Chapter Text
Hour two into his homework and the formulas and equations on Hinata’s paper start to swirl and mash together, forming messy tendrils of black ink and bitter disappointment that swim around in their stark white confines. He throws an arm over his eyes and groans, letting the itching burn in his eyelids start to ebb as they slide over his tired eyes.
“Shouyou where’s your phone? I want to check if I did these derivatives right,” Yachi says from her cross legged position on the bedroom floor, blonde head not lifting from her paper.
Hinata groans again as he rolls over, letting one arm dangle off the edge of the bed as he watches the way her eyebrows furrow and tongue sticks out slightly between her lips as she concentrates.
“You know you’re gonna get wrinkles if you keep screwing up your face like that,” he jokes, brain completely giving up on math homework for the night. He’d just scribble something down tomorrow morning in class. Or, better yet, he’d just get the answers from Yachi later.
She ignores his comment, face remaining just as scrunched as before, if not more so, and sticks out her hand. “Phone, please.”
“Where’s yours?” he asks, wiggling on top of the covers until he can get his hand in his pocket and extract the device.
“It’s almost dead,” Yachi answers, looking up and nodding slightly as the warm metal hits her palm. “Thank you.”
“Mhmm,” he hums while her fingers fly over the screen, inputting the password she already knows by heart.
Hinata rolls over again, curling up on his bed and barely caring as he feels paper crumple beneath him. Maybe rolling on his homework will make the answers magically appear. You never know.
He studies the grain of the stucco on his walls; the calm atmosphere and warm air of the room making his eyes start to droop when Yachi’s voice breaks the silence. “Umm, Shouyou?”
“Hmm,” he mumbles again, trying to pull the peaceful air back to him like something tangible he could hold and keep with him.
“Why is ‘how to summon a demon’ in your search history?”
He bolts up, feeling like a jolt of electricity made its way from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers and toes in less than a second, leaving a static wake in his veins. The loudly tearing paper beneath him barely even registers in his ears.
“What!?”
She turns the phone screen towards him, purple text expanding below the Google searchbar in the center, exposing all of his secrets. Well, not all of them, but definitely enough of them.
Sure enough one line reads ‘how to summon a demon’, sitting snugly between ‘how to stop peeing the bed’ and ‘how likely are you to die from summoning a demon?’. He knows the first line is no surprise to Yachi, but he’s still glad she ignores it.
Hinata’s mouth hangs open like a fish, gulping for air to liberate his frozen lungs and finding none. Yachi raises one blonde eyebrow and starts to turn the phone back around as Hinata leaps forward to snatch it away, falling from the bed in the process.
“Shouyou!” Yachi yells as he lands in her lap, grip like a vice around his phone and face burning. “What is going on with you?”
He waits for her to push him off but she doesn’t, so he just sighs and covers his face, hoping she’ll just forget about it and move on. She doesn’t.
“Shouyou?”
“What’s up?” He asks, tentatively peeking at her from between his fingers, but she just folds her arms and looks down at him; homework forgotten and determination switched from cosine derivatives to getting her questions answered.
“Why are you looking stuff like that up? Isn’t that dangerous?” There’s real concern in her eyes, peppered with stubbornness and carefully subdued curiosity.
“I was just curious?” He tries to smile but it comes out forced and suspicious.
“Shouyou…”
“Alright, alright!” He whines, throwing his arms wide and looking up with eyes as wide and innocent as he can muster. “I was reading about how to summon demons and make them do stuff for you and I… was kinda maybe thinking about trying it.”
He watches as emotions fly across Yachi’s face; first he expects her to yell, but her expression changes to one of fear and eventually derision. “I think you’ve been watching too much Black Butler.”
“What? What is that?” He asks, narrowing his eyes when her cheeks turn pink but shaking his head and getting back to what’s important. “No, Hitoka, listen. This is real. This is important.”
“What on earth could you need,” she pauses, leaning forward to whisper, “a demon for?” She’s obviously trying to get him to understand the gravity of the situation but to no avail.
