Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/14025057.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Haikyuu!!
  Relationship:
      Kageyama_Tobio/Ushijima_Wakatoshi, Kageyama_Tobio/Oikawa_Tooru, Akaashi
      Keiji/Bokuto_Koutarou
  Character:
      Kageyama_Tobio, Ushijima_Wakatoshi, Oikawa_Tooru, Nishinoya_Yuu, Akaashi
      Keiji, Bokuto_Koutarou, Shirabu_Kenjirou, Semi_Eita, Yahaba_Shigeru
  Additional Tags:
      1964_Japan, Gambling_Hall, Drag_Race, Heroin, Heroin_Addict_Kageyama,
      Gangster_Ushijima, Gangster_Oikawa, Crime, Murder, Prison, Yakuza,
      Prostitution, Murderously_Jealous_Oikawa, Other_characters_and
      relationships_to_be_added, i'm_deeply_sorry, there_are_plenty_of_deaths
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-03-19 Updated: 2018-03-28 Chapters: 7/10 Words: 5481
****** Butterfly and the Knife ******
by nighttimesympathies
Summary
     1964.
     After serving ten years of time for a wrongly convicted murder,
     Ushijima returns to his former life as a gangster in the gambling
     halls of his past. All he wants is to reunite with his young lover,
     Kageyama. When he finds the boy ravaged by heroin, he vows to stay by
     his side. He soon learns that he must contend with a second threat in
     the form of a possessive rival. Updated every Wednesday.
***** Homecoming. *****
Chapter Summary
     welcome to the past.
Chapter Notes
     hello, readers. welcome to my newest project. i'm a huge slut for
     this pairing and crime stories. i'm super excited.
Kageyama,
Don’t wait up for me.
Would that I knew a way to suffuse your bones with the holy oil of my love,
upon your waking resounding through your head with the strange clarity of a
forgotten dream.
Sweet butterfly, go on winging.
===============================================================================
 
“Ushijima.”
Fading into his dream like a piano tune played in the next room, the guard’s
voice coaxed him awake.
The cell door moaned open. A chill, so complete as to flood him with visions of
a dense embankment shedding a mound of snow, clacked his teeth. Groaning with
the creak of rusted door hinges, his knees came alive as he drew himself to his
feet.
For ten years, he had called the cell home. He found, upon his leaving, that
he’d miss it. The vestiges of sorrow, put to death by paintings undertaken of
his lover’s face in his head, stroke by stroke, bid him farewell with a
palpable heaviness.
===============================================================================
 
Do you remember, Kageyama?
All through the night. The boy spiraling, undone, rocking through sobs so
torrential their inexhaustible multitude deadened him with awe.
Only by loving Ushijima within an inch of murder, depleting the rich spring of
adoration to a trickling well, did the boy find comfort, unraveling in his
arms.
===============================================================================
 
Tokyo, without his knowledge, had grown overconfident. Boasting of its lurid
indulgences with the flagrant defiance of yamaoroshi, the Snake God, it
beckoned him back to the Karasuno Gambling Hall.
Kageyama, unavoidable, heeding no warnings at the consequences of voicing an
honest opinion, haunted the establishment’s squid inked walls at all hours. In
his youth, fresh-faced and uprooted from a comfortable life of wealth in favor
of debauchery and depravity, he had uncoiled the twisted longing in Ushijima’s
chest by sitting at his side, advising him in the calculated art of winning.
It became apparent that the boy possessed a gift beyond analyzing, a madness so
acute and disarming it preceded him among the wizened regulars that had
darkened Karasuno’s doorstep for years.
In due course, Kageyama began to share his secrets, and soon, with a smug
discretion, his bed.
Reasoning with himself, Ushijima found jealousy a bane of productivity, the
cruelest thief of one’s time. He saw to it that Kageyama dallied with whomever
he chose, in so doing managing to carve himself an irreplaceable lodging in the
boy’s heart.
This veneer of benevolence extended to all but one man: Oikawa.
Rather than preparing for their inexorable reunion, Ushijima reacquainted
himself with the shabby apartments, the prostitutes idling by running engines,
the livid red glow of the pleasure houses. Kageyama, he thought, must still
court death under Oikawa’s faithful tutelage, screeching past the boundary of
the horizon in drag race after drag race. He himself had something of a talent,
endearing him to his elders. Withdrawing, he preferred to keep his lover from
harm, though more often than not he endangered the both of them.
