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'til we're home again

(do not interact with this post if you are under 18.)

“Home again,” Osamu mumbles. It feels like an impossible dream at this point. What home is there left to go back to? He has no idea.

After a freak series of meteor impacts leaves the world’s surface an uninhabitable wasteland, the last vestiges of humanity seek shelter in an underground military compound. Osamu’s culinary skills are called into action, though the fare is as bland as the monotonous progression of time ten miles below the surface.

Lucky for him, he’s got a crush.

characters: osamu miya x f!reader

wc: 12.1k

tags: apocalypse AU, mutual pining, soft smut, Warm And Fuzzies At The End Of The World, There Is A Child Involved, Osamu Is A Sardonic Nerd, Atsumu Is Also There, I Make References To Cringey 40’s Music, And Maybe Titanic If You Squint

warnings: smut (18+), aged-up characters, implications of massive global extinction/impact events, discussion of loss/mourning, mentions of burns/allergies/anaphylactic shock, lots of food talk

notes: this is my second submission for the Smut Pile Apocalypse Collab AND my first fic for Haikyuu! That’s right, i tried two ENTIRE new fandoms for this one. Kind of diving into the deep end of this one, too (why dip your toe in with quick and horny drabbles when you can just write a 12k apocalypse fic instead?) but i really, REALLY enjoyed writing Osamu this way, so I hope you like him too.

MASTERLIST

The dinner bell chimes through a grainy speaker above Osamu’s head as he gives tonight’s mashed potatoes one final stir. He is sweaty and red-faced with the messy sweep of his grown-out hair bound back in a tight net, sticky reconstituted potato crusting the chest pocket of his white apron.

Dinner’s right on time, just like it always is when he’s in charge. As he scoops giant globs of potato into a steam tray, workers hurry around him on all sides, stirring big pots of canned gravy or poking at trays of frozen vegetables, bland and lifeless with the nutrients boiled out of them.

Dinner is always a disappointing affair ten miles underground. But on nights that feel particularly hopeless, like this one, he thinks of Chef Lavigne from Le Cordon Bleu. He was the one who taught Osamu how to make port wine reductions that gave him goosebumps, boeuf bourguignons so rich they made him cry. He sought excellence from every aspect of life. And for most of his career, Osamu strove for the same thing.

It does not take a degree in culinary arts to reheat the same processed foods every day. It does not take years of kitchen management experience to decide how many pounds of mashed potato flakes to cook up for a big crowd.

Chef Lavigne would die laughing, if he could see his best student now.

But those reconstituted vegetables, and Osamu’s ability to warm them to perfection, saved his life. After all, it was that degree and those years of experience that earned him a spot down here, among the last dredges of humanity at the end of the world.

Even that might not feel worthwhile, though, if it weren’t for you.

You were just about the only thing Osamu had to look forward to anymore. Your presence in his life was that of a polished gem, hidden among the monotonous mush of preparing sub-standard meals and keeping himself occupied with sub-standard hobbies and menial daily activities.

Yet, you had no idea who he was. The only interactions you had at all were the brief, passing glances you shared as he dumped scoops of flavourless sludge onto your meal tray. Sometimes he spared you a “good morning” or a “yep, same as yesterday,” but he’d never found the right moment to actually introduce himself, despite the close quarters you found yourselves living in.

Tonight’s interaction passed like any other. If he was paying close attention, he might have noticed the little nod you sent his way. He liked to think your eyes lingered on him just a second longer than strictly necessary, though in reality you were probably just staring at his ridiculous hairnet.

Osamu had never really given much thought to the way he looked in the kitchen before. In culinary school, he was always dressed in those excessive whites, and in his professional life he emerged from nearly every shift red-faced and harebrained. But suddenly down here, serving the worst possible substance to have ever been called ‘food,’ he stared across the counter at you and felt suddenly self-conscious.

Maybe that’s why he’s never introduced himself before.

It isn’t until the next morning, when he burns himself on the searing hot side of an enormous pot of gluey porridge, that he realizes you’re beginning to mess with his head.

He’s been thinking of ways to break the ice- sneaking out of the kitchen before the end of his shift, perhaps, and plunking down a meal tray of his own across from yours. He’s never seen you down in the lounges after supper, though he’s so busy trying to keep the compound fed that he hardly makes it down there himself.

He’s dying to know more about you, in any way that he can learn it. That distraction becomes his downfall.

He excuses himself from the rest of the breakfast service to seek treatment for his hand, which is already starting to blister. It’s not a terribly severe burn, but he knows it’ll only get worse if he doesn’t put something on it. It’s not the first time he’s caught himself on one of those giant, scalding monstrosities.

The nurse practitioner on duty barely gives him a second glance as he enters the infirmary. She just waves him over to the cabinet of first aid supplies, and Osamu is more than happy to attend to himself.

He rifles one-handed through the cupboards, taking gauze and ointment and surgical tape and clean bandages. And he’s turning for one of the examination tables with one arm full of supplies when you burst through the door.

He’s so startled by your rushed appearance that he nearly drops his armful, stumbling over it and setting it messily down on the table in question.

“Please,” you gasp, and the nurse- Maria- is already on her feet, scrambling for your side.

“He can’t breathe,” you plead, and it’s only then that Osamu realizes you’ve got somebody with you. He recognizes the little bundle in your arms as the boy who’s always trailing along behind you. He’s a cute kid, always remembering his pleases and thank yous and hardly ever wrinkling his nose at the sad, smelly mush Osamu has to offer him as food. An especially impressive achievement, considering Osamu’s turned up his own nose at the same slop on more than one occasion.

The poor kid’s gone a little purple around the edges, gasping and wheezing in a frightening handful of noises.

When you turn enough to give Osamu a look at his face, it’s obvious that there’s something strange about the way the boy’s holding his jaw. Like there’s something big inside his mouth that he can’t close his teeth around.

Maria notices the same thing, the second she starts to smooth a hand up the column of the boy’s throat.

“He’s having a reaction to something,” she says, crossing quickly to the locked supply cabinet on the other side of the room. With the keys from her belt, she’s got it pulled open in an instant, and she comes back with the familiar orange-and-blue plastic case of an Epi-pen in her gloved hand.

She doesn’t waste a minute in jamming it into the boy’s thigh. He flinches hard in your arms, giving a hoarse little wail, but as the drug works its way into his system, his body goes slack and his gurgling little wheezes give way to slow, easy breaths.

You are holding him tightly over one shoulder, rubbing his back in slow circles that make something warm and affectionate tug at the center of Osamu’s chest. For an instant, you cast your eyes over the boy’s shoulder and they lock with his.

Osamu’s heart leaps into his throat. He quickly busies himself with his own injury, keeping his eyes averted mindfully from you and Maria the nurse and the recovering little boy in your arms.

But he can’t help turning an ear on your conversation.

“What’s he allergic to?” Maria asks, sounding breathless and agitated.

“Nothing,” you insist. “Or- I didn’t think he was.”

“He’s young enough that it could have developed spontaneously,” Maria reasons. By now, you’ve got the boy sitting up on another examination table a little ways away, and Osamu is still staring intently down at his wounded hand as he squeezes a generous smear of greasy ointment from the foil tube in front of him.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees you come around to face the boy. He sees you get down to his level and dares turn his head to watch as you say something to the kid, too hushed for Osamu to pick up.

