Chapter Text
To the best of Tooru's knowledge, it all seems to have started off as a joke.
That's how it always happens, he thinks in a long suffering inner voice; that's why so many horror movies are kicked off by dumb kids with their dumb bets and their dumb bravado. And he is without a doubt dealing with two of the dumbest, currently.
Well—maybe former dumbest. Is he still allowed to call someone dumb when they've passed on? Whatever, he's the one being haunted, so he'll say whatever he wants. He lays his cheek on the table in annoyance and pushes some of his tarot cards around on his elaborately laid oracle's table with its turquoise crushed velvet covering, it's volleyball-sized crystal ball with the vines carved ornately around the base. He sighs.
"Okay," he says. "Tell me, again—without arguing over each other, this time—what happened."
To reconfirm: it started with a joke.
"Well," says a warbly, wispy little voice, and the mist in Tooru's crystal ball swirls and turns an intense, warm orange. "It was more of a dare, really."
*
It was a dare, and not a bet, because Tsukishima was too smart to pay Hinata when he knew Hinata would do anything for free if he was challenged to it, and Hinata was dumb enough to fall for it every time.
This was how Hinata, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, and Yachi ended up huddled around a Ouijia board late one Saturday night, candles lit around them. Yachi, hidden almost entirely under a blanket until only her eyes and nose were visible, the entire blanket shivering, said,
"Messing around with ghosts and stuff is serious! I don't think we should do this!"
Yamaguchi looked as though he wanted to agree, but Tsukishima said, "We aren't doing anything." He smiled serenely at Hinata. "Hinata wanted to try this all by himself, because he's so brave."
Hinata was not brave. Hinata wanted to yank the blankets off Yachi and cower under them himself. But instead, he said, "Yeah! Those ghosts better come at me!"
Please, god, oh please, he thought, do not let any ghosts come at me.
Using a Ouija board, in and of itself, was not very exciting. It was just a wooden board with letters all over it, and a small wooden planchette with a little hole in it that slid across the board, to indicate the selected letters. Supposedly, once a spirit was summoned, it would use the board to communicate with them by moving the planchette. Hinata would be the one acting as a medium, letting the spirit guide him and show him where to move it.
"What if… Hinata gets possessed?" Yamaguchi asked nervously. Yachi made a pitiful grunting noise and burrowed further into the blanket.
"He won't," Tsukishima said. "Even if he does, the ghost will probably get so depressed to be in his body that it'll leave."
"Mean!" Hinata said, sticking his tongue out at Tsukishima, and then, "Are you sure it'll leave?"
"Are you scared?" Tsukishima shot back.
"No!" Hinata yelped. He took a deep breath and put his hand on the planchette. "Okay, ghosts! Announce your presence!"
Nothing happened. Tsukishima snorted. "None of them want to talk to you."
"Maybe they're scared of me!" Hinata said.
Seconds later, he screamed. Yachi screamed. Yamaguchi screamed. Tsukishima looked annoyed.
"What?" he asked.
"It's moving!" Hinata whisper-shrieked. On the board, the planchette had shifted, with Hinata's finger still pressed on top of it.
"What's it saying?!" Yamaguchi asked, trying to hide behind Yachi.
"Wh… Who…" Hinata read, as the words formed slowly, "are… you. ‘Who are you'! It wants to know who I am!"
"Oh, come on," Tsukishima said, "you're moving it yourself, it's so obvious."
"I'm not!" Hinata said indignantly.
"Don't tell it your name," Yamaguchi hissed.
"Right," Hinata agreed. "Who am I? Who are you?"
They all stared at the board as someone—or some thing—formed the next answer.
I… asked… first… it spelled out, and then: Dumbass.
Hinata gasped in outrage as Tsukishima clutched his stomach in a fit of laughter.
"Holy shit," he said, "you actually managed to summon a ghost… and it hates you."
*
This is not how Tooru wanted to spend his day. It's not his fault he's so in tune with the spirits. He didn't ask to have his house haunted—he's not even getting paid for this.
But unfortunately, they won't go away until he figures out how to help them be at peace.
"Okay," Tooru says, "so Chibi-chan, you foolishly summoned Tobio-chan's restless spirit, and he's still too clueless to figure out how to move on, hmm?"
