Warnings: Confusion rampant ahead. But trust me, we're all confused together, 'cause I don't know what's going on either. ^^;;

Chapter Eight

Oriya was smoking on the back porch, listening to the gentle sound of the wind chimes, when Muraki finally emerged from his room. The doctor was now fully dressed and had his long white coat on. "You off, then?" Oriya asked, not looking up.

"Hai," Muraki said. There was carefully controlled anger in his voice.

"Aomori to find your pseudo-boyfriend?"

"You know," Muraki said, as if this was just occurring to him, "I wish you wouldn't take your jealousy out on me."

Oriya snorted and stood up. For the first time, Muraki noticed that not only was he wearing one of his casual kimonos, not generally meant for running a business, he also had a bag by his feet. "All right," he said. "Aomori it is. Let's go."

Muraki blinked at him. "You're not coming," he stated.

"Stop me," Oriya said, and smirked.

"Oriya," Muraki protested, feeling as though he'd suddenly been caught flat-footed. After a second, he managed to regain some semblance of dignity. "Why on earth do you want to go to Aomori with me? Because if it's to make sure I don't get together with Tsuzuki-san, I doubt you have much to worry about after this morning."

"Nah," Oriya said. "I'm just sick of letting you run off without me, that's all. We can have a nice vacation together. It's been a long time since I was up that far north." He grinned suddenly. "And if you don't let me come, I'll just follow you around. How's that?"

Muraki scowled at him. "Fine, you can come," he said through clenched teeth.

"Good," Oriya said. "That's exactly what I thought you'd say."

~~~~

"Well, uhm . . ." Watari looked at the papers that were scattered around the hotel room. "This was your room. I guess we should put these in order to try to figure out what you were doing, huh?" He started to gather up the papers. Hisoka and Tsuzuki did the same. For a few minutes, they were silent as they sorted through the stacks.

Watari explained to them the details of the case. By the time the morning was over, they had systematically gone through everything that Tsuzuki and Hisoka had gone through before they had lost their memories.

"This is stupid," Hisoka grumbled, flopping backwards onto the bed. Tsuzuki said nothing, loosely clasping his hands in his lap. His head was slightly bowed.

"We have to keep trying," Watari said, trying to be genki.

Hisoka crossed his arms over his chest. "Stop doing that," he snapped at Tsuzuki. "If you're so God damned miserable, go out on the balcony. You're making my head hurt."

Tsuzuki's head jerked up, then he sighed slightly. Without another word, he shuffled over to the balcony.

Hisoka pressed two fingers to his temple. "Idiot," he muttered. "What the hell did he take me so seriously for?"

Watari sighed. "He's got issues," he said. "If you're really worried, go out and talk to him. Try to cheer him up a little. I'm going to go pick us up some lunch. We've been working on this long enough for now."

"Okay, okay." Hisoka stood up and went out onto the balcony. Tsuzuki was leaning over the edge, staring vaguely into space. "I'm sorry I snapped," Hisoka said sullenly. "My head aches and I'm having a bad day. Are you all right?"

"Mm," Tsuzuki said, not looking over at him. "I'm fine."

"You're also a bad liar," Hisoka said, leaning against the railing so he was looking away. It was, had they known it, eerily reminiscent to their conversation in the rain, where they had officially become partners. "And very bad at hiding your misery. Even if I wasn't an empath . . ."

"I'm sorry," Tsuzuki said. He started to erect very careful mental barriers, being sure to stop the flow of emotions.

Hisoka grit his teeth in annoyance. "That's not what I meant," he said. "I don't want you to just hide it from me. I want you to talk to me."

"Why?" Tsuzuki asked, softly, curiously. "You don't even know me."

"I guess not," Hisoka said. "But I feel like I do." Though he would sooner die than admit it, he felt a very strong urge to comfort Tsuzuki. It was somewhat akin to the fear that had gotten underneath his skin when Tsuzuki had been in danger. He could not explain it; the best he could do was accept it.

"I know," Tsuzuki said with a sigh. "I feel like I know you too. It's strange . . . I don't mean to make you upset, but this is all very . . ."

"You're not making me upset," Hisoka snapped, too quickly. "Just don't be such an idiot." He paused, carefully gauging the small amount of emotion he could still feel from Tsuzuki. Even that was rapidly disappearing, like a hole that was being blocked up. Anguish . . . and betrayal. "You're not still on about Muraki, are you?"

Tsuzuki flinched. "No," he said. He caught Hisoka's skeptical glance. "Okay, maybe a little. It's just that he was so kind to me . . . it's hard to think of him as being evil. Despite what Watari and Tatsumi said . . ."

"Kind to you." Hisoka's voice was disbelieving.

"He was," Tsuzuki said defensively.

"And you're going to try to convince me that he didn't once try to get into your pants the entire time?"

Tsuzuki's vivid blush was answer enough.

Hisoka stared into the hotel room, which was now dark and empty. Watari had departed. "He knew you were vulnerable . . . so he tried to get you. That's how he works. That's what he does."

Tsuzuki shivered.

"I'm surprised he didn't just force you," Hisoka said bitterly. "Unless you just went along with it, that is?"

"No!" Tsuzuki protested, turning pink again. "I was tired, so I . . . I turned him away. But he didn't force me! That wouldn't count as having been kind to me, now would it."

Hisoka turned away. "So he made you want it, instead. I suppose that's better than what he did to me."

There was a long pause. "Ne, 'Soka . . ." Tsuzuki picked up the nickname automatically, making Hisoka's cheeks burn bright pink. "What did he do to you? If you want me to believe he's evil . . . why don't you just tell me?"

"Because I'm not sure I can," Hisoka whispered. "I'm not sure I could say it out loud without going insane. Because that might mean having to come to grips with what happened . . . and I don't think I can do that. Maybe that makes me weak. I don't know."

"I don't think so," Tsuzuki said quietly. "There's plenty of things that I certainly don't want to talk about."

They stood in silence for a few minutes. The rain began, gentle at first, then harder.

"Should we go in?" Tsuzuki asked.

"Aa," Hisoka said. He turned away and pulled open the balcony door for Tsuzuki. He paused and looked out at the city. "It's out there somewhere," he murmured. "I can feel it . . . pulling on me . . ."

(like a moth to the flame)

"What was that?" Tsuzuki asked.

Hisoka shook himself. "Nn. It's nothing."

