling shopping district, rows of stores of all kinds. Most of the displays are empty now, of course, windows shattered and goods looted. It’s a familiar sight.
“Yeah, yeah,” An says. “You don’t need to tell me.”
A few streets later, Akito pauses, listening. They’re close to the meeting point now, but—
“There’s a group of zombies ahead of us—five or six, I’d say. Do we circle around or fight them?” If they reroute to avoid the zombies, it’ll add a not-insignificant amount of time to their return trip, considering how close they are to the meeting point at this point, likely enough to leave them running late, and Akito doesn’t want to keep Kohane and Toya waiting for them. Still, it’s An’s call.
An clicks her tongue. “I’m running low on ammo. Better to not waste it if we don’t have to.”
Akito tips his head in acknowledgement, and ducks into the alleyway to his left. An follows. Really, it’s too bad the buildings here are a little too spaced out, a little too unsteady to justify parkouring on, else they could’ve just gone straight ahead via the rooftops instead.
They get to the meeting point first, surprisingly, considering how long they were out searching and the detour. Akito leans against the wall, tipping his head back.
“Looks like Kohane and Toya aren’t back yet,” An says. “Guess I’m going to be stuck with just you for a while longer.”
Akito rolls his eyes. He’s in too good of a mood to really snipe at her, even if neither of them particularly mean it anyway, pleased at their success. They got the food they needed, found a place to resupply that’ll last them a while, and managed to not have any particularly hazardous run-ins with the undead. A good day’s work. Now, all they have to do is wait on Kohane and Toya. Hopefully they’ve had similar luck.
Naturally, of course that’s when things go wrong.
Fast-paced footsteps ring out against the pavement, heralding their partners’ return. Kohane and Toya tear across the corner, both of them flushed in exertion and carrying a box under one arm; if they weren’t so in shape, he thinks they would’ve been out of breath. Instantly, Akito straightens in alarm.
“Kohane!” An barrels into the other girl, worriedly checking her over. “Is everything alright?”
“We, uh, ran into some trouble,” Kohane says. In the distance, guttural growls and the sounds of shuffling resounds—far louder than it should be.
Akito blinks. “Just how big a group did you attract?”
“Too big,” Toya says, simply.
“We got the ammo we needed, though,” Kohane says. “More than we needed actually.”
“Survivor’s cache?” Akito says, and Kohane nods.
“Abandoned.”
“We need to go,” Toya says, urgency bleeding into his tone. “Azusawa and I took some detours to confuse them and throw them off, but they’re not far behind us.”
This particular alleyway is a dead end; it’s easier that way, so they don’t have to watch both ends of the street for zombies. And if there’s a mob in the direction Kohane and Toya came from, then there’s no way but up. To the rooftop it is, then.
An scales the wall first, easily leaping from foothold to foothold all the way up. Akito tosses his bag up to her, along with the heavier of the ammo Kohane and Toya found. They even managed to get the right caliber magazine for An’s machine gun. She’ll be pleased about that. He slips the rest of the ammo into Toya and Kohane’s bags, to be sorted later once they’re safe.
Toya is next, only a couple seconds behind An, though his path is a little more ungainly, a little more awkward. A couple of months, and he’s still not quite used to it; kendo training never quite prepared him for parkour, but Akito thinks he’s picked it up fairly fast, all things considered.
Akito pauses to help boost Kohane up, and she offers a quiet thanks. Strong as she is, she’s still tiny, and that makes it hard for her to make the leaps the rest of them can. Not to mention that she’s still newer to this, hasn’t yet fully picked up the instinct of looking at a wall and automatically finding the best path up. Akito keeps a close eye on her, ready to catch her in case she slips or loses her grip.
The first zombie shuffles around the corner just as Kohane manages to clamber up over the lip of the roof. His turn.
Akito leaps, grabs the edge of the windowsill and swings up onto it. “Hurry,” An urges, and he decides to save his breath and swallow down the retort at the tip of his tongue. He reaches for a low hanging ledge, and moves to pull himself up—
A hand closes around his leg, unnaturally strong (too fast, when did they get so close—), and pulls. He falls.
In the split second before impact, he glances up, sees the way terror shines clear and sharp Kohane’s eyes, An’s horrified expression, the way Toya shifts as though to leap down after him. The idiot. Only one of them has to be in danger, Toya’s safe where he is, and there’s no way he’s going to let him possibly die for Akito’s sake. He shoots his partner a sharp glare, manages to get out—“Toya, don’t you dare— ”
And then the horde is upon him.
Akito rolls with the impact, drops into a crouch, but the hand wrapped around his leg makes it less graceful than he usually is and he fails to absorb the full force of the fall. Pain shoots up his ankle as his foot twists out from under him, and he can only hope it’s just sprained, not broken. He’ll be even more of a liability if it’s broken (if he even survives this, that is).