Such was his thinking upon lumbering past Oikawa at the gambling hall’s
entrance. He shuddered when the captivating man snagged on the crease of his
freshly pressed blazer. “You’re expecting your whore, I take it,” he said.
This, then, has not changed. Their discourse, winding in circles, solved
nothing. Ushijima sighed.
“You won’t find him here.” Years had treated Oikawa’s face with the utmost
kindness. Usually leaking the youth from one’s face, the wrinkles crinkling
around Oikawa’s face illuminated his beauty.
“My bets are on that slut guzzling saké in some godforsaken izakaya or nursing
his white lady.”
Panic, a siren’s descending wail, pounded through Ushijima’s ears. The former;
heavens, not the latter.
“Let them know I’m back,” he said, treading on unsteady feet. Glistening in his
smart white suit, Oikawa smiled.
“It’s spread by now, no doubt. Your concubine’s in the dark, however. Of that I
am certain.” Stifling an impulse to gut the man, Ushijima surrendered to a
faint tremor, regarding his hand with a hostile detachment.
“You might think your showering this spray of insults on that boy endears you
to me. I assure you, Oikawa; it curdles my blood.”
He half expected a shot to the head as he receded from view. But then, Oikawa
had always held more of a fondness for words.
===============================================================================
 
Shuttered in a dilapidated row of shambles, his apartment advertised its
disrepair with a shit-eating grin. Ushijima bore no resentment toward its
condition, having given it up to the gods in favor of caring for its second
inhabitant.
In a vivid pool of darkness, Kageyama sat, one rumpled sleeve rolling up his
arm. Washed out, the once-death defying gleam of his eyes now saw his small
universe through a sheen of slush. Ascetic cheekbones fought for dominance of
his face, giving the impression of a starved monk in want of worship.
Weeping, Ushijima rocked on his knees. Startled, the boy’s ashen lips parted.
“Where’d you go, Toshi?” His watery voice trilled with a cadence of disuse.
What need does one have for companionship when the white lady loves you?
Crawling on the moth-eaten carpet, Ushijima swept the boy into his arms,
submerging himself in the slick grease of his thick dark hair.
“Oh, sweet baby. Who did this to you?” With a surprising show of force,
Kageyama wriggled free from his arms, stripping off his damp white button-down
shirt. Sliding on his knees, he turned his back, revealing a tapestry of
riotous color that covered the entire half of his body. On the inside of his
right wrist, Ushijima saw imprinted in ink the familiar characters for Aoba
Jousai.
“Oikawa.” Slurring, drunk on the word, Ushijima bit into the boy’s neck,
searching out a vein, smothered in want of familiar moans.
“Kill him, Toshi. Slice that pretty motherfucker’s face in two.” Hissing,
Kageyama swerved, pouncing on his stomach, something rabid slackening his jaw.
“Don’t chickenshit yourself outta this one. If I lose you again, I’m gonna find
myself a woman and we’ll kill ourselves. Double suicide. Outta one of Dazai’s
novels.”
In one gulp, dried tears staining his cheeks, Ushijima devoured the boy whole.
***** Ousted. *****
Chapter Summary
     full speed ahead.
Chapter Notes
     Thank you for reading. If you enjoy yakuza/Japanese crime/gambling
     stories, watch the movie Pale Flower. I'm doing research for this
     project. Research is fun.
They slept through the morning, the boy no longer stirring in a stream of his
own tears. Ushijima roused himself to find his lover propped ramrod straight
against the headboard, smoking. Gently, he extinguished the flame with two
fingers, shredding the remnants of the vice on the rumpled linen blanket.
“They help the craving.” Slumping on his wrists, Kageyama sighed. “I’ll help
you kill him, Toshi.”
Last time, they had gone about it in the way of amateurs. They waited until
Iwaizumi, whittled down to a bloodshot wraith, lost enough of his senses to
shoot Aoba Jousai’s boss, Irihata, in the head. Oikawa had yet to forget the
deaths of his first love and mentor.
Soon after killing Irihata, Iwaizumi had taken a stroll by moonlight over a
quiet canal and leapt to his death.