Either way, the boy shakes his head earnestly, and though Osamu can’t see your face, he knows you’re going to believe him.

“Either way,” Maria continues, glancing across at Osamu. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with him. Nobody was supposed to be admitted here if they had food allergies. We don’t have the supplies to cater to him.”

“What do you mean?” The cool dread that bleeds into the undercurrent of your voice smashes Osamu’s heart into the tile floor.

“I don’t know,” Maria replies. She looks up at Osamu one more time, who’s paused halfway through securing a piece of gauze to his injured hand. He’s frozen under her stare, helpless to do anything but watch as she opens her mouth again.

“I’ll have to consult with the kitchen and see if there’s-“

The next words out of Osamu’s mouth are perhaps his most foolish. Ever.

“I’ll cook for him.”

Maria goes quiet, and now it’s Osamu’s turn to be overcome by the same cold dread as you turn to look slowly over one shoulder at him.

He watches you recognize him- surprising, considering the way his hair flops forward over his forehead now, instead of being scraped harshly back by the hairnet.

It’s the apron, he tells himself.

“You’ll…” You trail off in disbelief. Osamu knows that feeling. He’s experiencing it himself, at present.

“I’ll—” His voice cracks pathetically, and he clears his throat, scraping a hand over the aforementioned locks of his loose hair. Down over the back of his neck, which hasn’t been trimmed nearly as closely as he likes it in a very long time.

“I work in the kitchens,” he announced dumbly. “I— manage them. If you tell me what the kid’s allergic to, I’ll cook for him. Special.”

You look at him again, disbelief mounting as your eyebrows climb into your hairline.

“You would do that?” You ask, like you know the long hours he’s already putting in. But the longer he thinks about it, the more this is starting to feel like an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Maybe he won’t be able to cook to the same level as he did on the surface. But preparing special meals for the kid will still break up the maddening routine of his everyday life.

Besides, now he’s finally got his introduction.

“I—yeah,” he finishes, sealing the tape firmly against his skin and lifting his hands before he has the chance to remember that the roll of surgical tape hasn’t been cut free yet. It flops uselessly from his left palm before he darts that hand behind his back, pinning the tape between his knuckles and the tie of his apron.

“It’s no trouble,” he promises. “Kitchen… basically runs itself these days, anyway. Besides, what else are you gonna do?”

You blink, perturbed, but you can’t disagree with him.

“Thank you…” you start to say, trailing off in the way that begs his name.

“Osamu,” he says, “Miya. You’ve… probably seen my brother around.”

You wrinkle your nose. “Atsumu?”

“That’d be him. In that case, I apologize on his behalf. Whatever he’s done probably garners one.”

“He’s not so bad,” you brush, introducing yourself in return. The privilege of your name is something he wants to hold on to forever. He burns it into his memory, feeling one step closer to knowing you the way he’s always wanted to.

“And this is Kenji,” you add, coming back around to the boy’s side and settling a hand on his shoulders. Kenji waves because he knows he’s supposed to, but his face is tight with evident shyness.

“Good to meet you,” Osamu replies, stomach tightening with the easy flowing joy of his brilliant plan. “And you should probably wait’ll after you taste the food to thank me.”

Nevertheless, it’s a start.

After a few days of rigorous testing (and feeding the poor kid nothing but bowls of steamed rice), you come to the kitchen one afternoon to give Osamu your findings.

“It’s milk,” you tell him, which is not as bad as he was starting to worry it might be. Peanuts or shellfish would be the best-case scenario, since those aren’t exactly staple ingredients in the standard underground diet.

Wheat and eggs, on the other hand, would complicate things. But milk falls solidly in the middle— prominent enough that he’s going to have to rethink the boxed mashed potatoes, but easy enough, especially given Osamu’s area of expertise, to cut out entirely.

It’s a simple enough substitution for him to lick his lips and nod thoughtfully at your revelation, rubbing at his jaw as he tries not to pose too consciously in the frame of the kitchen door.

“I can do that,” he concludes easily. Your eyes light up, and suddenly Osamu realizes you could have asked him to strip naked and storm the bunker doors and he probably would have agreed all the same.

This is a preferrable alternative, though.

That night, he comes to the kitchen twenty minutes before the rest of the workers arrive. He steams rice in a pot beside the porridge-potato monstrosity, cooking it down until it’s nice and sticky. He takes pork that’s been roasting since lunch- nontraditional, but it’ll work- and sets a couple of small portions aside.

The rest comes to him as easily as sleep. He wets his hands, scoops a measure of rice into one palm, and fits a smaller scoop of pork into its center.

He hasn’t done any of this since leaving the surface. But the idea of making something special for that poor kid- making his face light up the same way yours did- brings an inexplicable rush of joy to Osamu that he can’t swallow any longer.

He shapes the rice into two perfect little triangles, wraps them up carefully, and leaves a space on the tray for some steamed vegetables. Finally, he tucks the special meal into the walk-in fridge, feeling just a little more alive than he might have at this time last week.

The hour and a half before dinner passes like an eternity. Finally, people start trickling in to eat, and even manning his usual post beside the soupy mashed potatoes, Osamu’s heart is racing.

He catches your eye from the other side of the room, the second you scoot in through the open double-doors with Kenji clinging tightly to one hand. He’s not quite ready to identify the sensation that races through him when he sees the way that kid clings to you, so he pushes it down and averts his eyes.

As soon as you get close enough, he shoots you a pathetic attempt at a casual little nod, which he’s almost certain comes out more like a weird, stiff jerk of his chin, punctuated quickly when he ducks his head and disappears into the kitchen.

That special meal is exactly where he left it, and it’s with more joy than he’s felt in all the months down here combined that he pulls off the cling wrap and brings the chilled plate to the front.

“Hey,” you greet brightly when he meets your eye again, ducking out of the kitchen. Your gaze drifts to the plate in his hand and your eyebrows shoot up. The stunned look you send him shoots lightning bolts into his heart. He wants to capture that image permanently, your pretty eyes blown so wide, and all for him.

“Wow,” you continue. “That looks… incredible. Did you make that just for Kenji?”

There’s a hint of pitch to your voice that wasn’t there the last time you spoke, and he can tell by the way you enunciate that you’re half-speaking to Kenji, too.

“Sure did,” he announces, attempting the same sunny tone. He reaches across the counter and sets the plate down in front of the steam trays. Kenji reaches up and, with one steadying hand from you, takes the plate into his hands, beaming.

“Wow,” you quip brightly. “They look amazing. What do you say, Kenji?”

The brightness in Kenji’s eyes is something Osamu never thought to look for before. He agreed, selfishly, to do all of this as a cure for his own ridiculous boredom. And, even more selfishly, to get closer to you.

He never really thought about how much the kid in question would appreciate it.

“Thank you,” Kenji coos, loud enough to cut through the babble of the crowded dining hall, but soft enough that it still bears the edges of his shyness. He’s still grinning down at the plate, though, with toothless gaps in his smile.

Shit. He is pretty cute. Especially when he reaches up to gently prod at the sculpted edge of one onigiri and Osamu catches himself comparing Kenji to the kids that used to come by the shop on the surface.

The shop that’s been blown to dust by now.

