“What is this?”

The cheap card table that doubled as a serving board in the office staff room shook with the weight of a carelessly tossed manila folder, dislodging the cardboard haphazardly stuffed beneath its wobbly leg and sending sugar packets and assorted coffee paraphernalia flying. Tatsumi reached out reflexively to steady a creamer threatening to spill its contents onto the floor, half-calculating the cost of its replacement should the interloper care to take another shot before returning to placidly stirring honey into his drink.

“I believe,” he answered, “That is your next assignment, Tsuzuki-san.”

He reached to take hold of one of the mismatched plates in the office repertoire, a chipped, decrepit thing garishly patterned in gold and orange, picking through the morning crop of pastries to extract a particularly bland croissant, placing his prize on the unfortunate piece of tableware before reaching for another.

“Tatsumi-san!” The older man wailed, piteously drawing out the last syllable for a full three seconds before trailing off into a pleading whine.

This plate was blue, scratched plastic Tupperware that had seen better days. One of a number of less delicate items Wakaba-san had thought to appropriate as the collection of office dinnerware dwindled under the influence of their coworkers’ never-ending absentmindedness and a string of strategically destructive battles between Terazuma-san and Tsuzuki. He appreciated that, not only the practical foresight to prepare for further destruction but the consideration that went into the gesture, though consideration was something Wakaba-san had never been lacking.

“Yes Tsuzuki-san?”

He searched the pile again, picking through the sticky selection of more elaborate pastries, something he was certain Wakaba-san had added to appease Tsuzuki’s sweet tooth. Tatsumi had never really understood the relationship between the two, if only for wont of finding a deeper level to it than the girl’s obvious willingness to bake for her coworker, and Tatsumi knew better than to think his friend so shallow, despite appearances. He selected a particularly gooey concoction, lifting it between thumb and forefinger to drop it with an unceremonious plop on the blue plate, wiping his fingers on a nearby towel.

“You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?”

He paused, considering as he pulled out a second mug, filling it with coffee before turning to regard his friend. Tsuzuki was tall, well-proportioned and definitely adult for all that he acted otherwise, a carelessly pretty man in a permanently rumpled suit whose true nature asserted itself only in fleeting glimpses of quiet intelligence behind those expressive eyes. Eyes that had earned him any number of admirers, the uninvited advances of whom Tsuzuki seemed perpetually unaware no matter how blatant they became. At the moment he was pouting, amethyst eyes impossibly large as he worried his lip between his teeth, shuffling from foot to foot in an over-dramatized show of nervousness. It was exasperating that even though Tatsumi was well aware that he was being manipulated something in him still softened at the pathetic tableau of the man turned scolded child, habitual guilt at Tsuzuki’s situation reasserting itself even as he moved to quash it.

More than fifty years later and he was still convincing himself that he had made the right decision, certainty faltering a little more with each failed attempt at finding his friend a worthy companion. The office had been a different place then, filled with jaded, worn Shinigami orchestrated by Konoe-Kacho’s hopeless organizational skills and Tsuzuki had been a light amongst the shadows, a measure of stability as he struggled to navigate the alien world of the afterlife. He hadn’t expected to become so… attached. Hadn’t expected that his feelings stood a chance at being returned if only because he had deigned to stay by the older Shinigami’s side for longer than a few weeks. By the time he had realized his situation it had become something dependent, unhealthy by any standards and he refused to allow himself to become Tsuzuki’s lifeline knowing full well that it was all they would ever be to each other. It had seemed the right decision, a certainty with the saddened understanding in Tsuzuki’s eyes, but decades of watching his friend flounder had worn at his resolve, left him feeling as though he had abandoned Tsuzuki to the wolves and he fought to appease that sense at every turn.

He had told Tsuzuki that he needed something more than habit, someone to inspire him towards more tender emotions, but the passing of time had only made it more and more apparent that such a person, in all probability, did not exist.

“Honestly Tsuzuki,” said Tatsumi, fighting to maintain the ever-present unflappability so expected of him as he handed the other man the wayward folder, the blue plate and the second mug of coffee. “Descending into hysterics will get us nowhere. Fill up your coffee with as much insoluble sugar as you like and meet me in my office. Perhaps some carbohydrates in your system will enable you to have a calm, rational discussion.”

The change was immediate, and Tatsumi felt a swell of satisfaction at the way Tsuzuki straightened, throwing him a particularly shrewd look in startling contrast with the childishness of moments ago as he carried his own breakfast to his office. There were times when the urge to shake the older man and demand to see something of the maturity he knew Tsuzuki was capable of became overwhelming, his frustration at the endless maneuvering required to coax an honest reaction out of his friend a palpable presence in the air. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the levity. There were days when he remembered the sepulchral air that hung heavy in the office in his first decades as a Shinigami and was very grateful for Watari’s antics and Wakaba-san’s baking experiments, for Tsuzuki’s unending childishness and Konoe-Kacho’s sudden fascination with tourist trap souvenirs. But he suspected that the falsehood only hurt his friend, cutting off any reprieve he might have found in confiding in his fellow Shinigami when that manufactured exuberance was all they knew of him, all they expected. He was at a loss for what to do to ease that pain, and his own helplessness was depleting what reserves of patience he had left.

