#haikyuu zombie au | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

purpleqilinwrites · 2 months ago

Text

quietly.

a/n: for the pixel café network's spooktober event. if you'd like to read more, the event masterlist is here!

fandom: haikyuu!!

character: ushijima wakatoshi

genre: angst

info: zombie apocalypse au; takes place around the time-skip; established relationship (ushijima is your boyfriend / fiancé)

warnings: might not be canon-compliant; mentions of gore; mentions of injury (one of them self-inflicted); major character death

synopsis: the world ended not with a bang, but quietly, in a room with blue wallpaper.

word count: 3.5k

Ushijima Wakatoshi

It was quiet outside. Too quiet.

The thought of something – or a group of someones – catching you by surprise prevented you from falling asleep, and you got up from the makeshift bed you threw together to stand guard by the smudged window again. Ushijima stirred from your abrupt movement, moving his arm to tug you back to him but only snagging a handful of air.

"They're not active when it's dark," he said, his voice still laden with sleep. You felt bad for waking him. He was the one who's been doing most of the hard labour keeping the two of you alive, and you thought that safeguarding him while he rested was the one thing you could do for him in return. You weren't much good at any of the survival things, despite being quite savvy at the games you played that simulated this exact situation you found yourself in. "Let's just sleep."

Cutting through the rotting flesh of a zombie was stupidly easy a few months prior, when all you had to do was press several buttons in quick succession. Ushijima had wondered what you found so fascinating about playing a character trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. You didn't know either. Maybe there was something about being a hero that you liked. The main character almost always won at the end, after all.

"Be back in a minute," you said, crossing your arms to ward off the late autumn chill. Ushijima left it at that, turning his head to the side where you should've been sleeping and closing his eyes.

You remained on your feet by the window for maybe half an hour after you heard him start snoring again. The only movement you detected outside was the trees bending at the waist to the strong hand of the night winds.

When the food you'd amassed was close to running out, Ushijima decided that it was time to move on from this defunct power station. With several jelly drinks and two granola bars safely stored in the fanny pack under your jacket, you followed him out of the ruined front gates once the afternoon began to wane into the evening.

It was all open terrain once you were out of the compound.

You were soothed knowing that if there was a zombie or two approaching, it would be easy to spot them since there was nowhere for them to hide. On the other hand, there was no avoiding another bloody confrontation once the zombie had been spotted.

The weight of the borrowed wrench in your hand did little to assuage your worry. It was cold against the heat of your skin. Colder than the evening breeze that whipped at your face once the stars began to wink at the pair of you from above.

You stopped Ushijima for a moment to admire them, and just for the slow count up to ten, everything was alright again.

It felt like you'd been walking for days on end when a town a little ways ahead came into view.

You exhaled your relief, your breath condensing into a misshapen mist that was quickly eaten by the breeze. "Let's hurry," Ushijima said, adjusting the straps of his backpack and then gesturing for you to keep up with him.

The house that was the first to greet you looked the way you felt, with the door missing, all its windows smashed in, and an entire chunk of the front wall lying scattered about the overgrown lawn in hunks of debris. As you approached, there was a pointed odour of decay rushing out from deeper within the house through the missing section of the wall.

You continued down the path that led to several more houses in the town instead of stopping at the first one, and all the houses in the row were alike in sight and smell. There was a much larger house at the north end of the town from where you started. Despite its less than hospitable condition, you said, "It'll have to do for now," and Ushijima acquiesced with that little wrinkle in his brow that told you he didn't want to stop there in the meantime if he could help it.

Less than two meters from what would've been the front gardens of the large house was a mostly intact concrete wall that reached only to your waist. There were several rust-coloured blotches splattered around the corners. It was arduous work putting the thought of what those dark stains could be to rest, but you managed. Across the one face of the wall was a metal plaque inscribed with a mostly faded name.

This town used to be a retirement village.

