Bloodied Dahlias | Miya Osamu

[XII] The Lion's Den Part II

"I've been looking for you," came a voice from Osamu's side.

The sound of your voice had coaxed the corners of his lips up into a small smile as he turned around to face you — his eyes having slowly crawled up your form from your feet to your face, his gaze having lingered a second longer on the smile spread across your mouth.

It's you.

He could feel his pulse thrumming from behind his ears as his eyes landed on the red gown you had on. Perhaps it was from how the silk material had managed to hug each curve and each dip of your figure while still permitting the dress to flow along the trail of your steps — so windswept and ethereal, as if celestial and divine. Or perhaps it was just because he's had god knows how many drinks since the start of the night, but he could swear the colors in his vision were burning with such vivacity in this moment — a stark contrast to the monochrome black and white he had always known before. Elation had crashed through the dam of his common sense and had been flooding his system, drowning out all rational thought to trick his lips into the shape of a foolish grin that had felt so foreign and so unfamiliar upon his mouth.

Foreign and unfamiliar, but not entirely uncomfortable. Not entirely unpleasant, for the matter. Osamu moved another step closer, having made no attempt to wipe it off his face — the man perfectly content with basking in the unknown — his hand reaching for yours before to raise up to his lips.

"Have ya now?" he mused in-between your fingers, the tip of his nose grazing against the ridges of your knuckles.

"Someone," you began, the word punctuated in mock accusation, "promised to save me from all those stuffy introductions but never showed up."

"The curse of bein' super important," Osamu said with a shake of his head, the words leaving his lips a little slower than usual — a bit louder than usual — as he returned your hand back to your side and stood back up to his full height. He stepped aside in invitation for you to stand beside him, a hand finding its home around your hip and on the small of your back as it guided you close, his fingers just brushing against the embroidered side panel of your dress from the motion.

He dipped down closer to you, his heart nearly skipping a beat as he felt the warmth of your breath against the skin of his cheek, and reached over to the plate of dessert you had been holding in your other hand, picking off the precariously balanced cream puff at the top of the makeshift tower.

"Should've been born a normal person like me. Then ya wouldn't have this problem," he continued, pushing the dessert into his mouth with two fingers. He raised the glass of whiskey he had been holding up to his lips and took a sip, the creaminess of the pastry's filling now cut and carried down by the alcohol.

He set the now-empty glass onto a side table before returning to your side, a bashful grin upon his mouth as he swished the alcohol around his mouth. "Sorry," he said after he had swallowed, "came late cause I got blood on everythin'." He paused, hand lifting off your hip to gesture at his own outfit. "Then I got caught up in a cold war between Suguru and Adriah." He nodded in the direction of the two who had since gone off to the other side of the ballroom to bicker with Terushima and Yaku.

Your eyebrows etched themselves into a frown, and for a moment, he could feel that pleasantly happy buzz in his mind silence into nothingness. That joyful and jubilant ecstasy now replaced by the pounding of his heart against his ribcage — the anxiety of a misstep suddenly the only thing he could focus on.

And then it all receded back away like the tide slinking back to the ocean, all doubts — all unease — washed away as you took a step closer, toes touching and faces inches apart, and reached out to brush at something under his lips. He could feel his mouth curving back up into that same goofy grin from before as that pleasant feeling of euphoria returned, all traces of worry shoved back to the side, discarded and forgotten from both forethought and afterthought.