The door opened a moment later without the courtesy of a warning knock, and Tatsumi shook his head at Tsuzuki’s forgetfulness. It wasn’t that he was ill-mannered, he simply forgot the rhythms of polite society, of life, without a considerable conscious effort to maintain them. Tsuzuki shuffled in, kicking the door closed as he balanced plate, cup and folder. The file came slapping onto the middle of Tatsumi’s desk as Tsuzuki took a seat in front of it, removing his plate from its unsteady perch on top of his coffee as he sprawled comfortably over a worn leather armchair.

“Now,” Tatsumi began, “Why don’t you explain to me what the problem is exactly? Without descending into whining – unlike the rest of your happy companions I am perfectly cognizant of the fact that you are capable of carrying on an adult conversation and my patience for idiocy has already been far exceeded this morning.”

“Why do you do that?”

He met Tsuzuki’s eyes as the older man tipped his head, a strangely reflective look writing itself across his features. “Excuse me?”

“My ‘happy companions’,” Tsuzuki replied, parroting him. “Why do you cut yourself off like that? They’re your coworkers too, you know.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with this discussion.”

“You were the one who wanted to have an adult conversation,” said Tsuzuki, brows raising in gentle irony as he sat back in his seat, bringing his coffee mug to his lips with a shrug.

And that was the point. Tatsumi could analyze his friend all he wanted, but to ask Tsuzuki to be himself was to unleash the analytical creature within him, for all that Tatsumi pushed him to speak his mind, he allowed himself to forget that Tsuzuki was perfectly capable of pushing back.

“Your protest is duly noted,” Tatsumi replied, allowing coldness to creep into his voice. There were some areas in which his motivations were simply off-limits, even to Tsuzuki. “Moving. On.”

“Good morning to you too,” the other man replied, biting carefully into his pastry.

It had always amused Tatsumi that despite the fervor with which he hoarded his sweets, Tsuzuki always took great care to savor them, relishing them with a ritualistic enthusiasm that was more comical than the lengths he went to acquire them.

“Seriously though, what gives? This is the second search and rescue you’ve given me this week, and you haven’t handed me a case this simple in twenty years. I know you hate wasting manpower almost as much as you hate stretching the budget, so what’s the deal?”

Traditionally, cases were cross-referenced for content and difficulty, matched to the most compatible agent available to help assure success in a profession where failure was definitely not an option. It was complicated and tedious, and if Konoe-Kacho’s lackadaisical attempts at handling it were any indication, far too complicated for anyone else to keep track of. Watari had solved this problem for the other agents by sorting cases into three major categories of his own invention, absurdly dubbing each case either ‘search and rescue’, ‘seek and destroy’, or ‘unfortunately squishy’. Search and rescue cases were the simplest, low risk spirit retrieval equating with the kind of subpoena delivery done by courts in the mortal realm. Seek and destroy cases were more complicated, investigations of unexplained deaths and demon activity that usually ended in violence. The unfortunately squishy category housed the throw away cases, blood pouring from walls and oddly messy demons that alternated between absurd and terribly difficult. The ridiculousness of this parallel system was annoying, but the new categorizations had somehow helped the other Shinigami better grasp their assignments, and had upped productivity a good ten percent. Tatsumi was more than willing to put up with a little absurdity for better records.

Tsuzuki, being by far the oldest and most powerful in the division, was usually assigned cases from either of the latter categories in an effort to best utilize his talents. As much as Tatsumi knew his friend hated the deaths he inevitably caused, offensively his horde of Shikigami were too effective a tool to ignore. He couldn’t remember the last time Tsuzuki had been assigned a simple retrieval, which was the problem. He had been trying to get Tsuzuki out of the office but the man had stubbornly solved each case he’d been handed with a staggering efficiency, the irony of his annoyance at which he was painfully aware.

“You’re right,” he replied, fixing his glasses and deciding that the truth, or some variation thereof, was the best method of dealing with Tsuzuki in his current mood. “I’ve been trying to get rid of you. So if you would kindly take a bit longer with this case,” he tapped the folder with a finger, “I can stop filching files from other people’s schedules. Torii-san and Fukiya-san are beginning to get bored.”

The look on Tsuzuki’s face was priceless, all wide-eyed shock and childish indignation, and Tatsumi had a moment to savor the expression before Tsuzuki paled and choked out, “Why?” in the smallest, most painfully wounded voice Tatsumi had ever heard.

The man had a ridiculous amount of experience at being pathetic, but something in the cold shock twisting his features gave Tatsumi the sinking feeling that this time he was truly hurt. There was no mock-sniffling, no hunched shoulders or comically overdone wailing – Tsuzuki sat stock still in his seat, pallor overtaking frozen features as he stared, searching Tatsumi’s face as if the reason behind his apparent exile was hidden in his eyes. Tatsumi sighed, removing his glasses and scrubbing his face with the heel of a palm, allowing himself to soften. The last thing he wanted was to add to Tsuzuki’s habitual pain, even if it was for his own good.

“Do you not think,” he answered, “that if I could tell you, I would have done so already?”

Their eyes caught and held, and Tsuzuki seemed to be searching for something, amethyst eyes hard and unreadable. “I think…” he said, in perfect sincerity, “that you don’t love me anymore.”

