Chapter 1: Sugawara Koushi Is A Very Tired Man
-.-.-
"Please let me take the night off. I'm so tired, you have no idea, I can't do another damned job tonight—"
"It's easy," Kiyoko reassures him. Suga groans against the tabletop; he's sprawled across it horizontally, as if that will make him seem more pathetic. Well, it probably does, but Kiyoko famously is the most unyielding person he knows. Others could call her a cold bitch, and maybe she could be one, if she weren't so horrifically (and quietly) devoted to people and causes. Just, like, two of them. Suga may be one of the two.
She walks around his outstretched arms, ignoring his whine, and rummages around in a cabinet. She pulls out a mason jar of something greenish and opaque. Suga narrows his eyes in suspicion when she opens it and offers it to him.
"What," he says. He wrinkles his nose because wow, that is foul. His stomach churns.
"It will help replenish some of your magic. You won't be so tired," she tells him tonelessly and Suga wants, so badly, to go back to thinking she's a cold-hearted tyrant. But god, Kiyoko is giving him one of her homemade concoctions, free, just so he'll feel better.
He wants to cry. Partially because he's touched, mostly because he's still so goddamn tired. Magic isn't a cure-all, especially for him.
But Suga drinks it. It somehow tastes even worse than it smells and he wants to immediately throw it back up, but he's gotten good at fighting his gag reflex through the years of doing supernatural clean-up jobs. He has to, when everything smells like blood or shit or rot or puke or if he's especially lucky, all of them.
"Don't drink all of it," Kiyoko advises, and Suga jumps because he had been about to do just that. The jar's about halfway empty already. His throat feels coated in something thick and unpleasant, and whatever the green stuff was, it sits like lead in his stomach.
"I'm going to throw this back up," he says, half-hoping it's true, so he can go back to whining and rolling around on her countertop. But the potion's already forcing feeling back into his fingers and toes, and while he still feels like it's half a bottle of cheap vodka in his stomach, Suga does feel better. Which should say a lot for his condition.
"It's a very easy job tonight," Kiyoko says. He hates how he can hear the sympathy in her tone. "There is a spirit haunting someone. It wasn't a call-in."
"How malevolent are we talking?"
"That's why it's easy. It isn't."
Suga rolls over onto his back so he can look up at her. He's about boob-height, however, and immediately regrets his decision. Kiyoko stares impassively down at his red cheeks. "Why is this spirit haunting someone if it's not malevolent?" he asks, averting his eyes from the rather magnificent bosom in front of him.
"It's a human spirit, but it doesn't behave like one. Investigate that. I know the person will be at this address tonight, since he'll be going for a walk, and it's the best chance you have at figuring out what's going on and guiding the spirit toward peace."
Ah, yes, Peace. Fucking Peace. Peace is the other cause Kiyoko is hopelessly devoted towards, and Suga knows arguing with her is a lost cause. So he pushes himself off the table, tries not to puke, and grabs his bag from the post by the door. Spirits are easy. Usually. At least, he trusts Kiyoko to be a good judge of them. She's the best psychic he knows, which, admittedly, is all of three people, but she's very thorough and has good intuition.
The night is foggy, the horror movie kind of fog, and Suga pulls his coat tighter around himself while he waits for the poor sap to walk by. The streetlights are hazy overhead, blotches of softened light, and really, he shouldn't be out in such fog. No one should. He wants to go home, curl up with Sunshine, and sleep for twenty hours.
It's getting late and he's worried about missing this guy in the thick fog when he hears someone approaching from behind. Suga whirls around, narrowly avoiding hitting himself in the face with his own scarf, and finds two figures in the fog.
He really shouldn't have been worried about missing them.
The normal figure seems to be a teenage boy, pathetically dressed considering the chill and damp weather, messy-haired and freckled. The figure behind him looks like one of the streetlights in human form; it's glowing, gold, light diffused by the fog and making it seem actually very pretty. Suga would have thought angel if he couldn't smell the gross ghost smell from there.
"Ah—hey, excuse me!" Suga calls with a wave. The teenager jumps like a startled cat. Suga instantly feels the spirit's attention on him. He steps over to them, eyes raking over the spirit, which certainly doesn't look like a human spirit.
"C-Can I help you?" the freckled boy asks, sounding half-afraid. The spirit behind him bristles at Suga.
"Um, actually, yes? My phone's dead, and with all of this fog, I've gotten turned around, and I'm a little lost," he says with a cheery smile plastered on his face, but his eyes are on the spirit. Its glow dampens a little when it seems to realize that Suga can see it.
"Oh, uh… I think we're on Cherry Street?" They are not. The spirit touches the boy's shoulder and Suga lurches toward him on reflex. The boy doesn't notice, doesn't react at all, except for digging around in his pocket. "Oh, thank god, my phone still has a charge. Let me boot up my GPS…"
Suga drops his hand at the same time the spirit does. They regard each other over the boy's shoulder. He begins to think he's figured out what's going on, but he doesn't like it. A regular haunting would be easier. And safer.
