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“How stubborn can one guy be?” Gin groans, leaning against the wall to watch their captive. It’s a futile exercise; the man hardly moves or makes any noise. It’s infuriating.
“I’d like to shoot him in the foot,” Atsumu says, staring the man right in his eyes—well, eye. The left one is so swollen, it’s nearly the size of a baseball. It’s probably permanently damaged. Atsumu is proud of that.
“Ya wouldn’t dare,” Osamu says. He’s standing at Atsumu’s side, picking at his nails. There’s dried blood underneath them, something that has always bothered him. Atsumu’s grown used to the feeling. He doesn’t even notice it anymore, but a quick glance down at his own nails shows they’re caked in the stuff. “Kita’d be mad at ya if ya did.”
“Shut yer trap,” he growls. “I don’t care if Kita gets mad at me.”
“Tell him that to his face,” Suna mutters from Osamu’s side. “You’re terrified of him.”
“And ya got the hots for him,” Gin says. The man quirks an eyebrow at Atsumu, but it quickly turns into a wince of pain. Atsumu grins back at him, his teeth bared. The smallest flash of fear registers in the man’s eyes, and Atsumu relishes it. The man seems to think he’s not making it out of here alive, but Atsumu knows he still could. He could, if he would cooperate.
“Yer not denying it for once.” Osamu is bored out of his mind. That’s why he’s mocking Atsumu for the same thing he always mocks him for. He’s not even original anymore. “It’s boring if ya don’t put up more of a fight.”
Atsumu shrugs. “Dunno what to tell ya. I’m not in love with him or anything.”
“You’d just do anything for him if he asked.” Gin yawns—actually yawns, as if this is the most mundane of tasks, and he hasn’t just finished bashing the man in front of them over the head. “It’s yer turn, Atsumu, hurry up. Just make him talk so we can be done here.”
Atsumu pushes himself up off the wall with a sigh. He doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty, but he’s tired of this. How long have they been in this room? It’s musty and it’s starting to smell like blood, sweat, and piss (the man’s passed out three times already, and he pisses himself every time). He’s starting to get a headache. He’s pissed at the man in front of him for holding so tightly onto his shitty ideals, but can Atsumu really blame him? If he spills all the secrets and they actually let him go—which is starting to look more unlikely by the minute—his own gang will just kill him anyway. He’s screwed, but that’s what he gets for getting himself caught. Dumbass.
Atsumu stops at the small table and glances at the weapons with glazed eyes. He lazily grabs a knife and grips it loosely in his hand. What’s he even going to do with this? God, he wants to leave this room.
“Can I kill him?”
“No,” the three say back. Atsumu sighs and sets the knife back down. He has his gun. That’s enough, right? Maybe if he hits him enough with the butt of the gun, he’ll tell him everything.
Unlikely. Fuck, he wants to be done with this. He hates this guy so much for making him do this. The smell is driving him crazy. He’s tired. He hasn’t eaten since they entered this room for-fucking-ever ago. And maybe he misses Kita a little. He’s not clingy. He’d just like to see him.
This frustration, bubbling up in his throat and twisting his mouth into a sneer, has the man in the chair leaning back, trying to put as much distance between himself and Atsumu as he can. It’s futile. Atsumu marches up to him, grabs him by the hair, and slams the butt of his gun down on his nose.
The crack is satisfying, and blood flows thickly from his nose, down his lips, dripping from his chin onto his soiled pants. The man whimpers, and traitorous tears leak from the corners of his eyes. Atsumu slides his gun back into his holster. Were Atsumu a weaker man, he might pity him. Or even if Atsumu were in a better mood. But right now, he’s in an awful mood, and he fully intends on taking it out on this piece of shit.
“Tell us!” he roars, slamming his head into the back of the chair. The man is silent, but his eyes are hazy and unfocused. He’s on the verge of unconsciousness, but Atsumu doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a few seconds without pain. Atsumu yanks his hair one last time before letting go. The man glowers back, beaten but defiant.