Osamu doesn’t let himself spiral, focusing on you instead.

“I wish I could offer you the same,” he adds, digging the stainless steel scoop in his right hand into the gelatinous steam tray of potatoes. Your mouth tightens, but you shoot him an appreciative glance nevertheless.

There’s something not unlike relief brewing in your eyes. Maybe you’re thrilled by the knowledge that Osamu knows *exactly* how bad the food is down here. Or maybe you’re relieved to find out that he can, in fact, put together a decent meal for your kid.

Whatever it is, it makes him pause, potato-ladle in hand, until globs of the sticky mess are dripping back into the steam tray with an unholy sort of schlop.

“It’s okay,” you prompt, shaking him from his idiotic reverie and forcing him to actually serve you a dose of the potatoes from hell. If only he’d met you on the surface. He could have cooked you anything you asked for. He’d sweep you off your feet, with a world of ingredients to choose from.

The frozen supply of meat and fish is already starting to dwindle. And he doesn’t want to know how ugly it’s going to get when the entire bunker goes vegetarian.

“I know I’m not as special as Kenji,” you tease, nudging the boy gently and prompting a humorless snort from Osamu.

If only you knew.

He watches you and Kenji disappear into the crowd with one hollow filling in his chest. Whatever fills it empties rapidly from another, larger hollow, growing bigger and harsher the longer he lets himself want you.

Nobody down here has a simple story. Kenji is shaping up to be a very complicated facet of yours.

And Osamu’s never been good at keeping himself from getting his hopes up.

Despite the new tasks at hand, Osamu settles into a new routine fairly easily. Atsumu hasn’t given up on rising at an unreasonable hour to go jogging around the compound yet, so Osamu starts getting up with his brother’s alarm, too.

He misses the twinge of envy that’s always sailed across their cramped little bunkroom when Osamu rolls over to go back to sleep, but the lost sleep is quickly becoming well worth the effort.

He gets to the kitchen earlier and earlier every day, brain racing with ideas, plates he can throw together that will put a smile on Kenji’s face. Meals he can cook up with what simple ingredients he has that will simultaneously satisfy the kid while impressing you wildly.

It seems to be working.

You don’t even make your way down the line anymore, coming directly to Osamu’s station at every meal with Kenji bouncing excitedly at your side. Where Osamu was pining hopelessly for you only a couple of weeks ago, stealing glances at the back of your head and barely catching your eye in passing, he can now boldly hold your gaze as you approach him eagerly. It sends flutters of pride through him every time. And you’ve shown no signs of letting up.

On one particular day, after Osamu’s handed off Kenji’s meal and loaded your tray up with whatever monotonous bullshit was on the government-issued menu, you bend quietly to mutter to Kenji while gently turning away from the meal line.

“Where should we sit?” Your voice is hushed, but Osamu’s heard you ask that often. This time, however, instead of leading you excitedly to the table by the wall, Kenji turns back to the meal counter.

“I wanna sit with ‘Samu,” he declares. Your expression immediately folds. Osamu’s cheeks warm.

“Osamu’s working right now,” you begin to explain. “He can’t come sit with us until he’s-“

But the deflating look in Kenji’s eyes is too much to bear, so Osamu cuts you off.

“Sure, you can sit with me,” he announces quickly, finding your eyes and giving a subtle little nod. He’s probably going to get in trouble for this, but he’s well beyond caring at that point.

That kid’s starting to have the same influence over him as you always did.

“Here, come on. I’ll leave this to my friends, Lemme show you where I sit, alright?”

Kenji is vibrating with joy already, which counters the eyeroll that one of his coworkers flashed him when Osamu pushes his sticky ladle into their gloved hands. He reaches across the counter and grabs an empty meal tray, filling it quickly.

“See that door at the other end of the…” He trails off, pointing across the room to the door that separates the dining hall from the kitchens. He glances over his shoulder at you, feeling the smile tug subconsciously at the edges of his mouth.

“I’ll meet you over there.”

With that, he ducks into the kitchen, clutching tightly at his chest when he’s sure you can’t see him. It’s too late, though. His heart’s already leapt into his throat.

If Atsumu could see him right now, he’d be in stitches.

He races to the door, throwing his tray down on the back table as he passes it and ripping off his hairnet. He’s still combing and mussing his fingers through the dark strands of his hair as he unlocks and pulls that heavy kitchen door open.

It’s the first time he’s seen you without a counter cutting you off at the hips in weeks.

It feels strangely too intimate.

“Hi,” he croaks, like he didn’t just see you.

“Hello,” you giggle, playing right along because of course you would. “Am I late?”

“Not at all,” he croaks, hiding the desperate throb in his chest with some kind of pathetic wheeze. He scrapes his fingers through his hair one more time, then steps aside, holding the door open for you and Kenji to pass through.

“You’re right on time.” His voice holds a little steadier now, and he’s starting to think he might actually make it through this conversation without kicking the bucket.

The kitchen’s back table is nothing more than a long, wooden table jutting out from the back wall. It’s lined on both sides with stools, and it’s where Osamu’s eaten every single meal since he arrived down here.

But it occurs to him, as he watches you take in the gigantic table with no small measure of wonder, that you’ve never even been back here before.

“I’ve always wanted to see the kitchens,” you confess.

“Why, so you could deliver your complaints personally?” Osamu jokes sardonically. Insulting his own cooking is the only defense mechanism he has against you. He has to drill home the fact that he knows. If you know he knows, then you also know that he’s capable of doing better.

The perfectly formed rice balls in Kenji’s little hands are proof enough of that, though.

You snort quietly, looking at him with a fondness in your eyes that knocks him straight onto his ass.

“It’s not that bad,” you promise.

“Please, you don’t have to flatter me,” he teases back. “Sit down, please, before your flavourless mush gets cold. I promise I’ll give you the grand tour afterward.”

He glances over his shoulder at the other workers, who are shooting him a killer combination of jealous glares and smug little smirks. Osamu can’t decide which expression he dreads hearing about later.

He turns his back decisively on the rest of the kitchen, offering the stool at the head for Kenji and letting you slip into the seat kiddie-corner to him. Osamu takes the seat across from you, squaring his tray with the end of the table and making his best attempt at a smile.

He can feel the nerves in it, but he doesn’t care. Despite his better judgements, the more he learns about you, the deeper the flutter in his chest grows. He thinks about all the times Atsumu’s made fun of him for not being able to get a girlfriend and wonders how ironic it is that he might only find love at the end of the world.

But you’re just grateful to him. Nothing more. You’re placating your kid by agreeing to have supper with him. If Kenji’s survival didn’t depend on Osamu, you might never have given him the time of day. And why would you?

“You know,” you hum, already halfway through the mashed potatoes that seem to grow more liquid with every preparation. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to meet you.”

Osamu resists the urge to roll his eyes as all the self-loathing he’s just done goes swirling into the toilet. He should know by now that you’re never going to stop surprising him.

“Oh?” He shovels an impossibly huge mouthful of steamed peas into his mouth to hide the way he wants to let his mind go hypersonic. “Why’s that?”

“Your brother talks about you all the time,” she confesses. Osamu stops chewing.

Atsumu has always been the extraverted twin. Osamu’s no misanthrope, but Atsumu was always the one being asked to school festivals and jetsetting all over the world. It was a fucking miracle they even happened to be in the same city when all of this went down.

