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The Vice Chief drops, and everyone completely loses their shit.
Yamazaki feels himself yell too. It's easily lost in the clamour of dozens of other loudly panicking voices, belonging to guys with way less personal experience than him seeing Hijikata succumb to injury, and that snaps him out of it like a too-hard clap on the back from a rowdy drinking partner- it's uncomfortable and it gets his nerves going, but it's nothing new.
He sees Yorozuya in the near passenger seat of the car, or maybe 25% in it at this point, with a foot on the ground and most of his torso on his own knee to reach down in front of him where the man of the hour's crumpled in a heap. With the back of one of his cuffed hands, he's feeling for breath under Hijikata's nose. Yamazaki makes an easy decision.
"Hey! Boss!" he shouts, and jogs the rest of the way up. Yorozuya meets his eyes, with a blank and alert frown.
"You get his shoulders," he says, and drops to his knees at Hijikata's feet.
" How ," Yorozuya urges him, jangling his wrists loudly.
"Aw shit –" Yamazaki freezes, with a heavy leg already under his arm, glancing back and forth in dismay at the number of fucking pockets on the Mimawarigumi's shitty ripoff uniform. "I dunno where the key is."
Yorozuya sighs harshly out his mouth, and leans back into the car while Yamazaki gropes frantically around at Hijikata's dusty bloodstained clothes.
"You fuckin' guys ," he groans, pulls his knee all the way up to his own chin, and yanks his hands apart in front of him as far as they're permitted.
With sudden brutal force that makes Yamazaki's whole body jump in alarm, he locks his arms and smashes through the chain in the handcuffs with the heel of his foot, shredding bloody gouges into the flesh of his outer wrists.
"Holy shit," Yamazaki mutters, his heartbeat pounding, and they both quickly start to go about lifting Hijikata into the back seat.
Yorozuya steps all the way out and grunts over his shoulder, "Kid, go sit up front," reminding Yamazaki that frickin' Tetsu is in there too.
"Y-yes," the poor guy sniffles loudly, and the door pops open then shut on the far side.
It feels like Yorozuya does more than his fair share of the hefting, and backwards at that, but it still takes Yamazaki all of his own strength to get the unconscious deadweight of Hijikata's hips and legs far enough into the car that it won't drag him back out again. Breathless and stinging from the effort, he hurriedly leans around to check the driver's seat, beyond where Tetsu's promptly gotten himself all buckled in. It's already occupied, thank god.
Yorozuya has slid all the way over, bringing the Vice Chief's head and shoulders with him, by the time Yamazaki starts to duck inside. It's easy enough to fold Hijikata's shins out of the way and slip under them, and then all he's gotta do is pull the door shut beside him for the driver to get the engine running. He didn't get a clear look at the dude, but he's obviously someone who's been around long enough to know the deal in situations like this. That's a relief.
"Ooedo Hospital," Yamazaki tells him, just in case. "Don't bother with sirens till we hit some traffic."
That'll still be a while, considering how far outta the way this whole thing went down. There's nothing but condemned buildings and failed development out here, and no electricity on the near horizon but the tiny red pilot bulbs on high-rise cranes and radio towers. It's pitch black inside the car, now that the headlights are lit and they're on the way back to the expressway.
The miserable younger Sasaki brother, trying his darnedest not to sob too noticeably, seems like he could use something productive to do. Yamazaki rifles through the pockets on his disguise and quickly finds where he stashed his cellphone, experiencing some begrudging gratefulness that they aped the design so accurately.
"Tetsu-kun," he says.
The kid leans all the way around the seat, in total darkness, just to politely face the senpai addressing him and answer with another soggy "Yes!". Yamazaki feels an embarrassed and involuntary pang of fondness for what's become of the outrageous little shit he first met a couple weeks ago. He still can't believe what an impression Hijikata made on this punk, let alone that it was a positive one.
"Hold this open and aim it back here," Yamazaki instructs him, and hands over his phone. The oblong silhouette of Tetsu's head nods firmly, and gives a few more quiet sniffles. "We're gonna need some light."
"O-Of course! Please leave it to me!"
