Kannuki was absent.

 

It wasn’t the great event it might have been. In fact, most of the division seemed completely oblivious to her absence aside from a bewildered moment at morning briefing when Tsuzuki finally caught on to the fact that she hadn’t been by to preen at him and hand him his morning coffee. Never mind that he was being coddled by Tatsumi-sempai and Kurosaki at every available opportunity, he needed his surrogate little sister to add a soprano to the mix of simpering voices at his side. More entertaining was the longwinded speech from both Konoe-Kacho /and/ Sempai following the meeting about Kannuki’s apparent sick day, which Hajime really should not concern himself with but was he going to be able to get along without her? Never mind that immortality precluded those routine illnesses that would actually /constitute/ a sick day, the Shokan division prided itself on its illusory appearance as a normal living realm workplace. If keeping up the illusion meant giving employees a means to skip work every so often then so be it.

 

It was idiocy, all of it. The oddly sympathetic looks he received from both Sempai and Kacho on his apparent loss, like Kannuki wasn’t going to be in the next day tagging along at his heels like the lovesick puppy she was, driving him insane with her constant chatter and her insistence that should he get his head out of his ass long enough he would notice that there was a world outside of case files and chain of custody reports. Like the fearful looks he was getting from the girls every time he stalked by their desks on the way to the coffee machine (which unlike /some/ people, he was perfectly capable of working), the nervous way Doc kept hovering around his desk at the slightest provocation ‘just to check up on him’. The only people who hadn’t added their two cents to the office consensus on his impending breakdown were that damn Tsuzuki and Wonderboy.

 

And sure, despite what the rest of the morons around him might think he was perfectly willing to admit that he missed Kannuki’s presence. The way her smile seemed to stretch on forever whenever he insisted on bringing /her/ coffee for once, or the way she chewed at her pens when she couldn’t figure out how to finish a report. The way she poked at him when he got too morose and refused to allow fear of the monster living inside of him to keep her from touching him in a thousand mundane ways over the course of a day, at least over his clothes. She was something, that girl. He knew it and everybody in the damn office knew he knew it.

 

That did not mean he couldn’t manage for one damn day without her.

 

It was about the third time inside of fifteen minutes that Doc had ducked out of his lab to check on him, 003 bobbing impatiently over his shoulder. His hair was a little less wild today, braided more efficiently than the scattered scientist usually had the mind for, but then Doc’d been spending too much time with Sempai to wonder that some of that infamous anal retentiveness had rubbed off on him. Hajime liked the man, as well as he liked anyone. Doc, for all his simpering ineptitude at least knew when to push and when to back the fuck off, and Kannuki seemed to like him. Not that that was a reliable yardstick, what with the disgustingly high regard she held for the office idiot, but it helped bolster his faith in humanity enough to at least talk to the man without growling. Much.

 

He returned his attention to paperwork as Doc approached, flipping through Kannuki’s latest scrawled report to mark off errors before he started in on typing it up. Despite what the office might have believed, their partnership was not the kind of give and take relationship in which the actual giving was Kannuki’s province. She liked to fuss over him, yes, and he had never been prone to sappy poetry or overenthusiastic public displays of affection, but that hardly meant he didn’t care or more annoyingly, that he was in some sort of denial about their relationship, as half the office believed. These were people who also felt that his apparent lack of interest in their gossiping made him deaf to it and discussed his love life, or the lack thereof, with impunity within five feet of his desk. The truth was, as much the June Cleaver clone as Kannuki was, there were still some things that eluded her perfection. Targeting, for one thing. Giver her a bow or a firearm and you’d be taking your eternal life into your hands even standing behind her. And she couldn’t type worth a damn, which meant that Hajime was forever pulling double duty whenever the reports were due to save her hours of playing hunt and peck on her computer.(1) So far his attempts at teaching her mastery of what she referred to as ‘that evil machine’ had resulted in a newfound proficiency at electronic hearts, but that was about it.

 

He didn’t mind the extra work if it made her happy and he felt better knowing he could do something for her, but he wasn’t about to announce that to the entire office just to make their vapid coworkers feel better about their relationship. There was no touching for one thing, and would not be any for the foreseeable eternity, which complicated things on a hundred different levels without adding a constant search for external validation into the mix. He liked to think there was something intrinsic in the way they related to each other, something indefinable that was better left unsaid, and as much as that might have been rationalization Hajime had played the fuck and run game one too many times to mess around with the first good thing that had come along in either of his lifetimes.

