Title: Happiness (Or, Wolfie Attempts to Write Decent English and Fails Miserably)
Author: Me
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Pairings: Tsuzuki/Hisoka
Warnings: Sap, fluff, horrible English, terrible writing, shonen ai, overuse of italics, FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF OMG
Notes:...An attempt to write off my fic ideas a long, long time ago. Note that I really don't have the inspiration, time, or ability to write fic now, and so I'm digging up random and sundry stuff that I wrote in the past to post up for the sake of letting people know that yes, I am alive. Updates for my multiparters will be long in coming, as my various feeble attempts to write the next chapters for any of them suck major donkey butt. Meh. Yeah. Please forget this piece of writing ever existed as soon as you finish reading it.
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Tsuzuki was being unusually happy today, Hisoka noted rather sourly. His partner seemed immune to the withering summer heat, bouncing around their office happily in a long-sleeved dress shirt and dark slacks like he usually did, haphazardly fastened tie flapping against his chest as he wooed the piece of cake he held in his hand. It was rather inconsiderate of him, Hisoka thought, to be so happy when Hisoka was anything but happy. Hisoka hated the heat. It made him feel faint, and more often than not, he did faint, usually ending up in some embarrassingly compromising position that ultimately led to one of his coworkers (usually Tsuzuki) being delegated the task to tote him home.
Mentally, Hisoka cursed Tatsumi for being too much of a tightwad to even pay for air-conditioning. He ignored the fact that even if Tatsumi had gotten an air-conditioning unit, it most likely would have ended up as the subject of one of Watari's experiments or the victim of an errant psychic blast within a month.
Frankly, Hisoka couldn't see what Tsuzuki was so happy about. It was cake, for EnmaDaioh's sake, and he couldn't see what made this one piece of cake so superior to the ones Tsuzuki had had in the past. Forget the fact that Tsuzuki treated almost every dessert that came within his range like that; cake simply shouldn't have had the power to make anyone that happy.
Abruptly, the young Shinigami found himself with the aforementioned piece of cake thrust under his nose, Tsuzuki cheerfully offering Hisoka half of the slice (a rather generous offer from Tsuzuki, considering how greedy he was with his sweets most of the time) and already brandishing a fork full of the fluffy concoction before Hisoka's lips. Hisoka pursed said lips irritably and gave Tsuzuki the best glare he could at such a close range, and was became even more irate when Tsuzuki simply ignored the dark look his partner was giving him and poked at Hisoka's mouth with his fork.
"Tsuzuki, I don't - mmph!"
Let it never be said that Tsuzuki wasn't sneaky. Hisoka found himself with a mouthful of cake, chewing automatically as Tsuzuki retreated to sit on his desk, watching him gleefully for a reaction. Chew twenty times - then swallow...
...maybe the cake wasn't so bad. Another forkful was waved in front of his face, and, grudgingly, Hisoka allowed Tsuzuki to feed him the slice of cake, bit by bit...(not that he didn't try to take the fork from Tsuzuki, but the man was surprisingly adamant about feeding him.)
Tsuzuki seemed pleased by Hisoka's acquiescence, and even said so. Hisoka blushed and turned away, feeling that it would be too callous even for him to smack Tsuzuki for his (unwitting) innuendo after Tsuzuki had fed him such good cake.
Curiosity began to join his irritation as Tsuzuki returned to his own seat, scarfing the rest of the cake too quickly to have really enjoyed it and spending the next five minutes picking up the crumbs one by one and eating them. Something other than the cake had to be making Tsuzuki so joyful, and part of Hisoka wanted to know what. Though he would never admit it, sometimes Hisoka was envious of how Tsuzuki managed to be so happy all the time. Even when he was drowning in the sorrows of his own past, somehow Tsuzuki's mourning seemed clean and pure. It was unlike Hisoka's own insecurities and feelings of betrayal; his were tainted by hatred and anger. Hisoka was far more inclined to be angry than to be hurt; Tsuzuki was just the opposite. Tsuzuki was always hurt, always let himself be hurt, and Hisoka knew it wasn't because Tsuzuki was a masochist. Tsuzuki hurt because he cared too much. To someone who considered himself as one who cared too little, Tsuzuki was a conundrum. Perhaps it was the enigma of Tsuzuki's eternal empathy (what was Hisoka's empathy in comparison to Tsuzuki's? Hisoka could often shield his empathy, while Tsuzuki's pain was all too real and imagined. Hisoka could never feel as much pain as Tsuzuki did) that drew Hisoka's interest, but Hisoka found himself intrigued and envious at the same time. He wanted Tsuzuki's happiness.