In Tetsu's eagerness to help he flips the device on immediately, bathing Yamazaki's wide open pupils in point blank white LED.
"Over here if ya don't mind," Yorozuya pipes up, while Yamazaki squeezes back shut the lids clothing his agonized eyeballs. "Bit lower. Yeah, hold it there."
The weight of the man draped across both their laps starts to jostle vigorously from the actions Yorozuya has begun to take, and Yamazaki recognizes that there are more important things at risk than his corneas. He takes one second longer to recover, and opens his eyes again to a much more bearable glow illuminating Yorozuya's impressively efficient efforts to disrobe Hijikata's upper half.
All the spots of blood on his clothes clearly belong to someone else, from the relatively intact state of all the expensive white fabric they're staining- the wounds causing the waxy pallor of his face must have been bandaged, and then hidden by his strategic change of wardrobe. Yamazaki had never in his life seen someone so pragmatically used to doing first-aid on their own horrific injuries, before meeting the Vice Chief; of course he'd just wrap himself up and keep on trucking, this fuckin' jackass.
Yamazaki begins to search Hijikata's legs for signs of previous treatment, quickly grabbing with both his hands in tight increments from the ankles up like he's after a concealed weapon rather than the total opposite. Nothing but skin and bone below both knees. He sucks in a breath, mentally apologizes to both Hijikata and Yorozuya, and starts moving his hands higher up.
Nearby beside him in his keenly honed peripheral vision, Yorozuya deals with those inner vest clasps so swiftly and easily that it looks like a magic trick, and Yamazaki cannot stop himself from being cognizant of the reasons for such flawless expertise. He does not imagine those reasons.
He does not picture Yorozuya taking Hijikata's clothes off in the dark.
Half way up Hijikata's right thigh he feels an odd ring of firmness making a slight concave dent in the flesh beneath the thick fabric of these expensive slacks, and his stomach plummets with dread. There’s a major artery in there and whatever field dressing he just touched felt slippery. His options for accessing the site are slim– there's nothing sharp or small enough on hand to use to make an opening, and his blade, its sheath thumping against his shoes on the floor, is entirely out of the question for its poor maneuverability as well the danger it poses in cutting too well.
... And unlike the monster in the back row of the car with him right now, who just tore the entire sleeve off that sturdily tailored captain's jacket with nothing but a spare hand and his teeth, Yamazaki has a normal human being's grip strength.
He'll have to do this the conventional way.
Sighing loudly through the terror and the dismay that reaching for Hijikata's belt buckle just naturally instills in him, as a man who would like to live into his retirement, he decides he needs to apologize out loud for this one.
"Sorry 'bout this Vice Chief," he mutters, and starts to do what he needs to do in order to administer more than just temporary, stopgap wound treatment.
His fingers, recognizing that they are engaging in actions which under any other circumstances would be unbelievably inappropriate and stupid, refuse to cooperate. They tremble, and stumble, and fail to manage a proper grip around either the belt's metal fastener or the tongue of leather speared through the pin on it.
"Need some help with that?" fucking smartass Yorozuya grins at him sidelong, with one of those myriad faces he's got that just makes you wanna pummel a few of his teeth in.
"Shut the hell up," Yamazaki snaps right back at him, and finally gets the end of this stupid belt coming loose. "You're my witness here, got it?! There's something wrong on his thigh and this is the only way I can reach it. You better corroborate me if he wakes up and sees me pantsing him right now, I swear to god. Fucking... dammit. I should've had you switch places with me before we got in."
Yorozuya just chuckles dryly. "Maybe," he says, then focuses back on his own grim tasks. He's composed enough to make ribald jokes, but thanks to Tetsu's mostly steady hand Yamazaki can see that the guy is far from unaffected by the severity of the situation on his lap. His jaw is incredibly tense, and the white of the phone screen catches the moisture of anxious sweat on his cheeks and nose.
