Upon hearing a summary of what had happened between them, one might say that such collisions were truly cliché.

Heck, even Killian himself thought so.

In most cases, especially in the endless collection of stories Princess Kira seemed determined to consume, such encounters were always depicted with a certain degree of finesse. There’d be surprise, a bit of flustered staring, perhaps an awkward apology, and then everyone would go home with a spark of interest lodged somewhere in their hearts. Sometimes it was portrayed as fate. Other times it was destiny. Either way, it was usually treated as something sweet.

Killian Nox would like it officially recorded that his experience bore absolutely no resemblance to any of that.

For starters, collisions hurt.

That was a very important detail people seemed determined to leave out.

Not the sort of hurt that makes someone rub their shoulder and say "ouch".

No, this was the "I might die from this" sort of hurt that made someone briefly wonder whether all their internal organs were still where they were supposed to be.

Honestly, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that heavenly entities must’ve been actively protecting those twig-like protagonists every time they crashed into someone twice their size and built like a fortress. Otherwise, half of those stories would’ve ended in a trip to the hospital.

Because if one were being realistic about the matter, then running full speed into a wall did not result in romance.

It resulted in pain.

And unfortunately for everyone involved, Killian had not merely run into a wall.

No.

The aggressively chased official had first crashed against a wall before colliding into him.

That was a completely different level of unfortunate.

Then there was the screaming.

People always forgot the screaming.

It was definitely not Killian’s finest moment, and not reliving it would do well for his sanity, but it was definitely an important factor in this analysis.

At some point during the entire ordeal, there had been enough panic, dirt, confusion, and frantic movement that by the time the actual collision happened, Killian was fairly certain neither of them—okay fine, only he didn’t have enough air left in his lungs to sustain his very mortal life.

More importantly—and this was the detail everyone would likely overlook yet again—there were bees.

A truly concerning amount of bees.

Actually, at that point, he hadn’t even known that the dark sludge that honestly felt like a moving mass of slime was made up of all those eerily flexible bees that were hell-bent on swarming them.

The sort of swarm that caused perfectly reasonable adults to stop asking questions and start focusing on keeping insects out of important bodily openings.

And that was exactly where everything went wrong.

Or right.

Depending on whether one was listening to the Elders.

Or Princess Kira.

Or literally anyone other than Killian who thought the scenario was truly one that could never have been attributed to luck had they not lived to hear the Elders’ joyous exclamations.

Now, did all those sound like excuses?

Well, maybe so.

But the relatively responsible and level-headed Killian simply wanted to state his case so that one may understand exactly how they ended up tangled in this blur.

Ahem.

See, one moment led into another so quickly that even now he couldn’t properly separate where one action ended and the next began.

He remembered being unable to breathe. He remembered feeling lightheaded. He remembered the bees, then unknown to him, becoming increasingly frantic as everything spiraled further out of control. But amidst that entire disaster, he managed to remember a key detail after realizing that there had been a person in that sludge.

Yes, an actual person.

Who, despite being at his weakest, actually attempted to tend to him and the problems even Killian himself hadn’t quite anticipated in his rambled state.

The world had already dissolved into darkness, buzzing noise, and complete confusion by then.

All he knew was that suddenly there was pressure against his mouth.

Warmth.

And absolutely no way to ask what the hell was happening because the very thing preventing him from speaking was also apparently preventing him from breathing in several highly motivated critters.

Somewhere in that mess, said person had also reached up and covered his ears.

Again, entirely practical.

Entirely reasonable.

A survival-oriented decision made under extraordinary circumstances.

The fact that they happened to end up tangled together afterward was therefore irrelevant.

Completely irrelevant.

An unfortunate consequence of gravity, momentum, panic, and approximately several thousand bees.

At least that was Killian’s position on the matter.

And considering nobody else seemed interested in defending him—including his own traitor of a body—his poor brain had resigned itself to the task of protecting whatever remained of his dignity and composure.

But to be fair, back then, that literal stopgap measure worked swimmingly.

At least well enough for Killian to recover whatever remaining wits he still had lying around and piece together what was actually happening.

Better yet, that brief moment of internal panic had actually been somewhat beneficial. It gave him something else to focus on, because thinking about literally anything and everything was preferable to acknowledging the increasingly concerning reality unfolding around him.

Such as the fact that someone solid was practically sprawled on top of him.

Or the fact that his face was currently being held between another person’s hands.

Though if he concentrated hard enough on the increasingly frantic bees surrounding them, then perhaps he wouldn’t have to think too much about the last detail. Namely, the identity of the person passing much-needed air through his mouth.

Again, it was a move that was one hundred percent motivated by survival.

At least that was what Killian chose to believe, because before he’d nearly passed out and before the darkness created by the swarm completely engulfed them, he’d managed to identify exactly who he had collided with when that mass of bees suddenly parted around him.

It was Jax.

And if there was one thing Killian could confidently say about the redhead, it was that malicious opportunism simply wasn’t in his nature.