There was nothing.
Not darkness, exactly.
The word darkness implied something, a space, a container, but this was just the absence, a hollowed-out cavity where everything used to be, and Quill floated in it (if floating was even a word for what happened when there was no up or down, no him to do the floating) and felt nothing about feeling nothing.
So that's it then.
He was dead. Actually dead.
He'd half-expected death to be better than this.
Don't get him wrong, this was pretty freaky on its own but he had expected - well, he had expected something!
Lights. A tunnel. His late grandmother squinting at him with that particular expression she reserved for disappointment (oh, honey, really?over a pair of underwear?).
Instead there was just this. Vast, indifferent nothing, and the distant, gnawing sense that he probably deserved it.
Not to mention the system messages that he had seen in his last moments.
For a second he had entertained the thought he was actually getting isekaid.
It was obviously the delusional last throes of a dying mind. A concussed, oxygen-deprived mind throwing up error codes as his body failed.
That's all it was.
That's all he was.
A nothing person who died as nothing.
Atleast he hoped wherever he was going to end up wouldn't be too bad.
Hopefully he wasnt going to he….
PAIN.
It hits him suddenly, wrecking his train of thought and disorienting him all over again.
And it's coming from head.
His skull feels like someone split it open with an axe and then filled the crack with molten lead.
The pain pulses, rhythmic and cruel, and with each pulse he becomes more aware of…..
Bouncing.
He's bouncing.
Up and down, up and down, a jarring, nauseating motion that makes the pain spike with every jostle. Something is cold against his back. No, not cold. Cool. Damp, even. And there's a pressure beneath his shoulders, behind his knees, like he's being.... Carried.
Someone is carrying him.
The realization trickles in slowly, the way water seeps through cracked concrete.
Huh.
Who the hell is carrying him? And so roughly at that?
He has eyes. He'd forgotten about eyes.
Eyes are for seeing, and seeing might help him understand why he's bouncing and why his head feels like it's been used as a battering ram and why–
He opens his eyes.
Blue.
It's the first thing he sees. The sky...
The sky is blue. Not the polluted gray-blue of the city sky through his apartments small window, but blue blue.
Deep and endless and scattered with clouds that look close enough to touch.
Quill blinks. His vision swims, spots dancing at the edges like fireflies having a seizure. He tries to turn his head, but the motion sends a fresh wave of agony through his skull and he gives up, letting his neck go limp.
That's when he notices the arm.
A forearm, thick and corded with muscle, is hooked beneath his shoulders. His head is hanging off the side of it, dangling backward like a ragdoll's, and from this upside-down angle he can see...
Oh.
A chin. A jaw. A neck, long and pale and streaked with what looks like sweat or maybe water. And beneath that…..
Oh no.
Beneath that are breasts.
They're not like the breasts he's used to seeing in the grainy images he pulls up on his phone after he heads back to the apartment to unwind. These are real. He could feel the heat radiating off them, could see the slight sheen of sweat on the curve of them.
(And his brain, which had been operating at roughly four percent capacity, suddenly found reserves.)
Oh.
Oh, those are…that's…
Boobs. He's looking at actual boobs. Right there. In his face.
They're pressed against some kind of dark fabric, rising and falling with the effort of whoever is carrying him, and they're right there, inches from his face, bouncing with every step the person takes.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
His headache intensifies with each one. Or maybe that's just his heart, hammering against his ribs like it's trying to escape his chest and dive directly into the cleavage in front of him.
You're dead, he tells himself firmly.
This is a hallucination. You hit your head on an industrial washing machine and now your dying brain is giving you one last gift before you shuffle off this mortal coil.
That makes sense.
That's the only thing that can make sense, because Quill Steven does not get carried by busty women. Quill Steven instead gets punched by busty women who then watch him bleed out with horror in their eyes.
Speaking of which…
His mouth is moving before his brain catches up.
