𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖

lxix - middle of the night

"Hey, I'm calling in a favor," Crow stood in an alley with his brother's body against the wall, having knocked him out hard enough to hopefully induce partial amnesia. On the phone was the only Yakuza boss in southern Miyagi. After taking down where Crow was, he sent out some of his most elite people to collect the body from him. "Make sure to deliver it to Ehime prefecture, the exact address will be in the guy's wallet," He informed him.

"Of course Crow-sama, thank you for trusting us with this," The yakuza boss said politely. "Rest assured we'll follow your directions down to the letter."

"Good. Then I'll get going," the ravenette stated, so with that, he cut the call and strode the rest of the way back to his house. When he came back through to the backyard, he witnessed as Hinata went up for a spike.

"Oh, sorry!" The setter grimaced. "It might be a bit short!" That fact didn't bother the ginger at all, considering he just hit it over left handed. Crow hummed quietly as he leaned against a post, that was pretty good. "Amazing! Nice cover, Shou!"

"Before, if the timing was off even a little bit, you started panicking," Another of the setters commented, making the ginger flush in embarressment.

"Shut up!" He huffed, then looked down as a reminicent look crossed his face. "Until now, I was spiking without giving it much thought thanks to my amazing setters. But now," He looked up with a smile. "Since everyone's techniques and quirks are different, I have to handle them all midair. Though just a little, I can see the ball better than I did before."

"Munchkin, help me out a bit over here," Ukai called as he picked some peas from the vines. The others grinned.

"The nickname went from Shrimp to Munchkin! He's been promoted!"

"Is that really a promotion?"

"Yeah it is," Crow said, making his way over to the two setters and ruffling their hair. "Good work guys, mind setting a bit for me?"

"Crow-sama!" They beamed. "Sure, we'd love to!"

"Great," He nodded, and so as Hinata and the old man talked, Crow got to do some hitting. Finally, it was time for everybody to go home, so the two residents saw their friends off before going inside the house for the night.

"Hey," Ukai suddenly spoke up, drawing a quirked eyebrow from his charge. "Something happened while you were out, didn't it?"

"Yeah," He shrugged, not seeing any point to lying since the old man was pretty good at digging the truth out of him. "Don't worry about it, it's been taken care of."

"If you say so," He squinted at him. "You really need to stop trying to take care of everything by yourself, it's okay to rely on people you know."

"Ha, yeah," His expression darkened as he turned to face Ukai fully. "The last time I did that, Tenma ended up dead. You don't care if you die, plus you're so damn insistent that I can't say no." He shook his head. "I won't rely on anyone if I can help it, and nothing you say will change that."

With that, Crow went back to his room and left Ukai reeling from all of the things he'd just heard. Sighing, he braced himself on the counter and looked up at the ceiling. "You really hit him hard, didn't you Tenma."

The next day, Keishin had everyone gather around so Takeda could talk for a bit. "Now, as it's summer vacation, we can practice from morning to night, and starting tomorrow," He beamed excitedly. "We'll resume the Tokyo away games! This time, we'll be there for a solid week! This training camp is the last and most important one before the spring tournament preliminaries. As we approach the preliminaries, to make sure we have no regrets.. let's take this opportunity to devour everything down!"

"Yessir!" The team cheered, absolutely stoked to be going and facing their rivals and strong teams at the training camp again. So, the guys were let out early so that they could get some sleep before they needed to head off.

Before any of them knew it, they were in the parking lot of Karasuno High school in front of the van they were going to be using. "Oh man!" Hinata exclaimed. "Setting off in the middle of the night is pretty exciting!"

"Oh right, you guys were late last time," Tanaka hummed.

"Being an idiot must be pretty nice," Tsukishima remarked snidely, making the two growl.

"Nandato?!"

"Shut it," Crow kicked Hinata into Tanaka, causing them to yelp and fall over.

"All right guys," Takeda stepped out of the van after getting everything situated. "We plan on getting there around dawn again," He informed them, casting a brief glance at the two scrambling to get off the ground and sweatdropping. "Ukai-kun and I will take turns driving."

"Sorry if I nod off," Keishin held up a hand in apology.

"We're counting on you sir!" Daichi said, and everyone echoed with a bow.

"Sir!"

"Ack, it's the middle of the night," Takeda flinched. "Not so loud."

"Oh, sorry," Daichi smiled sheepishly. "It's a habit.."

"Anyway, do you guys have everything?" the faculty advisor asked. "Make sure you double-check."

"Hey Crow-san," Kageyama addressed, causing the irritated player to glance his way. "Will you sit with me? I'd like to go over my progress with you."

"Sure I guess," The ravenette agreed, noting how Suga was giving Kageyama a weird look before his gaze moved to Hinata. Probably worrying about their lack of communication, Crow surmised.

"All right Ryuu! Let's show 'em what we're made of!"

"Shut up Noya."

"Oh come on, aren't you excited Crow?!"

"Not right now. Be excited when we get there."

"Awwww fine!" Nishinoya huffed.

"All right, we're heading out," Keishin told the group, and so everyone boarded the bus. On the way to Tokyo, Kageyama quietly explained how he and Keishin had come up with a way to get Hinata the set he wanted, and Crow commented here and there on improvements that could be made.

As the sun peaked over and colored the sky, the two had stopped talking and were just staring into space. Well, Crow was slumbering on Kageyama's shoulder, and Kageyama was trying not to make any movements that might wake him up. His heart was pounding hard in his chest at being this close to his crush.

He wanted to trace his face, his neck, his collarbone, his shoulders, his entire body; he wanted to memorize every dip and curve with his hands, but if he even thought about doing that, he felt like Crow might sock him. Letting out a slow breath, the setter decided to just settle for looking at him. The colors of the sky painted on Crow made him look unreal, and then Kageyama flushed as he met his eyes.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer."