Title: Heat
Author: Moi
Pairing: Tsuzuki/Hisoka
Warnings: Shonen ai bordering on yaoi, fluff, Grumpy!Hisoka, kissy-kissy. Lots of kissy-kissy. Extensive use of italics and long paragraphs. Do not read if you have a history of losing your train of thought by the end of a long paragraph or have a tendency to go into seizures at the first sign of excessive fluff.
Notes: This is another fic that I started a long, long time ago. It was inspired by one of Brigdh's fics, and although I really liked the beginning of my fic, I couldn't finish it. Then, the other day, I was Inspired by Random Things and decided to try to finish the fic. As a result, this is the longest one-shot to date that I've written. Yay for long one-shots. For a moment I contemplated writing my first lemon for YnM, but then I realized that it didn't quite fit in with the story. It had nothing to do with my being lazy. Really.
I'm not really sure what happened to this fic, honestly. I had no destination in mind when I started it, but then it morphed and stuff happened, and then Tsuzuki and Hisoka decided to take it over and be all cute and…and…ahh! Help me! The imaginary characters in my head are taking on sentience!
Muchos thankees to Meritite, who helped beta this when I shoved the entire mess into her lap over IM and proceeded to do an obscure dance of joy at having finally written something.
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It was silent in the Shokan Division Diet Building. A quiet sort of lethargy had spread throughout the offices, brought on by an unexpected heat wave that caused the cherry blossom trees to droop slightly and the inhabitants of Meifu to retreat within their air-conditioned buildings. The usual hustle and bustle that normally took place in the working place of the Shinigami was gone, replaced by the monotonous humming of numerous fans and the occasional scratch of pen against paper.
Watari had long since retreated into the air-conditioned safety of his lab, where he was able to putter around and pore over his experiments like a mother hen with chicks, undisturbed by the heat and sporadically even adding more to the atmosphere with the spontaneous explosion or two. Happily immersed in his experiments, birds, and various and sundry doodle-kins scurrying about his feet and trying to avoid being stepped on, Watari was able toignore the summer heat quite contentedly and continue with his normal routine.
Hisoka envied the blond scientist. Whereas the older Shinigami was able to work in cool, blissful peace, the green-eyed youth was left sweating over piles and piles of documents, reports and case files accumulated over time through his partner's aversion to paperwork and tendency to pull Hisoka along with him on random tangents in an attempt to escape the growing mountain of work. As if in response to the unusual heat, the number of supernatural cases that he and Tsuzuki usually attended to had dropped, leaving Hisoka with the leisure to pick through and finish the aforementioned paperwork. That had been his original plan; however, now, eight hours after he had started working and only halfway through the first of seven piles of documents, Hisoka was beginning to question his decision to tackle the unfinished files. Tsuzuki was nowhere to be found, his hand was sore, and a throbbing headache was beginning to form in his left eye.
Hisoka had abandoned his denim jacket a long time ago, and, with a bit of reluctance, had done the same with his orange sweater. Now he was clad in his jeans and a sleeveless black shirt, the collar pulled up high despite the heat. It was more of an unconscious gesture than any real desire to conceal himself; though the scars Muraki had left imprinted upon his skin only flared up and became visible after a nightmare or an encounter with the silver-haired doctor himself, Hisoka nevertheless found himself with a tendency to hide himself, whether it be within the baggy folds of an oversized sweatshirt or the even bulkier depths of a heavy jacket.
A frown settled between his brows as he hunched forward, his pen moving automatically across the page to fill in blank after blank, initialing where it demanded it and signing away his soul whenever the odd reference popped up. Sometimes, Hisoka wondered if Tatsumi was secretly trying to take over the Shokan Division by turning all the Shinigami into mindless drones through the endless amounts of paperwork he impressed upon them. With an explosive sigh, he finished the report and set it aside, reaching for another blindly as he rubbed his eyes with his free hand.
A cold, wet glass was pressed into his groping hand. Hisoka froze in surprise before looking up into familiar violet eyes, blinking as he suddenly realized that he had been sensing Tsuzuki for the past ten minutes without really registering that he was there.
"Here."