Hinata sits up, facing her on the rug and wringing his hands in his lap. “Okay, that’s not important, but trust me! I really need it!”
“Shouyou…” she sighs, eyeing him with a mixture of exasperation and pity.
“Hitoka, please! I’d have already done it by myself but I was afraid of messing up or something and I could really use your help!” He knows it’ll work; Yachi can’t resist helping people especially when they specifically ask for it. “Nothing will probably happen anyway.”
Yachi squeezes her eyes shut, visibly battling something inside of herself before letting out a long breath and looking back at him. “Show me the instructions.”
“Yes!” He yells, punching a fist into the air in excitement before pulling up the bookmarked page on his phone. 10 Easy Steps for Summoning an Obedient Demon. “Thank you so much!”
“Are you sure this is safe?” She asks, eyeing the dark gray and red horror blog with a suspicious look. “This is just something someone posted online, Shouyou. There’s no telling if it’s real or if it’s actually ‘10 Easy Steps for Getting Yourself Murdered by Creatures from the Beyond’. I don’t know if we can trust this.”
“Don’t worry that blog has like, a million followers. It’s totally safe.”
“I don’t think…whatever. Do you have any of this stuff?” She continues scrolling through the post, worry creeping farther and farther along her features.
“Yeah! I’ve been collecting stuff here and there,” Hinata answers, digging through his drawers to obtain various candles, jars of salt, sheets of heavy looking paper, scissors, gluesticks (Yachi wasn’t sure what that was for), matches, red thread, needles, and who knows what else. He can hear Yachi gulp loudly from the other side of the room.
“This says you have to draw a summoning circle and its super dangerous if it gets smudged or broken. Where are you going to put it?” She looks around, scanning the room for something small and inconspicuous they could paint on.
“We’ll just do it here,” Hinata answers, ushering the girl up from the floor and sliding the rug all the way to the wall, leaving a clear space of hardwood floor behind. “Tada!”
“Isn’t that dangerous? You walk here all the time it can get messed up really easily.”
“Nah we’ll just put the rug back over it,” he waves away her concern, returning to his supplies on the floor.
“…Okay. Anyway, what are you going to use to draw it? You need something really durable,” Yachi says, eyes darting between the instructions and the pile of supplies with eyes growing more and more worried by the second.
“Hmm,” he hums, searching through a messy drawer at the top of his desk with his tongue between his teeth, smiling when he finds the skinny pink vile. “This! I took it out of my mom’s stuff.”
Yachi steps forward and takes it, holding up to her face to read the tiny lettering on the side of the bottle. “Smearproof liquid lipstick ultra matte finish long lasting lip paint high pigment lipstain…in the shade gossip. When has your mom ever worn this?” Her mouth forms a small ‘o’ when she looks up at him.
“I have no idea. But it’s basically just hot pink paint in a bottle. It’s perfect,” he tells her, shaking the bottle and twisting off the cap. Yachi starts to say something else behind him but he doesn’t hear her, kneeling down and pressing the thin gooey brush to the wood floor.
“..preparation..- What are you doing!?” She yells, making him jump and almost drop the vial of paint.
“What the-,” he squeaks, catching it before anything can spill and turning around to send an incredulous look Yachi’s way. “Drawing the circle! What does it look like?”
“Now!?”
“What? Yes, now!”
One hand flies to her chest, the other still clutching his phone with the instructions on the screen. “I thought we were just…just getting ready or something! I didn’t know you wanted to do this right now!”
“You’re not going to back out are you?” He asks, looking like a kicked puppy as he stands and recaps the lipstick.
“N-no,” she stutters, taking a deep breath to steady herself. “It just…caught me off guard I guess.”
“Good! No time like the present, I always say,” he beams, which only seems to make the poor girl more anxious than before. “Let me see the phone I need a reference for the circle.”
Yachi nods, handing him the phone and muttering something about him ‘never saying that once in his life’ and ‘batting those big dumb puppy dog eyes’. She pokes nervously at the paper and needles for a moment before returning to watch over his shoulder, pointing out any mistakes he makes in the drawing before eventually just taking over and finishing it herself. In the end the second half looks much neater than the first, but a summoning circle is a summoning circle. Probably.