“Just like Dazai,” Kageyama had said on the morning after, reading a dog-eared
penny dreadful in Ushijima’s arms.
Later that day, Aoba Jousai had let themselves into the apartment through the
kitchen door, filching the cash Ushijima had salvaged behind the rice cooker in
a rusted tea tin, shattering the sitting room windows and slashing the
threadbare tatami lining the floor.
All of this Ushijima bore with a passive resignation until Kageyama blew a
raging tornado through their bedroom, looking in desperation for a photograph
of his childhood friend, Hinata. By nightfall, he had desecrated the fragile
confines of the apartment into a spartan ruin, his arms littered with angry red
splinters, heaving with wordless sobs.
“They killed Hinata. They already took him from me once. God only knows why
Oikawa’s so certain I’ll spare his life. If I can kill Oikawa Tooru on my last
day on earth, I’ll die a happy man.”
Yet, Ushijima heard a calcified wall crumble in the boy’s voice, giving way to
a need he no longer controlled. Part of Kageyama belonged to Oikawa, the part
of him trodden underfoot by a biblical vengeance. Their bond transcended the
mortal conventions between men. Ushijima surprised himself by pondering over
whom the boy would miss more should both of them meet their end.
Thoughts like that invariably lead to trouble. Shaking sleep from his eyes, he
spread Kageyama supine on his stomach, opening him with a deft, torturous
tenderness. Entering him in one fluid motion, Ushijima stormed through the
years of their parting, at once reawakening a maddening yearning for their love
to sustain him.
“Why did you leave me?” His voice breaking, Kageyama buried his head in the
fathoms of the bedsheets, writhing in unendurable ecstasy. “Don’t you ever
leave me again.”
Muffled laughter fractured their feverish passion. Peering over his shoulder,
Ushijima softened at the sight of a stocky, smiling youth with a loud foxtail’s
head of hair and a thunderous gravity he wielded with an uncommon grace. “Don’t
stop on my account,” he said, casting a furtive look at the open window. “We’ve
got bad news, boys.”
Pushing himself out from beneath his shelter of warmth, Kageyama turned in full
view of the diminutive youth. Summoning strands of the muted springtime
sunshine from the open window, his buck naked body shone with a holy innocence
that was enough to knock Ushijima’s breath from his lungs. “I need to hear it
from you straight out, Noya. Do they want another drag race?” Gritting his
teeth, Noya wrung his hands.
“Yes, but they don’t want you. They want Ushijima. Oikawa’s orders.”
***** Truce. *****
Chapter Summary
     this one was hard to write.
Chapter Notes
     writing this has been a genuine challenge but a fuck-ton of fun. i
     think i'm going to keep writing these kinds of stories. also. writing
     that challenges you is the best kind of writing you can do. it helps
     you improve as a writer. this is completely off topic, but the next
     story i write in this vein will probably be inspired by Aoi Haru
     (English title being Blue Spring).
“They want Toshi because they’re screwing with me.” Kageyama slung on his damp
white shirt. As Ushijima straightened the wrinkled row of buttons, the boy
adjusted his dented collar. “I’m going, too. I don’t trust you alone with
Oikawa.”
Though going alone soothed his nerves, Ushijima relented, not wanting to spend
their first day reunited in a ponderous state of worry. Pressing Kageyama’s
wrist to his lips, he kissed the parched white skin, biting with the gentle tug
of a loving cat.
“Expect high bets tonight,” Noya said, smiling. “The boys from Nekoma have been
coming around. They’ve been betting in the millions. It’s time you came home to
roost, Kageyama. No surprise our boys’ll have a warm welcome for your man.”
Demurring, Ushijima fumbled with his frayed leather belt. “Let’s go ahead and
die again.” Laughing, Kageyama slid a crisp white linen shirt across his
lover’s shoulders. Every time they dressed one another for the gambling hall,
they tricked themselves into thinking they dressed for their funeral.
===============================================================================
 
“Place your bets, place your bets, place your bets...”
The methodical drone rang through the hall, lulling the men into a tantalizing
haze. Sitting seiza for that long wore your knees down to arthritic bulges of
fat, but the regulars had long since grown accustomed to their weakening limbs.
