Fukuda Tadashi was not a jealous man.

He wasn't jealous. He had nothing to be jealous about. He had nobody to be jealous of. His life was…well his life had been circling the drain since the mid-80s….but it was still better than a lot of other people's lives. He could have been living in a box in the park, or he could have been born without powers, or he could have been one of Claw's devout cultists. Yes, his life could have been a lot worse and he had a lot of better things to complain about, anyway, than the fact that his assistant had stopped….assisting.

Which should have been a good thing.

Hatori was not in his nest. His empty energy drinks, chip bags, and tiny orange fingerprints were the only indication that Hatori Nozomu had ever existed there at that desk in the corner…and Fukuda should have been over the moon. No more muttering under his breath, no more dirty looks, no more tinny songs coming from overly loud headphones, and especially no more random outbursts of anger and profanity. Seriously. The lack of the last thing alone should have sent him dancing down the hallway. Hatori was off to where it was that he had gone off to and Fukuda could work in peace.

He should have been happy.

But he wasn't. He knew exactly where Hatori had gone off to. He had gone off running to Suzuki. He always ended his day sitting there with Suzuki distracting him from his life's goal, a good thing, but also telling him God only knew what. Suzuki was a powerful man and Hatori had his ear…and Suzuki let him. Suzuki actually liked him…..for some reason.

Maybe he saw himself in Hatori.

He had been a geek, a nerd, a dork, and whatever other words the kids had thought up for pale gangly kids with no social skills, good grades, and extremely niche interests that they were happy to tell you about AT LENGTH. Seriously. On that first day, their first meeting, Suzuki had spent more time explaining why Space Invaders for the 2600 was the best port of the game followed only by the port for the 5200 which made sense because even though the 5200 was newer the 2600 was perfection….that conversation had gone on longer than their whole 'oh my fucking God there are other espers in the world' conversation. Yeah. He had been…something. He was still something…and that something was pretty much….in a lot of ways who he had been when he had been a kid…

Which was not a good thing.

Because he hadn't let go of their STUPID GAME! Only now it wasn't a game, this was life, and they were really trying to take over the world. The two of them were really….well the two of them and others….they were going to take over the world. This wasn't the two of them in the woods filling endless notebooks with their plans for the new world order. This was life. This was their real, adult life and….and maybe they should have stuck to the arcade. Maybe instead of playing along they should have stayed in the arcade for their entire childhood. Or maybe it was better that he was back with Hatori. They did have a lot in common….

Maybe Hatori could get him back in the arcade.

So maybe it was a good thing that Suzuki had taken a liking to him. Hatori was a lot like a younger version of him. Same interests, same poor social skills, same overreactions to just about everything…and Suzuki did overreact. He didn't yell and scream or hide and cower like Hatori but he did overreact in his own way. Be it taking over the world because of some existential crisis about having the powers of God, Suzuki thought so anyway, or hiding in his room for the rest of time because he confessed to his kendo sempai and she had rejected him and, of course, since the most perfect girl in the world had shot him down there was nothing else that he could do but sit in his room plotting world domination, playing videogames, and drinking ketchup….and yes, he did drink ketchup…

Fukuda bet that Hatori didn't know that about him.

He also bet that Hatori didn't know that he cut the tags out of all of his clothes because otherwise he would tear the whole back off without realizing it. He bet that Hatori also didn't know that he was terrified of mice to the point of actually climbing up on a chair, once, when their fort had gotten infested on summer because the farmers were burning their fields…and there had been more farmland then. He also bet that Hatori didn't know about the time Suzuki had gotten lost in the woods and resigned himself to eating baby soy beans from a farmer's field instead of literally anything else. He also bet that Hatori hadn't heard the rest of Suzuki's ridiculous stories from childhood. Like the time they had snuck off to Tokyo for that comics thing and Suzuki had spent all of his money on Galaxy Express doujinshi….and he bet that Hatori would never know, either, about the time Suzuki had publically proposed marriage to that girl…what had her name been? The one who slept with him out of pity. God that had been…so much second hand embarrassment…..

God….those were the days…

Wait…no. What in the hell was the matter with him? He was….well maybe those were the days. Before all of this. Back when they had been friends and things had been simple and…and he was getting older. He didn't look it, he barely looked thirty, but he was getting older and…..yeah. People got nostalgic in their old age. He and Suzuki….back when they had been kids…things had been good. Then he killed his parents, got weird, and it turned out that Claw wasn't a game….and then university had happened…and then he'd had Sho….and then Fukuda….well once Sho had been born he had been trapped…or maybe he had been trapped before….