“Just for the record I think this is a really bad idea,” Yachi says, sitting quietly on her knees as Hinata arranges candles at the five main points of the circle’s edge. “And the only reason I’m taking part in it at all is to make sure you don’t do it wrong and hurt yourself.”
“Where would I be without you?” Hinata smirks, handing her a cut strip of the heavy paper and assuming a similar position beside her. She takes it with a small frown, and he knows that despite her completely true words they’re both already in too deep to back out of this now. “Write your name on this.”
“My full name?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it matters,” he shrugs, uncapping a pen with his teeth and pressing the tip to the parchment.
With a sigh Yachi reopens the blog post, scanning for the answer to her question and shaking her head furiously when she finds it. “Do not use your full name when summoning a demon. Names are powerful and giving them the power of your full name can result in danger and even loss of control of your demon.”
“Oh. Alright then,” Hinata says, looking down at the strip of paper with his full name scrawled on it. “Guess I can’t use this one.”
Yachi picks the piece up from the floor where he tosses it and carries it to the trash can near the door, returning quickly and neatly writing her last name onto a scrap of paper. “What next?”
“We, uh, put these under the candles and then…say the magic words?”
“You’re hopeless, Shouyou,” Yachi sighs, placing each of their papers under one of the mismatched candles and looking back towards the pile of supplies. “What’s the red string for?”
“Oh! That’s for something else I read about where you invite something to possess a doll and play hide and seek with you. It seemed fun until I read some stories written by people who actually tried it and,” he pauses to shudder, “just trust me you don’t want to do it.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she mumbles, wondering what part of that could seem fun in the first place.
“Okay, okay,” Hinata smiles, scanning the phone screen and nodding. “I was right. We’re all done except for the words. I know this part. Help me light the candles.”
They each take a match and light the candles around the perimeter of the circle, Yachi making sure they’re completely extinguished before setting them aside. “Here,” Hinata says, taking her hand in his and wrapping it around the base of the candle sitting on top of her name. “Keep your hand here until it’s over.”
“O-okay,” she stutters, her fear and discomfort showing more and more on her face; delicate features darkened by the unknown they’re delving into.
Hinata smiles at her, doing what he can to alleviate some of the tension. It seems to work.
“Ready?” He asks, not waiting for a real answer as he grabs hold of his own candle and winks. “Here goes nothing.”
The candlelight flickers ominously on the walls for a moment, casting shadows that don’t quite look like the two figures huddled on the floor but couldn’t be anything else.
Before the silence can work its way to his nerves Hinata speaks, repeating words he’d been practicing in his head for days, not sure when he’d actually put them to use. “Creature of the darkness, living on the edge of shadows, we call you here. With our names we draw power, and that power binds you to the land of the living and to our souls upon release of death or broken bond. Come now, to your masters, and take your place in the firelight.”
They wait, but nothing happens.
Yachi’s eyes are squeezed firmly shut, free hand shoved between her thighs to keep it from shaking, but after a few minutes of inactivity she slowly opens them. Hinata stares intensely at the center of the circle, willing something, anything, to appear, but the space remains empty.
“Oh wow, what a shame,” she chirps, trying to hide her relief as she stands and dusts off her skirt. “I guess that’s that. Now let’s get this mess cleaned up.”
“We must have done something wrong,” Hinata whispers, looking dejectedly down at the mess of paint and burning candles before him, the hard wood floor biting into his kneecaps. He looks up at Yachi defeated, and her carefully hidden excitement starts to fade.
“Hey,” she says, kneeling back down and rubbing her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it; we probably just missed something small. How about I check it over and see if I can find anything?”
“Alright,” he sniffs, rubbing the back of his fist against his nose. He’s disappointed, but he doesn’t want Yachi to know just how disappointed he really is.
She picks up the forgotten phone again and begins poring over the instructions as Hinata turns back to the pile of unused summoning supplies he’d gathered. His eyes land on the sewing needles just as Yachi speaks again.
“We forgot the blood.”
