Warnings: Angst, bloodshed, fluff, sap, and Tatsumi being a weirdo.
Chapter Eleven
Akimiya gives me a very long look, then raises an eyebrow at me. "I sure hope you have more of a plan than that," he says dryly. "Because if you intend on marching in there, stabbing Muraki, and hauling Tsuzuki out by his hair, I have some choice words for you."
"No, no," I say, waving my hands in the air. "I have a much better plan than that."
"All right. Sit down and tell me."
Akimiya ushers me into a chair and gets me a mug of tea. I proceed to tell him the plan that dawned on me, that I refined and revised on my way over to his house. He listens intently and doesn't interrupt.
"'Cause, see, if I just stabbed Muraki he'd just heal himself and it wouldn't matter," I remind him. "So I have to be more devious about this."
He sits in silence for a few minutes after I'm finished, tapping his fingers against the table. "I don't know Muraki like you do," he finally says. "Do you think it's going to work?"
"I think it will." Pause. "I think there's a good chance," I revise.
"And what if he calls your bluff?" Akimiya asks calmly.
I give him a little smile. "Whoever said I was bluffing?"
He just gives me a look.
"Sorry. Had to be said. If he calls the bluff, that's where you come in. I'll need your help to latch onto Tsuzuki and drag him back to the Meifu."
"You think he won't transport by himself?" Akimiya asks, surprised.
"I think that if Muraki doesn't release the vow, he can't," I correct.
"Ah, right." Akimiya nods slightly. "So we drag him back here and then figure it out from there?"
"Yeah." I nod, get up, and start pacing around the room. It's nearly three o'clock. "Anyway, you might need to help me transport him anyway. I'm not sure he'll be thinking too clearly."
"What a surprise," Akimiya says dryly. He gives me a curious look. "Why did you come to me? Tatsumi-san is more powerful. He would have helped."
"Give me a break," I say with a shrug. "Tatsumi wouldn't approve of this. If it fails, it might as well be suicide. And that's what it'll look like to him."
Akimiya considers this for a long minute. "Let's make sure we don't fail, then."
"Well, I was sort of planning on it." Roll my eyes. "Besides, I figured that if you didn't want to go along with it, I'd just remind you that it's technically all your fault." I wink to let him know I'm kidding. Sort of. "And then I'd appeal to your overdeveloped sense of conscience."
It's his turn to roll his eyes. "Oh, all right. Let me tell Rika-chan where I'm going, and then we'll go down to Chijou and get what we need. You want to do this tonight?"
"Hell yes."
"I figured." Akimiya walks out of the room. I'm practically twitching from anticipation. If this works . . . by dawn I'll have Tsuzuki back in my arms. And if it doesn't, well, I'll be dead and it won't matter. Either way, I'm better off than I am right now.
And as much pleasure as it would give me to slice Muraki from navel to nose, I'm not that stupid. He's survived enough that I don't think this will make much of a difference.
Akimiya comes back out. "You ready to go?"
I can only nod.
~~~~
For once, Muraki isn't expecting us. Of course, this doesn't mean that he doesn't wake up the instant I set foot in the door, but at least he wasn't waiting on the front step to deliver some of his charming morale-damaging comments. That might have messed me up a bit too much to attempt this. But no, he and Tsuzuki are both sound asleep when we get into the room. Of course, I have to kick open the door, which isn't the world's most subtle way of entrance. He's out of bed before I'm inside, and Tsuzuki is sitting up with the sheets pooled in his lap, looking confused. My heart thuds painfully in my chest.
"Didn't expect you to try anything," Muraki says coolly. I'm not sure the words register. I'm just staring at Tsuzuki. He's staring back with the faintest hint of hope in his eyes. He doesn't look hurt, but he's a Shinigami, so that doesn't mean anything. "What are you trying to accomplish?"
Akimiya is standing in the doorway as instructed, staying out of harm's way. The knife is in my pocket, a solid and reassuring presence. "Just a housecall," I say, somehow managing to keep my voice even. "You know, I would've brought a casserole, but I didn't have time to make it."
Tsuzuki climbs out of bed, looking hesitantly at Muraki as if awaiting his orders. Which he probably is. It makes my blood boil, the way he's cringing as if expecting to be hit. I hold out my hand to him.
He looks at it and shakes his head, his eyes darting to Muraki again. I leave my hand out. Muraki watches this all with a great deal of amusement.
Oh please. This is what it all hinges on. Well, this and a few dozen other things.
"Go on," Muraki finally says. "Let him have his delusion of hope."
Tsuzuki takes a few steps forward, not quite sure of what he's supposed to be doing. His hand closes on mine.
I pull, hard, spinning him around and getting my arm around his waist. Then, before either of them has realized what I'm doing, I yank the knife out of my pocket and hold it to Tsuzuki's throat.
