Chapter 1
*******
May 21, 1980 - Kanagawa
Takeshi Touma sighed in poignant frustration as he watched his
partner's expression of misery heightened by his insistence that they
file the damned report and be done with it. He wasn't sure how much
longer he could handle the weight of his older partner's emotional
neediness. Tsuzuki would be a great partner . . . if he could just
learn to detatch himself from his work, but from everything Touma had
heard, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
"But we haven't found them yet, how can we just close the
case?" Tsuzuki lowered his head from where it had rested against the
bowing trunk of the property's only sakura tree, fixing his partner
of six cases with an imploring stare.
"I think we have, and I'll say as much in the report." Touma
replied, crossing his arms across his chest in defense of that all
too intense gaze. Tsuzuki snorted in retort, his anger with the
injustice of the situation melting easily into bitterness.
"You can't even tell me if the mother is holding the baby, or
the baby the mother. And we haven't *seen* *either* of them."
"*You* haven't seen either of them," Touma snapped back, his
increasing edginess at Tsuzuki's personal involvement scraping the
surface of his demeanor, "I'm *telling* you the baby's there, I can
*feel* the two souls."
"But not Kasane, which means she might still be clinging to
something here . . . we just haven't found yet."
"Tsuzuki." Touma began with a sense of weariness, "an infant
soul is devoid of personality. The *only* reason it would not appear
straight back in Meifu is if the attachment of the mother is too
strong to let it go. Kasane *drowning* herself makes a pretty strong
case for that strength of attachment,"
"By that logic they should have *both* appeared in Meifu
*then*! You can't just rule out the possibility of interference from
another party!"
"But Kasane is a *twin* . . . twins are already part of a
divided soul, if she merged with her sister's spirit she *wouldn't*
show up in Meifu."
"You're still leaving out the baby."
"I keep *telling* you, I can *feel* the baby! It's become part
of the pregnancy!"
"But you're talking about a five month interval between Kasane's
death and Rui's conception, *if* Kasane merged with Rui
automatically, what was holding the baby all that time?"
"Does it *matter* Tsuzuki? If they're both accounted for?" Touma
raised his hand unconsciously, rubbing his temple as he turned his
head to squint at the flaming orange of the sun on the horizon.
"Of course it matters . . ." Tsuzuki's voice had dropped to a
pitch that was dangerously close to despair, and Touma looked back at
him, watching as he lifted his hunched shoulders from the support of
the tree and stood up, staring down at the ground.
"Then suppose the baby merged first . . . same father, twin
mother, the infants themselves would practically be twins . . . she
could have drawn Kasane after her."
"There is no proof Kasane merged into Rui at all. . . and if the
baby had the spiritual strength to pull away from the mother to
attach itself to an infant, why not to return to Meifu?"
"I don't know, Tsuzuki . . . the womb would be a familiar place,
and identical to her own mother's . . . maybe that was just a
stronger impulse."
"But Kasane,"
"When twin souls merge, there *is* no differentiation to detect,
they started out as the same and it's natural to return to that
state. Just let it go, and lets go home." he was pleading now and he
knew it.
"What about the baby. Babies. What will happen to it with two
souls?" Tsuzuki turned his head, looking away from his partner and
in the direction of the main house, despite it's being out of sight.
"It's hard to say." Touma thrust his hands into the pockets of
his khakis, quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "Most of the
time, the two souls are unable to completely blend, and the child
grows up schizophrenic. When the two souls *can* combine into a
single entity, the child is likely to be gifted with some sort
of . . . talent, due to all the extra spiritual energy. Of course,
that happens less frequently, and the way the medical world works
now, with all the births and infant deaths and pregnancies being
grouped in the same place, dual soul schizophrenia is more common
than it ever was in the past. It's too easy for one lingering infant
to attach itself to another."
"So what you're saying is this kid is probably going to grow up
crazy, and if we had come here first thing when the mother and baby
didn't show up, he would have been a normal child with a shot at a
life." Touma could see Tsuzuki's fists clenching at his sides in
barely contained anger and self-recrimination "Isn't there any way
to,"
"No." Touma spoke as firmly as he could muster, there was no way
anyone had ever found to detatch one soul from another once they had
begun to bond, and attempting it would no doubt end in failure and
Tsuzuki would be worse off for having hoped.
