Archive of Our Own

AN: Universe smush of J-Rock and xxxHolic. Wherein some of PSC members are not human and psychic, or in some cases human and psychic and hating it, and there’s a lot of wtfery from the premise alone. Written while listening to ENDLICHERI☆ENDLICHERI’s albums. Fit like a glove, considering how much traditional Japanese sounds Tsuyo-chan likes to use. When you’re trying to write something with a traditional feel, try his songs.

Title taken from ENDLICHERI☆ENDLICHERI’s song of a similar name.

ソメイヨシノ ： The Sky in Bloom (A xxxHolic/J-Rock crossover)
Pairing: (Future) Tora/Saga, (Future) Shou/Uruha and (Future) Hiroto/IV.
Pairing for current installment: Kyo/Ruki
Bands: Alice Nine, Dir en Grey, The Gazette, ViViD
Rating: Gen
Summary:
Tora likes to pretend he’s your average Joe. Which both Nao and Shou finds hilarious. Because Nao is a traveler of Worlds (notice the plural) and Shou is a dimension-wizard-in-training, and the both of them still blend in with the crowd better than Tora. (a xxxHolic/J-Rock crossover fic)
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything including the story idea. I also don’t own xxxHolic. That’s all CLAMP’s.

Tora likes to pretend he’s your average Joe. Which both Nao and Shou finds hilarious. Because Nao is a traveler of Worlds (notice the plural) and Shou is a dimension-wizard-in-training, and the both of them still blend in with the crowd better than Tora.

The only average thing Tora can factually claim is how he’s human. Not a normal one by any stretch of the word, but human enough. He has a heart, two lungs, and he can bleed. Of course he can also See your aura and Sense your emotion, an empath in the most impractical way, and that threw all those notions of being ‘normal’ out the window.

He’d once describe his condition as like being a walking, talking radio receiver. He’s always picking up signals, and they’re always sporadic and more often than not unintelligible. Being in a crowd is torture for him. He never know how to close the connection, was what he always said. And so Tora learned to wear his aura like a shield. Most people can’t See like he does, but they can sense the atmosphere around someone, whether they’re approachable or not. And Tora has honed his aura to be as inapproachable as possible. Even without the black clothing and the long dreadlocks he wore his hair in; people would still avoid him (it’s fine to stand out like a sore thumb for that).

Compare that to the always smiling, always courteous dimension-wizard-in-training. Shou can charm the pants off of anyone, although, considering he’s capable of hurting most humans’ soul, Tora never knew why he bothered.

‘I can’t just hurt people’s soul, mind, there are grave consequences for that.’ Shou said.

‘I know that, my point still stands, though’ Tora countered.

‘He’s weeding them out, youngling.’ Nao grinned from above his cup of Chrysanthemum wine. ‘The foolish would fear the more obvious out of the two of you’ his cup gestured at Tora. ‘But the clever ones would know which one they should be more careful of,’

Shou’s answering chuckle was as amicable as ever, but remembering how the first time they met he’d already owe Shou his life, Tora knew not to take that smile at face value. Tora isn’t stupid.

‘Help me with my stuff, youngling. I need to get going before dusk,’ Nao said, rising from the tatami floor. Realizing there’s not much else to do in the shop anyway, Tora followed him.

They crossed the inner courtyard to the storage in silence.

(It’s always so silent inside the shop, something that Tora couldn’t be thankful enough. The buzzing thought of city-dwellers roaming everywhere in the concrete jungle beyond these walls could never reach Tora here)

So when he sense confusion and pain somewhere in the vicinity, he knew somebody must’ve gone through the gates.

‘Aw, hell,’ Nao said behind him ‘looks like we’ve got customer after all. Go then, see what Shou can do for the miserable bugger,’

Tora nodded and stepped into the genkan through one of the side doors.

‘Can I help you?’ he said, before blinking at the sight of the young guy standing there.

Now this is also somebody who wears his appearance like a shield.

Tora hesitates to call him a man, though he’s certain the guy is younger than he is.

He’s wearing a white shirt with intricate patterns on it, painted in blood red under an oversized hoodie that reached his jeans-covered thighs. So far, typical clothes young guys wear these days. Although most of them he saw on the streets don’t have blond hair highlighted with red that matches his blood-red color-contacts. There seemed to be tattoos circling the guy’s neck of what Tora can only distinguish as claw-marks. Tora sighed under his breath.

Now why would somebody like him come to a shop like this?

The guy still hasn’t answered his question, so Tora asked again if he can help him.

‘I’m pretty sure there are no shops like this around here,’ he said instead.

‘Don’t worry about it. If you’re here, there must be something you need. I’ll call the proprietor.’