You shivered, even if you didn't feel particularly cold. Ushijima retraced his last ten or so steps and came to stand beside you when he realised you hadn't moved for a while, and his palm was warm against your bicep.

"Let's not stay here long," he said. "Just for the night."

The aluminised plastic rustled when you rubbed the packet of onsen salts between your hands. It didn't impart any warmth to you, but you still palmed at it anyway.

Ushijima looked up from taking stock of what was left of your food reserves because of the noise. "There's no running water here," he said. "You can't take a bath." A mirthless sound left your lips at his innocent reminder of your situation. It's been a few months already since the last time you took a bath. You wondered how long you'd be stewing in the medicated water if you knew beforehand that it would be your last soak for a while.

Even the ability to rinse your sweat-smeared face with clean water instead of drinking it was a luxury so far out of reach.

"I know." You spoke after a moment of silence, reading the words on the packet as if it were the first time you were seeing it. "I was hoping looking at this would make me feel better. Remind me of the days before all this."

You felt him scoot right up to you, his arms wrapping around your midsection as he leaned in to take a closer look at what you were holding. "We went there for our anniversary last year. And to celebrate my contract with the Adlers being renewed," he said, poking at the telltale logo on the upper left corner of the packet. You didn't miss how he let his touch linger on the packet of onsen salts in your hands. "I liked it too. The onsen."

For a man as stoic as Ushijima, though you knew it wasn't on purpose that he presented himself that way, that small gesture absolutely ripped your heart down the middle.

The next place you took refuge in was at a fishing port.

All the buildings along the port were repurposed shipping containers, the outer layer of paint dulled all over and peeling in some places, exposing irregular patches of rust. Ushijima stopped in front of the least damaged container and tried to open the door. When he determined that it was locked, he forcibly opened the door with his hammer and stepped in.

After a moment, he emerged from his initial scan of the shipping container's interior and beckoned for you to join him inside. "Come. It's safe for you."

Whoever owned this shipping container was a godsend.

The weariness you've been shouldering all these past few months seemed to seep out of your bones and evaporated as you hungrily took in the sight of the rows and rows of emergency food supplies and bottled water. You felt something wet trail down your chin. Swiping at your mouth with the back of your free hand, you realised then that you had been drooling. Even the wet sensation of your own spit on your face felt unfamiliar.

Ushijima was hauling the display cabinet at the other end of the container to fortify the now busted door when you came back to yourself. You began pulling where he was pushing, and the two of you made quick work of turning the display cabinet into a barricade.

Dinner was a comparatively extravagant affair now that you had options other than to have a bite of something for now or to save it for later.

You crunched on not just one but two cups of instant noodles, enjoying a forkful of canned tuna between bites of noodles. Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed Ushijima simply watching you eat, his own dinner of canned beans in tomato sauce with a sleeve of wheat crackers sitting yet untouched in front of him.

"You want some?" You reached over with an especially hefty forkful of tuna, which he easily accepted. As he chewed, he placed a cracker loaded with beans over the mouth of one of your empty noodle cups.

"I like this," he said, and you had an inkling he wasn't referring to the food in front of him. "It's been a while since I saw you smile. It's nice."

His sentimental declaration completely disarmed you. Even with the cracker he shared with you shovelled partly into your mouth, your eyes filled up with tears that quickly began running down your face as if by the bucket. Your tears surprised him, and with your vision partially obscured by them, you saw how he almost dropped the cracker he was eating. It made you laugh, despite yourself. Despite the cracker chunks sticking uncomfortably to the roof of your mouth. Despite the reality of things outside this shipping container.

There was something boneless about how you felt – a good kind of boneless feeling, if there was such a thing – when he put his food down to hold you until you were done crying around a mouthful of beans and a broken-off corner of a cracker.

This situation with the zombies has been a reality for exactly a year and eight months since the first time you got bitten.