"What are you doing," he murmurs, voice low, almost a growl.
"Huh?" the boy squeaks, jumping, clutching his phone like a lifeline.
Suga reaches over and grabs the spirit. The gold glow falls away like water, revealing a far more human-looking spirit underneath. It's a boy, too, looking like a teenager—Suga's heart clenches—but with blond hair and glasses and the most affronted expression he's ever seen on a ghost.
The blond spirit glares at him and starts up its—his—gold glow again. Suga reaches for him again, to dispel it, but he jerks back with a silent snarl.
"Are you okay?" the freckled boy asks, backing away from him.
Shit. Suga is so tired, ugh. He groans and gropes around in his beat-up messenger bag, until he finds a paper envelope. He knew he was forgetting something, but the boy is quiet and he's so shocked to see such a young spirit acting like that, but this was a dumb mistake. He rips the paper open and blows the powder inside at the freckled boy. His eyelids flutter. Kiyoko's own sleep soot powder, ninety-eight percent effective.
The boy crumples, but the spirit catches him—actually keeps him upright, and the messy-haired boy manages to shake himself awake again. "Wh-What the… hell…?" he mumbles and it's hard to miss the anger rolling off of the spirit in waves.
"You're trying to turn into a luck spirit!" Suga accuses, jabbing his finger at the gold glow. Before the freckled teen (poor soul, having to put up with all of this) can fully wake up again, Suga draws a ward on the space between them and commands, "Sleep."
The drain is instantaneous. His knees wobble and he stumbles forward, shit, but the boy is unconscious and he's free to confront the spirit openly.
Except the world tilts, already out of focus because of the fog, and Suga's last thought before he passes out is oh god I fucked up Kiyoko's going to kill me for wasting her magic potion. He glimpses the would-be luck spirit leaning over him before his eyes slide shut.
-.-.-
"I've told you not to use magic anymore," Tooru sings. God, he sounds so pleased with himself. Suga himself feels like he has the world's worst hangover. Tooru knows that, too, which is why he's making a racket in his kitchen, banging pots and clinking glasses together. "I told you, I told you~"
"Yes, you did," Suga wearily agrees and wonders if this is hell. Maybe he's finally fucking died.
"You shouldn't be using magic," Kiyoko says and sips at her tea. She doesn't sound particularly disappointed or angry, but Suga pulls the blanket up over his head and hides from her anyway. He's definitely in hell. It's one thing to deal with Tooru and his noise, and another to deal with Kiyoko after he's messed up a job, but together?
"Can I go back to sleep," Suga begs. His hands are numb, he can't feel anything below his knees, he's terrifyingly cold all over, and frankly, he's not sure his heart is still beating. He wants to sleep for a week straight.
"You need to drink something," Kiyoko says lightly.
He hopes she means tea. Hell, he'd take that disgusting green concoction again over what he knows is coming.
"Please," he whimpers.
"It's your own fault!" Tooru announces and flounces back out into his living room. He has a teapot that Suga knows doesn't house tea inside. He definitely wants to cry. He regrets ever giving either of them access to his research. "Please, tell me how you managed to do this," Tooru says with inappropriate cheer and Suga groans. That's his I Know You Fucked Up And I Want You To Admit It voice. He has a lot of very useful, very specific voices and facial expressions.
"It was just a sleep spell, a very basic one," Suga guiltily mumbles through the blanket. "The ghost haunting him is trying to become a luck spirit. He's doing a pretty good job so far, because the kid was still awake after Kiyoko's sleep soot."
"Oooh," Tooru coos, chin in his hands. "So you tried to knock the kid out and end up knocking yourself out. What a rookie mistake~"
"Yes," he says miserably.
"Drink up," Kiyoko tells him and pours him a drink in one of Tooru's silly teacups. The drink steams, and it's not from the heat. Suga can practically taste the magic in the air, and it's not the pleasant kind that she normally works with.
"The ingredients are very hard to get hold of, especially on such short notice, you know," Tooru says with a sharp smile. Kiyoko nods seriously and takes another sip of her own tea. Suga watches the movement, jealous. "No, you can't chase it with tea," Tooru adds.
Suga fixes him with his best glare. At least he doesn't laugh at him for it. "Use that clairvoyance of yours to look for the luck spirit, not read me."
"I want you to drink the whole teapot," Kiyoko says simply, interrupting any chances for a spat.
"Hell would be better than this," Suga moans.
He recites formulas and spells in his mind as he picks up the cup with trembling fingers. Anything to distract himself. It barely works. The liquid is hot over his tongue, coppery and sweet, vibrating with energy. It moves down his throat as if it has a mind of its own, and he nearly chokes on it, but he doesn't want to have to drink this twice. He throws the rest of it back like the world's worst shot, ignoring the burning in his throat and nose. It's too much to gulp down in one go and he splutters, coughing, and is pretty sure he manages to snort some out his nose.
Kiyoko hands him a napkin.
