Title: Luncheon
Author: Phoenix Wand, 'course.
Rating: Pg-13 There's a reason, kiddies. - (Really, just the beginning, though. Rest's just pure fluff.)
Author's Notes: Wow, when did I last write anything that I was actually intending to finish? Oh, yeah…good year, good year. Yep, been a long time, my writing skills are probably horribly rusty, so do not flame me! The pairing for this is Tsuzuki x Hisoka. Don't like yaoi? Don't care. Don't like the pairing? See previous. Not trying to come off as rude, but so many flamers. Gosh. Where do they come from? Anyway, enough rambling for a brief warning, recounting of Hisoka's rape, so there is some gore. And NCS.
Disclaimer: If I owned this, would I be writing a fan fiction? Would Hisoka and Tsuzuki still be just partners? Would Watari have not already just jumped Tatsumi (In some form or another…)? Exactly.
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The moon had been red that night, both dark and bright, like wet blood painted over the once luminescent surface. He could feel hands, feather light in some places, heavy and too commanding in others, but still, unwelcome all the same. Still he stared up above, as though by locking his eyes on this falsely colored nightscape he might be able to escape the darkness that surrounded him, emanating from the man's soul and his uninvited caresses.
He cried out, straining his throat, and arching his back away from the man who pressed against him. Those eyes, so cold, so wild, stared down at him, wide with pleasure at the boy's pain. He looked so heavenly, with his silver hair and eyes, his countenance that of an angel, but it was certain now; this man was no angel.
One of those hands, long and thin, elegant, but so strong, pressed across his throat, leaning against the boy's airway, the demonic gleam back in his face as the boy gasped and shuddered and writhed, trying to escape. But still he bore down, not merely stifling his cries, but breaking down any resistance the boy might have had.
But those harsh movements--so painful--and commanding dementia in those angel eyes had been enough to cause the latter long before this. The only comforting thought to the boy was that it had to end soon, the pain of the man pressing into him (how could it hurt worse than when he'd first started?) It would be over soon, though that might mean that this man would kill him, as he had that woman. Had she felt like this? Hoping for death by the end?
The man slammed against him, and heavy red lines raced lithely along his thin frame, and Kami! The pain was so bad, burning in his body, and the man's hatred and darkness clouding his mind and surely this was the end--
Instantly, the boy sat up in his bed, alone, a silent scream straining to be heard, and his fingers clawing desperately at phantom hands along his neck. For several long moments, he could do no more than leaning forward to bring his head into his palms, cold and clammy, taking harsh breaths and remembering. That it had been no more than a memory, just a dream, from over five years ago now, but still, it haunted him.
How many nights had he woken up like this? Unspoken cries, or worse, the ones he did speak, jerking up in bed, some name on the tip of his tongue? But as the dream world, the memory of exactly which name would fade away as he looked around his bare sleeping quarters.
Hisoka Kurosaki, now eighteen, glanced around the room as he shakily stood, sliding his legs between the sheets with ease. One glance at the alarm clock told him that he had woken early again. His soft sigh seemed so loud against the rest of the silent room. It seemed as if, unless he had passed out, he would never sleep past six. And often, six in the morning could've been considered a few extra hours to the boy.
He padded into the bathroom, his footsteps soft against the thin carpet. As ever, when he woke in the mornings, he wasn't sure what changes he expected to see when he glanced into the glass before him, but there were never any. He looked sixteen; he would always look sixteen. Such were the ramifications of dying (or rather, being murdered) young.
The eyes that met his were large and green, could have been expressive, but so flat and cold. His hair was floppy, some mix between dark blonde and sandy brown, spilling into those eyes, and still mussed from the tossing and turning against his pillow. And, as always when Hisoka awoke and took off his sleep shirt, his thin, pale frame bore extensive, angry looking red marks, twining along his arms, and then down across his torso, and still, more, covered by his pajama pants. The mark that the mad doctor Muraki had left on him those years ago.
He washed, and left quickly. He hated mirrors, because he could always be sure what he would see. A child and one scarred and inwardly frightened by what had happened to him so long ago. He shut off the light behind him.
He didn't have time to look at that child, to see him staring back out at him. Hisoka didn't like to be late for work.
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The Ministry of Hades was an impressive building, by anyone's standards. In the resting place of purgatory, the purpose of the building was to look after the souls of the dead, judging them for the sins and savings that had happened in their life. However, the most important part of the Ministry of Hades would be the Summons Department, where they employed eighteen Shinigami (high status agents of great power and low pay,) to both guard and retrieve the souls of the dead.
The irony of this being, of course, that as Guardians of Death, their job was more likely to bring the end of one's life, than to protect it, as the name would suggest. The job often required preternatural powers, and even more so, a tough skin.
