12. Healing
Leaning into the warmth that surrounded him, Hisoka placed his head against a comfortably yielding surface, emeralds concealed in serene slumber.
He slowly became aware of a tingling sensation across his back. A soft pressure lingered there, tracing calming figure eight patterns on his obliging skin. The soft pressure on his back gently slid up the side of his slender torso and came to rest at his cheek, cradling it affectionately.
Unwilling to separate his consciousness from his tranquil slumber, Hisoka passively noticed the hand travel up his face, gracing his eyelids and stroking the obstructing bangs away from his forehead.
Moist, pliant flesh was delicately pushed against his brow and the boy sighed contentedly, relishing the peaceful contact.
His eyelashes gradually fluttered open to reveal a somnolent gaze. The shadowy world blurred before him as he forcefully attempted to train his corneas to focus on his surroundings.
Feeling his own warm breath bounce back at him, Hisoka myopically studied the object before him.
The fatigue quickly drained from the surprised Empath as he realized he was staring at a collarbone framed with a loose dress shirt whose only hope of refraining from opening further was a loosened necktie.
Instantly comprehending the gravity of his prior actions, and the helplessness he had expressed, Hisoka struggled against the form next to him.
His efforts were at first futile as his opposition to the security only made it close in stronger around him. He urgently attempted to free himself from the comfort that was so freely given to him.
Eyes shut tightly, Hisoka grunted in anger as he pushed against the embrace aggressively with desperate strength, and the ambiguous arms reluctantly weakened around the slim figure of the boy.
Hisoka felt a sickening ooze fall around his shoulders and waist were the arms had been, and what had previously been a firm chest turned to dissipating syrupy pulp under his rejecting touch.
Eventually there was nothing, 'I imagined it?' The boy was left clutching his arms tightly around his torso.
Feeling suddenly exposed and shamed from the lack of the other body, Hisoka grudgingly opened his fearful eyes widely against the dull throb in his head, as he squinted in an attempt to focus on anything familiar in the surrounding darkness.
His weary mind slowly deduced that he was splayed out on the cold ground amidst complete darkness. Only he himself was illuminated by a sole omnipotent light source that loomed overhead.
He diffidently pushed himself up with shaky arms until he was sitting up in a slightly hunched, protective fashion.
The last thing he remembered was... "Tsuzuki?" his meek voice hoarse through parted dry lips.
Receiving only a thundering silence as a response, he pulled the hem of his denim jacket, tightening it around his delicate shoulders as he involuntarily shivered.
A single hot tear rolled mutely down his clammy cheek.
"I'm alone," he quietly choked out to himself. "He didn't come." He began to shake from repressed sobs that no longer needed to remain hidden, as there was no one to witness them anyway.
Doubt flooded his senses as he considered his current deserted state.
No one had come for him. He silently berated himself for thinking someone would help him, and normally he would not have expected any different, but for some reason, this time the knowledge that he was abandoned was overwhelming.
Hisoka suddenly crashed to the ground, writhing in pain as his mounting frustration began to rip through his weakened mind.
He clutched his head in anguish as crushing waves of emotion assaulted his fragile mind from a remote source. "Tsuzuki!" he frantically cried as the dreamscape he occupied began to shatter into cascading falls of shimmering fragments.
-----
Tsuzuki sprang up at the clear mention of his name from were he sat all but patiently beside the infirmary bed. With a wildly overwhelming need to protect his partner, he unwittingly emitted crushing waves of anxiety, fear, and panic.
Under the devastatingly intense flood of raw emotion, the Empath feared the worst and let out an audible cry meant to evoke mercy in his anticipated assailant. The pressure in his head was now devastating and erupted violently as Hisoka winced at sensing a warm liquid gush from his nose, running in thick trails over his panting lips.
Efficiently triggering the mother hen instinct in his worry-stricken partner, Hisoka subsequently felt an emotionally heated hand come in contact with his feverish cheek.
"Let go!!!" Hisoka screamed out fiercely in confusion and anger as he squeezed his eyes shut. His entire body tensed in pain as his back arched off of the bed at the intense emotional surge.
The Empath felt an intense wave of energy spring forth from within him as his weary body fell limp and drained against the bed once more.
