Chapter Text
Hunting monsters isn’t glamorous, but it’s stable, honest work. Either way, it’s not like Iwaizumi had many other options. He never minded it much, steady jobs were hard to come by, but once in a while on longer hunts he caught himself silently pining for a warm bed and a full stomach. It certainly didn’t help that the bard trailing after him pined in a similar way, only Oikawa’s pining was loud, whiny, and sometimes accompanied by lute. For instance, when they found themselves trekking through a dense wood in search of some water-dwelling monster terrorizing the local town. The forest sprawled around them in every direction. The trees seemed to cover the sky itself, snowflakes falling from between their twisting branches and quickly melting into the mush of rotten leaves which covered the ground, muffling their steps.
“You know, Iwa, that beast only gets hungry once a year.”
“Of course I know that.”
“And it only takes— what, three or four people when it feeds?”
“That’s right. Get to the point,” Iwaizumi snapped, as if Oikawa even needed to explain where this line of logic was going. Iwaizumi knew him too well by now, and Oikawa knew just how well Iwaizumi knew him, so he just hummed and kept his mouth blessedly shut for a moment to let Iwaizumi think it over. He savored the peace while it lasted, and soon enough, like clockwork, Oikawa’s mouth started running again.
“It’s quite a big town, isn’t it? People die every day,” he said, “and the beast has been here for years now, isn’t it best for them to get used to it? There won’t always be a hunter around—“
“Oikawa, shut up.”
“I just mean, shouldn’t they become self-sufficient? Maybe if they’d quit pitying themselves and pick up a sword for once, they could handle it on their own. Doesn’t that sound better, Iwa? They can be their own heroes, no one else dies, you and I get back to civilization, everyone’s happy.”
“Great idea. Tell it to Willa.”
“Who?”
“This year’s first victim.” Iwaizumi stopped in his tracks, turning to Oikawa. “Her dad took her along while he gathered firewood by the pond two weeks ago. He says he only looked away for a second, didn’t hear a sound until she started screaming. When he turned back around, she was already gone. Couldn’t see anything in the water but ripples and the ribbon from her hair.”
“Gods,” that story seemed to sober Oikawa. “How old?”
“Would’ve been five this month.”
“Gods have mercy,” Oikawa muttered. With nothing more to say, they kept walking. Iwaizumi really did know Oikawa well, or he would’ve kicked the bard to the side of the road years ago for making comments like he had. If one didn’t know Oikawa, it would almost seem like he didn’t care about the lives of the townsfolk. A bard’s work isn’t stable and it certainly isn’t honest, but it can be glamorous if you do it right, and Oikawa had more than enough talent to live like a lord if he wished it. But he stuck to Iwaizumi like a whiny, obnoxious, deceptively clever thorn in his side, helping wherever he could and making the journey twice as excruciating where he couldn’t. Or maybe Iwaizumi wasn’t being fair. He was lucky to have a friend traveling with him at all, and it was downright miraculous that he had one he could trust, one who trusted him in return. Oikawa followed Iwaizumi through the dense wood until they reached a murky pond, colored almost black in the shade of the tall, barren trees surrounding it.
Iwaizumi held a hand out behind him, and Oikawa stopped several feet away from the bank.
“Go get 'im, Iwa. Should I sing a song to fire you up?”
“Only if you want me to use you as bait.”
“Your loss.” Oikawa settled in next to a tree, hoping for a nice, heroic angle on Iwaizumi’s gruesome work. For his part, Iwaizumi began with all the sophistication and precision one would expect from a professional monster hunter— he picked up a rock and hurled it into the water. It fell right in the middle with a surprisingly shallow splash, as if it had landed in a puddle instead of a pond.
“Nice throw, Iwa!”
“Shut it.” In another exemplary moment of hunting technique, Iwaizumi picked up a long stick and poked it into the water. It knocked into a tangle of hard, branching somethings, maybe the roots of the surrounding trees? Iwaizumi kept prodding.
“Ah, yes. The excitement of watching a hunter at work. Never a dull moment with you, is there?” Oikawa’s unwelcome commentary, as always.
“If you want excitement, I can always throw you in.”
“Oh no, no, I don’t think I could handle it,” Oikawa said as Iwaizumi kept poking at the dense tangle of roots. Was there even room for anything to live down there? The roots were oddly straight and stiff, almost stony. They wouldn’t budge, even under Iwaizumi’s less-than-delicate touch. He tuned out Oikawa’s heckling.
“My poor heart’s already beating out of my chest, watching you… shove a stick in the water.” Frankly, they didn’t feel like roots to Iwaizumi. They were more like, well, he wasn’t sure what else they could be. He kept poking.
“What are you doing, are you looking for frogs?” Iwaizumi’s stick caught on one of the roots. It shifted, just a little.
“You’re even making the face you used to make when we looked for frogs when we were young, remember that? Weirdly intense. Any good frogs in there, Iwa?” Finally, something dislodged. Iwaizumi balanced the stray root on his branch and lifted it to the surface. Like he’d suspected, clearly not a root. As the murky water ran slowly off the surface, the not-root faded to something pale, almost white.