It’s almost admirable.
“You wanna get outta here, dontcha?” Atsumu asks. His voice is dripping with fake sweetness, and the man can tell. He cranes his head to the side, eye squeezing shut, his shoulders drawn up in anticipation of impact. Atsumu hates to disappoint, so he slams his fist across his cheek. The man’s head lolls to the side, but he’s not unconscious. Good. “If ya wanna get out of here, just tell us. We ain’t askin’ for much. Just tell us where yer all located, all yer secrets, all that fun stuff.”
The man raises his head and stares Atsumu dead in the eyes. He’s ballsy, he’ll give him that. Another crack across the cheeks has his head lolling again. “Tell us!” Another punch. “Tell us!” Another. “Just tell us!”
His head sags forward, chin resting on his chest, which rises and falls rapidly. He’s holding on. Atsumu supposes that’s a good thing; a person can only pass out so many times before they start getting permanent brain damage. And while he’d love for this man to die, Kita would be mad if he died before they got any information out of him. He’d hate to disappoint Kita.
He grabs his chin and wrenches his face up. He leans down, inches from the man’s nose, to say, “I promise ya, if you don’t give us what we want, you’ll regret it. We’ll track down everyone ya love, yer parents, yer friends, yer whole miserable gang, and we’ll kill ‘em all. And it’ll be yer fault, unless ya open yer trap and start talking.”
The man spits in Atsumu’s face.
In retrospect, it’s a good thing the other three were there, or else Atsumu would have made a mistake. He knows it, and they know it too. He heard the intake of breath behind him when the man spat saliva and blood in his face.
Atsumu doesn’t even wipe the spit off his face before he draws his gun. He’s not one hundred percent sure what he’s going to do with it, but he does know it’s going to result in the man’s death. Osamu grabs his arm and yanks him away from the man, Gin wraps his arms around Atsumu’s waist and tries to pull him back towards the wall, and Suna is trying to take Atsumu’s gun away. Atsumu is yelling something he can’t even hear over the shouts of his friends.
“No, Atsumu,” Osamu is hissing in his ear, “don’t do it, ya know ya can’t do it, yer gonna blow this whole fucking deal if ya do this—”
Atsumu manages to yank his arms back, but Gin’s arms remain firmly around his waist. He points his gun at the man, right in his gut. He wants so badly to pull the trigger. He wants to make this man bleed out, but he can’t. Not right now. Still, his hand are shaking with rage. He deserves to die. Or maybe he deserves to be beat within an inch of his life. Atsumu can’t decide.
The man knows it, too. There’s a weariness and fear in his eyes that wasn’t there seconds before. He’s broken. He’s cracking. He’s beaten and worn and he just wants to be done.
He slides the gun back in his holster, and only then does Gin let go of his waist. He pushes Gin away and marches back over to the man. Atsumu grabs him by the hair and pulls his head up, stares his dead in the eyes, and spits back.
It’s spiteful and unnecessary, but it makes him feel better all the same. He hears Osamu snort from behind him. Atsumu releases his hair and the man sags in his seat, his face screwed up, and cries. Finally.
“I think we’re almost there,” he says as he rejoins the group by the wall. “Just a little bit more and—”
The door swings open and slams against the adjacent wall. The four against the wall jump and the captive’s head swings up, and in through the door strolls Kita Shinsuke.
He looks good, like always. His hair is impeccably styled, shiny and perfect. His suit doesn’t have a single wrinkle in it, but it never does. Atsumu wonders if he irons it himself everyday, then decides of course he does, because he’s Kita. He keeps his jacket resting across his shoulders, like always, which gives Atsumu a great view of how his white button-up pulls across his chest. Atsumu likes it. He can’t help but stare.
Kita, unsurprisingly, is flanked on both sides by Aran and Omimi. As Kita’s unofficial bodyguard, Omimi goes anywhere Kita goes, and as Kita’s right hand man, Aran goes anywhere Kita tells him to. Despite being high-ranking, the three don’t typically venture down to the holding rooms. Why would they, when they have four slightly unstable underlings who are ready and willing to do this kind of stuff?
