Here we are, with another chapter. I neglected to mention in all of that expository note junk at the top of the prologue that Tatsumi and Watari are an established couple, so I'm doing that now. It makes life that much easier when I don't have to worry about hooking them up. So, on with the fic. More notes at the end of the chapter.
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Watari loitered about the shared office of Tsuzuki and Hisoka, idly fiddling with his hands. The hour was growing late, and he was more than ready to go home, but he was stuck there. He swore he didn't mind, he was keeping company with his two best friends after all, but he was an impatient young man and eager to hear the news he'd been expecting all day.
"Are you sure you're going to be all right, Tsuzuki?" he asked, wandering around the brunette's desk, poking messy piles of papers.
The other Shinigami smiled. "Yeah, don't worry, it's just paperwork."
"Paperwork you should've turned in three weeks ago," Hisoka retorted from across the room. "I don't see why I have to help you fill in the forms you neglected to complete."
"Because we're partners, and partners do things like that. Don't you, Watari?"
Hisoka snorted. "You idiot. Watari does paperwork for both Tatsumi and himself because Tatsumi doesn't have the time to waste filling out the forms. He's usually too busy correcting yours."
"That's right, pretend you don't love me," Tsuzuki grumbled under his breath.
Watari smiled easily. "Oh, I don't mind doing the work. With laboratory accidents down to a minimum these days, I find I've gained back all of the time spent cleaning up from my little mishaps."
Tsuzuki set his pen down and stretched, trying to work the kinks out from his stiff shoulders and hands. Writing for hours on end was definitely not how he'd wanted to spend the night, he would've much preferred wining and dining his adorable companion, but the forms needed to be turned in and he favored the wrath of Hisoka over the wrath of Tatsumi any day.
"So…what're you still doing here?" he inquired of Watari, who'd moved to inspect the fake fern gathering dust in the corner, 003 perched on his shoulder.
"I can't leave until Tatsumi gets out of his meeting. He's got the keys to the apartment with him…I sort of melted my last pair…plus I want to know what happened. It was a pretty important meeting," the cheery blonde explained.
The purposeful click of soles on tile heralded the arrival of such a man. Tatsumi's expression was, as usual, severe, his suit a little more rumpled than it had been when he'd arrived that morning, his tie hanging limply from his neck, the knot loosened. From his appearance, things hadn't gone well. Watari smiled at him, ambling out of the office and latching his arm around the secretary.
"There's my ride. See you tomorrow, kids!" he cheered, waving as the two men and the owl walked off.
Hisoka frowned. "He didn't look happy."
"Tatsumi? I know. I overheard the Gushoshin talking the other morning. Apparently he was up for a big promotion, commissioner of investigations or something fancy like that."
"You mean Konoe's position?"
He shook his head. "Higher than that, even. Chief even wrote him a sparkling recommendation and everything. Pay was better, but the hours were miserable. Tatsumi puts in enough time here, I can only imagine how little sleep he'd be getting in that job…plus he'd be working directly for Enma…Watari would most likely never see him again."
"So he'd be miserable whether he got the promotion or not," Hisoka deduced.
"Exactly. We'll just have to wait for Watari to give us all of the grimy details tomorrow morning, I guess. I just hope Tatsumi isn't that mad that he's going to take this out on Watari. You know? Sometimes the littlest things set that man off."
"Like someone else we know…"
Tsuzuki glared at him, though it was a half-hearted glare. "I hope you're talking about yourself."
"Of course not. Now get back to that paperwork, Tsuzuki, I don't want to sleep here tonight. Even our couch in infinitely more comfortable than this chair."
His violet-eyed partner smiled at the phrase 'our couch.' It seemed as though partners across the districts had been, of late, become partners in the relationship sense of the word. Or, at the very least, found lovers from some of the other divisions of Juo-cho. It was cute, but in a way the most horrible thing imaginable. The potential of a Shinigami becoming either seriously and irreparably wounded, ensorcelled by their own misfired magic or the attack of an enemy, or even killed was always high. The threat of losing one's partner was omnipresent. It was the concept of losing one's lover that was so terrible. They were immortal, but only in a twisted sense of the word. Immortal as long as you weren't killed in a firefight with a demon. Immortal as long as you didn't go insane from living after death for so long. A Shinigami dies, and they die. There is no in-between for the immortal, one must ascend or descend. And who could bear to live potentially forever if a lover was killed?
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They walked through the park on the way back to their shared apartment, Watari's arm still twined about Tatsumi's. The sky overhead was dusky, and the streetlamps were just starting to flicker on. Fireflies, the last of the season, flickered dimly in the bushes, aware of the onset of winter. The air had turned cool, but it was nowhere near as cold as Tatsumi's expression. Watari clutched his arm tighter, hoping for the best, expecting the worst.