Suga sneezes and if it hadn't been in his nose before, it definitely is now. He can feel a nosebleed start, which is great, because the thing he needs right then is more blood dribbling down his chin.
"I added mint. Did it help at all?" Tooru asks. He has that fake smile of his on, but there is something sincere in his tone, so Suga doesn't throw his teacup at his face.
"Don't—eugh—mess with the recipe," he chokes out. "You have—urp—no magical talent."
"Ready for another cup?" Kiyoko asks, already taking his cup from him to refill. She slides it back over to him and he struggles with the prospect of having another. "It's a small teapot. There's probably just this and one more cup. You can do it."
This is what he means by horrifically devoted. She could be the author of How To Care For Your Very Own Sugawara Koushi: Second Edition. Suga's head pounds, thrumming right behind his eyes, and his sinuses burn like he'd been snorting purifying salt. No, stop thinking that, don't give them any ideas.
Suga actually does feel a couple tears leak out during the second cup. He puts on a bit of a show, gagging and coughing, and they pretend to buy it. Suga wheezes and presses the back of his hand to his mouth. His leans back against the couch, eyes on the ceiling. His body feels overly hot, and sort of pin-prickly, like he's been sleeping weirdly. Wow, he wishes he had been sleeping instead.
He avoids looking at the fourth figure in the room.
He manages to not look at it through all of his final cup. He's probably fully crying by that point, but neither psychic remarks upon that, and they let him pass out on the couch again. Suga squeezes his eyes shut against the black silhouette leaning over him.
-.-.-
A full week later, and they still can't find the kid with the luck spirit wannabe. Spirits trying to change their forms are bad news, even if this seems like a positive case on the surface, but they simply can't track him down. He's too lucky. Whenever Kiyoko manages to get a lock on him, he misses Suga when he arrives there. When Oikawa points out where he is, Kiyoko's clueless, and Suga doesn't have time to get there.
They enlist help from another pair of hunters, but more hands don't make for easier work. It doesn't help that Suga still feels like death warmed over. He'd really thought he could handle a simple sleep spell, too, even if he'd been exhausted. It's embarrassing in hindsight.
And there's still other work to do in the meantime. Mostly easy escorts for lost spirits (and an aggressive (and also lost) kelpie). Suga's not the fighter Kiyoko or Oikawa hire; he's there for finding and herding dead things. If they want brute strength, they can ask the Tanaka siblings or Nishinoya.
Suga stops at a bookstore on the way home from dealing with a particularly stubborn kikimora, intent on finding a mythology book to give to Tooru. Because someone needs to learn how to better warn others when sending them off to banish house spirits. Especially house spirits that can abuse sleep magic. Is Suga ever not going to feel exhausted? The answer looks to be a resounding no.
"Uh, excuse me. Is there anything I can help you find?"
Suga hardly looks up at the new voice, but when he does, he does a double-take. Smooth. The man standing across the aisle from him is something. Tall and built and handsome and Suga feels his mouth go try at his warm, dark brown eyes. He's normally pretty easily impressed when it comes to attractive people, okay, he'll be the first to admit that. You'd think years of hanging out with Shimizu Kiyoko and Oikawa Tooru would build up his immunity, but if anything, they've weakened him.
So he stands there, staring, mouth agape, at an incredibly handsome man, probably looking like a severely exhausted hobo himself. The man looks unfairly nice in a maroon button-down, sleeves rolled up, and his gaze dips down to find very nice legs in black slacks. He wants to circle around him to see if his ass is as nice as his thighs. Suga is so weak, he knows, but he's (still) only human despite all of the supernatural bullshit he's involved in, and he's not particularly known for his resistance to temptation, either.
And yet when he manages to bring his eyes back up to the other's face again—tired Sugawara Koushi is not subtle Sugawara Koushi—all thoughts of the hot guy in front of him fly out of his head.
The freckled boy, gold glow trailing behind him, is walking down another aisle, arms full of a stack of books. Suga has enough time to process same shirt, must be uniform, must work here before the teenager catches sight of him and lets out a squawk of alarm.
"It's almost our closing time," the man in front of Suga prompts, tone patient but firm.
Suga jumps back to attention. The freckled boy is fleeing toward the back of the store, but Suga is exactly awake enough to think of a plan that's a far sight better than Run After Terrified Minor. "Yes, sorry! I, uh, I'm just looking for a book on mythology, and I was wondering if you'd like to go out for coffee after you close up here?" He gives him his most winning smile, one that he knows not even Tooru can say no to.
He has managed to find out where the boy works. Even if he gets spooked tonight, they have a way of finding him, and maybe Kiyoko can focus her searching on the store somehow to figure out his schedule. And if Suga gets cozy with the rest of the staff, they'll have no reason to kick him out when he starts hanging around the store a lot.
And he gets a hot date for coffee. Score.
"Um," the dark-haired man says, smiling uncertainly, "I'm flattered, but how about I just help you find a book tonight? Is there anything more specific you're looking for?"
Wait, what?