Kita takes in the sight in front of him: their captive, dripping in sweat and blood and now Atsumu’s spit, Atsumu with blood and saliva on his face, his chest heaving, the other three trying their best to not look guilty. Kita is highly intelligent; he probably already knows what just happened, but he still says, “How’s it going down here?”
Atsumu is the unofficial speaker of the group, because he’s very good with people and because he fears Kita the least (that isn’t to say he doesn’t fear Kita, though, because everyone’s afraid of Kita). “He hasn’t cracked yet. He also spit on me.”
“I can see that.” Kita’s slim fingers dig into his pants pockets and pull out a handkerchief. He tosses it to Atsumu. “Clean up your face.”
Atsumu practically snatches it out of the air. He doesn’t even try to hide the grin that spreads across his face as he wipes Kita’s handkerchief—his personal handkerchief, that smells like him—across his face. It comes away bloodier than he’d thought. Maybe he’d gone a little overboard. He tries to hand it back to Kita, but Kita pulls a face and says, “Clean it, then return it to me.” If it were anyone else, he’d be annoyed. But he doesn’t mind holding onto Kita’s handkerchief a little longer. He stuffs it in his pocket with a smug smile, and he swears he can hear Osamu roll his eyes.
Kita sighs and crosses his arms in front of himself. “I’m disappointed,” he says, and Atsumu’s heart drops. “I would have thought the four of you could have gotten him to crack now.”
“We’re trying,” Suna grumbles. “Do you see his face? He’s lucky he’s still alive.”
Kita shakes his head, and Atsumu interprets it immediately. That’s not enough. All four bow their heads and mutter, “Sorry, Kita.”
Kita shrugs, and somehow his jacket doesn’t fall from his shoulders. Atsumu thinks Kita is just too powerful for something like that to happen. “I’m tired of waiting.”
The fear is the man’s eyes like nothing Atsumu has seen yet. He likes the way it looks. Kita unbuttons the cuff of his shirt and starts rolling the sleeves up. Atsumu’s jaw drops at the sight of Kita’s smooth, creamy forearms. They’re muscular and defined. Perfect, like every other part of Kita.
Aran raises an eyebrow at him, and he snaps his mouth shut. He swears he’s not a creep. He just really likes Kita.
Kita rolls his sleeves up and approaches the man. His two followers drop back and hover by the door, and Atsumu and his crew press their backs against the wall. Everyone in the room, save for the man tied up, knows what is about to happen.
The man drops his tough act. Maybe it’s because he’s too exhausted to keep it up, or maybe it’s because he’s scared shitless of Kita. Atsumu wouldn’t blame him for either; he’s taken quite the beating in the last few hours, and Kita can be very intimidating when he wants to be. And Kita wants to be.
Atsumu rakes his eyes over the man’s beaten face. His eyes are as wide as possible and he’s leaning away from Kita’s approach. His mouth is twisted together like he’s trying to keep a sob in. He’s terrified. He’s pitiful.
Atsumu loves it.
Atsumu thinks back to elementary school, when he would stand over Osamu as the taller kids kicked at him. He remembers their cruel faces twisted with something—not hatred, but glee, pure joy, at the prospect of beating an innocent child. He remembers hating them, wanting to kill them, for hurting him and his brother for no reason other than they were weak and no one would defend them. He never understood why they acted that way.
Now, when Atsumu stands over someone who is broken and bleeding, crying for mercy, nothing but fear written across their faces, he understands the bullies. He’d never forgive them, but he understood why they’d done it. He wasn’t like them, though. He only hurt people who deserved it, never the innocent. He’d never hurt someone like past Atsumu.
Current Atsumu, though, he agrees deserves to die a painful death. But he hasn’t yet, so he’s still kicking.