"It's just so wrong!" the older man whirled on him suddenly, his
dizzying purple gaze uncontainable in his anger, "If this is so
common and irreversible, they should *have* shinigami posted in every
maternity ward! To intercept the souls before it happens!" Touma
shook his head sadly.
"That will never happen . . . think of the cost, how many
shinigami would have to be employed to keep watch over that many
locations. Besides," here he sighed, looking away from Tsuzuki once
more to the rapidly darkening sky, "of all the shinigami who have
ever started with spiritual strength or powers that they had while
living, more than two thirds are dual souls. The rest are like Wakaba-
chan, and come from lines of onmiyouji or other spiritualists. If
they started policing the merging of infant souls, think how it would
affect the division in the long run."
"That's obscene."
"That's bureaucracy." Touma shrugged, still looking away.
"So you . . .?"
"I'm a dual soul. That's why I've always been able to detect
auras. I'm one of the lucky ones."
"And the baby they're having now . . . ? What are the odds the
souls will blend properly . . . ?" The note of despair in the man's
voice was gut wrenching.
"As it stands now . . . I can feel two distinct presences in
that woman's womb . . ." he could almost hear Tsuzuki deflating back
into misery behind him, "but, then, sometimes it isn't till the time
of birth, when the infant is most fully developed and closest to the
state of the first infant when *it* died that the souls can
completely blend . . ." he added, in hopes of easing the man's mind a
little.
"So the kid has a chance . . .?" Touma nodded without turning
to look at his partner, afraid of what they might see in each other.
"Let's just write it up and get out of here, Tsuzuki . . . there
isn't anything more we can do."
"Kasane . . ."
"Kasane is joined to her twin, she must be. And her baby has
joined to her sister's. I'm sure of it." His statement was met by a
long silence, so long that he began to wonder at Tsuzuki's emotional
state before he finally replied.
"All right. We'll write it up. I just . . . I hope this baby
brings some happiness back to this family."
*******
April 6, 1998 - Meifu
Mornings, Hisoka had decided, were better than evenings. He
could recall a time, when he had been very small, that he had loved
summer evenings. He could recall watching the sun set from the top of
a grassy slope on his ancestral lands just west of the main house,
and the world becoming cool and mysterious in the darkness, and
chasing fireflies barefoot with wet grass sticking between his toes until his mother would come looking and scold him for staining his
nice clothes. And they were always nice clothes, whether they were
modern or traditional. Kurosaki Rui had always been insistent on that
point, that he was the son and heir of a great family and heritage
and it did not befit him to dress commonly or to rough-house and make
a mess of himself like other children did. Though his father had been
the patriarch and adhered strictly to the family code of honor and
tradition, as long as his son conducted himself with dignity and
behaved with respect and obedience, Hisoka didn't frankly think the
man would have cared if he had worn jeans and amused himself in his
spare time.
But his mind was drifting to things he preferred not to think
about. He enjoyed mornings now, when the sunlight seemed so much more
golden and infinitely soft, when the whole world was somehow soft,
and fresh, and faintly sweet with the scent of the same dew that had
once stained his clothes. He had found, to his surprise, that he
enjoyed listening to the birds in the morning. They sounded more
cheerful and harmonious in the early morning, while later in the day
it seemed to him that they were all bickering with each other. The
sunsets he had watched in his childhood now seemed like the burning
out of an exhausted day, and he could not enjoy the colors of the sky
properly for the rising tide of anxiety that heralded the onset of
all-out night. But the sunrise he had come to enjoy as it was softer,
less blazing, and lit up the world rather than darkening it. Never
mind that his brain was frozen in adolescent development and his
serotonin levels would never properly balance out and his internal
clock was perpetually set to make him want to sleep late - if nothing
else, his parents had taught him discipline which, despite
everything, he was begrudgingly grateful for, and he could drag
himself up day in and day out no matter how inviting the pillow and
the warmth of the bed and even the security of Tsuzuki, if that was
where he happened to be . . . and he could have the untainted morning.
Of course, it was well past sunrise now, though not late
enough that the soft, golden, misty sense of light and warmth had
faded, and he sat on the two wooden steps leading up to the narrow
back porch of his small house, with his arm hooked over the rail from
underneath.
