Work Text:
body snatching
phrase
The secret disinterment of corpses from graveyards.
In retrospect, maybe slipping Seto a powdered sedative probably wasn’t such a good idea.
“You’re fucking insane,” Hanamiya hisses, following Imayoshi into the cemetery, dragging his feet every step of the way, “absolutely, completely insane, and I don’t even – ”
“Sshh up for a moment, will ya?” Imayoshi holds a warning finger up to his lips, “keep yappin’ like that and we’re gonna get caught.”
Hanamiya huffs. “I look forward to watching you explain us out of this one,” he mutters bad-naturedly, but falls silent.
It is past midnight, streetlights casting long, eerie shadows over the sidewalk and the flowerbeds just inside the cemetery fence. The sound of crickets chirping is interrupted, every so often, by the shrill cry of a screech owl. Hanamiya tells himself, very firmly, that it isn’t creepy at all.
“Hurry up, will ya? We haven’t got much time,” Imayoshi’s usual shit-eating grin is faintly worried, little nervous crinkles around the edges of his mouth, and the corners of his eyes, and if Hanamiya wasn’t equally apprehensive he’d snap a picture to preserve the moment. Or shoot a video. And upload it to the internet.
“Don’t look at me,” Hanamiya tells Imayoshi, feeling very much like a pious, virtuous angel (or how he supposes pious, virtuous angels must feel like), “I’m not the one who got us into this mess.”
Imayoshi shoots him an ‘I’m not buying your crap’ look. Hanamiya smiles sanctimoniously. Imayoshi rolls his eyes.
“Do you suppose he’s died in there?” Imayoshi says after several moments of silence, while they trek solemnly past what seems like an infinite number of graves.
Hanamiya snorts. “At least we won’t have to bury him,” he says, which earns him a raised eyebrow and a “lame,” from Imayoshi.
Imayoshi makes a turn; Hanamiya follows him. Their boots sink into the soft grass-covered dirt. Hanamiya idly wonders what it’d be like to sink all the way through. If he descended far enough in any direction, he would, at some point, end up encountering a body, he thinks, and immediately sets that particular part of his brain to mentally solving logarithms, because it is obviously too idle.
“Are ya solving logarithms, too?” Imayoshi asks wryly, a self-deprecating smile on his face. It is slightly knowing, too, and Hanamiya shrugs.
“Why ask what you already know?” he asks, and Imayoshi gives him an appreciative little nod. Hanamiya pretends he isn’t at all pleased at the acknowledgement. He doesn’t fool Imayoshi in the slightest, of course; Hanamiya’s senpai laughs a shrewd little laugh and lapses into silence again.
The air is humid – it is mid-August, when the rainy season is at its peak, and Hanamiya hopes, fervently, that it doesn’t rain while they are out here, because rain would draw out things like earthworms, and if this wasn’t already enough of a bad-horror-movie situation, adding a mass of wriggling annelids would certainly make it so.
“How much further?” Hanamiya asks, because he is apparently suffering from an inability to hold his tongue – not because he’s scared, no – never because he’s scared –
“Almost there,” Imayoshi says, not unkindly, and Hanamiya is pretty sure the kindness is due, in part, to the fact that Imayoshi is secretly pleased he is not the only one who is absolutely terrified.
“What if he really is dead?” Hanamiya shifts his shovel into a more comfortable position against his shoulder.
“Let’s not go down that road,” Imayoshi says, as if he isn’t the one who voiced the thought aloud first. He rounds another corner, walks two more paces and stops, setting his shovel down.
“Are you sure this is the right one?” Hanamiya breathes, because they’re already breaking about five dozen rules and if they end up exhuming the wrong body –
Imayoshi raises his eyebrows as if to say, are ya really doubting me? and Hanamiya sighs.
“Forget I asked,” he says, and watches Imayoshi set his shovel down, blade first, the tip just barely penetrating the soil. Imayoshi hesitates for a moment, and then shakes his head.
“Might as well just put my back to it,” he mutters, and Hanamiya has to step back to avoid being hit by the first shovelful of dirt, and then two, then three –
“Don’t just stand there,” Imayoshi says, breathing already labored, “help me.”
Hanamiya huffs and steps forward, following Imayoshi’s push-lift-drop movements. It’s harder than it looks, and despite his years of playing basketball, his arm muscles are protesting within five minutes.
“Why’d this have to be so fucking deep?” Hanamiya says when they are knee-deep in the dirt, walls rising rapidly around them, and Imayoshi shrugs, not even bothering to reply verbally, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his blue turtleneck. A breeze brushes the back of Hanamiya’s neck, and he shivers in the wake of the sweat rapidly cooling against his skin.
On the next push, his shovel hits something hard, and Hanamiya stops digging; looking up, he can see Imayoshi doing the same, palpable relief relaxing his features. They brush the remaining dirt off the coffin with their hands; there’s hardly any of it left:
“Got the hammer?” Imayoshi asks, and Hanamiya reaches into his pocket, pulling it out and handing it wordlessly over; Imayoshi takes it – gingerly – and uses the forked end to pry the nails fastening the coffin’s cover loose.
When the last nail comes free - there are ten of them – Hanamiya sets his nails into the crack between coffin and cover and, with Imayoshi’s help, lifts it up, setting it to the side –
-he’s almost surprised – but relieved – when Seto does not immediately sit up – that would scare the living daylights out of him (or what daylights are left, anyhow): instead, Seto looks very much like he did the last time they saw him, which is to say, very much asleep, and that is how Hanamiya knows he can’t have died, because if he had, he wouldn’t look asleep, he’d look, well, dead (with bodily fluids seeping out of his crevices).