His lip twitched, unable to contain an ironic smile and Tatsumi shook his head, incredulous. The moment was over, any traces of fear or hurt erased by Tsuzuki’s never-ending mercurialness and he was glad of it. There were things between them that were never spoken of, never dragged into the light of day and it was far too late to liberate them now. Not without damage, the bitterness of years past compounded by a wealth of guilt and failed intentions.

“Perhaps,” he countered, both to retain some sense of dignity and to allow Tsuzuki his manufactured levity, “I never loved you to begin with.”

Tsuzuki’s smile widened. “Perhaps.” Another swig of coffee, a bite of pastry, and he rearranged himself in his seat, sighing contentedly. “You’re really not going to tell me what’s going on?”

Tatsumi began on his own breakfast, carefully stirring his coffee before taking an experimental sip. “No.”

Tsuzuki heaved a heavy, overdone sigh, tipping his head back to pop the last of his pastry in his mouth. He threw his empty plate down beside the file on the desk, scattering files and briefings before Tatsumi could slap a hand down to settle them. Bringing his coffee to his lips in a halfhearted attempt to hide the subsequent smirk, he fidgeted in his chair, hanging his torso so far over the arm Tatsumi was amazed it didn’t tip.

“I’ll just have to guess then.” The older man sighed. “Let’s see… what don’t you want me to know about?” He was back to worrying his lip between his teeth, humming absently as he stared at the office ceiling. Tatsumi watched him in bemusement, settling into tearing off small bites of his croissant as Tsuzuki waited for inspiration.

“There was that thing with Terazuma and the walnuts, but Watari knows about that so it’s pointless to even try keeping it a secret. There can’t be anything funky in the coffee if you’re trying to get me out of the office, and you’re drinking it with me. Konoe-Kacho’s not going to fire me until I’ve paid off those supplies Suzaku torched last month, and the Gushoshin can’t be angry with me, I’ve been smuggling them rice crackers. So that leaves—” His head snapped up, body suddenly rigid. “No.”

“Tsuzuki-san—”

“No!” Tsuzuki threw himself from his seat, momentarily caught in a tangle of gangly limbs and fluttering trench coat before straightening to slam his hands down over the edge of the desk. “Another partner? You can’t do this to me again, Tatsumi-san, you know it’ll only last for like, a case, before whoever it is has that inevitable epiphany about what a pain in the ass I am and takes off! Can’t I just keep working with the Gushoshin? They like getting out of the library every once in a while!”

“Tsuzuki-san!” He barked. “Sit. Down.”

Tsuzuki froze at the warning, crumpling back into his seat with a dejected sigh. “What’s the point?”

“Tsuzuki-san…” His voice was a wistful murmur and at any other time he would have been unnerved, but this dance of trust and betrayal with the succession of Tsuzuki’s partners was wearing—on Tsuzuki for obvious reasons and himself for the guilt it triggered. “You can’t expect the Gushoshin to take on field duties full time. Even if they wanted to, the fact remains that they’re needed here. And I can’t let you wander around the countryside without a partner, not with the cases you take, not while you risk your own life and everyone else’s should you fail. There is a balance of power that must be maintained, and you more than any of us has convinced the council that our power must be checked.” He paused, pushing his glasses higher on his nose as he leaned across the desk. “You need someone to keep you grounded to prevent you from doing anything more spectacularly stupid than usual. You know that as well as I.”

“I know, I just… If I really have to have someone with me, can’t I just call one of the Shiki? Byakko is more than willing to follow me around as long as there’s chocolate involved.”

“I’m sure.”

“Besides,” Tsuzuki added, “Is there even anyone left in the department who hasn’t worked with me yet?”

“No.”

“A-ha!” Tsuzuki exclaimed, waggling a triumphant finger, smiling his superiority as he tipped his mug and relaxed back into his seat. “You see? I’m right. How are you going to pull this off when there’s no one left to saddle with me in the first place, huh?”

Tatsumi sighed, watching his friend grin triumphantly into his coffee. Any moment he was going to look up, make eye contact and realize—

“Oh. Oh, no, you can’t.”

He raised a brow at the wheedling tone, meeting Tsuzuki’s horrified stare with a calm unflappability he knew would probably only exacerbate the situation. “It’s too late, Tsuzuki-san, I sent Watari-san out this morning.”

“Tatsumi-san, please! There has to be another way! You can’t just send us out to harvest every time somebody blows me off!”

Harvest. That was another of Watari’s terms. Shinigami were called to the profession, chosen from those EnmaDaiOh marked for potential displayed during their mortal lives. When a new Shinigami was needed, the list of potential candidates was dredged up from somewhere in the Gushoshin’s vaults and Konoe-Kacho began the task of selecting an agent who would fill the particular niche left vacant. Once in Meifu, they were trained and run through a battery of requisite tests before being released into the field.