He's twisted Hijikata a little sideways at the waist up there, to elevate the shoulder he's got gripped tightly between two bunches of that sleeve he tore. Entry wound and exit wound, contributing to matching dark stains. With the jacket that sleeve came from fully removed, what must be Hijikata's original button-up is covered in evidence that the injury Yorozuya has chosen to focus on is the correct one: its entire left side is soaked through, and the shirt has even begun to stain up to its starched collar in the opposite direction of the wound with nowhere else for its results to easily absorb.
With his clothes all parted in the centre down to his bare skin, it's clear that Hijikata avoided taking any of Sasaki the elder's bullets where it would have meant certain damage to his vital organs. Yamazaki is ready to feel relieved by that , at the very least, as he starts to shimmy Hijikata's loosened slacks past his hips to deal with the potential damage site in his own jurisdiction.
... until his hands make contact with the undergarment revealed by this process, and he instantly recognizes the sticky warmth of fresh blood, saturated copiously enough throughout the fabric to wet his knuckles in just a second.
" Fuck ,” he spits, horrified and appalled, largely at his own carelessness. He wrenches both his hands away to pull all of those clothes up top wider apart, scanning frantically for something either of them could have missed.
"What's wrong," Yorozuya presses, easily detecting the urgency of the present moment. Yamazaki feels the pair of eyes on him sharpen so intensely that his instincts want to perceive a physical threat.
No oozing exit wounds, not even a bruise, nothing —
"–His back," Yamazaki realizes, reaches around to check, and instantly recoils with a despairing groan and a smeared palm.
Yorozuya reacts immediately, telling Yamazaki "Help me turn 'im over, don't let him slide off".
The stark, pale beam of electric light cast from the front passenger seat starts to wobble as the two of them brusquely coordinate to roll Hijikata around in their cramped surroundings. The sound of Tetsu's barely restrained weeping begins to fill the car.
Yamazaki feels a strange distant numbness begin to overtake his mind, following one realization: if he's been shot in the kidney then the Vice Chief is going to die tonight, and there's simply nothing anyone can do to prevent it. It's already too late.
Once they've got him face-down into Yorozuya's knees, the guy wastes no time on caution wrenching both layers of clothing up past Hijikata's shoulder blades. It reveals a long, diagonal laceration that continues to bleed sluggishly in clots; using his bare hand Yorozuya quickly wipes through the trails on both sides, to expose further injury potentially hidden by all the blood, or discover it by touch–
–and then visibly sags in obvious relief, with a gigantic sigh.
"Just a sword cut," he says, reaching for the jacket leftovers that've been half-buried under Hijikata's waist from all the commotion in the meantime. "Not even that deep."
Yamazaki lets out his own breath, shakily in spite of himself. No matter how used to it you get, you never really get used to this stuff.
"Wanna double check?" Yorozuya asks him, with a quick glance and a handful of gruesomely sour and coppery-smelling worsted fabric. The interior lining on the thing's probably a swimming pool, ugh...
"Nah," sighs Yamazaki, feeling a little faint from the thought of what this car's gonna look like under decent light. "Just hurry and do your thing over there, so I can get back to pulling my boss' pants down," he grimaces.
A low “hah” answers him. Yorozuya pulls his fist full of jacket all the way over to his lap, dumping a substantial amount of dark, thick liquid with no uncertain properties on to the cushions along the way, just like Yamazaki thought would happen. There's so much it sounds like someone dropped their milkshake. Yamazaki's stomach lurches.
If it's already clotting then the gash can't be too awful, on the bright side. Its surface area, not to mention that other wound nearby, are probably what's to blame for this horror show. Yamazaki's more worried about the leg he hasn't seen yet, and readily follows Yorozuya's lead to get Hijikata turned over again so his own weight can provide stanching pressure.
"Alright, show me your technique already then hot stuff," Yorozuya immediately hits him with, the second he's back to his two-handed attention on that shoulder. Yamazaki gags on his own saliva.
He's saying that kinda shit in front of the driver? And Tetsu ???
Yamazaki's annoyance quickly overcomes his shock, as he starts once more to pull at the waistband of Hijikata's slacks.
"I'm sure it's got nothing on yours, boss ,” he leers sideways at Yorozuya, and finally gets these stupid fucking pants down past the crotch area where he can safely just shove at them without having to worry about touching anything.