Hinata, who mainly shows up in Tooru's crystal ball as tangerine-colored smoke, but sometimes gives Tooru the vague impression of a small, excitable bird, yelps his agreement. But then the smoke in the crystal swirls blue-black, and a harsh voice barks out,
"I was fine until he summoned me!"
Kageyama, mostly, gives Tooru the impression of a large pair of angry eyebrows, which is fitting, because he is grumpy most of the time. Still, while his ire is usually directed at Hinata, there seems to be something more going on there. After all, Kageyama was the ghost that responded to Hinata's presence the fastest. And then, there are the circumstances surrounding Hinata's new state of being.
Because obviously, while Hinata had been alive the first time they'd encountered each other, this was no longer the case.
"Wait a moment," Tooru says, realizing they've skipped over a crucial detail. "Exactly what happened to Hinata-kun, then?" An explosion of arguing follows his words, and he holds up his hand. "Tobio-chan, explain."
*
Being a ghost wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly good, either. Kageyama couldn't remember when or how he had become a ghost anymore, but he did know that the first time he could remember the boringness of it being shaken was when a voice had just called out to him, from nowhere.
The voice had demanded some ghosts pay attention to it, except really, it had seemed to be yelling right at Kageyama, and so Kageyama had come to see who it was, a bit like someone had started banging too loudly and insistently on his front door.
Except when he'd opened the door, he'd been met by an idiot who wouldn't even tell Kageyama who he was when asked.
It had been very hard to communicate through the contraption Hinata had chosen to argue with Kageyama through, but argue they had, late into the night, long after Hinata's friends had gone to sleep. Hinata whispered, but his voice was loud to Kageyama; it was the only thing Kageyama had been able to hear clearly in a very long time. And so Kageyama slowly spelled out his words:
You play sports? You're so small.
"So what if I'm small! I'm going to be the ace one day."
What's an ace?
"The best player on the team, obviously. Did you die before sports were invented?"
I just died before they let people who suck onto the team, I guess. Do other people play with you?
"Yes! Well, kind of. Almost. They say I should keep practicing, and maybe I can play more then…"
I'd play with you.
"R-r-r-really?!"
Yeah. So you can see how much better I am.
"Bastard."
Kageyama found that being disturbed, shaken out of the boringness a little bit, wasn't so bad. It was almost fun.
They spent a lot more time talking. Kageyama wondered if Hinata thought it strange—to spend so much of his time talking to a ghost, lying under his blankets with his cell phone used as a flashlight so he could see the Ouija board properly.
Kageyama wondered if Hinata could feel him there, too, lying beside him. Sometimes Hinata would shiver a little bit, when Kageyama's transparent arm brushed through his. Kageyama tried not to let it happen, but he liked lying as close to Hinata as possible. It made it easier to talk, to say what he was thinking. Even if half of it was insults.
The thing was that ghosts had a special relationship with those they were close to, and with that force which was always close to them: death.
Everyday, Hinata left for school, and every day Kageyama, tied to the Ouija board, waited for him to come home, and every night, they would talk until very late.
One day, Hinata got ready for school. And Kageyama watched him, feeling that something was different today. Something had changed. He tried to rattle the board, but Hinata just patted it absently; he'd overslept and he was late. He left, and Kageyama waited. And in the evening, Hinata came home. It was dark, as usual, when Hinata called out to him.
But nothing else was the same.
"Kageyama?"
Kageyama turned and saw him. Hinata stood in the middle of his room, only standing wasn't quite the right word. His little feet in his little sneakers passed straight through the floor on every step, like he was trying to walk normally and hadn't realized the ways the world worked for the living no longer applied to him. He glowed around the edges, a soft gold-orange, and Kageyama thought he looked more beautiful than ever.
Then he realized this must mean he'd been thinking of Hinata as beautiful for a long time.
More startling than anything else, he was looking right at Kageyama. Hinata had only ever looked through him before.
"You… dumbass!" Kageyama shouted, and Hinata flinched at the sound of his voice, because he could hear it now. "What did you do?!"
"I… it rained…" Hinata said. "And I was biking next to the river and I think I fell in…"
Kageyama swore. "Did it hurt?!"