Either way, Atsumu’s kind of a bystander in all of this. When the state of things was made clear, Osamu was the one given clearance to come down here. Osamu was the one who was told to choose one family member to bring down here with him. Osamu’s the one with a job to do down here.

Atsumu’s just along for the ride. The possibility of drowning in his brother’s shadow even though HE was the one determined ‘useful’ is not one that Osamu wants to entertain.

Either way, Osamu hasn’t realized just how much time his work down here has been taking up. Most people down here have parts to play once the threats on the surface have passed, and can only bide their time until that happens. As such, there are all kinds of social gatherings and activities that Osamu hasn’t been able to participate in.

It makes sense that you would know Atsumu, then.

“Good things, I hope,” he manages to say, after what feels like a lifetime of stewing.

“You kidding?” You poke idly at the food substance filling the ‘meat’ section of your meal tray, and he’s not sure whether you’re considering taking a bite or waiting for it to get up and dance. Still, you pull your attention from the tray and when you look at him, it’s with such sincerity that HE wants to get up and dance.

“He talks about you like you’re a superhero. Says he wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. He talks about how hard you work, which is obviously true. And he’s always going on about how you’ve been the hardworking one from the moment you were born. And all he’s done is mooch off you, or something like that.”

Osamu snorts into his dinner, but it’s to hide the shock that he’s too afraid to let you see.

He’s never had a bad relationship with Atsumu. But it seems that they’ve both got some ideas about one another that they haven’t exactly settled the score on. To Osamu, Atsumu’s always been the star of the Miya show. He was the one that girls flocked to, the one with enough passion and drive to turn his high school club sport into a career, the one who, in an overpopulated bunker buried miles beneath a broken world, has still managed to make more friends than his brother.

It never occured to him that Atsumu might feel the same way about him in return.

He makes a mental note to say something to Atsumu later. Now, though, it’s time to push the conversation as far away from him as physically possible.

“He’s a good guy,” Osamu promises idly. “But-“ He jabs his fork at you, taking a deep, shaky little breath and trying not to appear too physically uncomfortable at the thought of being admired by his twin.

“What about you? I mean, how did you end up-“

“Down here with a kid I’ve never met before?” You ask, smiling politely over the top of your meal. Osamu casts a cautionary glance toward Kenji, but he’s chewing slowly on his rice balls and absolutely fascinated by the industrial ovens on the far side of the kitchen, watching the workers who are already prepping breads for the morning.

“So he’s-“ Osamu’s been searching for a way to ask that question that wouldn’t be immensely insulting.

“No,” you hum, looking fondly down at Kenji one more time. “He’s not. He was one of my students, though.”

Osamu purses his lips. That was his next question. It’s always been fairly obvious what bought Osamu his ticket down here. But you’re a bit of a question mark.

“I was- I am a teacher,” you continue. “Elementary school. So when everything happened…” You close your eyes for a moment, pausing before you sigh into your food.

“Hey.”

Osamu refuses to let his curiosity get the better of him. He will not probe you needlessly for answers. He reaches over, finding your hand on the table and covering it with his.

For a moment, he does not worry about whether his palms are sweaty or not. He’s not concerned with how quickly his heart is beating or how pretty you are, even in all the heat and bustle of the kitchens.

He closes his fingers around yours and squeezes gently. The smooth touch of your skin makes his limbs tingle.

“You don’t have to,” he continues. He has enough painful memories around that day. Osamu still hasn’t fully considered the cruelty of granting someone with two surviving family members one extra pass.

But his gran was clear: the Miya twins stick together.

He swallows that memory hard. Focuses on you instead.

“It’s alright,” you promise, though you flip your hand between his and the table, squeezing it back. Osamu hasn’t realized just how touch-starved he’s become until he’s willing the goosebumps that race up his arms to disappear before you do something crazy, like notice them.

“They gave me one extra pass,” you explain. “To take someone down with me. My parents didn’t want to be separated, though. They… didn’t want to go at all, if they couldn’t go together.”

Your lips tighten and Osamu squeezes your hand harder, helping you fight back the tears if that’s what you need.

“So I went to the airport alone. And when I got there, I mean- I’m sure it was the same scene for you.”

Osamu remembers it well. The crowded gates, desperate people forced brutally back by armored security guards. He and Atsumu fighting through the crowd, waving his phone in the air with that stupid government-issued barcode.

The sky above going a mean sort of reddish colour, unlike anything he’d ever seen.

“Yeah,” he replies mildly, giving a quiet little nod.

“So I was just about to go through the gates when I saw him standing there, all by himself. He was crying, and I had no idea where his mother was, or what had happened to her. But it seemed like…”

You trail off, blanching a little.

“It seemed like she wasn’t coming back for him. And I had nobody else to bring through with me, and no time to wait to find out, so…”

You give Kenji a little nudge, and he’s pulled from his reverie just long enough to send you a sunny little smile through big bites of rice and meat.

“Good?” You prompt softly, and he grins on, oblivious.

“Yeah.”

On the other side of the table, Osamu’s wondering if it would be inappropriate to propose on the spot.

There’s something about you that’s drawn him to you from the very beginning. He’s always thought you were pretty, but it’s more than that. There is a kindness about you that makes him want to know you better. A softness to you that makes him know, underneath all the self-deprecating nerves, he wouldn’t regret meeting you.

He thought maybe sharing a meal with you would simply prove him right, but it’s done way more.

“That’s…” He trails off. You’re still holding his hand, so he flips your palm over, brushing his thumb carefully across the top of your knuckles, so much smoother than his will ever be.

“That’s really good of you,” he confesses. The words tumble from his mouth like a prayer, because he means every syllable. He can’t think of anything to say that won’t come spilling out like blind praise.

“It’s…” You trail off, and he watches the conflict cross your face. “Sometimes I get caught up in thinking about whether she was coming back for him or not. Or whether he would have survived, if I hadn’t…” You shake your head violently. “No point, though. He’s down here. I’m down here. Gotta move on, you know?”

Your meals have gone cold. If only it were that simple.

That night, when Osamu gets in after cleanup, Atsumu’s already in his bunk. He’s got the overhead light turned on and a book, of all things, open in his hand. As soon as Osamu comes around to the other side of the room, he sits down on his own bunk and immediately recognizes the cover as one of those seedy paperback crime novels from the bookshelves in the lounge.

A book’s a book’s a book, though.

“Are you reading?” Osamu asks in mild disbelief. Atsumu snorts without looking up.

“Can it. You think there’s anything else to do around here?”

He’s been starting to wonder just how boring it is for the people like Atsumu- who aren’t worked off of their feet day in and day out. There’s something inside his overworked spirit that kind of craves that boredom, but he knows how it’ll be.

“Hey,” he prompts, a little quieter this time, and Atsumu actually looks up. “I wanna talk to you about something.”

Atsumu quirks a brow, slowly closing the worn pages of his book and stashing it under the bed, between his legs as he sits up.

When Osamu speaks your name, his eyebrows shoot up even higher.

“Do you know her?”

Atsumu bites his lip, shrugging.

“Kinda. Think she only wanted to meet me so she could get to you, though.”

Osamu doesn’t want to let his heart lurch, but it does without his permission.