 

“I’m fine,” Hajime muttered, as Doc’s shadow finally fell over Kannuki’s report. He bit down on the half-burned stump of a cigarette, the last he was allowed to have for the day after promising Kannuki he would cut back. The smell made her sneeze.

 

“Fine, huh?” Hajime looked up to find Doc leaning against Kannuki’s desk, arms crossed over his lab coat as he eyed Hajime warily. “You like fine, buddy, real fine.” He motioned towards Hajime’s cigarette. “I think you killed it.”

 

Hajime growled under his breath, an ability that was one of the few more interesting side effects of having Kuro shacked up in his DNA. “I’m cutting back. That alright with you?”

 

“Peachy, even.” Doc nodded, prodding at a wilting bonsai tree weighing the bulk of this week’s case files down onto Kannuki’s desk. “You don’t seem too happy about it, though.”

 

“Happy,” Hajime muttered, rolling the word off his tongue like something distasteful. “I’m fucking thrilled, can’t you tell? This is my happy face.”

 

“Looks a lot like your PMS-ing face, Terazuma, you should really work on that.”

 

Doc’s eyebrows were raised beyond his hairline, arms crossing tighter around his torso as he drew himself up in some sad attempt to be authoritative. Hajime might have garnered a bit more patience if he’d imagined there was any more point to this conversation than the dozen or so other generic encounters he’d had with various office personnel, several of which were from Doc himself since they’d all apparently decided he was much less likely to lash out at the scientist in any permanent manner. Doc’s bluntness was amusing enough that Hajime could usually put up with him, but all he’d really wanted was to get his paperwork done so that he could go home before the monotony and the idiocy drove what was left of him out of his mind and let Kuro set up shop for good.

 

“Is there a point to this conversation, or am I allowed to get back to work?”

 

Gold-auburn eyes rolled dramatically beneath wire frames. “You know, one of these days you are going to have a normal conversation with someone who is /not/ Wakaba, and send half the damn office into my lab for treatment when they faint from the shock.” He reached into the folds of his lab coat, yanking a file from somewhere within its depths and plopping it down on Hajime’s desk. “But for now you can think of me as the bringer of good news.”

 

Hajime fingered the file, flipping through the first few pages for reference and wondered idly just how many Saitos there were in Japan for them to hit three in one week on separate islands. The case was a messy one, man eating hell-beasts with a penchant for evisceration, not his and Kannuki’s usual fare with her squeamishness and his complete inability to take on anything that much of a big scary without losing all control with the transformation and having to be corralled. Not to mention that this case was high priority, which meant leaving ten minutes ago and closing the case by last week, and with Kannuki out…

 

“You’re not going, so you can stop mulling it over. I can see the little wheels turning in your head. It’s freaking painful.” Doc shifted, pulling 003 back onto his shoulder from where she’d danced onto Kannuki’s computer monitor. “Think of this as your get out of jail free card. Tatsumi-san has seen fit to take pity on you. Play errand boy and take that to Bon and you’re off the hook for today.”

 

Hajime could only blink at the notion, Tatsumi-sempai did not just /hand/ people time off.

 

“Normally we’d get Wakaba to do it, so we figured you wouldn’t mind picking up her slack.” Doc stood from his place at Kannuki’s desk, straightening his lab coat. “You’re scaring the others, boyo. Go home.”

 

With that he turned on his heel, a whirl of flying lab coat and gold-blond hair disappearing into Sempai’s office before Hajime had even articulated a protest. He might have picked a fight if the insidious little prick hadn’t run off to hide behind the one person even Hajime refused to tangle with without reason. He glanced down at the file sitting innocuously in his lap. On the one hand, walking out of work this early meant shirking his responsibilities and there was nothing Hajime hated more than laziness. Terazuma Hajime was a lot of things and not all of them were entirely kosher, but he was not a hypocrite. On the other, there was very little actual work to be done around the office beyond clerical busywork without Kannuki.

 

It didn’t take much thought before Hajime was slamming the file closed, locking his computer station and pulling his discarded suit jacket off the back of his seat. At least if he was still pissed off he could pick a fight with the idiot on the way out. Whatever damage they managed to cause would be a better punishment for Doc and Sempai than anything more direct was worth, anyway.