Hisoka had always wondered others reasons for taking the job. It was not conducive to either a guiltless conscience or a full night's sleep. His own reasons were revenge and hatred for the man who had murdered and raped him, but now…he wasn't sure. He stayed for that, still, but there was something else that kept him around, the first sense of a real family he'd ever known.
He knew who had done that for him. Hisoka glanced up as he strolled the sidewalk to the main entrance. The path was lined by its usual cherry trees, always in blossom, the small pink petals drifting along on the wind in a peaceful manner. Everyday, rain or shine, day or night, they bloomed, and it seemed that there was something fake in the beauty of it.
One of the falsely angelic petals fell before him on the cement. Hisoka headed inside; this morning had become tiresome, and the facts and numbers of paperwork would be a welcome escape, at least until noon when Tsuzuki would grab him and drag him out to a little known place with an amazingly well made sweet on its menu.
"Hisoka!"
He heard his name cried brightly as he passed through the office, and turned to see a girl only a few years older than him (or so she looked) and quite smaller. Wakaba Kannuki, of course, optimist and generally friendly to everyone. "Good morning, Kannuki-san," he replied, nodding to the bright girl.
The miko's smile widened (if, in fact, that was possible,) and she waved brightly from where she sat at a desk with Hajime Terazuma, who merely grunted in his general direction and focused more intently on his cigarette. Hisoka would have liked to say that Terazuma was simply not a morning person, but he already knew the man to be constantly like this.
He passed by without responding, hearing behind him gently scolding words. ("Hajime! You could at least try to be nice. I know it's early, but Hisoka will think you don't like him.") As he headed towards his desk in the back, across and only a few feet away from that of Seiichiro Tatsumi's, he knew what to expect. The same as every morning, Tatsumi was poring over papers and tapping numbers into the fax machine, working, most likely, on ways to stop Hisoka's partner's destructive habits.
Hisoka grabbed a seat, and helped himself to small set up of tea that sat before them. Bancha. Tatsumi could be such a cheapskate sometimes, it seems. As though sensing this thought, the man looked over at him and smiled absently. Hisoka understood, only too well. Get most of the paper work done before--
Precisely eight o' clock struck, and the door flew open at the end of the hell, to reveal easily the most disorganized man any might know. His glasses were crooked, and his eyes were on a handful of papers, badly crumpled and written on in several different color pens. His long blonde hair was curly, held back by an amber ribbon to match his eyes, and a small fluffy owl was fluttering around, either tightening or untying it. His lab coat looked as though it had seen better days…and several explosions, which was most likely. The mechanical engineer was not known for his practicality. Yukata Watari absently brushed the bird away with the hand not holding the papers, and was promptly screeched angrily at.
Or at least, one could assume it was angry, no one could really understand the bird except for Watari. "003," he said, as though this was a perfectly logical thing to name a miniature owl. "Stop that, it's highly distracting. I already told you, that idea won't work. Attacking me doesn't change that."
Tatsumi looked suicidal. Or homicidal…or avicidal. "Watari," he said, reaching up with one hand to straighten his glasses, as though by doing so his colleagues might suddenly be straight as well. "You couldn't have left the bird in the lab?" He looked prepared to twitch. "Or that ridiculous potion?"
Watari glanced up, watching as 003 piped shrilly. "No, I couldn't have. Well, maybe the second part, but I didn't want to, and 003 goes where she wants." He shrugged. Apparently, to the scientist, it was perfectly normal for the bird to dictate things. Ignoring the glare sent at him, more fearsome than the one sent at the tiny puffball now on his shoulder. He was the only one Tatsumi really had little effect on; he took a seat next to the boy with a grin. "Morning, bon."
"Morning, Watari-san." Hisoka's reply was somewhat brusque, knowing better than to get into the middle of an argument between the secretary and the mad scientist. It had become custom. Watari would come in, he would be…Watari-esque. Tatsumi would glare, and snap. Watari would ignore him, beg for some funds that would most likely all just go up in smoke (literally, and flame, as well,) and Tatsumi would give him a reasonable amount enough to shut the man up and send him off back to doing odd things in that lab/aviary of his.
The morning went predictably for Hisoka, which he much appreciated. It took Watari fifteen minutes to leave with his yen, after needling Tatsumi for the entire period, and actually sitting on the brown haired man's desk, something no one else would be able to do without being killed (he still wasn't entirely sure why Watari was allowed to do it, simply that he was,) and waving them all off as he headed back down the hall.
And then chaos struck.
It might have been overly dramatic to say this about anyone else, but no one seemed to make quite as much noise coming in. No one seemed to destroy things as regularly, or raise their voice as loudly when shouting a good morning to the residents scientist and miko (he pointedly ignored the "Incredible afghan hound from hell.") No one seemed to make Tatsumi look more murderous when he ran in twenty three minutes later than he was supposed to (not even Watari for blowing up his lab Kami-sama only knows how many times.)
