Unbound

The Boy

"She bid me take love easy,

As the grass grows on the weirs.

But I, being young and foolish,

With her, I did not agree."

Ten years later

"For many years I claimed that I could remember things seen at the time of my own birth. Whenever I said so, the grownups would laugh at first, but then, wondering if they were not being tricked, stared distastefully at the pallid face of that unchildlike child."

5:32 p.m.

The red lines that made up the characters on Hisoka's digital clock glowed dully at him across the room, the only glimpse of color that made its way through the dull, grey, curtain-induced gloom. Every so often, the numbers changed- 5:33 p.m.- nearly dinner time but it wasn't like Hisoka was hungry- seeming more alive than the clock's owner, who was sitting perfectly still in a faded mauve armchair. He'd intended to read Mishima Yukio's Confessions of a Mask when he sat down- Gushoshin the Younger had recommended it last time he was at the library- and even went so far as to pick up the book and open it. That had been at precisely 3:17 pm. Since then, Kurosaki Hisoka had been able to take in exactly two sentences, but he'd stopped caring. Something far more pressing was on his mind.

It was 5:34 p.m., the fifth day since he'd gotten Watari to release him from the hospital, and he was no closer to figuring out what he was going to do about the brown-haired man who'd occupied the bed next to him. He'd purposefully left while Tsuzuki was still sleeping, selfishly wanting to avoid awkward questions. Needing to think, he'd beat it back to his apartment post-haste. It looked just the way he'd left it, with the exception of the refrigerator- the days he'd been gone had not been good to his leftover rice, which had developed a fine spotting of black mold. But it wasn't just that- he'd cleaned the bowl out in a daze, wondering why everything felt so much the same and yet so different. Going back to his apartment had been like stepping into a long-lost childhood memory for a few minutes, before he'd re-acclimated himself. It was strange- he'd gone on plenty of business trips before, and coming back always felt strange. Empty. Like he'd been full for days and suddenly found himself starving.

It's Tsuzuki, he'd finally realized, when his partner had come in one day to take care of him when he'd collapsed. I'm getting used to having him around, and it's strange to just be alone with my thoughts again. I'd better work on my shielding...

But that had been months ago, and he'd finally realized that it wasn't just acclimation that was bothering him. It was- shit. It was disgusting. He couldn't even think about it. Gross. Gross! But sometimes he couldn't help it. The second night in the ward, he'd thought about it. Tsuzuki had been sleeping peacefully for once, while Hisoka was overcome with a nasty bout of insomnia. Turning over in bed for the thousandth time, he'd come to look- accidentally! of course... at his partner. The moonlight that was shining through the window illuminated the already handsome, angular visage, relaxed but not quite- never completely- untroubled. People never looked completely smooth when they slept, Hisoka thought. Distracted, lost in their world of dreams, perhaps; but he'd never seen the sort of blissful tranquility that writers liked to describe.

Still, once he'd peeked (accidentally!), he couldn't stop looking. The vulnerability of the moment was rather frightening- he could feel the hint of a worried knot at the bottom of his stomach, warning him of the embarrassment that would follow if his partner were to wake up suddenly and catch him staring, but he pulled the covers up over his chin and ignored it. Eyes shadowed by the blanket, he gazed across the expanse between the beds. Tsuzuki was sprawled across the bed, coverlet pulled just over his waist; his gangly limbs hung everywhere, and Hisoka's eyes were automatically drawn to the planes of his chest where his sleep-shirt had fallen open. He swallowed. Tsuzuki was- he was- his mouth was dry. When did it get so hot?

Oh.

He was so disgusting. Hisoka rolled over firmly and faced the other direction, flushing even deeper in embarrassment. This was wrong, he didn't- he wasn't like that. He wouldn't want to do that to someone.

But you just did, his mind reminded him traitorously. Damn it. Painfully aware of his own heat and sensitivity, he trained his gaze on a swath of paint on the far wall. What was wrong with him? Tsuzuki was a man, had just tried to kill himself, and here he was thinking about- things- was it Muraki? Had- what he'd done- messed him up, somehow? He'd read about it- sometimes when things like that happened to people, those people turned out just the same.