Heat suffused the dark crimson of the walls, threading through the bodies,
floating in stifling shrouds between the stacks of money the regulars fanned on
the thick white cloth laid out in the middle of the hall. Tiles, small and
rectangular, decorated with intricate swaths of vibrant paint, denoted the
rising bets. Akaashi rotated the outpouring of the men, directing the game
where the players steered it onward.
“Long time coming, Ushi,” he said with a small smile as his friend and the
scowling boy situated themselves on either side of him. Akaashi often found
himself watching out for the both of them, targets as they were for the
regulars fond of jeering, and the knife besides. On multiple occasions, he had
seen men meet their ends on the pair’s behalf. Neither of them had forgotten.
“Drag race tonight,” Ushijima said under his breath. “Oikawa wants me.”
Worrying his lip, Akaashi made the final call, the men scurrying to place their
final bets.
“Didn’t you hear, Ushi? We’re friends now.” Laughing, Kageyama swiped sweat
from his forehead.
“Aoba Jousai forgave us for all wrongs,” Akaashi said, “formally, addressing
the chief. I wasn’t there, mind you, but I heard about it. They took to running
with us after Shiratorizawa killed Kindaichi. Onion Head. Remember him?”
Kageyama nodded. “To say we’re friends now, well, that’s pushing it. But when
it comes to Shiratorizawa, we’re of a like mind.”
Some of the men had begun to catch on to the discourse, stewing in the muck of
their collective body heat, staring at Ushijima and the boy with the heavy lids
of undisguised contempt.
“I can’t say I know why they want you, Ushi,” Akaashi said, scanning the rows
of men for finished bets, “but I do know this; it’s bad.” He announced the game
in play, the men shuffling to prepare their bets.
“Bokuto says it’s time for you to part with Shiratorizawa.” Something akin to
sorrow laced Akaashi’s voice. “They’ll have seen it coming. Tendou can’t expect
to keep you in his life for much longer after what’s gone down. Never mind
Shirabu, and forget Semi and the rest of them.”
Bristling, the men privy to the conversation fought to maintain their
equilibrium rather than brandish their razor blades and lop off a finger, any
finger.
“I could never forget them,” Ushijima said. “I’ll talk to Tendou. He’ll see
sense.” Akaashi shook his head, a sad smile forming an arresting portrait of
beauty. Bokuto was a lucky man, Ushijima thought fondly.
“You’re familiar with the old adage,” Akaashi said. “There are two paths for
men such as ourselves: prison and death. But you, well, you want to live.
You’re one dangerous son of a bitch, Ushi.”
The blade drove through his neck so fast, Ushijima had no way to halt its
passage.
Choking on his blood, Akaashi sank in a slump of cool white silk, blanketing
the snow white cloth in a blackening river of red.
“Oh, sweet Jesus.”
Removing the razor blade from his friend’s neck with a practiced swiftness,
Kageyama shut the eyes opened in horror. Grasping Ushijima’s hand, he dragged
him from the floor.
“We gotta tell Bokuto,” he said.
“What’ll that solve, baby? Let’s bury Akaashi somewhere quiet and safe first.”
Hoisting the leaden body up with shaking hands, they bore him between the
silent rows of men and up the darkened stairwell, stumbling on the laces of
their dress shoes.
===============================================================================
 
In the unforgiving chill of the night, neither of them noticed the engine
stalling near the entrance to the gambling hall, a crowd of women lolling
around the black convertible’s hood.
“Look, it’s Oikawa’s whore! And his daddy.” A shrill laugh racked through the
woman’s body, her silken dove grey dress dripping down her disappearing frame,
cheeks flushed with fever. Drunkenly tripping in her arms, her friend giggled,
her slinky black dress hidden by the cloak of the nighttime sky.
Kageyama opened the razor blade sewn into the shredded lining of his black suit
jacket and threw it. Spinning through the air like a delicate creature of the
wind and the springtime, it sliced through the woman’s eyes with a surreal,
deliberate slowness.
“Did you do that?” Ushijima said, the howling of the woman’s friend echoing in
their wake. A wistful glint shone in Kageyama’s eyes.
“I think this time, Hinata might’ve helped me.” Ushijima smiled.
===============================================================================
 
As they trudged onto an open field, the body of their friend resting in their
arms in an unknown afterlife, the lovers withdrew into their fragile memories,
remembering.
***** Ultimatum. *****
Chapter Summary
     bokuto's gonna fuck. shit. up.