After a few moments of staring blankly at the condensation-covered cylinder being pressed against his hand, Hisoka dazedly realized that he should be doing something about it. Slowly, his fingers curled around the curved surface of the glass, a cool weight against the heated skin of his palm. He glanced up at his partner in time to see a flash of white teeth before Tsuzuki moved away, plopping into his creaky, ancient chair with all the grace of a hyperactive seven-year-old. Hisoka blinked at him, amused violet eyes returning his gaze with steady affection and warmth. The younger of the pair finally opened his mouth, fully intending to ask Tsuzuki where he had been the entire afternoon, bracing himself for the tiff he knew he was about to invoke. Before he could say a word, Tsuzuki waved lazily at the glass in his hand, tilting back in his chair and putting his feet up on the desk.
"You looked like you could use it," he said simply. "I felt kind of bad for ditching you here with all this-" he gestured at the piles of paper around them, "-while I went off and looked for some things in Chijou." Silken bangs fell into his face as he cocked his head to the side, a smile playing around his lips. "It's lemonade. Don't worry- I didn't make it."
Hisoka frowned slightly as Tsuzuki chuckled at his own words, an inadvertent admission that the older Shinigami knew full well about the reputation of his cooking. Tsuzuki continued to look at him, patient anticipation on his face as he unconsciously fiddled with his eternally crooked tie. Hisoka looked down into the glass, peering at the semi-transparent, yellow-tinted liquid blankly before raising it to his lips and taking a small sip. Tsuzuki beamed.
"…thanks." Hisoka croaked, vocal cords rusty and dry from hours of disuse. Waving a hand in careless dismissal, Tsuzuki randomly plucked a paper from one of the nearby piles, wrinkling his nose in displeasure as he read it.
"This case? I thought we wrote the report for it ages ago." Nonetheless, he picked up his pen and began to write out the report in his scrawling, lackadaisical handwriting. Hisoka found himself oddly off-balance from Tsuzuki's almost flippant attitude. Several times, he opened his mouth to speak, and just as often, he closed it without having said a word. Tsuzuki seemed oblivious to his partner's nonplussed expression, his pen steadily moving across the paper with a faint scratching noise, face strangely content in the dimmed sunlight that filtered through the blinds. His white dress shirt was pristine without the slightest hint of sweat staining the thin cloth, the man looking for all the world as if he had never ventured out into the blazing heat. Inanely, Hisoka noted Tsuzuki's sole concession to the weather – the rolling back of his sleeves in characteristic disorder – and sipped at his lemonade again, for lack of anything intelligent to do or say.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
Tsuzuki did not lift his head, his hand still moving steadily, but a faint smile touched the corners of his mouth. Hisoka drank again, his throat bobbing as the bittersweet liquid poured down his throat, his fingers tense and almost spasming in inexplicable nervousness as he waited for Tsuzuki to reply. The fan in the window choked and sputtered, the motor humming dully for a moment before dying away completely. The sudden silence that followed was stifling, the heat setting ponderously in as Tsuzuki remained silent. A trickle of sweat made its way down Hisoka's back, and he suddenly found himself wishing that he had brought a set of spare clothing.
"Yes. I did."
Half-expecting there to be more to Tsuzuki's rather simple answer, Hisoka frowned, setting the glass of lemonade on his desk. The clink of glass against wood seemed to catch Tsuzuki's attention and he looked up, dark eyes narrowed and head tilted questioningly.
"Is there something wrong, Hisoka?"
The furrow on Hisoka's brow deepened and he crossed his arms, hunching into himself in an unconsciously defensive gesture against Tsuzuki's inquiry. He couldn't explain the unease that had arisen since Tsuzuki's quiet and unobtrusive entrance, a slightly nauseous twisting of his stomach with every nonchalant action his partner made. It was the same feeling he sometimes got on cases, a strange sort of foreboding that always promised danger and blood and pain. Here, though, in the all-too-mundane setting of the office with his lackadaisical partner playing twenty questions and offering no information to Hisoka's increasingly frustrated mind, the feeling seemed out of place and unwarranted. Tsuzuki offered no danger to Hisoka, ever – though he was proving quite a challenge to Hisoka's patience.
"What was it you were looking for?" Hisoka decided to try again, giving his partner the benefit of the doubt. It was entirely possible that the heat was responsible for his discomfort, and that his irritation at his partner stemmed from his infamous lack of tolerance for extremities in temperature.