No. He wasn't like that, he told himself. He'd never be like that. He needed time to think... pulling his knees up to his chest, he squeezed his eyes shut. Sick, that's what he was. He'd just have to remember not to do that again. He'd had years to learn to suppress his empathy- surely this wouldn't be as hard? He couldn't think of anything else to do. He might not be known for his tact, but he wasn't that kind of person. He couldn't let himself be. So he wouldn't. It would have to work. Wouldn't it?

...Wouldn't it?

It was 5:43 p.m., ten minutes darker than before, and Kurosaki Hisoka had put the book aside, not even bothering with the pretense.

The problem, he supposed, was that he was just too damned selfish to leave. It would be easy- just put in a request for a transfer, get himself stationed somewhere where he'd never have to see Tsuzuki, never have to worry about the disgusting things his mind did without his permission. But he knew as soon as the thought crossed his mind that he couldn't. No. He... he loved his partner, in a completely innocent way, and he could just be near him as a partner, maybe even as a... a friend. That would be fine. Besides- and this thought was a sharp, sobering one that cut straight through the depressing fog of his other ones like a steak knife through oversoftened butter- Leaving like that would be awful for Tsuzuki. You may have screwed up, but he cares about you, doesn't he? And knowing that you care about him, that's what made him come back. It's not like it's all bad. Just... that. That's a problem. But mostly, it's not bad. Good, even. It's good.

(Sick freak.)

So, he told himself firmly, hugging his knees to his chest, it'll just have to be suppressed. That's all. Get rid of the bad part. It's not like this is you, anyway. You'll just have to do that, and Tsuzuki doesn't ever have to know.

The thought was comforting. Hisoka sat there for another few minutes, staring at nothing, concentrating on driving that thought into his brain. You're not a sick freak. Just get rid of this, and it'll be fine. Then he got up and went into the kitchen to make himself tea. Cheap sencha, nothing special. Kurosaki Rui had been terribly partial to the expensive Gyokuro, but even on the occasions when her son was allowed to have it, he had never liked the taste. He stared pensively into the steam that curled up from the kettle, cupping a hand over it to feel the fleeting warmth; large though his apartment was, the downside was that it had always been rather cold. He heard the phone erupt in a shrill ring from the other room, jumped, and ignored it. It continued to ring, then stopped, then rang again, and finally Hisoka walked into the other room to answer, feeling a bit guilty. If anyone had been trying to reach him, he hadn't been answering the phone at all. Tsuzuki had said that could be worrisome.

"Hello?"

"Kurosaki-kun!"

"Watari-san?" Hisoka glanced sideways.

"Indeed! Nice of you to answer, finally." The scientist's voice came in, clear and far too loud. Luckily, the phone's volume could be adjusted. "I was just calling to check up on my uncooperative patient."

Said patient frowned in annoyance. "I'm fine."

"No fevers? Indigestion? Dizziness?"

"No." The junior shinigami scowled at the phone, never appreciative of unasked-for incursions into his own affairs.

"Good." Watari proclaimed, cheerfully oblivious to Hisoka's irritation. "Tsuzuki's doing well, too."

"Yeah?" Hisoka suddenly found himself enamored with the whitewash on the wall, flushing.

"Yup. I'm planning to release him tomorrow morning. He was asking after you."

"Really?" It was lame, but the best he could manage. In the other room, the teakettle began whistling. Hisoka got up and walked back to grab it, squeezing the phone between his shoulder and ear as he poured the boiling water into a cup and added a tea bag. No sugar. He couldn't stomach much sweetness.

"Yes, he was," Watari continued. Then he added significantly, "I hope you're feeling up to taking visitors."

Hisoka nodded reluctantly, then realized Watari couldn't see him. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He could almost see the scientist narrowing his eyes at him, trying to see through the phone to decipher the thought process behind Hisoka's vague reply. But after a moment, Watari seemed to let it go. "That's good, Kurosaki-kun. I'll tell him you're answering your phone now, hmm?"