Kita stops just in front of the man, the toes of their shoes touching. Atsumu doesn’t need to see Kita’s face to know that it’s a cold mask of indifference. The man stares back at Kita in terror.
“You’re making trouble,” Kita starts, in that soft, soft voice of his. The man’s shoulders start to sag, but he pulls them back up. He won’t lower his guard. Good choice. “I don’t appreciate people like that.”
Kita’s hand is quick. It flies out and snaps the man across the face. He sputters and coughs and spits out blood, and Kita just watches. When he looks back up, his lips are trembling and tears drip down his face.
“This can all be over.” Kita’s fingers twitch at his side. “All you have to do is tell us what we want to know.”
The man gasps out a sob, and Kita shakes his head. “Crying won’t get you anywhere, you know.” Kita watches on as the man shakes and cries.
Finally, he manages to calm himself down. His chest still shutters with uneven breaths and hiccups, but he chokes out, “What do you want to know?”
“Not much.” Kita steps a little bit closer. Kita’s one of the shortest in their group, but right now he towers over the man in the chair. Atsumu thinks Kita likes the feeling of being taller than someone. It happens so rarely. Atsumu doesn’t mind, though; he thinks his height makes him that much cuter. “We just need to know a few things. Like where all your deals take place. And when your next deal will be, and how many people will be there. Stuff like that.”
The man inhales sharply. “Why do you need to know?”
“You don’t need to know that,” Kita says softly. “Just tell me what I need to know.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know that kind of stuff. I just go where they tell me and do what they say.”
Kita glances back at the group, his eyebrows raised. He briefly makes eye contact with Atsumu, who raises his eyebrows in reply. No one believes him.
Kita grabs his gun from it’s holster and the man’s eyes flash in fear. But Kita doesn’t shoot him. He slams the butt of the gun against the side of his head, and the man’s whole body goes limp. They wait a few seconds, and the man starts slowly blinking back to life. Not dead, though he probably wishes he was.
Kita tilts his head up with the barrel of the gun. The man’s eyes are unfocused, but the fear is unmistakable. “I don’t take kindly to liars,” Kita drawls. “Ya better start telling the truth.”
Aran lets out a low whistle. Kita’s accent is slipping in; a sure sign that he’s growing irritated. Osamu shifts uncomfortably on the wall next to him. The man’s chance of survival just dropped to zero. It makes nearly everyone in the room antsy.
“I’m gonna give ya one more chance,” Kita is saying. Osamu glances over at Atsumu, who purses his lips and shakes his head. Osamu goes back to picking at his nails. “Tell us what we wanna know. And throw in somethin’ extra, or yer gonna regret it.”
“Fine,” the man spits out, “fine! You win!”
He spills everything. Their drop site for weapons, drugs, and other various supplies, the schedule for the next week, and how many people would be there. He even tells them that their boss will be at one of the deals, but he doesn’t know which one. He starts crying halfway through.
“There,” Kita purrs, “was that so hard?”
“Please,” the man gasps, “let me go. I’ve done everything you asked of me. I just want to see my family again, please.”
Kita raises the gun again and points it right in between the man’s eyes. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” His voice is calm and even. All business. For someone who hates getting his hands dirty, he sure has no problem doing it.
Atsumu, on the other hand, feels his heart rate pick up. Please don’t beg. There"s nothing he hates more than listening to them beg for their lives. They should be strong and silent; they should look death in the eyes with more dignity than that. But some people transform into sniveling babies, wailing and screaming for their life. Atsumu hates it. It reminds him of little Atsumu, cowering at the hands of bigger and stronger people, begging for them to stop. They never did. Atsumu never stops either, but he never gets used to hearing the screams.
His pleas go unanswered. “Please don’t kill me,” the man begs. “Please. Please! I don’t want to die, please!”
Undoubtedly, Kita’s face is smooth. Begging won’t do anything to him. Atsumu, on the other hand, presses his palms on the wall at his back and forces himself to watch. No weakness. But god, he wants to look away. He wants to cover his ears. Every plea tugs at his gut, evokes the most pity Atsumu’s felt for the man since they captured him. He’s genuinely terrified.