"So how did the meeting go?" he asked, trying to school his voice into nonchalance. "Will we be moving your paperweights into a corner office and buying you a bigger fern? Do I get to pick out the curtains and the furniture? Can I at least buy you colored staples?"
"I didn't get the promotion," Tatsumi murmured, his eyes on the ground in front of him.
Watari sank his head against his lover's shoulder. "Oh Tatsumi, I'm so sorry."
"They said I was more use as the division's secretary and accountant. After all, I've been doing it for nearly a century, why change now? Especially not after I just pulled us out of the red," he said bitterly, clenching his fists almost tightly enough to draw blood.
"You deserved that promotion more than anyone," Watari said reassuringly. "But I'm all right with you staying just where you are. Besides, if you became commissioner, I would've had to get another partner, and breaking in a rookie is such hard work."
"Watari…I know you're trying to help, but will you just leave me alone for a little while?"
The amber-eyed young man blinked. "Beg pardon?"
His companion handed off his keys, his tone severe as he commanded the younger man. "Take these and go home. I'll be there later, I need some time to think things over by myself."
"What about supper? You haven't eaten all day, you've got to be starving."
"I'm not hungry. Just go home," Tatsumi snapped.
Watari started walking off, but stopped, about-faced, and marched right back to face Tatsumi. His expression was rueful, and even 003 seemed repentant for something.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry the meeting went poorly, I'm sorry you didn't get the promotion, I'm sorry they didn't even give you a pay raise since you obviously work harder than anyone I know, but mostly…I'm sorry that you're taking this all out on me. I still love you, Seiichiro Tatsumi, always will. 003 and I will see you at home. We'll leave the door unlocked. Don't stay out too late though, Enma only knows what kind of whackos are roaming around these days."
He kissed Tatsumi's cheek gently, smiling sadly as he walked away, seeming to shimmer under the streetlights. Tatsumi was certain Watari's shoulders were shaking in quiet sobs, and though he felt wretched for making the blonde cry, he did not pursue. There were things he needed to seriously think about, and though Watari did deserve an apology, it would have to wait until he got home.
The young scientist, had, of course, been right. Were Tatsumi to have gotten his promotion, it would have meant the end of their partnership. Watari would be paired with some fresh-faced rookie completely unaware of the intricacies of being a Shinigami, and he himself would be shackled to a desk, going out into the field long enough to collect the necessary information for a case, shove it in a file folder, get Enma to approve it, and send it down to one of the divisions. No thrill of the chase, no berating Tsuzuki for overtaxing the food budget, and most likely no seeing Watari anymore. His hours would have been much longer than anything in Enma-cho, getting up long before his lover woke and coming home far later into the night. Of course he'd deserved the job, but he knew he wouldn't have been happy in the position. Still, he felt robbed. Tatsumi felt that he should have been given some sort of recognition for his work. It seemed as though pen ink was forever embedded in his skin, his hands dyed varying shades of black, blue and red from the countless reams of forms, papercuts crisscrossing knuckles. It was almost humorous how abused his hands were from mere secretarial work.
The streetlamp overhead guttered, the fluorescent bulb giving its death shudder as the last of its luminosity petered out, leaving Tatsumi's patch of walkway in a ring of darkness. The blue-eyed man shuddered in response to the light extinguishing, remembering his grandfather's voice as it bubbled up from some long-forgotten past.
"There are monsters in the darkness, Seiichiro, monsters that only come out when the lights are all gone…the kind that eat repulsive, disobedient, dishonorable little boys like you," he'd told him, digging his fingernails into his tender young flesh. He'd been three years old, and had never once forgotten his words.
"Monsters in the darkness," he murmured, questioning whether he himself, a summoner of shadows, was such a monster. For the cold way he'd responded to Watari, he certainly felt like one at the time.
A sharp stab of pain lanced the back of his neck, as though someone had jabbed a steel spike straight through his spine. Tatsumi let out a choked cry, his eyes wide from the pain. His knees buckled, muscles locking up, his whole body lurching forward. The man hit the pavement with the dull thud of flesh and fabric connecting with concrete, his glasses flying off, the frame snapping, the lenses crunching. He lay there, motionless, azure eyes wide and unblinking, not quite conscious, but not quite sentient either. The streetlight overhead flickered back on feebly as someone stepped out of the shadows, chuckling quietly as he toed the limp form.
"Indeed, Mr. Tatsumi, monsters in the darkness."
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Notes: Yup, big honking cliffhanger ending. I hate cliffhangers, but I'm evil enough to put them in my own damn fanfics. Now, you might be wondering if Tatsumi's grandfather (mentioned just a few short paragraphs ago) has anything to do with anything. My answer? Wait and see, suckers, wait and see.
On that note, I'll see you next chapter!