Not that he was thinking…the unthinkable.

Sho needed him. Sho needed him and…and if anything he should have been nostalgic for when Sho had been little. For when he had just been learning to talk….and everything had been 'no' even when he'd meant 'yes'…and how he had been 'dada' just because that was the only word he knew for a grown man. Back when Masami had been there…and she had smiled so much in those days. Not that her smiles had been…well what they had become to him. Not that she had been anything more than Suzuki's wife. He remembered….God. Suzuki had been obsessed with her. He met her and for a time she was all he could think about. Her name was Masami, she worked at an animal prison, her hair was brown, she wore a lot of yellow, when she smiled her canine teeth showed, she wanted to live in either a manor house or a proper Japanese castle, she loved cats even though they were terrible animals, she smelled of berries and cinnamon, she called him Touichi sometimes, and she was the most perfect person that Suzuki had ever met…

Fukuda too.

Of course he hadn't realized it then. No, that had taken some time…and this was not the time or the place or…or the place for nostalgia. Not the walk down memory lane that he should have been taking. The times when he would come over to check on the family. Making dinner with them. How Sho had been so small but so eager to help….so he had put Sho on washing the vegetables…and he had only turned his back for ten seconds but in that time Sho had managed to use half a bottle of dish soap and drawn the vegetables a nice bubble bath…and the salad had tasted of lemons but nobody had cared…and Masami had smiled…

God, he missed her smile.

He missed her smiles and her laughs and the way she always had something nice to say even in the depths of her depression. The way she had always been so beautiful even if she had been in her pajamas for days on end. The way her skin had been so soft. The way that she had been there for him as much as he had been there for her. A relationship went two ways…and he had never had anything with anyone that went two ways. Suzuki…friendship with him had been a lot of work…and he'd never had a girlfriend for long with all the work that he put into his friendship…or whatever he had…with Suzuki….but Masami…she had been there for him. She had fulfilled a need that he hadn't even known that he'd had.

For a few hours he could pretend that he had a family.

He could pretend that everything that Suzuki took for granted, and he always took everything for granted, had been his. He had taken his wife and son for granted. Masami and Sho…anyone would have been happy to have had people like them for a family. Suzuki had spent his entire life taking everything for granted. He'd never wanted for anything, not money or food or games or love…not that Fukuda had been lacking those things either…but still. Suzuki had, when he'd had it, the perfect life. A mom and dad who loved him even though he was….who he was. Plenty of money to spend on adolescent nonsense. Effortless good grades. All of it. He'd had it all and then he'd lost it all…and Fukuda still didn't know what had happened…but he knew that he was done beating himself up for what had happened. Like his parents had said when they had been alive, it hadn't been his fault. So what if he'd wanted to take some time to himself that day even though he and Suzuki were supposed to go to Cuticle City to investigate the Rising Sun Spiritual Association for the millionth time? That hadn't been his fault. Suzuki…his life was his own…

Heh. He bet Hatori hadn't heard that story.

Sometimes he disliked himself. The thoughts that came into his mind. He didn't know where they came from, sometimes. This life…it had not been good to him. Maybe it had driven him insane. That would have made sense. Here he was sitting at his desk nostalgic for a time when he had been friends with a man part of him hated. Here he was equally nostalgic for a time when he had stepped in and borrowed that same man's family. Hell, here he was nostalgic for a time when he'd slept with his best friend's wife on his bed with his son sleeping down the hall…it sounded worse in his head. Masami had needed him just as much as he had needed her…and he didn't even know who he was even justifying himself to. He was the only one in the office. There was no one, no assistant, no Sho, no nobody. He could have just gotten up on his desk and started shouting, confessing, everything….and he wanted to…just to get it out.

He could have screamed it at the top of his lungs 'I slept with Suzuki Touichirou's wife and she liked it!' over and over again….but he wouldn't because that would have been suicide.

He was tired, maybe, that would explain it. Tired because Sho, or rather his aura, had kept him up all night. That had been some lightshow…and he had no idea what it had been. A fight? An explosion? Or maybe he had just managed to find where his sister hid the soda. Fukuda didn't know. All he knew was that he had been up most of the night waiting for Sho to show up at his door…but he hadn't. Sho had spent the night in his own home in his own bed dealing with….whatever that had been….all on his own…and Fukuda should have been there for him…

He had fucked up.