 

Androgyny boy and partner shared what amounted to a closet space tucked into the same hallway Tatsumi-sempai worked from, something of a place of honor in deference to Tsuzuki’s by now officially crotchety tenure at EnmaCho. Hajime was convinced their move to a separate compartment had more to do with their continued insistence on pawing each other in full view of the rest of the office, a habit consistent enough to make Doc’s underhanded suggestions that the two of them ‘get a room’ seem like a brilliant idea to the bosses. He suspected they agreed, if the noises often emanating from the little room were any indication, and Hajime had yet to really decide whether they were worse in that audacity than periodically seeing Tsuzuki plant one on the kid in the first place. It would have meant dwelling on it far too much for comfort.

 

Kannuki thought they were cute.

 

The door was battered from frequent slamming, fissures worn through faded blue paint to the wood beneath by the insistent scratching of disobedient Shikigami. The names etched across its surface were incongruously neat, perfect calligraphy in thick black ink--Kurosaki Hisoka and Tsuzuki Asato, Area 2. A part of Hajime admitted that yes, the idiot did have some skill with calligraphy, useless though it was, before noting once again that the weather beaten door was thick and windowless. Surprise, freaking surprise.

 

He paused before the door, ears twitching as he trained his hearing on the room beyond for any sign of untoward activity. Tsuzuki was never quite so pissy as he was when playtime was interrupted, and standing around listening to the two of them tittering in embarrassment as they recollected their clothing would be the final indignity of the day that would sent Hajime over the edge, he just knew it.

 

“You’re scaring me.”

 

Kurosaki’s voice echoed out into the hallway, quiet, almost subdued, which seemed to be the default position unless someone directly pissed him off.

 

“I’m sorry, I just…”

 

And Tsuzuki was once again doing his kicked-puppy-pity-me routine, the one that involved heightening his voice to just below a falsetto pitch and fluttering eyelashes over those creepy eyes in just such a way that never failed to make the others fall all over themselves to accommodate him, and Hajime want to deck him.

 

“Just /what/?” Kurosaki demanded, voice echoing faintly inside the small office. “This isn’t like you!”

 

“I know, but…” There was a long, considering pause, and Hajime strained to hear. “It has to be done. It’s been too long…”

 

The idiot sounded resigned, of all things, and something in Hajime perked at that. He pressed closer, leaning against the door as silence descended beyond it, broken only by the muffled squeak of Kurosaki’s sneakers shuffling towards the far wall, and the swish of Tsuzuki’s suit pants as he followed the movement. What the hell was going on in there?

 

“If you do this,” Kurosaki warned, voice straining, “you can’t take it back and I promise you’ll regret it later.”

 

“Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be, Hisoka.”

 

More shuffling, a resounding crack as something was snapped shut, and Kurosaki dropped heavily into his chair. Tsuzuki moved towards him slowly, almost solemnly, a swish-swish from the fabric of his shirt as he raised his arm…

 

“/Please/, think about what you’re doing!”

 

Hajime’s eyes widened. The kid sounded almost desperate, and Tsuzuki was raising his arm, heading towards him…

 

He slammed the door open, throwing his weight against it and barreling into the office beyond, ready to tackle the idiot before he could do anything stupider than usual. “What the fuck are you--? Huh?”

 

The kid was sprawled over an ancient desk chair, slumped back so that his head actually rested against the chair back. Tsuzuki was standing next to the messy desk in front of him--his own, if the piles of pastry wrappers and unfinished paperwork were any indication-- poised to toss what looked to be the remnants of a chocolate cream pie into the trash bin tucked next to the chair.

 

A scene which made absolutely no sense after the conversation he’d just overheard.

 

Kurosaki’s head snapped up, glaring green eyes boring into Hajime’s. “What is your deal?”

 

Hajime froze. “He’s… and you said…”

 

Tsuzuki drew himself to his full height, glaring hard enough to hurt as Hajime fought the urge to sputter. “He /said/? You wanna tell me what you were doing eavesdropping on a private conversation, Hajime-/chan/?”

