Casual Friday
Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own Yami no Matsuei.
Rating: PG-13 for language and sensuality
Pairing: Tatsumi/Watari
Summary: Nothing to say, really. Just a quick, fluffy little thing.
++
Watari stared at the notice taped above the coffeepots in the break room and laughed, though he knew better. The Apocalypse was approaching and here he was, highly amused by it. It was going to be a Casual Friday. Thinking back, the last time there had been a Casual Friday at Enma-cho, it was his first full week as a Shinigami. And that had been twenty-six years ago. True, every day for the blonde was a Casual Friday, as he managed to skirt the dress code rules as much as humanly possible. The only concession his wardrobe made were the neatly pressed navy blue slacks he generally wore. And yet somehow Hisoka, by virtue of still being brand-new to the whole business of being a Shinigami, got to wear blue jeans pretty much every day.
"Damn hypocritical secretary," he muttered, rooting around in a drawer for a spoon.
"What was that, Watari?"
The scientist froze, his whole body going rigid. He knew that voice well, and the person attached to it, who was no doubt standing right behind him, glaring murderously at the back of his very blonde head. He spun on his heel, grinning idiotically, trying to hide his annoyance at being caught.
"Good morning, Tatsumi! Looking forward to this morning's investigation meeting, I hear this latest case is a real bitch."
The secretary knew very well that Watari's enthusiastic cheer was a distraction, trying to steer him away from the fact that he'd been the subject of discontented mumblings.
"Indeed. I will see you in an hour, Watari. And if I find out there's been anything extra added to those pots of coffee, your paycheck will be the one to suffer," the blue-eyed man said in his usual, no-nonsense, matter-of-fact tone.
"Sorry to say, Tatsumi, but you and Konoe have been working me so hard lately, I haven't been able to work on anything to put in the coffee. But you never know, so I'd be very careful what I drank if I were you," he threatened in return; though it was all part of the constant game he played with Tatsumi. The secretary knew very well that Watari would never intentionally experiment on him, not if he wanted to keep his position.
"It has been noted."
And with that, he was off. Watari watched him leave with a smirk of frustrated amusement playing on his lips. It was one of those moments that he would've loved to throw the cup of steaming coffee at the back of the man's head, just to see what would happen. Tatsumi, in spite of being such a composed and intelligent man, was really quite an idiot sometimes.
"I'm telling you, Watari, you need a really big, flashing neon sign. He doesn't understand the concept of flirting," Tsuzuki said, piling breakfast edibles onto a paper plate. Watari's gaze shot over to him.
"When did you get here?" he inquired, not remembering seeing his fellow Shinigami patrolling the food items a moment ago.
"Just now, teleported in from Nagasaki. Man, was it a rough case. I'm ready for a vacation…alone on a tropical island for a week sounds good."
Watari raised an eyebrow. "Hisoka mad at you again?"
"Yelled at me the entire time. Said I was a complete idiot and I should let him be in charge of cases and I should be back in the office keeping you company. But I can't blame him, really. What with Tatsumi sticking us with a case on the anniversary of Hisoka's death. Should've given it to Terazuma and Wakaba, really."
"Not like you had much of a choice, though. And an investigation meeting today, too. Hey, did you see this? Casual Friday this week," Watari jerked his thumb in the direction of the notice. Tsuzuki crossed to the coffeepots and scanned the paper quickly.
"That's different. Wonder if somebody complained."
Watari shrugged. "Don't rightly know."
"Well, we both know one person around here who's not going to participate," Tsuzuki sighed, absently nibbling on a pastry.
The blonde chuckled. "Let me guess…" he scowled, pushing his glasses down to the tip of his nose, just to slide them back up again. "I can't have you and Watari wastefully spending the company's money, Tsuzuki. These unnecessary expenditures have got to stop."
Tsuzuki nearly fell over laughing. "Watari, that's brilliant! You sound just like him!"
Hisoka poked his head into the room, glaring at the both of them. "Tsuzuki! Get your lazy ass back into this office, because I am not filling out your paperwork for this case. For once could you do something around here other than stuff your face and make jokes at other people's expenses?"
The younger boy disappeared and Tsuzuki reluctantly trudged towards the door. He turned, grinning at his partner-in-crime as though he had some terrible secret to share.
"He's just pissed off because I caught him mumbling in his sleep about how good-looking he thinks I am," he announced, winking rakishly and darting off to fill out the much-dreaded forms.
Watari just laughed. He could tell already, the portents were all set for one of those weeks, the kind where Tatsumi would be on edge, Hisoka would be moody, Tsuzuki would be rapidly in-and-out of his whiny puppy mode, and he himself would just be highly amused by it all. No doubt the Count would try to cash in on some of Tsuzuki's favors this week as well, meaning they'd all have to rescue the poor man from that invisible lecher. Just the usual chaos that came with the territory.