*

‘Now, how can I help you?’ Shou asked as he took his seat in front of the weird guy (Tora has an authority for weirdness. He knows what he’s saying, he can judge if he bloody wants to).

‘What do you sell here?’ the guy asked, looking warily at Shou, even though the brunet was in his most unassuming I’m-just-a-normal-guy in his jeans and t-shirt.

‘Anything you need.’

The customer frowned ‘is this like- a drug-smuggling shop or something?’ he asked and Tora knew Shou would’ve chuckled if he didn’t know the guy would took offense to that.

‘Lord, no. You don’t need drugs anyway, you just need something for your shoulder.’

Bingo. Tora thought as his right hand went to his left shoulder. Now that Shou mentioned it, Tora could sense that the pain he felt from before concentrated on the guy’s left shoulder.

An injury? But it shouldn’t be radiating so much energy if it’s just an injury. Tora can see the air surrounding it now throbbing as if in anger.

‘How- how did you know?’ The guy asked sharply, his glare sharpening. A wounded animal was the only thing Tora could come up with, watching his aura shimmering in a wider sphere before recoiling when it touched the very tips of Shou’s own aura.

He has a pretty one, this guy.

Tora told the voice to shut up. He’s not bothering to figure out which spirit was talking to his ear.

‘Well, it’s simple, really. You’ve been very careful not to move that shoulder too much. Also, it smells.’ Shou was still smiling at the guy’s indignant eyes.

‘It smells? What are you talking about??’

Shou leaned across the tea table, eyes staring straight at the costumer’s red ones. ‘It smells of unholy things like only stolen things can smell. That wasn’t your pain you’re carrying around, did you know? You might not even be conscious of it, but you stole that pain from someone.’ The heavy energy surrounding Shou dissipated as he leaned back on his chair. ‘Now, would you mind telling me when the pain started?’ he’s back to smiling now.

He hesitated before the words came tumbling out of his mouth. ‘I thought it was just an infection from the new tattoo, but I’ve been careful with it like all my other ones and it never hurt like this, not even after it stopped swelling.’

Shou gauged the guy’s face. ‘Can I ask you what your name is?’ he said, pulling a piece of paper out of nowhere and a pen for the guy to use. He obediently wrote on it, still looking a bit shook up.

The unhesitating neatness of the guy’s handwriting is at odds with his outrageous appearance, but there his name is after all, written very prettily.

“流季”

Ryuuki?

‘It’s read as Ruki…’he said, as if he’d spent his whole life correcting people on it (which, granted, he probably did).

‘There’s a power in our handwriting, have you ever heard something like that? Especially when you’re writing something as personal as your name. Each stroke is a part of you, and if you aren’t careful you might sign yourself away.’ Shou took the piece of paper and turned to bellow ‘Iv, Ko-ki, I need my lantern!’ and received a ‘Yes second-master~!’ in a sing-song voice. After a few second one of the twins (Iv) came into the sunroom carrying Shou’s lantern, already alight in a purple flame. The guy—Ruki—looked on with amazement as Shou fed the paper with his name on it into the paper. The flame blazed upwards in an impressive arc, and Shou looked up to read the pattern in the ashes slowly falling on him. ‘The pain is connected to a piece of handwriting, but it’s not yours. Not quite signing themselves over, but something was taken away from them after all, and in this case you took away their pain.’

Ruki’s eyes widened as Shou’s rested on him. ‘You understand what I’m saying.’

It wasn’t a question, and he nodded at that.

‘As I’ve said, I just made a new tattoo on the back of my left shoulder,’ Ruki said as long fingers started unbuttoning his parka before he reached his hands to pull his t-shirt off of his back. The spirit that was talking to Tora earlier hummed in excitement, and Tora can see why. There’s an alien energy pulsating from somewhere on the guy’s back, and he’s willing to bet that was the source of the problem. When Ruki turned around it’s clear why.

In confident, bold calligraphy that showed the owner’s apparent skill was a letter tattooed clearly on the back of Ruki’s left shoulder.

“京”

Tora sensed something familiar in that character. An energy not unlike his own.

‘An empath,’ he breathed without thinking. Shou turned to him.

‘You’re exactly right. The residue energy in this name… this can only comes from an empath. This isn’t your writing, Ruki-san, whose is it?’

‘A poet, a lyricist, I- was at a convention last week and got his autograph and decided I want to use that for my next tattoo, but-’

Shou sighed. ‘Your name, no matter who you are, would always have a power in itself that connects tightly with who you are. Each stroke is a breath. And since the owner of this name is an empath, it’s understandable that his name carries stronger energy than most. Chances are you’re now receiving… how do you call it, Tora-shi?’

‘Probably a leakage from the signals he’s getting.’