 

Hajime couldn’t stop himself from bristling at that, taking a faltering step forward and raising a hand to pluck at the pointed tip of an ear. “Supernatural hearing, Tsuzuki-/san/. Makes it kinda hard to ignore whatever idiocy emanates from your esteemed company.” He growled under his breath, turning from the baleful glower Tsuzuki was throwing him to round on Kurosaki. “And /you/. What are you two lunatics up to in here?”

 

Kurosaki blinked. “Um… cleaning out the fridge for the first time in months?”

 

“What?”

 

“See that battered piece of ancient machinery clinging to life next to the file cabinet?”

 

The kid pointed to a small brown mini-fridge that was probably older than Hajime himself, and looked to have been swiped from one of the third-rate motel chains Tatsumi-sempai took sadistic pleasure in booking for extended case files. The thing looked like it’d been kicked around by everyone in the office and then set point blank in front of one of Doc’s explosions for good measure, wobbling visibly and chugging along as though it were on life support. It was the kind of thing that only Tsuzuki wouldn’t be ashamed to keep in an office, if only because he was so blind to appearances and insistent on keeping a private stash of sugar laden foods in case of emergencies.

 

As if his usual sugar high idiocy wasn’t annoying enough.

 

“You /said/,” Hajime answered, ignoring the machine, “ that he was freaking you out!”

 

“Yeah, because there will be incessant whining later when he realizes that thing,” Kurosaki nodded towards the pie still held unceremoniously over the basket, “hasn’t been in there as long as he thinks it has. Not that eating it’d kill him, anyway, but you know how he gets when he thinks he’s been denied dessert.” He sighed, throwing Tsuzuki a withered look as the old man muttered something incoherent about the last one giving him a tummy ache.

 

“No,” Hajime growled, “I really /don’t/ know how he gets. I spend most of my time studiously avoiding learning his idiosyncrasies.”

 

“Probably for the best,” said Tsuzuki, the picture of nonchalance as he tossed the pie onto the desk. He turned to Hajime, leaning against the desk beside his partner’s chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “Is there a reason why you’re gracing us with your presence, or are you just bored without Wakaba in the office?”

 

Hajime wanted to hit him. Wanted to hit anyone really, but with that smug smirk on his face Purple Eyes was obviously jonesing for a bruising. He would have obliged, but in all the years he’d been at EnmaCho, in all the stupid fights he’d gotten into with the infamous Tsuzuki-san, he’d made a point never to throw the first punch. It only made things harder on Tsuzuki, to realize later on that it took so little provocation to snap his self-control, one last little dig as Hajime nursed his bruises after whatever creature the idiot deigned to call beat Kuro into submission. He’d glimpsed something in those uncanny eyes, some unfathomable regret surfacing just before the uncontrollable anger, and Hajime knew that was Tsuzuki’s weakness. He was a dweller, that one, the kind of guy Hajime had seen a dozen times over as a mortal policeman, the egocentric assholes who could never let go of their own self-involved insistence at feeling everything too keenly, too openly, never once realizing that the work was never about them. It was dirty, people died and the detectives of both Meifu and the living realm were left to clean up the mess left behind, but slacking off for the sake of some personal sob story just pissed Hajime off. They were just the incidental idiots who pulled the case file off the shelf, they had no right to these people’s pain, and solving the damn case was a hell of a lot more likely to lessen it than sitting around whimpering on their behalf.

 

“Yeah well, I’d be better behaved if you people weren’t so melodramatic about everything.” He slammed Doc’s file onto the desk in front of Kurosaki, stepping back to cross his arms, mirroring Tsuzuki’s position as he returned the increasingly aggravated glare thrown his way. “There’s your reason.”

 

The kid took the file, laying a restraining hand on his partner’s forearm as the man made to step towards Hajime. There was a second of indecision before Tsuzuki moved to lean over Kurosaki’s shoulder, a proprietary pose from where he stood hunched over the kid with an arm over the back of his chair, face nearly pressed into Kurosaki’s hair. Kurosaki seemed to tune them both out, flipping through page after page with a speed that with anyone else would have convinced Hajime they were skimming, but he’d seen the kid go through fiction just as quickly without distraction.

 

He leaned back, head lolling onto Tsuzuki’s shoulder as he finished, groaning softly. “We need to be gone, like, /now/.”

 

Tsuzuki sighed. “We should go talk to Tatsumi first.”