"Well, I am." The younger shinigami stared at the counter, tracing little specks in the granite. He had the feeling that Watari was scolding him for his disappearing act, though he wasn't sure how much else he could have done. He couldn't just sit there with those thoughts.

"All right, then." Watari's voice made the smooth transition from inquisitively chiding to light and professional. "I'll see you later then, Kurosaki-kun."

"You too."

Hisoka stared at the phone for a moment. Then he put it down, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took a sip of tea. Too early- it burned going down his throat.

He'd wound up eating, eventually. Just rice. When he'd come to Meifu, he hadn't known how to cook at all; not even how to boil water. His parents- or more accurately, his father, for his mother had never given up hope that a new, less freakish pregnancy would come along and absolve them of the need to keep Hisoka around- had made sure he was book-learned, but when it came to domestics... he just didn't know. The maids had always taken care of such things. So it was that for his first few months on the job, he'd eaten every meal in the overpriced Shokan-ka cafeteria, sacrificing a good chunk of those early paychecks and, as a result, foregoing amenities like a new pair of shoes once holes had been worn in the toes of his right ones. Since then, with Tsuzuki's poor cooking the ironic impetus- he needed some way to escape his partner's curry rice coated in mint leaves, cinnamon, and whole nutmegs- he'd taught himself to follow recipes, and the amount of money wasted had gone down significantly.

As he ate, he thought about- what else?- ways to get rid of it, as he'd taken to calling the thoughts. The problem was that he knew about getting rid of thoughts; that is, he knew how hard it was, and how he'd never succeeded before. Not for a lack of trying; for years of his childhood, attempts at ridding himself of his empathy had loomed ominously, like the towering shadow of an infuriated parent in his mind. If the issue was will or motivation, he'd had plenty, stabbing needles of resentment and settled despair running through his respiratory system with every breath he took of that over-lacquered, stiffly affluent atmosphere. And without even that... there was simply no chance. He could try concentration, but... it hadn't worked the first time.

Hisoka sighed, dropped his head onto one hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Instruction manuals...

A shield. Wakaba had helped him with that when he'd first arrived, to give him more control over the empathy. Would that still work if it was your own thoughts you were trying to block?

He pulled his head up and scraped his hands through his hair, bringing them to rest clasping the back of his neck. Actually, that might work. Surely there was something that could block out his own thoughts, right? And if there was, Watari would probably know where to find it... and Wakaba might know how to do it, he didn't see how the topic wouldn't have come up at some point during her tenure. In their line of work, with all its demonic possessions and bad memories, people had to have reasons to block off parts of their own mind. Sure, there hadn't been any way but the soul-splitter to get Sargatanus out of Tsuzuki, but that was different. That was an entire entity inside him. This was just one... perverted... inclination.

Outside, the sun had set entirely. The bare apartment aquired a queer starkly lonely quality with the lights on, all shadows thrown across whitewash that was yellow under the low-wattage bulbs. It was impossible to tell where all of them came from, fuzzy undefined shapes that must have been the result of some light angled awkwardly towards a fold in the couch covers; still and unidentifiable on the far wall, next to the open window. Hisoka got up to close the blinds, frowning at his own skinny reflection in the cold glass. There was something unnerving about the way he couldn't see out of a glass window at night when he was inside, but from without, all activities were starkly visible in more detail than they ever were in daytime. Anyone could be looking right in, and he wouldn't be able to see. Unless they had their nose pressed right up against the glass. And he did not want that.

He walked back to the kitchen after that, closing the curtains above the sink before turning on the faucet to wash his teacup. So. Maybe Wakaba knew. He'd ask her, next time he saw her at work.

He woke up the next morning, and realized the problem. Staring befuddled into the ceiling's blank grey expanse, he recalled his conversation with Watari:

"Release him tomorrow morning... I hope you're feeling up to taking visitors."

"Damn." He flopped over and took a look at his clock- 6:27 a.m.- what time tomorrow morning had the man meant, anyway? "Crap." He wasn't even supposed to be in the office for another week, and his stomach flipped at the thought of making an obviously special trip to seek out his coworker for information of this sort. And, just his luck, the library was still closed for repairs after Mariko and Suzaku's rampage. But he had to get it somehow-

Then his eyes alighted on the old phonebook.