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, she’s had a thing for you since, like, the first day we got here.”

Osamu’s stomach goes inside out. He gets up so fast, his head collides with the bracket of the bunk above him on the way up, sending him reeling toward the door with a hand clapped to his forehead. Atsumu howls with laughter, and Osamu’s just thankful their other two bunkmates aren’t here.

“Can’t imagine why,” Atsumu enthuses when his laughter dies down enough for him to speak.

“Shut up,” Osamu harshes, pinching his eyes shut hard to hide the fact that they’re watering. “She didn’t say that.”

“She didn’t have to,” his brother drawls, stretching back out on his bunk with his arms pillowed beneath his head. “’S clear as day to anyone with a working brain. No wonder you can’t see it.”

If the pain in his head weren’t already so intense, Osamu might have punched him for that one. But then he remembers all the things you told him, all the stuff Atsumu’s been saying about him, and he takes a deep little breath.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Osamu confesses. Atsumu looks out the corner of his eye, but it’s easy to see his mouth lifting in a genuine little smile.

“I know,” he drawls. “You can just say it. I’m the best wingman you’re ever gonna get.”

Osamu nearly loses his pillow tossing it across the bunk at his twin’s face.

A couple of nights later, there’s a party.

According to you (and Atsumu, later on) it’s something that some of the more idle folks have been planning for a little while. The people lucky enough to have brought musical instruments down with them have already volunteered their talents. And you’ve been assigned the task of sweet-talking Osamu into letting you at the compound’s liquor stores.

You barely need to flutter your eyelashes at him before he’s bringing up casks of wine and kegs of beer, all carefully stored away for, from the sounds of it, occasions just like this. On weekends (whatever those even are anymore), a cask or keg of wine or beer might be brought up to be enjoyed with dinner.

But this is going to be something else entirely. Well beyond the meager celebrations that are put on for somebody’s birthday. For the first time in a very long time, there’s going to be merrymaking.

And after supper, as Osamu helps the soldiers and other volunteers push the dinner tables to the edges of the dining hall, he lets himself… get excited.

He doesn’t have much to do in order to prepare, besides showering the stink of the kitchen away and buttoning into his best shirt. It’s one of those shirts he wouldn’t have thought twice about wearing on the surface, but down here he may as well be getting into black tie. He leaves the top two buttons undone, tugging self-consciously at the open collar of the shirt, but appreciating the straight dip of collarbone it exposes.

His chest tightens. He tries not to think about what you’ll be wearing tonight. He tries not to think about how badly he wanted to kiss you when you were alone together in the wine cellar. He tries hardest of all not to think about what Atsumu told him, because it still feels too good to be true.

Atsumu and the others went down to the party ages ago, so Osamu has the bunk to himself. He fusses with his hair a hundred times over, but with no product to make it sit just right, he’s stuck with the messy way it’s drying from his shower.

By the time he edges back into the dining hall, the party is already in full swing. Whatever ragtag combination of instruments there are down here sound pretty good together. There’s at least one guitar, a horn of some kind— saxophone, maybe? and one fiddle playing some kind of old-world, vaguely Celtic-sounding jig. Somebody’s got a bodhran, and its rhythm thumps steadily in his chest, warming his nerves.

He needs a drink.

The tin meal cups are the only drinkware available, so he snags one and half-fills it with a sweet red from the far end of the drinks table. He finds Atsumu before long, wading through the crowd toward his twin.

Osamu’s never seen the dining hall this crowded before. There are a lot more people down here in total than he ever bothered to estimate, and tonight, they are all lively and warm and happy to be alive.

He’ll never know what the occasion was for throwing this party. But Osamu’s got a feeling that this won’t be the last time they try this. This is the sort of feeling that’s been missing from this place.

It’s the sort of feeling that makes him want to live long enough to see the surface again.

“Is she here yet?” Atsumu ribs, nudging Osamu in the ribs and hollering over the music. He’s obviously noticed the way that Osamu’s been craning his neck to see over the tallest of the crowd for a familiar flash of your hair, or maybe even Kenji’s little bobbing head. Would you have brought Kenji with you tonight? Is it past his bedtime?

Seems cruel to deny a kid all this joy and fun.

“I don’t see…” Osamu starts to respond in earnest, but the sentence dies in his throat when you push the dining hall doors open and appear like a vision, Kenji perched securely on one hip.

You’re in white. A dress. A white dress.

Osamu’s never seen you in a dress before.

“Oh god,” he mumbles out loud. Atsumu’s already laughing. This is torture.

“I can’t do this.”

“Christ, ‘Samu. It’s just a dress.”

“No, no,” Osamu protests, already diving behind his brother like they aren’t both well over six feet tall. “It’s not the dress.” He takes a long sip of his wine, ignoring the way the sharp flavour catches in his throat.

“It’s not about the dress.”

It’s definitely about the dress.

Lucky for him, it doesn’t take long for Kenji to see the band and the dance floor and get eyes like dinner plates. He’s begging you to take him out onto the dance floor, and you’re in no place to refuse him.

Osamu watches you out there, bouncing and twirling on the plain tile floor and making Kenji shriek and smile and laugh until he’s purple in the face. He’s never seen either of you happier before.

At some point Atsumu plucks the empty cup from Osamu’s fingers and disappears from his side, but Osamu’s too mesmerized to care. At some point, he slips forward to the edge of the dance floor, but he’s too distracted to notice.

In a vague, dreamlike state he watches Atsumu cut from the crowd and make his way toward you. He’s not sure exactly what Atsumu’s intentions are, until you stop dancing to greet him, visibly flustered by the realization that people you know are watching you.

It’s like you have no idea how captivating you are like this.

Atsumu leans in to say something to you. Then he nods vaguely in Osamu’s direction.

The pieces fall slowly into place, one at a time. You look up and find Osamu’s eyes in the crowd. The emotions swirling around in his chest become too much to bear, now that you’ve acknowledged his existence. You hold his gaze for a moment, smile quietly, then turn back to Atsumu and hand Kenji off to him. You say something quietly to the boy, but he seems more than satisfied when Atsumu plops Kenji onto his shoulders and bobs idly away through the crowd.

It’s too late to bail now. You’re already walking toward him. Osamu can’t bring himself to look away from you. His hands twitch uselessly against his pants.

You are breathtaking, even under the shitty, dimmed fluorescent lights of the dining hall.

“Hey,” you greet, and there’s a soft edge to your voice that he’s never noticed before. There’s a warmth in your gaze when you look at him, too, a knowing sort of warmth that makes him want to sweep you into his arms and dance you into a Fred Astaire movie.

“Hi,” he answers pathetically. “You look…” He lets his eyes drift properly over you now, letting you watch him take it in. His mouth’s gone dry, so he licks his lips before he finds your eyes again, chuckling softly into his adoring grin.

“Things to pack for the end of the world,” he quips. “I wouldn’t have pegged you to be the dress type.”

You raise an eyebrow.

“There are lots of things you don’t know about me,” you tease. “But now you do know I can dance, so…” You throw a cautionary glance toward the floor, then look back at him with a doe-eyed, endearing little gaze.

“So… would you like to?” Osamu offers playfully, ears warming. You feign shock, bringing a palm to your chest, then pressing the back of it to your forehead.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He can’t pass up any excuse to touch you, so he offers you his arm, and when you slip your hand into the crook of his elbow he feels light enough to bob right through the ceiling and all the way back to the surface above.

