Title: Sittin' in a Tree

Summary: Kinda-sorta-pseudo companion to #13, "Dr. Love." Kamatari regresses; Tokio stresses.

Word Count: 622

A/N: This one is quite silly. Then again, anything with Kamatari has a tendency of getting silly.

Telling him anything had been such a mistake, she decided.

"So what's he like?" Kamatari prodded—figuratively and literally; he used the eraser of his pencil to poke her hip.

"What do you care?" Tokio asked, trying desperately to ignore her friend and coworker.

She didn't miss Kamatari's Cheshire cat grin.

"Kit-ten," he singsonged.

"Work, Kamatari," Tokio said from behind gritted teeth; he was still poking her with the eraser.

"Awww! Come on! Don't be so mean—tell me!" the man next to her whined (Still. Poking. Her). "I'd tell you!"

"Of course you would, you're an incurable gossip and chatterbox!" Tokio snapped. "Now go back to sketching the exhibit setup, Akira-kun wants it ready for the meeting with the Board tomorrow."

"Why won't you tell me?" Kamatari asked huffily, blatantly ignoring her command. "Is he deformed or something?"

"No he is not deformed!" Tokio snapped, flushing; she didn't know for a fact if Saitou was deformed or not, but as far she could tell he wasn't, so she was going with no.

A big, loud, resounding no.

"Tou-chy," Kamatari sniffed. "So what's he like?"

Tokio made a sound of frustration in the back of her throat that made Saitou grin in sadistic glee every time he heard it.

"Would you finish the damn sketch already?!" she bellowed.

Kamatari eyed her in a mixture of distain and affront, then suddenly sent her another Cheshire cat grin.

"Kitten an' her boyfriend, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g—"

"Kamatari!" she snapped.

"First comes love, then comes marriage—"

"What are you, four?!"

"Then comes the baby in the baby carriage!"

Tokio abruptly grabbed the pencil he'd been holding (and using to keep time against her hip with, twitch, twitch) and snapped it in half.

"Are you quite done?" she growled.

Kamatari stared at her in horror.

"That was my favorite pencil!" he yelped after a moment.

"How unfortunate for you," Tokio replied coolly, setting the dead writing implement down on the desk in front of her friend. In the back of her mind, she vaguely realized that she sounded an awful lot like a certain snarky policeman she knew—hell, she sounded even better than he did—and she smirked faintly to herself at that thought.

"Tokio!" Kamatari wailed, picking up the pieces of his beloved pencil. "How could you?!"

"It's really easy, actually," she said dryly. "See, first you grab the pencil, like so, and then you apply pressure at both ends, like so, and then you snap the crap out of your annoying friend's favorite pencil because he was being an obnoxious child." Pause. "Well, more of one than usual, anyway."

"You were never this cruel," Kamatari dramatically announced, sniffing and clutching his pencil(s) to his chest. "If this is that man's influence, I can't say as I care for him the least little bit!"

Tokio rolled her eyes.

"Oh would you stop?" she irritably asked. "Come on, just finish the sketch—"

"You broke my pencil!"

"Well it still works! It's just shorter now…and the eraser's separated from the point—"

"I'm sorry poor baby," Kamatari cooed to his pencil(s). "She's just a terrible woman with anger issues and she decided to take them out on you."

Tokio rolled her eyes and gave up and walked away. She'd send Enishi in later to see if his presence would galvanize the effeminate man. For right now, it was better to let him mourn over his beloved writing implement.

"My friends are so not normal," she muttered, pushing her glasses up to perch on the top of her head.

She thought again about the head-case she'd see in about half an hour and smiled faintly.

"And apparently, neither is my taste in men…."