"We're going to end up being late." he said finally, watching
the toes of his sneakers as they nudged slightly at the faintly muddy
ground where the rested, digging a tiny trench. In the past months
(he wasn't sure how many anymore, as the season never changed anyway)
his neat, relatively barren little backyard had gradually exploded into color as his new house-mate claimed the uncharted territory as
his own, turning grass and muddy patches into brilliant flowerbeds.
Said house-mate, on his knees at one erratically landscaped portion
of the new garden with trowel in hand, looked up from his quiet work
long enough to check his watch.
"We've got time, we'll just blink straight into the office."
"I wanted to walk." the boy on the steps murmured only half
audibly. He *had* wanted to walk, he liked the feel of walking. Maybe
it was a lingering effect of his long illness, being bedridden, but
he enjoyed walking down the street, the way his rubber soles seemed
to nearly bounce against the pavement and he allowed the slightest
spring in his step despite his closely guarded posture and
indifferent air. "You know," he continued out loud, "they'd probably
grow just as perfectly without you doing this every day, just like
everything else."
"I know," the older man replied cheerfully, "but I like doing
it anyway." That was that then. If playing caretaker to a perpetually
blooming, perpetually perfect garden gave Tsuzuki a short respite of
true happiness, who was he to challenge it. He dropped the argument
but uttered a long suffering sigh to save face. Tsuzuki was
resonating faint waves of amusement with him and looked up to meet
his bored expression with a wide grin, raising one finger and
winking "Think of this, as your moment of zen."
"It's *your* zen, not mine." the boy snapped back with no
real venom, faintly agitated at the sense of Tsuzuki laughing at him.
"You seem peaceful enough, sitting and watching like a cat in
the sun. You could leave without me, but you don't." The older man
retorted smugly before he rose, wiping the damp earth off his trowel
before pulling off his gloves. Hisoka didn't have anything to say to
that, so he didn't say anything at all, untangling his arm from the
railing and scooting over as Tsuzuki sat down beside him, his longer
legs folding up comically where Hisoka's younger form fit
neatly. "You do like them, don't you?" the man's face and voice came
across calm enough, but there was a ripple, a twinge of anxiousness
dimly reflected in his eyes that the boy had come to recognize. It
was a small thing, an unimportant thing, but it was a thing Tsuzuki
wanted to give him, or wanted him to share with him, he wasn't sure
which, if the man was being generous or needy, but he relented
slightly.
"It's nicer this way than it was, at least. Don't you think
it's kind of feminine though?" Tsuzuki's anxiety seemed to dissipate
at that, and he grinned again, leaning over and tapping the boy's
nose in a patronizing manner that would have gotten him punched if
there had been anyone to see it.
"I don't know about *that*, samurai used to arrange flowers
before going into battle, and you, my young friend," here he
punctuated with another tap that made Hisoka contemplate punching him
anyway, "are a samurai, *so* . . . by my estimation, this should be
right up your alley."
"Ah." Hisoka replied in a noncommital tone as Tsuzuki
withdrew from his personal space, leaning back into his own side of
the steps.
"Which ones do you like?" he asked casually. For a moment
Hisoka was silent, surveying the garden studiously, taking his answer
more seriously than Tsuzuki had probably intended.
"I don't really care for the pink ones so much . . . I like
the darker ones best. Those . . ." he pointed self-consciously
towards the edge of the yard where a line of tall, dark flowers stood
up against the fence.
"Irises." Tsuzuki supplied quietly, trying not to sound
condescending in giving him a lesson. Hisoka only nodded and pointed
to another patch around the base of a young tree.
"And those . . ."
"Mojave Aster."
"This one . . ."
"That's an orchid."
"And those over there."
"Purple-loosestrife."
"And that one."
"Foxglove." Tsuzuki was grinning madly now, and fairly
radiating delight and amusement.
"What?" Hisoka frowned, suddenly suspicious. Tsuzuki only
shook his head, reigning in his smile.
"It's nothing, it probably doesn't mean anything and you'll
get flustered and tell me so, but it makes me happy so don't worry
and just let me keep it so I can enjoy it." Hisoka blinked once,
twice, then shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, still frowning.
It probably *didn't* mean anything . . . but every flower Hisoka had
professed to like was purple. Hisoka either hadn't noticed, or it
really didn't mean anything, but for the moment, to think it did,
made Tsuzuki immensely happy.
They continued to sit in companionable silence for a while,
all hopes of walking to work flying farther away with each passing
minute, but Hisoka found he didn't really mind anymore. This was
calm . . . this was pleasant . . . this was a good morning.
