AN: A special thanks to Tinker-Bell-Greanleaf, who unwittingly inspired this little one-shot! Sankyuu!
Summary: Hisoka goes to desperate measures to distract Tsuzuki from his daily angst session. Takes place some time after Kyoto and before Gensoukai.
Warnings: My usual bad language (really, I'm working on it!!)
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'Oh, God... he's doing it again...' Hisoka clutched his head in a futile attempt to keep out his partner's pathetic emotions; the all-too-familiar collage of guilt, anger, longing, anxiety, and fear that usually reached its peak at around this time of day. As if that weren't enough, he knew that this emotional tsunami was the result of Tsuzuki trying to hide some feeling, some thought, from him. 'He's probably skewering himself over Kyoto or some other incident he had absolutely no fucking control over...' Normally, the empath refrained from such profanity, even in his mind, but it looked like today was going to be one of those exceptional days: Tsuzuki had added an extra dose of angst to an already grueling routine.
Feeling amethyst eyes on him, Hisoka quickly turned his head towards the suspected culprit, hoping to catch him in the act, only for the brunette to look away just in time to avoid his gaze. This had been happening especially frequently today, and was very quickly grating away his last shreds of anything resembling nerves. He was never sure what to think when the older man did such things; sometimes, he would have his mouth open as if he wanted to say something, and then close it, pretending to get back to his paperwork. Other times, like this one, he would simply blush and look away.
"Anou... Hisoka..."
"Hmm?" Lost in his thoughts, the boy almost hadn't heard him, and became slightly embarrassed at having been caught off guard. Now, he only prayed that the idiot wasn't going to do what he was almost certain he would...
"Aa, it's nothing. Sorry, 'Soka," he answered sheepishly, scratching the back of his head nervously before returning his attention to the papers before him.
Dammit. Why did the man have to be so frustrating?
'His pen isn't even on the paper, so if he thinks he's fooling me...' As if he'd read the disgruntled teen's mind, Tsuzuki began moving his pen across one of the documents, most likely forming doodles or some other nonsense under the guise of working. Of course, Hisoka knew better, both because he knew how much the man despised working, and also because there was no way in any of the Hells that a person could focus on something as tedious as filling out a report when his angsty emotions had only strengthened in fortitude. The fear and anxiety in particular had doubled in their intensity, and Hisoka suddenly felt as if every blood vessel in his brain were about to explode, nausea rolling over him threateningly as he opened the top drawer of his desk. Fumbling for the bottle of aspirin he always kept there, he managed to procure two of the white tablets, popping them into his mouth and swallowing them dry. Not that he didn't prefer washing the pills down, but he'd had to learn to do without since becoming a shinigami.
Tsuzuki must have observed this, because the moment the aspirin touched the blond boy's tongue, guilt quickly overpowered every other emotion in the room, guarded but still excruciatingly heavy. 'Great, now he's got something else to hate himself for...' Hisoka knew the most probable path his partner's thoughts had taken; it was very likely the man was mentally berating himself for not shielding well enough.
Ironically, as Tsuzuki's remorseful, pitiful thoughts lead him further away from reality, his focus on his shields began to steadily slip.
There was still a half hour before their shift ended, but the frustrated empath could take no more. Tsuzuki had been an emotional pendulum all day, all goddamn day, back and forth, smashing against the walls of Hisoka's skull, and if he didn't leave or hit him or do something--
"Dammit, Tsuzuki!!" He rose from his seat, pounding his fist into the desk, his partner nearly jumping out of his skin as he swiveled his chair around to face him.
"What? What's wro--" The brunette was rudely interrupted by Hisoka straddling him, the mouth on his own swallowing his shocked cry as a pale hand gripped the back of his neck. A forceful tongue entwined itself with his, plundering his mouth and evicting a pleased sigh. All too soon, however, the boy pulled away, flushed and panting, asking between huffs,
"Was that enough... of a distraction?"
Tsuzuki simply gaped for a moment, mouth hanging open before he stammered, "W-wha? Distraction?"
"From whatever it was you were thinking about," the boy responded embarrassedly, removing himself from Tsuzuki's lap as he finished, "Your emotions were driving me up the wall."
The older shinigami nodded stupidly, to which the smaller partner replied, "Good," before returning to his desk, an evident blush still staining his cheeks. Conversely, Tsuzuki remained paralyzed, his visage having donned a humiliating shade of cherry red that refused to leave his features.
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Hisoka knew there had to be a perfectly logical explanation for his behavior just now; stress, desperation, empathic overload... he just needed to figure out which one it was, if not all of the above. Somewhere, though, in the back of his mind, he admitted,
'I've wanted to do that for a while now...'