"Hmmmmmm," Yorozuya just drawls. Yamazaki has more important things to do than check, but he wouldn't need to anyways to know exactly the face this jackass is pulling at him. "'fraid I can't divulge. I got more than just my position to consider, as Jimmy-kun is well aware."
"I don't wanna know about anyone's positions thanks," Yamazaki grumbles.
So expressing himself he finally unearths the source of that concerning texture he felt earlier, wrapped around the midpoint of Hijikata's right thigh:
A sock.
Stretched to the limit of its smooth elastic cotton weave, and tied off tightly in front with the opening and the toe. A second sock is held snug underneath it, packed deeply enough into whatever wound it's concealing that the visible bits are barely stained at all. Yamazaki had expected to find a quantity of bloodshed to rival the deluge inside that horrid jacket, but the inner lining of the trousers mostly sports some thin smears coming from those other injuries and the work of gravity, far as he can tell.
The Vice Chief's more at risk of losing this leg to gangrene, the way he’s tied that makeshift tourniquet of his, than he is of bleeding out from it.
And he just kept on running around on this. The pain must've been unimaginable.
What a fuckin' lunatic.
Yamazaki allows himself five quick seconds, slumping all the way back into the car seat, to close his eyes and just properly breathe .
And then he decides he better check for an exit wound, just in case.
"Thought I saw him limpin'," Yorozuya mutters. "Hey, you're gonna check the back of that, right?"
"I am already, you control freak. Just keep your hands full."
"Wow, well I guess if I've got Jimmy-kun's blessing–"
Yamazaki staunchly ignores the amount of cheesy innuendo positively dripping from this idiot's words.
He does his best to just allow himself, passively and graciously, to be watched by the Vice Chief's annoying goddamn sweetheart as he rolls his trousers all the way down to his ankles to get better maneuverability on the injured leg. He shifts Hijikata's thighs apart, gets a hand under the knee of the affected limb, and with some effort lifts it high enough for a clear view of the dressing on the underside.
He is avidly, dreadfully aware that the guy sitting directly beside him and spectating right now has performed all of these exact same actions on this exact same man, to all sorts of different ends with different body parts. He considers doing a tuck and roll on to the asphalt.
Yorozuya gives him a low, lurid whistle. Yamazaki changes his mind: this asshole should be the one taking a dive out of the car.
There's no hint of an exit wound whatsoever, which is its own relief. It means there's likely still a bullet packed inside there, though. Yamazaki decides he'll just keep this leg bent up over his lap, to avoid agitating the shrapnel lodged in it any more than he might have already. He gets both his hands into a more stabilizing grip, one at the shin and the other up at the side of the raised knee.
"Good job, Tetsu-kun," he sighs. The phone light's been pitching around for some time now, with the force of Tetsu's distraught crying, but it was way better than nothing.
"I got one more thing you can help with, while you've got the phone open. Find Ooedo on speed dial– it should be in the top five– and let 'em know their favourite customers are on the way. With a whoooooole lotta friends following."
The amount of people injured tonight will probably fill an entire floor of the hospital. Feels like the Shinsengumi should just spring for a permanent reservation, at this point.
"Huh. Nice friends ya got there," snits Yorozuya.
"Back atcha," Yamazaki retorts.
His answer is just a brief "hmph". There's no real venom in the exchange, though. They both know if Yorozuya hadn't been ready in the corner for those stupid punks, getting out of that mess without fatalities would've been impossible. For hardly the first time, Yamazaki is silently thankful and awed toward the boss here's incredible knack for just being where he needs to be, and aware of his own job’s totally farcical true nature.
"Uh– um, Yamazaki-senpai," Tetsu addresses him through some sniffles and hiccups. He's still facing the back row, and with Edo's nighttime skyline quickly approaching in front of them at last his big ole watery eyes are quite literally sparkling with innocence and apprehension, along with all the teardrops. "In... in those exact words? Or…"
Cripes, this kid...