He kicks out, breaking the zombie’s grip on his ankle and stomps, ignoring the pain that flares in favor of the satisfaction as fragile bone shatters under his boot. He lets his gun drop—at this close of a range it’ll be more of a hindrance than a help, and anyway, he’s almost out of ammo—and sweeps out with his machete, the sharp edge slicing through rotting flesh. The first wave falls, their legs cut out from under them, but the rest of the horde is already pressing in, pressing closer.
His skin prickles, their putrid breath surrounding him. There’s too many of them. One on one, they’re no danger. A quarter of this mob, a half even, he can take. But this many? Maybe he can survive it, but—not unbitten, and Akito would sooner die than turn and put his friends in danger.
He lunges anyway, throws himself into the fray, machete hacking away at the zombies closest to him. If he’s going to die, he’s going die fighting, taking down as many undead with him as he can. He can only hope that Toya and the others manage to safely get away while the mob is distracted.
Sharp pain slices up his other leg and he staggers, even as he cuts down the zombie. Fuck, was that a bite? The next undead reaches for him, mouth open—
A whirlwind of blue and silver descends, steel flashing, and abruptly all the undead in a close radius fall. That idiot. Of course he didn’t listen.
Akito whirls on his partner in the brief snatch of calm, a furious sort of fear flooding his chest—Toya could get hurt thanks to him, because it’s Akito’s fault that Toya’s down here, to save him. “Toya, I told you not to—”
Toya’s eyes flash, uncharacteristically upset. “Don’t tell me what I should do,” he hisses. “Not if it means abandoning you.” He opens his mouth as though to say something else but is interrupted.
“Boys, DUCK!!” An’s voice shouts, and he and Toya hit the ground just in time. A whirr of An’s machine gun, and then bullets are mowing down the undead, enough to buy them the precious seconds they need.
Toya grabs him by the arm, grip tight, katana already in its sheathe. “Come on, let’s go.”
Akito gasps. “I can’t—my ankle—”
Toya curses, low, and in any other situation Akito would gape at him. Kohane must’ve heard them, because the next second, there’s a creaky groan, and a rusty metal ladder drops over the side of the building, the end hovering about two feet above the ground. The world shifts, tilting as Toya scoops him up and somehow manages to scale the ladder one-handed. Toya’s panting as they collapse on the rooftop, but somehow he manages it. Out of the corner of his eye, Kohane hurries to pull the ladder up before any of the undead can reach it.
God that was way too close. His heart pounds wildly in his chest, sweat a cool film across his palms, adrenaline thrumming under his skin from the near-death experience. Akito allows himself a moment or two of respite, before pushing himself upright into a sitting position.
An storms up to him. “You absolute idiot!” She punches him in the shoulder, then pulls him into a hug, heedless of the way it smears blood on her clothes. “If Toya hadn’t gone after you, you would’ve—”
“Hey,” he says awkwardly, leaning into the hug. “I’m fine now, see?”
She pulls back. “Don’t ever do that again,” she says, and she can’t quite hide the way her voice trembles slightly, or the slight sheen to her eyes.
“You scared us, Shinonome-kun,” Kohane says, earnest, hands easing from their white-knuckled grip on her mace as she stops leaning towards the edge of the rooftop. Had she been about to jump down after him too? Bad enough that Toya did that, but Kohane? Why didn’t An pull her away and stop her? “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Yeah.” He shifts slightly and pain lances up his calf, and he’s abruptly reminded. “Wait, my leg—” he says, and understanding and trepidation flit across An’s expression.
She rolls up his pant leg, and it's an ugly wound, weeping blood, but— “A scratch, not a bite,” An confirms, and Akito slumps in relief.
It’s quiet for a moment, and he lets the calm wash over him, slowing his racing heart. His head is still spinning, adrenaline fading into a belated nausea and horror, anger at himself for putting them all in danger. And—shame, for needing to be saved in the first place. An was already forced to waste so much precious ammo, ammo that Kohane and Toya just managed to get, because of him. What if Kohane had come down too, to help, and something had happened and An had been forced to watch? What if Toya—or both of them—had been bitten? It’s not that he’s not grateful to be alive, but—
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Akito says, shooting a sharp look at Toya, and it’s harsh with fear-fueled anger. He would never have forgiven himself if something happened to Toya because of him. “You shouldn’t have put yourself in danger like that. Not for me.”
The corners of his lips tug downwards. “Akito. Did you really think we would just leave you?”
“You should’ve,” he hisses. “I’m not worth dying for.”
The next second, he’s seeing stars. Akito blinks. An stands over him, and she’s back to looking furious, fists clenched tightly enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if she drew blood. “You. Are an idiot. Don’t you dare say that.”
“Shinonome-kun,” Kohane says, resting a hand on An’s arm, “would you have left us? If it was any one of us in that situation, would you have just left them behind?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then why can’t you see that for us the same applies to you?”
Because it’s different, he wants to say. It’s not as though he hasn’t been left behind before, and—he should’ve expected that they wouldn’t have, that Toya wouldn’t have. He knows they wouldn’t, not even if it put themselves in danger, and for once it’s less blessing than curse.