Hisoka didn't know the apartment's last renter, but he assumed they'd worked in a sector that included Hokuriku, because they'd left behind a recent Kanazawa business directory that Hisoka had never bothered to get rid of. It was on top of the refrigerator, covered in a fine layer of dust which made Hisoka sneeze as he pulled it down and flipped to the bookstores. Would any of them be open at this hour? Probably not, he supposed, though Tsuzuki would most likely get up late too- he could assume to have the morning to himself, at least. They wouldn't have books about shielding, but maybe there was a drug of some sorts- they wouldn't work if this was the result of residual magic from Muraki's curse, but if it was purely psychological, there had to be something. So he picked up the phone and dialed the number of the first familiar-sounding store he'd come to. He had no idea how they'd managed to get phone service between Chijou and Meifu, but it was damned convenient.

"Thank you for calling Books Kinokuniya. Our offices are closed at this time. For our hours and locations, please press 1..."

(Beep.)

"Thank you. Our hours are 8:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m., Monday through Sunday. Our locations in the Ishikawa prefecture are as follows..."

(Click.)

So. Well. Hisoka flopped down in a chair and studied the wood grain of the table, belatedly bleary. That was that, then, and this way, he might not even have to tell anyone. He'd get a book to help him figure out how to deal with this- and then he'd call Tsuzuki, because there was no doubt in his mind that the man would want to hear from him. Just... hopefully, the man wouldn't actually come over until Hisoka'd had a chance to work through some of it, but knowing him...

The junior shinigami frowned and stalked off to take a shower. If that happened... well. He'd just have to do his best to keep from thinking about things like that. At least Tsuzuki wasn't an empath.

The trip turned out to be more embarassing than Hisoka had anticipated. He blinked down to Kanazawa at exactly 9:01, after waking up at 6:30 as if he were going in to work, and skulked through Kinokuniya in order to look up "abnormal sexuality" (118 titles), "healthy relationships" (1,134 titles, most of which were either diet cookbooks or dubious-looking guides on how to keep a man), and "sexual pathology" (3 titles). Then he walked to the section that seemed most promising, struggling to look nonchalant, and was promptly assaulted by a veritable wall of bright pink and scantily clad women. It was gross. Blushing furiously, he tried to take a top-down stock of the shelves while assuming his best "I'm A College Student, and These Are All Class-Related" look. Not that there were many reasons Hisoka-the-Pretend-College-Student would need to look at anything like Miiko Haruna's Love + Control, or Lolita Confinement Lesbian, or World's Horniest Schoolgirl: She was cursed by a demon and now everyone in the school wants to fuck her!.

Hisoka jerked his head rather theatrically away, hurrying to the other side of the stack while trying to look like he was just browsing for other things- not all this... whatever it was. What was it doing there, anyway? He was pretty sure he'd never even heard some of the words involved. And just what the point was, he'd never understand. Or- well- a blush was spreading across a good portion of his face. People enjoyed this, and they weren't all sick. Someone had to carry on the human race, after all. It felt good, he guessed. But he didn't have any reference points, unless you counted- he felt sick. That was different. He shouldn't think about that, trying to learn about it; so much he knew, at least. It hadn't been normal.

And at this rate he wasn't going to get anything done, and just standing there twitching made him feel acutely that he was looking stupider by the minute. Hisoka moved back to the shelves, trying to project an aura of nonchalant confidence. He didn't think it worked, but on the bright side, nobody was around to see him examining these titles. He quickly found that the books closer to the bottom of the shelf seemed more promising- Sexuality and the Brain: Physiology and Pathology of the Neural Pleasure Centers, perhaps, or A Cultural History of Sexuality. Though those might not be... specific enough. But this, an academic-looking tome with plain unquestionable black covers entitled Sexual Pathology: Diagnosis and Treatment looked like it could be exactly what he was looking for. Or the fat volume simply called Human Sexuality, which according to the table of contents covered everything he could have thought of and then some. Eventually, he just snatched up everything and hurried to the checkout, where the bored-looking salesgirl mercifully made no comment as she rang up his purchases and placed them in a tactfully opaque layer of two plastic bags.