He had fucked up so badly and he had no idea what he was supposed to do. The only thing he could think up was going back in time…but Suzuki had proven it with very complicated math back in high school that time travel wasn't possible. Sho…he was a child and he couldn't understand that Fukuda…he'd had no choice but to make the pragmatic choice. He'd had no choice but to confess to a smaller crime, keeping Sho's girlfriend from him, instead of spilling the beans on Sho's greatest secret. Sho was ten, almost eleven, and he was just too young to understand. Maybe when he got older….

But Fukuda didn't have that long.

Sho…he was a good boy and Fukuda wanted to keep him that way. He knew that Sho had been spending time with Shimazaki….that wasn't good for anyone…and he needed to keep Sho safe…but Sho was still angry with him and he could hold a grudge like no one else….and he was in love, too, and even if Fukuda threw himself on Sho's mercy and got him an economy size box of poptarts…Sho would always chose to spend time with the person he was in love, as much love as a ten year old could be, with instead of the guy who did his best to keep him safe….

God….Fukuda needed to get out of here.

He needed to get Sho out of here…and they were in Japan…..and Fukuda knew that Suzuki hardly watched Sho. In the past he had warned Fukuda over and over again not to overstep…but now…well now that he'd latched onto Shigeko, to an admittedly unhealthy degree, he hardly even seemed to remember that he even had a son. That was…a pragmatic choice. It was better that he focused on Shigeko. Shigeko was….well it was a choice between Shigeko and Sho and he had made his choice. This was…Masami would have hated him if she could see what he had let happen…but she was gone and he was doing his best…and Sho…well Fukuda knew that he had earned himself some personal time…and Seasoning City was only a train ride away…and they could be there and back in a day if they left soon enough….

There. A plan.

Sho would forgive him. Everything would be alright between the two of them again. Also Fukuda could get away…this office was not big enough for two. He needed to get away just as much as Sho did and…and this was a good plan. It was a sudden plan, one thought up by a mind that was overstressed and over tired, but it was a good one. It was one that he had to act on before he changed his mind. So much could go wrong. Someone could bring how often he had been visiting the Seventh Division to Suzuki's attention…Sho could refuse to go with him and figure out that he could get on a train on his own….the train could get derailed and Fukuda could get so injured that he used up all of his energy saving himself and had nothing left for Sho…the world could explode….the dead could rise…he could get caught in a hiccup in time…

He was too tired.

Coffee. Coffee from the cafeteria, and then talking. He needed to wake up and he needed to be coherent…and he couldn't fix his own exhaustion. This was not an injury. This was his own inability to just go up to Sho and lay it all out there for him in a way that he could understand. Well no matter. He could make this right. He had to make this right.

But first he had to have his coffee.

He got one for Suzuki, too, since he must have been exhausted. He was even more sensitive to auras than Fukuda was…well more than any other living esper…and Sho must have kept him up all night. If this had been a year ago he would have had to worry about broken bones, bloody noses, and deep bruises that Sho might have been hiding from him. Well not anymore. Shigeko had managed to convince Suzuki not to hit Sho anymore. She was capable of being selfless, it seemed, unless she was just trying to get on her brother's good side so that when the time came, when he inherited the world, he would remember how his sister had saved him from their dad. That was what Fukuda would have done if he had been her. She was smart, probably as smart as Suzuki, but she actually understood how the human mind worked….

She was downright terrifying.

It wasn't just her powers that were terrifying, though they weren't anything to sneeze at, it was the fact that she didn't use them for everything. Suzuki…he was an easy man to understand. He used his powers, his strength, to make people fear and respect him. He was capable of grand plans but he only knew how to make those plans come to fruition by displaying the fact that he was head and shoulders above all other espers. Shigeko…she almost never showed her strength and when she did…it was very sparingly….but also…also just enough. She had managed to stop Shimazaki from teleporting…and that had been more terrifying than her explosion at the Eighth Division…and he hadn't even killed anyone. She had just stopped him and started giving orders…and he had followed them…

Because she was terrifying.