Bone-white.
The thought had just crossed Iwaizumi’s mind when Oikawa’s shriek shot through the forest air, accompanied by a thump and a tumble as Iwaizumi whipped around. He saw a lump of dark fur and what looked like black leather barreling into Oikawa, large enough to cover even the bard’s tall frame. Iwaizumi found his sword in his hand before he even thought to draw it, and he was already on his way to strike the hulking thing enveloping his friend, when another shape dropped from the trees, right onto the thing’s back. It screeched and swiped in a flurry of blade-like claws, and with a cry far too deep to be Oikawa’s, the frame reared up and staggered back. Oikawa thought quickly, as always, and scrambled off to hide somewhere, Iwaizumi wasn’t too worried about him. Instead he focused on the shrill beast clinging to the back of what he could now see was a man, a large man wielding a dagger in each hand, flailing wildly to keep the creature’s snapping, almost beakish mouth away. Iwaizumi watched in horror as the man and the beast stumbled closer to the pond. As soon as he gathered his wits, he called out to the man.
“Watch out!”
Not a second after he had plunged one dagger into the creature’s skull, the man looked at Iwaizumi. For a moment, Iwaizumi could see into wild eyes, glowing amber— almost gold— even in the gloomy wood, before the creature gave a final vicious shriek, baring rows upon rows of sharp teeth, and closed its pointed jaws around the man’s neck. With a gasp he stepped back and slipped into the pond. He struggled and splashed for only a moment before the creature pulled him somewhere deeper, and the water fell quiet, except for occasional ripples echoing on the surface.
Iwaizumi was stripping off his armor when a hand grabbed at his wrist.
“Let’s go, Iwa, come on!”
“That man fell in there.”
“Oh, gods damn him,” Oikawa said, still trying to drag Iwaizumi away from the banks, “he’ll be dead before you can reach him, if he isn’t dead already.”
“Well, we’ll see about that.” Iwaizumi breathed in deep, wrenched his wrist free, and dove into the pond, leaving Oikawa on the shore. The water was cloudy and it hurt to open his eyes, but he could just make out a large body thrashing around, one leg trapped in the snarled mess of skeletons, keeping him from reaching the surface. Iwaizumi swam over and pawed at the bones, not sparing a thought for the grim sensation of freeing a person from the remains of so many others. When Iwaizumi finally cleared enough room for the man to get away, the now-freed leg didn’t move at all. In fact, the man’s body had gone eerily still. Iwaizumi wrapped a limp arm over his shoulders and kicked to the surface with all his might. The man was heavy, but Iwaizumi was a strong swimmer. When they finally broke through the foggy shell of the pond, he gulped in a breath and struggled back to Oikawa on the shore.
“Is he dead? He looks dead, I told you he would be, I thought you were dead for a minute, Iwa, how could you just leave me like that?”
“Shut up, get out the medical supplies.”
“What, for him?”
“Yes,” Iwaizumi barked, “he’s still breathing and I am not giving up until he stops.”
Oikawa shut his mouth and put out a blanket for the man. When they had him laid down safely, Iwaizumi set about taking off his armor and furs and putting them aside. Oikawa dug a salve, a water skin, and some bandages from his bag and got to work on the man’s wounded neck.
“Do you know this guy or something?”
“No.”
“Then why are we doing this? Did you not see him tackle me?”
“Yeah, to shield you from that monster. He saved your life.”
“How do you know he did it on purpose? For all we know, he was going to rob me or kill me or something,” Oikawa said as cleaned the man’s wound, applying a thick layer of healing salve. “Maybe that creepy bird-bear-whatever was the one that saved me. Maybe you should jump in and grab that thing, too.” Oikawa packed fabric over the wound.
“Maybe I will. You can thank it yourself.”
“Ugh, don’t bother. Doesn’t matter anyway, this lunkhead probably won’t last more than a few minutes,” Oikawa wrapped the bandages carefully, making sure to not to restrict the man’s already shallow breathing, “we shouldn’t be wasting our resources on a corpse.”
“The reward the townsfolk are offering for this job is enough to buy more. If he does die, which he won’t do, he can repay us by letting us collect it.”
“Well, that’s the least he can do. Help me flip him over, that thing got his back pretty bad.”
Iwaizumi positioned the man to roll him over, while Oikawa held his head steady. Just as they started to push, the man’s eyes blinked open. As soon as he woke up enough to do so, he shoved Oikawa off and tried to crawl away, before slumping back to the ground and groaning.
“He attacked me! Iwa, he attacked me, what did I tell you? And after all we did! Just throw him back in the pond!”
Iwaizumi ignored Oikawa and shuffled up towards the man’s head. His jaw was clenched and his brows drawn, he would have made quite an intimidating picture if those golden eyes weren’t still wide and wild with fear. Iwaizumi held up his hands and tried his best not to look threatening, a goal Oikawa had told him many times was out of his reach.