There's a tiny little gasp from Tsuzuki. Nothing from Muraki.
"Well," I say pleasantly. "Now the fun part. Release him from his vow, or I'll kill him."
Muraki's face doesn't change. "You would never kill Tsuzuki-san."
"Oh no? Try me." I press the blade harder against his throat. Have to be very careful. Don't want to cut him accidentally.
Muraki just shrugs, and for a minute I think it's all gone to hell, that he's actually going to call my bluff. Then he stops. I'm not sure why, maybe it was the look in my eyes. God knows after this long without Tsuzuki, I'm more than a little bit crazy.
"I would rather die," I grind out between clenched teeth, "than let you have him. And I would rather see him dead on the floor for the same reason."
He doesn't buy it. Not yet. But he's starting to. Tsuzuki is holding himself perfectly still in my grasp, so I don't end up slitting his throat by accident.
"Release him. Now."
"And if I don't?" he asks casually. "You'll cut him. And then I'll heal him, and nothing will have changed."
"No," I say coldly. "I'll cut him, and then I'll drag him back to the Meifu with me, the one place where you can't get him. I'll strap him down and watch him die, if necessary. You don't get to have him. He's mine."
"His vow says differently."
I sneer at him. I improved my sneering quite a bit lately. "His vow means nothing. You extorted it out of him. It isn't worth anything."
"It keeps him with me."
"In body, yes. But no matter what he swore, you'll never have his heart, because that belongs to me. No vow he ever swears can give that to you, because it isn't his to give."
I can see the building fury in his eyes. I've touched a nerve, and he doesn't want it to show, but it does. Because I'm right. Tsuzuki will never be his, not even if I'm gone.
"It doesn't matter," he finally says with a shrug. "As long as he's with me."
"So you say," I reply quietly. "But it bothers you. I know that it does. I suppose it all comes down to which one of us really loves him, ne? You don't care about him at all, as long as he's yours. But I want his happiness more than anything else. If he loved you, if he was happy with you, I would let him go. But he's miserable, and so I won't. And I will kill him before I let you touch him again."
"Muraki . . ." Tsuzuki's voice wavers, then steadies. "He's serious . . . I can feel it . . ."
Because after so long not using my empathy, I've lost a little of my control. I must be projecting like crazy. Of course, I don't know what exactly it is that I'm projecting, but apparently it's enough.
Muraki hesitates. It's the first time I've ever seen him do it. The first time I've ever seen him without a concrete plan, without knowing what to do to best further his ends. The first time I've actually managed to take him off guard, in all the time I've known him.
The moment hangs in the air. No one breathes.
"I don't believe you," he finally says.
"I didn't expect you to," I reply, my voice even. "But can you afford the chance?"
Press the knife just a little bit harder. It's making a definite indent on Tsuzuki's throat now. Not quite enough to draw blood, but very close. All it would take was a tiny movement on my part, and Muraki knows it.
"You took everything from me." Tears are running down my cheeks now, and I don't care. "I thought I was finally safe from you when I knew that Tsuzuki loved me, but you even took that from me. I won't let it happen anymore. I'm sick of it. Maybe I'm not powerful enough to kill you, but you can't take him away from me. I won't let you. I would rather see both of us dead than him with you."
Silence. Tsuzuki can't even breathe, the knife is pressed so tightly to his throat.
Muraki smiles.
He actually God damned smiles.
"Well, who would have thought?" he finally asks. "You appear to have won this round. I don't know whether or not you're telling the truth, but you're right in that it's a chance I won't take. I release Tsuzuki from his vow. He's no longer mine."
I can hear Akimiya's audible sigh of relief. But we're not in the clear yet. The second that Tsuzuki releases his end, Muraki regains his ability to hurt me. And from the look in his eyes, he's planning on doing plenty of that. "Tsuzuki." I nudge him gently. "You have to say it, too."
"Oh . . . yeah." Tsuzuki takes in a shaky breath as I let up the pressure slightly. "I release Muraki from his vow."
Akimiya takes a step forward and puts his arms around my shoulders, and we all transport as one, just as Muraki starts toward us.
We thump to a heap in my living room. Now Tsuzuki's and mine again. I wonder briefly how we're going to get all his stuff. And whether or not he'll actually care. Only now am I realizing that he's only wearing boxers. He doesn't even have any clothes. Hm, that'll make it interesting at work tomorrow . . .
Tsuzuki scrambles away from me, and I can feel his fear radiating from him. Let's clear that up right quick.
"You . . . you were going to . . ." He puts a hand to his throat, his skin very pale.
I shake my head. I want to explain, but all the words are gone. Even after sleeping so long, I find that I'm still exhausted.
"No, he wasn't." Akimiya rescues me. He takes the knife from my limp hand. Tsuzuki lets out a cry of alarm as Akimiya slices his palm open, then an even louder cry of astonishment as the wound heals instantly.