She was like Suzuki but…not socially impaired. She had her own little cult within a cult. The Awakened loved her, she had her own entourage of powerful espers, and she had her father wrapped around her finger. She knew how people's minds worked….and that was more terrifying than being able to pick up an airplane without moving a finger….and Fukuda…..he had no idea what he was supposed to do….so he did what he did best.

He did what he could to protect Sho.

He would have done anything for Sho…even played nice with Suzuki and Hatori. He had grabbed a can of that disgusting neon drink that Hatori liked. He could play nice with Hatori…even though that was his assistant and he should have been assisting him instead of spending his days with Suzuki talking about….whatever it was that they talked about. For Sho he would play nice with Hatori. Sho was worth it. He was. Even when he acted like this, like he had been lately, and even though he had chosen to keep company with the worst person possible…he was worth it. He would always be worth it.

He was Sho. There was no one in this world more worth it.

Fukuda felt himself entering Suzuki's passive aural range. He steadied his face and his aura, took a deep breath, and walked through the office doors. He didn't skip a step. He didn't give anything away. He just entered the office like normal. He paid no mind to the reams of paper on Suzuki's desk with…some kind of sketches on them…and he paid no mind to the much better sketches that Suzuki had tacked onto his wall…Sho had been doing a series on dragons it seemed…and he paid no mind to the way Hatori squeaked and tried to make himself small as he passed.

What did he have to be so afraid of?

"Fukuda. Maybe you can help us with something." Said Suzuki. Well that was new. Usually he was all 'what do you want?' and this…well this was nice…though he hoped that it had nothing to do with whatever it was that they had unbalanced the paper budget for.

"If it's whatever you two are drawing I'm at loss." Said Fukuda. There were numbers, upon closer inspection, beneath the drawings…and Fukuda didn't know anything beyond the square root symbol…and he wished, for the millionth time in his life, that he had gotten any degree of hypercogniton.

"No, not with this. I was showing Hatori how three dimensional objects mathematically. He hadn't even heard of an octant, before this morning can you believe that?" asked Suzuki. Fukuda put his coffee down in front of him and kept his eyes from going wide. There was….a lot more math in front of Suzuki…and it was easy to forget that Suzuki was a genius…but he was….and maybe…well maybe he couldn't pull one over on him…

No, he was getting Suzuki confused with Shigeko. She would have seen right through him…but this was Suzuki. He had always been easy to fool.

"I still don't know what an octant is….and I don't think that I ever will…" said Hatori. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. Fukuda didn't blame him. This was another side of Suzuki that he had never seen before, apparently. Well good. Let him see all of Suzuki, then, if he wanted to be friends so badly.

"In two dimensions the coordinate axes partition into four quadrants which we can then divide once again into eight regions from the origin. Try and keep up." Said Suzuki

"Sorry. You I stopped going to school in my third year of middle school, right? I can barely do algebra." Said Hatori. Fukuda kept his aura and his face still. Hatori had spoken to Suzuki like that…but he apparently hadn't been able to hear the disrespect in his tone. Good for Hatori, he lived another day.

"Right, well then I'll have to explain algebra to you. I'll have to clear my schedule through lunch." Said Suzuki

"Boss? You really don't have to." Said Hatori

"Well I want to. I enjoy math and I enjoy speaking with you." Said Suzuki. Fukuda decided to step in. Hatori needed saving, which he didn't care about one bit, it was…he didn't know. He wasn't a jealous man but he had felt his aura flare there…and his stomach squirm….and he wanted nothing more than to take his coffee and dump it all over Hatori's head…and he was much too tired. That was it.

"Well that, at least, I can help with…though I might be a little bit rusty." Said Fukuda. His mind raced with how he could cover up that aural flare. Fear of math? Being tired? He had brain worms? Or something? He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to be careful how he played this. Suzuki….he seemed ok not but he could be more than unpredictable…..and he just…he took a sip of his coffee. There. That would buy him some time.

"No, I don't need your help with that. What I need is help trying to figure out why Daughter slammed her bedroom door in my face last night." Said Suzuki. Fukuda almost spat his coffee out right in Suzuki's face. That was….Shigeko had done….what? Shigeko? Disturbingly enmeshed with her father to the point of sleeping in the same bed with him at her age Shigeko? She had slammed her door in her father's face like, well, a kid? What the hell…..?

Maybe he had fallen through a snag in time and space and he was in some crazy alternate dimension where Shigeko was a normal little girl, Japan had won the Pacific War, and they had invented a diet soda without the funny aftertaste.

