Chapter Text
Lately, the nights had begun to cool considerably, signaling that fall was in full swing. All too soon, the inevitable winter season would be right around the corner. Uncomfortably close; just the thought alone of needing to bulk up your person in heavy clothing to fend off mother nature’s harsh bite made you want to give up there and now and find the closest town to count your losses when you had felt that first cold gust of wind a couple weeks ago.
There was no need to imagine the idea of possibly meeting your end at the hands of an icy demise. Such an idea was a valid concern lightly jostling around in the back of your brain when you handed over your entry fee. It was a concern that was pushed back by the wall titled “we’ll worry about it when we get to it” like so many other normal concerns one had when one embarked on a cross country journey.
Now, though, the one and only concern at the forefront of your mind was meeting your end at the hands of a fucking dinosaur.
A particularly cold breeze gliding across the back of your neck had you spinning on your heels, .22 level and unfaltering at eye level as your scrutinizing gaze swept across the camp that belonged to Diego Brando. You had seen that tell-tale bright teal of his top lit up by the modest campfire in the middle of a small clearing when you had approached slowly from the dense forest.Your approach, as slow as it was, was not quiet enough apparently, as when passing by a tree broke your line of sight while a stone’s throw away, Diego was no longer sitting in the spot you had seen him in just a mere second ago.
Panic didn’t quite surge so much as it began to simmer in your gut. You held your breath to listen to anything above the crackling of fire and the angry snort of the horse tied to a tree nearby. You weren’t sure if horses harbored the ability to hold murderous intent, but if they could, you were fairly certain the one you were disturbing now by stepping into camp would hold such an intent towards you.
The murderous intent you were sure of, however, was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t have gone far in the seven seconds it took from when you broke your sight to where you stood now. You could see scuffs in the dirt next to where a bedroll sat near the fire leading past the edge of camp and toward the trees. You strained your eyes to see past where the fire’s light ended in a ring around the trees, eyes staying on one spot for only a single second before darting to the next spot, and then the next, over and over until you ended right on the same spot you had began. You could feel it, though; eyes were on you, watching smugly, you were sure, as you looked down the barrel of your gun, daring one of the trees to move.
And smug was absolutely right when you turned back toward the spot you had come from and was met with a grin you wished you had smacked with the end of your rifle.
Diego’s hand gripped it instead, stopped barely an inch from hitting the side of his neck. You inhaled sharply through your nose at the sudden jolt of your momentum stopping, but it was the only thing you gave him to indicate he had frightened you. He was too close, an arm’s length away, and you feared how long he had been at that distance, or how close he came to tearing you to shreds. You heard him exhale a short laugh through that smug grin.
“Brando,” you started evenly, eyes narrowing when you yanked the rifle out of his grip and took a step back. There was enough distance now to aim directly at the center of his chest.
“Found me,” he replied in a tone that made your fear spike. He was too calm for being a twitch of a finger away from earning a hole in a vital organ. “You survived then,” he continued while giving you a slow once over. “I’m surprised. Genuinely.”
He meant that small town in the Rockies where somehow, through all the chaos, you had managed to slip out unscathed, save for some scrapes and bruises. At the time, you hadn’t understood a single thing that was happening around you, save for the undeniable truth that there were suddenly creatures running around the quiet town you had just rode into. One such creature just so happened to be sporting on its tail the namesake of a racer you had the misfortune of watching speed ahead of you a number of times. You had found that coincidence quite peculiar at the time, just before you had fired a shot into it in self defense, and it retaliated by sending you through a wall.
You regained consciousness just in time to make it to the spot where the chaos had moved to watch and hear everything unfold from a safe distance. Which led you eventually to where you stood now, with a shaky knowledge of the holy corpse, and its possible monetary value.
“No thanks to you,” you said, earning you another short laugh.
“Revenge, then. Is that why you hunted me down?”
“No, despite you throwing me through a fucking wall.”
“Right after you shot me,” Diego scoffed.
“Well,” you drawled out slowly while your lips slanted into a grin of your own, “let’s consider ourselves even then.”
“It doesn’t seem very even when one party insists,” he knocked the barrel to the side with one harsh push, but your aim snapped back to center just as quickly, “on threatening the other. Put it down.”
“No. We’re still even. I know what you can do, and just your presence alone is threatening.” That seemed to ignite something in him, something that darkened his gaze and broadened his grin, his chin dipping ever so slightly lower. He knew you were scared of him and his abilities, and it delighted him. Your posture straightened as much as you could muster to stand taller. “I know you have one of the eyes. That’s why I’m here. Hand it over and I’ll consider not blasting you to kingdom come.”