"That'll be 36,500 yen."

...Well, he hadn't been planning to do anything that month anyway.

He'd blinked back to Meifu and was hurrying back to his apartment when his luck ran out. He felt the man before he saw him, the sophomoric shinigami standing anxiously in front of his door, wondering (while refusing to acknowledge his own worry) whether Hisoka had just gone out, or if he was refusing to answer the door...

Quit it, Hisoka thought furiously, feeling his own heart quicken in anxiety that wasn't entirely a result of the empathy. His knuckles tightened on the bag, angling it to hide in part behind one of his legs. Then he drew in a breath, and rounded the corner.

"Hisoka!"

"Tsuzuki?" He came to a stop, staring dumbly at the other man. The bag seemed to swell to bursting behind his back, heavy and pregnant with potential embarrassment. His face was hot.

"Um. Yeah." His partner laughed sheepishly, raking one fine-boned hand through his hair. He turned a hopeful gaze on Hisoka. "Watari let me out today."

There was nothing Hisoka could think of to say, looking away shamefacedly. "Oh?" Stop that, he scolded himself, steeling his gaze and moving it back to Tsuzuki.

"Yeah..." Hisoka felt Tsuzuki's sense of awkwardness, a wave of questions threatening at the back of his mind. His partner certainly didn't take long to question his own worth- but Hisoka knew that already, didn't he? It had been made brutally clear last week. "I thought I might come and see you. Are you all right, Hisoka?"

"Fine," he answered automatically. This was all so very... bland, he realized. Bland, and so awkward after Kyoto. It didn't seem right, but he wasn't sure what would be, or how to make it that way. And he was still acutely conscious of the incriminating bag at his right side. Tsuzuki didn't seem to have noticed it yet... "Do you want to... come in, or something?" He gestured abortively with the other hand.

"Sure." Tsuzuki shrugged, perking up immediately as a smile spread briefly across his face. "Have you had breakfast? There's this café downside in Nagasaki if you haven't- it's kinda small, but they serve this crépe that looks absolutely excellent-"

"I thought I invited you in, not out," he muttered, rolling his eyes, but grateful for the hint of their usual banter. Tsuzuki blinked.

"What?"

"Nothing," Hisoka said, louder, eyeing the door. "I'll have to go inside to, er, grab my wallet. Can you wait a minute?"

His partner grinned. "So we can go out?"

Sigh. He unlocked the door and turned in the doorway. "It's all right, but only if you pay for your own food. I am definitely not paying the tab on this one."

A pout, not serious. "Aw, Hisoka-a!"

"You can deal. I'll be back in a sec." Hisoka stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind him. He rarely let people into his apartment- Tsuzuki was the only one- but that was no reason not to find the best hiding place he could for his recent purchases. Unfortunately, looking around, he realized he had few other possessions to help in concealing them. Stuffed in the closet? There wasn't much there in the first place. Behind the fridge? Not enough room, and between the fridge and the counter would be too obvious. Under the bed? Well...

So he put his purchases in an old cardboard box, placed the Kanazawa business directory on top of them, and shoved the whole thing against the wall under his bed, tugging the covers sideways to prevent it from being readily visible from any part of the room. Not that he could think of any reason why anyone would be on his bedroom floor, looking sideways (unless they were doing something completely unacceptable, and he wasn't going to think about that), but why risk it?

"Sorry," he said as he walked back outside, though Tsuzuki wasn't feeling especially impatient. Of course, he hadn't really needed to grab his wallet. It had been in his pocket the whole time. "Shall we go?"

"'Course!" Tsuzuki answered cheerfully, waiting for him to catch up before moving on.

