sypnosis: you've started sticking to Tamsy, your saviour, like a persistent leech ever since you joined the cleaners as a supporter. to put it simply, he finds it very VERYY irritating and unnecessary. but what could he do? he couldn't just tell you to buzz off. to his own horror, he's now slowly starting to warm up to you. ah... how troublesome.
౨ৎ content: fluff, platonic relationship!! (sibling dynamic! reader is 16/17 in this) , a tad bit mischaracterized perchance? I'll let you guys be the judge of that , character personality spoilers!!! (major manga spoiler btw)
requested by anon >< (reqs r open btw hahahaha hmu) here's part two!!
the first time Tamsy saw you, he almost didn't stop.
almost.
what sort of idiot wanders into a no man's land? you apparently, cause Tamsy was now standing on top of a broken car, watching some kid dig something up in a pile of trash.
you were out in a no man's land—unarmed, alone and surprisingly very much alive. at least you weren't dumb enough to not wear a gas mask, or else you would've shriveled up and died somewhere no one would ever find. you were crouched near a mountain of trash, poking at something from the pile he couldn't really see.
Tamsy scoffs under his breath, watching you from a distance. ‘how strange..’, he thought, tilting his head slightly. ‘no fear, no awareness either... just curiosity. or maybe that's just stupidity’.
he watched for a little while longer. he could just leave you there if he really wanted to, but then again, that wouldn't be very "charming and helpful cleaner" of him, right?
and so, that's where he found himself coming towards you with stealthy precision. he stood behind you, leaning down to take a peek of what you were looking at.
“it's pretty dangerous out here yknow? anything could move and swallow you alive at any moment”
you jolt at the sudden voice behind you, whipping your head around.
you blinked up at him.
silence, and then—
“oh, hi!”
you smile at him, he blinks.
ah..
you're one of THOSE people. the type who stupidly smiled at strangers.
—
he doesn't save you. at least not really.
he just... intervenes.
cause your earlier rumaggings through a trash pile caught the attention of a rather troublesome and loud trash beast. it was messy, and quite frankly, very inconvenient.
he had to do a clean up, unless he wanted HQ on his ass for letting a trash beast roam around for longer than necessary.
you stared at him, looking at him like he just descended from the heavens, blinking rapidly after he had just quite literally crush a trash beast with his jinki in the blink of an eye.
‘woah.... this guy's hella cool!!’, you thought.
“you really shouldn't be here”, he says calmly, stepping past you as the threads retract and Tokushin shrinks back into it's normal size.
“errr.. yeah, I figured that out like.. five seconds ago”
“mhm”
there was no panic in your voice. no trembling. If anything, you sounded rather impressed. Tamsy narrows his eyes at you through his full-face. how can someone still smile in a situation like this?
“..follow me”, he sighs, turning on his feet.
—
he takes you somewhere safe, not like safe safe—this is the Ground, after all—but safer than certain death that's for sure.
it was an abandoned but relatively stable structure out of the no man's land, close to a town if you walked a couple of miles and the air wasn't polluted with toxic fumes so you could take off your mask.
he stops at the entrance and turns to look at you.
“this is as far as I can take you”
“oh”
you blink at him and nod. “...thanks”, you say, a little softer this time.
Tamsy gives you a small, polite smile. the kind he wears like a second skin, the kind that made people blindly trust him, “don't mention it”.
and then he just... leaves.
no name, no explanation, no looking back, no nothing.
‘irrelevant’, he thought, ‘just another stray who got lucky’.
—
few months later, a new batch of supporter recruits were being brought in.
Tamsy could care less, he was just passing by. but perhaps curiosity got to him cause he found himself walking towards the briefing hall.
he glances lazily at the small group gathered nearby, only half of them were actually listening to Gris' brief rundown on how things worked around here. some of them looked determined, most look nervous. well, it was to be expected, they were going to be facing trash beasts from now on.
his eyes scanned the group, stopping on a certain determined looking person.
oh?
your eyes caught his, immediately lighting up when you realized who he was.
Tamsy pauses, blinking before he gives you a curt nod. ‘ah.. so they made it out alive. interesting.’
—
from that point onwards—you were everywhere. no like, literally.
supporters needed for his missions? you're the first to raise your hand like an excited kid. “oh, oh! I'll go with Tamsy!”
walking around the base doing literally nothing? you're suddenly walking next to him, striking up a conversation before he can even dodge.
sitting somewhere alone? quietly? well not anymore.
“Tamsy, hi!!”
“... Hello🙂”
tch.
Internally, he's slowly going insane from having to always entertain your admiration. ‘ugh.. this is so IRRITATING, can't they leave me alone????’. outwardly though, he smiles—gentle, patient, warm—everything his inner thoughts weren't.