Suga, stunned, tries to process that he's been rejected. "Slavic mythology," he replies on autopilot. Did I just get turned down? "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come on strongly—"
"It's not really an issue. Slavic mythology, huh?" he replies and turns and leads Suga down another aisle. Suga's eyes drift immediately downward. That ass is the most unfair thing about the situation, which is saying a lot, considering his (amazing) plan is crashing down around his ears.
He tries to rein in his embarrassment as he buys whatever book the guy hands him. Okay, so maybe he had come on a little strong, but Suga is a firm believer in optimism and a nice smile, and he had really hoped for two good things that evening to outweigh the bad kikimora. But one good thing—finding out where the kid works—is probably good enough.
He texts the information to Kiyoko when he gets home. Sunshine meows at him, demanding food, and he absently pets him as he drops his stuff on his tiny, lumpy couch. His apartment itself is sort of tiny and lumpy. But he's lived here for a long time, and there are plenty of wards and spells carved into the doorways that are still useful. He turned down Kiyoko's offer to move in with her. Her several offers. Suga sometimes wonders what he's done to deserve such a loyal friend. (Sometimes, he's pretty sure it's nothing he's done.)
He feeds his insistent cat and leafs through the book he bought, reclining on the couch. The information it has on kikimora (at least it has it) is sparse at best, but at the very least it mentions that they can abuse basic sleep magic.
He sighs and grabs the receipt to use as a bookmark. The top catches his eye, particularly the 'Cashier: Daichi, S.' at the top, and Suga feels fresh shame wash over him. He still has a plan; he can still cozy up to the bookstore and wait the kid out. "Sunny," he groans before shoving a pillow over his face, "Papa made a fool of himself again today. Papa needs to relearn how to socialize with normal people."
Sunshine meows at him, black tail flicking.
"No, Noya and Asahi don't count. Definitely not."
He can't even remember if he has normal friends. Sure, some are definitely human, but all of them are aware of things like magic and psychics and monsters, and some are really only technically human, anyway. Suga glares at the pillow on his face. Did he need new friends? It seems equal parts good and bad idea.
He's not exactly lonely, not when he sees Kiyoko every other day and Nishinoya and Asahi on about a weekly basis, but it would be nice to hang out sometimes with someone who isn't a cat. Or a monster hunter. Or a witch.
"Sunny, I think papa misses normal people life. Do you?" Suga asks, and Sunshine pads over and jumps onto his stomach. Sunshine is a damn big cat, too, and Suga oofs at the sudden weight. He scratches him behind the ears, earning a grudging purr, and sighs into the pillow. "At least we have each other, huh?"
-.-.-
Tadashi has absolutely no idea why the man with the fluffy grey hair and mole under his eye is stalking him. He doesn't look like a stalker, all easy smiles and big, honest eyes, but isn't that how it's supposed to be? It's always the people you least expect.
He's not sure what he's supposed to do. The man hasn't done much more other than creepily ask him for directions one time, although Tadashi's memory of the event is a little fuzzy. He wonders if he passed out—actually, he's pretty sure that part happened—but he woke up with his money, phone, everything still on him. Completely unhurt.
And in his room.
Things have been weird lately.
But then the man shows back up at his work, and then won't leave. Tadashi sees him every shift, normally reading in a chair and drinking a smoothie, and so far, he's made no move to approach him directly. He's waved, a couple times, when he sees that Tadashi's looking at him. He doesn't really want to wave back.
It's been two weeks since that foggy night. He's been dreading going to work, but he needs the money, and he needs to not make his managers pissed at him. Granted, lately he's been the golden boy because of how well his shifts seem to be going—without him expending any particular effort—but still. It could happen! At least school seems to be safe, or as safe as it can be.
Although, come to think of it, the bullies have been leaving him alone lately, too.
Things have been so weird lately.
"I should start making your shifts the big hours to earn, huh?" Daichi says and claps him—firmly—on the back. Tadashi chuckles nervously and tries not to stumble. "You've been doing excellent work lately, Yamaguchi."
"Oh, um, thank you, s-sir," he mumbles, quailing under the attention, although he's a little taller than his manager.
"Don't call me sir."
"Oh—yes! S—uh. Right."
A customer pushing a stroller accidentally tips over a display at the registers, but Tadashi manages to catch it before it falls over and breaks something. Tadashi didn't know he had reflexes that sharp. Daichi laughs in a relieved sort of way and slaps him on the back again.
It's still early in the day, so there aren't many customers, but the stalker is already there, curled up in one of the chairs in the Horror section. He's thumbing through a Lovecraftian encyclopedia and occasionally sipping at something purplish.
"Have you greeted that customer yet?" Daichi asks with a nod over to him.
"Uh. Yes," Tadashi lies.
Luckily, his boss doesn't call him on it. And then, curiously, he realizes that he's never seen Daichi himself greet him after that first night.
So half the staff is ignoring him and he still shows up. He's totally a stalker, isn't he? Tadashi thinks with no small amount of despair. It's not like he's rich or attractive or famous or anything. He's never met the guy before. Aren't stalkers supposed to be someone you know? Exes, fans you've met once, really creepy redneck second cousins?