To say that Tsuzuki objected to the idea was an understatement. There was nothing Tsuzuki hated more than killing, be it someone who was overdue to pass on or not, he had never fully accepted that aspect of their work and harvesting often involved hastening the deaths of potential Shinigami. Tatsumi found the idea slightly absurd. After all, how was a dead man to feel guilty for ending lives when he knew full well that they were merely switching planes of existence? The older man had found a way, it seemed, if the absolute fits he threw whenever a candidate was announced were any indication, and Tatsumi had taken to orchestrating personnel shifts while Tsuzuki was on assignment, if only to save himself the migraine. It didn’t help that Tsuzuki’s never-ending search for a suitable partner triggered most of the retrievals.

Tatsumi sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning. “For what it’s worth, I’m fairly certain that this one already had one foot in the grave long before we were involved.”

Tsuzuki ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I guess.”

“Look, I know you’re not happy, but what’s done is done. Watari-san is probably on his way back with him as we speak.”

“Him?” Tsuzuki murmured, “Another guy then?”

Sensing a chance at distraction, Tatsumi allowed the barest of smirks to twist his lips as he took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone with a woman, did you? I shudder to think at the consequences.”

“Of what?” came the indignant reply, “The only fraternal relationship I have in this office is with Wakaba-chan. Or have you seriously not noticed the weird penchant otherwise rational grown men have for stalking me?”

“Honestly?” asked Tatsumi, “We all thought you hadn’t noticed.”

Tsuzuki shook his head, smiling ruefully. “Nobody’s that dense. I just figured if I pretended not to notice they’d give it a rest.” He paused, tracing thoughtful fingers around the rim of his own drink. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Tatsumi chucked. “Yes, well, as little as I know about this case, guessing from Watari-san’s mumbling as he wandered off with the file, he’s not exactly grown.”

“Ah. Right. That solves all my problems,” said Tsuzuki, rather acerbically. “Because we’ve all forgotten the bureaucratic nightmare that was Asuka. I was doing extra paperwork for a week just to put his ascension on file.” (1)

“Welcome to my world,” Tatsumi grumbled, popping another piece of croissant in his mouth. “There isn’t an archetype you haven’t tried and failed with, so don’t expect that to halt things. Besides, I thought you were the world’s own optimist. Perhaps this will be the last.”

“Uh-uh. Not happening. I won’t do it. I’m digging my heels in. I refuse to do it.”

So much for rationality, Tatsumi thought, straightening in his chair to throw his friend a meaningful look.

“Unless you make me.”

He fought the urge to laugh at that, the sudden contriteness as Tsuzuki tipped his head back, coaxing the last, most likely chewable, dregs of coffee from his mug.

“Then you’ll do it.” He said, pushing the errant file of one Saito Hoshi forward. “And try to do it slowly, lest your introduction to your new partner take place before we can better explain some of your… peculiarities.”

“Ha. Ha,” Tsuzuki muttered, grabbing the file and vaulting from his seat. “I’m not going to like it,” he insisted, whirling around in an indignant huff and a whoosh of flying trench coat. He yanked the door open with more force than was strictly necessary, caught up in his childish huff as he paused dramatically in the doorway. “And I am so overspending my account while I’m down there.”

Tatsumi winced, though whether it was from the overenthusiastic slam of his office door or the certainty that Tsuzuki would more than make good on his threat was anyone’s guess. He sat back in his chair, finishing off the last of his croissant and picking up his mug, staring into the cooling liquid there as if it concealed the secrets of the universe.

“How much do you love me?”

Tatsumi looked up from the tedium of rereading case reports to find Watari’s head poked in his office door, gold-brown eyes shining in the mid-morning sun. He threw Tatsumi a manic, Cheshire grin, a patented Watari expression that either meant he’d done something spectacularly productive or he’d just caused a disaster and was attempting to look as adorable as possible to avoid any chance of grievous bodily harm.

“Why do people keep asking me that today?” he asked of no one in particular, using the pen he was holding to keep his place as he closed the file he’d been reading, steepling his fingers in front of him.

“Come on, Boss Man, I did good out there,” the scientist wheedled, “I think it at least earns me a reprieve from field work for a while.”

He stepped wholly into the office, hair and lab coat swinging with the motion as he sauntered to a chair, carefully arranging himself in front of the desk before crossing his legs and folding his hands atop them.

“A reprieve?” Tatsumi asked, barely bothering to hide the incredulity in his voice. “If I recall correctly, Watari-san, this is the first case you’ve had in nearly a month and it wasn’t even in your district. I hardy think you need a break.”

“Hey, I have way more important things to do than spiritual intervention. My work is here. In my lab, with my equipment. It’s what I love. Besides, you don’t have to pull field duty, I don’t know why you keep insisting on sending me out.”

“I’m here more often than not because someone has to coordinate all of this, and with Konoe-Kacho running interference with Hakushaku, that person is invariably me. And unlike you, I don’t have the luxury of throwing every case into one of three piles, I have to deal with the real system, and that takes time.” He paused, pushing his glasses farther up his nose and sighing softly. “And as for your work here, puttering about with chemical concoctions even you can’t identify and blowing up your lab on a biweekly basis hardly constitutes vital work, and is certainly not what you’re paid for. The only reason you’re allowed to continue your experiments is because I’ve been passing them off to Konoe-Kacho as applicable research.”

