Chapter Text
DAY 36
It’s chaos.
The vault Fujisaki Ryo opened explodes, as thought it had been waiting for the slightest room to wreak havoc over the city. The blast of energy slams its way up, up into the sky, settling right over the top of the HQ building like the world’s most dangerous Christmas tree topper. Every window lining the glass infrastructure blows, one by one, each level of the tower spitting the finest of glass shards across the sky like snow. And at the top of it all, somehow, standing at the precipice of it all, struggling under the weight of the sun—
“Hinata,” Osamu breathes.
Kiyoomi’s eyes snap back to the balcony the Fujisakis had been standing on. They’ve disappeared, and it’s unclear whether they’re dead or if they’ve retreated into the depths of their hideout. All around them, people have erupted in commotion, scrambling to get away. Some manage to flee, but others drop like flies where they stand. Kiyoomi can see, horrifically, their skin turn to the colour of ash. It’s only when he registers an agonising scream ringing in his ears like the knell of death does Kiyoomi realise he can barely stand on his feet, too.
“Inside,” he manages to force out. “We have to get inside and up there, to Hinata.”
Next to him, Atsumu nods. “Race you there, I guess,” he says, and surges forward. Osamu curses and follows, hot on his heels.
It’s beginning.
Atsumu hasn’t felt this terrified since his twin went missing on a grocery run nine years ago.
Being able to keep an eye out on his brother a few feet ahead as they pick their way through the detritus of the once-pristine, indestructible Fujisaki HQ helps steady himself a bit, but his heart is jackrabbiting in his chest as he stumbles over chunks of concrete split fully in half by the tremors, tries not to slip on the floor dusted with powdered-sugar glass.
“We’re not going to make it in time,” he pants, startling when the ceiling above him rumbles dangerously. “This building has like forty floors.” They turn the corner of the entryway and skid to a stop, staring around them at the atrium towering up, up, up above them.
It’s impossible to look directly at the sky—the demon energy orb’s hissing and spitting fire like a comet crashing through the earth’s atmosphere. Atsumu’s terrified that Shoyo’s already burnt to a crisp up there.
“You guys are spellmakers,” Kiyoomi points out. “Can’t you whip up something that can, I don’t know, float us up there?”
Osamu stares at him like he’s stupid. “What the fuck do you think craft-type magicians even do?”
Kiyoomi shrinks back, raising his hand as if to protest, but: “We don’t have time for this,” Atsumu interjects wildly. “Every second we spend arguing is a second closer to whatever the fuck the Fujisakis want out of this.”
“Well, fuck, ’Tsumu,” Osamu snaps. He points at a slim set of gold-framed double doors behind them with his thumb. “Do you have any bright ideas of how to get us up there? It’s not like the damned elevator’s going to work.”
The elevator fucking works. Osamu is livid.
He’s sulking away in the corner of the death trap, resolutely refusing to look down because the floor’s made of tempered glass and he’s terrified of heights but will never admit it. “I don’t get it,” he says, trying to sound unaffected but failing as his voice comes out in a squeak. “I don’t see why the Fujisakis would draw us all here just to show us their idiot energy bomb exploding. And what the hell does this have to do with the energy drains?”
“I don’t know about you,” Omi says, resting his forehead against the panel of buttons, “but I’m exhausted. I feel like that stupid goddamn vault took everything out of me.”
As Atsumu lets out a shaky exhale and takes stock of himself beyond the rush of adrenaline, he realises that Kiyoomi’s right. He’s nearly dead on his feet. He’d thought it was just because of the dirt and blinding light, but his eyes are bleary and wet. His joints hurt. He’s breathing way too fast for way too little physical exertion; they’d only run around a hundred meters when things went to shit and his lungs are already giving out on him. He'd been fine before the vault had opened, so that could only mean—
“Shoyo shoved the energy drainers in there,” Atsumu realises. “I don’t think the Fujisakis expected their own invention to blow up on them, so there’s gotta be another reason. It’s—fuck, when they let it out of course it was going to go supernova. It’s like a goddamn antimatter bomb that was shoved into a tight, tiny prison and let out after ages. It’s sucking the life out of everything.”