‘Yes. That. Now, I guess the first thing we should do is close the connection. If you are to have something else drawn on top of the character, then—’

‘What?’ Ruki asked.

‘I’d suggest removal, but as I understand it that is a more complicated process, so obscuring it would just have to do.

‘I—no, I don’t— I don’t think I can do that,’ he looked distraught now. ‘this is something I received from him personally, I don’t think I can obscure it with anything… is there anything else I can do? That doesn’t involve damaging this?’ his eyes flashed a bit wildly at the end of that, as Shou continued to observe him levelly.

‘Well. There is one thing.’ The dimension wizard said finally. ‘I’ll be needing payment from you though. It’s only fair. Something needs to substitute the magic.’

‘Payment? What—?’

‘You’ll know when we’re done. May I see your back now, please?’

When Ruki turned around Shou stepped behind him with the lantern in his hand. He’s whispering into the fire, words more rapid with each moment passed before he blew the flame towards the name on Ruki’s skin and said ‘you are welcomed,’

‘Huh?’ Ruki turned back with apparent puzzlement.

‘Wait for a bit. You can put your shirt back on now; it’s still quite chilly these days. More tea?’

*

Shou had turned to him after that and asked if he would mind terribly making one more pot of tea and an extra cup, if he’d be so kind. Tora, having nothing better to do, went to the kitchen and fetched more, wondering what is on Shou’s mind when he felt a rush of emotions went through him. It took a lot of composure in his part not to lose his grip on the tea tray.

Somebody was broadcasting. Somebody other than him.

Tora ran to where the source was, not wanting to go nearer to the sudden onslaught, but figuring he must anyway and found a man standing on the genkan. He’s blond and heavily tattooed, and way shorter than Tora is but the way he carried himself says you probably shouldn’t mess with him. But more importantly than that, he’s leaking. Badly.

‘Dude, you’re leaking.’ Tora said without preamble, knowing the man can read him already.

The man winced at that. ‘Tell me about it. I haven’t leaked this bad since I was ten. Somebody summoned me here though. Somebody who said he can fix my problem?’

‘You mean—’

‘Ah, you must be Kyo-san. We’ve been waiting.’ Shou said suddenly from behind Tora.

‘You’re the one sending me that thought,’

‘Yes, I figured you must be receiving a significant amount of feelings and realized I can probably use that to ask you to come. The emotions won’t bother you, not within these walls, but the residue alone was quite something, you startled our resident empath.’

‘Come inside, Kyo-san, if you can find this shop chances are there’s something you need here.’

*

Shou led the new guest through the courtyard to the sunroom.

‘How do you know of my problem, anyway?’ Kyo said as he took off his shoes and changed it to slippers before stepping up to the corridor.

‘Because we have the cause of said problem here,’ Shou smiled, as he opened the door to the room. Ruki was still there and at the sight of the three of them, he froze. Tora never saw a living human going perfectly still like that. Shou stepped into the room, uncaring of the stillness. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting Ruki-kun.

Now that the players are complete, we can start fixing this thing.’

*

Kyo stared at the tattoo on Ruki’s back for a long time after he’s given the explanation of the situation. He stared at it so long, the back of Ruki’s neck was bright red under the scrutiny.

‘That must’ve been horrible,’ he whispered almost straight at Ruki’s skin. Ruki turned at that.

‘Eh?’

‘The empath thing. I wouldn’t wish it on my biggest enemy,’ Kyo gave a lopsided smile at that. ‘It’ll drive you nuts if you don’t know how to control it. Sorry bout that, okay?’

‘That was—entirely my fault.’ Ruki bit his lips.

‘Well yeah, have better taste in poets, will you? Why would you want a tattoo of *my* writing of all people, anyway?’ Kyo barked out a laugh. Ruki looked like he’s about to argue the point, but as Kyo stopped laughing and turned to him again, the guy went back to worrying his lips.

‘You’re kinda obvious, aren’t you?’ Tora quipped when neither Kyo nor Shou were paying attention, just because he can’t help it.

The glare Ruki sent his way was enough to make him chuckle in glee.

‘Why don’t we start?’ Shou said. In his hand is something that looked like a pipe made out of brass. He fed dark liquid into the head before testing the flow to the tip. Tora noticed now that it’s probably a pen of some sort.

‘We must make do with Henna although later you should probably change it into a more permanent one. It’s lucky that people use Henna for weddings, it’s a symbol of staying true to promises, so this’ll serve our purpose well.’

‘Are we sure this’ll be okay?’

‘What this does is restore the balance, Ruki-kun. Right now you have something of Kyo-san’s in you, and if you want to neutralize the effect, he should have something of you in return. Binding your name to him as his is already bind to you will achieve that.’