“Aw, see? You do love me,”

The man was downright cooing, something only Watari could pull off without seeming utterly effeminate and more than a little foolish, leaning back in his chair with an indulgent smile. Tatsumi had to admit that Watari was good company, and at the moment a very welcome distraction, even if he was ridiculous at the best of times. He was impossibly endearing, possessed of an effortless, clumsy charm that brought even the most imperious men out of their shells. No matter how certain Tatsumi was that he was running figures and reactions in his head at every opportunity, Watari always behaved as if there was nothing he’d rather be doing than devoting his undivided attention to other people’s problems.

Of late, he’d taken an undue interest in Tatsumi’s well-being, showing up at impossible hours to drag him out of the office and forcing him to partake in whatever meals he managed to scrounge from the cache of food he crammed into the specimen refrigerator in his lab. It was soothing in a way to be with someone who, while alternately acerbic and childish, had no history with him. At least not one to cause those awkward silences that descended between he and Tsuzuki. There was no guilt, no expectation, just a manic, forgetful engineer-turned-frightfully bad chemist who was glad to find someone else awake at four in the morning. They had that in common at least, and a whole host of other little details that he was slowly discovering, and whenever he thought of the man’s predecessor, he was more than grateful for his company.

“C’mon, admit it. You totally love me.” The Cheshire grin was back, practically oozing enthusiasm as Tatsumi shook himself from his thoughts.

“You are the sunshine of my life,” he replied, drolly, rolling his eyes at the cackling laughter that met the statement.

That was another thing about Watari, he had the requisite mad scientist cackle down to a tee. He was laughing so hard now he almost fell off his chair, knuckles white on the worn leather armrests as his face contorted in amusement. “Man, you keep that up and I am not responsible for myself if I start singing. And I’m warning you, I’m tone deaf.”

“Just give me the gods-be-damned file.”

His voice hadn’t raised, it rarely did, but the dry tone earned him the rise of a gold-blond brow. “Cranky much?” A hand disappeared into the folds of his lab coat, rummaging around in pockets that should not by right have contained as much storage space as they seemed to. A moment later it reappeared, clutching a rumpled manila folder just out of Tatsumi’s reach. “Now how do we ask nicely?”

“Now. Or I dock your pay.”

Watari blanched, dropping the file with a rueful grin. “Okay then,” he replied, absently scratching the back of his head. “You know, you’re lucky you’re dead, or I’d be warning you against a potential ulcer.”

The file of one Kurosaki Hisoka didn’t pull its punches. Upon opening, Tatsumi was met front and center with an 8x10 glossy photograph of an emaciated, sallow youth caught in a tangle of IVs and hospital sheets. “One of the highlights of being undead, Watari-san. My stomach lining has yet to eat itself, and your teeth have yet to rot from all the rubbish you eat.”

Watari sighed, tossing an errant lock of blond hair over his shoulder as he crossed his arms in impatience. “Like I’m the only one risking cavities around here? And what’s with the -san?” he grumbled, “I don’t take myself that seriously, man. I’m not even gonna suggest that you call me Yutaka, trying to get you on a first name basis would probably only drive you to some kind of undead coronary, but could you just once call me Watari? Pretend like you’ve known me for twenty years.” He paused, brow furrowing beneath the fringe of his bangs. “Oh, wait—you have!”

“Don’t remind me,” Tatsumi replied, thumbing through the rest of the file as Watari threw his hands up in exasperation.

Kurosaki-kun was sixteen. Not an ideal age for a Shinigami, but some of the most impressive agents Tatsumi had worked with in his tenure at the division had come from younger stock and he was less than inclined to pass judgment on that point alone. He was trained in several martial arts, reared on the harsh training regiment prescribed to the scion of a samurai family, felled by an unknown assailant at thirteen only to survive though a cursed kind of metaphysical loophole until Watari had been sent in to harvest. His parents had abandoned him at the first signs of weakness, leaving him in the care of medical practitioners as his body began to rebel against its forced animation, wandering off without a word as their son faded from the living realm in unchecked agony. Tatsumi wondered at that, the incredible apathy so rarely found in the living, an odd counterpoint to his own indifference at yet another account of the suffering required to create a Shinigami.

“He’s an empath?” he asked, flipping forward. No wonder Enma wanted him. There hadn’t been a capable empath working for the division in more than twenty years. Souls with malleable empathic talent were rare, imbued with a volatile gift that was easily turned against its wielder at any simple twist of fate before it could be tamed. Most empaths were driven mad before they reached adolescence, and those who weren’t survived by burying their gifts within the layers of their psyches, shields upon shields to stifle the power threatening from within. Only rarely did a child circumvent both scenarios, and it seemed that Kurosaki-kun had somehow managed to hold both his power and his mind intact—no small feat for a child who had been slowly deteriorating since the age of thirteen.

“Pretty sensitive, I’d say, but untrained. He freaked when I touched him.”

“How does a child like that survive?” Tatsumi wondered, snapping the file closed as he dropped it back to the desk.

“Gall,” Watari answered, “Pure, unmitigated gall. Kid’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Hong Kong.”

“That’s not very large, in the scheme of things,” Tatsumi commented, voice casually disinterested as he pulled notes and leaflets from a battered clipboard. “Hokkaido perhaps—now that would be a rather impressive chip.”

“Oh bite me, Boss Man.”