Tadashi feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise and he suddenly thinks it's a good idea to check on the woman with the stroller. He ducks away from the registers just as another customer enters, an unfairly attractive man who oozes confidence. Tadashi scurries away as Daichi greets him with a somewhat forced smile.
He gets to spend a fun few minutes discussing Dr. Seuss with the lady, helping her pick out a couple of his favorites for her kids, but when he goes back to the registers to ring her up, he catches sight of the confident man, sitting next to the stalker, legs crossed and surveying the small store like he owns it. Uh-oh.
With the woman and her stroller gone, they're the only customers in the store. It's early on a weekday, so Tadashi doesn't think there's much of a chance for many interruptions. Daichi leans on the counter, frowning thoughtfully, and doesn't say anything about approaching the pair.
"Are they…" Tadashi begins, but he's not sure how to finish that.
Daichi cocks his head to the side, still regarding them, and mumbles, "Don't think they're shoplifters. But I've seen that light-haired guy in here an awful lot lately."
"Yeah," he says with an uncomfortable fidget.
The fidget turns into a full-on squirm when it feels like someone breathes on the back of his neck. He slaps a hand against his neck and whirls around, but of course there's no one there. Daichi chuckles at his jumpiness.
"Hey, it's pretty quiet here, so why don't you go grab us drinks? My treat," he offers as he's pulling out his wallet.
"Oh, um, are you sure?" It's very hard to not tack on the 'sir'. Tadashi has submission beaten into him.
"Sure. Just get me anything lemonade and get yourself whatever. No rush."
That should have tipped him off, but he's so glad to be getting out of there and away from the stalker that he doesn't give it a second thought. He tosses his lanyard onto the counter and ducks out the door without a look back.
-.-.-
Tooru is normally a pretty good wingman. Not that Suga exactly has need of wingmen often, but he's seen him in action and he can respect his skills. Being psychic helps quite a bit. But when, a week after his disastrous attempt at hitting on the hot manager, said hot manager approaches him directly for the first time, his first instinct is to shut Tooru up by any means necessary.
He all but throws his smoothie at his face. Tooru gives him a look that tells him he definitely knows what's going on but politely sips at it as hot manager Daichi walks up to them with a frankly terrifying smile. But Suga can handle that. "Can I help you two find anything today?" he asks.
Tooru sips noisily from the smoothie. Since he's not saying anything, Suga can only assume that they're not about to be in catastrophic trouble. "Oh, no thank you. I was just brushing up on some—" he glances down at the book in his hands, "—Lovecraft." Ugh. It's a tiny, charming bookstore, possibly family-owned, so their mythology section is understandably tiny. Suga's been having to branch out from actually useful books.
"A fan of horror?" Daichi asks, still smiling.
Suga wonders why he's bothering to engage in conversation at all. He wishes he knew a way to subtly set down the book and wipe his sweaty palms on his jeans. "I suppose I am. A lot of today's stuff is a little repetitive and too reliant on gore, though," he replies, gaze flickering between the manager's scary smile and the smoothie that Tooru seems content to just chug in one go. That had been a perfectly good smoothie, too.
"Are you much of a reader of other genres? I could recommend some things we have that you may like."
Is he mad that I've only bought the one book? Suga wonders, squinting up at him. Granted, he feels awkward just sort of lazing about while figuring out what to do about the freckled kid, but he's not afraid to act like a spoiled customer if it gets him out of throwing his pitiful amount of cash at books every other day.
Tooru finishes the smoothie. He hands the empty cup back to Suga (who doesn't miss the way Daichi looks at the single straw) and airily asks, "Do you have any Goethe? I think I need a new copy of Ars Goetia."
Suga facepalms.
And he knows for a fact that he has an ancient copy of the Lesser Key of Solomon on his bookshelf in his study.
"Goethe didn't write that," he hisses at him, unable to believe that this is his plan. It's childish.
"Then who's Goethe?" Tooru asks, perfectly innocently.
"He wrote the Faust play," Daichi supplies. He's lost his scary smile and is instead looking amused, which is a far better look on him. "I think that might be the only work we have of his in stock, if that's who you're looking for, but we could order any others for you."
"Faust is bullshit." That part, Suga can believe is genuine. Tooru flaps a hand dismissively and nudges him with his shoe. "Suga, get me the one I need. Translate for me." He really hates the imperious tone he gets when—well, most of the time when he wasn't actively manipulating the situation.
Had he recently pissed him off? The last job Suga had done for him had gone rather well. Suga smiles up at Daichi, trying to look apologetic, and tells him, "I think he wants De Praestigiis Daemonum."
Daichi grins again, and this time it's completely natural. Suga wants to stare at it all day. "I have no idea what that is," he easily confesses. Tooru snorts into his fist. Daichi beckons, and adds, "But I'll see about ordering it for you, if you can tell me how to spell it."