“shouldn't you be training with the others?”
“I was, but you're here!”
“... I see☺”
‘how IRRITATING’, he thinks, but doesn't push you away. he needs to keep up his facade.
you trail him like a lost puppy constantly, not at all being subtle about it either. you ask him questions. a LOT of them. so many unnecessary, pointless questions that nobody else would've asked him.
“is Tokushin heavy?”
tch.
“how do your threads work like that? they're so cool!!”
how troublesome.
“do you listen to music? you look like you do”
“..sometimes”
you beam like he just told you a life-changing secret.
...tiresome
—
at first, he tolerates you. because that's just what he does, Tamsy Caines is someone who's kind, approachable and helpful—well that's what people see. he thinks, maybe if he entertained you for long enough you'd get bored and stopped bothering him.
he answers just enough of your questions, acknowledges you just enough, smiles at you just enough, all while keeping his mask perfectly intact.
but internally—he notices, you're getting too close. which is dangerous.
It's not fear.
It's irritation that something might get in his way.
you exist in his space far more than he'd like and he hates it. you trust him. too much. completely.
that could be a BIG problem.
—
except...
you're completely harmless, annoyingly so. you don't pry into anything important and you stupidly don't notice the things that matter.
you're just there.
following him around, talking about random things, getting excited over small achievements that shouldn't even matter.
like today.
“DID YOU SEE THAT??” , you say, bouncing around him as you walked with him after a mission. “that trash beast stood no chance against you! you took it down so fast!!”
he smiles. ‘what are you so excited for? how utterly childish.’, he'd coldly voices in his head. “it wasn't anything impressive”, he says smoothly.
“it was! you're seriously so cool, you know that??”
Tamsy pauses for half a second. something he wouldn't ever do.
“.. am I now?”
“yeah!!”
you say it so casually, so easily. so genuinely. no hesitation, no hidden agenda. just.... pure admiration.
...strange.
he hums softly before continuing to walk again, “I'm glad you think so”.
—
It happens gradually, over time.
so gradually he doesn't even realize it at first.
somehow. somehow, he stops minding how close you were getting. stopped minding how you carried extra supplies for him. stopped minding how you would ramble to him about random bullshit he wouldn't have been bothered with. he stopped minding completely.
...
no.
that's not quite right.
he starts expecting it.
—
“you're late”
the words slip out before he could even stop himself. you blink, surprised, “huh? oh—sorry! I had to go help the others sort out the equipment”
he hums, nodding his head before turning to walk, expecting you to walk after him. and you do. of course you do. you always do.
and he's starting to not see that as a bother.
—
it's irritating, it's inconvenient! It's—
comfortable.
he notices that he's started... accounting for you.
positioning himself between you and danger without thinking, waiting for you to catch up to him. making sure you're still there.
“...what the hell”, he'd mumble to himself out of realization. what's gotten into him? this is ridiculous.
—
this was never a part of the plan.
you are not a part of the plan.
you're irrelevant, expendable. a variable to be removed if necessary.
so why—
“Tamsy!”, you run up to him, like a kid running up to show their parents something they found on the ground.
“want one?”, you say, holding up the chocolate bar towards him. “got it at the vending machine, it dropped two! how lucky is that, right?”
he stares at it, then at you.
“mhm, really lucky ..thanks”, he says softly, taking it from your hand.
you beam at him, that same childish admiration you always showed only towards him. like you just accomplished something great.
this is a problem.
—
later that night, Tamsy sits alone in his room, his hair loose after a long day of work. the untouched chocolate bar sat on his nightstand.
he stares at it, thinking for a long time.
he exhales slowly.
‘this is so not what I was going for..’
you're a liability, you're reckless. you're too trusting for your own good and you'll get in the way of his plans. so why—
just why does he feel so protective towards you.
the word sits wrong in his mind. uncomfortable. unwelcomed.
you were like a younger sibling— like—
“...no”, he cuts off his own thoughts, running a hand down his face out of irritation. “this is ridiculous..”, he mumbles, quietly laughing to himself. a dry, soft laugh to convince himself he wasn't letting his guard down.
he wasn't supposed to get attached.
he never gets attached.
that's how mistakes tend to happen.
and yet here he was. caring about someone he shouldn't be bothered to.
‘how stupid.. I'm growing soft’
⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ ✩ ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆
a/n: THIS WAS SO FUN TO WRITE LMAOAOAOAOAO anon, I hope you love this as much as I do.. don't be shy to drop comments and/or critics about my writing, it seriously motivates me more when u guys comment so don't forget to say hi ^^