In hindsight, Hisoka would decide that going out with Tsuzuki without a definite plan of Things To Say had been a bad idea. Worse in light of the paranoia that had begun eating him almost as soon as they'd left his flat- an intense, gut-churning, face-reddening terror that his secret would be betrayed in some small quirk of his mannerisms, some tiny Freudian slip in his speech. Attempting to make small talk on the way to the café was torment, seeming to stretch the time interminably far beyond its actual value.

It took around twenty minutes, walking and riding Nagasaki's chin-chin densha, for the two to make their way to Inta-Kohii- a tiny, international coffee shop nestled comically between two office buildings of much larger stature. Strings of holiday lights hung in the huge front windows, unlit; behind them, one could see a space simply decorated in salmon pink, with a few purple-mountained landscapes on the walls and a screenprint of a sakura tree covering a good three and a half square feet of the wall behind the counter. Spread out on a long, low shelf beneath the latter were a multitude of large glass jars containing different types of coffee beans; the owner was in the process of scooping some of these into a huge metal roaster for another pair of customers when the two Shinigami walked in the door.

"Irasshaimase!" he called to them with a smile. He was a friendly-looking, open-faced man in his fifties or sixties.

"Black coffee, please. No sugar," Hisoka requested briskly once they got up to the counter.

Tsuzuki wrinkled his nose. "Ew, Hisoka. So bitter." To the owner, he continued, "I'll have a cinnamon latte and a slice of Death by Chocolate." Hisoka rolled his eyes.

"It's a good thing your arteries can't quit on you, or you'd be dead."

"I already am," Tsuzuki reminded him, once they'd moved safely away from the counter to a table near the back. It occurred to Hisoka that perhaps the remark had been a bit tactless, but Tsuzuki didn't seem to have noticed it. The junior shinigami snorted, in forced amusement or exasperation at the overused Shinigami humor, he wasn't sure. Outside, the historical center of Japan's international trade was moving at a rapid clip. A creaky green bus rattled past, and across the street, a young-ish looking man scrambled after the contents of a dropped folder full of papers. Inside, it was loudly quiet. Hisoka didn't need to hear the conversation to know that the woman behind him was grieving and ashamed; he didn't want to hear the details of her third miscarriage, but hear he could. So, he suspected, could everyone else, if they so chose. It was disconcerting. He frowned at the tabletop, then plucked one of the sugar packets out of the little brown jar on the left and began fiddling with it.

"Hisoka..." Tsuzuki broke him out of his reverie. "You okay?"

He flushed. "I'm fine."

"You've been awfully quiet." Did something happen? What's he thinking? Tsuzuki was leaning his head on his entwined fingers, appraising him from across the table. Hisoka found himself wanting to tremble under the weight of that gaze. He didn't quantify himself as being inclined to verbosity; nor was he good with words. But there was something comfortable about Tsuzuki that made him want to... say things. Because Tsuzuki, well, Tsuzuki... he noticed, and he didn't begrudge, however stupid the remark might have been. In fact, Tsuzuki seemed to expect a bit of stupidity, giving it himself in return. The only thing his partner didn't like was being ignored, which Hisoka was forcefully and guiltily reminded of when he didn't respond.

"Hisoka..." The man seemed to swallow apprehensively. "Did you... are you... regretting it, what you said?"

He didn't assume himself to be any great intellect, but he'd have to have been brain-dead to not catch the thoughts Tsuzuki was blaring and realize what he meant. He remembered choking in flames, sobbing out words that had been there for he didn't know how long- that morning- something had been right about what he said in Kyoto, he'd felt it in himself, in Tsuzuki, and he wasn't doing it right anymore. He wasn't handling this well, and he had no-one to blame but himself. He shook his head quickly.

"No! No..." The sugar packet burst in his hands, spilling white crystals that would quickly turn sticky in the heat of his palms. Tsuzuki wordlessly handed him a napkin, which did little for wiping the mess off his fingers. "I meant it," he stuttered, trying to answer the question that was once again throbbing in his vulnurable partner's core. "I've been... thinking. It's not your fault. I... Tsuzuki, there are things about me, I don't..." He felt the girl at the counter surrepetitiously turning to look; he imagined that his voice was loud enough to carry to every ear in the café, and it probably was. Nor was Tsuzuki's concern alleviated, still being directed towards him, albeit in a different way.