With the pain gradually draining from his beaten form, he slowly opened watery emeralds narrowly under a furrowed brow.
Meeting his acerbic gaze was the sight of a brunette smashed into the opposite wall of the sparsely furnished infirmary, the older man's violet eyes wide with shock.
Tsuzuki stared at his partner from behind the protection of a defensively raised left arm - an arm that had seen better days. Though the wound from the wild psychic blast was nearly healed already, blood drenched the torn fabric of Tsuzuki's white dress shirt.
The boy noticed cracks in the drywall that framed his partner's tense physique.
Hisoka's chest was suddenly consumed by a sorrowful ache as he stared in disbelief at his partner. The older man's customarily warm acceptance was absent from his current visage as he regarded his roused partner with worried skepticism.
The slightest hint of concern flashed behind Hisoka's eyes, which he unconsciously attempted to mask. The concentrated mix of fear and mistrust that vibrated off his partner was making the empathic youth nauseous, and his own emotions responded with vulnerable need.
Repulsed by the weakness of his dependent nature, Hisoka quickly remembered why he repressed his need for affection in the first place as he recalled the dream of moments earlier.
Tearing his gaze away from his partner, the blonde furiously attempted to free himself from the disgustingly sterile sheets of the infirmary bed that had effectively wrapped themselves several times around his legs during his restless sleep.
Eventually liberating himself from the restrictive linens, he made a graceless dismount off the bed, falling to the cold floor as his left leg gave out from a sudden, unexpected pain. His unstable frame struggled to lift itself with the aid of cool metal bars that adorned part of the infirmary bed.
Allowing one of few tables in the room to support the weight his hand offered, Tsuzuki watched the spectacle before him and calmed considerably as he realized Hisoka was back to normal. 'You're just hurting yourself more,' Tsuzuki mused to himself in frustration as he watched his partner stubbornly attempt to stand unaided.
Aware of what getting involved had resulted in, Tsuzuki decided it best to let Hisoka calm down slightly before offering his support. He unconsciously rubbed his forearm, which held no trace it had ever been accosted, save the immense amount of fresh blood that was slowly becoming cool and sticky as it dehydrated on his skin and decimated dress shirt.
The floored Empath locked his jaw in agitation as his hypersensitive mind heard his partner mentally giggling at his current predicament.
Decidedly ignoring him, Hisoka gazed down the length of his left leg and noticed a surplus of bandages wrapping around his quadriceps and hamstring slightly below the hem of his boxers.
The wound had healed, but it left a stinging numbness in its wake. Standing again with less difficulty, he took the damage done to his leg by the celestial magic into consideration. He made sure not to limp as he walked slowly but intrepidly to a neatly stacked pile of clothes next to the bed.
Carefully slipping his jeans on around and up his wounded thigh, he collapsed to the bed with an irritated sigh as he sat in angry contemplation of the floor. Tasting the blood on his lips, Hisoka stole a glimpse of the crimson-rimmed collar of his undershirt before irritably wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
"Are you going to be okay?" a calm but concerned voice queried apprehensively from the opposite corner of the room.
"I didn't need your help," Hisoka shot back instantly without looking at this partner.
Tsuzuki's commonly concealed temper flickered to the surface at the obvious habitual lie. "That's not how I saw it," he stated with a sardonic smile while crossing his arms over his chest. He stood imposingly, the ashen dust of the damaged wall at his feet beside the table.
"I was in the process of actually getting somewhere with this case. God knows one of us has to!"
"You know, you have a real gratitude problem," Tsuzuki stated accusingly, narrowing vibrant eyes at his partner. 'You have some nerve getting upset, when all you ever do is lie to me.' He lowered his shields considerably so the Empath was sure to catch the cold thought.
Tsuzuki's remark earned him a patented emerald death glare.
"I never asked for your assistance," Hisoka stated bluntly, staring defiantly at his partner as if challenging the older man to come up with a suitable counter argument.
"That's not the point," Tsuzuki replied sharply, unwilling to be baited "Why the Hell does it make you so upset to know I want to help you?!" he demanded, while clenching his hands tightly in an attempt to restrain his temper. Tsuzuki's arms fell to his sides in an attempt to appear slightly less threatening as he felt a long forgotten but familiar heat wash through his veins.