It was this growing curiosity that led Hisoka to reach out towards Tsuzuki's mind now, not intending to really delve into the secrets of his partner's often complex psyche, but to simply discover just why the man was so happy now. Foraging into Tsuzuki's mind felt like sinking into molasses, slow, sweet, and rich. Hisoka could feel emotions pressing at his mind from everywhere, an indistinguishable morass of feeling that overwhelmed rather than hurt. The ephemeral happiness that Hisoka was seeking was buried, hidden among the other emotions that roiled in Tsuzuki's mind, but the young empath stalwartly reached deeper, trying hard to catch that little wriggle of joy that tickled at the back of his empathy.
He reached further - and deeper - just a little more -
And suddenly it washed over him like a tidal wave, nearly driving the breath from his lungs with the force of pure happiness, a strange, almost golden experience that filled Hisoka with warmth. Struggling to keep himself from simply letting himself go and floating in the almost foreign emotion, Hisoka drew the threads of Tsuzuki's emotions into his imagined hand, sorting them until they lay gleaming and shining in his palm. Slowly, so as not to lose even one thread of happiness, Hisoka followed along the lines, looking for the source of this happiness.
Finally, he reached the end of the threads, where the individual strands coalesced and formed one glowing cord. The rope was heavy and soft, leading into the now peaceful darkness of Tsuzuki's mind, and he traveled along it. He stopped after a while, for he had finally found the source of the gilden happiness, the end of the rope culminating in a single fragment of what Hisoka recognized as "memory", a shard of time frozen in Tsuzuki's psyche.
After only the briefest hesitation, Hisoka reached out and touched the memory.
All at once, he was assaulted by color, imagery, and vision, causing him to cry out as he fell back, nearly letting go of the memory. Slowly, the pure sensory overload settled down, sorting itself, forming an image of a young man - a boy, really, with over-large green eyes and pale, wheat-gold hair -
With a gasp, Hisoka came to himself, gasping for breath as he stared at the bewildered Tsuzuki with wide eyes. Tsuzuki seemed speechless, perhaps in surprise - had he realized what Hisoka was doing? It had seemed such a long journey - perhaps simply because Hisoka was now looking at him with shock and confusion in his gaze, thin hands grasping at the arms of his chair as Hisoka struggled to balance himself.
"...What were you doing?" Tsuzuki's voice was almost frightened, a hint of anger and hurt edging his tone. The tiny flicker of happiness in his mind was gone now, concealed by uncertainty and apprehension.
Hisoka tried to speak; on his third try, he managed to croak, "...me?"
"You what?" Something changed in Tsuzuki's eyes, his gaze becoming softer and warmer.
"...I make you that happy?" He had seen himself in Tsuzuki's mind, the shard of memory and image reflecting his own face to his startled eyes. Tsuzuki tilted his head to the side cautiously, eyeing Hisoka with growing tenderness.
"You're surprised?" Tsuzuki smiled, "Of course you make me that happy. You're you."
A hand brushed Hisoka's cheek and he jerked in surprise, lifting his gaze from the floor - hadn't he been looking at Tsuzuki a moment before? - to his partner's face. But Tsuzuki's fingers - those warm, calloused fingers, gentle for all that Tsuzuki's hand could have easily covered Hisoka's entire face - were tracing his brow, brushing aside a few strands of hair with a delicacy that suggested affection. Hisoka daren't let himself make any assumptions, but the look in Tsuzuki's eyes - and what he had seen in his mind - coaxed that small, hidden desire within Hisoka, the tiny voice that cried out for love and acceptance in the night, which Hisoka had denied himself for so long, into finally making itself known.
Tremulously, Hisoka raised a pale, slender hand to cover Tsuzuki's.
"...you know."
"Yeah?"
"...you make me that happy, too."
A smile.
"I know."
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The TERRIBLE TERRIBLE UTTERLY SHAMEFUL End.
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.........That was the crappiest piece of writing ever. goes off and shoots self (I do this a lot, don't I? My friend's put me on an infinite Revive loop because of it.)
Wolf