‘Yeah, and since you’re not an empath yourself this’ll help close the connection you have with what I Sense.’ The blond added.

‘Of course when that happens, the connection is thus transferred to you, and he’ll be able to Sense your stronger feelings , and you will too, to an extent.’

‘And you’re okay that?’ Ruki asked Kyo.

‘It’s a lot better than constantly leaking.’

‘I—okay, I’ll do it.’

‘To bound you to him, we’ll need your name written on Kyo-san. Now where would you like him to be?’

Kyo looked at both of his sleeves before raising his right wrist and pointed.

‘Let’s put it here. Near my pulse.’

‘…Okay. Ruki-kun?’ Shou gestured to the boy while handing the ink holder over. Ruki made a few trial writings on his own hand before steeling himself and bending over Kyo’s wrist to carefully write his name. When he’s done with the first character in his precise calligraphy, something started hissing from his shoulder and Ruki gasped, raising his eyes in surprise.

Kyo raised an eyebrow, a smile Tora wondered if it was meant to be encouraging was on his lips. ‘Did you feel the connection from Outside closing?’

Ruki nodded.

‘The next character will open your connection to mine.’

Visibly trying to calm his shaking fingers, Ruki went into writing the second character. The hissing sound got louder with every stroke, and as he reached the end of stroke number eight, a strong wave of emotion washed through him. He gasped for breath while his legs gave. Kyo quickly pulled his body against him to prevent a fall as Shou gripped their wrists together, a string of chants left his lips. When he was done, the hissing had stopped and Ruki, still slumped against Kyo, now appeared to be in deep sleep.

‘That must’ve been draining, the poor thing,’ Shou said.

*

‘I take it you know what to do from here?’

Kyo nodded at the question. ‘He’ll be fine after sleeping it off for a few hours, and then I can train him to control our bond. My leakage has stopped completely, so it’ll be easier to teach him.’

The proprietor smiled at that, and Kyo knew he’d let nothing pass him. ‘You could’ve be kinder and not place the bond on your wrist, that’s just mean. You know how strong the resulting bond would be if we put it there,’

Kyo smirked at that. ‘What can I say, I play dirty.’

‘So you’ll understand why I’ll be taking the payment from you and not him,’

‘I know. It’s only fair since my Wish was granted.’ He pulled something from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to Shou. It was a quill made of colorful feathers, easily reaching half a meter in length. One would wonder how the hell he’s able to carry it around with him, but nobody in the shop would bat an eyelash at that.

‘Beautiful. Thank you. Yes, this would suffice. Thank you for your patronage.’ Shou bowed.

‘The pleasure is mine,’ Kyo bowed back.

Shou laughed at that.

*

‘They’re off?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Are you sure they’ll be okay?’

‘They’re pages from the same book, those two.’ Shou smiled again and Tora knew it’s probably as close to a real answer as Shou would give him.

‘Do you need me for anything else, cause Nao-san’s still making a big ruckus in the storage, I wanna make sure he hasn’t destroyed anything valuable.’

The wizard laughed and shooed him away ‘go, go and save my precious belongings.’

And Tora was helping Nao carry one of those precious belonging—a grandfather’s clock that they can’t even risk shrinking—out of the barrier of the front gate when he Sense a commotion.

Looking over the streets, he saw what looked like a gathering of grey clouds coming towards them. Tora was in high alert instantly. Those are a gathering of grey ghouls, they’re hardly harmless on their own, but in such a large group—

As the smoke came closer he realized there was actually a person inside the smoke. He’s walking like there’s nothing wrong with him, like he couldn’t Sense some of the ghouls are trying to take a bite out of his aura. None of them are succeeding just yet, they were just gnawing at it like toothless babies—really creepy toothless babies—but it was such a freaky image Tora couldn’t help grimacing.

Is the guy inside really not feeling anything? Surely even normal people would feel some sort of unease which such impressive gathering of alien energy surrounding them?

Should I say something to him?

The guy—completely clueless as he was of the cloud of creepy ghouls surrounding him—noticed Tora’s eyes on him and the grimace the empath hadn’t manage to school. He frowned at the expression on Tora’s face and went back to typing on his mobile phone. Tora shook his head.

Nope. He’s not hurting, so it’s none of his business.

One of the ghouls shove another one for a place to gnaw at the guy’s aura and the guy tripped over something as a result, head bumping against a lamp post. He rubbed his head for a bit, frowning at the offending lamp post, before continuing on his merry way.

Tora looked on with complete disbelieve until the guy and his gathering cloud of ghouls disappeared around the corner.

Nope. Still not his problem.

 

Stop.

This entry was originally posted at http://takaraikarin.dreamwidth.org/104416.html.