Imayoshi says, “grab his feet,” jolting Hanamiya out of his semi-contemplation; Hanamiya makes a face but obeys, firmly grasping Seto around the ankles; across from him, Imayoshi slips his hands around Seto’s shoulders, his thumbs against the backs of Seto’s deltoids and his fingers curving around Seto’s armpits; Hanamiya is suddenly grateful he isn’t in Imayoshi’s position.
They stand like that for a few moments, rather foolishly, with Seto suspended several inches above the coffin between them, before Imayoshi remembers how deep they are, and that their current situation isn’t the most suited to getting Seto out.
“Shit,” Imayoshi curses, which tells Hanamiya that he is a lot more uneasy than he has been letting on. “Shit,” he says again, which, in Imayoshi-terms, is equivalent to fraying at the edges, and abruptly, Hanamiya is glad none of this is going to end up on the internet, “Hanamiya,” Imayoshi takes a deep breath, “would ya please climb out? I’ll tell you what to do from there,” and Hanamiya, whose brain short-circuited the minute Imayoshi said ‘please’, mutely complies, and makes an extra effort not to shower Imayoshi with dirt clods when he makes it over the top.
“Alright, I’m up,” Hanamiya peers down at Imayoshi (unsmiling) and Seto (infuriatingly comatose) and is surprised at how far down they are – nearly four feet – and it hadn’t taken that long to dig the hole –
“You wouldn’t have any rope in those endless pockets of yours, would ya?” Imayoshi says, a little despairingly, and Hanamiya fights the urge to laugh, because a pair of so-called geniuses like himself and Imayoshi didn’t think far enough to plan how they’d get the body out of the grave –
“Afraid not,” Hanamiya tells Imayoshi, and turns out his pockets just because he can; Imayoshi laughs self-deprecatingly.
“You’d think we’d have planned this better,” he calls, voicing what Hanamiya was thinking five seconds ago (that is: the obvious).
“Can’t be helped now,” Hanamiya shrugs, “you said you’d tell me what to do, earlier.”
“Don’t laugh,” Imayoshi says warningly, “because this is the best I can come up with, unless you wanna run over to a convenience store for rope,” and he stares up at Hanamiya with flinty gray eyes till Hanamiya says,
“Fine, I won’t laugh,” and then Imayoshi bends over Seto and grabs him around the middle – despite his promise, Hanamiya has to try very hard not to laugh, because it makes for a very awkward picture, given the difference in their sizes – and hoists him up, Seto’s head hovering several inches below the edge of the dug-up grave.
“For God’s sake, Hanamiya, take him,” Imayoshi growls, sounding awfully muffled, which isn’t surprising considering how his face is currently smashed into the small of Seto’s back.
Hanamiya pretends his wavering was deliberate, kneeling and tucking his hands under Seto’s armpits – karma is a bitch, after all – and pulling, Imayoshi supporting Seto from below – but, despite all his efforts otherwise, momentum comes through and Hanamiya ends up falling gracelessly backward, with Seto’s deadweight – no puns intended - crushing the breath out of him.
He is in the midst of attempting to push Seto off when Imayoshi makes it out; Hanamiya hears him slip, curse, and barely has time to think ‘fuck it,’ when Imayoshi joins their impromptu huddle on the ground.
“Do you think you could get off, maybe?” Hanamiya tries not to sound utterly frustrated (and fails, of course); he hears Imayoshi grunt and get up; the weight on Hanamiya’s chest lessens considerably, and he is just bringing his arms up to shove Seto away when Seto blinks, shifts, and coughs into Hanamiya’s face.
“Ugh,” Seto says, and Hanamiya receives a faceful of Seto’s I-was-buried-for-twenty-seven-hours-and-just-woke-up-breath, “fuck you, Hanamiya, the fuck are you doing in my bedroom?”
In the background, Hanamiya hears Imayoshi explode into nearly-hysterical laughter.
“Fuck you, asshole,” Hanamiya gripes, and with a final, forceful shove, throws Seto off; Seto sits up, a little dazedly, looks around, eyes slowly widening.
“Fuck,” Seto breathes, “this isn’t my bedroom,” and he crosses his arms, drawing his knees to his chest, lower lip sticking out in a petulant pout – looking incredibly ridiculous, in Hanamiya’s opinion, and gives them both what is supposed to be a haughty once-over, - the effect is particularly lost on Imayoshi, who is curled up on the ground, shaking -, “whatever you assholes are doing, I don’t want any part of it,” and the utmost seriousness with which he pronounces this last statement is enough to drive Hanamiya over the edge, and he, too, doubles over with (manic) laughter.
***
Because karma truly is a bitch, the cemetery gate has only just clanged shut behind Hanamiya when a security guard, making rounds, comes up and finds them; – and although they’d left the grave looking (almost) untouched, the dirt-encrusted shovels (and clothes) along with the fact that Seto looks like the living, walking (stumbling) dead are enough of a pretext for the guard – a weary, caffeine-deprived, middle-aged officer – to take them into custody.
“Don’t you boys have better things to do than disturb the departed?” he asks, casting a look over Seto as if he can’t quite believe the boy is alive. If Hanamiya expects Seto to give the officer some sort of assurance of his status among the living, he is sorely disappointed; Seto is clutching the back of Imayoshi’s shirt and nodding off while Imayoshi tries his best not to look like a harried mother hen.
Hanamiya, sitting in the backseat of the cruiser (he fought Imayoshi for the windowseat and won) and having never been one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, takes the opportunity to fall asleep, because he might as well rest while he can.
He’s pretty sure someone up there must hate him, though, because Imayoshi promptly ends up crashing on Hanamiya’s shoulder.
At least, Hanamiya thinks sleepily, the scent of Imayoshi's shampoo - conifers - curling into Hanamiya's nose, Imayoshi hadn’t spent long enough in the cemetery to smell like a graveyard.
(And outside, it starts raining.)
***
end.