Osamu yanks at his hair. Thirteen, Atsumu counts deliriously. “But what could Hinata hope to gain from this shit?”
Atsumu fishes for an answer, but he doesn’t get to think about it for long. The elevator slows to a stop, dings as the metal pointer weakly stalls at the fortieth floor.
“Well,” Kiyoomi says, “only one way to find out.”
When the doors open, Kiyoomi nearly drops to his knees from shock and pain. Atsumu fully doubles over, cursing; Osamu shrinks back with a groan. Kiyoomi steps forward, attempting to shield them with his body, throwing an arm over his eyes in futile defence. He tries desperately to adjust to the blinding light, praying that he doesn’t damage his sight for good.
In the centre of it all is Hinata, and Kiyoomi realises with a horrified chill up his spine that the eerie scream resonating across the city is coming from him, a cry of hurt amplified a thousand times over by the energy bomb that’s leaching the life force from him.
“Shoyo!” Atsumu cries out from behind him. He staggers forward, Osamu right by his side. “We need to get him out of there, he’s killing himself!” He takes a step forward, and another, and another, and then—
Someone crashes into Atsumu, sending them both flying in a flash of light and limbs. Osamu yells, stumbling ahead, only to be tackled by someone else.
In the half second before Kiyoomi feels the knife against his neck, he knows he has to react. He throws an elbow back hard, other arm coming up to shield the front of his body just as cool metal slices across his skin. His forearm manages to block the movement of whoever’s trying to kill him; Kiyoomi hears a wheeze as his elbow connects with soft flesh. The blade’s edge rakes a single line of fire against his throat, drawing pinpricks of blood, before it falls from his assailant’s weak grip. Kiyoomi uses the leverage he has on the exposed hand to spin around and drive his knee into the person’s gut, hard.
Maybe it’s a bit of an unfair fight, because seventy-ish-year-old Fujisaki Akihiko caves like a house of cards. He did hold a knife to Kiyoomi’s throat, though, and when he wasn’t even looking. It’s hard to feel bad for him, the dirty fucking cheat.
Kiyoomi turns his eyes to the twins. Osamu’s being attacked by Fujisaki Kanae from the house of the Falcons; it’s not coming to blows, but it’s a near thing, what with the arsenal of weak curses he’s hurling at her. “It’s your fault that I can’t visit Aran-kun anymore!” he roars. “I had to get a goddamn all-access pass with my culinary degree to meet my best friend! You piece of shit!”
Kiyoomi doesn’t know what’s going on beneath the onion skin of Miya Osamu, but he’s not going to try and peel back the layers if it’ll make his eyes burn. He’s going blind enough now as it is. And, besides—
Atsumu.
Kiyoomi sprints towards Atsumu, who’s on the floor. His hands are braced against Fujisaki Ryo’s, trembling as he pushes back against her to stop her from driving a goddamn ice pick into his heart.
“You!” she shrieks. “You’re the fucking cursemaker, aren’t you? Your damn draining spells! You’ve been fucking our plans over for weeks because you couldn’t stop playing with your chemistry set!”
“What the fuck,” Atsumu wheezes. “You’re strong for an old geezer. You compensating for your dead older brother?”
Why do I like this idiot, Kiyoomi thinks fondly. There’s a vase on the table next to him, stained glass and light. Kiyoomi picks it up and throws it at the head of the Raijins with all the spite he can muster. He’s never liked her anyway.
The object collides perfectly with her head with a hollow bonk, shattering against the ground as she topples over and off Atsumu. The ice pick clatters uselessly onto his chest. He turns his head in bewilderment.
“Omi?” he asks, awed.
Kiyoomi shrugs. “I took a page out of your book,” he says in explanation, kicking the shards of glass away from vicinity.
Atsumu has stars in his eyes.