Sounds come out, slurred and thick, like his tongue has been replaced with a wad of wet cotton.
"'M I ded?"
The words are barely intelligible, even to him.
The bouncing stops.
Quill blinks at the abrupt stop, trying to focus. The breasts are no longer moving, which means the person carrying him has stopped walking, which means-
She's looking at him.
He tilts his head back further, ignoring the spike of pain, and stares up at the face hovering above his.
Oh.
She's beautiful.
Not in the soft, approachable way of the girls he used to see on campus, the ones who smiled at him with pity when he fumbled his way through greeting them.
Not even in the intimidating, Amazonian way of Yvonne, with her maple-syrup eyes and her thighs like tree trunks.
This woman is sharp.
Her jaw alone could cut glass and her cheekbones sit high and severe beneath eyes the color of winter frost, pale and unsettling and fixed on him with an expression he can't quite read.
Her hair is dark, pulled back from her face in a way that emphasizes the hard lines of her features, and her skin…. Her skin is so pale. Whitewashed pale.
Like she's never seen the sun in her life, which is strange, considering the blue sky stretched out above them.
Quill stares at her. She stares back at him.
Neither of them speaks.
He doesn't know what to do with the silence. He doesn't know what to do with any of this, honestly.
He's confused and concussed and probably bleeding from somewhere he can't see, and there's a beautiful woman holding him in her arms like he weighs nothing, and….
His hand moves.
He doesn't tell it to. He doesn't even realize it's happening until he feels the warmth beneath his fingers, the soft give of flesh under his palm, full and heavy, the way a tit should be when it's not restrained by a bra.
He could feel the shape of it, the slight give of the nipple against his fingers, the way the weight settled perfectly into his grip.
His thumb found the curve and pressed deeper, testing the resistance.
Oh.
Oh, that's nice.
The sound that comes out of his mouth is embarrassing. A low, appreciative moan that he'd be ashamed of if he had the mental capacity for shame right now.
He doesn't. All he has is the feeling of her breast filling his palm and the way her heartbeat, or maybe that's his own, thrums against his fingertips.
This is a hallucination, he reminds himself, squeezing again just to be sure. A very, verynice hallucination.
The woman freezes.
Every muscle in her body goes rigid, and Quill feels it, feels her, tense beneath his hand. Her already-sharp expression somehow sharpens further, her lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line.
She's speaking.
He can see her mouth moving, forming words he should probably be able to hear, but his ears are still muffled, still full of cotton and static and the distant echo of his own pathetic whimpering.
Whatever she's saying, it's probably not complimentary.
She looks down at him with something between disgust and disbelief, and Quill, stupid, addled, dying Quill, just blinks back at her.
He doesn't know what she expects from him.
An apology? An explanation? Some kind of coherent response that isn't just him squishing her breast like a stress ball?
He squishes it again.
The woman's nostrils flare. Her lips move faster, more angrily, and even though he can't hear the words, he catches the shape of them well enough to know she's insulting him.
'Fair', he thinks. 'That's fair.'
He opens his mouth to ask again
(am I dead, is this heaven, why are you carrying me, why is your skin so pale, why does my head hurt so much) but she doesn't give him the chance.
She jerks him up and the motion is intentional, violent, designed to dislodge him from her grip and remind him of his place.
His hand slips from her breast, and before he can process the loss, pain explodes through his skull.
Not the dull, rhythmic ache from before. This is sharp and white and everywhere, radiating from the base of his skull to the space behind his eyes, and it's too much, too fast, too much!
His vision goes spotty. The blue sky blurs into something gray and dark.
The woman's face swims above him, pale and sharp and furious.
Then it fades.
Then there's nothing.
….
[HOST UNCONSCIOUS. PAUSE SYSTEM INITIALIZATION.]
[REMAINING PARAMETERS: 73%]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS: UNKNOWN.\]
[SYSTEM NOTE: HOST IS AN IDIOT.]