Suga happily follows him, two steps behind, eyes on his ass again. So maybe this has worked out a tiny bit. Daichi is talking to him, willingly, and Tooru got to see the situation with the haunted teenager for himself. Granted, it isn't like he can see spirits, but he's familiar with the kid's aura now. They just need to figure out a way to corner him safely.
"So, Italian?"
"Huh?" Suga brings his eyes up and Daichi may have caught him staring. He can't even blame it on fatigue this time around.
"That book of yours. Was that Italian?"
"Oh, no. I think it's Latin? The title, anyway."
Daichi leads him to a tiny, old computer tucked away in the corner near the registers, and Suga leans on the counter while he boots it up. He's about to apologize (again) for his behavior when they met when Mr. Hot Manager cuts him off. "So, you're interested in the occult, too, or is this more horror stuff?"
"My friend is definitely very interested in the occult," he replies, dryly, and shoots a look back over his shoulder. Tooru waves with a beam.
"But you're always in here reading Mythology for Dummies and half the Stephen King."
"That's not true, yesterday I was reading through that big teal one on Welsh mythology!" he exclaims, a little defensively.
"So," Daichi says, looking up at Suga with one eyebrow raised, "why are you in here all the time, if I may ask? We don't really have to worry about conversion here, but it's not a library."
Shit. Suga had planned on using him as the excuse to hang around the haunted teen, and if he admits that now he just comes off as being rather desperate. But it doesn't seem as if Daichi has noticed that the kid looks nervous around him, and Suga would really like to avoid that. "Um, well," he hedges, and he can feel his face heating up. He's going to have to bite the bullet here, for the sake of the job and that kid's safety, and he rarely hates being so mature. "The atmosphere here is pretty nice, there's a nice smoothie shop about a block over, and the view's pretty nice?" Why did it come out sounding like a question?!
The bell over the front door dings, and the messy-haired kid with his glowy pet walk in, a drink in each hand. He freezes when he sees Suga by his manager, and Suga stares back at him, wondering how this is going to play out.
"Hey~ Could I get some help real quick?" Tooru calls in a singsong voice.
"Y-Yes!" the boy squeaks. He sets both drinks behind the registers and darts away with obvious relief.
"Your friend is, uh, kind of…" Daichi begins, mouth pulled into a grimace.
"Yeah, I know. He's harmless, though, I promise," Suga says. As glad as he is to be talking mostly-normally with Daichi, he really wishes he could have been the one to speak with their target. Or at least the spirit. Wait, we've been approaching this wrong, he realizes, but doesn't like the thought as quickly as he has it. They now know where the boy works, but they don't necessarily need to involve him. Not if the spirit stubbornly sticks to him like that.
"Can you spell that title of yours for me?" Daichi asks, fingers poised over the keyboard. He even has nice hands, Suga laments. He's nearly forgotten what it's like to have something like a sex drive, and Tooru's probably having a field day poking around in his brain during all of this, but Daichi's just so aesthetically pleasing. Every bit of him is.
Suga leans his head on his folded arms on the counter and spells the title, watching Daichi type. He knows he has a problem when he wonders if he would get along with Sunshine.
"Almost done here?" Suga doesn't hear Tooru come up behind him and jumps when he throws his arms over his shoulders. "Okay, good!" he says without waiting for an answer.
Daichi frowns at the computer, and normally Suga would be annoyed, too, but he he can see the alarm in his expression. "Is it possible to get this ordered and we'll pay for it then?" Suga asks as Tooru begins trying to drag him away. Daichi nods, brow knit in confusion. "I'll be back—definitely! You'll see me around, but we—"
"I left the oven on! Probably!" Tooru calls and shoves Suga out the door.
He knows it's bad if he couldn't have even been assed to give a decent excuse. "Is the kid in that much trouble?" he asks, worried about leaving him in the store with Daichi.
"What? No—the kid's fine. Yamaguchi Tadashi, seventeen, and he has no idea what's following him around, by the way. We have time on that. This, no, this is new."
"And what is this?"
"There's a witch nearby," Tooru tells him darkly. He's a bit of a control freak, Suga knows; he tends to feel as if he has to know all of the major players in the city. But he's going to be very irritated if he dragged him away just for that.
But as they round a corner, Suga smells the magic in the air, and it makes him nauseous. That's not nice magic. "Oh my god, what the hell is that smell," he says and clamps his sleeve over his nose. "What is that? Why didn't Kiyoko warn us about this if it's so close by?"
"Whatever this is, it's bad, and this guy's been under the radar. Ugh—that building!" He points across the street to what appears to be an office building of some sort. As they near, Suga sees it's a law firm, which only concerns him further. Tooru drags him across the lobby, pushes him into the elevator, presses a button, and ducks back out.
"Don't you dare—!" Suga starts.
Tooru points up, grimacing behind the hand covering his nose. Suga can see the blood dripping down onto the collar of his shirt. "I'll call—" The doors shut, cutting him off.
