it's eric bittle-zimmermann, thank you very much (stressbake) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-05-01 11:59:00
BITTY
NURSEY
WHERE Somewhere on the island of Viga-maðr WHEN Saturday, May 1st (morning) WHAT The boys wake up lost ~in the past~, Nursey ends up in a trap, and Bitty gets up in arms at scary men with weapons. It goes about how you would expect. STATUS Complete! WARNINGS Mentions of medication for anxiety.
"Nurse, Nursey, wake up," Bitty whispered in a way that wasn't whispering at all. He was maybe only a minute into waking up himself and he was not excited about his surroundings. Going to sleep wrapped up in his husband's arms with the gentle breeze of the open window making the post-coital cool down perfectly comfortable, Bitty was alarmed by this. He was a Southern baker who coached an amateur hockey team. Not an outdoorsman.
He wondered if this was Jack trying to get him to run by exposure. But Jack would never be so cruel; Bitty had just managed to convince him that he was completely cleared for more strenuous activity. Dumping him in a forest that did not look remotely familiar seemed odd. And so Bitty wandered for a few seconds, barefoot in his tiny pajama shorts that were going unappreciated because Jack was not here before seeing a familiar form asleep. Not unconscious from a concussion.
Bitty probably should have paid more attention to the ripped red cloth tied on one of the branches of the trees he ran by, or maybe some of the runic symbols that marked the territory as Viga-maðr but he was more relieved to see a familiar—albeit sleeping!—face and not be alone.
The moment Nursey started to stir, Bitty launched into, "It wasn't me! We have done all of our hazing and I absolutely would not have put us in the middle of the woods! Faber only! And y'all have already done it, so I don't even know what this for. Unless it's fines—" Bitty's eyes went wide, a hand to his mouth to stop the gasp.
Nursey slept deep. Not like the dead but deep enough that Bitty making noise and moving around didn’t rouse him. It was the lack of warmth that did it. He’d gotten used to tucking in against Dex at least a couple nights a week – trying to read the balance of when it was good to stay and when Dex needed space – and he’d fallen asleep toasty. He’d also fallen asleep full dressed and suitably drunk for a Friday night. Now he was cold and a little itchy and his travel container of anxiety meds was jabbing him in the thigh. He snorted awake in surprise and lifted his head to stare at Bitty blearily.
“Chill, Bits,” he yawned. “I don’t even know what you’re…you’re…” His gaze got stuck on all the trees behind Bitty and he finally started to really look around. He was on the ground, on his side. He rolled to his back, but didn’t get up. He needed to take stock first. He was dressed; that was already a step up over hazing. He was wearing Samwell sweats, a tank top that said “fucking YIKES” in neon 80s vibe, and bright pink flip flops. No Dex. No basement. A lot of green.
“Uh…normally, I’d be all for this nature, but what the actual fuck, Bitty.” Nursey rolled to his feet and brushed dirt off his arms. Only then did he realize Bitty was practically naked. “Dope PJs,” he chirped.
"Nursey, I swear on my mother's chess pie recipe that I didn't do this! This is too much, y'all could have gotten eaten by a racoon! Or, dear Lord, a magic racoon. What were those things the other week everyone was talking about? Goodness," Bitty said with a wave. He was so flustered, and he flushed momentarily when Nursey chirped, embarrassed that his choice for sleepwear was not appropriate. After his insistence on passing out sweaters and the Haze-a-palooza, he really should have been better prepared to not go asleep half naked.
But how was he supposed to know he would be dumped in the middle of the woods?
With a huff, he straightened up from his crouch, hands on his hips, looking around. Nothing seemed familiar, and the light was still pale in the trees, indicating it was still morning. It might have been pretty, and if Bitty could remember how to get back here, he'd tell Jack that this was a lovely scenic route for his runs.
"Well, there has got to be a path back to a waypoint..." Bitty trailed off as he noticed a small square shape in the leaves where he had woken up. He approached slowly, and picked up the journal. "Is this yours?" Bitty asked as he flipped through its empty pages, and then realizing the faux pas, snapped it closed. "I promise I am not snooping! It’s just odd that whoever brought us out here brought this too? What kind of person does—"
A sharp crack of a twig snapping cut Bitty off, and the face he made to Nursey was I didn't imagine that, did I?
Nursey still felt half-asleep but he’d spent the majority of his college life feeling that way so he was fully able to function. Bitty’s rambling just made it feel like home anyway. He rolled to the side, intent on getting to his feet, but he ended up on top of another book, not unlike the one Bitty was holding. This was getting weirder by the second.
“Uh. I’ve got one t--” The snap sound hit his ears and he grew quiet. Being a mixed race black man raised in America did not make Nursey at all interested in scoping out strange noises after being unceremoniously dumped in the woods. He stood and took a few steps in the opposite direction instead.