“Oh?” A look of genuine surprise passed over Diego’s features. “So you’re aware of this race’s true intentions as well?” he continued, his tone condescending. He took a half step forward and to your left, just barely brushing against the barrel of your rifle. In different circumstances, it may have looked like he simply was shifting to a more comfortable stance, but you knew better. He’s trying to get closer to me. “Tell me, what on Earth could someone like you gain from pursuing the corpse?”
“A shitload of money, for starters. I know I’m not going to win the race, but I heard the president is looking for them. Figured he’d be interested in buying them off me for a pretty penny each. Might even end up being more than the prize money.”
This made Diego laugh heartily and take one full step to your left.
“Now that… That I can’t let you do.” In the shifting light of the fire, and as the two of you circled around one another, you swore you saw that persistent grin crack, literally crack, up into his cheek. You gripped your rifle harder. “Because I had the same idea.”
You saw his hands twitch first, just before he made a lunge leveled at your waist. Or, would have had you not leapt back a step and swatted your right hand through the empty space between you two, palm facing downward and parallel with the ground. In the same moment, Diego’s lunge was cut short by him slamming face first into the ground with a thunderous thud. Dirt flew out from the impact, and Diego’s horse let out a spooked whinny, pulling at the ropes in a desperate attempt to break free and run.
“What-?!” Diego struggled to speak and struggled even harder to look up at you under the crushing invisible weight. You saw his face sour when he locked eyes with you, then twist into anger. He must have seen your Stand floating behind you, mimicking the same hand position. You couldn’t stop your smile, or the low whistle you blew as you walked toward him.
“Oh, Diego,” you sighed. “I wasn’t too confident that would work the way I planned considering I’m still getting used to this, but… Damn,” you chuckled as you lowered yourself onto your haunches next to his head. “You walked right into it, didn’t you.”
Diego growled and fisted his hands into the dirt, looking positively pissed. Remember when he reveled in thinking you were scared of him? You reckoned what you felt now as you watched him seethe felt something like what he had felt in that moment. Bloody satisfying.
“Let… go,” he barely choked out.
You stood and broke eye contact to look out toward the night sky, hand still poised outward and at waist level. You paused a moment, taking in the sound of his wheezy breathing for a moment.
“... Nah.”
Using your boot, you nudged Diego onto his back by his shoulder while lifting your right hand only slightly to relieve the pressure enough to move him. To his credit, he was able to fight against your Stand’s hold more than the others you had tested this ability on, managing to lift his head slightly to give you his full attention. When your eyes met his again, you almost shivered at the pure hatred pouring from them. Almost.
“You know, I had no intention of actually killing you to get your eye. But you’re going to be a problem, aren’t you,” you thought out loud. Diego tried to say something, but nothing made it out. You assumed it was something mean.
“Last chance,” you began and lowered your hand by an inch, increasing the pressure to make your point. The force was beginning to make a crater around the man, and the sound of bones creaking made you raise your hand once more. Point made. “Give me the eye, or I’ll crush you into the dirt.”
“Ff- ine-” he managed to croak. Good enough for you. You raised your hand once more, but kept enough pressure on him to make moving nearly impossible. Diego broke into a coughing fit once the pressure was relieved, a thin trail of blood splattering across his chin.
“Hurry up,” you sighed, and his eyes met yours with the same amount of hatred as before. But, despite this, you watched him heave a heavy sigh and level a neutral gaze to the sky above as he slowly reached for his face, arm shaking under the strain. Finally, you were going to win, take your new piece, find your horse where you had left him tied up near the entrance to the woods, and continue your hunt for the other two racers that had made off with other pieces.
Something was wrong, however. Diego’s eyes shifted over to your own, face beginning to relax, and that previous smug grin returned to his lips. You tensed, readying yourself to slam your hand back down the instant he made a move toward you again. But what you didn’t expect was something from behind you to move instead.
You heard the swish of dirt first, then saw the flash of blue as you turned your head to look over your shoulder. Was that a tail? His tail? When had that happened? How had that happened? You didn’t have the time to rationalize how he had managed to partially transform while under your Stand’s hold as his tail wrapped around your ankle and pulled, knocking your foot backwards and out from under you.
Your hands barely caught your fall and stopped you from smashing your face into the ground, but Diego had other plans. His fingers gripped the hair at the back of your head, lifted, then slammed your face straight into the hard dirt. You registered the sound of him getting up from beside you, but you couldn’t manage to do much more than groan as you began to push yourself up, fighting against acknowledging the white hot pain that burst from your nose, and the warm trickle you felt making its way down toward your upper lip.