Hinata shook his head. "No. The last thing I remember thinking before I fell was…"
"What?" Kageyama asked, incensed. Was it food, or manga, or sports? What stupid thing could have caused Hinata to lose focus like that?
"I was really excited to come home and talk to you," Hinata said.
If Kageyama had still needed to breathe, he would have stopped. As it was, he could only stare. "Oh."
"Hey, Kageyama…" Hinata said softly, "you really look just like I imagined you would."
For the first time since they met, when Kageyama touched Hinata, Hinata didn't shiver, and Kageyama didn't pass through him. He hugged him tight and Hinata clung to him, and they stayed like that for a long time.
"I tried to warn you," Kageyama told him. "Stupid, you never listen to me."
"That's because you say dumb things," Hinata said. His arms squeezed tighter around Kageyama's middle and he rubbed his nose against Kageyama's shirt. And Kageyama could feel it, could feel all the places they were touching. "It's weird, but I don't feel that sad. I'm kind of just… glad to see you, finally."
Kageyama felt a lot of things. Maybe he was sad for Hinata; but he was also happy, even if that then made him feel a bit horrible. And he was also soft and warm, which weren't really feelings, or at least he hadn't known they could be, until he'd found himself hugging Hinata.
"I'm glad to see you, too," he said.
"Couldn't you always see me?" Hinata asked.
"Yeah," Kageyama said. "But now you see me back."
*
"Do you have a cold?" Kageyama asks Tooru, as he hastily wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.
"No, Tobio-chan, these are seasonal allergies," he says. Where did he put that damn tissue box? "I have to admit—" Ah, there it is. Tooru honks his nose very loudly into a tissue. "I'm not really sure why you two need my help."
"You can't tell us anything?" Hinata asks, dismayed.
"No, I mean," Tooru shrugs, "are you actually unhappy? You seem…"
Head over heels for each other, is what he thinks, but doesn't say. After all, where would be the fun in that revelation? Some things are best left understood over time; especially when given all the time in the world.
"You seem at peace," Tooru concludes, and he's not even lying to get them out of his hair. There's a hell of a lot of bickering back and forth, but in the end, it all amounts to a strange kind of comfort.
"Well…" Kageyama says, "yeah, I guess. But then why are we still here?"
"Where would you rather be?" Tooru asks shrewdly. There's silence.
"As long as I'm with Kageyama," Hinata says, orange mist curling tentatively, "anywhere's fine."
"Dumbass," Kageyama, predictably, responds. Blue fog puffs agitatedly. He sounds choked up. "You weren't supposed to die to be with me!"
"I didn't mean to!" Hinata protests. "But it's better with me around, isn't it? Now you're not so lonely. And I'm not, either!"
"Well, then," Tooru says cheerfully, "it looks like we've solved your problem! I'll leave you two to your afterlife! Now if you'll excuse me—"
"Oh, don't worry," Hinata says, just as brightly, "we'll live here for a bit so you don't feel lonely either!"
"What," Tooru deadpans.
"Yeah, I already talked to Tobio about it," Hinata reassures him. "We thought, in exchange for you helping us, we'd stay with you for awhile!"
"That really, really is not necessary," Tooru tries to say.
"We don't mind," Kageyama says.
"Besides, I was planning to stay around and haunt Tsukishima for awhile," Hinata says. "So I have to practice moving things around and stuff."
"I bet I can do it before you," Kageyama challenges him.
"I bet I can move our crystal ball."
"Do not break anything, or I will exorcise you," Tooru threatens them.
The last thing he needs is two love-struck teenage ghosts making a mess of his apartment, but, what the hell, he reasons—maybe he can put them to good use. If they're planning on learning how to become corporeal, he can make them clean up the place and spook less affable guests into becoming true believers.
There's a knock on the door, a customer there for a reading, and he starts to rapidly straighten up his table.
"Stay quiet, pay attention, and maybe we can consider an arrangement," he says. A thought occurs to him and he smiles slyly. "Do either of you know how to make the lights flicker?"
"Me," Kageyama says, while Hinata whines and says he wants to try.
Tooru laughs in delight. The afternoon is looking livelier already.