“So what do you think of his chances?” asked Tatsumi, ignoring the blonde’s indignant pout.

“As an agent? Pretty damn good, provided somebody bothers to train him. He won’t get far without some kind of hold over his empathy, but if he gets the hang of it he’ll be pretty useful.” Watari crossed his arms over his chest, sinking back into his seat with a contemplative air. “With Tsuzuki… I don’t know. Who can tell with him? But I can’t see Hisoka putting up with any crap.”

Tatsumi said nothing, nodding for Watari to continue as he rummaged within a drawer in search of the registration sheets required for the initial employment of a new Shinigami.

“Well, think about it man, nobody says no to Tsuzuki. Even you spend half your time trying to avoid the pouty puppy eyes, and you’re like, emotionally stunted.”

Tatsumi paused, hand still buried beneath last week’s expense reports, looking up to lock eyes with Watari. “I am not emotionally stunted,” he grumbled, “I’m emotionally inept. The first implies that I don’t have emotions, which is ludicrous. I have the same impulses as everyone else, I simply deny them as best I can.”

Watari’s eyes rolled behind the wire frames of his glasses. “Do you hear yourself? I mean, seriously. Color me hypersensitive, but there is just so much wrong with that statement I don’t know where to begin to explain why it’s unhealthy.”

Tatsumi secured the newly recovered and slightly battered registration documents to the clipboard, fingers smoothing over faint coffee stains and creases so old they were nearly tears as he attempted to ignore Watari’s exasperated stare.

“My point is, and don’t roll your eyes at me, Tatsumi-san, you knew I had one, that the kid’s not about to let Tsuzuki get away with the happy masquerade the rest of us grant him. That smile’s getting painful, and you know it. He needs someone to tell him to cut the crap before he cracks completely. I have vivid memories of Kyoji-sensei’s full on burn out, I don’t want to see Tsuzuki end up like that.”

He barely contained the instinct to flinch at the mention of Kyoji Haru. To date, Watari was the only one still willing to call him by name, though Tatsumi suspected that stemmed more from some lingering sense of awe at his earlier accomplishments than any real sense of forgiveness. The man had been brilliant, Tatsumi allowed for that, he had made advances in the chemical sciences decades before their discovery in the living realm and without the help of instruments most modern scientists depended on. But by the time his more than two hundred year tenure at EnmaCho had come to a close, he had been little more than a raging psychotic, the wielder of enough unchecked accumulated power to set the wary eye of EnmaDaiOh himself upon him. He had done unconscionable things in the name of finding a suitable replacement for himself, victimized the very man who still insisted on keeping his memory, all in the name of an empty promise to a woman who had ascended a decade beforehand. Tatsumi remembered the struggle to hold him in check with frightening clarity, that horrible instant when he realized that all his power, all his master’s teachings were useless against a force that they themselves had unleashed upon the world. (2)

Looking into the smiling eyes of his companion, he was rather abruptly reminded why, for all his apparent dispassionateness, he could not simply turn away when Tsuzuki railed at the unfairness of it all. He remembered that bitterness, the horrifying realization that the universe was a cold, calculating creature, sitting in remembered grief with his friend whether he felt the current loss or not.

“Hey.” He looked up to find Watari giving him a fond, impatient glance over the rims of his glasses. “Don’t be like that, Tatsumi-san.”

“Like what?” he queried, conspicuously clearing his throat and shuffling whatever papers first fell into his hands in a pathetic attempt to avoid eye contact.

“Like that.” A pale hand shot out to still his wrist. “With the guilt-ridden, ‘I killed Watari’ face. And yes, you have one. It’s unique to the rest of your guilty repertoire. I hate that face.” He froze, gaze moving from the hand suddenly clasped over his own to find Watari painfully serious, ponytail swinging forward over one shoulder as he stretched across Tatsumi’s desk. “You didn’t pull the damn trigger,” Watari insisted, pausing as his face screwed up in almost comical annoyance. “The metaphorical one, anyway, since there weren’t any actual firearms involved, but that’s not the point. If the whole demon lurking within us all thing really bothers you that much, then help me train this kid to keep our boy from following in Sensei’s footsteps. I don’t want to watch Tsuzuki go down that hole anymore than you do, and right now, Hisoka’s our best shot at preventing it.”

It was a poignant moment, he thought, and he probably should have said something equally as encouraging, but all he managed was an arched brow. “Hisoka? Already on a first name basis, are we?”

“Gods, you never stop, do you?” Watari shook his head, vibrating with repressed laughter as a welcome grin stole its way back onto his face. “Lest I forget who I’m talking to, right?”

His hand was squeezed encouragingly as Watari shifted from his seat, tugging impatiently at his arm as he attempted to collect Kurosaki-kun’s file and the registration sheets one-handed. “Do you mind?”

“Nope!” Watari chirped, effervescent energy focused on this new self-appointed mission as he dragged Tatsumi bodily from the room. “Not at all!”

Obviously, he had underestimated Watari’s penchant for subterfuge. Again.

The scientist was shifting nervously behind him, shuffling from foot to foot like a disobedient child waiting guiltily for some parental figure to mete out punishment for his error. Tatsumi stood stock still, fists clenching convulsively at his sides as he forced himself to remain calm through the sudden throbbing at his temples. The sight that met him, meager though it was through the minuscule porthole adorning the door to Watari’s lab, did nothing to relieve that pressure.

