[Team 2] [Stuck standing still]
Gasp, this AU doesn't have a proper name, but this is in the same verse as {Midnight C R A Z Y}. For t-list, yo ♥
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"Tomorrow isn't a good time, I've got classes," Tamamori said, talking over his shoulder at Miyata, who was dragging his feet along.
"When I said I didn't think this was a good time, I meant 'never' was a good time," Miyata said miserably as they stopped outside a house with a garishly green door.
"Not everyone is a bear of a werewolf," Tamamori said, shrugging and knocked.
When Yamamoto opened the door, his face immediately dropped. Perhaps Tamamori should have expected it, but he frowned at Yamamoto anyway. Beside him, Miyata tensed, his normally puzzled expression turning especially bewildered.
Tamamori’s lips snapped into a thin line before pushing his way inside. They both left Miyata on the porch as Tamamori dragged Yamamoto into the kitchen. “What’s with you?”
“I don’t want him here, is that so hard to understand?” Yamamoto hissed, squirming under Tamamori’s grip. “You could have warned me!”
Though he nearly snapped ‘will you grow up’, Tamamori caught himself. Asking someone to be rational about someone else who’s taken a vicious bite out of you was a bit much, especially when that someone else had been a giant werewolf at the time.
“I thought you were training for this kind of stuff,” Tamamori, reasoning that since Yara, who was a different-but-still-kind-of-similar freak to Miyata’s werewolf, that Yamamoto might be used to this sort of thing. “Yeah?”
“That’s not the problem okay, Yaracchi’s different and besides-“ Yamamoto broke off, wincing and flinching away Tamamori’s hands. It was then that Tamamori noticed how many layers Yamamoto was wearing, even though it was indoors and summer was in full swing.
“Jacket?” he asked, before catching the collar and tugging, just enough to show the bandages beneath Yamamoto’s jacket and shirt. “What the…” Frowning, Tamamori glanced from the bandages to Yamamoto’s face and back again. “These are from the forest. It’s been ages, shouldn’t those have healed by now?”
Yamamoto grimaced. “They… I don’t know, they won’t close up. It’s been like this since it happened. Dad and Mom wanted to send me to the city to figure it out, but I, uh, convinced them otherwise. It’d be hard to explain wounds not healing after so long, but nothing’s working already...”
Tamamori didn’t ask how Yamamoto had, uh, convinced his parents to let him stay. While Yamamoto was just as human as he was, his friend had discovered the other world a lot sooner than Tamamori had, and had been training under Yara for nearly two years now. He knew things Tamamori didn’t - things Tamamori didn’t really want to know.
But he couldn’t ignore how Yamamoto looked. Now that Tamamori was looking properly, he was pale and slightly off balance, favoring his shoulder, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“What about Yara? Surely he knows what to do,” he asked instead, carefully choosing his words. Knowing that Yamamoto was just as ripped up as he had been that night in the forest helped ignite some of Tamamori’s sympathies, and he now watched Yamamoto’s every twitch with an eagle’s eye.
At this, Yamamoto’s face colored with guilt. (Tamamori was forever grateful that the other was such an open book, he was much less tedious to read.) “Yara’s been gone for nearly two months,” Yamamoto admitted after a moment. “He doesn’t know yet.”
“… You’re dumb, you know?” Tamamori said after a pause, scrunching his face up.
“It was important, okay,” Yamamoto defended, carefully tugging his jacket back into place. “He’ll be back.”
Tamamori debated several things to say, but couldn’t find one that could be spoken aloud without insulting Yamamoto completely. “You’re dumb,” he settled for repeating instead.
There was nothing else to do but leave Yamamoto in the kitchen, heading back out the front door to where Miyata was waiting faithfully for him. “Come on,” Tamamori said abruptly and Miyata trotted after him.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Miyata asked worriedly, hurrying after Tamamori. “I could smell it on him.”
Though Miyata’s true power lay in his ability to transform into a wolf, some of that he retained when he was merely looking human. His sense of smell was excellent - which Tamamori also attributed to the size of the man’s nose.
“You did it, don’t you know what’s wrong?” he asked when they had gotten a way’s away. “He looks awful.”
“Well… Actually…I haven’t an idea, really,” Miyata said, hemming and hawing.
“… And why not?”
Miyata glanced at him in dismay. “Tama, most people don’t live after being bitten like that. And Kitayama doesn’t tell me anything. I’ve never seen this sort of thing before!”
It was reasonable but unsatisfying, and Tamamori whipped out his phone instead. “I wonder where Yokoo-san is, I bet he might know something. Or maybe that guy - Fujigaya? Maybe he could help.”
“I don’t think it’d be a good idea for Fujigaya to return here,” Miyata said weakly, but Tamamori ignored him.
~
Yamamoto closed his eyes, leaning back against the countertop. He was already tired again, which was a common thing these days. He hadn’t really expected Tamamori to come over, so busy he was these days with Miyata, but Takahashi was also stopping by soon and that meant that Yamamoto couldn’t just sleep, even if he desperately wanted to.
Groaning, he shuffled over to the fridge, in hopes of finding something that would wake him up, or at least get his stomach to stop complaining.
There was a rustle of his curtains, a small breeze of sound, so soft it was almost nothing. But Yamamoto had heard that sound far too long to just dismiss it. Normally such a sound would make him smile, but now it made his heart thud uncomfortably in his chest, guilt pooling in his gut.
As he turned, he found Yara leaning against the counter, arms crossed and eyes gleaming forebodingly.
“Ryo-chan, I think you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.
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Next up is hatenaimirai_e
Note! I somehow managed to lose the start of my fic in a different document, but since I posted it without the proper first word, hatenaimirai_e can start with whatever word she wants (if she so chooses?)