Which made the rope that closed around his ankle, jerking him up into the air upside down, extra unchill. His meds tumbling out of his pocket and the startled yelp he made didn’t help. “Okay, alright, okay, alright,” he murmured anxiously. “I’m really not looking to be a cannibal’s dinner guest so if you can help me down, Bits, that would be cool.”
If they were planning on being quiet, that went immediately out of the window. More terrifying than the noises in the woods was Nursey going up, up, up while upside down. Bitty yelped so loudly, dropped his book, and went running toward him. This was not good, this was terrible, this was going to end so badly. But Bitty didn't say any of that, he had to remain optimistic, while Nursey swung a couple of feet above him.
"You're going to be okay! I'm not going to leave you here alone," Bitty reached up to grab Nursey's hand, which only resulted in them brushing fingertips because he was just out of reach. "Stay there—well, you can't really go anywhere. You know what I mean! I'm going to see where this is hooked up to and try and get you down. Don't pass out! Breathe slowly! You're upside down and all the blood is rushing to your head. Good Lord, who puts one of these in the middle of the woods where..."
Bitty was stomping off, following the rope, which was attached to an positively ancient looking pulley system. He frowned, slightly confused, but he found where the rope was tied to the base of a tree. "Nursey! I found—"
Well, what Bitty found was a knife to his back as he was promptly marched back towards the dangling Nursey by someone. A couple of someones, but Bitty didn't have a good look. "Does this look as bad as—ouch! Excuse you!"
Nursey was glad he didn’t have a problem with heights and his equilibrium was actually pretty solid from years on the ice. This might have been a lot more uncomfortable otherwise. It was still high-key terrifying, especially when he realized Bitty couldn’t reach him and might have to climb a tree in his little shorts and get his white ass chest all scratched to hell--
“Yo, uhhhh, hello, hey. I think there’s been a mistake?” he said to the people currently flanking his tiny friend. He held his hands up palms out as he swayed slowly back and forth like a pendulum. “Are you guys like hunting here or something? Sorry, I set off your--” One of the men behind him abruptly let the rope out and Nursey crashed to the forest floor in a painful pile.
“Trap,” he finished weakly. On the plus side, he landed near one of the flip flops he’d lost in the ascent. He reached for it.
Bitty needed a hot minute to get his bearings together. There were currently several angry looking men pointing weapons at them. And while Bitty should have been terrified—it wasn't every day he was lost in the woods and having knives pushed into his bare back—confusion just made his little body furious. He was pushed toward Nursey after he fell, and that just riled Bitty up even more.
"Oh my goodness, you don't just drop people like that! He could have been seriously hurt!" Bitty scolded his big brutish viking man, and wiggled out of his grasp to run to Nursey. Clearly, Bitty wasn't enough of a threat to worry about getting away, and so he was left to make deep, concerning frowns at Nursey while checking his head. Bitty was fretting like a ruffled mother hen, and said quietly to Nursey, "Don't worry, I'll take care of this, there's been a misunderstanding."
And that's when Bitty whirled back around on the group, a single scolding finger raised. "Are any of y'all going to say something because if not, I have some words about your manners and how to—" Bitty took a furiously righteous step toward one of the men, and an arrow landed between his feet. A warning. That only gave him a minor pause, before he continued.
"This! This is what I mean by y'all and manners. We are lost, we're just trying to get back to the city, and we promise to leave y'all alone! Do you think either of us would go out dressed in our pajamas?" nothing but raised weapons pointed at them was the answer.
“Easy, Bits,” Nursey mumbled. “I’m okay.” That was mostly true. His shoulder hurt from where he hit the ground but nothing felt broken. He tried tugging Bitty by the arm to keep him close but the spitfire was already laying into their...captors? Were they captives? He looked down at the fucking yikes on his shirt with an unsettling sense of discomfort.
It hiked up to seriously not okay when the man who’d cut him down reached into the grass and plucked out his pill bottle. The man squinted at the bottle, sniffing the outside before he tried to open it. All of Nursey’s plans to calm down Bitty flew off into the trees.
“Whoa whoa whoa.” Nursey smiled nervously and reached out. “Those are mine. They’re not--there’s only like a week’s worth in there, it’s not even enough worth selling.”
The man shook the bottle and made a confused face at the rattling noise that came out.
Bitty was only backing down because Nursey was saying he was okay and tugging him back, not because these childish boys were being any type of hospitable. In the back of his mind, his sensible other half was saying to also calm down, and to not rile anyone up, and just get past this. And while that would have been fine on any other day, that whoa, whoa, whoa was enough to send Bitty off into his second—third?—tirade in a matter of minutes.