'Why am I getting so angry now?' Tsuzuki wondered to himself 'Hisoka has acted childishly in the past.' His thoughts were put on temporary hold by a harsh voice.
"I am not a child! I don't need anybody's help!" the youth roared, rising from the bed to his feet and steadying himself in a defiant position as if to prove his leg had completely healed on its own already.
Tsuzuki's fists began to shudder in frustration of the utter absurdity of the conversation. 'Can Hisoka really be so selfishly ignorant?'
The man did not bother trying to answer his own query, or find some justification for his partner's actions, due to a crushing fervor that invaded his senses...
It was the first argument of its kind since their case in Kyoto. Tsuzuki was certain that after all that had happened he would be more accepting of these spats, or at the very least more accustomed to them. However, he could not deny the lethal sting of betrayal he felt at the boys heated words.
Tsuzuki felt every negative emotion he had ever repressed to the far reaches of his mind all flood to the forefront, as he shot back with a commanding malice in his voice. "None of this would have happened if you had just been responsible enough to work together. You are in the infirmary because of your irresponsibility!" Tsuzuki yelled fiercely at his enraged partner as he approached the younger Shinigami.
Hisoka kept up his guise of uninhibited anger, though inside he was shocked at the truth his puerile partner spoke. Nothing hurt quite like someone of Tsuzuki's immaturity telling you that you were irresponsible. The worst part was that Hisoka knew Tsuzuki was right... and very upset.
Hisoka was slowly crumbling. His shoulders mentally slumped in defeat 'I'll be blunt and just tell him... once this blows over.' More then ever it seemed he needed to speak with his partner about what had happened in Kyoto.
Watching his angered partner, the boy only became increasingly frustrated. 'You idiot, don't you get it?' the boy thought desperately, wanting terribly to simply break down right there and cry, to tell him he was not worth protecting if he was incapable of returning the favor.
But the Empath hid it all well by continuing to let his misdirected anger consume him.
"I don't want your pity!" he spat fiercely, eyeing his partner with brutal intent. His knuckles paled as one hand gripped tightly to the fabric atop the bed behind him, clinging desperately to reality as his mind secretly reeled.
Tsuzuki's condemning voice brought him back... "You wouldn't know the difference between pity and love if it came up and hit you in the face!" ... Only to throw the Empath back deeper as Tsuzuki finished his piercing sentence.
Tsuzuki now encouraged the maddening rage that enveloped his being with a strange sense of liveliness. Something about the current state of his raging temper felt intoxicatingly familiar and right. He let his mind be consumed by the intensity of the emotion as it screamed for the man's servitude.
Hisoka's own frustration and anger had become so intense that the wave of Tsuzuki's rage sweeping over him left him relatively unaffected as he invited it into his mind, making it his own. Infused with both his own frustration and Tsuzuki's fury, he yelled back reproachfully, emphasizing the last word by glaring accusingly at his partner, "You're damn right I wouldn't! Because I've never experienced either of them from anyone!"
Tsuzuki's violet eyes darkened with inconceivable urgency as his body trembled with restrained force.
With that simple, blunt statement, Tsuzuki's last semblance of control shattered.
Hisoka felt a wave of fear ripple across his senses and was certain it found its way to his expression.
The only emotion the Empath could read off his partner was a passionate fury. His own anger fickle, Hisoka's slender form began to vacillate under the strength of the blatantly unshielded emotion of the taller man.
His veins shrieked viciously as his predatory figure loomed above his partner, effectively backing the blonde against the infirmary bed.
Tsuzuki's expression was blank, save the intensity of his feral gaze.
A fanatical energy flowed down his arms and pooled at his clenched hands.
He was guided by pure emotion as the knuckles of his right fist cracked hard over his partner's jaw.
To Be Concluded...
Reviews are not necessary, -smiles- but they do make authors very happy –wink wink-
Thanks to all who have reviewed thus far, and special thanks to SapphireDragon, Fin-Phoenix, and ola for taking the time to review as much as they have.
Also, I had some nice compliments for my concept art for this series (especially from my favorite beta reader Chiharu-san,) so if anyone is interested, I could post the pictures if you like.