Author's Notes:
This series on the whole is pretty much the result of about half a dozen challenges, several crackheaded late nights, and prolonged exposure to Shoiryu's Tatsumi. It's also partially just me trying to communicate a bunch of different types of weirdness about my interpretations of the pairing.
With music. Lots of music.
(I am aware that Tatsumi and Tsuzuki's partnership was most likely before Watari's time in the office, but the idea seemed like a good one when I started this fic and arose from a misunderstanding of the translations I had at hand. Apologies if any purists get mad. ;)
-,--
"I'm in no hurry; I could wait forever..."
--Alanis Morisette, "Twenty-One Things (I Want In A Lover)"
Summer was, honestly, disorienting after death. In the world of the living, seasons moved in cycles, so a heat wave rarely came as a real shock; in an afterlife of almost perpetual spring, an eighty-degree morning was like a tsunami on dry land. Sakura blossoms drooped on branches. Grass and angels of death wilted beneath the outpouring of so much clear hot sunlight.
It felt almost decadent, to lounge around the lab with his sleeves rolled up.
The morning's experiment had been mostly done by ten o'clock, and if his notes were right he wouldn't have a definitive result until at least one; 003 had been fed, and for once he was confident he'd left his paperwork in the right in-box. Nearly everyone, it seemed, was on field duty, leaving the office eerily quiet. Even Tsuzuki, who'd held off on taking any down-time in the two weeks since Tatsumi had dissolved their partnership, had decided it was too hot to stick around the office.
He'd found silence unsettling before death; after death it was downright disturbing.
Wind stirred in a faint hot puff outside the window, like a fevered huff of breath. A whisper, inarticulate and wordless, threaded through his hair. He looked up: a shower of bruised petals had fallen across the sill, lovely, ruined.
Out of curiosity, he reached over and brushed at them with his fingertips. He'd expected them to feel like skin, and didn't know why; instead they felt like paper that hadn't quite burned down, scraps that had escaped becoming ash.
Something bright moved across his line of vision. Out of some bizarre, catlike instinct, he reached up and snatched at it; something soft and not quite solid brushed against the curl of his fingertips before he could close his fist.
"Watari-san?"
He glanced up, and it took a moment for his mind to shift back to a different type of function--there's another person here; leave the handful of images for later.
For some reason, he found himself smiling.
"Hey, Tatsumi-san! What can I do for you?"
"Your paperwork, for one." His tone was stiff, dry as kindling.
Watari stuck out his tongue. "It's in your in-box this time, so there."
With an exasperated little huff, Tatsumi turned and disappeared down the corridor. He could almost imagine the man muttering darkly to himself, a variation on his usual diatribe about idiots and damn immaturity and not paid enough to put up with this.
The thing in his hand stirred, and he glanced down.
With the suddenness of heat lightning, his smile sparked into a grin, and he bolted down the hall. Tatsumi was standing over his in-box, sorting through the mess of papers there; he glanced up with startled eyes as Watari crossed the threshold unannounced.
Watari opened his hand.
The butterfly righted itself within half a heartbeat and went winging crazily towards Tatsumi's window, its small body brilliant red against the white walls and then black against the nearly glowing sky.
Tatsumi stared at it, mute, and made no move to either help it or catch it himself. Only when it found the sill and perched, wings trembling against another breath of humid air, did he glance over at Watari.
It was then that Watari realised where he was, and what he'd done, and why this might be a bad idea. The secretary's office was private if not sacred ground; there were horror stories about hapless shinigami who had interrupted his lunch hour without warning and had found themselves plagued by terrible shadowy nightmares.
That was also when Watari realised what had made him smile, a thought finally coalescing into words. Oh, the sky today... his eyes are like that. That solid blue--it's almost the same, isn't it? Funny thing.
Tatsumi raised an eyebrow, slow, not quite disapproving.
He backed out of the room, and made up his mind to go home at two o'clock.