"So . . . where do you want to go for lunch?" Tsuzuki
stretched his legs out and leaned back, resting his elbows on the
porch. Hisoka snorted.
"We haven't even gotten to work yet and you're thinking about
lunch?"
"Well, this way we aren't wasting work time discussing it."
the older man replied with a cheery logic. Hisoka's snappy retort was
lost as something green moved beside his foot and he yelped in panic,
jumping up onto the porch without seeming to have ever stood up.
Tsuzuki burst out laughing as the boy stood in the center of the
floor, looking around his feet anxiously.
"Shut *up* and be useful! Kill it or something!" The boy
hissed, glaring at his partner between furtive glances at the ground.
"Kill *what*?" the words were hard to get out through the
humor bubbling unstoppably in his throat.
"The *snake*!"
"That was a garter snake! Don't *tell* me a big, tough, I'm-
not-a- kid shinigami like you is afraid of an itty-bitty garter
snake."
"I *hate* snakes."
"So I gather," he lost his train of thought for a moment as
the laughing started all over again at his mental image of Hisoka
standing on a chair in a dress with a rolling pin, but he didn't dare
describe this image out loud.
"I *hate* snakes, I've *always* hated snakes, when I'm five
hundred years old I'll *still* hate snakes, I used to have
*nightmares* about snakes as a kid, now stop laughing and kill it! Or
are you too much of a head-case to whack something as stupid as a
snake without a massive guilt trip!" Tsuzuki managed to sober up and
give him a wounded look.
"Aren't much for tact today, are we." he remarked dryly.
"Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic."
Hisoka shot back, crossing his arms defensively over his chest in a
way that made his shoulders seem smaller and his form younger.
Tsuzuki softened and then began to smile again.
"Then you must be the greatest wit that ever lived."
"I'm Oscar fucking Wilde, kill the damn snake! *What*?!"
Tsuzuki was grinning again and Hisoka's irritation was mounting.
"You're scared of snakes." that seemed, to Tsuzuki, a perfect
explanation.
"What's your point?"
"You're letting me *see* you *being* scared of snakes."
Hisoka didn't have anything to say to that.
*******
May 21, 1980 - Kanagawa
Takeshi Touma sighed in poignant frustration as he watched his
partner's expression of misery heightened by his insistence that they
file the damned report and be done with it. He wasn't sure how much
longer he could handle the weight of his older partner's emotional
neediness. Tsuzuki would be a great partner . . . if he could just
learn to detatch himself from his work, but from everything Touma had
heard, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
"But we haven't found them yet, how can we just close the
case?" Tsuzuki lowered his head from where it had rested against the
bowing trunk of the property's only sakura tree, fixing his partner
of six cases with an imploring stare.
"I think we have, and I'll say as much in the report." Touma
replied, crossing his arms across his chest in defense of that all
too intense gaze. Tsuzuki snorted in retort, his anger with the
injustice of the situation melting easily into bitterness.
"You can't even tell me if the mother is holding the baby, or
the baby the mother. And we haven't *seen* *either* of them."
"*You* haven't seen either of them," Touma snapped back, his
increasing edginess at Tsuzuki's personal involvement scraping the
surface of his demeanor, "I'm *telling* you the baby's there, I can
*feel* the two souls."
"But not Kasane, which means she might still be clinging to
something here . . . we just haven't found yet."
"Tsuzuki." Touma began with a sense of weariness, "an infant
soul is devoid of personality. The *only* reason it would not appear
straight back in Meifu is if the attachment of the mother is too
strong to let it go. Kasane *drowning* herself makes a pretty strong
case for that strength of attachment,"
"By that logic they should have *both* appeared in Meifu
*then*! You can't just rule out the possibility of interference from
another party!"
"But Kasane is a *twin* . . . twins are already part of a
divided soul, if she merged with her sister's spirit she *wouldn't*
show up in Meifu."
"You're still leaving out the baby."
"I keep *telling* you, I can *feel* the baby! It's become part
of the pregnancy!"
"But you're talking about a five month interval between Kasane's
death and Rui's conception, *if* Kasane merged with Rui
automatically, what was holding the baby all that time?"
"Does it *matter* Tsuzuki? If they're both accounted for?" Touma
raised his hand unconsciously, rubbing his temple as he turned his
head to squint at the flaming orange of the sun on the horizon.