~~~~

By five o'clock, the three of them were all tired and irritable. They had gone over every possible theory at least twice, and still had made no headway. "It's impossible," Tsuzuki declared. His misery had abated somewhat now that he was confronted with such a complicated problem. "We have no way of finding this thing."

"But you found it," Watari said insistently. "There must be a way to find it, because you two already did once."

"Maybe it was just coincidence!" Tsuzuki replied.

"Maybe it found us," Hisoka said in a low voice, and shuddered. It was hard to think with that consistently quiet buzzing in his ears. Hard to concentrate. "This is stupid." He stood up. "I'm going for a walk."

"But it's raining," Watari said, sounding both surprised and concerned.

"I'll survive." Hisoka picked up his jacket and pulled it on. "I need to move for a little while. I can't stand being cooped up." That was certainly true; being kept in the cellar all those years had bred that in him quite nicely. "I'll be back in a little while."

"You'll be okay?" Tsuzuki asked anxiously.

"Baka. I'll be fine." Hisoka stalked out of the room.

Tsuzuki picked at the blanket covering the bed. His head ached and his unhappiness was returning quickly now that he had nothing else to occupy him. Watari sighed and took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was a difficult case -- damn near an impossible one, and one that he might have been tempted to give up on completely if it weren't for this new development. If Tsuzuki and Hisoka wanted their memories back, they had to find wherever this thing had gone.

But the more Watari thought about it, the more convinced he became that Hisoka was right. They had not gone out and found it. It had come to them, or at least brought them to it.

It made perfect sense, after all. Tatsumi had said it just the day before.

// What do you think would happen if this . . . whatever it is . . . discovered that Shinigami were after it? //

What would happen?

Either it would run, afraid -- which it obviously hadn't -- or it would want to get them out of the way. And want to get its hands on their psychic energy. Two birds with one stone.

Hisoka was right. This thing had drawn them in and effectively disabled them. And as much as Watari didn't want to admit it, he still had no proof that the spell was no longer in effect. Maybe it was draining their energy more slowly. Maybe it would take a few days before they noticed.

Maybe maybe maybe.

All the maybes added up to the fact that he still had absolutely no idea what to do.

"Ne, Watari . . .?"

