Chapter Text
Kei really did not want to be doing this.
Lugging around a dead body really should be beneath him at this point. He’d paid his dues, worked his way up the chain of command to a point where he should have been able to call someone to come clean up this whole mess. But no, Karasuno’s now ex-chemist had to stick his nose where it didn’t belong and Sawamura had to tell Kei that the situation was much too sensitive for any of the newer recruits to handle.
And now Kei was stuck trying to shove a 250 pound corpse down 7 flights of stairs into the back of a Honda Civic, and it wasn’t going well.
Frustrated and sweaty, Kei shot off a text to Sawamura asking if anyone could come help him with clean up, and thankfully received a reply telling him Kageyama would be by shortly to help him.
Needing an escape from the stench of old man sweat, Kei stepped out onto the dead man’s balcony to light up a cigarette while he waited for help to arrive. Not that he’d ever admit that he needed Kageyama’s assistance to anyone, especially not the man himself.
Kei let the acrid taste of the smoke sit in his mouth and lungs until he burned for air. He rolled it out of his mouth with a sigh, flicking ash into the street below him. He stubbed out his cigarette as he spotted Kageyama’s sleek black 911 gliding up to the curb under the streetlights, and went back inside to let him in.
“Took you long enough,” he drawled with a sneer when he opened the door.
Kageyama grunted in reply as he brushed past Kei to where the body was rolled up in a plastic sheet. “Grab his feet,” Kageyama directed as he positioned himself at the dead man’s head.
Kei wanted to argue against being told what to do, but wanted to get this over with more, so he did as he was told. With two of them, the body lifted easily, and Kei thanked whoever was out there that rigour mortis hadn’t set in yet. It’d make the body a bitch to shove into the trunk.
At the late hour, Kageyama and Kei were able to get the chemist’s body down the stairs and into the basement parkade without notice. There were, of course, cameras all throughout the building, but Azumane had disabled those before Kei had even stepped foot into the building.
“I’ll follow you to the river,” Kageyama called over his shoulder as he walked towards his own vehicle.
Kei climbed into the Honda and grimaced at the identical stench to the apartment upstairs that permeated the shitty vehicle. When he turned the car on, he realized that there was barely enough gas to get to the river. Cheapskate, Kei thought to himself. No, Kei would not be sad to never have to deal with this man again after tonight.
He pulled onto the street and saw Kageyama pull out a ways behind him. Kei had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the ostentatious vehicle. Why bother trying to keep a low profile by having Kei drive this piece of junk when Kageyama was following behind in the most recognizable import possible?
Kei drove directly to the riverbank in silence punctuated only by the changing gears. When he was close enough to the shore, he put the car into neutral and stepped out of the vehicle. He didn’t bother closing the door behind himself as he walked behind the car and pushed it into the river, only letting go when the water threatened to lap at the toes of his shoes. Kei brushed his hands off on bloodstained jeans as he walked back to Kageyama’s car.
“I guess we’re in need of a new chemist,” Kageyama said as Kei slid into the passenger seat.
“Yeah, I guess so,” was Kei’s reply.
Kageyama’s observation proved remarkably astute in the next few days.
A meeting was quickly called for all the top members of Karasuno to discuss the fallout of disposing of their main drug supplier.
“Here’s the situation,” Sawamura began once he got everyone to quiet down enough to hear him, “we all know Tamaki had to go. No one steals from us without consequences, especially not to supply their own habit. However, losing him left a giant hole in our supply chains. He had almost no product made when Tsukishima offed him, and had tested even less of our latest shipments from Afghanistan, Columbia, and Mexico. We need to replace him ASAP.”
His declaration was met with silence, or as much silence as one could expect in a room with Tanaka, Nishinoya, and Hinata all in it. They were busy swivelling around in their chairs and didn’t seem to be paying much attention, but Sawamura didn’t seem to be concerned. It’s not like they’d be able to solve this problem anyway.
Sawamura glanced to his right, where Sugawara was chewing on the end of his pen, looking deep in thought, but knowing him, he could just be stoned out of his mind. Sugawara perked up under inspection though, suggesting the first option was more likely. “I’m sure Nekoma would be happy to lend us one of their drug specialists for a while,” he suggested.
Hinata visibly brightened at the mention of Nekoma, which was impressive considering his base level of brightness at any given time seemed to be set somewhere higher than Kei’s had ever been. “Kenma could be coming to help us for a while??”
Sawamura shook his head, “I’d rather not owe Kuroo anything if I can help it, and taking his boyfriend away from him indefinitely would definitely be a big favour. We don’t even need anyone who’s worked specifically with drugs at this point, just someone who knows their way around a lab and has both the initiative to fill in the gaps in their knowledge on their own and the moral flexibility to do the job.”
Kei’s mind flashed to kind eyes framed by safety goggles and a ridiculous cowlick that refused to be bound by required hair ties against his better judgement. That's an idea..
Sawamura looked around the room, steadily making eye contact with everyone. His gaze was heavy, demanding truth from everyone that met it. As he went around the table, he was met with head shakes. Kei meant to do the same, but a visible hesitation led Sawamura to look at him more intently.