"No, not in those exact —" Yamazaki sighs again, and reminds himself this is Tetsu's first real foray into the type of violence his new job's gonna be exposing him to. If he's really set on sticking with it, like he said he was.
"Just say there's several dozen injured en route, with sword and gun wounds. They've probably already gotten calls for some ambulances. They know my number, they'll know what's up. Don't worry too much."
"Yessir!!!"
The last part's a little rich, coming from him. The way he saw that terrifying girl with the oodachi plowing through the poor chumps in her way, Yamazaki's not so convinced the incident will actually resolve, when all's said and done, without any deaths. Those guys better be getting priority, back at the site. Maybe he'll have Tetsu call up Kondou-san and double check, when he's done with the hospital.
As he hears the guy stammering and trembling into the receiver up there, though, he decides against it. Tetsu's gonna have to get used to this sorta thing, especially if the one he's so dead set on attending to is the crazy fuck sprawled out back here covered in his own blood– but it doesn't need to happen all at once. The Chief knows how to handle things, on his end. Yamazaki determines that everyone in the car right now is doing exactly what they need to be doing.
Apart from the patient himself, who should be obediently continuing his rest; who instead has suddenly begun to stir with a loud halting gasp, which turns into a cough.
Guess it was about time for this. He just never, ever manages to stay down for long, does he.
The Vice Chief's always quick to regain his faculties, from whatever fucked up cocktail mix of adrenaline, keenly honed spatial awareness and plain old survival instinct always gets him back up and going. He doesn't always swing wildly the second his lights are back on, but the fact that he's prone and vulnerable right now in a markedly different environment than the one he passed out in does not fill Yamazaki with reassurance.
He could not be more perfectly poised to receive a knee to the face.
Yamazaki easily makes his peace with a broken nose, but... it never arrives.
"Yo, what's up Sleeping Beauty," Yorozuya laughs down at the groggily wincing man on his lap, his voice quiet.
Hijikata groans a little, and his whole body goes rigid- Yamazaki feels it seize up all the way down to the shoe held in place on his knee.
"Hey hold still, will ya? I don't wanna get yelled at by a buncha nurses for not keeping consistent pressure on your bleedin' ass."
"–My- khngh -"
The passing panels of fluorescent light that the car has started to encounter illuminate Hijikata's gritted teeth and furrowed brow in gaudy red and yellow. His eyes peer open beneath his deep frown, but focus only on the back of the leather seat at his nose before falling shut again. He sighs out more deeply through his nose, and then the strain drawing his body taut begins to slowly ebb, though the amount of pain he's visibly suffering will prevent it from disappearing much more.
"My ass isn't what's bleeding, stupid."
"Tell that to the state of your boxers right now, hah."
Hijikata huffs a tight single laugh from behind his lips.
Yamazaki feels no need to contribute to the conversation. Doesn't really know where to look, either, suddenly. His skin prickles with itchy awkward sweat.
"... Why’re my pants off," Hijikata mutters, and Yamazaki decides the view out his window is pretty interesting.
"You got shot in the leg, remember? Stuuuuu pid."
He's acting pretty smug, for someone who never even saw it happen. Though the results speak well enough for themselves.
“Right,” Hijikata breathes out quickly, voice clipped short by an audible amount of tension. A very shaky, hard sigh forces its way shortly thereafter, before he can stop it from coming, sounding thick.
“Hey, quit yapping already,” is how Yorozuya interjects– before Yamazaki can start getting fully stressed out about how to try calming down the bleeding guy on their laps, who regularly skips right over the part of being gravely injured where he experiences shock, he’s so freaking used to it by now.
Yamazaki always gets brushed off right around here, and then he usually ends up having to try to physically grapple his stupid fucking boss out of just getting back up and walking himself to the emergency room.
None of that happens this time. Hijikata, though he continues to shudder with suppressed discomfort, anxiety and pain, continues to lay prone across the legs of both Yamazaki and the guy he seemed ready and eager to nail for collusion before he wiped out back there.
“Mh,” he grunts through his nose, and says nothing more.
“Yeah yeah,” Yorozuya mumbles down at him, openly placating.