++
Tatsumi didn't even look up at him when Watari swung the door open several days later. All of his predictions about the week were coming true. The higher-ups dumped Tatsumi with a miserable amount of paperwork that needed to be completed as soon as humanly possible. Hisoka and Tsuzuki got into an argument that led to the latter being locked out of his office by the former. And that subsequently led to Tsuzuki and Terazuma getting into a fistfight after the demon-possessed Shinigami ridiculed his coworker for being locked out. And he, Watari, had melted a very large hole in the floor of his lab, roughly the size of a Jacuzzi.
"No, Watari."
"You didn't even let me ask my question," he replied sulkily, flopping down into the chair facing the frazzled secretary.
Tatsumi glanced up at him, a smudge of ink on his cheek. "You are not putting a Jacuzzi in your lab, I saw the hole and the order forms. The company hardly has enough money to buy a single box of paperclips, let alone a Jacuzzi."
"Actually, I was going to ask if you'd mind if I did a provocative striptease on your desk."
"Watari, you're testing my patience, aren't you?"
He grinned. "Always. Today's Thursday…which means tomorrow's Friday."
"Congratulations, Watari, you know the days of the week," Tatsumi deadpanned.
"What I mean is that Casual Friday's tomorrow. Maybe for once in your life you could participate. Or do you not know the meaning of the phrase 'dress down?' After all, in the time I've been here, I've never once seen you in anything other than a suit."
"Somebody around here has to act professional."
Watari groaned, slamming a fist on the padded leather armrest of the chair he occupied.
"See? That's the attitude I'm talking about! You don't always have to be so professional! You practically own this division, yes, I know, and without you we'd all be going to Hell. But you never take time out for yourself, Tatsumi, never. Do you even sleep anymore? And when was the last real meal you've had, eh? I hate to admit this, but you worry me, Tatsumi, as a physician and as your friend. If you weren't already dead, I'd say you were well on your way to a fatal heart attack, though that's not to say you still couldn't have one."
"Are you quite through?" Tatsumi asked. "I thank you for your concern, Watari, but now is really not the best time to be lecturing me. These reports…"
"Oh, to hell with the reports!" Watari rebuked. "Figuratively speaking, you need to live a little, Tatsumi. You have all eternity to be chained to your desk, whoring yourself to these stupid sheets of paper. Do something spontaneous, something…"
"Something like what?" he inquired, azure eyes flicking up at the scientist.
Watari shrugged. "I don't know, I didn't have a good example handy."
Actually, he just couldn't bring himself to say 'something to make me fall in love with you all over again.' That was a little too out of line for the moment, and Tatsumi was already annoyed enough as it was.
"If I do this, will you leave me alone for the rest of today and until I get these reports done?" Tatsumi negotiated, still trying to plow through the stack of papers even while speaking.
"I guess so…but just one thing first," he replied, getting up from his chair.
"What?"
He ran his fingers through his hair, shoving loose strands of gold behind his ears before leaning over the paper-littered desk and kissing Tatsumi's cheek.
"You had ink on you," Watari stated simply, winking as he sauntered back towards his lab, whistling jauntily.
Tatsumi sighed heavily, rubbing where the mark had once been. "That man…"
++
Friday was hardly any different from Thursday. Sure, Watari had the full excuse to come into work wearing jeans and a slightly rumpled black jersey, his hair left loose and slightly damp, a pair of well-worn flip flops on his feet, but there was little change. He came into work at his usual time, unlocked the lab, turned on the lights and the computer, fed the birds and stumbled off for the day's first cup of coffee. He checked his email while he watched everybody else stagger in, 003 darting out of the room to swipe whatever her little talons could carry from the break room and bringing it back to share with her 'sisters,' the penguin and toucan who shared counter space with the domineering yet diminutive owl.
He'd yet to see Tatsumi, though, as he'd held to his work and avoided all unnecessary contact with the man since Thursday morning.
"If he's wearing that same tired brown suit," he told 003, glancing towards the door, "I swear I'm camping out in his office all of next week."
Tsuzuki wandered in at one point, yawning and popping joints as he stretched, eager to complain about some new injustice that had transpired since he'd last seen Watari. No grievances, but a surprising declaration that Hisoka had invited his violet-eyed partner over for dinner.
"I can't figure that kid out," he sighed, picking at the muffin in his hands rather than eating it. "One minute he's bashing my head in, the next minute he's asking me over."
Watari shrugged. "He's an empath, what do you want?"