He spun to see the guy shaking the bottle, and exchanged an alarmed look with Nursey. Those were not something they could barter with or risk losing. His hand went to Nursey's arm stilling him in that comforting sort of way. Bitty offered out the tiny journal. "Take this instead, we don't need this! But he needs those! Y'all, work with us here! We're trying to get home, so I can cook for my husband who is going to be—" Bitty huffed, couldn't even put into words what Jack was going to be like.
When the man with the bottle didn't give it back, Bitty started wracking his brain with options. "What do you want from us? Nursey is an absolutely wonderful poet! We both know hockey, have you ever played hockey before? I'm willing to share my MooMaw's jam recipe if we can just get those back!"
Bitty reached for the bottle, but the man held it out of reach and pushed Bitty back with his other hand. As Bitty hit the ground, he looked to Nursey as if to ask—anything else in those pockets to trade?
With his throat gone dry, Nursey was quiet for a moment. Watching Bitty try his damnedest eased back the initial wave of panic, though. He really did love that little guy. Bitty didn’t even seem all that tiny in the moment; protective instincts made him feel ten feet tall.
“I uh…” He reached into his pockets as he clumsily rolled to his knees. Out came a roll of chapstick, a twenty dollar bill that had seen better days, and a punch card for Annie’s. “I’m one more stamp away from a free latte?” He held up the card and gave a nervous smile. The man with his pills reached out and took everything he held and inspected it all very closely. Nursey was starting to wonder if the guy needed glasses, honestly. Not that he’d say as much when the guy had an axe at his hip. “Can I just--”
He tried to pluck the pills out of the man’s other hand and back to the ground from behind.
“Do you two ever shut up?.” One of the men asked.
Nursey spit out a blade of grass and frowned a muppet’s frown. “Chill. I’d shut up real fast if you gave me the bottle back, I’m just saying.”
Even if Nursey was not chill on the inside, he was doing a damn good job of keeping his cool. Bitty would feel a little sheepish later with how risky he was being, but it was like adrenaline during a game—there wasn't time to be scared, only to think through the next step, the next play. But Bitty was slowly running out of moves.
All of his yelling wasn't particularly helping the situation either, and the only thing he had to offer to get Nursey's medication back were the very tiny shorts he was currently wearing. He didn't want to say he would, but he would, if they got desperate. "I'll even cook for y'all, show you a thing or two around the kitchen in Vallo, for the bottle! And I think it's a pretty good deal, as peaches are coming into season and there is a lot of cobbler in your future—"
"No," another man said, stepping through the small ring of people around them. He was holstering a bow to his back. Bitty might have thought it would be impressive if he didn't suspect that was the guy who shot an arrow at his feet and—oh goodness, someone shot an arrow at him! That shouldn't have taken so long to understand.
The man took the bottle from the other, and inspected it himself. Deeming it unnecessary and unthreatening, he threw it back at Nursey. He made a hand gesture, signalling something, and two pairs of hands were grabbing at both of them and hauling them to their feet. "You will go with the others. None of you can be trusted."
No matter how chill Nursey looked on the outside, he was a twitchy mess on the outside. It had taken years to find a good med balance and he could probably survive without them long enough to get an emergency replacement, but who knew where they were or how quickly they could get back to the city? He made himself do a breathing exercise – in for four, hold for seven, out for eight – as stealthily as he could manage. He was going to tell Bitty it was okay, they’d figure something out, but the bottle was thrown at him instead.
“Whoa, okay,” he murmured, letting out a surprised little noise as he was pulled to his full height. He was actually taller than the guy who had a hand on his shoulder but he was decidedly less armed. Unless maybe he could blind someone with his flip flops. He pulled the one he’d lost back on just in time to get shoved forward a few steps. “Damn, you guys really need to work on your people skills.”
“Shut up and walk! Put them with the others!”
Nursey glanced sideways at Bitty as he tucked his bottle back into his pants. He inched closer and ducked his head. “We’ll figure this out, Bits. Just stick close.”
One teeny tiny victory—they got the bottle back. That had been Bitty's first priority, but the second should have been finding a shirt. Or maybe making it back to the city. Getting back to Jack before he panicked, especially after just getting him to relax about doctor's restrictions. Priorities with a little scattered as Bitty marched along. He had never been kidnapped before, but he most certainly didn't like it.
He looped his arm through Nursey's, in his own little defiance. "You know it. I'm going to be plastered to your side like my mama's mac and cheese is to your ribs." Bitty's stomach grumbled helplessly in that second, and he pouted.
"Goodness, I hope whoever the others are, they have something for us to eat, or I am going to be incredibly hangry, and they'll regret that they weren't nicer to us before."