Asato Tsuzuki was in a league all his own, no matter what the situation. His trade marked (or, if it wasn't, it should have been, because nobody but nobody could do the same things he could with those amethyst eyes,) wide eyes puppy pout softened his pretty features. His voice was pleading over explaining, for reasons that even Hisoka couldn't understand why someone would be late, to Tatsumi exactly what had happened. Tatsumi didn't seem quite as angry with Tsuzuki as he might usually have been, rather going through the motions, and all of them knew it.
Hisoka could feel it off the secretary, though he was without a doubt the best as pulling the mental shield over his emotions. He and everyone else (save quite possibly Terazuma and the Gushoshin who didn't bother to be nice to hardly anybody,) had avoided at large the subject of Kyoto, and Tsuzuki's second attempted suicide.
Even as the "yelling" and threaten of pay cuts ended, and his partner took a seat with a bright, "Morning, Hisoka!" (that the boy did not bother to return, but did not seem to faze the man,) he could feel the slight tension from the mini-argument of being consistently indolent fading away.
It was, thankfully, paperwork this morning. And while this meant having to split his attention between Tsuzuki and his work, it meant no fieldwork, which made Tsuzuki a good deal less depressed. This came at a price, however, seeing as the older Shinigami's idea of doing paperwork was playing with his pen, doodling, humming to himself, and occasionally falling asleep- only to be awoken by book (or fist) to head contact, courtesy of his partner. It was trying, to be sure, with pleadings of, "Aw, Hisoka, you're so booorrring." The word draw out longer than the boy would have thought humanly possible, or better yet, "Can't we just go out to lunch yet?"
No. Hisoka was not going to attempt to explain to either Tatsumi or Chief Konoe (though the former would have been scarier,) that they were leaving for lunch at ten o' clock rather than the allotted twelve because Tsuzuki had as much trouble concentrating on paper work as he ever did. He liked living- or at least existing in some form or another.
However, the time passed quickly around his partners whining, aided and abetted by yet another explosion from a far part of the building, and some shouts about something involving a violent blender with claws, wings, and teeth that Watari had seen fit to develop (presumably as a paper shredder) which had currently taken to ravishing Tatsumi's inbox. Very unhappy Shinigami watched as toiled over reports became little more than a good next in line for the lining in Watari's "aviary." It was almost needless to say, but when noon did roll around, it seemed with great relief that most members of the Summons Bureau attempted to escape a psychotic blender and the flamboyant scientist who insisted on walking around clasping his fudas, quite assured (three hours after its beginning rampage,) that the creature was in fact possessed, whereas before it had only been temperamental.
Though Tsuzuki took this in good spirits, indeed, getting side tracked by watching the once docile (and most likely inanimate,) house hold appliance dive bombing Terazuma, Hisoka had never thought he had more appreciated the free hour that was provided for them. Though undoubtedly amusing…to some, he would much prefer a restaurant and perhaps some ibuprofen.
"I just thought of a place!" Tsuzuki was literally bounding down the steps of the front walk, his smile easy as ever, once away from the dreaded task of paperwork. Which he still hadn't finished the first two pages of.
"No." Hisoka's voice was flat, looking up at his partner with severe mistrust. Tsuzuki's choices were either one of two, very quiet, good food, nice atmosphere, or barely able to cope with, food was fair save for one or two things the man liked, and Hisoka's nightmare personified into a building. There was no middle man, and if Tsuzuki was thinking of it off the top of his head, it was inevitably a bad sign. It spoke eons of the boy's patience, though, that he managed not to point that out in a scathing tone. "You pick someplace where the food's not that great, and then you ignore Tatsumi-san's budget limitations, and he gets pissed."
If Tsuzuki was bothered by the boy's tone, he didn't show it. Either that, he had become so used to it, he had learned to merely brush off the harsh words. In Tsuzuki's mind, he didn't mean them. So, he continued on as if the empath had agreed with him. "Yeah, it's in the quieter part of the city." The city, of course, referred to Kyushu, where both of them preferred to dine. "I haven't been there yet, but I thought we should try it together." He smiled at the boy.
"You couldn't try it by yourself?" Hisoka asked, and watched as before his eyes, his twenty-six (technically, ninety-seven) year old partner pouted and began crying out about how Hisoka was so mean to him, and did he really want to hurt his feelings? The boy closed his eyes, nearly feeling himself twitching. "All right," he snapped, finally, unable to take any more of his partner's immaturity. "We'll go, okay? Just knock it off. You're being an idiot."
Tsuzuki's face lit up, and even as they began to leave for Kyushu, Hisoka realized he would probably have gone from the beginning.
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A/N: Yeah, rather pointless, still, but fluff is nice. You can pet it and it keeps you warm at night! - This fic was actually written as a gift for an awesome friend and betta, Kistuna-sama, otherwise known as the Notorious Kistune Marauder. But, you'll find out more about her in the next chapter.
