Subject to Study (Naga!Brothers x Reader)

Chapter 35

I didn't remember falling back asleep, but when I woke up, I felt like I was being crushed. An uncomfortable tightness had wrapped itself around my legs and torso, squeezing my nerves every so often like a wave was washing over me. Gritting my teeth and opening my eyes slightly, I couldn't see anything but darkness but my ears picked up a soft hissing sound.

"Guys...?"

"(Y/n)?" I heard Stacy call out from somewhere beyond the naga pile that had somehow encapsulated me, "We've been on the ground for a little while, waiting for the fuel truck to come to us."

I reached out with both hands and felt the smooth underside of a tail hovering right above my head, tracing up the sides with my hands and feeling humid air just past the tail. Scales shifted and the tail was pulled away from my face, a pair of hands hooking underneath my arms and lifting me out of the naga ball. A flashlight clicked on and revealed the darkened cargo area, the source of the light coming from where I had remembered Stacy was sitting.

"Lights out for a reason?" I adjusted my clothing after my feet touched the floor of the area, looking up behind me to see Choro's face in the edge of the flashlight beam and giving him an appreciative smile.

"We don't really want anyone to get curious about the cargo," Stacy pointed the flashlight away from the nagas, sweeping it over the back of the cargo area as if she was inspecting the raised ramp.

"We landed about ten minutes ago, and fuel's twenty minutes out," I heard Grant call out from the personnel area, stepping through the doorway into the cargo bay and starting to open the side door, "I'd suggest waiting to give the nagas some stretching time after the fuel truck leaves. We're not on a strict schedule, now that we've landed here."

"Do you know what time it is?" I carefully made my way over as Grant opened the side door, looking out into the dark night sky that was full of stars.

"Locally, it's just about one in the morning. The wonders of timezones is a beautiful thing," He laughed as he kicked out the collapsible stairs, stepping down to the ground and looking up at the sky, "Took us just over eight-and-a-half hours to get here."

I watched as he took out a cigarette and lit it as he placed the butt into his mouth, the end blazing with a bright orange color as he flicked a lighter to life. Glancing over my shoulder, I could barely make out six pairs of eyes carefully watching me from the darkness of the cargo bay as Stacy switched the flashlight off.

"Can you guys wait another twenty minutes?" Striding back to them, I tried to meet their eyes in the dark, "After the fuel truck leaves, then you guys can go out and stretch."

"That sounds fine..." One of the nagas ducked away, his voice identifying him as Oso, "I can barely feel my tail..."

"Were the vibrations too much?" Stacy asked quickly, her voice coming closer as she emerged from the dark area.

Oso didn't respond, but Jyushi filled in his silence.

"My tail's numb, too!" He laughed out before Stacy turned the flashlight back on and made her way towards the reticulated naga, asking shorter questions to make sure that he was feeling healthy otherwise. After finding out that the numbness more than likely came from the engines reverberating through the floor, Stacy apologized and asked them to bear with it for one more flight. There wasn't a large enough tarp that had enough padding to keep them from feeling the vibrations, but the nagas seemed to agree amongst themselves on some kind of solution.

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Twenty minutes passed faster than I thought it would, finding myself enraptured by the stars overhead. They looked a bit different than what I would've seen in San Diego, but we were under a different part of the sky. It would've been strange if it looked the same.