4. Perspective.
T: In which I employ a wonderful old plot device to move things on a little! Beware the OC, OOC, RANDOM THEORISING, RANDOMVERSE, SLASH, ANGT, and the sewn together Hisoka Characterisation! I own only the plot. Oh and italics are a skip in time/place/everything!
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It takes the greatest of effort to get through breakfast without making his new found comprehension of his heart painstakingly clear. Indeed, in a show of vulnerability that has his pride rankling hard in his mind, he eventually cries a painful headache and retreats, once more, to his room.
Once secure he takes a shaking breath and attempts to find some calm, rational, centre to the whole matter. It is a tact that, inevitably, ends with him even more frustrated than before and, though it further buffets his pride, he turfs out his little used and little loved mobile.
Watari picks up with a speed that denotes either a lack of work or a lack of motivation and, praying silently for the former, he states simply.
"I need your help, Watari."
"Oh? Aren't you two on some form of rehabilitation program that basically forbids you doing anything even remotely constituting work?"
"It's a 'decompression exercise' rather than rehabilitation, but that's not at all relevant at the moment."
"Ah, so this is a personal matter?"
"Yes."
"You'll want some magical way to forget that you're in love with Tsu then."
"How…actually, no, you knowing is something that really shouldn't shock me. You're an expert people watcher, after all."
"Heh, that's me!" The Scientist retorts before informing him, "Come get some air outside your hotel in about an hour."
He is all together certain that the enquiry of "What are you up to now?" would wield a frightening or foolish answer and, taking the view that ignorance was, at least in this case, bliss, he responds simply with,
"Right, I'll see you in an hour then."
He kills the time void with a few paragraphs of his current book, a few minutes of channel hopping and slipping a hastily constructed note under the door to Tsuzuki's room. He then slips his denim jacket over his shoulders and meanders his way out into the fresh air.
"Hmm you're looking a little peaky." The remark is followed by a firm hug and the familiar broil of Watari's emotions.
"Yes, thank you for that, Watari." He responds as he pushes himself free.
"Heh, glad to see that you're still your amiable self," the other remarks before glancing once over each shoulder and then enquiring, "How about a little walk down the river?"
Of course the altogether furtive attitude has him even further on edge and yet, having watched Tsuzuki stumble into similar situations, he knew that there was now no point in putting up a resistance.
Precisely two minutes later he is breathing the oddly electric scent of free moving fresh water and feeling more ….settled…than he had for the last handful of hours.
"Ah, so it did work." Watari remarks before informing him, "Whenever I felt agitated or unsure…before…I always took in a little river air, of course sea air is a little more traditional but mama always said…"
"That's enough of that, Watari," he remarks before enquiring, "So why make this a face to face thing?"
"Boredom and I thought that you might want a little bit of perspective before you took any sort of regrettable action."
This last is followed by Watari carefully placing a very familiar tablet onto the soil before them,
"That's…"
"A memorial to a good agent, but it's also a little more." Watari concludes, before carefully taking a hold of his wrists, remarking, "Try not to be too mad with me after words, ok," and placing his hands against the cool stone.
The muggy, silky, sensation is one he associates oh so well with emotional overload and yet he cal feel nothing other than his own, intense, confusion.
It is a strangeness compounded not only by his sudden, unexplained, return to the bureaux, but also how…odd…everything looks.
Though it unsettles him to admit it, Watari seems as his only hope of clarification and he has just begun to make his way to the infirmary when he catches a familiar profile out of the corner of his eye.
As he turns to confirm what he knows shouldn't be true everything slides together into one concessive whole. For there, slumped now in a ratty old office chair, is his partner and yet…
His hair is ridiculously long, a fact only emphasised by the poor attempt he has made in bundling it up into a ponytail. His body is thinner, less defined and clothed in a crumpled mess of items that are entire worlds from his usual collection of smart/casual attire.
Somehow the tablets contained the emotional imprint of those that they commemorated and, by touching his hands to the stone belonging to Ichigo Ryuhei, he had been drawn into a snapshot of that other's life.
It is a theory confirmed not a moment later as a smart suited, well groomed, stranger approaches Tsuzuki's slumped form and gently claps him once about the head.
"Ow! Was that really necessary, Ichigo?"
"That is a rhetorical question, Tsuzuki-san."
"Of course, because it'd be too much to hope that my partner might want to be kind to me once in a while."
"I treat you in a perfectly amiable manner, Tsuzuki-san, however…"
"I was being an eyesore and you've told me before about the consequences of that particular activity."
"Precisely."
So akin to one of many exchanges that they have had over the years had the matter been that he half expects Tsuzuki to either tear up or antagonise Ichigo further. However, his partner simply shrugs his shoulder and states,
"I can't see why it matters to be honest, but then that's why I've got you, neh, Ichigo?"
"It is a factor, yes." The other responds before passing a thing case folder over and remarking, "I'm coming back to quiz you on this in an hour so you might want to commit the basics to memory."
"I'll do what I can." The enthused statement is followed by his partner straightening himself up in the chair and actually turning his attention onto his work.
It is a placidity and co-operation that has attempted to achieve from the very moment that he had chosen to stay at Tsuzuki's side and yet…
All of a sudden he is being wrenched, somewhat forcibly, back into the present and choked on Watari's somewhat intense uncertainty.
"Ugh, can you tone that down a little? You're giving me a head ache." He remarks as he breaks free, at last, from the other's grip.
"Sorry, sorry, I was just a little uncertain how you'd take the surprise."
"Were they always like that with each other?" The question is not, at all, relevant and, sagging a little in relief, Watari responds,
"I only really saw the last few week of that particular partnership, but from the way everyone else talks about it I'm guessing that it was a pretty constant thing."
"But Tsuzuki was so…"
"Diffident? Restrained? Impassive?" Watari enquires before informing him, "He and Ichigo were put together only a little after Tsu had ended things with Tatsumi and so, by that point, I think he'd decided that not caring at all was better than caring all too much."
"A decision that you want me to believe he let go for my sake?"
"Why do you find that so unbelievable?"
"Because I've never been kind or welcoming, never treated him any more tenderly than Ichigo-san did."
"Perhaps not," Watari remarks before adding, "However, you have been hurt in a way that Ichigo-san never was, have suffered so very much that to simply brush you aside as he had every other after that point would have been beyond cruel."
"Ha! So that's my advantage, the salve for my insecurity? That he pities me? That he sees me as some apparently hopeless case that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to fix?" He enquires as he rounds on the other, fists clenched hard at his sides.
"That might be how it started, but it's not how it is now, Bon."
He opens his mouth to protest, to scream that such monumental shifts in perspective only ever happened in fantasies and then he recalls the heat in his partner's eyes from the night previous.
Caught he all but folds in on himself and, head turned back towards the tablet, he enquires,
"How can you say such a thing so confidently, Watari-san? How can you have such unwavering certainty when I do not?"
"Because I have the advantage of an objective perspective and I've been precisely where you are now."
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T: Next chapter next week, review?