Kei sighed and leaned forward onto his hands, “I… might know someone.”
For the second time that week, Kei found himself wanting to be anywhere than where he was at the current moment. Actually, he thought, I’d rather be hauling that dead guy down those stairs all by myself right now.
From anyone else’s perspective, waiting around on the ground floor of the local university’s chemistry department would be much preferable to disposing of a body, but Kei wasn’t anyone else, and he was incredibly out of his element.
He hadn’t been on campus for four years since he dropped out after his first month of college to join up with Karasuno.
He also hadn’t talked to Yamaguchi since then.
He didn’t regret dropping out, he would make the same choice now as he did back then. When his brother was hurt in a turf war between Karsuno and Shiratorizawa, Kei knew Akiteru needed out of the life more than Kei needed to stay out of it. So, he went to Sawamura and begged him to let Akiteru out in one piece if Kei took his place. It wasn’t a simple transaction. Akiteru had made himself invaluable to Karasuno in the eight years he’d been a part of the organization since their parent’s death. But Akiteru had taught Kei everything he learned as he learned it, and Kei had become just as capable, if not more so, than his brother. After a quick bit of target practice, a line of coke, and a thorough quiz on the variety of weapons and drugs Karasuno dealt with on a regular basis, Sawamura declared Kei competent and let Akiteru go to heal and live on his own terms.
No, Kei didn’t regret the decision he made four years ago, especially not when he saw how happy Akiteru was in his new life with his steady job and pretty little wife.
At some signal Kei couldn’t discern, the doors to all the classrooms opened and students started pouring out. Kei stood up from where he was sitting on a bench against a wall near the main doors, buttoning his jacket as he did so. He was grateful for his many extra centimetres over the majority of the population that allowed him to look over the tops of heads to search for an unruly cowlick with ease. He stood against the wall scanning the crowd as it thinned out, and was about to settle back down to wait longer when a door at the end of the hall opened up again with the ringing of a familiar laugh.
Kei pushed himself off the wall as Yamaguchi and four girls walked out of the classroom together. As if magnets still pulled him in Kei’s direction, Yamaguchi immediately made eye contact with him and startled to a stop with a gasp that Kei could hear over the last stragglers of the crowd.
Yamaguchi’s sudden stop caused one of his companions to run into him, but he didn’t flinch or take his eyes off Kei, as if Kei would disappear if he looked away for even a second. Kei almost rolled his eyes at Yamaguchi’s dramatics, but stopped himself when he was able to get a better look at the other man through the crowd. Kei’s eyes roamed freely over the studded leather jacket and artfully ripped t-shirt and jeans tucked into loose black boots. Yamaguchi’s hair was longer than when Kei had last seen it too, long enough that Yamaguchi had tugged the top half into a messy bun to keep it out of his eyes. He looked good.
Since Yamaguchi no longer seemed capable of movement, Kei began stalking toward him, the crowd parting around him to give him a wide berth. Kei felt on display as Yamaguchi’s companions all turned to watch him walk over with identical expressions of confusion and shock.
“Yamaguchi,” he said simply, even though his heart was racing in his chest.
No, Kei didn’t regret taking Akiteru’s place four years ago. It was the right thing to do.
But he regretted everything to do with Yamaguchi Tadashi.
***
Tadashi scrubbed his face with his hands. Advanced organic synthesis was, in theory, a fascinating subject, however, when it was taught by a sixty year old russian man with an extremely thick accent at 8 AM, one tended to have trouble staying awake. Hana had already poked him twice with the butt of her pen when he had closed his eyes for what she deemed to be too long.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d bothered to show up today. Any notes he had managed to jot down were a complete mess and didn’t make any sense to him. He’d have to copy Hana’s or one of their other friend’s later.
He hadn’t meant to stay up so late, but his thesis experiment had been going really well last night and he lost track of time. By the time he got back to his apartment to make himself some dinner and finish today’s homework, he didn’t crawl into bed until four hours before he had to get up again.
He was looking forward to the hour break he had after this class. Hana and her friends had booked a study room on the ground floor of the building, and he just had to drag himself down two flights of stairs and he could take a nap while they worked on the stuff he had already completed. They always agreed to wake him up in time for his next class in exchange for his answers.
The professor dismissed the small class with a wave of his hand and Tadashi shoved his notebook and pen into his backpack open at his feet. He stretched his arms over his head as he stood up, feeling his shirt ride up on his stomach with the movement.
He also felt Hana’s eyes on him as he did so.
Tadashi had noticed her staring a lot more lately. He couldn’t decide if it was worth doing anything about yet. She was one of his oldest friends, she was beautiful, and he owed her a blood debt for her help in thermodynamics, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into anything serious in his last term of school. He still didn’t know where he was going to end up after this year, and he didn’t want to start something just to find out they were going to schools on opposite sides of the country.
He slipped his backpack on and followed his friends out of the class and down to the study room. He threw his completed assignments on the table and beelined for a corner of the room. Taking his backpack off, he pulled out the hoodie he kept in there for this express purpose, balled it up on the ground, and laid down on it facing the wall without a word.