He should be.
The longer Kita keeps the gun to his head, the louder the pleas get. Soon he’s screaming, craning his head back from Kita as far as possible, but the gun still follows. He trains his eyes on each of the members in the back, begging for help. Begging for them to stop Kita. Everyone stares back at him.
Atsumu thinks that he’ll give up and face death with a small shred of pride still, but instead he lets his head fall to his chest and cries. He sobs hard, his chest heaving, all the while mumbling, “Please don’t kill me, please.”
Kita grabs his chin and pulls his head upwards. The tears keep streaming from his eyes. Kita presses the gun to his forehead again, almost gently. “Thank you for your cooperation.” Out of the corner of his eye, Atsumu sees Osamu squeeze his eyes shut. Atsumu keeps his open. He won’t let himself look away.
A click and a bang, and the man’s brains are splattered across the back wall. It’s gruesome and bloody. The man’s body goes slack in the binds, his eyes stuck open in perpetual horror, staring blankly at a man who isn’t bothering in the slightest by the scene in front of him.
Kita puts the gun back in his holster and turns around. There’s blood splattered on his shirt and face. He frowns in distaste. “Atsumu. Sorry, but could I have my handkerchief back now?”
Atsumu forces himself off the wall and towards Kita and the body. He digs the handkerchief out of his pocket and Kita meets him halfway to take it. Their fingers brush briefly, and Atsumu almost feels guilty for the rush of excitement he feels at the touch. He shouldn’t be getting butterflies in his stomach when there’s a dead body right in front of them, but Kita’s face is soft as he hands the handkerchief back and Atsumu just can’t help it.
“That takes care of that,” Kita says. “I’ll have to go change.” He marches back to the two by the door, who are eyeing the scene with disgust. He turns back to the four by the wall, smiling gently. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who would kill someone so brutally without the slightest bit of hesitation. That’s why they should be afraid.
“You four will clean this up, right?” It’s not really a question, but he phrases it as one to be polite. He’s addressing it to the four of them, but his eyes are boring right into Atsumu’s. He’s asking Atsumu, because he knows Atsumu will do anything he asks. Atsumu doesn’t exactly keep this a secret, after all. He lives for the way Kita will seek him out when he needs something done. He loves that Kita knows he’s reliable and skilled and all the things he needs. Why would he keep that a secret?
It’s also no secret that Atsumu is in love with him. But Atsumu doesn’t know if Kita has picked up on that one yet.
“Aye aye, captain,” Atsumu says, raising his hand in a mock salute. Kita’s eyes narrow, but the corners of his mouth twitch up in a small smile. It’s a victory. Without another word, Kita turns and leaves the room. Omimi and Aran follow.
Once the door swings shut, Gin groans, “Fuck, Atsumu. You and yer useless gay ass.”
“What the fuck?” Atsumu replies, but he can’t keep the smile off his face.
“Sure, you’re not in love with him,” Suna mumbles. “You’ll just do literally anything for him. Like clean up a fucking dead body.”
“Nothin’ we haven’t done before.”
“I’m tired. I haven’t sat down in hours,” Suna gripes. “We could have forced one of the newbies to do it and your dumb ass promised we’d do it. Fucking idiot.”
“Alright, I get it.” Atsumu knows their anger is not appeased. He can’t drop the dopey smile. “I’ll go get the mop and the body bag.”
“Hurry,” Osamu says, “before his brains dry on the wall and we have to scrub ‘em off.”
Atsumu nods and leaves the room, heading down the hall for their cleaning supplies. Away from the prying eyes of his peers, he allows himself a full-fledge lovestruck smile. Kita is terrifying and powerful and can kill anyone in an instant without any remorse.
But he’s really, really pretty. And Atsumu would do anything for him.
Even clean up this god damn dead body.