“Ah ah ah,” you heard from somewhere above and behind you. Diego’s forearm hit the back of your neck and slammed you back to the ground, but you managed to turn your head in time to save your face from another beating. His hot breath fanned over the shell of your ear as he leaned over you, applying enough pressure with his arm to keep you in place. “Dare I say,” he breathed, voice low and winded. At least you had managed to make him strain. “You walked right into that one.”
A low growl emitted from the back of your throat and you began to push up from the ground. Diego’s hold did not relent, and from the angle you couldn’t do much more than struggle to throw off his arm. He straddled your waist, though did not have much pressure applied there to focus most of his weight on the back of your neck. He huffed at a particularly stronger attempt to throw him off, then tsked at your effort.
“Stop struggling. You brought this on yourself,” he said, but you refused to comply. You tried to get your knees under you, but the only good it did was allow you to turn slightly on your side, which Diego gladly helped with by flipping you over under him. He had a better grip on your struggling form this way, now able to sit back on your hips and catch one wrist in each of his hands as you threw your fists toward his face.
“This can be over so much faster if you, just,” he paused. You could tell by his voice that he was trying to keep his tone collected while he attempted to overpower you, but the small strain in his voice let you know that you were not making this easy for him in the slightest. He was still trying to move your wrists to the ground, and he was quickly winning. “Hold. Still. I know you have a corpse part hidden on you somewhere, and I will find it.”
“Like hell you will,” you spat through gritted teeth, then surged forward to connect your forehead with the bridge of his nose. Your own nose lit up in searing pain again at the sudden hit, but it had been worth it as you watched Diego tumble backwards and let go of your wrists. For good measure, you slipped a leg out from under him and gave a swift kick to the center of his chest to knock him further off of you, freeing yourself.
Your gun had to be nearby from when you dropped it before hitting the ground, and you needed to reach it to end this shitshow. You twisted over onto your knees to look behind and spotted it barely out of reach from your outstretched arm. The polished stock felt smooth under your fingertips and palm when you slapped your hand down on it after moving closer, and felt just as smooth as your fingers glided over and away from it as you were pulled out of reach, unable to grip it in time. Diego had grabbed your ankle and forcefully yanked you away through the dirt back to him, once again flipping you onto your back in the process. You fought back again, his face out of reach this time from where he knelt next to you instead of hovering over you, but just as quickly as you began to move your hands to his shoulders in an attempt to push him away, Diego moved quicker.
“Enough!” His voice seemed to still everything around both of you, yourself included, but the hand that clamped down on your throat was the main reason for your sudden halt. Four claws broke into the skin on the right side of your neck, and a fifth on the left just under your hairline scraped downward and dug into the flesh of your neck. There wasn’t enough pressure to cut off your airway, but the warmth you could feel leaking down and around to the back of your neck was enough to stop your breath. Eyes wide, yours met ones that were quickly calming down from their previous wild fury. Diego knew he had won.
“Feel that?” he asked coolly despite his ragged breath still coming to him in short pants. Your hands slowly slid down from his shoulders as he moved to straddle your hips once more, your left hitting the dirt while your right trailed down his arm to grip the outside of his left wrist weakly, as if that could relieve some of the tension in the hand that held you captive. Diego leaned down at the same time, face a mere inch from yours, breath hot on your lips, and cruel eyes boring into your own. “This is you being a moment away from no longer having a throat.” The claws dug in a little further to emphasize, and your eyes squeezed shut as you failed to suppress a pained gasp. “Understand?”
You opened your eyes and pressed your lips together in a thin line. With five claws digging into your throat along with your hurt pride, you didn’t trust your voice to be as strong as you wanted it to be. You simply gave him the shortest of nods.
The satisfied smirk Diego gave indicated that must have been good enough for him. He slowly sat up and lowered himself back to sit on your lower abdomen, eyes closed and head tilted back slightly as the fingers of his free hand brushed the blond locks from his eyes. From this angle, had you not been bleeding from deep punctures in your neck and fearing for your life, you could have understood why this man had so many fans screaming his name at every finish line. He took in a long, deep breath, the kind that acts as a reset button for your entire body, then looked down at you in his grasp. You felt your skin crawl at how easy his demeanor shifted to something entirely casual.
“Now… About that corpse part. Should be as easy as finding the right place and giving it a little tug.” You of course knew which piece you held, but you didn’t dare move your eyes away from his, lest you accidentally let your eyes shift to the correct spot.
Diego didn’t care to wait for you to slip anyway and began to move his right hand. He started with your face, bushing his gloved hand from your forehead, right eye, over your nose (which somehow, despite the other immense pain you were feeling, managed to flare up in pain), each side of your face until every spot had been ghosted over. You watched as his brow furrowed slightly.