From the negligible amount of road traffic they’ve encountered even this far into the city, the night’s altercations must’ve taken them all well into the early morning. Yamazaki has nearly reached a state of calm, ready to help the waiting paramedics get ahold of their new burden in probably the next five minutes or so, when it appears that Tetsu can no longer contain himself as he’s so admirably managed for the duration of their fun little road trip.
“Hi- Hijikata-san-n-n-nn ,” he sobs, snotty and hoarse, and quite loud. Yamazaki can’t bring himself at all to begrudge the poor guy his catharsis, after the time Tetsu’s just had. He’s got no siblings of his own, but doesn’t need to imagine too hard what it might feel like to be so thoroughly left for dead by one.
“These– all these t-terrible injuries-s,” Tetsu cries, his voice cracking, reminding Yamazaki that although the phone light’s been off for some time now, nobody here has gotten a better look at all the gore in the back seat than the kid least equipped by a long shot to be seeing it.
Shit… that might have been a mistake. Is he gonna be okay?
“All be-because of me , I, how– how can I-? ”
Immediately, there’s a much bigger problem than the new guy’s mental state: Hijikata has been behaving for a record amount of time now, but there is no way in hell he’s taking that one lying down.
Yamazaki feels the energy collecting in the limbs held in place across his knees, and knows beyond doubt even before any of the power in them comes to bear that this motherfucker is gonna try sitting up. He groans in dismay, and commits to one final attempt at course correction.
“Tetsu-kun, I know it’s tough but right now is really not the time–”
“Come on dude, we just got him to chill out back here,” Yorozuya barks at precisely the same moment. Yamazaki is flattered by the “we”, though he thinks it’s far too much credit.
The uninjured leg splayed across Yamazaki’s knees makes a sluggish kick into the door for leverage, and the briefest moment of struggle takes place to his immediate right, accompanied by a thin gasp of exertion. The force applied by both of Yorozuya’s arms down to his grip around that problem shoulder manage to keep Hijikata anchored, happily. Yamazaki has changed his mind from earlier, feeling exceptionally relieved that he’s not the one dealing with the upper half. He’d be a smear on the back window by now.
“M’not gonna die , just let me–” Sounding horribly strained and breathless from just one attempt at full-body movement, Hijikata growls unhappily from atop Yorozuya’s knees with the obvious intention of trying again.
“You can talk lying down , asshole! He can hear you just fine up there, I freakin’ promise you. Right, little bro?”
Tetsu is still far too overcome to keep up with the usual speed of Yorozuya’s repartee, and provides no answer but more wet sniffling and a nod. Hijikata can’t see it, obviously, face-to-face with the back of a car seat as he still is despite his best efforts. He begins to squirm again.
“Hey hey hey, he nodded, dammit, just stay put . You got me on this, Jimmy? You saw it too.”
“I did, Vice Chief.” Yamazaki is glad to provide confirmation, almost as much as he’s glad to be the backup on this kind of op instead of the spearhead for once. No matter how annoying hearing that stupid nickname is.
Another dissatisfied, belaboured noise comes out of the damn Vice Chief’s mouth up there, but he makes no further efforts towards thrashing himself into a pointlessly early grave at least.
“Fine,” he says. “Tetsu, listen–”
Tetsu, and everyone else in the car, listens.
“Was gonna kick your brother’s ass anyways.” Another long, shaky breath, while he steels himself anew for the effort of gritting through syllables. “Had it coming. Piece of shit– no offense.”
“ Seriously , no kiddin’.” Interjecting, again, with suspiciously compassionate timing, Yorozuya is emphatic to back up the main point at play, that being ‘Sasaki Isaburou is a dick’. Yamazaki had plenty of ammunition ready in the chamber himself, though it looks like it won’t be needed. Hijikata seems thoroughly exhausted just from delivering those two sentences. He did at least economize them pretty well.
“The guy texts like such a freak, he is so clingy and weird. You don’t need to be like that, got it? Give people some fuckin’ space from their stupid phones, Jesus. Like, it’s not the end of the whole stinkin’ world if you don’t respond to a guy two seconds after he says ‘hi’ with a kaomoji after it! Take this shit to heart!”
