Chapter Text
“Where were you supposed to meet Ushijima to drop off the weapons?”
Silence.
The connection of a fist to Tendou’s stomach would have emptied its contents…if he hadn’t already emptied it a dozen or so hits ago. All he could do was dry heave as the pain in his abdomen exploded again. He groaned, head falling forward. His red hair hung around his face, plastered by sweat to his forehead and neck. He wished they had hit him in the face, maybe then he would have at least passed out again. They left him alone once he was unconscious.
He wasn’t that lucky.
It had been two days of this; an endless string of questions that went unanswered, followed by beatings to try to force an answer out of him. His shoulders ached from where they had him strung up, his hands tied and chained to the ceiling. The tips of his feet were barely able to find purchase on the cold concrete floor. Breathing hurt if he took too deep a breath; he was fairly certain multiple ribs were broken. His left eye was swollen to the point of nearly closing, the rest of his face numb from the beating they had given him yesterday.
Was it yesterday?
It felt like he’d been unconscious for at least a few hours but in this dark, windowless room, everything seemed to run together.
Maybe it was this morning.
“How have you found out the location of our last three shipments?” The voice growled.
More silence.
Tendou heard a frustrated grunt from somewhere to his left. He silently prayed the frustration meant he’d get bored and leave.
Unlikely.
Fingers gripped his hair hard enough to pull strands out. He tried to suppress a hiss at the sting. The hand in his hair didn’t yank or moved his head, just held him very still as he felt breathe near his ear.
“Why protect him? Is he really worth all this pain?”
The hand pushed his head down as it let go, straining Tendou’s neck.
Tendou raised his head, looking at the man before him. Cold, hard eyes started back at him, framed by sharp eyebrows that furrowed as he awaited a response. His dark t-shirt hid most of the stains that no doubt Tendou’s blood would leave when they were done. Tendou had recognized him on the first day when he’d walked in, asking the same questions he was now.
Iwaizumi Hajime, one of the inner circle members in the Oikawa gang.
Mouth set in a hard line, Iwaizumi let his shoulders relax a fraction of an inch when Tendou seemed to open his mouth to finally speak.
He did not open his mouth to speak.
When his spit landed just below Iwaizumi’s chin, Tendou’s signature grin broke out on his face despite the pain.
The next hit landed exactly where he wanted, and he sank into unconsciousness.
----
Tendou awoke on his back what felt like a few hours later. He had been let down from his suspension, but his shoulders still screamed, as did the rest of his body. His fingers gently prodded at his face to try to get a sense of the damage; some spots more tender than others, but all of it throbbed. His eye was now completely swollen shut.
I’m going to kill that fucker if I get the chance.
Tendou stared up at the concrete ceiling above him, mind still foggy with receding unconsciousness and pain, imagining what it would feel like to slit Iwaizumi’s throat and let blood pool at both their feet.
He tried his best not to move, taking shallow breaths to not irritate his ribs.
Where were you supposed to meet Ushijima to exchange the weapons?
Tendou groaned.
It was supposed to be a routine pick-up. Him and his crew had gone to the edges of the Ushijima territory for a weapons deal with a new gang, someone they were considering an alliance with apparently. But when him and his six men had rolled up to the spot, they had been met with almost twenty Oikawa gang members waiting to ambush them. They had tried to shoot their way out of it, but it was useless. After the Oikawa grunts had finally captured them, all of his men had been shot in front of him. He thought he was going to get a bullet between his eyes too for his trouble, but they had other plans for him it seemed.
How have you found the location for our last three shipments?
Everyone moved weapons, dirty money, and drugs, those were the building blocks of the underworld they all lived in. But the Oikawa gang had been known to move more than that. The Oikawa gang was one of the seedier groups lurking the streets, dealing with things that crossed certain lines, even in the underground.
People.
Disgusting.
Children.
Unforgivable.
When the first rumors had reached Tendou’s ears, he’d gone ballistic. Begged Ushijima to let him go after them, to let him slice them open with his knife. Pleaded with eyes that, to anyone else, might have looked crazed.
To Ushijima they had looked incredibly pained.
So, Ushijima had reluctantly agreed. The voice in the back of his head had told him it was a bad idea, that Tendou was too close to this to oversee such an operation. But Tendou was his right-hand man, and he trusted him. Plus, the rules had been broken. That required action.
And Tendou was a man of action if Ushijima needed him to be.
So, for the last four months Tendou had stalked the Oikawa gang. He had monitored their movements, their habits. They got their shipments every month, that much he knew already. But they were sneaky about their timing and how they got the shipment into the city.
Tendou had watched closely the first month, tailing members and tracking their movements. On the last week of the second month, he’d made a guess at where they’d be going. He gathered his men at the site he thought would be the drop-off point for the Oikawa gang, and lo and behold they had shown up. He and his men had been able to intercept a cargo container with almost 15 kids in it.
They had all been under twelve years old.
Tendou’s men had worked for him for more than five years at this point, and they thought they had known the limits to his blood thirst. Thought they had seen the extent of what he could do with a knife.
They had no idea.
Once Tendou had had the children tended to and taken care of, he had ordered his crew to bring the dozen or so men they’d captured during the raid back to base.