 

His fingers were combing through the kid’s bangs, tracing over his jaw line briefly before tipping his head further back and then… they were kissing. Not halfway either, this was the kind of needy, visible tongue action tonsil hockey that most people at least attempted to save for when they were alone, but god forbid the idiot follow social convention if he didn’t have to. The worst part was that Hajime knew anyone else in the office would have found it cute, or sentimental, or maybe even arousing, but the only emotion he could muster in response was mild annoyance that he’d apparently been forgotten again. It wasn’t like he’d never seen this kind of display before, and he supposed it was his own damn fault for wandering onto their home territory in the first place, but it didn’t make the urge to yank them apart any less.

 

They yanked themselves apart before he got the chance, panting softly, staring at each other with the same obnoxious look of wonder that made him wonder if every kiss could possibly be all that fascinating. Kurosaki started as he noticed Hajime glowering in the doorway, arms still crossed over his chest, and Tsuzuki nearly growled.

 

Despite himself, Hajime felt an irrational stab of pride that Tsuzuki’s human voice box couldn’t come close to the kind of growls he could produce when he was pissed off.

 

“What are you still doing here?” the man seethed, arms moving more firmly around Kurosaki’s shoulders as if to protect him from Hajime.

 

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Standing, mostly. And conveniently enough, if you’re done with me, leaving.”

 

“Convenient,” said Kurosaki, standing. He turned to Tsuzuki, grabbing at his tie and yanking his partner down to face him. “We don’t have time for this macho bullshit.”

 

Tsuzuki blinked, helpless, tipping his head slightly to kiss the kid again before drawing away, grabbing his suit jacket from the back of the chair before guiding Kurosaki out the door. He frowned as he passed Hajime, stopping long enough to mutter “Later,” as he stalked after his partner, slamming the door shut as Hajime trailed behind.

 

He watched them disappear around the corner, marveling at how quickly any illusions of normalcy seemed to seep from any situation the great Tsuzuki-san was involved in.

 

==========================================

 

The house was idyllic to the extreme, a crushed stone walkway bordered by purple and white geraniums leading to an actual, bona-fide white picket fence. Kannuki had gone all out on the front yard, perfectly cropped grass bordered in flowering shrubbery and perennial tulips, tiger lilies and tiny, weedy looking daisies. All held in the same quasi-limbo as the rest of Meifu’s plant life, forever blooming beyond the constraints of time. Hajime had wondered once if the seeds and saplings sold in Meifu were spirits of things already dead, flowers picked by careless hands in the living realm, sent to them by way of the same laws that brought the Shinigami themselves to its comfortable monotony, but the idea had since lost its appeal.

 

What did it matter, anyway?

 

The house itself was a distinct shade of pale blue, a color similar to the one his eyes had held before Kuro, before his body had morphed into something unrecognizable, inhuman. He suspected that Kannuki knew it, but she’d been living there long before he’d moved in and unlike the living realm where chipping and cracking would have made a perfectly logical excuse for her to have it redone, she’d never been able to think of a real reason beyond some decidedly out of character flash of vanity to have him repaint it. And really, what was she supposed to say? ‘Hey honey, I know you’re pissed that the house reminds you you’re a freak, wanna go modern?’ The idea was so absurd Hajime couldn’t even picture it.

 

It was cooler inside, just beyond the entrance where he slipped into a pair of house slippers. Like everything else in Meifu they were as crisp and shiny as they had been the day he’d been presented with them, nearly seven years before. Things were only battered if they’d been brought in that way, and no amount of wear and tear seemed to make a difference. It was a bitch to break in shoes in a land where things were so perfectly preserved, if they weren’t worn in the living realm they stayed as generic and uncomfortably molded as they’d been when they were bought. It was one of the minor annoyances of his job, those little things that would have been easily ignored if they weren’t so constant. Hajime had never been a particularly patient man, at least not outside of case work, and a decade and a half of Meifu tedium had worn at his nerves.

 

Nothing ever changed here. There was no such thing as a brighter day because they were all bright, and very little outside the confines of the Shokan division could ever really be called unpredictable. It hardly ever rained except as some kind of divine favor to the plant life, and whenever that happened it shut down half of Meifu for the day because no one ever seemed to twig to the idea of preparing for it.