“M–mm,” Tetsu nods earnestly after a confused beat, ever the apt student, lately. “Un–” he sniffles again, “understood.”
“Good. Class dismissed.”
From a professional standpoint, Yamazaki is continually impressed by the boss’ ability to dominate a conversation with nothing at his disposal but bullshit. Observing and listening are his own main tools of the trade, but there’s something to be said for the divertive capacity of loudly complaining about stuff that barely matters.
If he ever needs to take a more proactive approach to his undercover work, there’s definitely something to this, and he’s already thought so before. Though he’ll probably need some practice first; he’s never been too good at the interfacing part. Developed too much natural skill at going unnoticed, maybe.
The car settles back into silence just like that.
As automatic as it simply is, his adherence to these two priorities– observe, and listen– nets Yamazaki a front row seat to something he is absolutely not meant to be party to.
If you’re spying on purpose, it’s the ideal situation. But he’s not right now, so it really, really is not.
Hijikata has been admirably doing his part to stay still, but in a jostling vehicle and a very awkward, twisted pose meant to keep his injuries isolated, which certainly cannot be supported by a seatbelt, there’s only so much he can control. The right side of the car dips violently twice in rapid succession as it encounters one of Edo’s numerous potholes at speed, and he’s almost lifted off his side for a moment from the disturbance. He’s left tense and wincing, after multiple impacts to his very freshly torn up body. A tiny, bitten-off whimper escapes the resolute clench of his jaw.
Yorozuya shifts his grip, widening one hand to encompass its stanching capabilities (and likely reducing them) while he removes the other. He places it on the side of Hijikata’s head, behind his ear, loosely splayed and clearly telegraphing its intent to remain. There’s the quiet noise of a sigh. Neither of them speaks.
Yamazaki feels all the blood in his body rise up to his face, his back and underarms already clammy and hot from embarrassment.
This is worse than those drunk voicemails. The ones he had to sit through before Hijikata had a page, when he was the guy checking messages on the Vice Chief’s work phone. Where Yorozuya was shitfaced and annoyed and probably horny on the other line, complaining in great detail how he felt like a pregnant wife, left at home alone to the doom of frigidity.
Somehow this is just… a hundred times more intimate. Yamazaki doesn’t need to be around for this. This sucks, for him.
He’s gone unobserved third wheeling at least. And mercifully soon he’s directing the guy in the driver’s seat to just pull into the ambulance drop-off lane where they’re expected, well ahead of the main convoy.
Disembarking is total chaos, naturally. Getting one look at the splatterfest in the back row, in the grim clarity of the entrance bay’s overhang pool lights, all the EMTs prudently assume that it’s the three of them rather than just one who needs to be carted off to surgery ASAP. They determine real quick who’s the most urgent case though, and get Hijikata traded out of the car on to a gurney with limited debate. Two pairs of hands, wearing sterilized gloves, transfer his weight off of Yorozuya’s lap.
He still seems pretty lucid throughout the process, which involves far less arguing and struggling than usual. It’s clear, now, to what extent all his previous fussing has exhausted him; he’s nearly grey in the face and whatever exposed skin isn’t smeared with blood is shining with fresh perspiration. Without craning his neck to look, he raises an arm on to its elbow and implies the typical gruff “see ya later” with his open palm. Yamazaki waves back, and they take him away expeditiously.
Yamazaki easily hoists himself off the triage hook, once he’s fully out of the car too and has given the designated driver the all clear to head around to the parking lot, just by dressing down from his full ripoff whites and shedding most of the bloodstains along with ‘em. Yorozuya is not so lucky, on the other hand– his demeanour is not terribly calm all of a sudden, and the absolutely gruesome amount of runoff sunken into his own disguise is a bad match for all the genuine bits of dusty roughed up skin he’s still wearing from his part in the fight. He’s even managed to get some blood in that clip-on ponytail. People in hospitals really don’t mess around with potential head injuries, so there’s nothing Yamazaki can do to vouch for his physical wellbeing.