"You know, it's kind of funny, nobody's seen Tatsumi yet. He's usually the first one here…of course, that's generally because he didn't go home the night before and stayed through to do work, but…it's kind of scary, you know?"
"I'm sure he'll be here. We're talking about Seiichiro Tatsumi, the man hasn't missed a day of work ever. That's all twenty-nine years of his mortal life plus all of the time he's been dead."
"Right, right. Hey, I'll see you later, Watari. Got to head back so I don't incur the wrath of Hisoka," Tsuzuki chuckled, shaking his head. "Oh, and the bet's still on. If Tatsumi doesn't ask you out by the end of the month, you're doing all of my paperwork."
"What are you, a third-grader?" Watari taunted. "Give the man some slack, he's been under a ton of pressure lately from the higher-ups. I saw him come out of a meeting yesterday around lunch, he looked like he was going to cry."
"Damn, they really push Tatsumi way too hard sometimes. Maybe we should take out an ad for an assistant."
Watari shook his head vehemently. "Oh, he'd kill us! You know how stubborn he is. It might be a shitload of work, but damned if anybody else does it. Besides, any assistant we might hire may not be compatible with Tatsumi's organizational systems."
"Yeah. All right, now I've really got to move. Later, Watari."
He sighed as soon as Tsuzuki was out of the room. He really did love the man, Tsuzuki was probably as close to a brother as he would ever have, and they'd been close ever since Watari's arrival in Meifu. Despite his carefree attitude, Tsuzuki was the only one Watari had ever trusted with some of his most intimate secrets. Tsuzuki was the first person to know when Watari had fallen for his superior, and to date the only other person in all of Meifu who had been informed of the young scientist's love for Tatsumi. Hisoka probably knew, but that was the sneaky thing about empaths, they always knew everything.
"I don't even know why I like him so much," Watari muttered, his thoughts still stuck on Tatsumi as he moved to water one of the plants he'd been keeping on the windowsill.
It wasn't even the fact that he was handsome, which he was, and Watari was admittedly a sucker for blue eyes. And it certainly wasn't his personality, most of the time Tatsumi hardly showed any. But Watari knew better than to think things like that because it was all a front, just as he himself strolled about with a perpetually carefree attitude. He'd done it in life too, smiled and laughed and acted like an absolute lunatic when inside he felt like killing himself. He knew that despite his stern exterior and intense hatred for disorder and inefficiency, Tatsumi was a warm and caring man who just needed some gentle persuasion to let go of his inhibitions. And maybe that was it, why Watari made any and every excuse to barge into the man's office day in and day out, completely uninvited and not caring at all about the consequences, even the threat of being pummeled by a host of angry shadows.
"Ugh, what am I saying? Of course I know why I like him so much! God, don't tell me I'm starting to get as emotionally weird as Bon! Gah, I'm too old to be hormonal!"
That was about when Saya came skidding into the lab, talking a mile a minute, waving her arms for emphasis. She looked like a parrot. 003 and the other birds were certainly impressed by the imitation, nodding with approval.
"Slow down, Saya. I can't understand you," Watari stated, putting the watering can aside.
"There's some strange guy in the break room! Nobody has any idea who he is or what he's doing here…he's wicked hot too…but since nobody can find Tatsumi, you're the next best person to go talk to him!" she said, not once pausing for breath.
"Me?! Why me?" he cried as the young Shinigami from Hokkaido grabbed his wrist and started dragging him out the dented doors. "Tsuzuki's the most powerful one of us!"
"Aw, Hisoka won't let him out for anything. And Terazuma could care less about the whole thing, so…"
Watari sighed, letting the girl drag him down the hallway and practically throw him in the break room. She, on the other hand, stood a safe distance away. Actually, she was only leaning against the doorframe, with Yuma and Wakaba huddled around her as the three young women listened in.
This 'strange guy' of Saya's was leaning against the wall by the window, his hands curled around a blue coffee mug star-studded with places where the paint had chipped off. He seemed content to stare at the places on the secondhand Oriental rug where it was rubbed down to nearly nothing from an eternity of chairs being pushed in and out from the wobbly tables. And he, unlike certain aggrieved secretaries, was dressed for Casual Friday in a pair of comfortable, well-worn jeans and a heather-colored high-necked sweater. His hair was tousled, the apathetic style of someone who'd simply rolled out of bed, ran his hands through his hair and went out of the house that way.
"Good morning," Watari said brightly, making his way over to the coffee machines and shaking the pots carefully, gauging how much coffee was left in each.
"Spiking the coffee again, are we?" the man asked, a wry smile spreading across his face. He tilted his head up, and despite the apparent lack of eyewear Watari could instantly recognize those gorgeous lapis-blue eyes anywhere. He grinned easily.