The music is lively and rich, and you whirl toward him and grab both hands. Osamu does not know this dance, but he follows you anyway, twirling and holding and dipping you. It’s moving so fast he doesn’t have the chance to focus on the way you’re touching him, more than you’ve touched in all the time you’ve known one another.

He dips you low at the apex of the music, a real leap of faith on his part, and you stare up at him with stars in your lashes. He could rule the world with all the power you give him in that stare.

He wants to see you, happy like this, for the rest of his goddamned life.

The lopsided little band is striking up a new tune as he lifts you upright again- something slow this time, and your eyes light with recognition, then fall with nostalgia when you recognize the tune.

“My grandma,” you begin, stepping toward him. It’s such a direct gesture that he’s a little intimidated for a moment, not ready for you to be so close like this. You loop one arm around his neck and he’s sure you can feel the way the hairs on the back of it stand straight up.

He slips one hand into the small of your back, finding your fingers with the other and just staring down at you as he starts to sway.

“She loved this song,” you finish, and even if he’s never heard it before, he can see the words echoing in your mind. He dips his cheek bravely against yours- a little sweaty, but the sweet, soapy scent of your hair wafts over him and he pulls you a little closer and he wants to stay here forever.

“Sing it to me,” he challenges, and you tense in his arms. But you consider it for a moment, then finally relent, and at the beginning of the next verse, you croon so low and soft in his ear he’s got to stop his knees from going weak.

“Fly the ocean in a silver plane,” you sing, “see the jungle while it’s wet with rain.” Your mouth is so close to his ear he feels you stop and smile.

“Just remember till you’re home again, you belong to me.”

“Home again,” Osamu mumbles. It feels like an impossible dream at this point. What home is there left to go back to? He has no idea.

The last estimates available claimed that eighty percent of all the world’s infrastructure was completely wiped out. Whatever miscalculations lead to a meteor impact of such magnitude made home a more distant concept than anyone ever thought possible.

But all they have are estimates. There’s been no contact from the surface, no reports from any other facilities all over the world. There could be scores of them, preserving a larger faction of the population than anyone anticipated.

Or, for all anyone knows, this little bunker could contain the last pathetic dredges of human life.

It’s not a concept Osamu wants to revisit, swaying cheek-to-cheek with you as you sing a song about home.

He blurts your name before he can convince himself this is a bad idea, interrupting your singing and sending you to arm’s length, looking up at him in wild confusion.

You must think he’s insane. He probably is insane, for trying any of this.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he pants, growing sweatier by the minute. “I just want you to know how…” He swallows hard. “How much it’s meant to me, seein’ you down here every day.”

Your eyes soften. You reach up and cup his cheek. In a sharp contrast to his heated body, your skin is cool and smooth. Collected. Just like you are, always.

“I never told you how grateful I was,” you reply. “For Kenji. For everything. I don’t know what we would’ve done if it weren’t for you.”

“Was nothin’,” he brushed, but you’re not taking that this time.

“It’s not nothing,” you insist, stroking a thumb over his freshly shaved jaw. It feels so good he wants to curl his toes. He’s so in love with you by now it aches.

“I know how many extra hours you put in. I know how hard you already work. I don’t know what we did to deserve all of this from you, but…”

It’s Osamu’s turn to chuckle. He dips his face toward your touch, letting his lips brush the softness of your palm. Then he realizes he’s not allowed to do that yet and looks quickly across at you, peeking through his lashes.

But you look even happier than he feels right now.

“You deserve so much more than I can give you down here,” he confesses. “If I could show you—"

“Show me,” you breathe, and there’s an urgency in your voice that he does not recognize. His brow furrows a little, until you expand. You lick your lips and breathe a deep little sigh, letting it out slowly. Like you have nerves to cool.

Impossible.

“Let’s go somewhere,” you continue. “Quiet. Where’s your bunk?”

Osamu glances around, He finds Atsumu and Kenji easily in the crowd. Kenji is still sitting on his shoulders, though he’s sort of toppled over on top of Atsumu’s terribly grown-out roots, looking sleepier by the minute.

Atsumu catches his eye through the crowd. He smirks big enough to make Osamu’s stomach turn, but gives a quiet little nod, jerking his head toward the door.

Osamu’s too grateful to roll his eyes.

“Not far,” he breathes, dragging his gaze back to yours. Your smile softens, and you take both of his hands.

“Show me.”

He leads you out of the dining hall so fast he nearly trips over his own feet trying to throw the door open for you. As soon as you’re on the other side of it, though, safe in the empty hallway beyond, you reach up and slip your fingers into the hair at his nape to drag him down to your height.

Then, you kiss him.

Osamu goes numb the second his mouth touches yours, tasting of overaged red wine. He licks the sweet notes of it from your tongue, bringing his palms to your soft, heated cheeks to tilt your face more firmly into his.

It feels as though he’s been kissing you all his life. When you pull away with new heat sparkling in your eyes he’s almost certain this is some kind of dream.

“What did I do to deserve that?” He mutters before he can stop himself. Luckily, it makes you laugh, and you intertwine your fingers with his, tugging him toward the stairwell.

He almost forgets the route from the kitchen to his bunk, despite walking it six times daily for as long as you’ve been down here. You kiss him at least three more times along the way, pulling him close by the collar of his shirt, or pushing his back into the concrete wall.

The dizzying press of your mouth does nothing to support his dwindling intellect, but eventually he finds the door to his bunk and you stumble inside together.

Osamu honestly expects you to pad quietly inside, look around as he turns on the lights, maybe prop yourself timidly on the edge of his bunk. But you do not wait for him to turn the lights on before pulling him close, and you do not wait for him to wax poetic before your fingers are plucking at the buttons of his shirt.

“Are you—" he gasps before you can steal the air from his lungs again. He wraps his fingers around your wrists, face hot, chest hot. He’s going to melt at this rate, before you even get his clothes off.

“Yes,” you brush. “Please, God, don’t make me prove it to you. I’ve been wanting this ever since I saw you with that stupid hairnet—"

He can’t help but snort, amazed that anyone would find him attractive in such a state. You would be beautiful in a hairnet, he thinks before he can stop himself. Sweat-sheened and working hard in the kitchens beside him, smiling at him in the way you were only a moment before.

He can’t see you in the dark of his cramped little bunk, but he knows you’re still smiling.

“Okay,” he pants. “Okay. I mean, I had some questions prepared, but—"

He’s silenced rapidly when you drag him to your lips again, a sensation he’ll never grow tired of.

You’re pushing the light folds of his shirt away from his shoulders before he can even feel you get the buttons undone, but he tugs the stray corners of its hem out of his pants and eagerly helps you strip him of it. When his chest is bare, he reaches behind him to flip the light switch on the wall.

The lightbulbs in the ceiling struggle and pause for a few seconds, but flicker to life eventually anyway, and you are enchanting, even in the dull fluorescent light that casts a sickly sort of glow over everything else in the room.

You are your own breathtaking light source, radiant and glowing. And he is just lucky to be occupying the same space as you, let alone…

He takes you gently by the hips, letting you smooth your fingers over his bare skin. The sensation is enough to send a tight shiver down the hollow of his spine and he actually has to close his eyes, chuckling shakily to cover the otherwise horrendous noise that might have escaped.