And then he’d ordered that no one interrupt him.
Lest they risk their health.
He’d spent the following hours inside a room not unlike the one he was in now, peeling skin from flesh and cutting flesh from bone. Torturing them while taunting them, laughing with tears in his eyes.
Tears from laughter.
Nothing else.
The following morning Ushijima had come to collect him. His men had been too frightened to cross the threshold of the room to retrieve him themselves.
Tendou sat in a puddle of blood that had soaked most of his clothes. His knife was off to the side, although other carving instruments littered the floor The concrete floor was stained red, not one patch untouched. Chunks of remains were everywhere, none of the people in the room even looked human, much less identifiable.
Tendou didn’t even have to look to know it was Ushijima.
His men would never come near him like this.
He was a monster.
When he turned to face him the tear tracks on his cheeks still looked fresh after all these hours.
He had on a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. After a moment, when Ushijima didn’t smile or say anything back, the small smile fell from Tendou’s face.
“I couldn’t stop myself,” He whispered quietly.
“I know.” Ushijima responded, just as quiet.
Tendou looked away from Ushijima, at the carnage lain out before him. His eyes were unfocused, like he was a million miles away. Remembering something from a lifetime ago.
Ushijima extended a hand to Tendou, pulling him up to his feet when he finally took it. Tendou still wasn’t looking at him, but Ushijima led him out of the blood-soaked room to a small bathroom down the hallway they had nearby for the exact purpose of cleanup.
He gently undressed Tendou, peeling the now crusty clothes and ushered him under the warm spray of the shower head. Tendou stood for a moment, eyes still unfocused as the warm water began to relax his muscles. Memories swirled in his head. Memories that made him nauseous. Made him angry. Made him murderous. Made him want to curl in on himself. He sucked in a quick breath, hoping to stave off what he knew was coming. The lump in his throat was making it hard to breathe, hard to swallow, but he tried to force it down anyway.
Don’t let it out.
Suddenly two warm arms encircled his waist from behind. He felt Ushijima gently press his forehead against the back of Tendou’s head. Their bodies pressed flush together.
Fuck.
Tendou quickly spun around in Ushijima’s arms, burying his face in the other’s neck and wrapping his long arms around him. Sobs shook his body, his wails echoing off the tile bathroom walls. Ushijima’s hand rubbed Tendou’s back, trying to soothe the pain.
“I’ll kill them all,” Tendou sobbed.
“I know,” Ushijima whispered into his hair.
After that incident, Satori had gotten very good at guessing the Oikawa gang’s shipping plans. Some of it was based on rumors and the intel they had on which locations the gang frequented, but most of it was just good old intuition on Tendou’s part. And the promise of being able to spill blood after a correct guess was too big of a prize to not have Tendou on his A-game. Ushijima still allowed him to have his way torturing the men they captured after the raids, although he did make sure to intervene before Tendou spiraled. It was stuff like this that had gotten Tendou his nickname in the gang.
Guess Monster.
It was part of what made him so useful to Ushijima. With an almost inhuman sense of intuition and unmatched bloodlust, he had become one of the most feared members of the gang. That, and his unwavering loyalty to Ushijima, made him the ultimate weapon. And Ushijima relied on him for a whole assortment of tasks.
Which is why he’d also had to go on the weapons pickup in the middle of the Oikawa operation.
Ushijima had wanted him to feel the other gang out, see if they were trustworthy for the alliance. It wasn’t supposed to be anything complicated, just grab the guns and go, spending just enough time getting a quick read on the guys to see what he thought. Tendou had an uncanny ability to get under people’s skins, to really unnerve them in a way that left them frazzled. And when people were frazzled, they made mistakes. But he didn’t even get the chance to frazzle them.
Bastards, I’ll kill them all too, when I’m done with the Oikawa gang.
Tendou grit his teeth and felt his head begin to ache and throb all over again.
The great Ushijima gang’s Guess Monster, reduced to a bleeding heap on the floor.
Tendou wished they had at least left his shirt so he could place it under his head, but he was left in just the black slacks he had been wearing days ago. His chest and back were covered in bruises of varying color, scars underneath barely visible with the different levels of discoloration. He knew they would start escalating their methods soon. They had only dragged it out because he was an upper-level member of the Ushijima gang and they’d probably thought he’d crack earlier than this.
That he wouldn’t be used to the pain.
Not quite.
Tendou smirked, then stopped when his face throbbed.
He sighed, thoughts turning to Ushijima. He would be mad about this, no doubt. Mad the deal had fallen through, mad they weren’t going to be getting the weapons, mad his men had died, mad Tendou was taken…
I’m sorry, Wakatoshi.
He could picture it now, the hard set of Ushijima’s mouth, his brows furrowed with his arms crossed over his broad chest. To anyone else, he would look terrifying, all sharp angles and threatening aura. But Tendou knew better. The tension in his shoulders, the slight crinkle of his eyes, they would betray his worry.
His concern.
Tendou’s exhausted body started to sag against the concrete, demanding more rest even though he had just woken up. He began to drift back into unconsciousness, thinking of that mouth set in a hard line quirking up just in the corners for a secret smile, just for him.