It was in what used to be a covered shopping street. You remembered coming here with your friends from elementary school, your wallet heavy with coins so that you could spend hours and hours playing in the arcade. For a moment, you wondered about them as you walked behind Ushijima along the ruined corner of the shopping street where that arcade should've been.

This was a place brimming with good memories from your past. It filled your mouth with an acrid, bitter taste that in your present, this place would signal the beginning of the end.

You mourned the loss of two fingers from your left hand, your little finger and your ring finger that you had to cleave off if you wanted to avoid transforming into a zombie. For months and months after the fact, you suffered from irregular bouts of a phantom pain that was real enough to seize you from your sleep, and you were always left kicking and screaming until it passed.

Sometimes, when your mind cleared and you became aware that the wound had already healed into an uneven mass of a scar, you found yourself grieving also that if this zombie situation were ever resolved, you'd never wear a wedding ring where it was supposed to be worn.

After a particularly nasty run-in with a group of other survivors, the two of you collectively agreed to remain on your own. You wanted to ask "Until when?" but the words evaded you when you noticed that the clench in Ushijima's jaw had become a permanent fixture of his face. His natural expression was never angry, before all this.

The remains of Shiratorizawa Academy loomed over the residential and semi-commercial buildings that surrounded it, casting a shadow even in the late hour.

At first, you thought he wanted to stay there for the time being, and so you followed at the usual two paces behind him. Ushijima stopped without warning in his approach, and you rammed into his back. The sight of your shared alma mater cast a spell on him, and he paid no mind to you as you stumbled and latched onto his elbow to right yourself.

The last time he'd held you, the angles of his bones didn't jut out this much.

"I wanted us to get married here," he said, turning around to face you. You had expected him to say something about volleyball instead. Something about the way his palm tingled pleasantly after he spiked the ball. Something about Satori-kun and the other Shiratorizawa boys he used to play here with. After all, he loved the sport before he loved you. You never once thought to equate these two loves of his. Even so—

There was that pinprick of warmth at the back of your eyes that warned of the tears to come, but that was the end of it. Maybe you were too dehydrated to retain the ability to cry. You blinked, as if to prevent a tide of nonexistent tears from falling.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but a low growl from within the abandoned Shiratorizawa compound made him close it.

There was a part of you that was too tired to run. You've already spent more than two years – or more? Had it been three years already? Five? More? – running and hiding and starving. When was the last time you were happy that you were still alive?

Ushijima appeared to be able to hear the words on the tip of your tongue that you haven't yet said, and he made the decision for you. As a swarm of zombies materialised from the twisted shadows of Shiratorizawa, he grabbed your forearm and yanked you after him.

The two of you narrowly missed the most nimble zombie in the horde. The one who relentlessly chased after you on all fours with a good portion of his face and most of his right arm missing.

It was in another school when you got bitten again.

This time, there were no memories attached to the place. Neither of you went to school here. It was too far north of Sendai where the two of you met. You took it as a small consolation, no matter that it was insignificant, that nothing in your past was sullied by this thing that happened in your present.

You poured an entire travel-sized vodka bottle onto the wound once you managed to duck into an underground shelter a good distance away from the school. Dipping your hand into your fanny pack left you disappointed; you had nothing else to clean the site of your injury with.

The wound festered unnaturally, darkening into the sickly purple-grey of a bruised plum beginning to mould. Even the flies that gathered around the corpses of people who died a natural death avoided the parasitic rot making its home in your body.

It occurred to you that you might need to self-mutilate once again, for the sake of survival. You brandished the one clean knife in your possession before you processed the thought, aligning the cutting edge with the curve of your lowermost rib on the right side. The exposed portion of bone, off-white from the poor nutrition of the recent years and mostly smooth when the bite was still fresh, had succumbed to the thing that was going to kill you.

If you didn't do this now—

Ushijima caught you with the pocket knife within its sheath, but still tightly enmeshed in the meeting of your two hands. There was a pleading look in his eyes that made your heart twist painfully in your chest. You couldn't bear to maintain eye contact for longer than a second, turning your cheek to him instead.