The smile that stretched Tsuzuki's lips then was beatific, holding not a little bit of mysterious mischief in the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth, faint laugh lines crinkling in amusement as dark chestnut bangs fell to shadow sparkling amethyst eyes. Yet, he refused to answer, bending his head lower as if to concentrate better on what Hisoka knew was a simple expense form, shuffling seriously through a pile of stapled receipts and even going so far as to sing softly under his breath. In the silence that followed his question, Hisoka could just make out the words that Tsuzuki was crooning over and over again in broken English.
I've got a secret – do you want to know? (1)
Hisoka seriously considered damning patience to hell and shaking his partner to get some answers from him. Just as Hisoka was about to give into violence, Tsuzuki looked up again, setting the expense report aside and lacing his fingers together beneath his chin. The same mischievous smile was back again, nearly hidden by his hands.
"Do you want to know?" he inquired teasingly, his voice lilting. Hisoka didn't bother tamping down the wave of aggravation that rose in his throat then as a scowl twisted his features.
"No, you idiot. I don't want to know. That's why I'm asking." He snapped sarcastically and glared at Tsuzuki.
Infuriatingly, Hisoka's irritation seemed only to fuel Tsuzuki's amusement. The older Shinigami leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head as the dilapidated piece of furniture groaned in protest. By this point, Hisoka wasn't even noticing the heat, the long-abandoned lemonade sitting forlornly on his blotter, collecting beads of condensation that slid down the cool glass to join the widening pool of moisture on his desk. Instead, his attention was focused wholly on his partner's unrepentantly grinning face.
"Are you sure you want to know?"
Hisoka blinked, his frown deepening as he noticed the serious look that had replaced Tsuzuki's maddening smile, amethyst darkening into a shade of purple that was almost black. Again, that snake of unease writhed in his abdomen. The young empath swallowed convulsively before nodding briefly.
Tsuzuki rose from his chair, lean frame uncoiling from the dented cushion and towering over Hisoka's sitting form. He approached his younger partner, a hint of mischief returning to his eyes in a faint gleam as he beckoned for Hisoka to close his eyes. With some reluctance, Hisoka obeyed.
There was a heavy, silence-laden pause broken only by the humming of the fans. For a moment, Hisoka thought that it was a trick, that Tsuzuki had taken advantage of his closed eyes to escape for Enma-knew-what reason, but a vague tickle along his empathy and the slight raising of the hairs along the back of his neck told him that his partner was still there, waiting – waiting for what? Involuntarily, the young Shinigami felt a blush burn along his cheeks, blood rushing to his face as he imagined briefly his tall, handsome partner standing there and watching him – green eyes closed in wary anticipation, pink tongue darting out nervously to wet thin lips – and realized with a jolt that he was imagining what Tsuzuki was seeing.
His eyes snapped open just as a warm hand cupped his cheek, sliding to the back of his neck to tilt his face up, just in time for him to register Tsuzuki's blurring features as lips touched his –
Tsuzuki was kissing him.
Hisoka froze with shock, eyes wide and disbelieving even as his partner gently caressed his lips softly, long, skillful fingers massaging knowingly at knots of tension at the base of his neck that he hadn't even known were there. And then – Hisoka didn't know what came over him, only that his body seemed to be acting without his urging – his arm was lifting, draping tentatively over Tsuzuki's shoulders as he tried to push up into the kiss, tried to get more of that wonderful sensation of lips over lips, and physical touches just shouldn't feel so good, and yet this one did. A soft moan sounded in Hisoka's ears as wet warmth laved across his bottom lip, teeth catching the fleshy mound and gently rolling it before a tongue slipped past his parted lips into his mouth, teasing his own with tremulous bravery.
There was a brief sensation of falling as Tsuzuki leaned forward, placing a knee on the chair between Hisoka's splayed thighs, and Hisoka automatically grabbed onto Tsuzuki's arms for support as he broke from the kiss with a startled gasp. The heat was forgotten, a small thing in comparison to the fire that was building in his belly, ignited by the unforeseen touches and that kiss. He was gasping for breath in the aftermath of that intensity, his heart hammering in his chest as he panted, staring into heavy-lidded amethyst eyes watching him intently from beneath dark lashes. It was a long moment before he regained enough composure to stutter words with any coherency, and in that moment Tsuzuki did not move from where his hands were placed on the armrests to either side of Hisoka, face barely a foot away from his partner's.
