by Katsue






1.  WORKING LATE
The Library was quiet – almost too quiet. At first, Hisoka had welcomed the emptiness and peace, the respite from the assault upon his empathy, but now he was left alone with his own thoughts and in the current circumstances that wasn’t a good thing. The pain and confusion he felt now was his and his alone, and he knew that when he couldn’t even keep his mind focussed for long enough to read something as short as “Death in Midsummer” that solace was not to be found in books.

It was late – he didn’t know how late, and he didn’t really care. Staring blankly out of the window, he vaguely registered a light which seemed to be coming from the direction of Watari’s lab. There was something comforting about that beacon of light in the darkness, a promise of friendly warmth and cheerful chaos, clutter that would fill his mind with something other than....

He didn’t know what he was feeling, other than that he was hurting. What had happened to the walls he had built up around him, to that cold place where he’d imprisoned his emotions rather than ever, ever have to deal with the pain that other people could bring? Those defences had long since started to crumble, and were now irreparably damaged. He needed shelter, and now there was no shelter to be had – the one who had rescued him from the prison of his loneliness was now the unwitting cause of his anguish.

It was only yesterday that all this had started. Tsuzuki and Tatsumi had been merely been discussing something work-related, but somehow, they managed to touch upon a sore point from their past, and no matter how deep Tatsumi tried to bury his feelings, no matter how hard Tsuzuki tried to smile, their pain was seeping out. Hisoka had just sat there helplessly as the former partners triggered off one painful memory after another in each other, and wanted to find some words of comfort to say to both of them, but it felt like they had been sucked back into a time before he had even existed, a place where he could no longer reach them, a hell the two of them could only go through together.

Yesterday, perhaps no-one else would have noticed that there was anything in particular wrong, beyond that Tatsumi seemed rather tense and Tsuzuki’s bright, cheery façade slipped from time to time. And perhaps because no-one else could sense what Hisoka did, because of the superficial normality, it felt almost like he was imagining things. It all seemed to happen so fast, but it wasn’t like this was the first time the past had come back to haunt them. Tatsumi had been repressing difficult and painful emotions for years, but Tsuzuki somehow managed to carry on accumulating such feelings, and it was probably inevitable that there would be times when things that had not been dealt with would rise to the surface.

Today, though.... Hisoka pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the library window, and tried to push aside thoughts of what might be happening right now. He couldn’t. He tried to tell himself that this shouldn’t be bothering him like it did. But it was. Today... things that had been simmering finally boiled over. Tsuzuki and Tatsumi’s emotions had been running high all day, a strange sort of tension in the air, even though very little of any apparent consequence had been said. Finally, late afternoon, they started arguing about something, Tatsumi trying to retain his cool and Tsuzuki going all whimpery and puppy-dog-eyed. “NO!” insisted the older shinigami firmly, slamming his hand down on the desk. Everyone else jumped at the unexpected shout, and Tsuzuki ran from the room in tears. Some two hours later, he slunk back, only to be informed that he would have to work late to make up for his absence. Any other time, Tsuzuki’s whining and wheedling could easily have been ignored as just part of daily office life, but Tatsumi was close to snapping point.

“Is it really fair to leave Kurosaki-san to do *all* the work??” Tatsumi demanded. Hisoka felt like saying “leave me out of it, you’ve been cutting me off from your problems for the last two days, so don’t involve me now!” but he didn’t. Instead, he said, in a mild and resigned tone: “I’m used to it.” Tsuzuki looked at him then, with big, sad, guilty violet eyes, and walked over to his desk. Crouching down beside the young blond’s chair, he looked up, those beautiful eyes full of remorse and tenderness. “I’m sorry, Hisoka,” he murmured, “I know it’s unfair on you leaving you to do everything, and these last couple of days must’ve been hard on your empathy, too. I’ll make it up to you, I promise!” Hisoka gulped at the softness and affection in his partner’s voice and the sudden sensation of fingers brushing gently against his own. It was all he could do right then not to slide off the chair and into Tsuzuki’s lap, to throw his arms around him and just *cry*. Instead, he merely acknowledged his partner’s words with a non-committal sort of nod and muttered “I’m fine, no need to make things up to me.” Tsuzuki looked lost, and lingered for a few moments, before returning to the mound of paperwork on the other desk.

Hisoka leant his head forward towards the monitor and hunched over the keyboard, desperately trying to hide and quell the emotions rising within him. This was going from bad to worse. To a casual observer this afternoon, it would look as though Tatsumi was merely fed up with Tsuzuki’s childish and apparently workshy ways. To Hisoka, it was abundantly clear that this was just a cover for his real, much deeper feelings – no amount of denial or repression was going to hide the fact that Tatsumi still felt guilty about breaking up his partnership with Tsuzuki, that he still remembered feeling utterly unable to help or cope with the anguish and guilt Tsuzuki suffered when they had to take someone’s life. Then there were the parallels he drew with his feelings for his mother. And on top of this, there was the fact that he quite clearly loved Tsuzuki, dearly, deeply, passionately. Sooner or later, if Tsuzuki broke down on him, Tatsumi was finally going to give way, those tears he couldn’t bear to see were going to dissolve his composure and reserve, and...