“God,” he sighs, letting his eyes flutter shut. “You are… really, really pretty. Did you know that?”

Your laughter is a tonic to his fraying nerves.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” you reply, and then your touch is leaving him and he can hear the rustle of that dress. He opens his eyes just in time to watch you duck out of the floaty fabric and drop it in a heap at your feet.

You catch his eye, arms twitching inward toward your chest, but you plant them firmly at your sides and take a slow breath, lifting your chest and straightening your back.

Osamu can’t honestly pretend he’s never thought about what you might look like underneath your clothes. It would be dishonest for him to say that he hadn’t let his mind drift, inside the tiny cubicle of the communal showers down the hall.

In the fleeting moments he’s had to himself, he would be lying if he said he’d never closed his fingers around his own heated flesh and wondered what your touch might feel like instead.

But he doesn’t have to wonder any longer. Because you are here in flesh and blood, looking at him with stars in your eyes that he does not deserve.

When he looks back at you, he sees the sun.

You’re on each other again in an instant, taking one fleeting step toward each other and meeting in the middle in one chaotic collision of limbs and mouths and skin. Osamu takes you by the waist, fingers twitching as he lays them on the tender dip of your bare skin. He walks you slowly backward, urging you toward his side of the tiny room and his bottom bunk that sits just above the bend in your knees.

You get the message, bending carefully to lower yourself onto the edge of the narrow bunk when you feel its metal frame behind you. The springs creak loudly as your weight settles against them, but Osamu drops eagerly to his knees in front of you, pushing your thighs apart to shift between them and kiss you until he can’t feel his tongue any longer.

He breaks from your mouth and dips his head, kissing ferociously down the column of your neck and burying his nose against your skin. He’s not shy about drinking you in, sliding his palms from the bottom of your bra to the waistband of your underwear while he breathes heady gulps of your soft-scented skin and licks at your tender collarbone.

“’Samu,” you whimper, toes curling as he kisses lower and lower. He brings his hands to your legs, lowering himself to his haunches and nosing a path down between your breasts while his fingers stroke and grip at the flesh of your thighs.

The sound of his abbreviated little nickname, in your melodic, desperate little voice is enough to send a throb of rampant pleasure through his gut, tightening harshly in his groin.

Then you sigh shakily on your next breath and the noise goes right to his dick.

“Fucking hell,” he groans into your belly, reaching up to brush his fingers down the wetted front of your panties. Your thighs tighten in anticipation, but you let him explore, stroking the pad of his thumb into the cleft of your folds and pressing the soft cotton of your panties against your swollen clit.

“You’re gonna kill me,” he confesses, bending to bury his face in the meat of your thigh. You gasp and twitch, parting your legs further and leaning back to brace your hands on the narrow mattress.

“Not if you kill me first.”

He chuckles into your skin, nipping playfully and drawing a tight little yip from your throat.

“Let me taste you,” he mutters, kissing idly up the inner hollow of your thigh while he digs careful fingers under the edge of your panties and pulls them aside.

“Jesus Christ,” you hiss, “you can’t just say shit like that.”

He chuckles. You are all he’s ever wanted, all leaned back and swearing with your chest heaving, slick practically dripping from your needy body for him.

There’s something about this place, the state of the world and the horrible reality of their situation that leads Osamu to believe he shouldn’t be this happy. But he’s well past giving a shit now.

He carefully thumbs the stiff ridge of your clit, watching the way you flinch and squirm under his touch. He bites his lower lip, swallowing his amusement.

“You’re so cute,” he mutters. And he doesn’t give you a chance to scold him this time before he leans in and replaces his thumb with his mouth. He clamps his lips down around your tight little clit and sucks gently, letting his fingertips stroke down to your fluttering entrance. He pets at the wetness that coats your skin, feeling for the tenderest spots that make your thighs twitch as you hitch them over his shoulders.

It’s been a while for both of you, a fact made clear enough by the cries of pleasure that you can barely contain before he even gets his fingers in you. And when he flips his hand over and pumps one of them into your clutching depths, you clamp down around his finger and he can imagine it so clearly, the way you would clamp down around his cock.

It’s nearly enough to make him lose it, right there in his stupid jeans.

He slips another finger into you, keeping up the gentle but steady suction on your clit as he curls his blunt fingertips, searching for ways to make you scream.

He finds one, milking the most sensitive spot on your upper wall while sucking in near-perfect sync. And your quiet little shaky moans sharpen quickly into breathless pants of impending ecstasy. Your tells are instant, and he can sense your climax long before you slide your fingers into his hair and warn him.

“‘Samu,” you whimper, bucking eagerly into his mouth. Your fingers tighten against his head, the pain only serving to amplify the tight, throbbing ache between his legs. “‘m gonna come, O-oh… Osamu, please!”

He knows better than to try and change anything at this point. He keeps up the rhythm of his pumping fingers and swirling tongue with devastating precision, keeping flawless rhythm even as you descend into pleasure. Your thighs clamp tightly around his ears as you pull his hair tightly with one hand and convulse around his willing fingers. He drops his mouth once you’ve started to tremble, eagerly licking handfuls of slick from your folds and inner thighs. And when you’re finally finished, he rests his cheek on your thigh again, stroking lovingly up the other leg and letting your fingers go slack in his hair.

“Holy,” you breathe, coming back to yourself finally with a stupid little grin that makes his heart absolutely soar.

“You’re—" Osamu starts to gush, but he realizes how moony he’s about to sound and bites his tongue, giving your thigh a squeeze and slipping your underwear back into place.

You slide your hand down from the top of his head to his cheek to his chin, bringing his eyes to yours. The heat left in them from your lingering climax is intensely beautiful.

“Hmm,” you sigh, tender and long and lazed, like a satisfied cat. You shift your knees from his shoulders and he gives them an experimental little roll, swallowing hard and trying not to think about how unbearably tight his jeans have become.

“Come up here,” you prompt, reaching for him. He obliges eagerly, practically crawling right into your lap as he perches one knee on the mattress beside you and trails the backs of his fingers up your spine.

You drape your arms around his neck, kissing him. He can’t think about how you can probably taste yourself on his mouth right now. He can’t think about how horribly transparent he is, with his hard cock jutting down the inside of his thigh and pressing into your hip.

He fingers the clasp of your bra instead, tugging it deftly open and letting you divest yourself of the garment. Then he seals his chest greedily against yours, groaning into your mouth and reveling in the way it feels to have so much of his tender skin on yours.

“Fuck,” you gasp, breaking from his lips to fight for a breath. “‘Samu.”

You plant your hand on his thigh, sliding it up to the juncture of his hip and curling your fingers around the clothed shaft of his cock. His voice cracks as hyperaware pleasure races through his nerves, trying not to buck his hips too eagerly into your touch.

“You don’t have to,” he starts to insist, but you squeeze harder and his voice shoots into the stratosphere this time, bringing a flush of heat to his ears.

“I want you,” you promise, leaning forward to find the button of his jeans. “All of you.”

