Tag: magic

Kenma’s eyes are gone. Dark, hollow caves swallow the light where they used to be. His contours are shifting, bones cracking in his body. Kuroo can’t run. His leg is broken where Kenma’s claws have rammed into it, and the pain is so intense that his mouth tastes white and searing and his vision is smoky.

“Three questions,” Kenma sing-songs. His mouth is tiny and red. He’s licked some of Kuroo’s blood from his claws. The gym is empty. Kuroo is against a wall, crying, silent and pathetic because he can’t wrap his mind around this.

“Wh…” Blood is in his mouth. Kuroo chokes, whimpers. “Why?”

Kenma takes a step. “A person has to eat.”

“You’re not a person.”

Kenma smiles, soft, almost fond. “I was, for you, for the years I was weak and grew in this body. But no, I’m not. I’ll count that as a question, so you have one more left.”

The gym is quiet. Nobody knows he’s here. He wants to know many things. Kenma takes a step. His naked toes touch Kuroo’s, trace his sneakers.

He can’t close his eyes, not even when Kenma’s jaw makes a terrible crack, when it unhinges and reveals a maw that’s so red and wet it’s almost pretty.

Kuroo lets his head fall against the wall. The thump is a dull echo in his skull.

“Was Kenma ever in there, or was it only just you?”

The hollow caves of Kenma’s, no, the thing’s eyes seem to grow. Black envisions Kuroo. Something wet touches his skin, and he feels numbness spread throughout his – oh. Poison. He can’t feel anymore, then.

A whisper reaches his ears.

“Help me.”

A slow grin spreads on Kuroo’s lips. “Hey there, kitten.” He rips his eyes open, fingers shooting forward, and before the thing can so much as snarl, Kuroo’s hands go up in flames, shoving down its throat with a burst of sparks.

The thing roars. Black goo spurts from its tongue, spills over Kuroo’s arms, but he just grins, grins, fingers twisting and the tips pressing deep into the thing’s esophagus.

“You know,” Kuroo says, tilting his head as his fire takes the monster apart, its agonizing screams almost drowning out Kuroo’s voice, “that’s the thing with you monsters. First off, you think you know humans, but you don’t. We lie, and some of us are pretty good actors. We also know when someone’s lying, just like you did before about all those years. Bullshit. And second, we really don’t appreciate it when you engulf the gorgeous boys that we’re bonded to into your disgusting bodies, and especially not when it’s on their anniversary. So.” He takes a deep breath, plants both feet on the ground, and his smile vanishes.

“Either you give me back my boyfriend, or I fry you from the inside like a goddamn chicken nugget. Or – oh well. Too late. Guess my magic reached him.”

Kuroo takes a step back and pulls his hands out of the thing’s throat. It’s a trembling lump of black goo now, all the outer shell of Kenma’s imitation melted away. The gym is silent for a few seconds. Then, an angry hum fills the air.

“Too bad. You could have had this quick, mostly pain-free, but you pissed him off.” Kuroo sits down, crosses his legs, waiting with a smile. The thing makes a hurt noise somewhere in its body, and then the entire gym begins to shake.

“’s not really a good idea to mess with a mage and their dragon.”

“But I should be dead,” Hajime coughs through the soot and dark smoke in his lungs when Tooru pulls him out of the ruins of his burnt house and lays him down next to his unconscious parents and sister. He laters learns that it was a short circuit in the power lines that almost killed them all. Tooru’s skin doesn’t carry a single burn, his eyes alight and blazing like the flames. 

“Yet you aren’t dead,” Tooru whispers into his ear before Hajime faints, and when the police and firefighters arrive, they find a burning house and the rescued family lying in front of it. Alive. All of them. Hajime’s arm is burnt and he lives. 

“But this is impossible,” Hajime whispers against Tooru’s pale skin as he watches the black lines crawl over it, ink-dark tattoos coiling over his boyfriend’s skin as if they were alive, symboles and runes and ancient power pulsing through Tooru’s smile. 

“Yet it is real,” Tooru mumbles into their kiss and pulls Hajime deeper into himself, throwing his head back with a howl as he lets himself be devoured, kissed, heat and sparks tingling down Hajime’s spine, thighs around his waist.

“But you are human,” Hajime says when he and Tooru are in the forest at night and Tooru dances for him, midnight-black smoke and silver sparks flowing around him like water, spinning, spiralling, framing his naked body. 

“Yet I am not,” Tooru says, and smiles. “And yet you love me, and I, you.” 

“But what are you?” Hajime asks into the softness of his mouth. 

“If it would matter, Haji, you would not be here. And you would not kiss me.”

So Hajime takes what once was impossible, and closes his heart around it. 

A Witch’s Kiss. || kurooken.

His father had only taught Kuroo three things before he vanished into the night to get cigarettes and never returned. 

“Don’t trust women who are too beautiful. Don’t go out during thunderstorms. And whatever you do, never – never – fall in love with a witch.” 

Kuroo’s mother had laughed when he’d told her that. She had kissed Kuroo’s hair and traced his neck until sparks flew and dark letters appeared on his skin, and Kuroo smiled because even though they always vanished after a few days, he loved the tingling they left on his skin, and how they protected him from the sadness. 

And then, Kuroo’s world shatters in a night years later, where the sky is white from lightning and his bones echo from the roar of thunder. The lithe figure that pulls him off the street just before the car hits him is soaked in rain, their hand tiny and pale inside Kuroo’s. He stares at the now-empty street for a moment, heart storming behind his ribs. When he turns around, the thin shadow that tore him out of death’s grip is gone. 

The shadow finds him again one week later. He keeps appearing on the balcony of Kuroo’s flat over and over again, every night, dark clothes wet from the rain and lightning reflecting in his eyes. When Kuroo comes closer, he vanishes, but only after Kuroo’s been near enough to stare into his eyes. 

The irises are golden, light-spun and sunshine-bright. Kuroo finds stars around the darkness of that young man’s pupils, and maybe it’s not only beautiful women who are dangerous. The man has soft-golden hair, fading into black halfway, and his lips are always thin, pale, tinted with blue on the edges. Kuroo starts to wait for him, begins to sit on his bed and soak up the darkness with his glare until the soft thud tells him that the young man is back. 

“Can I come inside?” The golden shadow says one night. It’s the first time he speaks. Kuroo doesn’t know why he nods, why he opens the door or why he offers him a blanket, some tea, warm clothes. He has so many questions, but none are answered. As soon as he puts the blanket around the man’s shoulders, as soon as a gentle finger traces his jaw and pale lips whisper “Tetsurou”, his mind fades to black. 

The next morning, the figure is gone and the flowers on Kuroo’s windowsill bloom purple and crimson red, and a coin of pure gold hides under each of their petals. 

Kuroo reaches out to touch one of the flowers, and stops. The back of his left hand is decorated with black ink, elegant swirls forming a name – “Kenma”. Kuroo traces his fingers along the outlines, and jolts as it vanishes. 

Don’t fall in love with a witch, his father had told him. 

“Thank you for letting me in,” the golden shadow says when Kuroo opens the door for him the next night. “Hello, Tetsurou.”