"Of course it matters . . ." Tsuzuki's voice had dropped to a
pitch that was dangerously close to despair, and Touma looked back at
him, watching as he lifted his hunched shoulders from the support of
the tree and stood up, staring down at the ground.
"Then suppose the baby merged first . . . same father, twin
mother, the infants themselves would practically be twins . . . she
could have drawn Kasane after her."
"There is no proof Kasane merged into Rui at all. . . and if the
baby had the spiritual strength to pull away from the mother to
attach itself to an infant, why not to return to Meifu?"
"I don't know, Tsuzuki . . . the womb would be a familiar place,
and identical to her own mother's . . . maybe that was just a
stronger impulse."
"But Kasane,"
"When twin souls merge, there *is* no differentiation to detect,
they started out as the same and it's natural to return to that
state. Just let it go, and lets go home." he was pleading now and he
knew it.
"What about the baby. Babies. What will happen to it with two
souls?" Tsuzuki turned his head, looking away from his partner and
in the direction of the main house, despite it's being out of sight.
"It's hard to say." Touma thrust his hands into the pockets of
his khakis, quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "Most of the
time, the two souls are unable to completely blend, and the child
grows up schizophrenic. When the two souls *can* combine into a
single entity, the child is likely to be gifted with some sort
of . . . talent, due to all the extra spiritual energy. Of course,
that happens less frequently, and the way the medical world works
now, with all the births and infant deaths and pregnancies being
grouped in the same place, dual soul schizophrenia is more common
than it ever was in the past. It's too easy for one lingering infant
to attach itself to another."
"So what you're saying is this kid is probably going to grow up
crazy, and if we had come here first thing when the mother and baby
didn't show up, he would have been a normal child with a shot at a
life." Touma could see Tsuzuki's fists clenching at his sides in
barely contained anger and self-recrimination "Isn't there any way
to,"
"No." Touma spoke as firmly as he could muster, there was no way
anyone had ever found to detatch one soul from another once they had
begun to bond, and attempting it would no doubt end in failure and
Tsuzuki would be worse off for having hoped.
"It's just so wrong!" the older man whirled on him suddenly, his
dizzying purple gaze uncontainable in his anger, "If this is so
common and irreversible, they should *have* shinigami posted in every
maternity ward! To intercept the souls before it happens!" Touma
shook his head sadly.
"That will never happen . . . think of the cost, how many
shinigami would have to be employed to keep watch over that many
locations. Besides," here he sighed, looking away from Tsuzuki once
more to the rapidly darkening sky, "of all the shinigami who have
ever started with spiritual strength or powers that they had while
living, more than two thirds are dual souls. The rest are like Wakaba-
chan, and come from lines of onmiyouji or other spiritualists. If
they started policing the merging of infant souls, think how it would
affect the division in the long run."
"That's obscene."
"That's bureaucracy." Touma shrugged, still looking away.
"So you . . .?"
"I'm a dual soul. That's why I've always been able to detect
auras. I'm one of the lucky ones."
"And the baby they're having now . . . ? What are the odds the
souls will blend properly . . . ?" The note of despair in the man's
voice was gut wrenching.
"As it stands now . . . I can feel two distinct presences in
that woman's womb . . ." he could almost hear Tsuzuki deflating back
into misery behind him, "but, then, sometimes it isn't till the time
of birth, when the infant is most fully developed and closest to the
state of the first infant when *it* died that the souls can
completely blend . . ." he added, in hopes of easing the man's mind a
little.
"So the kid has a chance . . .?" Touma nodded without turning
to look at his partner, afraid of what they might see in each other.
"Let's just write it up and get out of here, Tsuzuki . . . there
isn't anything more we can do."
"Kasane . . ."
"Kasane is joined to her twin, she must be. And her baby has
joined to her sister's. I'm sure of it." His statement was met by a
long silence, so long that he began to wonder at Tsuzuki's emotional
state before he finally replied.
"All right. We'll write it up. I just . . . I hope this baby
brings some happiness back to this family."
