October Eighteenth, 2000

Hisoka’s first impressions of the day involved grey sunlight and the shrill beeping of a digital clock increasing exponentially in his ears. He rolled over and punched the nearest pillow in defiance, muttering dire curses involving the nature and parentage of those who forgot to turn their alarms off on weekends. Which, on further consideration, was probably a case of self-loathing. Tsuzuki never bothered with the thing anyway.

It wasn’t until he’d turned back over and buried his head under the coverlet that the pillow’s remarkably taciturn response to his abuse registered as subtly incorrect. His pillow, by nature, usually punched back and then attempted early-morning suffocation; a threat thinly veiled in the name of cuddling.

The fact that that his strike had hit home on something soft and yielding, not to mention that in all his prodigious rolling around he had encountered no led him to the only logical conclusion. His partner was already out of bed.

On an off-day.

Two and two came together and completely skipped over making four in favor of six as Hisoka’s mind kicked into high gear. "Oh no..." he complained groggily to the sheet twisted beneath his cheek. "Not again."

The bed shifted into concavity as the weight of a second body settled itself near the edge. "You’re awake, then," Tsuzuki said with a decent show of repentance. "Sorry. I thought I’d turned that off when I got up."

Hisoka deigned to shift positions and shove the blankets down around his waist. "You made breakfast, didn’t you?"

"No..." Tsuzuki sounded as if he was genuinely puzzling this through, "Should I have? "

"Never." Hisoka muttered, making Tsuzuki laugh and bend over to plant a kiss on his stomach through the thin fabric of his T-Shirt.

"So why did you ask?" the man queried, turning his head to look up at his partner without pulling back, so that his cheek brushed just below Hisoka’s ribcage.

"Because-" Hisoka hesitated. If Tsuzuki had genuinely forgotten (he couldn’t have forgotten) he wasn’t about to be the one to broach the subject. Instead he slipped his fingers through overlong brown bangs and rubbed the crown of his lover’s head."- That looks profoundly uncomfortable."

"Only if I stayed here," Tsuzuki countered, looking as if he had every intention of doing so.

"Which you can’t," Hisoka agreed, pushing him away gently, "If I’m going to get up."

He’s biding his time. Hisoka decided, eyeing Tsuzuki over the rim of his mug. Tsuzuki was licking sugar off his fingers with apparent, but obviously diabolically feigned, concentrated enthusiasm. He’s going to lull me into a false sense of security, then pull some absolutely ridiculous stunt. And it’ll be that much worse because he’ll have been saving it up.

Tsuzuki pushed his chair back with complete unconcern for the loudly complaining kitchen tiles and the silently suffering boy across the table. "Want the papers? The news from ChiJou should be in by now. I’ll walk down and see."

"Do what you want." Hisoka shrugged.

I’ll obviously be lucky if I survive.

Upon his return, Tsuzuki found Hisoka curled up in the windowseat, eyes closed in what he hoped looked more like deep thought and less like a violent internal struggle against falling back asleep. In either case, Hisoka proved his alertness by firing a question as soon as Tsuzuki had shucked his shoes off.

"Are we going out today?"

"Are we? We could pick up some lunch."

"No!" A little to quickly.

Tsuzuki grinned, but since Tsuzuki was always doing that Hisoka really couldn’t infer anything from it.

"What do you think the others are doing?" Hisoka asked with feigned casualty, putting aside the book he hadn’t been reading anyway.

This time Tsuzuki was definitely smirking. "The same thing that any reasonable person would do on a weekend? Relaxing?"

Hisoka pondered this. It had been stupid to ask, after all. Because if they were doing anything else- if Tsuzuki had managed to pull them into his nefarious plan -Tsuzuki wouldn’t tell him.

"You seem edgy," Tsuzuki commented, shifting positions and curling closer to Hisoka where they sat together on the couch, if sat could be the proper word when related to an object that attempted to swallow you whole whenever you came near it. "Something wrong?"

"Nothing." Said Hisoka, leaning back so that his head was supported by the top of the sofa. If he was waiting for the worst, he might as well be comfortable.

"I know you’re up to something." Hisoka stated, going for the confrontational approach at last.

"Just thinking that one of us should do the laundry today." said Tsuzuki, pulling the nearly full hamper out of the closet.

When Hisoka first became a Shinigami, there were certain things he did that he’d never admit to anyone. Like sitting in front of his stove and pushing his fingers against the hot range to watch the flesh grow raw and red and blistered, just so that he could lift his hand away and see his skin repair himself instantly. It was a sort of insurance.

This felt a little like that, but without the angst-charged motives.

It also got very old very quickly.

Hisoka’s most recent impressions of the day involved mashing his face into the same pillows he’d left this morning and very seriously pondering biting them in frustration. As it was, and because he really didn’t want to think he’d naturally be that violent, he lay still and breathed in the safe smell of himself and his partner, ignoring the fact that neither one of them was being particularly admirable at the moment.

"Hisoka?" The sudden influx of light in his peripheral vision told him that the lamp had been switched on. "I was thinking we should... You okay?"

Hisoka sat and stared up at the source of all (most) of the day’s frustrations. Tsuzuki might be able to evade direct answers, but at the moment there was nothing he wanted more than to speak his mind. "You haven’t really forgotten, have you?"

Finally, Tsuzuki was visibly ruffled. "You’re all worked up over that?"

"I knew you hadn’t!"

Hisoka shifted automatically as Tsuzuki slumped onto the edge of the bed. "Of course I hadn’t."

"So?" Hisoka crawled to the corner where Tsuzuki has situated himself. "What was the plan? Surprise party? Dinner? Hauling me out of bed in the middle of the night to-"

"Nothing."

Hisoka stopped, mid guess. Air filled his mouth like water as he sat openmouthed, drowning in surprise. "Nothing?"

"Yeah." Tsuzuki fell backwards into his lap in an easy motion of defeat. "Remember last year?"

"Would I be acting like this if I didn’t?"

"A complete and utter-"

"-disaster."

"And we weren’t even living together yet. Getting kicked out of the house now would be at least a hundred times worse."

"So you thought-"

"-that this year I’d give you what you really wanted."

Hisoka could laugh now, and bring his hands up to trace patterns on his lover’s temples. "To be ignored?"

"To have the day ignored," Tsuzuki protested, stretching his arms upwards, lacing his hands behind the both of them.

"But you said yourself- we weren’t together then."

Tsuzuki examined him from under his eyelashes, head tilting to one side in an action that was probably unconsciously seductive. "Are you saying you wouldn’t have minded me making an idiot of myself?"

"You always do." Hisoka told him, with words that had been said so often that they’d somehow become a backhanded complement. "But... maybe we can work up to that. Maybe next year we can just celebrate my way, and the year after that we’ll celebrate your way."

"And what’s your way?" Tsuzuki asked.

"Humor me," said Hisoka, and bent to kiss him.

And Rain falls,

Angry on the tin roof

As we lie awake in my bed.

You're my survival,

You're my living proof

My love is alive, not dead.

Tell me that we belong together.

Dress it up with the trappings of love.

I'll be captivated,

I'll hang from your lips

Instead of the gallows of heartache

That hang from above

10.26.03

Additional Notes : I have not a clue when Hisoka’s birthday fell a few years back, nor did I have the dedication to go and check. Sorry all. I do know that everything up to GenSouKai took only two/two and a half years, tops [so short compared to realtime... o_O;] And in trying to keep to my purely personal canon, that means Tsuzuki and Hisoka probably got together the year following that, when he has 19. So this scene happened three years ago. Woot.

***End
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