He looks between the two of us, starting to understand. "It was a fake?"
Akimiya nods. "The knife was just an ordinary one, the kind you can buy at any weapon shop, and we did manage to find one open at three o'clock in the morning. We carved some similar symbols onto it. He never got close enough to inspect it, so it did the job."
Tsuzuki looks at us wonderingly. "Then you weren't going to kill me?" he asks timidly. Funny change from someone who tried to burn himself to death less than a year ago.
"Of course not!" The words burst out of me. "God, Tsuzuki, I could never hurt you . . . never ever . . ." I'm crying again. Or maybe I never stopped. I crawl into the relative protection of Tsuzuki's arms and bury my face in his shoulder. He hugs me so tightly that I can't breathe, but that's okay because I don't need to.
"You saved me," he says, his voice still holding a note of wonder. "You beat Muraki."
Now that he says it in such plain terms, I realize that he's right. I . . . beat Muraki. I faced him and came out on top. And not only did I do that, but I beat him at his own game. He's the master of manipulation . . . and I just manipulated him. I don't know whether I should laugh or cheer. I settle for a strangled version of both, clinging to him.
He hides his face in my hair. "Thank you," he whispers. "I had . . . almost given up hoping . . ."
I'm crying too hard to answer, and after a few seconds, so is he. So we just hold each other.
Akimiya's hand rests on my shoulder briefly and I look up. "I'm heading for home," he says. "I'll see you later, okay?"
I nod slightly. I'm not even supposed to go to work tomorrow. Tatsumi said he didn't want to see me before Thursday, and it's only Wednesday. Nearly five o'clock in the morning now. It took Akimiya and I a long time to find the knife shop, then a longer time to use my empathy to find Muraki and Tsuzuki. Thank God they hadn't left Tokyo, that's all I have to say.
"Come on," I say, once Akimiya leaves, and manage to get Tsuzuki to his feet. We stumble into the bedroom and collapse down onto the bed, still holding each other. I have this vague feeling that I'm not going to let him out of my sight for, oh, say, the next few decades.
"How did you think of it?" he asks, pulling me close and breathing through my hair. "To use the knife like that?"
"It just occurred to me," I reply. "At first I thought I would use it on him, just try to kill him, but I never would've managed it. He's too powerful." At Tsuzuki's murmur of assent, I continue. "But then I remembered Akimiya trying to kill me with it, and . . . I don't know. I just thought of it."
"I'm glad."
"No more glad than I am."
So many times, we've fallen asleep with Tsuzuki lying on his back and me cradled against his chest. But tonight it's the reverse. Tonight, for the first time in my existence, I challenged Muraki and won. And got the best prize in the world for it.
~~~~
I wake up with one question in my mind. Why the hell did I set the bloody alarm clock? The thing is beeping away and I'm lying here trying to bask in the glow of having Tsuzuki back with me. Beeping isn't conducive to basking. Worse yet, Tsuzuki is sitting up to turn it off. I wrap my arms around his waist and pull him back down.
He looks down at me and smiles. "I'll be back in a second," he says, kissing my forehead. "I have to call in sick. We'll catch a few more hours of sleep and then go see Tatsumi. He can get me transferred back."
I yawn. "Okay." Unfortunately, that's when the doorbell rings. We blink at each other, then I get up and answer it. I fell asleep fully clothed, so I'm in a much better position than Tsuzuki, who's still in his boxers.
Akimiya is on the front doorstep, looking far more awake than I would have thought possible, given that I know he didn't get much more sleep than me. "Ohayo," he says. "I thought you might want to borrow these." He holds out a small bundle, which contains, from the look of it, a white button down shirt and black pants. Ah, that makes sense. Akimiya is much closer to Tsuzuki's size than I am.
"Thanks," I say. "We'll probably be in around lunchtime. I need more sleep."
He smiles. "Well, I won't steal your thunder. You can tell Tatsumi-san all about it yourself."
"Yeah, thanks." I fully plan on letting Tsuzuki, in any case.
"See you later, then," Akimiya says, and leaves. I wander back into the bedroom. Tsuzuki has already crawled back underneath the blankets.
"Akimiya brought you some clothes," I say. "To wear to work. What do you want to do about your stuff?"
He shrugs. "I didn't bring anything I especially cared about," he replies. "Didn't want Muraki getting his hands on any of it. Anything that was actually important to me, I left with Tatsumi. He'll still have it." He holds out his arms to me.
I don't need further encouragement. I get back into bed and snuggle up to him. He rests his head in the hollow of my shoulder, his arm around my waist. I fall back asleep just as his lips feather over my neck.