 

And it wasn’t that things never changed that bothered him, really. What stomped on Hajime’s last nerve was the odd dichotomy of the place, the fact that while everything else in Meifu seemed locked into the moment of its prime, the actual people, Shinigami and miscellaneous residents aside, were not. Hajime still had to shave every morning, Kannuki still had to get haircuts to keep herself from tripping over her unruly mane. And while they seemed to change little as the years passed, at least retaining some of the same mannerisms and keeping the same ages they’d worn since they had come to Meifu, the fact remained that they /had/ changed, and were as powerless to stop it in this timeless land as they were in the realm from which they had come. It seemed terribly unfair, to be given life and prohibited from using it, to be unable to leave a mark upon the world in which they lived by virtue of their endless existences. It made the changeability of the living realm seem that much more petty, and the eternity of this one that much more frightening.

 

“Hajime-chan?”

 

He forced a smile as he saw her, legs draped lazily over the back of the couch from where she lay, magazine in hand. She was wearing something different from the usual uniform, a cream colored sweater over a pair of brown corduroys he knew for a fact were at least a decade older than him. She blinked up at him with wide, mismatched(2) eyes, moving hastily to sit up and snagging her ponytail on the lamp behind her as she jerked her head.

 

“Kannuki,” he scolded, moving to help her untangle herself from the lampshade, “What’d I tell you about sitting so close to this thing?”

 

“Sorry,” she murmured, head tipped back as she held perfectly still under his ministrations. “You’re home early.”

 

Green and orange eyes followed his movements, the slightest hint of that same overzealous worry that characterized her. He sighed, freeing the last of her absurdly long hair from where it had been caught, finger-combing out the snarl the ordeal had caused.

 

“I didn’t break anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

 

Her eyes widened, lips dropping open in shock. “Oh no! Hajime-chan, that’s not what I meant, I just--”

 

“It’s alright,” he said, shaking his head. “Really. The place isn’t the same without you but I managed. No fighting, no transforming, and aside from a couple pointed conversations with Watari-san, human contact was at a minimum. Managed to avoid causing any property damage.”

 

She giggled at that, girlish face alight with sudden amusement. “I’m glad.”

 

She was at her youngest when she smiled, a vision of childhood innocence frozen in time, locked inside the slip of a girl who was nonetheless old enough to be his mother. It was an odd combination of mothering and tittering innocence, the kind bred by the era in which she was raised. Hajime was never more aware of the difference than at times like these, quiet times when her eyes seemed to track his movements, devoid of those wiser instincts she brought to bear on case work. He was still barely pushing forty, and yet she allowed him to order her about, to lead the way as though she sensed that he would never have been comfortable any other way. And that was the wonderful thing about Kannuki, the way she sensed how far she was allowed to push, approaching him as carefully as the skittish creature inside him demanded. It allowed him this closeness, the surety that she was harmless enough to be trusted to keep things within his comfort zone, touching kept to a bare minimum and always, always over layers of clothing.

 

“Oh!” He jumped as she suddenly shifted, scooting from his grasp to curl up at the other end of the couch. “What am I thinking?” she demanded. “Sit down, Hajime!”

 

She patted the couch beside her, and he slipped off his shoes, lowering himself onto her vacated seat and leaning his head on the armrest. It was good to be home, in Kannuki’s comforting presence after the idiocy of his day. He wanted a cigarette, or a drink, but the serene look on Kannuki’s features was too open to risk breaking for the sake of one of his vices. She smiled, folding her legs beneath her to sit Indian style against the other arm.

 

“Put your feet up,” she commanded, the slightest reprimand in her voice for his reluctance. He knew she liked it this way, to play the dutiful wife even if what they had together could hardly be called a relationship, however attached to each other they might have become. Kuro saw to that, and all their notions of domestic bliss were just that, notions without real purpose because Hajime couldn’t touch her without risking her life.

 

It wasn’t that Kannuki couldn’t take care of herself. Far from it, the girl had kicked his Shikigami ass on more than one occasion. But it would only take one slip, one moment with her guard let down and he feared what the monster within him would do to her, feared what would become of him if her blood were on his hands.