“Truth be told, I don’t know what each part is,” he said with a genuinely inquisitive tone as his hand moved to your collarbone, then slowly down, “so this may take a bit. But I’m sure you don’t mind.” His hand paused in the center of your chest, palm pressing gently down. Your own free hand shot up to grasp his wrist and pull, your eyes narrowing in warning. Diego simply chuckled and shook your hand off. No tightening on your neck, no reprimanding. He did it to antagonize you. You were going to crush him to a paste with your Stand the moment you got out from under him.
The hand returned to its path, though now, it wasn’t a ghost of a touch along each path. Now he purposefully dragged his palm down your stomach, pressed into your ribs, curled his fingers around your waist. You moved your legs in an attempt to push and shift yourself away from his touch, earning you a raised eyebrow when your hips involuntarily shifted with the movement right up into Diego.
“You know, had you not came into my camp and immediately threatened to kill me, you and I could have had a fun time tonight,” he mused, continuing his path on the other side of your abdomen.
You exhaled sharply in what had been an attempt at a laugh. “What?” You swallowed hard and cringed before you could get the rest out in one breath. Fuck, it hurt. “You don’t th- think this is fun?”
“Oh, to some degree. But it’s not the kind of fun I usually have in mind with someone as pretty as you.”
“‘m flattered,” you rasped.
Diego chuckled and moved his search to your left arm. “As you should be. And I’m still not put off by the idea. Wrap up that neck, wipe all the blood and dirt off your face. You’re still serviceable. I’ll just take the corpse part, take you, send you on your way, and we’ll both forget this ever happened.”
“You can g- fuck yourself instead.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathed as his fingers brushed over your own. He moved his hand to lay flat next to your head, leaning in close enough for his nose to brush yours. “It’s comical that you think letting me fuck you is the worst thing I have planned for you tonight.”
Dread filled your gut like oil. And he could see it on your face as plain as day as he pulled back. You had to get him off of you, and you had to run. Collecting every piece be damned, you were sure you could still get a decent amount of money from having most of the pieces instead. It was no longer worth risking your life for this.
Diego’s hand came to lay flat on your right shoulder, his eyes almost immediately widening along with his grin. He pulled, and out with it came the mangled, dead flesh barely clinging to a shoulder bone that did not belong to you.
“No!” you shouted. You twisted your shoulder to the side, but the motion only made more of the arm pull up in Diego’s grasp, now down to your bicep. You tried to push him away, but every struggle you made resulted in his claws digging into your neck further, and moved your own arm further from the corpse. You were in pain. You were nearly defeated.
In one last act of desperation, you raised your right hand and slammed it down palm first onto the ground, sending Diego right down with it. You managed to localize your stand’s powers just enough to prevent yourself from being crushed by it and Diego, but the force trapped your right side under his left with the corpse part along with it. The force also pulled him far enough away to pull his claws from your throat, the tips scraping lines down the front and to the right side of your neck just before they morphed back into gloved fingers. You gasped in a deep, painful breath that quickly ended with a grimace. Now your right arm hurt like hell.
Diego was stuck in an awkward position with his right arm trapped under his left side, his hand still gripping your arm after the corpse part sunk back into your bicep. You weren’t able to apply as much pressure as before with how much your strength had drained during the struggle, allowing Diego enough leeway to sit up slightly and glare down at you. The leather of his glove squeaked against your skin as he gripped your arm painfully tight.
“Let go,” he demanded through his teeth.
“You let go,” you snapped back.
“Over here, I see a fire!” you both heard from the trees. Then another voice, and maybe another, all far enough away that you couldn’t make out their words unless they shouted, but definitely getting louder. You deactivated your Stand.
As if on the same wavelength, Diego pushed himself up as you sat up, heads snapping in the direction of the voices.
“Friends of yours?” he asked, turning back to look at you.
“No,” you answered and turned as well, aware of how close his face was to yours yet again and how his arms caged you in on either side of your own. You didn’t feel threatened this time, however. The look on Diego’s face held no malice or anger toward you, only a seriousness that showed his sudden focus on your incoming guests.
Diego stood up fully first, and to your surprise, offered you a hand without so much as a word or a glance your way. You gratefully took it and let him quickly hoist you to your feet, biting back any snide comments you had at the tip of your tongue. He was trusting you in that moment to join him in defending yourselves against the quickly approaching party. You had the unfortunate good sense to respect that.
You returned your rifle to your hands, checking the end to make sure no dirt had clumped up in the barrel upon its fall.
“This isn’t over,” you said, rolling your right shoulder as you looked over it at Diego. He glanced over as well, smirking at you before you faced forward to level your aim toward the woods.
“Good.”