Suga is the noncombatant for a reason. He does not want to go up and track down a witch who has been strong enough to avoid Kiyoko and Tooru for this long, and who is doing something that is giving him a headache the further up he goes. He has his bag with him, but that's just the basics: sleep soot, a couple basic purifying spells, a silver knife, a vial of holy water. Granted, he's feeling alright (for once) so maybe if the stars are aligned he could handle a spell or two himself, and he does have the blood.
It's generally enough to keep him out of trouble, but he is still the noncombatant for a reason.
The elevator lets him out on the twenty-third floor. The magic is practically shimmering in the air above the cubicles and glass-walled offices. Suga feels severely out of place in his sweater and jeans—he wasn't sure he brushed his hair that morning, and his mouth is probably dark red from his smoothie—and more than one head turns to watch him as he nervously shuffles down the hall. What was he even supposed to be looking for? He's not a witch himself, he has no idea how to track them or identify magic. It smells heavy and bad, but that doesn't exactly narrow it down. It's nothing he's familiar with.
Suga ducks into what appears to be a break room—mercifully empty—when his phone rings. It nearly scares him out of his skin. It's Kiyoko, and he answers with a shaky, "H-Hello?"
"Ryuunosuke and Saeko are on their way, but they're across town," she says at once, voice firm and reassuring and he sags against the wall with relief. "Do you have any idea what's going on there? I haven't seen anything for that part of town in weeks."
"A witch, probably? I have no idea what it is, and I haven't found them yet. The place just reeks of magic. It's a law firm." What could a witch lawyer possibly want to accomplish? And at their office, no less?
"Whatever it is, Oikawa's worried. I am, too." That small confession is enough to set him on edge all over again. "Could you try to figure anything out?"
"I don't know where to start," Suga says, but as soon as the words leave his mouth, he spots something on the door frame. He stands on the tips of his toes to look at it, but he identifies it as a ward. A protective one. He circles around the frame and finds another, etched into it near a hinge. "Wait, I…"
"Did you find something?" Kiyoko asks worriedly.
"There's wards. I think they're—"
The lights go out. Suga hears a pop from his phone and drops it, shaking out the stinging in his hand. There are concerned voices floating over from the cubicles, and he picks up his fried phone with a sigh. He buys cheap phones for a reason, but there had been some really cute pictures of Sunshine on that one.
So the Tanaka siblings are on their way, but whatever is happening, it's happening right now, and Suga can't stand by and do nothing. There are still people in the building, innocent (as far as lawyers go) people. It takes some circling around the floor, but he manages to find a fire alarm. He has to sneak past a particularly judgmental-looking secretary to get to it.
The alarms start ringing and he sprints for the nearest proper room, ducking inside while people in suits bustle around. It takes a very long time for most of them to leave, and Suga hopes the building doesn't face any actual fires in the near future. He jogs around the floor again, noting people still at their desks, looking irritated at the blaring alarms. "Shouldn't you be going? There could be a fire," he shouts over the noise.
"What're you doing here?" comes the responding challenge.
Suga leaves them to their devices. He tried. More worryingly, he still hasn't been able to find where the witch could be. There's definitely some sort of large ritual or spell being set up, which means there has to be a place for it.
He finally goes up to the next floor, and is rewarded (or punished, probably punished) by an increased amount of magic in the air. The alarm shuts off and his ears are ringing, and maybe not just from the noise. Tooru probably would have keeled over at that point, Suga supposes, and he wipes at his eyes. It's not hard to find the place now; there's only one shut and locked door on the floor.
He listens at the door, but all he can hear is footsteps and a faint crackling sound. There are wards and runes lining the entire door frame, and not subtly at that. With his silver knife, he ruins the ones preventing opening—whoever's in there was certainly doing something important, and he's probably about to jump headfirst into something really terrible—and then sets about picking the lock itself. It's not hard, and in fact the door surprises him when it pops open almost immediately.
Although, it's hard to tell who's more surprised, Suga or the person standing inside.
It's a guy, Suga realizes, younger and smaller than he is and a little round-faced so he looks even younger. He's in an ill-fitted suit, minus the jacket, barefoot with his pant legs rolled up. His hair, badly dyed, is tied back in a messy ponytail with a sprig of sage stuck in it.
"Oh," he says tonelessly, expression shifting back into something impassive. Suga's eyes find the drawings on the floor.
Holy shit he's trying to summon a demon.
"Um, can you leave?" the witch asks, averting his eyes, as if shy.
Suga crawls forward, head craning around as he tries to read the symbols on the summoning circle. "Those are—what are you trying to do with this demon?!" It isn't the normal summoning circle, that was for sure, but that makes the situation even worse. Which is an impressive thing to do since he's about to face literal demons. He recognizes several runes from necromantic spells and a couple from protection wards, both of them very out of place.
"Don't touch that," the witch says, stepping between Suga and the circle. His shirt is so big his sleeves almost cover his fingertips. "Please, just go."