Some time later, Hana gently shook him awake and laughed as he sat up.
“Wassofunny?” he asked blearily.
“Your hair developed sentience while you napped it seems, Yamayama,” she said kindly, running her hands through hair that felt like it was standing straight up.
Tadashi pushed her hands away and replaced them with his own. He groaned. Any effort he had expended this morning making his hair fall the way he liked seemed to have been completely undone. He smoothed back everything he could and pulled the hair tie off his wrist with his teeth and looped it into a loose top knot. He looked to Hana for approval, who reached over to pull a few pieces out of the tie to frame his face and sat back with a nod when she was done.
“Come on, we got class,” she said while getting up, reaching down to help him up.
Tadashi collected his assignments from where they had been scattered across the table and leaned over someone’s notebook with his phone to take pictures of the notes he missed this morning. He’d copy them into his own notes later.
“Have a good snooze?” Akari, one of Hana’s friends, asked.
“It was great,” Tadashi replied, “just could have been about a week longer.”
That got a giggle out of all the girls as they walked out of the study room. Their next class was in the next building over, so they made their way to the main doors. Tadashi glanced around at nothing in particular, but noticed there was an obvious gap in the flow of students near the entrance, as if everyone was avoiding something.
That something was staring right at Tadashi, and he gasped and stopped in the middle of the hallway under the weight of that look. He felt Hana run into him peripherally, but it didn’t even remotely register to him. The only thing that mattered right now was the man in front of him. He hadn’t seen Tsukki in four years, but he couldn’t forget him if he tried. The years seemed to have been kind to him. He had obviously put on some muscle, and his curly blond hair was shorn short on the sides but left to fall softly into his eyes on top. He had gotten new glasses too, a lighter framed pair with larger lenses that left more of his face visible than the old ones. None of this would explain the wide berth everyone was giving him, but Tsukki’s expertly tailored all black suit, combined with his perpetual arrogant glare and the way he was holding his arms away from his body as if he had something strapped to his ribs, screamed danger.
He looked like violence, and it was terrifying.
Tadashi drank all of this in as Tsukki walked towards him. He tried to get a handle on his breathing, knowing he only had moments before he would be expected to interact with the person who he thought he’d never see again, who had left him in the worst way possible without the promise of ever coming back.
“Yamaguchi,” Tsukki said simply, as if he hadn’t just thrown Tadashi’s entire world out of orbit.
The girls looked at him in a combination of shock and fear, as if such a simultaneously beautiful and terrifying man being here for Tadashi was the last thing they could have ever expected. Granted, Tadashi felt the same way. He never expected Tsukki to want anything to do with him ever again, and if he did, Tadashi would have expected him to call first instead of just showing up out of the blue.
“What- what are you doing here, Tsukki- Tsukishima?” he asked. He figured he wasn’t allowed to call Tsukki - no, Tsukishima - by anything but his full name anymore, even in his head.
“I need to speak to you,” Tsukishima replied flatly.
“Right now?”
Tsukishima rolled his eyes and looked pointedly at the girls, all of which had somewhat huddled behind Tadashi, as if he could protect them from what he knew to be a trained killer. “I was hoping we could go somewhere a little bit more private,” he said, his trademark snark edging back into his voice.
“Um…” really eloquent there, Tadashi, “I have class for another hour and then I have a couple hours break before I need to be in the lab, if you want to meet at the coffee shop in the building next door, it’s where I have my next class so I’ll be quick after.”
Tsukishima nodded affirmatively to Tadashi’s plan, then stepped to the side. Tadashi still felt rooted to the spot, so it took him a second to realize that Tsukishima expected Tadashi to lead the way. He quickly started walking, trying not to freak out that he currently had a yakuza member tailing behind him and his friends.
Honestly, pull yourself together.
Once they were inside the next building, he turned back to Tsukishima. “If you just wait over there,” he pointed at the small collection of tables and armchairs near the coffee shop in the corner, “my class is a floor up and I’ll come meet you in an hour.”
Tsukishima nodded again and turned towards where Tadashi had pointed.
While he walked away, Tadashi tried to calm his racing heart and ran towards the stairwell, not even caring if his friends were following him at this point. Apparently they were though, or at least Hana was, because she caught up with him and grabbed onto his arm as if to pull an explanation out of him by force.
“What the fuck was that all about??” she hissed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that was a member of the yakuza who walked up to you, knew your name, and knew you would know his right back. Not even to mention that he was the hottest man I’ve ever seen, no offence. Care to explain, Yamayama??”
Tadashi sighed and wrung his hands as he walked up the stairs. “I used to know him,” he stated simply. “I don’t know what he wants, we haven’t spoken in years. I honestly never expected to see him again.”
Hana huffed, obviously unsatisfied with the explanation, but Tadashi couldn’t bring himself to care or explain further. What else was there for him to say?
He slid into a desk near the back of the class and resigned himself to borrowing someone else’s notes again. How was he supposed to concentrate when his best friend just walked back into his life?