2. Cheesecake.

T: In which there is the threat of actual plot appearing! All warnings remain the same and I still own nothing you see other than the plot!

X

More than anything else Yukata Watari was an enigma.

Not that he'd thought as such the first time the slightly older man had, quite literally, burst his way into his life….no, when he'd picked the gangly mess of limbs and hair off of his dorm room floor, he'd been absolutely certain of the character of the then stranger…but, of course, that was entirely the point.

Everything about Watari's appearance, from the deliberately bad bleach job on his hair, to his obsessive, scattered and occasionally demented personality, was designed to distract everyone from the scared little boy lurking deep in the other's heart.

It'd taken years of knowing the other, of listening to the thousands upon thousands of world changing inventions he crafted in his mind every minute he wasn't spent attempting to make said inventions a reality, to gain the trust required to see even a little of this 'true' Watari and even now, after an entire decade of friendship, he'd not really seen much past that glimpse He was, of course, versed enough in the workings of the mind to know that there was some trauma lurking deep beneath the strangeness, to know not to push for more than Watari was willing to give and to simply act dumb whenever the other's smiles look a little strained or it was clear that he was reliving some particularly unpleasant memory.

For today the other was every inch the bouncy, enthused, individual that he had the mixed fortune to call 'best friend' and had invited him into the chaotic mess of half finished inventions, blueprints and various fast food cartons, that'd once been a much desired ground floor flat, with a wide, wide smile.

"Hmm, The Stick's denying you tasting privileges again, isn't he?" The other enquires as he begins clearing a space for the pair of them on his well loved sofa.

"He said that I'm not going to make any sort of profit if I keep eating the stock, but how am I meant to be certain that the customers will enjoy things if I can't taste them, plus it's not as though I can't replace anything I eat!"

"Yes, well I hate to tell you so, but…" Satisfied with his cleaning effort Watari flumps onto the sofa and spreads his mouth out into an entirely too smug smile.

Groaning he settles, somewhat more gently, into a the space a few inches from the other and responds,

"You aren't really the most unbiased of people when it comes to Tatsumi, 'Tari, plus he really is the best accountant I know and…you know…" He flushes a little at the last and, for a moment, Watari's smile becomes all the dimmer.

The truth was that his best friend was madly in love with his accountant and had been as such since the very instant the pair had met six years previous….not that you'd know it for the way the inventor treated the other whenever they were together or the way that he bad mouthed him whenever they weren't…but because they were best friends he'd know.

…Which made the next bit of the story all the more shameful than it already was…

For, in a drunken fit of loneliness and self revulsion that he hoped never to repeat, he'd ended up not only sleeping with Tatsumi but, thanks to post coital guilt, actually starting up a relationship with the other.

Of course there'd not been anything there for it to go much further than simply lust filled sex and they'd quite swiftly agreed that they were much better simply being friends…which had just left him with the headache of just how he was meant to ever look Watari in the eyes ever again.

In the end he'd taken Watari's lead and simply acted like the matter had never happened, aware always that things were not quite as they had been between them…that they might not ever be as such ever again.

"Where's San today?" He enquires, desperate to claw back the sense of levity that he'd destroyed by allowing himself to chatter without thinking.

Smile easing back into something truer Watari glances over each shoulder before responding,

"You know, I've no idea, usually she's out from whatever teeny space she's squished herself into the second she realises that you're about and that, as such, she's likely to be spoiled rotten."

"What! I don't spoil her."

"Please, I still remember how I had to put her on a crash diet the last time you looked after her for me."

"Ok, fine, you win."

"Of course I do." The other retorts, smug smile gracing his lips a moment before he hefts himself back onto his feet and states, "Ok, so I'm going to go secure us some cheesecake and when I get back I want to hear all about whatever the heck that weirdness was."

He makes a gentle sound of affirmation in the back of his throat and, letting out a little breath of air, he allows himself to slide a little further into the chair…at which point the topic of their previous conversation at last makes an appearance.

For a few years during college Watari had become a member of an animal activists group and had personally spear headed numerous raids on cosmetic companies in order to liberate their animal test subjects. Eventually he'd become embittered by the other members of his fraction, by how they were using the cause for selfish means and he'd stepped away from that part of his life, yet not before he'd met 003.