Both heads whip up at the other’s words, and a grin breaks out over Hinata’s face, met with a pale grimace from Yachi.
“I can’t believe it,” he laughs, picking up one of the needles and quickly pricking the tip of his finger and letting a drop fall onto the paper with his name on it. “We forgot such an important step.”
“How silly of us,” Yachi mutters, grabbing a different needle from the box and copying Hinata’s actions before her conscience can jump in and make her stop.
“Is that everything?”
“Yeah I think so,” she answers, setting the phone down with one last sigh and replacing her hand around the base of her candle, Hinata already gripping his and practically bouncing with excitement.
He begins the words again, and right away he can tell something is different. The air thickens, cementing them in place on the cold floor, and his voice seems to fill the small space with much more substance than before. The candle beneath his palm grows warmer by the second, seeming to almost pulsate like a heartbeat. He looks up, wondering if Yachi feels it too, but her eyes are shut tight and her breathing is shallow, so he continues. “Come now, to your masters, and take your place in the firelight.”
At first nothing happens, but disappointment doesn’t crash down on him like before. Instead he holds his breath, knowing that something is coming. And it does. The edges of their scraps of paper begin to glow orange, the color spreading until they catch fire completely, the light spreading to the hot pink circle and igniting its lines in an iridescent glow.
“Oh my god. Oh god, Hitoka, its working!” He yells, looking over the center towards his friend.
“It’s what!?” She shrieks, eyes flying open just as the candles go out, casting the entire room in pitch darkness despite the sun not having fully set yet. “Shouyou!”
“Hitok-AH,” he gasps, palm flying to his chest as something moves inside of him sending blinding white streaks of pain up behind his eyes. Something thick and heavy snakes around what feels like his heart, squeezing ever so slightly as it makes itself at home. “Oh, ah! Fuck!” He pants; sweat beading on his forehead, but the pain disappears almost as quickly as it came.
“Shouyou, where are you?” Yachi calls, her voice frantic and understandably terrified. “I can’t see a thing!”
Hinata opens his mouth to answer, but he’s stopped short by the thud of something heavy hitting the floor between them. Something solid and large, cold ebbing off of it and touching the tips of his nose. No one speaks. No one breathes, and slowly the darkness begins to dissipate like an opaque gas in the filtering light of the evening sun.
The moment the fog clears and the room recovers its normal light, Yachi lets out a squeak.
Hinata doesn’t know what he expected to see, but what stands before him is definitely not it. “Y-you look like a person,” he blurts, clapping a hand over his mouth as the figure whips its head toward him.
The figure almost seems to smile; the most terrifying display of the feature he’d ever seen but a smile nonetheless. ‘Would you like me to look less like a person?” It asks, eyes turning black and bones elongating as it seemed to stretch out before them, more dark foggy tendrils spreading out between its feet.
“No!” Hinata shouts, throwing up his hands to stop the figure from transforming any more. “No. A person is…fine,” he chuckles lightly, hoping to soften the mood.
“Why did you call me here?” It asks, returning to its previous size and narrowing its no longer black but pleasantly dark blue eyes at Hinata. He feels Yachi crawl over and latch onto his arm, burying her face in his skin and probably trying her best to completely disappear.
“W-why don’t we start with hello?” The creature narrows its eyes dangerously, but Hinata continues anyway. “I’m…I’m Hinata, and this is Yachi. We, uh, we’re your masters, I guess.” He does his best to smile politely but the word ‘master’ seems to strike a chord.
“I have no master.”
Yachi’s grip on his arms tightens, and what little bit of courage he has left manifests in his chest. “Yeah, actually, you do. But don’t worry we aren’t gonna be like, mean or anything. We just want to know your name for now.” It still doesn’t move from the center of the circle, and Hinata faintly remembers something about them having to be given permission to move freely. This knowledge adds to his confidence; just a little bit.
Yachi turns her head slightly, enough to catch its attention, and nods vigorously. “Yes we promise to be very nice and accommodating,” she squeaks, immediately returning to her hiding spot against Hinata’s arm.