“If you lovebirds are fucking done,” Osamu groans, “we gotta help your friend, ’Tsumu.”
“What about Kanae?”
Osamu sighs, gesturing vaguely behind him. When Kiyoomi looks over his shoulder, he can see Kanae giggling hysterically on the floor, clutching at her stomach with an uncomfortably out-of-place expression of rage on her face.
“Really, ’Samu? A tickling curse?”
Osamu goes pink in the ears. “Cursemaking is your thing, okay? Shut the fuck up. If your head gets any bigger you won’t be able to hold it up against gravity.”
Kiyoomi startles when the ball of light at the atrium’s centre flares brighter, the Councillor at the epicentre letting out another anguished noise. “We have to help him,” Atsumu cries. “What the fuck do we do?”
Kiyoomi takes a deep breath, grounding himself. He focuses on the individual threads of energy connecting everyone in the room. It’s hard because of how messy and tangled up their emotions all are, but he manages.
He’s not the best investigative mage in Osaka for nothing.
The threads all lead back to Hinata, full of grief and desperation. There’s not a shred of evil intent in them, and when Kiyoomi snaps his eyes open, he knows exactly what to do.
“We’ve got to share,” he says, stepping forward. “That’s the only way we can stop this.”
“Omi?” Atsumu asks, small and confused.
Kiyoomi turns to look back at the twins. They’re dishevelled and scraped, a bit worse for wear, but Kiyoomi realises with love that he’d never give this up for anything. He holds his hand out.
“Do you trust me?” He asks, and the question’s for the both of them, but he only has eyes for Atsumu.
Golden-bronze irises swim with conflict, then determination, then gentleness.
With tired, steady fingers, Atsumu reaches back.
A light so bright and white-hot that it slices all the way down into the marrow of his bones. Four people, four pairs of hands, interlinked, finally lifting the responsibility off a singular set of shoulders. Conveyance. Direction. And release.
Gridlines all across Osaka shatter, setting firecrackers off underneath Kiyoomi’s skin, a main sequence star blowing up into a red giant behind his eyelids.
Atsumu is burned into his memory. He wouldn’t want it any other way.
The Energy Dissemination Act—and with it, the Council—dissolve when the twins are twenty-four years old, have lived through the oligarchy, and helped destroy it. At this point, all Osamu wants is to sleep. All Atsumu wants is a single day passing without the threat of him being arrested.
It’s steadily turning out to be a reality, now. The Fujisakis have no sway over the people anymore—they’ve got just as much power as anyone else, and two out of three of them have osteoporosis. There’s no way they can pose any danger to anyone anymore, and it’s high time that they reap what they’ve sown over the past nineteen years.
He’s not completely out of the woods, though.
“They closed down your shop?” Kiyoomi asks, outraged. After the expo from hell, he’d been treated for immediate injuries, the most obvious and alarming one being his damaged eyesight. The doctors managed to fix most of everything, but Kiyoomi’s confined to wearing sunglasses throughout the day, from when he wakes up till before he goes to bed. The blackout shades make him look like a scrapped Men in Black character. It’s hilarious.
Atsumu snickers. “Yeah, but considering I expected to be in prison for a long while for pretty much running a black market for dubiously legal curses, this is much better,” he says. “And ’sides, it’s not a forever thing. I’m on probation, apparently, which means we’re out of business for two months. One if I behave.”
“I’m so sorry, Atsumu-san,” Shoyo pipes up apologetically next to him. “I tried to make sure to keep you out of it, I really did. But—I failed so many times! That’s why I needed five of your curses!” He raises a hand with all digits stretched out; Atsumu winces at the sight of fading burns and scar tissue set deep into his palms and the pads of his fingers. “I knew it would work eventually, but I kept messing up the containment ritual every time I tried to shove the energy vacuum into the vault. It kept backfiring, and I guess that’s what hurt so many people the first few times!” he droops, apologetic. “I really didn’t mean to harm anyone. I—I just wanted everyone to be free again.”