She'd been little more than a ball of mismatched fur and he can remember still how certain Watari had been that he'd come to late to save her…that she'd die without ever knowing the better side of human nature. Yet there'd been a spark of stubborn determination in her even then and slowly she'd gotten stronger…gotten to a point where Watari felt certain enough to give her a new name to go along with her new life.

"Ah, good afternoon young lady and how are we today?"

Bright yellow eyes stare at him a moment with a look of bored curiosity and then, stretching as she goes, the cat hops up into the indent left by Watari and curls out into a deliberately adorable shape.

"Oh, I see, you're in that sort of a mood are you?" The enquiry comes as Watari re-appears from the kitchen, a tea tray laden with goodies and is met with a soft meow, as well as a further tightening of the cutsie posture. Sighing the inventor mumbles, "I don't know, the things I do for you, cat," before depositing the tray in the one flat spot on his coffee table and folding himself up in the small amount of carpet between the table and the foot of the sofa.

There is a pause as the inventor cuts him a very generous slice of a very shiny looking chocolate cheesecake and pours him a cup of tea, then the other enquires,

"So, this is the part where you tell me everything."

"There's not really very much to tell, I was making sure the window display looked ok when I spotted this guy decked out in a proper old school kimono, you know the sort that likely cost more than either of us make in a year."

"Blonde, slight with eyes so green they seemed almost to be made of cut emeralds?"

"Yes! But how did you know?"

"Please, you've known me how long?" The inventor enquires as he slides a trashy magazine out from under the various other pieces of detritus on the coffee table and, after a swift flip through in order to locate a specific page, passes the thing over to him.

It was one of the big photo intense features on some random celebratory party, the sort of feature that he found tacky beyond belief but that Watari sucked up like a sponge for some bizarre reason that he'd never really pressed to understand.

There in the large centre photo was the man he had seen in front of the bakery, his slight form dressed in yet another opulent kimono, the woman yet again tight at his side.

"Kurosaki Hisoka," he mumbles as his eyes at last catch the delicate kanji of the boy's name as well as the harsher Romanisation.

"Tsu, you were just curious about him for curiosities sake, right?" There is a note of concern there now in his friend's voice and, sliding the magazine back onto the table, he enquires,

"Why?"

"Because if rumour is to be believed that guy is not only the love child of Tony Rothschild, but also the express favourite of Kazutaka Muraki."

Both names ring a faint sort of bell in his head and yet he can not quite ascertain as to why, something that has Watari's face scrunching up in a familiar mask of exasperation,

"You know that you can watch things other than the cooking channel on that little TV I bought for you last Christmas right?"

"Yes, yes, you can give me the 'you can have a social life outside of the business' lecture again later, for now I'd appreciate the mental nudge."

"Tony Rothschild is the guy at the centre of that very expensive art fraud, along with copious amounts of other nasty things and Muraki is the reason he's not serving time in jail right now."

"Art fraud…art fraud…oh the one at the Brooklyn Museum?" Watari nods in a slow, slow, manner and understanding that this means he has not quite gotten the point his friend is driving at he sifts through the little he knew about the crime in question.

Over a course of several months some of the museums rarer exhibits had vanished just long enough to be missed and then appeared again as though nothing had occurred. Of course after the third such incident the museums directors had begun to suspect foul play and had put their fraud squad onto the case.

Several high ranking museum officials had been found to be harbouring replicas of the items that'd vanished, as well as receipts for further replicas that had been sold already on the black market.

The fraud squad had discovered that there had been plans to eventually replace each item with a highly skilled replica and that each official had simply been pawns in a much larger plot and then…

One by one the bodies of each museum official who'd been placed on the suspect list had begun appearing in very public locations, each mutilated enough that it was clear that they were meant as warning and yet it'd only been once one of their own had also fallen victim to this message that the investigation had come to a complete, shuddering, halt.

For a few days afterward the papers had spewn out images of the corpses, photos of their living faces and the most inane information on their lives, a few had even dared link Rothschild in with it all…then some vapid self obsessed celebratory had done something entirely scandalous and the world had moved on.

He can see the corpses again in his minds eye, their mutilated faces overlapping with Hisoka's in his head and he is struck by the sharp, dry, want to vomit.

He knows it is stupid, knows that he knows nothing of the man other than his name and yet….

And yet…