Netherworld 7 Title: Netherworld Fandom: Galactik Football Characters: Rocket, Sinedd, Tia, D'Jok, Warren Rating: PG Summary: WARNING: IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH MALE X MALE PAIRINGS, SKIP THIS CHAPTER. Rocket x Sinedd overtly (a nice change from six chapters of build-up, right?), and Rocket x Tia mentioned.
Netherworld: To The Victor
“What took you so long?” Rocket asked, seated cross-legged on his bed. The room was perfectly dark, making Sinedd’s silhouette against the lit-up hallway a clean-lined shadow. It meant Rocket couldn’t see the agony that twisted Sinedd’s face with every step he took, his own weight jarring down on his ankle, or the liquid blackness of his pain-dilated pupils.
“You try walking all the way here on a broken ankle!” The words were snarled, Sinedd slamming his hand against the wall to smack the light switch. The bright light blinded Rocket for a second, whose eyes had been accustomed to the dark, and by the time he adjusted, Sinedd was already sitting on his own bed, bent over from the waist to take his boots off and not looking at Rocket.
Rocket glanced down at the floor to make sure the mouse wasn’t there, then four quick steps took him over to Sinedd’s bed, Rocket sitting on it quickly so that the mouse couldn’t run out from anywhere and bite him. “Here. Let me.”
It’d be easier for him to undo the multiple snaps on the Shadows’ boots. Especially since this close, he could see that Sinedd’s hands were shaking, fumbling at the straps.
Sinedd had felt it when the mattress dipped down at Rocket’s weight was added to it. He didn’t turn around, trying still to take the boots off on his own, tone tinged with bitterness that couldn’t quite hide the pain. “Haven’t you done enough?”
No, Rocket thought but didn’t say. The match wasn’t over. Rocket hadn’t done enough – but he didn’t know what the next move was either. He just knew that it would somehow make things better if he could see the damage that he’d caused (allowed to happen).
“Sinedd. We’re not in the Sphere now.”
But the game was still continuing, even if Sinedd didn’t know it.
“Your ankle’s broken, and you won’t be able to get that boot off on your own without jarring it further.” Rocket knew Sinedd wouldn’t believe that someone cared about him. Why should he? It wasn’t as if anyone did, or ever had, as far as Rocket knew. So he added a selfish reason that Sinedd would be more likely to buy. “You end up unable to stand, who’s going to operate the Sphere?”
“…” Silently, Sinedd extended his leg towards Rocket, wincing as even that bit of movement made his ankle scream red-raw angrily. Rocket was right. Sinedd couldn’t go to sleep with his boots on, and they weren’t offering his ankle any support either. More than the Sphere, he had a match against the Pirates tomorrow. He needed to be able to at least stand for the face-offs, even if he could spend the rest of the time using the Smog to teleport and thus taking the weight off his ankle.
“I’ll get you some ice from the mini-bar and a towel to wrap it in.” Rocket said as he started to get to work on fastening the boot over the injured foot. One strap over the arch of the foot. Another strap over the ankle itself. A sort of hard pad behind the calf that Rocket didn’t see a use for, but it was strapped just under the calf with a thin neon-green band. The boots ended up above the knee, the material of them so soft as to be form-fitting though the sole of the boot was heavily cleated and the area around the foot was noticeably thicker.
Sinedd didn’t say anything as Rocket started to roll the boot down over itself, but his hands clenched tightly in the bedsheets, as if he were forcing his desire to scream into holding onto the fabric instead.
Centimetre by centimetre, the pale, muscled leg was revealed, Rocket’s knuckles a warm drag against Sinedd’s skin. It surprised Rocket how cold Sinedd was; how unhealthily pale he seemed. Akillian, for all that it was a planet of ice and snow, had sunshine. The reflection of the sun off the snow could cause sunburns as bad as any on a tropical planet. He couldn’t quite remember if Sinedd’s skin had always been so faded; he hadn’t paid enough attention to him before, when they’d been roommates as the Snow Kids.
The cold was wrong. Sinedd was in pain. Shouldn’t he be feeling hot?
Unless it was the fault of the Smog, curling poisonously slow through Sinedd’s veins and leaching the heat that his blood would otherwise carry. But surely if the Smog was hurting him, Artegor wouldn’t let Sinedd use it.
Rocket’s thoughts grew distracted as his fingers chanced upon an old scar, sunken into the flesh, midway down the calf, the length of his little finger but no thicker than a line a marker might draw. He gave Sinedd an inquiring look, pausing for a moment with his hands cupped around the bare skin of Sinedd’s calf instead of the boot he’d been undoing, “What happened here?”
“None of your business.” The words were curt, but Sinedd refused to explain as much because it wasn’t Rocket’s business as because he knew that longer sentences would make his voice wobble. And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want anything to betray what it cost him to sit still as Rocket touched him.
“Fine.” Rocket’s agreement could’ve been taken at surface value at the beginning, before he’d ever played in the Sphere. It wasn’t any of his business if Sinedd had scars or how Sinedd had gotten them.
Except he’d won. To the victor went the spoils, no? If you played Galactik Football, that meant you got the GF Cup. If you played Netherball, you got to be the King of the Sphere.
If you played this…
Rocket didn’t even know what this game was, let alone what he’d win. But it had something to do with the Sphere. It had something to do with Tia being the one to bring him to Galactik Football, and drawing him higher. It had something to do with his fall for grace (he fell for her), and Sinedd bringing him to Netherball, drawing him lower.
There was a parallel there, Rocket was dimly aware of it, but it was hard to grasp precisely. Everything felt like it did in the Sphere, when he was so focused on the game, on the next goal, on his opponent, that everything else just faded away. White noise. Static.
He held Sinedd’s broken ankle between both his hands, and he could feel Sinedd’s heartbeat throbbing against his palms. It was like holding Sinedd’s heart.
Except it wasn’t bleeding. It should be bleeding. It would be better if he was. Rocket could feel the sharp, wrenched edge of Sinedd’s bone poking against his palm. If he twisted it just right, it’d tear through Sinedd’s skin, jut out white and blood-slick. Rocket could imagine exactly how it’d feel in his hand, how his fingers would slip away from it, and how Sinedd would scream.
The screaming would be the best part, Rocket decided, covetous eyes fixed on Sinedd’s ankle (heart) as Sinedd fidgeted with the covers, teeth gritted against the pain. Finally, Sinedd couldn’t take it anymore and snapped, “You gonna stare or you going to get that ice you promised?”
Rocket’s eyes looked up, and they were as dark as old gold, gold that had been fought for and stored in treasure chests, gold that had had blood spilled for its sake and gold that had funded wars. He looked at Sinedd and for a moment, he didn’t see him.
He saw a way to win.
Everything felt distant, just as it did in the Sphere. The pounding of his own heart was overloud in his ears; the walls blurred into off-white, and the outlines of Sinedd’s body were sharp. Every little strand of hair was picked out in fine detail; the shallow curve of his eyelids were as precise as if painted by a master artist.
Inside Rocket’s head, everything rearranged itself, the way it did when he was taking a shot. He saw the angle that the ball needed to travel at; he calculated the force with which he’d need to kick it to have it ricochet off the wall and into the goal.
Click. It all slotted into place, just as it did in the Sphere.
The nagging feeling of the match not being completed left him. Rocket knew now how the game was meant to continue.
Fingers still around Sinedd’s ankle, holding it (hostage), he lunged forwards, striker-fast, and pressed his mouth to Sinedd’s.