Tite Kubo's, not mine, not for profit.

"They" say that the first day of any new job is the worst, and, whoever, "they" are, "they" are right. The first day's the pits. Too much to remember, everybody who knows what they're doing all watching and waiting for you to screw up ...

It was a nice office, and I felt like I might eventually fit in, but right now, I just needed to shut my brain down as firmly as I shut the front door to my apartment behind me.

All I really wanted to do was write some nice fanfic, preferably starring Shuuhei Hisagi because for some reason he cranked my scooter lately.

I sat down in front of the evil box after I had cooked and cleaned up after dinner, and done some pretty minimal housekeeping (my apartment doesn't get dirty because I'm never anywhere but in front of my computer. The computer desk, however, needs to be tidied, exorcised, and then burned down).

That was my night. I got so engrossed I forgot to watch my favorite TV show, but I could get it off the box later. Bonus: no commercials.

Eight thousand, four hundred and sixty-six words, of which I wrote two thousand and four that night. Not too bad, Shuuhei in a desperate situation, Kira shortly to the rescue; I was quite pleased with myself. At nine-thirty, I got up, did my yoga for the night, sat back down and cleaned out my e-mail, completed the research for the plotting of the rest of Shuuhei's miseries, failed to be distracted by Spider solitaire or even Tetris, and went to bed.

I sleep well, and if I wake up after five or six hours of sleep, I don't know why. If it happens I get a drink, use the bathroom, lay back down again. If I can't get back to sleep within a half-hour, I get up and write ... and then suddenly the alarm goes off, and I have to save, turn off the computer, and hie myself to work, short on sleep.

(And listen to that receptionist talk about how she was out dancing all night. Pfft.)

This time, I couldn't hear anything; my neighbors weren't having a knock-down-drag-out, there were no suspicious strangers at my door, my windows are three stories off the ground so I didn't have to worry about break-ins, and there were no sirens wailing up and down the avenue outside my building.

Nonetheless, my clock said three-fourteen AM. This is an hour of morning you should stay up until, not get up at.

I got out of bed and blinked toward the kitchen, a glass of water high on my list of priorities. I wasn't looking around much as a series of yawns claimed my attention while I shuffled my slipper-and-robe-clad self from bathroom to kitchen.

I didn't actually see the intruders until I came back, glass of water in my fist; I might not have seen them at all until the light suddenly changed in the computer nook. You know, like when you surf from site to site.

"What the - ?" I said, intelligently. "I thought I shut that thing off."

"You did," one Shuuhei Hisagi said, rising stiffly from the chair in front of the computer. He winced and grabbed the back of the chair. Beside him, Izuru Kira reached over and steadied him.

I wasn't sure whether to drop my glass of water, scream- and-run, wet my pants, grab them by the ears and kiss them on the mouth, or maybe all five ... at once. I settled for gaping at them for a few minutes, and then I shut my mouth and said, "Wh-what are you guys doing here?"

Shuuhei tipped his head and smiled at me, which was a) something I'd never seen him do in the animé, and b) soooo cute. He said, "We came to read the next fanfic you're doing on us. You take up quite a lot of our time, you know."

It required a physical effort on my part to shut my mouth. "But I thought you ..."

Izuru's warm blue eyes crinkled at the corners. (Soooo damned cute.) "Yeah, we know. You think we don't exist unless someone draws us. Hard to explain, but we do."

I fell with a thump into the dining room chair nearest them. "Please," I said. "Sit down. Can I offer you some tea?"

The two of them exchanged glances. "Thanks, but no. We can't eat or drink while we're here, or we'll have to stay."

"Oh." I gathered my wandering wits, and said, "Hisagi-fukutaichou, you seem to be injured."

He shrugged. "It's nothing much."

Izuru smiled at Shuuhei, then at me. "He has two broken ribs, a separated shoulder joint, and a sprained ankle. He collects this stuff like clockwork on the battlefield, but you give him quite a lot of healing to do as well."

"Er. Yes, I do. It's a subset of fanfiction called 'character-whumping.' I'm not the only practitioner."

"Unfortunately, you aren't," Shuuhei said. "Look, just as a favor, for the next two weeks, could you lay off a bit? I've got a lot to do in the manga, and the animé is keeping me pretty involved at the moment as well."

Okay, those gray eyes above the blue stripe, one of them pierced above and below by the three trails of Hollow-claws that nearly cost him his eye, the tattooed cheek, the general sweetness ... those bare muscular arms ... are you going to tell that face "no"?

"Excuse me," I said, and went to the computer table. I picked up a post-it note and scribbled on it, stuck it to the frame of my monitor, with the blond and the brunet both watching curiously, and resumed my seat. "Of course I will. The note's just to remind me to re-work a specific plot point."

"Fair enough," Shuuhei said. "And thank you, Mary Sue."

"It's not a problem. I'm happy to oblige."

Izuru rose, and put a hand down to his fellow fukutaichou. "Come on, Shuu," he said. "We've got three other people to look up tonight."

Shuuhei grunted himself upright. "You can't tell anyone we were here," he said.

"You don't have a memory-zapper?"

Izuru smiled. "They have to be checked out. We're here on personal business. No, they won't let us have them."

"Well," I said, "I don't think anyone would believe me, anyway."

"Probably not." The blond, seeming much less tentative than his animé counterpart, smiled. "But if you do write about us, change our names, will you?"

"Oh, sure," I said. "That's not a problem."

They vanished, and I went back to bed. After I wrote this story.

See, sometimes I lie.