Two chairs drawn up to Hajime’s desk didn’t leave a lot of space, especially since they were both tall; Oikawa, the leggy bastard, had alternated between tangling his feet with Hajime’s, and childishly kicking him in the ankles whenever he’d been losing. It was funny then, but Hajime wished fervently now that he could get up, or at least stretch. They’d been streaming nearly nonstop for eight hours today, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-to-knee.
And then he could escape the gloating that was definitely, one-hundred-percent positively about to take place.
Happiest (belated) giftday, @corruptphoenix! (♡∀♡) I was so thrilled that I got to do your @hqvalentineexchange gift!! I picked your prompt pro gamer/let’s play AU because how could I not mash up iwaoi and vidya games, two of my absolute favorite things?
Thank you for always supporting my art... ❤ Alanna, I hope you enjoy the art+fic as much as I enjoyed making this for you!
Tooru had been wandering aimlessly in the castle gardens for nearly an hour by the time his hanger-on finally caught up. In the two moon’s turns he had spent so far in Corvana, Tooru had only been able to shake off his guard a handful of times. He almost wanted to ask what had taken the knight so long to catch up to him today.It was twilight, the closest Corvana ever got to a real nightfall, and the reddish-gold light draping the cloistered gardens in warmth and shadow seemed to soften everything around him: the brilliantly colored flowers, the crisp cut lines of the stone walls, the sound of the approaching knight’s boots, crunching on the gravelled path.
It’s posting time for the @fantasyhaikyuuexchange!! Here are my gift(s) for @cas-allmyfavoritethings, who requested: magic, prince Oikawa/knight Iwa, medieval garb and a Oikawa+Suga friendship quest. My assigned fantasy creature was vampires, so obviously I went with the super creative and original idea of vampire prince Oikawa... on a diplomatic mission... for love(?) lol
I signed up for art but ended up writing a short fic to go with it. Cas, I hope you like it!
It’s about time I did a proper piece for the onmyouji!AU instead of endless doodle dumps! And! I wrote a little drabble to go with it (!!) under the cut:
ONMYOUJI #1: INUGAMI
“For the record,” Hajime panted, “this was a terrible idea.”
Tooru didn’t even look up from where he was rapidly hopping around on one foot, dragging the toe of his boot through the dry dirt of the park path. He was fully decked out in his exorcism regalia--hakama, headband and haori overcoat and all--and it would’ve been a hilarious sight if not for the squirming mass of demonic spirits slowly approaching from the darkened park entrance, only tens of meters away.
Even in his regular human form, Hajime could smell the sweet stink of corruption edging closer and closer. He crossed his arms and scowled.
“I didn’t see you coming up with a better plan, Iwa-chan,” Tooru sniffed, closing the circle around the five-pointed star he’d drawn in the dirt. Not a very strong foundation for a kekkai, but they hadn’t had time to prepare for this exorcism. Tooru had changed clothes and yarded Hajime out of the house the second he’d read the breaking news on Twitter.
It was an awful accident, by any metric: an exhausted driver had fallen asleep at the wheel of his freight truck and collided with a tourist bus, pushing the bus into oncoming freeway traffic. Eleven dead, more critically injured. Worse yet, it was the perfect recipe for angry ghosts. Too many lives cut short on foreign soil, too far away for a new spirit to find its way home.
Even after the police and paramedics swept through, relocating the wounded and dead alike, the bubbling dark mass of grief and resentment remained gathered at the crash site, a horrifying crucible of glowing spirit eyes and teeth and oozing hatred.
They had waited until the remaining emergency responders were distracted; Tooru had folded up his paper shikigami into a little crane and puffed it over to the chimera of melted souls. Twenty-two anguished eyes rolled over in unison, tracing the path of the little paper crane back to the two young men, where Tooru waggled his fingers irreverently and Hajime rolled his eyes, and then the chase was on.
The first part of Tooru’s hastily drawn up plan: executed flawlessly. They had, after all, succeeded in luring the ghosts from the freeway to an empty park some distance away. Tooru said as much, and Hajime only spared him a flat look, which morphed into a full-on, unimpressed glower as Tooru patted down the sleeves of his haori and fished out--just one exorcising ofuda, and nothing else.
“Oh, well,” Tooru said sheepishly.
“If you hadn’t insisted on rushing right out here,” Hajime said as he stepped into Tooru’s barrier, careful not to disturb the lines, “We could’ve stopped by Hanamaki’s and picked up more. Or you could’ve done it yesterday instead of marathoning Gokaiger for the fiftieth fucking time--”
“Yes, yes, point taken,” Tooru said, waving Hajime off. He didn’t look particularly concerned, a fact that both annoyed and heartened Hajime in equal measure. If Tooru was feeling confident about handling eleven or so ravenous, angry spirits with minimal tools, at midnight, in a random, secluded park, then they probably had nothing to worry about. Probably.
A dripping, skeletal hand flung itself out of the spirit goo and flattened against the invisible barrier wall. It fell to the ground and writhed, roiling into a shadowy blob that blinked open a new, lurid yellow eye. The ghosts couldn’t speak, but every movement telegraphed the anger and agony of lives waited to be lived, snatched away too soon. It inched around the perimeter of the barrier, searching for an entry. It was disgusting, but also darkly fascinating.
A sharp elbow jabbed him in the side. “Seems like someone should be preparing too instead of just standing around being a smartass and then gawking, hmm?”
Hajime was tempted to elbow Tooru right back, but the rest of the mass of angry ghosts were picking up the pace, oozing faster and faster around their little barrier. So Hajime simply breathed out his annoyance and trepidation instead and became the wolf.
Years of practice and the comforting weight of Tooru’s amulet in his collar made slipping into the inugami’s form easier than breathing. The god-form was always sleeping in his bones; it was just a matter of switching shapes. In a blaze of aquamarine light, Hajime shook out his ruff and stretched as much as he could, circling tighter around Tooru’s legs in the now much-smaller confines of the barrier sigil. The sweet scent of ghostly rot was nearly overwhelming to Hajime’s sharpened senses, but Tooru’s sleeve fluttering down over his head was almost enough to drown it out with the more familiar smell of friend, protector, priest, beloved--
“Aww, there’s my Iwa-chan,” Tooru cooed. His eyes were alight with mischief as he scratched the spot behind Hajime’s ears that Tooru knew (and Hajime forever denied) he particularly liked. “Who’s a gooood boy, who’s a big fluffy--”
Knock it off, asshole, Hajime rumbled. But he pressed his snout into Tooru’s palm and nipped his fingers, gently. Are we getting started or what?
“Yes,” Tooru said, drawing his hands away. Moonlight silvered his expression, no longer playful, but serene and focused, and he folded his hands, ofuda held before him. “I think there’s some spirits in there we can still help. I’ll channel, you burn away what we can’t do anything for. Good?”
Good, Hajime agreed. Tooru flashed a smile at him, sharp and sweet--the smile that said together, we can do anything--and the barrier circle exploded into a nimbus of purifying spirit fire. Hajime leapt out of the circle and into the fray, buoyed by aquamarine embers and the steadying sound of Tooru’s voice, chanting into the night.
A/N: you all know Oikawa absolutely pupper talks at Iwa in dog form to annoy the hell out of him lol