“Hey, hey you backstabbing shit, don’t you ignore me–”
Yup, nothing to be done. What good’s the testimony of a rank-and-file kinda guy like him?
“Sorry boss, can’t help ya,” he shrugs, watching at a distance as Yorozuya elbows an increasing number of doctor-like people from his various draggable parts. “I’m not medically certified. My word’s got no weight here.”
“It’s gonna have even less after I get my hands on– god, okay, quit tuggin ’ on me already. You guys wanna see me naked that bad, huh?! All you gotta do is ask!”
He starts angrily pulling his haori open, and at this point Yamazaki has no reason to keep his focus split. If Yorozuya’s already this antsy to sit around in the hall waiting while the Vice Chief gets himself sewn back together, it’d serve him far better to just cooperate and get examined. He doesn’t need a chaperone while he figures it out.
In the meantime, a thoroughly shaken and roughed up Tetsu has been obediently escorted to his own examination. Yamazaki was sure to shoot him some meaningful eye contact, and what he hopes was a comforting expression, but he’s still got plans to check up on him again when he’s got the chance. For now, he wants to be on hand when the ambulances start rolling in– some of the guys need a bit of… translation, when they’re exposed to the public sector.
Yeah… this particular work day’s not due to end for some time.
* * *
All said and done, it’s past 08:30 by the point Yamazaki finds more than two minutes to spare. He’s drank three canned coffees from three separate vending machines, the morning light feels way too yellow to every single part of his body that it reaches, and the second he hits a futon he’s either gonna violently collapse into a billion shaky little molecules or sleep for 48 hours uninterrupted, or maybe just instantly die and ascend to King Yama’s office queue.
It’s somehow still… still not the time for that, though, so here he finds himself. Dim, windowless corridor, two benches along the wall, both of them occupied, surprisingly.
“Oh. Hey, Zaki. You here for the big day too?”
“Mo–” a calamitous yawn cracks his face in half the second he opens his mouth, and it takes a big handful of seconds longer to recover. “Morning, Sougo-kun. What big day, again?”
Is it a civic holiday, or something? That’d be nice…
“The day Hijikata-san finally kicks the bucket. Got a good feeling about this one.”
The First Squad captain, in all his easy youthful vigour, looks to have escaped his own examination without losing a single article of clothing. He’s got a band-aid on his cheek, and his original black uniform is spotted all over with dust, but surprising no one whatsoever the Shinsengumi’s ace swordsman has once more audaciously courted death and then left it on read.
Yamazaki can’t help but worry that it’s gonna catch up to him… beyond the usual sleeping mask pinning his hair askew where he’s pushed it back up again, though, Sougo seems the same as ever.
The way he shows his concern has definitely not matured.
“Sure he’s glad to have you in his corner, kid,” mutters Yorozuya with his own wide yawn. Since the last time Yamazaki saw him, he’s managed an entire wardrobe change. Threadbare grey sweatpants, plastic sandals, and a flaky graphic tee about 2 sizes too small that looks like it once advertised a now-discontinued flavour of sports drink. He definitely stole all three from the lost and found.
Ditched the hair extension, too. Yamazaki’s not even the one fucking the guy and he’s still willing to admit, at least to himself, that the boss wore it way too well. Looked almost dashing. It was disturbing.
They’re partially obscured by the way he’s got his forearms resting on his thighs, but the gnarly injuries he gave himself getting out of those cuffs have been properly tended to at last. He reeks of iodine even feet away, and he’s sporting two thick rolls of gauze around both wrist joints where they hang between his legs. If he’s in pain at all, it visibly bothers him far less than the state of events in the nearby OR, whose indicator is still lit up in red.
Groggily staring down at the vicinity of Yorozuya’s hands as he presently is, the image comes back to Yamazaki unbidden: one set of fingers planted in the Vice Chief’s dark hair, the pinky on the far end slowly brushing back and forth in its rigid attempts to soothe.
He feels his face getting red again.
“You starin’ at my dick, buddy? Yeah, uh… Look, I’m flattered, but between you n’ me and the kid here, I’m already spoken for. Sorry.”
Yamazaki decides to wait for news somewhere else.