"Toshi, please," you said, and pushing those two words past your lips drained you. "I don't want to turn into a zombie. Let me do this, please. Please–"

If you didn't do this now, you'd have to ask him—

The last clinic the two of you stumbled upon was devoid of anything useful. All that met you within the shattered glass walls were the lifeless bodies of what looked to have been at least two groups of survivors fighting over the last of some medical supplies. You checked a can of disinfectant spray lying by the severed leg of the least decomposed corpse, and the way it rattled when you picked it up told you it had been empty for a while.

"We've already been through so much. We'll get through this too," he said, prying the knife from your trembling hands. You were prepared for the physical pain of what needed to be done, but there was nothing you could do to steel yourself against the cruel knowledge that you had to leave Ushijima behind soon.

"I can't– Do this anymore," you said. "It hurts. Everything– Everything hurts."

His eyes were watchful while you lay shivering and sweaty and grey on the stained mattress. You were bundled up in an assortment of clothes Ushijima had collected from the other apartments in this building. It was the heat of summer, clammy and thick, but it felt like winter to you.

You gathered the strength to wave your hand at him to properly get his attention, but your efforts fell short, your forearm rising only to flop back where it came from. The closest you came to swearing was a broken, wispy groan.

He was looking at you, but not seeing you. It was the same way you were looking at him, and all you could focus on was the repetitive floral motif on the pretty blue wallpaper behind him.

"–Toshi," you managed. It took maybe five or six seconds for him to register that you had spoken. Once it did, he rose from his seated position on the floor close to the mattress to kneel beside where you lay.

You mustered all the strength you had left in your quickly rotting body to nod to him. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't summon the words to your lips and push them out so he could hear you. So that he knew that this was it. That it was time for you to go, and he had to let you go. All you managed was a singular decisive nod.

It felt like a moment that should've been tearful. This was goodbye, after all.

These few – or maybe more than a few – years you survived because of him. You never knew how much it cost him because he never let you apologise for being one more thing for him to take care of. Ushijima only accepted your feelings when you said, "Thank you" and "I love you" and "I appreciate you".

You gave a strained nod that sapped what remained alive in you, and he nodded back with his mouth flattened into a solemn line.

He leaned forward to press his lips to yours one last time. In the blurred vision of your one good eye, it looked like he was about to cry as his face drew nearer to yours. Since you couldn't bring your arms around him, you settled for two dull taps of your index finger onto the plush surface of the mattress and hoped he understood. Did he even see it?

You wanted to ask him not to cry while you could still be aware of it, but you've already asked too much of him.

He stood up, leaving your narrow field of vision for a moment. When he came back into view, the pocket knife you'd been using as your weapon of choice was in his dominant hand, the deep green of the weathered handle standing out against the colour of his skin.

Ushijima leaned over you, shivering and sweaty and grey.

His right hand passed over your face, and he mapped out the line of your jaw, the curve of your lips, the slant of your nose, the shape of your eyes. The calloused pads of his fingers were gentle as he shut your eyes for you.

"I don't want this," he admitted, nestling his cheek against your forehead. His voice was close to your ear, and you could hear the fissures in it worsening as he spoke. "Not when I was ready to die before you."

The cool of your grey flesh greedily soaked up the warmth of his body when he lifted your upper body to cradle you to his chest, safe in his arms as you've always been. You wanted to snuggle into the crook of his neck one more time before it was time for you to go, but there was no more energy left in you. Your life had run out, and it was time—

"I love you," was the last thing you heard but not the last thing you felt.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu!! scenarios #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #ushijima wakatoshi #ushijima wakatoshi x reader #fic #angst #kaija writes #kaija writes: haikyuu!!#event: spooktober #cw: gore #cw: major character death #i just watched pearl #and it inspired this a little bit

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