Chapter Notes
     i scared myself writing this.
     also.
     if you dig Yakuza AUs written unbelievingly compellingly and
     ugggghhhh, read The Loyalty of a Traitor by DeathBelle.
     And then talk to me about it.
Dead, the love of his life decomposing, and no one thought to tell Bokuto to
his face. They thought it best to allow the news time, watching with
trepidation as it evolved into a burden too staggering for any one of them to
bear.
They had all feared for Keiji, Bokuto most of all.
“You’re too trusting, too good of a friend, and you don’t how to stop
forgetting yourself.” He had reminded Keiji of this any number of times over
endless rounds of saké, the both of them sharing their bets in one another’s
hands, content to gamble between the two of them long past morning light. Keiji
would smile, only half listening, enamored with the rules of abandoning their
livelihoods. Never again would Bokuto reflect on the candles in his lover’s
eyes daring to flare brighter than moonshine.
“Forget the yakuza code.” As the words thudded from his lips with the weight of
marble husks, Noya thought Bokuto must not mean to address him but an unseen
mass, waiting on tinterhooks for the call to rise up. “We find him and we find
his reason for living and with our hands, we rid him of his gift and his life.
It’s cheap. He knows as much. I’m through with mercy.” If he was honest with
himself, Noya thought, his friend would acknowledge his itch for bloodshed had
multiplied with years, years of watching men destroy Keiji’s life in
increments, tossing it off as a lark.
“So certain our murderer was a man, Bokuto?” Humor, at a time like this, was
crass. But Noya found he wielded it with an intelligence envied by all he
befriended. At least Bokuto accepted it, laughing mirthlessly.
“It wasn’t one of Oikawa’s hags. I heard about Kageyama shutting them up.” His
eyes, downcast, darkened. “Ushijima better watch that boy of his. He’s mocking
death, and one of these days, Ol’ Grim’s gonna tire of brushing off the hurt.”
He already has. But Noya knew his friend knew this. They all did, in their own
way. Only Kageyama looked the truth in the face with a smirk.
“Leave Tobio and his dalliance with mortality to me, Koutarou.” Prickles of ice
trickled down Noya’s back as Oikawa crept through the sliding door of paper,
kneeling on the pale green tatami with a grave ceremony. “Rest assured, I am
not to blame for Keiji’s demise. Showing my face after murdering your beloved
would constitute as the single greatest act of stupidity in my sputtering
candlewick of a life.”
He sure has a way with words, Noya thought.
“Who killed him, then?” No trace of affability rang from Bokuto’s voice, his
eyes glinting with the sheen of polished steel. “You may not have done it, or
so you say, but I guarantee you or one of your men knows who did.”
A flat glimmer of a smile spliced Oikawa’s face. Drawing a slick black pistol
from his suit jacket, he thrust it out with an unthinking aim and fired a clean
shot in the back of Noya’s head. Grunting with mild disgust, he dabbed at the
spray of blood and detritus clinging to his once clean white ensemble.
“Secrets cost hard cash, Koutarou. If you want to pay, then you fucking pay.”
The old Oikawa, the one Bokuto thought he knew, would not have strangled his
dignity with no thought of the aftermath. Reading the currents of his thoughts,
Oikawa laughed, the sound a deranged imitation of a jaunty refrain.
“Mention Ushijima in my presence and I’m liable to, shall we say, snap. Now and
again, I convince myself I’ve already killed the man!”
Bokuto stifled the queasiness knotting his gut. Staring at Noya, unmoving, a
gruesome requiem of his distant past, he breathed through his nose.
Unrelenting, the stench of death fogged over the room.
“If I extend my kindness to your sorry ass,” Oikawa said, “then you better
promise me.” On his knees, prostrating himself against the rough caress of the
tatami, Bokuto ignored the cloying clogging of tears in his throat.
“I beg of you, Oikawa. I’ll do anything you ask.” His laughter mangled his
soul, obliterating what remained of his conscience.
“See to it that Ushijima dies. But make damn well sure he dies under Tobio’s
hand.”
***** Untethered. *****
Chapter Summary
     let us commence with the action.
Chapter Notes
     two chapters today. if you're interested in a real life Yakuza story,
     read Yakuza Moon by Shoko Tendo.
     also. i am deeply sorry.