"Maybe, but just in case I'd be very careful what I drank if I were you," he answered, setting the pots back down and moving closer. "You look really nice like that. Contact lenses?"
"The disposable kind. But I did almost poke my eyes out trying to put them in, I'll admit to that. Do I meet your approval, Watari?"
The scientist had suddenly forgotten how to stop smiling. Tatsumi couldn't have looked better. "Absolutely fabulous."
"Thanks," he replied, blushing slightly. "Ah, Watari?"
"Hm?"
Tatsumi rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. No glasses to hide behind left him feeling very exposed. "I'm stuck in meetings with the higher-ups all day, regarding those reports you so graciously let me get finished. But…if it isn't too late…maybe we could go out afterwards?"
"Yeah, that sounds great!"
Watari could hear the girls out in the hallway discussing this conversation and had to stifle a laugh behind his hand. They were astonished that he knew the mystery man, who apparently worked here, and that they were planning on going out. It was, in their opinions, absolutely scandalous, something that would rock the foundations of Meifu.
"What will Mr. Tatsumi think?" Yuma gasped.
Tatsumi was quietly laughing as well. Totally unrecognizable out of his familiar suit and tie, even Tsuzuki hadn't realized just who he was, nor had Konoe or the Gushoshin twins. Leave it to the scientist, the analytical one who scrutinized every minute detail, to figure it out. But that was what he liked about Watari, his brilliance and attention to detail. Even if he was a little crazy sometimes.
"Watari?"
Amber eyes met sapphire ones, and Watari realized that Tatsumi was smiling at him. "Yeah?"
Tatsumi's hand brushed across his cheek, his fingers snagging in the wild blonde curls tucked just behind Watari's ear. The older man leaned in and kissed him, slipping his tongue into Watari's mouth as he started to gasp in shock. Startled, he could do nothing but hold on, feeling his knees start to buckle. Now that he thought about it, his whole body felt like the gelatinous ooze he'd found in the back of the lab refrigerator, an experiment that had taken on another life form due to his negligence. But it was better not to think at that particular moment, not with Tatsumi kissing him. Tatsumi kissing him. Now there was something that ranked far above the concept of having a Casual Friday. The Apocalypse was most definitely on its way.
Watari all but melted to the floor when Tatsumi finally broke the kiss.
"You had that coming, you know. I'm not as oblivious as you and Tsuzuki think I am. So you can tell that good-for-nothing slacker that you've won his stupid little bet and he'll have to catch up on all of his paperwork as well as do yours."
Watari remained motionless and dumbstruck, mouth moving but no sound coming out. Tatsumi smirked, leaning close to him again.
"Spontaneous enough for you?" he murmured, looking absolutely devious. Saya, Yuma and Wakaba were probably passed out in the hallway, or at least squealing fangirlishly.
"Tatsumi…" Watari breathed, still in a state of intense shock.
"You better not do this to me every time I kiss you."
He snapped out of it rather quickly. "What?! What do you mean, 'every time?' Eh?"
"Oh, you think I was just joking? You don't kiss someone like that and not mean it, honestly, Watari. And you're not using our relationship to weasel more money out of me, either."
"Who said anything about us having a relationship?!"
"Where were you when I asked you out?" Tatsumi shot back.
Watari raised up his hands in exasperation. "I thought that was just a casual invitation! I didn't think you meant out, out! And you didn't even ask if you could kiss me, either!"
"I think I did, Watari. You were too busy blushing."
"Me blushing? What about you?!" Watari cried.
Out in the hallway, the three girls were exchanging horrified glances with one another. Their incredibly gorgeous mystery man sounded an awful lot like a certain grouchy secretary they knew very well, especially now that he was engaged in a shouting match with Watari.
"Holy shit," Saya gasped.
"That's Mr. Tatsumi in there," Wakaba said.
Yuma shook her head. "That's the most disturbing thing that I have ever thought about. I think my brain is on fire right about now."
++
Another notice was posted above the coffeemakers on Monday morning, and Watari was in hysterics over it. There was going to be another Casual Friday. He was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down his face.
"Something funny, Watari?"
He recognized that stern voice anywhere. Not to mention the sharply dressed man that it belonged to, who was no doubt glaring holes in the back of his head from behind that familiar pair of glasses, a file folder clenched in his hand.
"Good morning, Tatsumi!"
It was going to be another one of those weeks, Watari could tell now. Just part of the chaos that went with the territory.
++
fin
Notes: Nothing really, I'd just pay good money to see Tatsumi go casual for once…if it hasn't already happened in the manga and I've missed it completely. In that case, he needs to do it more often! Dress down, Tatsumi, dress down!