*******
April 6, 1998 - Meifu
Mornings, Hisoka had decided, were better than evenings. He
could recall a time, when he had been very small, that he had loved
summer evenings. He could recall watching the sun set from the top of
a grassy slope on his ancestral lands just west of the main house,
and the world becoming cool and mysterious in the darkness, and
chasing fireflies barefoot with wet grass sticking between his toes until his mother would come looking and scold him for staining his
nice clothes. And they were always nice clothes, whether they were
modern or traditional. Kurosaki Rui had always been insistent on that
point, that he was the son and heir of a great family and heritage
and it did not befit him to dress commonly or to rough-house and make
a mess of himself like other children did. Though his father had been
the patriarch and adhered strictly to the family code of honor and
tradition, as long as his son conducted himself with dignity and
behaved with respect and obedience, Hisoka didn't frankly think the
man would have cared if he had worn jeans and amused himself in his
spare time.
But his mind was drifting to things he preferred not to think
about. He enjoyed mornings now, when the sunlight seemed so much more
golden and infinitely soft, when the whole world was somehow soft,
and fresh, and faintly sweet with the scent of the same dew that had
once stained his clothes. He had found, to his surprise, that he
enjoyed listening to the birds in the morning. They sounded more
cheerful and harmonious in the early morning, while later in the day
it seemed to him that they were all bickering with each other. The
sunsets he had watched in his childhood now seemed like the burning
out of an exhausted day, and he could not enjoy the colors of the sky
properly for the rising tide of anxiety that heralded the onset of
all-out night. But the sunrise he had come to enjoy as it was softer,
less blazing, and lit up the world rather than darkening it. Never
mind that his brain was frozen in adolescent development and his
serotonin levels would never properly balance out and his internal
clock was perpetually set to make him want to sleep late - if nothing
else, his parents had taught him discipline which, despite
everything, he was begrudgingly grateful for, and he could drag
himself up day in and day out no matter how inviting the pillow and
the warmth of the bed and even the security of Tsuzuki, if that was
where he happened to be . . . and he could have the untainted morning.
Of course, it was well past sunrise now, though not late
enough that the soft, golden, misty sense of light and warmth had
faded, and he sat on the two wooden steps leading up to the narrow
back porch of his small house, with his arm hooked over the rail from
underneath.
"We're going to end up being late." he said finally, watching
the toes of his sneakers as they nudged slightly at the faintly muddy
ground where the rested, digging a tiny trench. In the past months
(he wasn't sure how many anymore, as the season never changed anyway)
his neat, relatively barren little backyard had gradually exploded into color as his new house-mate claimed the uncharted territory as
his own, turning grass and muddy patches into brilliant flowerbeds.
Said house-mate, on his knees at one erratically landscaped portion
of the new garden with trowel in hand, looked up from his quiet work
long enough to check his watch.
"We've got time, we'll just blink straight into the office."
"I wanted to walk." the boy on the steps murmured only half
audibly. He *had* wanted to walk, he liked the feel of walking. Maybe
it was a lingering effect of his long illness, being bedridden, but
he enjoyed walking down the street, the way his rubber soles seemed
to nearly bounce against the pavement and he allowed the slightest
spring in his step despite his closely guarded posture and
indifferent air. "You know," he continued out loud, "they'd probably
grow just as perfectly without you doing this every day, just like
everything else."
"I know," the older man replied cheerfully, "but I like doing
it anyway." That was that then. If playing caretaker to a perpetually
blooming, perpetually perfect garden gave Tsuzuki a short respite of
true happiness, who was he to challenge it. He dropped the argument
but uttered a long suffering sigh to save face. Tsuzuki was
resonating faint waves of amusement with him and looked up to meet
his bored expression with a wide grin, raising one finger and
winking "Think of this, as your moment of zen."
"It's *your* zen, not mine." the boy snapped back with no
real venom, faintly agitated at the sense of Tsuzuki laughing at him.
"You seem peaceful enough, sitting and watching like a cat in
the sun. You could leave without me, but you don't." The older man
retorted smugly before he rose, wiping the damp earth off his trowel
before pulling off his gloves. Hisoka didn't have anything to say to
that, so he didn't say anything at all, untangling his arm from the
railing and scooting over as Tsuzuki sat down beside him, his longer
legs folding up comically where Hisoka's younger form fit
neatly. "You do like them, don't you?" the man's face and voice came
across calm enough, but there was a ripple, a twinge of anxiousness
dimly reflected in his eyes that the boy had come to recognize. It
was a small thing, an unimportant thing, but it was a thing Tsuzuki
wanted to give him, or wanted him to share with him, he wasn't sure
which, if the man was being generous or needy, but he relented
slightly.