An orchid spread its wafer-thin petals down his arm as Kageyama punctured a
familiar vein. He listened to Ushijima’s peaceful breathing beside him,
drifting back to loving him only moments before. The boundless well of
adoration he stored within himself was as sacred to Ushijima as his family
name. What remained elusive, however, was the kid from whom the fatal blade had
flown, killing their dear friend.
Right away, Kageyama had known who had dealt the cunningly thoughtless blow. It
wasn’t Tendou. He thought too much, that one. And it wasn’t Semi. Lacking
Tendou’s taste for showing off, Semi saw to what needed accomplishing with
minimal fanfare and such scarce evidence as to render police investigations of
his crimes laughable. Without a doubt, Shirabu had seen the deed done.
Possessing a sourness of disposition that rendered him immune to commonplace
human comprehension, he committed any and all acts of brutality sustained by
the righteous upholding of the Shiratorizawa code. Fearing his reputation had
begun to tarnish their already eroding standing, their chief had resorted to
sending their gopher on their last few calls. Desperation had lured Shirabu
from his underground burrow. Dealing with him required the finesse of someone
on intimate terms with a hunger that was never fully satisfied.
Removing the needle, Kageyama laid it on top of the paperback novel sliding off
the nightstand, another one by his beloved Dazai. He soaked in the overwhelming
heat of Ushijima’s warmth, straddling his back once more, the thought of
tearing himself away spiking his gut with an inhuman rage.
If he stayed, they would come for him and kill him without sparing Ushijima’s
grief a second thought.
Sliding up and off of the bed, he pulled on his wrinkled black work pants from
the floor and yanked on a freshly bought white shirt from the foot of the bed.
In the grey wisps of morning light cast over the room like swaying stalks of
grass, he thought he saw Ushijima’s stare bearing down on him, full of an
aching sorrow.
“Careful out there.”
He thought he heard those words right, but afterwards he figured he must have
tricked himself.
===============================================================================
 
Once, early on into their courtship, Ushijima had brought him to
Shiratorizawa’s grounds. Upon their arrival, memories of the home from which he
fled so carelessly had toppled him over his feet, ruining the first impression
on his lover’s friends. They had soon forgiven him for his error, all but
Shirabu, for whom that fumble had yet to fade into a recollection mused over
with laughter.
It was an old house, reeking of old money. The absence of dust on the
windowsills and in the hushed corners spied by the most discerning eyes spoke
of maids tasked with the meticulous minding of the estate’s cleanliness.
Outside the carefully curated garden blossomed with overgrown clusters of
sensuous peonies. In the springtime, the cherry blossoms shed their
heartbreaking petals, mingling with the plum blossoms planted in tandem
alongside bushels of white roses. These Kageyama found unnerving, blowing in
the wind, like looming, silent harbingers of death.
Beside the garden, dating back to the estate’s foundation in the time of
prominent samurai, stood a walled partition, its ground coated in fine white
sand. An elegant black rake with which one moved the ground in meditative
thought lay facedown, its legs having recently driven a passage. In this
encasement of serenity, Kageyama found Shirabu, turned away from him and
inspecting a smudge on his nail. It was not, as Kageyama had thought, a blot of
ink, but a drop of blood. He became aware of an overpowering scent as he
approached the boy from behind, stopping dead when, not in the least bit
ruffled, he spoke.
“If I’m going to die, at least grant me the privilege of looking at your face,
Tobio.”
“How did you know?” The laughter, barely there to begin with, vanished from
Shirabu’s voice as he peered over his shoulder.
“Only you are brazen enough to try your luck at offing me in broad daylight,
and without the help of our great Ushijima.”
His name, coming from Shirabu, with the possessive taint of ownership, stung.
“Why did you do it? What business did you have killing someone as blameless as
Akaashi?”
“Blameless?” He knew why Shirabu always aided him in forgetting his footing,
forgetting pressing matters, forgetting his vices. Without knowing it, Shirabu
suffocated him with the weight of his impending mortality. “Don’t you remember
the lies that man spoon-fed to you about us? Brainwashed Wakatoshi into
thinking we were bloodsucking pariahs. We need Wakatoshi back more than your
drug-addled brain can begin to comprehend, yakuza scum.”