 

“Woman, I can’t put my feet up with your butt taking up half the couch,” he muttered, eyeing the decidedly short space left between them. Kannuki giggled, patting at her lap and raising sculpted eyebrows at him in scolding. A few more seconds and she would have been telling him how ‘silly’ he was, so with a protracted growl he swung his legs up onto the couch, allowing her to pull his feet onto her lap. “You’re making me nervous, Kannuki.”

 

“Don’t be such a scaredy cat,” she murmured, kneading at the arch of his right foot. “You’ve got socks on, dummy.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.” He bit back a whimper as she pressed a thumb harder into his foot, hair falling forward to shade her face as she frowned softly.

 

“You’re tense. Are you sure nothing happened at work today?”

 

He closed his eyes, dropping his head back onto the armrest behind him and concentrated on the sensation of her hands on his feet. “Nothing major, no. I had a little run in with the idiot, but it was all choreographed by the Doc so neither of us got the chance to go nuclear.” He paused, shifting slightly as she moved to the other foot. “Did you know those two have a refrigerator in their office?”

 

“Oh yeah,” she answered, grinning at him as his eyes snapped open. “I keep cookies in there for birthday parties and stuff so Kacho doesn’t eat them all too early.”

 

“And Tsuzuki doesn’t finish them off?”

 

“No silly,” she giggled. “I just have to make it very clear to him that I’ll cry if he ruins my surprises, and he gets this scared look on his face. Hisoka helps, he gets all scary about it.”

 

Hajime had to smirk at that. Kannuki had had years to perfect her wounded look, not nearly as long as the idiot, but with the adjunct of a well-placed crying fit she held a lot of sway with the men of the office and she was not afraid to use it. Even Tatsumi-sempai crumbled at the first sign of tears, a phenomenon that fascinated Hajime if only for its complete incongruity with what he knew of the man’s personality. From what he could tell, it had a lot to do with the older men still seeing Kannuki as the child she had been at her death, a protective instinct that completely blinded them to the manipulative little creature she’d become. Hajime could sympathize with wanting to protect Kannuki, but he had never had illusions about her power or her independence the way Tsuzuki and the bosses did. He’d seen what she could do, and he’d been privy to her life in a way that her friends had never been allowed.

 

“It’s alright if you want to smoke,” she added, catching his eyes briefly before looking away. “I know it helps calm you down, and it’s not like it’ll kill me to put up with it for an afternoon.”

 

He sighed, sinking that much further into the cushions as he reached into his suit jacket, yanking out a rumpled pack of cigarettes and a childproof lighter hidden in a breast pocket. “Thank you,” he said, words garbled around an unlit cigarette, cupping his hands beneath it to light the tip and take a drag.

 

She rolled her eyes, pushing an ashtray towards his end of the coffee table. “I can make us lunch, if you want. Or just start on dinner.”

 

“Nah,” he answered. “I’m thinking we should go out. You’re sick and all, I don’t think cooking’s a good idea. You might be catching.”

 

She swatted at his leg for that, grinning idiotically at the thought of going out. They rarely bothered when they were between cases, but Hajime was in the mood to pretend tonight, and though neither of them said the word ‘date’ they were both aware of what it was. He took another drag of the cigarette, tapping the end against the ashtray now conveniently lying within arm’s reach, the soothing effects of the nicotine dulling the edges of his earlier aggravation. Damn the division, he decided. What did they know about his life? What did they know about his propensities besides what they saw of him when Kuro came out to play?

 

“Out, huh?” Kannuki murmured, pulling at his ankles as she wrapped her arms in an awkward little hug around his legs. “You must be in a good mood.”

 

“Can’t you tell?” he answered, drawing another puff and schooling his features into inscrutability, remembering a half-assed conversation with the Doc earlier in the day as he poked at Kannuki with a toe. “This is my happy face.”

 

 

==============Notes and Such=================

(1) I don’t know how old Wakaba is, so I shoved her into the 1950s. My father is a child of the fifties, as he so blithely puts it, and can’t type worth a damn despite the Newton Police Force’s new policy that all reports must now be entered into a database to help maintain FBI crime statistics. The stories we get of he and his coworkers’ adventures in PC land are priceless. Hunt and peck, anyone?

 

(2) I want it on record that I have no idea what color Wakaba’s eyes are. I know they’re definitely mismatched, but while in the anime they look blue and brown to me, in manga and fan art they look more along the lines of green and gold. I’ve not found it listed anywhere in a language I can read.