Watari turned to him, forcing a smile. Now Tsuzuki was going to ask him what they were going to do, and he would have to try to come up with some sort of reassuring answer. That or terrify him, but the purple-eyed Shinigami was unstable enough without adding that problem. "Aa?"

Tsuzuki asked nothing of the sort. "Hisoka and I . . . were we just partners?"

Watari blinked at him. "I beg your pardon?" he asked.

Tsuzuki stared down at his wrists. Stared at his watch band as if he could see the scars underneath it. "I was just wondering . . . I don't remember him, but I feel like I do. It's strange . . ." He laughed a little. "But he agrees with me. He said that when I was with Muraki, he was frightened without knowing why. And he was trying to comfort me earlier."

Watari waited for the rest of it.

"And I suppose I feel the same way," Tsuzuki finally said. "I know he's upset, and I . . . I want to go find him and make sure he's all right. I don't really know why . . . I just do. So I was wondering . . . what we were to each other. I know we must have been friends, but . . . was it more than that?"

Watari considered his answer very carefully. His immediate, and not very intelligent, impulse was to lie. To tell Tsuzuki that yes, they had been more. He knew damn well that they wanted to be, but he also was suspicious of whether or not either of them would ever get up the courage.

Or he could say that they weren't, and perhaps Tsuzuki would forget about the whole thing. He might never look at Hisoka as anything more than his younger friend -- and Watari knew that it would make Hisoka miserable.

The problem was really that he could not answer. He didn't know the answer, not for sure. He only knew what he had observed. And no one knew what had taken place in the burning building -- no one but the two of them and Tatsumi, and Tatsumi wasn't talking.

"I don't know," he finally said.

Tsuzuki, who had been expecting a good answer after Watari's full minute of silent contemplation, wilted. "You don't?"

Watari shrugged a little. "You and Bon are both very private people. I don't know for sure what was between you. Nobody did. I can tell you the little I know, if you think that'd help."

Tsuzuki nodded, eager for the information.

"I know that the two of you cared for each other very deeply," Watari said, turning to shuffle through some papers so Tsuzuki wouldn't be able to read anything from his face. "I know that you're the first person who ever showed any affection for him, and as such his loyalty to you was completely unbreakable. You saved his life -- well, afterlife." Watari laughed. "But you did more than that. You convinced him that it was worth something."

Tsuzuki sat silently, fingers tracing over his watch. "And?" he finally asked, when it didn't appear that Watari was going to say anything else.

And he loves you, Watari added silently. Deeply. Devotedly. Unconditionally.

"And just before all this mess, he saved your life too," Watari said. "But not by rescuing you from someone else. He saved you from yourself. You wanted to die." He delivered this statement without a trace of emotion. Tsuzuki looked down. "But he convinced you not to. I don't know how. No one does."

Tsuzuki nodded a little. "Anything else?" he asked quietly.

Watari thought he knew the rest. Hisoka loved Tsuzuki beyond any shadow of a doubt, but Tsuzuki wouldn't let him in. Too caught up in his own misery, his own lack of self-worth, his own belief that he had nothing to offer Hisoka, he would always keep his partner at arm's length. No matter how much Hisoka loved him, wanted him, needed him, Tsuzuki would never believe it. And it was slowly going to drive them both insane.

"No," he said. "That's all I know about it."

Tsuzuki nodded again, and said nothing.

"Okay, spill," Watari said cheerfully, turning to face him again. "Why do you ask? You smitten?"

Tsuzuki turned a pale shade of pink. "It's not that," he said, his voice bordering between anger and embarrassment. "I just wanted to know, that's all."

Watari gave him a considering look. "When you look at Bon now, what do you feel?"

Tsuzuki said nothing for a long minute. There was no way to describe the aching sense of longing, the fierce need to protect, to shelter, to comfort. To wrap Hisoka up so nothing else could hurt him. At least, there was no way to describe it without sounding like a lovesick idiot.

He was silent so long that Watari thought he was not going to answer.

"I just don't want to let him get hurt again," Tsuzuki finally whispered. Why was it that when he looked at the younger boy, along with everything else which could easily be explained by love, why was there so much guilt? What had he done to Hisoka? Or at the very least, what was he blaming himself for doing?

Watari nodded, as if this was what he had expected.

"He's been gone a long time," Tsuzuki said.

"Nah," Watari said. "Bon goes on walks that last for hours when he's got something on his mind. He does it all the time."

"Oh." Tsuzuki looked at the stacks of paper. "Now what?"