Hypocrite. He had never felt closer to Ushijima’s brethren than he did now,
dusting off the insult with the scowl of a rangy dog foaming at the mouth. “My
love for Toshi runs deeper than any drug.” Unsheathing his razor blade from the
lining of his jacket, he closed the gap between them with one swallowed step,
grazing the slope of the boy’s bobbing Adam’s apple. “You dare to question my
loyalty to him. You dare.”
Eyes flashing with a gut-wrenching malice, Shirabu lanced his palm over the
knife, clamping his hand down, a startling trickle of blood staining the cold
steel. “Since when do you apply such words to yourself?” A demented imitation
of a smile glittered across his face. “You shared my bed after all, not so long
ago.”
Wincing, Kageyama tugged at the knife in vain, the grip a well-oiled
vice. “Look me in the eye and promise you’ll forget what transpired between
us.”
His eyes narrowing on a pinpoint in the distance, Shirabu dug the knife into
the unblemished flesh between his fingers. “You’ll have to beg me,” he said,
squinting.
In one halting motion, Kageyama tore the knife backward, sending forth a thin
river of scarlet down the boy’s arm.
“Tobio, it’s Ushijima. He’s in danger.” As one, they turned to face Bokuto,
breathing in ragged huffs, fighting the urge to collapse.
Maybe this time, Kageyama could use Shirabu's help.
 
***** Annihilation. *****
Chapter Summary
     good monday to you.
Chapter Notes
     i'm posting the beginning to my Shingeki no Kyojin fic soon. and my
     one chapter Yuri on Ice fic soon. expect more.
So different, the three of them, but actually more similar than they could
fathom. All of them united in the quest to save one man. Though Kageyama had
noted Bokuto’s obvious exhaustion from the accumulated doses of terror chugging
through his bloodstream, he recognized the gaping nothingness in his eyes for
something else: vengeance.
He had not said one word to Shirabu. This had not escaped Kageyama’s notice.
“Keep to the road,” Shirabu said as the sleek black convertible purred down the
length of the highway.
One bleak oasis of starved landscape after another brushed past them. All of
the mundanity bored him. Flooring the engine, Kageyama teased the edges of the
horizon to come apart at their seams, permitting him entry an impermeable
Olympus. His skin flagged against his bones, chilled with an abrasive smack of
the springtime air. Roaring to life, the engine deafened him, shoveling down
Shirabu’s protests with a gluttonous greed.
Scowling, he hissed through his teeth as an identical black convertible tore
through the borders of his vision. Slamming on the brakes, he plunged headlong
into a bracing impact, the abrupt end to their flirtation with death tossing
his head back against the plush leather seat, leaving him limp as a rag doll.
"Are you trying to fucking murder me?" He was surprised Shirabu didn't kill him
then and there, his eyes glistening with a crystalized wrath. 
Ignoring him, Kageyama forced himself out of the car, holding fast his razor
blade, careful to conceal it from the inviting eyes of the man loping to and
fro on the shoulder of the road.
Oikawa seized with laughter.
"When did you become so vile on the road, Tobio? You're going to give all the
smarmy drag racers heart attacks." Behind him, Kageyama heard Shirabu and
Bokuto scrambling out of the car, the former launching himself with the
reckless aim of a catapult.
"The fuck have you done with Wakatoshi?" Scraping the butt of his pistol down
Oikawa's opalescent head, Shirabu shook with a righteous fury. Where had he
hidden that weapon?
"I don't have to wander five miles from my territory before I find another
piece of trash who cares about that man." Knocking the gun from his hand with a
blunt jerk of his head, Oikawa strung Shirabu's arms behind his back, yanking
them up.
"I ask you," he said, "what's there to care about? Does anyone honest to
God know about that man?" Yelping, Shirabu bucked against an unflinching
blockade. Kageyama stepped forward.
"Take me to him, Oikawa. I'll do what you want. We can pretend however you
wish." The springtime wind branded its mark across his cheeks, smacking them
raw. An audible gasp shot from Shirabu's lips.
Tearing open the door of his idling black car, Oikawa shoved the boy into the
dark interior, trapping him with one hand. "You have no idea how much that
hurts, Tobio," he said. Picking up the pistol from the asphalt, he cocked it
once.