The figure stays quiet for a moment, seeming to weigh its options before answering. “Kageyama, demon from the seventh circle of Hell, jailer of tortured souls, and I don’t take orders from children.”
Without a second thought Hinata bursts into laughter; Yachi’s grip becoming deathly tight as she leans back to stare at the creature, or rather, demon. “Kageyama? Just Kageyama?” Dark smoke slowly leaks from between the demon’s legs again.
“Shouyou, shut up,” Yachi whispers, frantically shaking his arm as he continues to laugh. “Shouyou, shut up now!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he wheezes, struggling to catch his breath and clutching his stomach; the demon’s face still completely rigid and expressionless. “It’s just…that’s like a typical anime villain name. It’s perfect.”
“Oh my god, ignore him!” Yachi pleads, clamping a hand down over Hinata’s mouth and turning to look up at Kageyama. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. I think you have a lovely name!”
Hinata sticks his tongue out to lick her hand and she quickly draws it away. “Damnit, Shouyou!”
“So what kind of powers do you have?” Hinata asks excitedly, looking Kageyama up and down, searching for horns or wings or a tail but finding none.
“Stop it!” She shrieks again, pouncing on him but he easily pushes her off.
“What is my purpose here?” Kageyama asks, ignoring the outburst from his two ‘masters’. “I’d like to fulfill it so you can release me.”
“We’ll get to that, don’t worry,” he replies, stepping a bit closer to the circle to get a better look. “But first-,”
“Shouyou! Hitoka!” A voice calls from the hallway, and all three freeze completely as the bedroom door is thrown open, revealing Hinata’s younger sister Natsu in the faint glow of the light from the kitchen. “Mom said dinner’s ready…what are you guys doing in here?”
“Homework!” Hinata says quickly, instinctively stepping forward to hide Kageyama behind him even though there’s no way he could ever hope to cover the demon with his small frame.
“It’s a complete mess in here, mom is gonna be so mad,” she tells them, eyes wide as they travel between her brother and the terrified Yachi still somewhere on the ground. “Hurry up before the food gets cold.” She turns and skips off, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
“Can she not…see you?” Hinata asks, turning back toward Kageyama with new curiosity in his eyes.
“I can only be seen by you two unless I choose otherwise,” he explains, obviously fed up with how his night is going so far. “I didn’t think the child needed to see me.”
“Nah, you’re right. That would’ve been bad. She’d probably have nightmares for a month.”
“Not that you’re scary or anything!” Yachi chimes, trying her best to keep tempers low and feelings unhurt. “Unless you like looking scary in which case you’re extremely terrifying.”
“Are you hungry?” Hinata beams, pushing Yachi out of the way and receiving a death glare he didn’t know the small girl was capable of. “My mom is a great cook and she always makes a ton. I can like, bring you back a plate or something.”
“Human food disgusts me,” he replies immediately, not breaking eye contact.
“Then you’ve definitely never had my mom’s pork buns,” Hinata shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking around the room. “Well, we’re gonna go eat dinner. You can sit on the bed or whatever, or you can tag along if you want.”
With permission finally granted Kageyama takes a step forward, one heavy boot exiting the circle with the slightest struggle, as if walking through an invisible barrier, slowly followed by the other. “I cannot stray too far away from either of you at once,” he says, and Hinata gulps a bit too loud as the demon steps close to him, towering over his measly 163cm.
“W-well okay then,” he stammers, looking up and meeting those cold blue eyes with his own. “The dining room is this way.” He grabs Yachi’s hand and they shuffle down the hallway trying to look as normal as possible with Kageyama trailing silently behind them.
Hinata’s mom is her usual smiling self, dishing out food onto plates around the table and asking about school or homework. He and Yachi do their best to keep their eyes from darting to the edge of the table where Kageyama sits rail straight in one of the empty chairs, unbeknownst to the other two members of the house.
“Hitoka, sweetie, you look so pale. Are you feeling well?” She asks, searching the girl she basically considers a second daughter for any signs of illness.
“Huh? Oh, yes! I feel fine!” Yachi squeaks, forcing a smile and shoveling a bite of rice into her mouth to prove it.