"Are you all right?" The man was using his tempering voice, the one he used on terrified souls to get them to trust him, trying to catch Hisoka's eye. A certain part of him found it maddening that his partner felt the need to use those conciliatory gestures on him, but... they worked. And maybe that was even more maddening.

He grimaced and glared at his hands. The mess wasn't coming off. "I'm fine. Stop worrying about me."

Tsuzuki was not convinced in the slightest. "What have you been thinking about? What things about you?"

"I..." He glanced towards the door, wanting to leave, wanting to curl in on himself and escape. A young college-age man sitting by the door got up and left, leaving behind a coffee cup and newspaper. The young woman and her mother sitting behind him weren't paying attention, still absorbed in the younger woman's grief. The girl working the counter had taken a seat and was reading a book, but she could hear. What if... that... turned out to be like the empathy, and he couldn't get rid of it?

He didn't know what he'd do then. He couldn't let himself become like Muraki.

"Hisoka?"

Silently, he shook his head. He covered his mouth, then swiped harder at the crystals that were sticking to his palms.

"Hisoka," Tsuzuki repeated, worry swelling luminously across the table between them. He got up, wanting to ask again, but all he said was, "C'mon. Let's get you cleaned up." And then Hisoka was allowing his partner to shepherd him from the table and into the restroom, where Tsuzuki wet a cheap brown paper hand-towel and began running it gently over Hisoka's hands. His touch was soft, and so Hisoka let him continue where he'd normally have slapped the other man away, comfortable in spite of the closeness that normally would have been suffocating as they stood by the sink. Tsuzuki smelled clean, like laundry soap, tinged with that other smell that was uniquely Tsuzuki whose components he couldn't identify.

"You know..." his partner said eventually, "You can talk about it, if something's wrong."

"Same to you." Hisoka glanced at the side of his partner's head in the mirror. Tsuzuki frowned.

"That's not fair. You can't tell me to talk, if you won't." Hisoka was ironically reminded of the day they'd been out walking in Kyoto, when Tsuzuki had refused to talk- and he still wasn't talking now, was he?

Hisoka chose not to mention it. The sugar crystals were gone, but his partner's fine-boned hands lingered, large and warm on his own cold, wet fingers. His breath hitched.

"Tsuzuki, I... it's nothing. Really." He turned a pleading gaze on the other man, but stopped, staring at Tsuzuki's black-clad shoulder before he could look him in the eye.

"Hisoka." The intensity of Tsuzuki's gaze was nearly palpable, as was his frustration, bubbling in the air. It had been a bad idea to let this subject come up in the first place, Hisoka realized. Unless he was really going to lose his mind, Tsuzuki could never know about what was lurking in the depths of his diseased heart. And if he couldn't get rid of it, what then- he'd have to leave, though everything in him cried against it. He'd have to tell Watari, ask the doctor to have him committed before he could hurt anyone, and- he remembered the basement, and wondered if it would've been better if he'd just stayed there. He suppressed a shudder at the thought- Please no.

"Fine." Tsuzuki's demeanor changed abruptly; he turned away from Hisoka, threw the paper towel into the narrow metal trash can, and remained standing there, facing the wall. "I won't keep trying to make you talk if you don't want to." He turned around, with an effort. "Just... look, I hope you get this sorted out, okay? If you wanna talk, you know my number."

Hisoka bit his lip and stared at his feet, wondering how he could want so much to melt into the ground when he knew there was nothing else he could have done. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..."

"No, it's fine," His partner answered, smiling with an effort. "Really. We'll talk more later, okay?"

It wasn't how he'd liked things to go, but Hisoka recognized the lost cause. "Okay."

Tsuzuki paused for an awkward second in which Hisoka felt his partner wondering whether or not to hug him. Finally, the older man reached out and gave him a quick pat on the shoulder before turning and walking out, leaving him standing there in front of the paper towel dispenser in the men's restroom. He followed after a moment, jamming his suddenly cold hands deep in his pockets and feeling empty in ways that had nothing to do with a lack of food.