Atsumu ruffles Shoyo’s hair. It’s streaked with white, both from the stress of secrecy and for struggling to contain the largest energy vacuum the world had ever seen. The seven minutes he’d withstood on his own had caused him near irreparable damage—joint pains, muscle atrophy, and reduced mobility in his fingers—but he was still as happy as Atsumu had ever seen him. I’ll bounce back, he’d told him cheerfully, when Atsumu visited him in hospital one day. My physiotherapist gave me a gold star sticker today, so I must be doing something right. And besides—and he’d smiled tiredly—I’m just glad this whole thing’s over. I’d do it all again if it meant putting a stop to the Fujisakis’ power trip for good.
Now, Atsumu smiles. He’s too relieved to even tell Kiyoomi I told you so.
“How did you know what to do, though?” Osamu asks curiously. He’s stirring a mug of hot chocolate, deep fondness in his eyes as he swirls marshmallows in with the liquid. “I’m honestly pretty impressed that you single-handedly managed to undo the Fujisaki empire. But, well, you did nearly die because you thought you could handle it all on your own, so I guess you can’t be too intelligent.”
Shoyo doesn’t even bat an eye. “Honestly, it was just guesswork, Osamu-san!” he chirps. “I figured, if the barriers are symbols of energy incompatibilities, you’d want to sort of sap it more and more and more of the power it can hold until it’s got nothing to give anymore. Like setting a colony of termites loose on a door.” He shudders. “It’s a little underwhelming, I know, but look at it this way! Nothing is bottomless. You just have to feed an energy line that saps people of their energy more and more of the stuff it feeds on till it goes kaboom! And it did.”
“Ah, like overloading a circuit,” Osamu says.
“Like popping a zit,” Atsumu adds sagely.
Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose.
“Right!” Shoyo snaps his fingers. “I needed to redirect that energy overload towards the barriers across the city, but the only place that connects all four factions together is the main headquarters. I only thought of it when the Fujisakis came up with their stupid plan to sell people back their magic. They’d stored a taste-tester of energy in the vault for the whole inauguration. The energy curse ate it all up. But it was still hungry, and I guess being confined for a week in a tiny little crystal jar only made it more berserk.”
Atsumu grimaces. “I think you might’ve underestimated how angry you made that curse, Sho,” he says. “No wonder it nearly fuckin’ killed you.”
“Yup!” Shoyo grins, like they’re discussing a coffee date and not his near-death experience. “But you guys got me out of it! Thank you so much! And now I get to see Kageyama whenever I want to without his soul withering away every time he tries to get past Adler territory! I’m so excited!”
“What do you mean, wither away? He had entry into our faction, right? Didn’t he have a Jackal tattoo on him?”
Shoyo cocks his head. “Why would he?”
“Aren’t you dating?”
Shoyo looks at him like he’s stupid. “No!”
Atsumu bursts out laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, his twin and friend joining in. He startles, trailing off, when he realises the seat next to him is now vacant. He twists to look around for their missing member.
Kiyoomi’s left their table, settled against the café balcony railing. He’s speaking rapidly into his phone, presumably to seal another job contract. Ever since he helped take down the oligarchy and solve the energy crisis at once, he’s been an even hotter item than he was prior.
Sadness twinges once again in Atsumu’s heart when he realises there’s no reason for pretence anymore—no more need for inked symbols on their skin. They never had anything to prove to anyone in the first place, but Atsumu had still managed to trick himself into believing that he’d found something good and steady and lasting.
Kiyoomi must sense eyes on him, because he turns to lock onto Atsumu’s gaze. He’s ethereal; curls soft and burning chocolate brown in the sun, facing away from the light so the shadows emphasise his long legs and the taper of his waist. He says a few more words into his phone and then shuts it off, casually tucking it into the pocket of his trousers. He cocks his head, as though beckoning Atsumu to come over.