"It's nicer this way than it was, at least. Don't you think
it's kind of feminine though?" Tsuzuki's anxiety seemed to dissipate
at that, and he grinned again, leaning over and tapping the boy's
nose in a patronizing manner that would have gotten him punched if
there had been anyone to see it.
"I don't know about *that*, samurai used to arrange flowers
before going into battle, and you, my young friend," here he
punctuated with another tap that made Hisoka contemplate punching him
anyway, "are a samurai, *so* . . . by my estimation, this should be
right up your alley."
"Ah." Hisoka replied in a noncommital tone as Tsuzuki
withdrew from his personal space, leaning back into his own side of
the steps.
"Which ones do you like?" he asked casually. For a moment
Hisoka was silent, surveying the garden studiously, taking his answer
more seriously than Tsuzuki had probably intended.
"I don't really care for the pink ones so much . . . I like
the darker ones best. Those . . ." he pointed self-consciously
towards the edge of the yard where a line of tall, dark flowers stood
up against the fence.
"Irises." Tsuzuki supplied quietly, trying not to sound
condescending in giving him a lesson. Hisoka only nodded and pointed
to another patch around the base of a young tree.
"And those . . ."
"Mojave Aster."
"This one . . ."
"That's an orchid."
"And those over there."
"Purple-loosestrife."
"And that one."
"Foxglove." Tsuzuki was grinning madly now, and fairly
radiating delight and amusement.
"What?" Hisoka frowned, suddenly suspicious. Tsuzuki only
shook his head, reigning in his smile.
"It's nothing, it probably doesn't mean anything and you'll
get flustered and tell me so, but it makes me happy so don't worry
and just let me keep it so I can enjoy it." Hisoka blinked once,
twice, then shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, still frowning.
It probably *didn't* mean anything . . . but every flower Hisoka had
professed to like was purple. Hisoka either hadn't noticed, or it
really didn't mean anything, but for the moment, to think it did,
made Tsuzuki immensely happy.
They continued to sit in companionable silence for a while,
all hopes of walking to work flying farther away with each passing
minute, but Hisoka found he didn't really mind anymore. This was
calm . . . this was pleasant . . . this was a good morning.
"So . . . where do you want to go for lunch?" Tsuzuki
stretched his legs out and leaned back, resting his elbows on the
porch. Hisoka snorted.
"We haven't even gotten to work yet and you're thinking about
lunch?"
"Well, this way we aren't wasting work time discussing it."
the older man replied with a cheery logic. Hisoka's snappy retort was
lost as something green moved beside his foot and he yelped in panic,
jumping up onto the porch without seeming to have ever stood up.
Tsuzuki burst out laughing as the boy stood in the center of the
floor, looking around his feet anxiously.
"Shut *up* and be useful! Kill it or something!" The boy
hissed, glaring at his partner between furtive glances at the ground.
"Kill *what*?" the words were hard to get out through the
humor bubbling unstoppably in his throat.
"The *snake*!"
"That was a garter snake! Don't *tell* me a big, tough, I'm-
not-a- kid shinigami like you is afraid of an itty-bitty garter
snake."
"I *hate* snakes."
"So I gather," he lost his train of thought for a moment as
the laughing started all over again at his mental image of Hisoka
standing on a chair in a dress with a rolling pin, but he didn't dare
describe this image out loud.
"I *hate* snakes, I've *always* hated snakes, when I'm five
hundred years old I'll *still* hate snakes, I used to have
*nightmares* about snakes as a kid, now stop laughing and kill it! Or
are you too much of a head-case to whack something as stupid as a
snake without a massive guilt trip!" Tsuzuki managed to sober up and
give him a wounded look.
"Aren't much for tact today, are we." he remarked dryly.
"Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic."
Hisoka shot back, crossing his arms defensively over his chest in a
way that made his shoulders seem smaller and his form younger.
Tsuzuki softened and then began to smile again.
"Then you must be the greatest wit that ever lived."
"I'm Oscar fucking Wilde, kill the damn snake! *What*?!"
Tsuzuki was grinning again and Hisoka's irritation was mounting.
"You're scared of snakes." that seemed, to Tsuzuki, a perfect
explanation.
"What's your point?"
"You're letting me *see* you *being* scared of snakes."
Hisoka didn't have anything to say to that.