“I’m going to remain very still,” he told Watari, eyes still transfixed on the painfully thin figure slumping defensively on a corner of the engineer’s cluttered desk. “And I’m going to ask you to take a good, hard look at the scene beyond those doors and tell me what is wrong with this picture.”

Kurosaki-kun looked far more childish in the half-light of a beleaguered desk lamp, phosphorescent eyes narrowed as one of Watari’s birds waddled past, an emperor penguin weighted by a burden of scrap materials and mismatched notes thrown into a sack around its shoulders. His shoulders hunched as hands clung to the wooden frame beneath him, fingers half-hidden by the oversized sleeves of an orange sweater accented with red stripes wound around slender arms at mid-bicep and along a breast pocket, the garment hanging loosely from his slight frame. It served to make him seem smaller, though he could not have been more than five foot five by Tatsumi’s estimation, exposing the prominent outlines of delicate collar bones and tendons within the boy’s neck. His features too were delicate, sharp with youthful androgyny, half-shadowed as weak light cast itself over pallid skin and wheat gold hair.

“What?” Watari began, all halfhearted ignorance under the force of Tatsumi’s glare. “Oh come on man,” he grumbled, shoving his hands deep into coat pockets that should, by right, not have carried half their storage space. “Look, it’s really not that big of a deal. So he’s pretty. Hell, I’m pretty. You’re pretty. People in this office take that whole ‘die young and leave a beautiful corpse’ thing way too seriously. Konoe has pretty moments, and he’s like eighty.”

“Konoe-Kacho is exactly one hundred and forty-seven years old, in the body of a fifty-six year old. Nowhere does he qualify as ‘like eighty’.”

“Now you’re just nitpicking. You realize that, don’t you? And that’s a damn wrinkly fifty-six, I must say.”

“Must you really?” Tatsumi muttered, shoving his glasses back into position. “Watari-san, that child is so attractive it’s painful. What were you thinking?”

“What can I say?” the blond replied, “I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”

Tatsumi turned to regard his friend, eyes narrowing at the blonde’s blithely innocent façade. Watari, in all his ineptitude, seemed guileless to those without the inclination to look beneath the surface but as the man himself had so eagerly pointed out, Tatsumi had been working in close quarters with him for over twenty years. While the blond had always had the best of intentions, his endless machinations in the name of greater happiness for all had a frightening tendency to explode more often than his chemistry experiments—which was saying something. The problem was that it was often impossible to detect Watari’s maneuvering until it was too late to stop whatever plans he had set in motion, when the only recourse left was to watch the oncoming disaster and brace for its impact as well as possible. This was merely case in point.

“Look,” Watari continued, “inevitable castigation for that conspicuously absent physical description aside, what difference does it make what the kid looks like?”

Watari had somehow always known that his feelings for Tsuzuki extended beyond the breadth of fraternity, if not the actual details of the situation, and he had known early on of Tatsumi’s apparently frustrating tendency to neglect his own peace of mind for the sake of Tsuzuki’s. He had made it more than apparent from day one that as far as he was concerned, as endearing as that self-sacrifice was, it was ultimately pointless because Tatsumi could be no help to Tsuzuki if he burned himself out in the process. Tatsumi had never quite settled on whether that insistence was more relieving or annoying, for while it allowed him a companion with a tacit understanding of the worries that plagued him, Watari’s endless conjecture on possible remedies to Tsuzuki’s unstable condition often lead to disaster.

It wasn’t that the help was unappreciated. There were days when Tatsumi was so certain of Tsuzuki’s impending psychotic break that he could see nothing else beyond the coming tragedy. With a shinigami of Tsuzuki’s ranking, EnmaDaiOh himself had a stake in keeping him controlled, and the reaction to any sign of instability within the ranks of JuOhCho would be swift and merciless. They would not allow another Kyoji Haru to roam the living realm, and no matter how harshly they were forced to deal with a seeming innocent, the power that lay dormant within Tsuzuki would prove too destructive should the threat be realized to leave it unanswered. It seemed at times that he was the only thing standing between Tsuzuki and the council, the great judges of the otherworldly court and their irrational fear of a man who had no intention of becoming what they so insisted and for all his depressive tendencies was unlikely to hurt anyone other than himself. Not that it made Tatsumi feel particularly better to know that. What worried him were the statistics—shinigami usually lasted an average of seventy to a hundred years before the monotony of eternal existence drove them to retirement and ascension. Those who did not had a tendency towards questionable sanity. Pushing that barrier required an embracing of fluidity, allowing for the reworking of an entire personality as the decades passed, and barring that, it needed something to cling to in the endless tide of time and transformation. Without an anchor, madness set in, and those shinigami who succumbed were some of the most frightening and dangerous opponents the division had yet to face.

“You know exactly what difference it makes, Watari-san, and you know what could happen.”