Every tooth of the zipper vibrates against his tender nerve endings and he stands on wobbly legs to let you help him shove his jeans to the laminate floor. He pushes his undershorts down hastily, too. You’re staring, and he’s letting the intimidation get the better of him. How many cocks have you seen in your lifetime? He doesn’t know.

He’s already doing his best not to picture how this might go in other circumstances. If he’d met you on the surface, everything about this night would be different. Better, he lets himself think, if he could have wined and dined you the way he still wants to.

But Osamu was never much for romance back then. He hardly even thought about dating, too focused on making his lofty goals a reality.

With those goals blown to ash, like the rest of the world, it’s easier to focus on you, and the way looking at you is as close to feeling the sunlight on his face as he’s come in a very long time.

“Okay,” he pants, smoothing a hand through his hair and stepping forward, cock bobbing obscenely between his thighs. He sits down beside you on the edge of the bunk, then reaches for you gently. “C’mere. Face away- yeah, just like that.”

He guides you easily astride his spread thighs, letting your weight perch on the strength of them while you wrap your fingers in the smooth metal frame of the top bunk above your head.

“Comfy?” He prompts, voice straining to hide the way he wants to howl when your ass brushes the tip of his throbbing cock. He is aching, drooling for you at this point, leaving obscene little wet prints of precum on your soft skin.

“Yeah,” you brush. “I think this is the best way to do it. Wait a minute…”

You pause, and there’s something calculating in your voice that tightens Osamu’s anxious chest all over again.

“This seems… really well thought-out,” you accuse, and suddenly your voice is playful all over again and he’s blushing and burying his face between your shoulder blades.

“It is,” he mumbles against your skin, gripping your hips tightly in a pathetic attempt at retaliation. But your giggles are too cute to stay angry with, especially when you settle even more firmly into his lap and grind your ass shamelessly up the underside of his dick.

He lets out a noise like a strangled balloon and you’re still giggling like the fucking angel that you are, gripping tighter to that bedframe and using your strength as leverage to ruin his life.

“Colour me flattered,” you promise. You lift your hips tellingly, reaching between them to wrap your hand around his twitching shaft.

“Shit,” he stutters, fingers tightening around the fat of your hips.

“Take it easy,” you pant, but there’s nothing easy about the way it feels when your eager pussy sucks him down. He grunts, a noise that echoes straight from the base of his diaphragm, and plants his feet to hide the way your fluid insides have every muscle trembling.

“God,” he mumbles. “You’re so soft.”

The words tumble dumbly from his mouth, but he coils an arm tightly around your waist and slides the other tenderly up your side to make up for it. You’ve already sat all the way down onto his thighs, starting to roll your hips in a careful little rhythm while he states the obvious.

He leans forward, tugging your back flush against his chest.

“‘Samu,” you pant, and his arm tightens around your waist. He can feel you having trouble, trapped by the angle of your shoulders and the pin of your hips.

It’ll be easy for him to pick up the slack.

“Here,” he breathes into your shoulder. He re-centers his gravity, spreads his thighs a little further, and starts to thrust up into you, settling quickly into a solid rhythm.

He has to. If he thinks too hard about how you grip him, tight as a fist and maddeningly warm, he’ll come on the spot.

But it feels even better, to know the pound of your back against his chest and the soft press of your breasts when he draws his hands up your side to cup one. You’re holding yourself up by that metal rung, letting him support you with one hand while letting the other roam.

“Fuck, I can’t-“ he gasps, tucking his face into your back as the pleasure continues to overwhelm him. “C-can’t hold out too long, I-“

“It’s okay,” you promise. “Keep going.”

He slips his free hand between your legs, finding the abused nub of your clit and desperately strumming it in time with his hips. Your pussy gives a telltale flutter, and then you’re crying out again and clamping weakly around his shaft, driving Osamu over the edge like a bullet.

He comes deep and long, pulling you back against his chest with blinding force as he buries himself inside you and holds you there fast. He can feel his cock spasming inside you as ecstatic pleasure shoots all the way to his crown, ricocheting through to his toes like lightning. He spills warm and messy inside you, letting slippery cum coat his shaft as his hips give a final few erratic pumps.

Spent and overwhelmed by feeling, Osamu collapses backward onto the mattress to catch his breath. You’ve slumped forward to do the same, quickly rolling off his tender, softening cock to stretch out beside him. Together, you lie perpendicular to the length of the mattress with your feet planted on the floor.

He lets himself stay there, feeling decidedly raisin-like- drained in the most pleasant way imaginable. But then he turns his head and you’re lying next to him and the joy and pleasure starts to fill him again, little by little.

The military-issue bunks are not wide enough to share, so together, you drag his blankets to the floor and stretch out between them. He knows he should feel silly, laid on his back with your head pillowed against his chest like you’ve got something prettier to stare up at than the dark ceiling.

There’s nothing above that ceiling but dirt, he thinks. Miles and miles of dirt and rock, and above that, sheer mystery.

At least up there, he’d be able to see the sky.

But with you curled gently at his side, he feels warmer and happier than he has in a very long time. The walls aren’t closing in around him so harshly, with you listening to his heartbeat. He can feel the way you’ve tilted your chin to press your ear to his sternum and squeezes you a little tighter in return.

“Do you know,” you mumble, voice hazy in your carefully preserved post-coital daze, “I can’t remember what it feels like to look up at the moon.”

It’s a truth that should have hit him like a punch. But he’s helpless to do anything but nod mildly as the realization trickles into his bloodstream.

“Me neither,” he confesses, closing his eyes and trying to remember the last time he saw the moon. It was on the flight over here, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in a tiny jet with the people who would soon become his only customers.

He’d been lucky enough to get squeezed in against the window, and he remembers seeing the moon and thinking so clearly that it would probably be the last time he ever saw it.

“I can picture looking up at it,” he hums, tracing the backs of his fingers up and down your spine, “and I know what it’s supposed to look like, but I can’t picture it.”

You give a sleepy little hum of acknowledgement, and Osamu opens his eyes, staring into the dark ceiling and failing to conjure the image again.

“D’you think any of it is still up there?” He asks after a long silence.

You don’t answer right away, and he’s not sure whether you’re thoughtfully considering your answer or rolling your eyes where he can’t see them, but either way, the pause makes him nervous.

“It will be,” you mumble. “If it isn’t now, it will be.”

As eager as Osamu is to have you fall asleep in his arms, the reality of their current position trickles quietly into the cracks of your warm bliss.

Slowly you rise, begin to dress, and kiss him at the door with a heartbreakingly sleepy little look in your eye. Then you’re gone, back to the party to find Atsumu and finally take Kenji off his sorry hands.

Osamu knows it won’t be long before his brother- or somebody else- bursts into his quiet little bunk in order to ensure that he never, ever, ever hears the end of his little disappearing act.

He makes up his bunk and stretches out in it, determined to soak up every moment of peace that he can.

It will be, he thinks to himself. When you first spoke those words, he almost laughed. They sounded like sheer blind optimism, something that had disappeared long ago for Osamu.

But the more he considers them, the more he begins to understand. You know that “it will be” because you’re going to make it that way.

When you say it like that, he wants to make it that way, too. Up there somewhere, among the broken cities and devastated earth, there will be a home. There will be good food again, and songs about lost love, and all the joy and pain and love and sacrifice that exists as a mere byproduct of living.

It’ll be home again, because you’ll make it that way.

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