"You want to pretend?" Training the pistol on an immovable target, Oikawa
licked his lips. "All right. Let's play." The bullet and its blast thundered
through Kageyama's ears, forcing him to his knees.
He swerved, gazing with a numb absence of comprehension. Bleeding from the
heart, Bokuto slumped against the car.
Emptying the bullets from cartridge of the pistol onto the asphalt, one by one,
Oikawa sniffed. "No use pretending I'd allow Koutarou the satisfaction of
avenging a snitch. Some lover, Keiji. They deserve each other."
A ravenous hunger nipping at his hunger, Kageyama leapt, hurling the pistol
into the waiting arms of the horizon.
"I hate you." He said it through tears, pummeling his fists against Oikawa's
chest.
"You're kidding yourself."
===============================================================================
 
Stripping the boy mechanically, carrying out a routine, a cleansing ritual, he
eviscerated the invisible barrier infiltrating their love. Over and over,
Kageyama submitted to an intolerable orgasm, the pleasure annihilating any and
all intention. Oikawa offered him no amount of relief, fucking him through the
torment, preferring to break him, savoring the symphony of doom.
He thought about vivisecting the boy, the pleasure of romancing him past the
conceivable bounds of death, when he said, "For the love of God, Tooru, don't
hurt Toshi."
 
 
***** Retribution. *****
Chapter Summary
     it's all coming to a head. (nope, that's not an innuendo).
Chapter Notes
     thank you for reading. i'm posting the beginning of my shingeki no
     kyojin fic today along with this one. also. i am on twitter and if
     you would ever be into chatting, hit me up: https://twitter.com/
     dzitaconnmoore
He began to doubt the entire trajectory of his life with a conviction that
serrated any hope of defeat. Perhaps the guard had not yet opened the door of
his cell and the events that followed culminated in a series of hallucinations
too horrifyingly tangible to bear.
From the start, he'd doubted Kageyama. As time went on, he'd thrown those
doubts into the darkening cellar at the back of his head. Resurfacing in
earnest, one after the other, the doubts enmeshed his brain in a dense fortress
of terror. 
Prostitutes in this business acted as spies more often than not, informants for
the enemy sent to acquire information and report back. Perhaps Kageyama had
been acting undercover for years, waiting for the perfect moment to end the
farce with a drug in his drink or a needle in his neck.
Most of the time, when Yahaba slashed his stomach with the cattails of his
whip, he stopped thinking. Pain helped him forget himself. Craving the release
from his fabricated torment, Ushijima submitted to the tails, bowed when they
sizzled across his head.
"You're boring me. Why make this easy?" Of course, Yahaba had expected a hard-
boiled veteran of injustice, thrashing against a self-imposed exile. Instead,
he got a masochist. Fortunately for him, he had contended with far worse.
"Let's see how you fare with this diabolical contraption."
A machine, grilled in its center and affixed with hostile black claws, shone in
the inescapable gaze of a flickering bulb. Plugging it into the wall, Yahaba
dragged it to the chair, feeding the victim to its claw. He'd switched the
apparatus on, assured in its aptitude for mental erosion. Ushijima screamed,
the sound dredged from a fear years in formation.
"It's the suckers for this shit that irk me," Yahaba said, cranking the lever
up. As the screams shook the balls of his feet, he smiled.
"You're a lamentable sadist, you twisted fuck." 
Flitting through the darkness on wings of death's angel, the blade scissored
through his neck, drowning Yahaba in a current of his own blood.
The precision, the breathtaking poise shown in the belly of a beastly
undertaking, revealed Ushijima's savior straight away. 
"Hello, Semi," he said as the young man tore through the coarse rope binding
his hands.
"Everyone's waiting. I'll get you out of this creature in no time." His
friends, brothers in all but name, waited for him. A film of tears clouded his
eyes.
"Where's Tobio?" Semi gently removed his length from the jaws of the machine,
kicking it under the chair.
"Oikawa assumes you've tired of the kid. He's, how should I say this, adopted
the lad as a sort of frivolity meant to adorn his person at all times. Am I
making sense?" Too much, in fact. Ever the blunt one, our Semi.
"We'll go see the man. That's what he wanted, after all. We might as well
satisfy his urges."
"You're frightening when you're angry, Wakatoshi." He wished otherwise. In many
ways, he'd have it easier.
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