“Don’t try to run, you won’t get very far.”
The man started scrambling again, wincing as he strained his injured limbs.
“Fuck, no— wait, that’s not what I meant, for the gods’ sake stop crawling.” Whether it was Iwaizumi’s command or the excruciating pain, something worked, and the man stilled again. Iwaizumi tried once more to calm him.
“We don’t want to hurt you, okay?”
“Then what do you want?”
Even in his weak state, the man’s voice rumbled like a far-off march.
“You’re injured, we want to help.”
“Speak for yourself,” Oikawa cut in from up in a tree a few feet away.
“Oh for fuck’s sake— well, I want to help, anyway.” Iwaizumi didn’t have to speak gently very often. He hoped he was getting it right. The man was still on alert, staring as Iwaizumi inched closer, but at least he wasn’t trying to run. “If you lie back down, I can patch you up a little, and you can rest before we get you into town to see a doctor.”
“Why?”
“Huh?” The man’s face seemed to have relaxed a little, now practically expressionless, but his eyes were still boring into Iwaizumi with terrifying focus.
“If you want to help me, give me your reason,” he said. “I refuse to owe you anything.”
“Alright, calm down,” Iwaizumi was getting a little sick of the man’s paranoia. “You saved my friend’s life. If anyone owes anything, it’s him, and since he won’t repay you, I’m taking on his debt. Once I’m done here, we’re even.”
“Fair enough.” Finally, the man laid peacefully on the blanket.
“Um, would you mind taking your shirt off? Just so I can, you know.”
“Not at all.”
Without his tattered shirt in the way, Iwaizumi could see the scars riddling the man’s well-built back— it seemed that today’s wounds would be in good company.
“You a hunter?”
“Yes,” the man replied. “I was hired to take care of the beast in this pond after it killed a girl. Her parents had heard of my reputation, and they thought I would do a better job than the hunter hired by the town.”
Iwaizumi gritted his teeth as he poured salve on the deep scratches marring the man’s back.
“Is that so.”
“Yes, I found it strange that the town would hire someone else. I am the greatest hunter in this area, and if you hadn’t been there, even I would have been killed. It was quite irresponsible of them to assign a lesser hunter to the job.”
“Really.” Iwaizumi reminded himself that he owed the man a debt. Well, really Oikawa owed him, but he was still off sulking in a tree. Iwaizumi was growing ever more tempted to join him.
“Yes. Well, I suppose budget is an important consideration these days.” If pressed, Iwaizumi would admit that he may have been a little rough applying the bandages. “And you, what’s your line of work?”
“Hunter.”
“Ah.”
They fell into an awkward silence. Iwaizumi finished bandaging the man’s back, and offered to escort him back to town—
“You know, to collect your pay.”
“I will be fine on my own. I appreciate the offer.”
To his credit, he almost had Iwaizumi fooled, managing to dress himself and getting all the way to his feet before he crumpled, leaning his weight on the trunk of a tree. Oikawa hopped down from his perch and joined Iwaizumi.
“Alright then, back to town you go, Mr. Greatest Hunter. If you pass out and die in the middle of the woods, make sure to let us know, we’ll be happy to collect that pay for you. You know, considering you wouldn’t have made it back without us anyway.”
The man blinked at him.
“You should be grateful—“
“Oh, yes, excuse me, Great Hunter, so sorry I wasn’t grateful enough after you tackled me, and got your ass kicked, and made my friend almost get himself drowned, just so you could tell us all about how much better you are than him. Thank you so very much.”
Iwaizumi snorted, despite his best efforts.
“As I was saying, you should be grateful to have a friend who takes care of your debts,” the man was staring at Iwaizumi again, even as Oikawa squeaked indignantly at his words. “If he hadn’t been there, and if I were a different man, you could be in trouble.”
“Well, how lucky I am that Mr. Great Hunter—“
“Ushijima Wakatoshi.”
“Well, great hunter Ushijima Wakatoshi, I’m the great bard Oikawa Tooru, and I’ve never heard of you. Is your reputation really that good?”
“Yes, it is,” the man— Ushijima— was still staring at Iwaizumi, who was starting to bristle under the scrutiny. Ushijima raised an eyebrow, as if hunters of his calibre were somehow above asking for names like a normal person.
“Iwaizumi Hajime.”
“Thank you for your help, Iwaizumi, Oikawa. I wish you luck in your future hunts.”
“Don’t act like you’re leaving without us. You won’t make it halfway back to town on your own.”
Iwaizumi wrapped Ushijima’s arm over his shoulder again, taking some of his weight. It should have been a lot nicer this time, considering they weren’t in danger of drowning, and Ushijima’s arm felt warm even without his still-drying furs. It should have been nicer, but a bitter feeling rose in Iwaizumi’s chest with every step they took back to town. From the sour look on his face as he followed after them, with all of their packs in tow, Oikawa felt a similar way. Ushijima’s face looked as blank as it had before, those golden eyes staring straight ahead.