When I wake up again, it's late morning, and Tsuzuki is awake. I know he is without opening my eyes, because I can feel his fingers combing through my hair gently. Now that I'm no longer so exhausted, I can feel the elation starting to bubble over, and I literally want to dance for joy. I settle for wrapping my arms around Tsuzuki and holding him as tightly as I can.
He hugs me back, and then kisses me, and we stay that way for a long time. Nothing is said, because no words are needed.
~~~~
There's a general, if somewhat predictable, outcry when Tsuzuki and I walk in. People are mobbing him, demanding to know what's going on. No one asks if he's back to stay. The huge grin on my face gives that one away.
Tatsumi emerges from his office, presumably to see what all the fuss is about, and does a double take when he sees Tsuzuki. He walks over and raises an eyebrow at us.
"Ohayo, Tatsumi," Tsuzuki says with a smile, and then sums up the situation as simply as possible in words that make me blush a bright red. "Hisoka rescued me."
I stand there and wait for the barrage of questioning that's about to start. Tatsumi gives me a long look, then Tsuzuki, then me again. Then he draws Tsuzuki into a very tight hug and says nothing.
There's a moment of shocked silence at this, after which we all clearly hear Wakaba giggling. Then everyone hears me giggling. I try to stifle it, but can't help it. Tatsumi lets Tsuzuki go and gives us all a glare of death, then says, "Aren't you all supposed to be working?"
"Yes," Watari says, "but we want the story." Ah, Watari, probably the only one of us here who would dare Tatsumi's wrath. His genki genes make him immune.
Tatsumi continues to glare. "I'm going to go speak with Tsuzuki," he says. "I expect all of you to return to your work."
Tsuzuki snickers a little, but follows Tatsumi into his office. Everyone immediately pounces on me, demanding an explanation. I sum up the night's events in pretty vague terms, which is good enough for them, and also causes all of them to tackle Akimiya. He's been sitting on one of the desks, watching the fuss with amusement. Everyone begins demanding why he didn't see fit to tell them earlier.
It's a little while before Tatsumi's door opens. Everyone scurries back to their respective offices. Tatsumi beckons Akimiya and I over. "I need to speak to you for a minute," he said. Tsuzuki squeezes my hand and then heads for the donuts and coffee left out from the morning.
Tatsumi lets us in and shuts the door. "As glad as I am that Tsuzuki-san's back," he says, "I'd like to know what the hell you thought you were doing, Kurosaki-kun."
I nearly groan. Of course Tatsumi would choose to get irritated.
"You risked Tsuzuki-san's life," Tatsumi says steadily, "and you did it specifically against orders, too."
Dah. I'd forgotten that stupid order not to go find him.
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
My answer is immediate. "That I did it to save the man I love and I'm not sorry and I'd do it again in an instant."
Tatsumi looks questioningly at Akimiya. His voice is quieter, but no less resolute. "That I did it to help Hisoka after the terrible wrong I did him, I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again in an instant."
Remind me to speak to him later about his guilt complex. Sheesh.
Tatsumi gives us both a long look. "I see," he finally says. "Well, on the matter of the consequences . . ."
Oh geez.
"I think you both deserve a week's worth of vacation."
We gape at him.
Tatsumi does something I've never seen him do before: he starts to laugh. Not just snickering, either. Real laughter. "You didn't actually think I was mad, did you?"
Wow. I think getting Tsuzuki home has fried Tatsumi's brain. He's acting playful.
"Sorry," Tatsumi says, regaining control over himself. "I couldn't resist that. You two looked so terrified . . ." He goes off into another fit of snickers. Akimiya and I are still just staring at him.
"Tatsumi . . . you jerk," I finally manage. "That wasn't fair. At all."
"I know," he says. "But I just had to see the looks on your faces." He coughs slightly, now back to scary-accountant mode. "In any case, yes, you two both have the next week off, as does Tsuzuki-san. I'm putting his transfer back to this department through today, so he'll be back with us by the time his vacation is over."
I nod. Smile. Can't stop smiling, really.
"And now, I'm taking Tsuzuki-san out to lunch, and you two may do as you will."
"You're leaving the office in the middle of a workday?" I ask, amused. "Wow, Tatsumi, you really are glad to see him back."
"You want that vacation or not?" he asks.
"Oh, I want it." Truth told, I'm a little anxious about letting Tsuzuki out of my sight, but he couldn't be with anyone safer than Tatsumi. And I know he missed Tatsumi almost as much as he missed me, so I'll deal with it.
The three of us wander back out into the main office. I give Tsuzuki a hug and see him off with Tatsumi, which of course gets the entire office gaping at the fact that Tatsumi is going out to lunch rather than eating in his office while poring over paperwork. Or at least just eating in the staffroom like a respectable curmudgeon.
Akimiya looks at me. "Want to go find some lunch?" he asks. "I guess I have the rest of the day off."
"Sure," I say.
~~~~
Ta da! One more chapter left, and that's all. Feedback please?