Hisoka glared at the screen in front of him and sighed heavily as Tsuzuki went back to whimpering at the secretary. That Tsuzuki was very loving, vulnerable and genuinely caring, and in all honesty, very much in need of love and acceptance didn’t bode well for Hisoka’s sanity right now. He just *knew* what was coming if Tsuzuki didn’t shut up whining. And it did:

“Tsuzuki-san, I have had it up to *here* with you tonight – I don’t know how Kurosaki-san has managed to put up with being your partner for so long, you’re enough to try the patience of a saint!”

“Don’t involve me in this!” warned Hisoka, tersely, donning the headphones that sat by the computer and searching the internet for anything that might possibly qualify as listening material so that he could get his work done and not be dragged into the confrontation. There was no way he could block out the emotions, but at least blocking out the actual words and effectively signalling to his companions that he *wasn’t listening* seemed like a good idea. He didn’t get as far as downloading an MP3, because Tatsumi announced that he was sick of the sight of Tsuzuki, and there was sudden silence, filled only by the pain and need searing through all three inhabitants of the room. Tsuzuki slumped down into the paperwork, lonely, dejected and despairing, and Tatsumi’s stern mask finally cracked. “Tsuzuki??” he said, more gently, putting his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. Tsuzuki looked up tearfully, and Hisoka decided that he had two choices, one of which was to have a nervous breakdown here and now, and the other of which was *leave*.

He switched the computer off. “I’m off home now,” he announced, “See you in the morning.”

Home was out of the question in his state of mind, and he hoped the library would provide him with peace, quiet and some measure of distraction, something that would stop him losing it completely. Instead, it provided him with somewhere quiet enough to brood, to fester over the probability that Tsuzuki and Tatsumi were currently making up in ways that he didn’t really want to think about.

Why should this be upsetting him so much? It wasn’t like he was in love with Tsuzuki or anything. The hell he wasn’t. Oh God....

He had no idea how long he’d been stewing in his own misery in the library, but he finally decided it was about time he did *something* other than just get increasingly depressed, confused and lonely. He sighed heavily, returned the book to it’s shelf, and left the library, remembering to turn off the lights and take the door off the latch so that it locked behind him on his way out. Somehow these little details mattered right now – something to keep him firmly in mundane reality and away from introspection and unwelcome imaginings.

Fumbling his way through the dark corridors of JuOhCho, he tried to think up some plausible reason for going to see Watari that didn’t involve any mention of the truth, and the effort of trying to think straight helped hold him together until..... he heard a loud, prolonged wail. He stopped dead in his tracks, not even drawing breath for a few moments. That was... Tsuzuki. He’d never heard his partner make such a noise before, but it was still unmistakeably *him*. Hisoka leant heavily against what he expected to be the corridor wall, needing some kind of support before his knees buckled in dismay. Oh shit, it wasn’t the wall, it was a door, and it opened as he leaned on it. He grabbed the doorframe to steady himself and then froze as he heard Tsuzuki whimpering. This was followed rapidly by an impassioned groan which most definitely didn’t come from Tsuzuki.

Hisoka’s ears, eyes and empathy were all informing him in brain-mulchingly heart-breakingly explicit detail of exactly what he had unwittingly blundered in on. He couldn’t think of anywhere he would *less* like to be right now, and he would have gladly turned and ran had his limbs been willing to move. Moonlight filtered through the windows of the otherwise dark room, picking out the contours of bare skin: Tsuzuki lying on top of a desk, completely naked, tossing his head from side to side, his body arching up in ecstasy; and Tatsumi, shirt open, pants and underwear puddled round his ankles, grasping Tsuzuki’s thighs and thrusting passionately into him.

Feeling his mind threatening to implode, Hisoka willed his body to move, but nothing happened. He was unwillingly transfixed by how absolutely beautiful Tsuzuki looked, by an anguished longing to be the one who was buried deep inside that lovely body, and rendered incapable by the the sheer shock of being here and witnessing this. Despair, dismay, shame, embarrassment and an almost childlike desperate yearning to be loved and held all overwhelmed him – he felt like the bottom had dropped out of his world, like his heart had just sank without a trace and was sickened by his own intrusion on something so private, so intimate.

How on earth Tsuzuki and Tatsumi had not registered his presence in the doorway, he wasn’t sure, but they were utterly engrossed in each other and even if they’d looked his way, the corridor was in darkness, and they wouldn’t have seen who was watching. Thank God.

“Leave, NOW!!” his mind urged his body. His body didn’t respond, being otherwise occupied by the sensations being fed to it by his empathy. He sunk his teeth into his arm to silence himself as he realised what was holding him here, unwillingly captivated: yes, that’s right, not one but *two* lots of near-orgasmic arousal were flooding through him, nearly causing him to groan out load and leaving him desperate for relief, for release. £%&#ing great, molested by his own empathy – that was all he needed!! Feeling as thoroughly miserable as he was, his own arousal was anything but pleasurable – he felt dirty, seedy and sick to the pit of his stomach.

He had to get away, he couldn’t take any more of this. One hand against the wall for support, he staggered a little way along the corridor, and then ran, stumbling almost blindly towards Watari’s lab, relying on his sense of direction to get him safely through the darkness. Knocking seemed like an irrelevant formality right now, and he dived gladly into the brightly lit mess of computer parts and experiments, nearly tripping over Watari’s feet. The startled scientist caught him and steadied him, amber eyes wide with bewilderment and concern. “Wha....” he began, but Hisoka didn’t hear the rest of his words. He was falling, everything was turning black, and then the darkness swallowed him up.



[Notes]  [1]  [2]  [3]  [4]  [5]



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