Atsumu goes like a moth to flame. Kiyoomi will always be effortlessly beautiful, he thinks, watching as his friend moves to unloop the medical mask pulled over his ears. The sunglasses are comically large on his face, reaching up till his eyebrows.
Atsumu snorts. Gorgeous, yes, but he looks ridiculous.
“Hey,” Kiyoomi says when Atsumu finally makes his way over.
“Hey,” Atsumu replies, breathless.
They stand there, overlooking the roads for a minute. Kids high on freedom and sugar chase after each other, some running inhumanly fast and some jumping up to five feet in the air. A father watches on fondly, twirling circles in the air with his finger to speed up a pair of needles that are knitting a sweater by themselves. People are embracing their newfound freedom just as they should be; Atsumu’s never seen so many smiles so constantly before. It’s nothing short of… well, magical.
“So,” Kiyoomi sighs. Atsumu’s stomach prickles with dread. “The job’s done.”
“Yeah,” Atsumu says quietly. “I guess it is.”
“Mmm,” Kiyoomi hums. “What are you going to do, now?”
I want to wind down for a bit, Atsumu wants to say. I want to spend time with you. Instead he bites it down and opts for a shaky laugh. “I don’t know.”
“No?”
“No.”
Kiyoomi turns to face him fully, tilting his head down so Atsumu can see his narrowed eyes over the rim of his sunglasses. “You never did tell me what was bothering you, that day.”
Atsumu stiffens. “I told you, it was nothing.”
“And I told you I’m not stupid. Atsumu.” He reaches out, grasps his hands in his. “We did a good fucking thing, and I’m so glad that it was with you. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else.” His gaze softens. “I wouldn’t trade you for anything else.”
Atsumu steels himself, taking a deep breath. “I was scared,” he confesses in an exhale. “I was scared that once this was over, you were just going to—up and leave. I was scared I’d never see you again. You were only my prickly-ass fake boyfriend for a week, and I still felt more settled around you than I ever had. I didn’t want you to go.”
It’s only when Kiyoomi raises a hand to cup his cheek that Atsumu realises he’d cast his eyes down to the ground in preemptive despair. “That’s funny,” Kiyoomi whispers, “because I’d been thinking the exact same thing.”
Atsumu’s eyes widen. His heart skips a beat. “What?”
“Well, minus the prickly part, because that’s insulting and frankly not true. You, on the other hand, are the perfect headcase of a mouthy blonde with authority issues—”
Atsumu bursts out laughing, tackling Kiyoomi for the third time that week. This time, he staggers but doesn’t fall. He instead sweeps Atsumu into his arms, shoulders shaking in mirth as his boyfriend peppers kisses across Kiyoomi’s forehead, and cheeks, and nose, and lips, over and over and over.
If Kiyoomi gets a phone call at nine in the morning, there’s only one person who’d possibly dare—and it’s not Motoya, because the stupid boy never wakes up before ten a.m. if he can help it.
“Hashibira-san,” Kiyoomi says groggily. “What.”
“Sakusa-kun, good morning!” his boss cries. “I know you’ve had a busy week, but we’ve been getting a mountain of calls directed for you—there’s people lining up in queues who only want you to handle their cases. Are you free to come in t—”
“No,” Kiyoomi says.
“Oh, wonderful, I’ll set you up with—wait. No?”
“No,” Kiyoomi repeats, fond. He’s too busy tracing patterns over Atsumu’s freckled shoulders, mop of platinum-gold hair tucked safely into his chest. The sun is bright against his bronzed skin, a warm and lasting reminder that Kiyoomi finally has what he’s been looking for. “I’m not coming in to work for a while. I’m cashing in on that vacation to Okinawa.”
“Oh—Oh, alright, well, I guess I can ring up my travel agent, get her to schedule you a flight for this Sunday. I can send you the correspondence.”
“That would be great, thank you. And—oh, Hashibira-san?”
“Yes, Sakusa-kun?”
Kiyoomi buries a smile into the crook of Atsumu’s neck. “Make sure that you’re booking tickets for two.”