"Tsuzuki – w-what?" Hisoka was sure his head was going to burst, either from the blood rushing to his cheeks in a deep blush or from the complete and total surprise paralyzing his brain. Searching his eyes intently, Tsuzuki replied softly, a shadow of his previous mischievous smile curling his damp lips.
"What I found in Chijou," he murmured, leaning forward to press his lips to Hisoka's again in a brief, teasing caress that the younger Shinigami responded to unconsciously, "Was the courage to do this. To you. With you. To trust that you would respond on your own; to gather the will to accept whatever response you decided to give."
He kissed Hisoka again, not quite as intensely as the first kiss, but not nearly as chaste as the second. As his eyes slid shut under their own volition again, Hisoka realized that for all that Tsuzuki was pressed against him, lips to lips and a strong arm slipping around his waist to pull him closer, he wasn't being overwhelmed by the emotions he knew must be surging in Tsuzuki's mind. Wonderingly, he stretched his empathy towards Tsuzuki and found walls stronger than any he had ever found before, barring those naturally created by Tatsumi-san's shadow magic.
Tsuzuki's emotions weren't causing him to relax in his partner's arms; Tsuzuki's emotions weren't kindling the warmth in his belly and encouraging him to return the damp caress of his partner's lips over his; Tsuzuki's emotions weren't daring him to twine his tongue around his partner's, to tangle his fingers in dark locks of hair that felt softer than they rightfully should have.
His emotions were pushing him to respond, to allow Tsuzuki to lift him slightly out of the chair and turn them until he was the one straddling Tsuzuki awkwardly, knees bent and pushing against the back of the seat even as he bent his head down to meet Tsuzuki's kisses. The trembling snake of nervousness that had been writhing so uncertainly in his stomach before had now dissolved into a pleasant warmth that filled him from the inside out.
Somehow, it did not surprise Hisoka to find that he felt no fear at Tsuzuki's touch, at his almost desperate strokes that slid down Hisoka's spine, changing directions just as large hands reached the small of his back, smoothing over his shirt with the soothing touch Hisoka had come to associate with his partner. At the realization that it was his emotions he was feeling, and his emotions alone that were prompting him to allow Tsuzuki's hands to slip under the hem of his shirt, fingers playing along his heated skin with teasing touches that promised to become more if he would only let them, Hisoka laughed, the rare sound of relief and almost sobbing joy swallowed by Tsuzuki's mouth, and it was all the response he needed to give.
It was Tsuzuki who broke the kiss first, gently pulling away from the intoxicating warmth of Hisoka's touch. The younger Shinigami's eyes remained closed as he licked his lips, as if tasting Tsuzuki still upon them. As long lashes fluttered slowly open, a slow smile curved Tsuzuki's mouth, and he reached up, brushing blond strands of hair behind the delicate curve of Hisoka's ear.
"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that." Tsuzuki said, his voice low and slightly hoarse from emotion. Hisoka's lips quirked slightly and he lifted a hand to Tsuzuki's brow, tracing along the side of his partner's face tentatively with his fingertips, a strange satisfaction blooming in his chest as dark eyes fluttered shut under his touch.
That he could bring the most powerful Shinigami in Meifu to this with only his touch – Hisoka smiled then.
Perhaps he had been unsuccessful in his bid for power in GenSouKai, but here, under his hands, beneath his lips, he had power greater than anything Kurikara might have offered him.
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The End
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(1) Tsuzuki's singing an Alicia Keys song: specifically, he's singing "I've Got a Little Something For You". I'll explain this little bit of plot deviancy as Tsuzuki hearing it on the radio. ;; Or something. Maybe he's into illegal downloading. Perhaps he even has an iPod and downloaded it from iTunes. ;
(2) Not a footnote, but doesn't R.E.M's "Everybody Hurts" lyrics make you think that Hisoka should've sang it to/played it for Tsuzuki after/before the Kyoto thing?
When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on
Don't let yourself go, 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes
Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go, (hold on)
When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on
'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,
When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on
Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts. You are not alone
Yes, I think that's quite fitting.
And with the longest author notes in my own history of writing fanfiction, I'll sign out now.
Wolf