This series on the whole is pretty much the result of about half a dozen challenges, several crackheaded late nights, and prolonged exposure to Shoiryu's Tatsumi. It's also partially just me trying to communicate a bunch of different types of weirdness about my interpretations of the pairing.
With music. Lots of music.
(I am aware that Tatsumi and Tsuzuki's partnership was most likely before Watari's time in the office, but the idea seemed like a good one when I started this fic and arose from a misunderstanding of the translations I had at hand. Apologies if any purists get mad. ;)
-,--
"I'm in no hurry; I could wait forever..."
--Alanis Morisette, "Twenty-One Things (I Want In A Lover)"
Summer was, honestly, disorienting after death. In the world of the living, seasons moved in cycles, so a heat wave rarely came as a real shock; in an afterlife of almost perpetual spring, an eighty-degree morning was like a tsunami on dry land. Sakura blossoms drooped on branches. Grass and angels of death wilted beneath the outpouring of so much clear hot sunlight.
It felt almost decadent, to lounge around the lab with his sleeves rolled up.
The morning's experiment had been mostly done by ten o'clock, and if his notes were right he wouldn't have a definitive result until at least one; 003 had been fed, and for once he was confident he'd left his paperwork in the right in-box. Nearly everyone, it seemed, was on field duty, leaving the office eerily quiet. Even Tsuzuki, who'd held off on taking any down-time in the two weeks since Tatsumi had dissolved their partnership, had decided it was too hot to stick around the office.
He'd found silence unsettling before death; after death it was downright disturbing.
Wind stirred in a faint hot puff outside the window, like a fevered huff of breath. A whisper, inarticulate and wordless, threaded through his hair. He looked up: a shower of bruised petals had fallen across the sill, lovely, ruined.
Out of curiosity, he reached over and brushed at them with his fingertips. He'd expected them to feel like skin, and didn't know why; instead they felt like paper that hadn't quite burned down, scraps that had escaped becoming ash.
Something bright moved across his line of vision. Out of some bizarre, catlike instinct, he reached up and snatched at it; something soft and not quite solid brushed against the curl of his fingertips before he could close his fist.
"Watari-san?"
He glanced up, and it took a moment for his mind to shift back to a different type of function--there's another person here; leave the handful of images for later.
For some reason, he found himself smiling.
"Hey, Tatsumi-san! What can I do for you?"
"Your paperwork, for one." His tone was stiff, dry as kindling.
Watari stuck out his tongue. "It's in your in-box this time, so there."
With an exasperated little huff, Tatsumi turned and disappeared down the corridor. He could almost imagine the man muttering darkly to himself, a variation on his usual diatribe about idiots and damn immaturity and not paid enough to put up with this.
The thing in his hand stirred, and he glanced down.
With the suddenness of heat lightning, his smile sparked into a grin, and he bolted down the hall. Tatsumi was standing over his in-box, sorting through the mess of papers there; he glanced up with startled eyes as Watari crossed the threshold unannounced.
Watari opened his hand.
The butterfly righted itself within half a heartbeat and went winging crazily towards Tatsumi's window, its small body brilliant red against the white walls and then black against the nearly glowing sky.
Tatsumi stared at it, mute, and made no move to either help it or catch it himself. Only when it found the sill and perched, wings trembling against another breath of humid air, did he glance over at Watari.
It was then that Watari realised where he was, and what he'd done, and why this might be a bad idea. The secretary's office was private if not sacred ground; there were horror stories about hapless shinigami who had interrupted his lunch hour without warning and had found themselves plagued by terrible shadowy nightmares.
That was also when Watari realised what had made him smile, a thought finally coalescing into words. Oh, the sky today... his eyes are like that. That solid blue--it's almost the same, isn't it? Funny thing.
Tatsumi raised an eyebrow, slow, not quite disapproving.
He backed out of the room, and made up his mind to go home at two o'clock.