"I think we're going to try something new," Watari said. "It's obvious that we can't track this thing, but there may be a way to reduce the spell without finding the actual thing that cast it. I want to go back to the Meifu and look into it."

Tsuzuki nodded. "All right."

~~~~

Hisoka trudged through the rain with his hands in his pockets, wandering through the streets aimlessly. His headache had faded as soon as he had gotten out of the small hotel room. Even under normal circumstances, being around two people that stressed would be bad for him. And these were hardly normal circumstances.

What he was beginning to think he should mention to Watari was this horrible buzzing that he couldn't seem to get rid of. He didn't know if it was a side effect of being dead, or if there was something really wrong.

No, that wasn't true. He knew. If he'd been living with this for years, he'd be insane by now.

So, the buzzing was not normal. He would mention it to Watari as soon as he got back to the hotel room. Along with, perhaps, this maddening image of the moth and the flame. There had to be some meaning to that.

What puzzled him was that his empathy was not wont to translating emotions into images. Emotions were emotions. He felt them; he didn't see them. So why couldn't he get this image out of his head?

He sighed and kicked at a small rock. He was soaked through, and feeling distinctly displeased.

(come here)

Hisoka shook himself. The buzzing in his head intensified, and he wavered slightly, listing to one side. He quickly put one hand against the wall of a building to steady himself. It was cold underneath his fingers.

(come here, little boy, I can give you anything you want, I can give you your heart's desire, I can)

The rain was falling steadily. It slid down the back of his shirt and had long ago soaked into the top of his jeans. It dripped from his hair and obscured his vision. He couldn't really see. But he could hear. He could hear something calling to him,

(do you want your friend Tsuzuki? I can give him to you, I can see that all he thinks about is you, if you will come to me, feed me, provide me)

drawing him closer, drawing him in.

Its voice was soft, sweet, barely audible. There was a better word for it

(seductive? was that the word?)

but Hisoka couldn't think of it off the top of his head. He shivered and began to walk again, stumbling along through the rain. He was suddenly struck by the desperate urge to be back at the hotel, back within the safety that Tsuzuki and Watari provided. He stopped and looked around --

and realized he had no idea where he was. He had been walking without purpose, and for some reason, he had not thought to keep track of how to get back to the hotel. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And that buzzing kept getting louder. No more seduction. Now just a hint of a threat.

(come here, you foolish child, unless you want me to get angry)

He was walking again. Towards the noise. He didn't remember starting to move.

The world tilted to one side and he stopped, closing his eyes against nausea. He crossed his arms over his chest, gasping for breath.

"Looks like you're not doing too well, boy," an amused, arrogant voice spoke up. Hisoka's shivers increased as memories washed over him. He could not bring himself to look up, could not bring himself to see that familiar smirk and silver hair. He sensed more than saw that hands were reaching towards him, and he knew he was caught, and tried to brace himself for the empathic flood.

But when the hands touched him, he felt no evil, no malice or perversion. Just a bit of confusion and concern. Hisoka looked up to see a hand on each of his shoulder and normal brown eyes. "Oh . . ." he said. "It's you." Had he dreamed Muraki's voice? No, the other man was standing there, smiling, slightly behind his friend.

"You're not looking too well," Muraki said, and smirked.

Hisoka thought he might throw up. Oriya gave Muraki a dirty look.

"What are you doing here?" Hisoka finally asked, directing the question at Oriya, figureing that he might get a decent answer that way.

"Chaperoning him," Oriya said dryly. "What are you doing wandering around in the rain, you idiot?"

"Nothing." Hisoka shoved his hands aside. He didn't want Oriya to be concerned. He didn't want help from either of them. He just wanted to get back to the stupid hotel. He knew the name of it; he could ask someone for directions. Once he got back there, he would be safe, both from Muraki and from whatever this thing was.

Oh, but it didn't like that plan.

(you stupid boy, come here, come HERE)

The buzzing was so loud that Hisoka couldn't think. He pressed both his hands against his ears and bit his lip to avoid crying out. This was not a good time to freak out. Not when he was alone with these two. He had to pull himself together.

"Oi," Oriya said, taking a step forward. "Are you okay?"

(COME HERE)

From a thousand miles away, Hisoka heard himself cry out in what sounded like unimaginable pain. Then the world flickered out, and he fell forward, into Oriya's waiting arms.

~~~~