"You're about to summon a demon. I'm not going to go," he replies, sounding far more calm than what he's feeling. His thoughts have pretty much ground down into demondemondemonaaaaaaaa but his body is still moving, running on This Is A Bad Idea I Should Stop autopilot. Which isn't a mode Suga was aware he had, since it's not like he's cut out for this sort of thing.
He's a noncombatant.
But he's not about to let a demon get summoned downtown, by a witch who's strong enough to hide from both Kiyoko and Tooru.
Suga stands and shakily raises the silver knife. It wouldn't do much to a witch outside of the whole stabbing thing, but at least he has size on the boy in front of him. Said boy seems to realize that and shrinks away, looking shy again, although his expression remains rather neutral. He seems shockingly composed for someone about to summon a demon.
"Just leave," he murmurs, stepping backward.
"Stop the ritual or I'll stop it for you."
"Um, you can't. You're not really magical, and you can't break my runes before I'm done, unless you want to die. Don't die in my circle."
And then, he turns his back on Suga, dismissing him entirely.
Suga scowls at his back. He doesn't have to die to ruin the ritual; he's not stupid or particularly suicidal. But the only ways he know of to stop it aren't particularly safe. "Last chance, I'm warning you."
"Hm."
Alright, this is all going to go horribly and Suga is going to blame one hundred percent of it on the intern with the dye job. The witch raises his arms, eliciting a red glow from the circle, and Suga slices open his hand with the silver knife. The witch whirls around on him immediately at the smell of blood, amplified by the raw magic in the room, and his eyes are wide with panic.
"What are you doing?! You can't add blood to this!" he exclaims and grabs for the knife. Suga yanks it back out of his reach, but his hand closes on the blade. He draws back at once with a hiss, but then seems to realize that they're both bleeding in a room with runes that should definitely not be touched by blood.
To be fair, Suga didn't mean to do that.
"Give me the knife," the witch threatens, voice low, and the red glow climbs up the walls behind him.
"I'll drop it into the summoning circle if you don't stop it right now," Suga blatantly lies. But he has little other choice, short of stabbing the kid and hoping that stops it. Blood would definitely do something to the summoning, but he didn't want to see what a living witch's blood would do.
"I can't stop it this late," he replies with an edge of desperation in his voice. Suga's not sure whether or not to believe him, and in that pause, the witch lunges at him. Suga quickly switches the knife to his other hand, ignoring the stinging in his palm, and starts to worry about both of them toppling over.
The summoning circle suddenly lets out a loud crack.
Both of them jump at the sound. Suga's grip, already slick from the blood, relaxes just enough for the witch to bat it out of his hands like an overly large cat. Suga kicks it before it lands (a moment after, he realizes that sticking his foot out to kick a falling knife was dumb) and it skates across the floor, coming to a halt before a desk.
They both dive for it. The summoning circle crackles again and the red glow begins to darken again.
Suga grabs onto the knife by the blade and shoves the witch down and away, and he responds with a jab to the stomach. Suga doubles over, wheezing, but manages to grab him by the two-toned hair before he could triumphantly get away with the knife. It's two seconds from devolving into a catfight full of hair pulling and scratching, but Suga's starting to panic, because that light is turning into something terrifying.
The witch headbutts him in the chin. Suga loses his grasp on the knife and it's flung out of his hand.
It lands neatly in the middle of the summoning circle. They both stare at it for a long, silent moment while the circle seems to contemplate this new addition.
Its light dies. Suga blinks in the sudden darkness and the witch scrambles away from him. He can see something in the circle in the gloom, and most of the magic has left the air. Suga feels the bottom of his stomach fall out when he catches sight of a wide smirk glinting in the darkness. Fuck that is a demon.
And he's normally so much better with jobs. This is likely why he's supposed to stay out of fights.
-.-.-
(( A/N: hey all! i know, i know, skitty's doing a volleyball anime fic, but i hope you'll join me on this journey anyway! it's fun, i promise. this story is inspired by the ever-amazing 'ghost story' by avoidingavoidance, but with different... fandoms and plots and casts and pretty much everything. but supernatural hunters au! heart eyes, motherfucker.
this story is crossposted to here; it's originally located on ao3. so if you wanted to read ahead, you totally could! ao3 also has a couple of fics inspired by this one, my own side stories to this, some really nicely formatted footnotes, etc etc.
as a warning, this story will contain: blood, swearing, violence, minor body horror, death, anxiety/anxiety attacks/panic attacks, a lot of given names, lgbtq things (beyond shipping; they mostly pertain to gender identities), and a lot of vaguely defined magic and mythological creatures. the main ships will be: daisuga, kuroken, yamatsukki, and iwaoi. we will also see minor ships such as kiyoyachi, tanaenno, bokuaka, asanoya, and some others not mentioned here due to spoilers.
this story will also contain other languages, and almost all of the translations will be in the author's notes at the bottom, since again this site doesn't have footnotes, but context should help you figure out enough to get through the scene you're in. you'll see what i mean by that specifically next chapter. thank you for putting up with me and this terribly long author's note! i love you and i love bbac and i hope you enjoy it as well! ))