“We just had a long day, Mom,” Hinata adds through a bite of pork bun. “You know, calculus and all that. We’ve been studying a ton for exams.”
“It’s nice to see you both working so hard but make sure to take care of yourselves, okay?” She smiles warmly, spooning more food onto Yachi’s plate.
“Hitoka works hard; Shouyou just copies her homework,” Natsu says, sticking her tongue out at her older brother across the table.
Kageyama narrows his eyes at the young girl as if she poses some sort of threat to his master. Hinata stands up suddenly, slamming his knees into the table and knocking over the water pitcher.
“Shouyou!”
“Sorry, Mom! But I didn’t realize how late it was and Hitoka has to get home soon! I should walk her,” he rambles, grabbing Yachi’s hand and pulling her down the hall and back to his room, making sure to nod his head at Kageyama to signal for him to follow.
“Shouyou, what the hell?” Yachi yells when he slams the door closed but he ignores her, whirling around to face the demon.
“Natsu is off limits! I don’t care if she has a knife to my throat you can NOT touch her. EVER,” he declares, as close to Kageyama’s face as he can get, fear being overshadowed by fierce protectiveness.
“I made no threat to the child,” he replies coldly.
“Don’t even look at her,” Hinata adds, folding his arms and letting out a deep breath.
“As you wish, master,” the demon jeers.
“Good. I do wish,” he says; resolve starting to fade and losing a bit of strength in his legs. “Alright, let’s get you home, Hitoka.”
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay,” she asks, gathering her bag and shuffling close to whisper. “Alone? With him?”
“We’ll be fine,” he answers, waving away her concern. “By this time tomorrow we’ll be best friends. I can already tell.”
“If you say so,” she sighs, and the three make their way outside.
Hinata must admit that walking the city at night feels much safer with a demon accompanying you. Even though he’s invisible Hinata feels secure with what almost feels like an invisible bodyguard trailing him.
They don’t talk much on their walk, but when they reach her house Yachi begins blurting out anything she can remember about safety when dealing with the occult she had read earlier. Hinata thanks her, not listening to anything she says, and waves as she reluctantly heads inside.
Excitement starts to bubble up inside of him as they turn to make their way back.
“Okay, ready to hear why we called you here?” Hinata asks, finally addressing his companion.
“I’d like to finish it as soon as possible,” Kageyama replies, ears seeming to actually perk up at the prospect of release.
“Me too, buddy,” he nods, clapping his hands together and smiling. “This is gonna be great. So, there’s this super annoying kid at school, Terushima, and he’s always pulling these stupid pranks on me. Like the other day! He put ketchup packets under the legs of my chair so it made a huge mess when I sat down. It got everywhere. I hate that guy.”
“And you need me to dispose of him?” Kageyama asks, eyes darkening and lips curling slightly at the edges.
“What? No! No, nothing like that!” Hinata sputters, throwing his hands up. “I just need you to help me get him back!”
“Let me get this straight,” Kageyama says, stopping on the sidewalk and sounding the most casual and…human that Hinata had heard all night. “You summoned me here to help you win a prank war?”
“…Yes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I know it sounds silly, but trust me, this is no simple prank war. Terushima is on a whole other level. I need all the help I can get,” Hinata pleads; trying the puppy dog look he knows always works on Yachi.
“Otherworldly help?” Kageyama deadpans, seemingly unfazed by Hinata’s attempts to look cute.
“Well, yeah! You’ll have fun I promise,” he says, resuming his walk down the sidewalk until the demon has to follow. “It’s gonna be great.”
Kageyama lets out a heavy sigh but doesn’t speak again until they’re back in Hinata’s bedroom, the only sound being the various scraping of drawers as he puts things away and pulls the rug back over the abandoned circle on the floor.
“I despise humans and your minuscule problems,” he huffs, falling onto the bed just like Hinata does himself after a particularly long day.
Hinata does his best to hide the smile spreading on his face, but his cheeks stretch wide anyway.
“That’s the spirit, buddy.”