With the morass of guilt and the silent, incredible loneliness trailing Tsuzuki through the decades, his already feeble will to live had only decayed with the passage of time, and the fact remained that if this hand was not played with untenable delicacy it could destroy the very thing they endeavored to save. While this child might be of benefit to them all, there was no way to convey the incredible intricacy of Tsuzuki’s situation without the possibility of frightening him away, and were Tsuzuki to become attached… The possibilities were equally as frightening as promising, and Tatsumi was uncertain if he could bring himself to wager his friend’s life on such uncertain odds.

“Please,” Watari grumbled, “So Tsuzuki gets a boyfriend. Doesn’t that just solve your little problem?”

Tatsumi turned away, squinting at Kurosaki-kun through the tiny window as the boy darted away from 003’s sudden interest in his shoelaces. “I thought we agreed never to speak of that.”

“Yes, I know, and I don’t know why you’d think that,” Watari answered, patting his shoulder amiably. He drew even with Tatsumi and joined him in studying the scene beyond the glass, arms folding over his chest as he regarded the boy in thoughtful silence. “If you could see past your concern for Tsuzuki for five minutes, you’d see that kid needs our help as much as he does. You should have seen his face when I told him I was taking him with me, Tatsumi-san, I can’t just abandon him because he might further mess with Tsuzuki. I’m his friend too, and I realize that this could all go to hell, but this could just as easily be his salvation and we’re not going to get anywhere with either of them if we don’t take a chance.”

003 had fluttered to perch on the edge of the desk Kurosaki-kun had vacated distracting him from the sudden movement at his feet as what appeared to be a cannibalized toaster skittered past. That creature circumvented the penguin of earlier, now busily at work sorting sheets into Watari’s inbox, clattering across the scattered diagnostic sheets and computer printouts nearly covering the western end of the office to halt in the shadow of a plump toucan perched unsteadily on a stack of books. They presided over the remains of a battered, charred file cabinet in the corner that looked as though it had seen one too many explosions. He watched as they began to converse—and he used the term loosely—toaster-creature rearing on what he assumed were its hind legs to search for a particular file as the toucan obligingly nudged open a drawer. It would probably have been disconcerting to watch had he not been so accustomed to the surplus of sentient machinery fluttering about Watari’s office. After all, how were they to expect a mechanical engineer not to experiment after finding himself with the power to grant sentience to his creations?

“You know I’m right,” warbled the man in question, voice a near whisper as he wrapped an arm plaintively around one of Tatsumi’s own, digging an exceptionally bony jaw into the thick fabric covering his shoulder.

“Yes,” he replied, half-turning to regard Watari, reduced to a blur of pale features and a flash of amber luminance by his proximity. “And it’s a frightening sensation.”

Kurosaki-kun was warily approaching 003 where the little owl had settled among the clutter of Watari’s desk, puffing out her feathers and hunching her neck until she appeared little more than a rounded mass of fluff and feathers. Huge yellow eyes slid open, blinking kittenishly within the mass of feathers at his approach, and had he not known better Tatsumi would have sworn that she was smiling at the boy. He paused, unsure, darting nervous glances at the strange pair in the corner as he reached out with an unsteady hand to present it for her inspection. She chirruped, straightening slightly to push her head against his hand, settling into happy fluttering as he brushed a few tentative strokes across her feathers. Moments passed and he grew bold enough to settle beside her, brushing back some of the clutter to make space for himself as he petted the bird beside him with more confidence. She cooed in rapture, straightening fully to follow the movements of his hand whenever he moved to pull away, fluttering half into his lap in her excitement. Most miraculous of all was Kurosaki-kun’s reaction to her antics.

He smiled.

It was a tiny thing, the barest of expressions on a face so obviously unused to joy, shuttered back beneath an indifferent façade before it was given time to settle. Watari gave a happy little squeak, squeezing Tatsumi’s arm harder in his excitement at what Tatsumi assumed was probably the first positive emotion the boy had displayed since he had made contact, turning pleading eyes to Tatsumi as Kurosaki-kun settled more comfortably on his desk, 003 perched contentedly in his lap. His own reaction surprised him, protective instincts kindled by some long dead sense of justice and fairness in the universe rising from some forgotten part of his mind even as he balked at this new complication to an already strained situation. That progression of guilt and worry was nothing more than an adjunct in the face of his dedication to his duty, and duty required him to train someone so obviously qualified regardless of his personal feelings. The boy would need extensive instruction to reach even a fraction of his potential, but one look at Watari’s hopeful face reminded him of the uncanny way that fate had always had of dropping people into his lap at opportune moments.

Shaking his head in resignation, he patted Watari’s hand where it rested on his forearm. “I suspect that I could benefit from a little disequilibrium.”

Footnote-y Goodness:
(1) For those who are working off the anime, Asuka was Tsuzuki’s partner in the first issue of the manga. He registered as a Shinigami under a false name and caused the division all kinds of trouble when he and Tsuzuki were assigned a case to help the cousin he had died saving cross over. He lasted a whole one assignment with our boy before moving on.

(2) Yes, the two of them have a history together, because I couldn’t wrap my mind around a relationship between the two of them (platonic or otherwise) without explaining how they met. I’m not mentioning it just to be annoying, one day if all goes well that will make a story of its own, but I have an actual plan for how my fics in Yamiverse will go (wonder of all wonders) and I’m writing them in order if it kills me. =)