"He isn't telling you that he tried to go into her room without knocking." Said Hatori. He wasn't being helpful. Suzuki never knocked. He didn't think that he had to. That was just who he was and Hatori would had known that if he actually knew Suzuki.

"It's my house." Said Suzuki

"Yeah but she still wants privacy. Like she said, she could have been naked in there." said Hatori

"But she wasn't…and either way I was in the room when her mother bathed her." said Suzuki. Yeah, he had been there while Masami had done all of the work and…and Fukuda calms down and tallies up his evil thoughts. Not the time or the place to be losing control like that.

"Yeah but she was a baby then. She's not a baby anymore. It would be like…if your mom walked in on your while you were in your room." Said Hatori

"My mother never knocked. She didn't have to. It was her house…and there were things which I needed privacy for…but Daughter is better than that." Said Suzuki. Fukuda didn't correct him. Shigeko was a human as anyone else and she was about at that age…well Fukuda been about at her age when he had figured things out….and Shigeko kept company with grown men so who knew what she had and had not figured out.

"Yeah but you know how girls are. Nobody wants their dad walking in on them." Said Hatori. Fukuda wanted to laugh. Suzuki had no idea how anyone was. He was Suzuki. He barely knew how he was let alone another human being.

"He's right, she's getting older and it would be better to knock on her door and wait for permission. She's not a kid anymore." Said Fukuda. It hurt him, it physically hurt him, to agree with Hatori…but he had a point. Shigeko wasn't a little girl anymore and of course she wouldn't want Suzuki walking in on her while she was doing….whatever it was that she had been doing. Well based on where she was physically he'd give three guesses as to what she had figured out…but he did NOT want to think about that new and terrible chapter in her life.

"I….well if you say so. You know about these things more than I do and I respect your judgement." Said Suzuki. Well that felt…good. Someone was in a good mood that morning…which was only good for the rest of the world…but especially Fukuda. It was so rare that he was in a good mood…and despite Shigeko's….whatever she had been thinking treating her father like that. Huh. Maybe he had fallen through a snag in time and space. Any minute now he'd make the leap home…heh. God he was tired.

"Thank you. Anyway I was just coming to tell you that I need a little bit of time off for personal reasons. I'm sure that Hatori can fill in for me." Said Fukuda. Hatori squeaked in fear again. Good.

"How much time?" asked Suzuki. Well that was certainly fast. Huh. Someone was in a VERY generous mood today.

"Not too long, a few days." Said Fukuda

"You-you're leaving me alone?" squeaked Hatori. Fukuda stifled a laugh. He would have thought that at twenty years old Hatori's voice would have been done changing. He was still such a child. Maybe that was what Shigeko had seen in him…or maybe she just hadn't pursued him at all, apparently, because he was just too young for her.

"You'll live." Said Fukuda dismissively. Only Hatori would hear that tone…and only Hatori did. His eyes went as wide as saucers. At least he didn't squeak again.

"That's fine. Hatori, you're Fukuda while Fukuda is gone. I trust that you will do well." Said Suzuki. Hatori looked like he was ready to piss himself. Good. He wanted to be friends with Suzuki? Well part of being friends with Suzuki was becoming a very important administrative cog in the machine that was Claw.

"I…I don't know…." Said Hatori. Fukuda put his energy drink down in front of him. Hatori looked up in fear. Fukuda shrugged. As was life. He wanted to be friends with Suzuki then fine, he got it, and everything that came with it.

"Well I do know. I know that you'll do very well. You're more intelligent than you give yourself credit for. You may not be able to do basic math but there is still an intelligence to you. You simply lack confidence in your own abilities…" Said Suzuki. Fukuda tuned out the rest of that pep talk. Hatori was squeaking and looking like he wanted to run away and Suzuki…well he was trying to build up another human being for once.

That was fine.

Fukuda was not a jealous man. Suzuki could say whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. He didn't care. He had gotten what he needed from him and now he was going to…do what he had to do. Hatori could have him. They were so much alike he would have thought that they had been related if he hadn't known better. Let the two of them feed into each other. Let Hatori figure out that being friends with Suzuki wasn't all that great. Let Suzuki realize that he needed someone to keep him in check or else he would end up distracted and everything he had worked for would fall apart.

Let those two have each other. Fukuda was jealous. What did he even have to be jealous of?