“Akito.” Toya reaches out, pulls him close, burying his face in his shoulder to take a few deep breaths. Guilt floods him at the way his partner’s frame shudders under his touch, and the rest of his argument dies on his tongue. Toya pulls back slightly but doesn’t loose his hold on his hoodie. One hand comes up to cup his cheek, and Akito’s left looking straight into steel-gray eyes. “You’re my partner. I would never leave you behind.”
“Get that through your thick skull,” An says, and he can almost picture her crossing her arms, or propping her hands on her hips, with that tone. He’s too reluctant to look away from Toya to check though. “We’re a team, okay? We’re friends. No one gets left behind.”
Akito groans. “Alright, alright.” He can feel his face heat up, and he elects to bury it in Toya’s chest rather than looking at any of them. Discreetly, he blinks away the moisture in his eyes. This is way too many emotions for a Monday morning.
An huffs, apparently satisfied that her point has gotten across, because her footsteps sound, heading away to fuss over Kohane.
Akito stays curled up in Toya’s arms for a little longer, relaxing in his partner’s reassuring, solid warmth, and Toya indulges him, but unfortunately he can’t stay there forever. Begrudgingly, he pulls back and sits up. “We should head back,” he says.
Toya hums. “How’s your ankle?”
Akito considers it. He pulls his boot off and prods at the skin, wincing at the way it’s already purpling. Now that he’s not in the heat of the moment, he can tell— “It’s just sprained.” Not broken, thankfully, but it’s still going to be hell to walk on, much less jumping across rooftops.
Toya’s eyes narrow, almost as though he can tell what Akito’s thinking. He probably can. Toya’s gotten scarily good at reading him; he might as well be an open book to his partner. “Shiraishi, Azusawa,” he calls, and the girls glance over.
“Yeah?” An says, bounding up to them, Kohane in tow.
“We should probably stay here for the night,” he says, head tipping towards Akito’s ankle.
An sucks in a sharp breath. “Ooh, yeah that looks bad. Let’s head back at street level tomorrow morning then, when there’s less zombies around. It’s not like we’re in any rush to get back, considering the haul we got earlier.”
“What, no—I’m fine,” Akito protests. He tries to stand, and he’s not sure if it’s the loss of adrenaline, the lightheadedness from being horizontal for the better part of an hour, or the pain flaring in his ankle, or maybe a combination of it all, but he nearly tips over. Only Toya’s firm grip on his arm keeps him from falling flat on his face.
“Sure you are,” An says.
“I don’t think you should be doing parkour on that ankle, Shinonome-kun,” Kohane says delicately.
An snorts. “Yeah, so just stay put. Kohane and I’ll do a sweep of the top floor, make sure there’s no undead around. We’ll be right back.”
“Mm. I think I saw a rooftop access somewhere around here…” Kohane’s voice fades into the distance.
And then it’s just the two of them again.
Toya’s quiet as he reaches into his pack for some gauze and begins bandaging Akito’s leg—which, honestly, he probably should’ve taken care of earlier, even though it’s hardly life-threatening, just a scratch—and Akito’s content to let him gather his thoughts.
“Do you remember,” Toya says finally, “when we first met?”
The answers comes immediately. “Of course.”
It was barely a month after he got separated from Ena, six weeks into the apocalypse. Akito had been in the middle of scouting for a place to set up camp for the night when his attention was drawn by the elegantly dangerous display. Toya hadn’t needed his help, effortlessly dispatching the group of zombies, but Akito had approached him anyway. He remembers surprising himself with the offer to team up; he’d turned down numerous others in the past when they’d asked, unwilling to trust, with Ena gone and everything that happened with Arata—
And yet here he is, with a group he’s willing to put before his own survival without a second thought. To this day, he thinks approaching Toya is the best decision he’s ever made.
“That day, you promised you’d have my back.” Toya pauses, checking the tension of the bandaging. Satisfied, he switches his attention to treating Akito’s ankle. “I always thought it was clear that the reverse was true in return, but maybe I should’ve been more explicit about it, if you could think even for a moment that I’d ever abandon you. We’re partners, Akito.”
“I know.” He does. Of course he does. But—Akito’s selfish; he doesn’t think he could live in a world without Toya. He is not worth Toya’s life, even if he knows his partner would make the trade gladly.
Toya’s mouth thins, no doubt reading everything Akito’s not saying. Akito looks away. He busies himself with slipping his boot back on and yanking the laces tight; with Toya’s taping, it’ll serve as a decent enough brace until they get back to base or find something better to splint it with. The girls will no doubt be back soon, and he wants to be ready to move when they are.
In his periphery, there’s a rustle of fabric as Toya stands. A huff of breath.Then—
“Akito,” he says, soft, and Akito can’t help himself from looking up once more. A hand extends in front of him, outstretched.
“We care about you,” Toya says quietly. “So please, just let us.”
Akito exhales, the remaining tension draining out of him. It’s not that easy, but—for Toya, he can certainly try. He takes Toya’s hand. “I—yeah. Okay,” he says, and lets Toya pull him up.