sweetdeath | [004 | text, Japanese]

Discedo didn't look much better in daylight, really. The cemetery was still creepy, the church was still disturbing, the streets were mostly deserted, and the entire place was oddly quiet - well, save for the skittering of monsters just beyond his peripheral vision.

At least it wasn't a long walk. He was stiff in every joint after sleeping sitting-up against a wall in a vacant room of the apartment building, and that hadn't helped his mood any.

Coming to... Marshall street, he supposed it was, he was able to add another decent thing to his day. Tsuzuki was easy to spot, standing outside the building he supposed was the high school with his hands in his pockets.

Hisoka unconsciously mirrored the gesture while crossing the street, his expression neutral as he walked up to his partner. "Hey."

Tsuzuki had been spending the wait thinking: between chips, repeated days, powers going haywire, and having offered to join the police force, there was a lot to think about. He'd have to go talk to them in person one of these days - soon, probably, but not before he'd helped Hisoka settle in. In the meantime, it was just nice to be outside. The city was a silent tragedy, with its empty broken buildings standing mute along each street, but the sun was warm.

He'd always been good at finding silver linings.

The familiar voice drew his attention away from the sunlight, and he turned, a bright smile spreading over his face. His hands slipped out of his pockets and then hovered by his side; he was half-tempted to hurl himself at his partner for a hug, glad simply to see Hisoka again, but the memory of last night's conversation stopped him. He'd been too smothering, hadn't he? Made Hisoka feel his strength wasn't enough. Even if his partner was standing there, hale and very much in one piece, some little selfish voice within him wailed at the thought that Hisoka could very easily not have been.

Well, he wasn't going to start the argument again. Brightening his smile, he tossed back the same offhanded, "Hey."

...Somehow, he'd been expecting more than that, and prodding Tsuzuki's mind gave him no answers. In fact, it seemed to his sixth sense that the man wasn't even standing there at all.

Hisoka could only imagine how upset Tsuzuki must have been to put his walls up that high.

He crossed his arms and tried to look like he got more sleep than he actually did. "I told you I was fine."

It felt mechanical, and it still wasn't the hug the selfish voice was pining for, but Tsuzuki stepped forward anyway and ruffled his partner's hair.

"Yeah," he said. "It's good to see you, Hisoka."

It really was. He found himself relaxing a little, the feel of the soft strands convincing more of his mind that Hisoka really was here, and fine, and in one piece. He hadn't even been worried about that until yesterday night, but the fear had set its taproot deep in the last ten hours.

He hoped Hisoka wasn't paying too much attention to his feelings.

Hisoka was barely listening, noticing more the gesture and the lack of the wave of... affection that usually came with it. He tilted his head away, uncrossing his arms and about to bat the hand away - if there was something this wrong with the situation and Tsuzuki wasn't letting on what it was, they should really talk--

And it occurred to him.

He'd tried to use a few spells the night before, just to see if what Tsuzuki had said was true, with little success, and his thumb had scabbed over where he'd bit it, but it hadn't even crossed his mind that that could have been affected.

Instead of batting Tsuzuki's hand away, he instead grabbed the older man's wrist with both hands and stared in a cold sort of dread when he realized that he felt nothing from the contact.

Tsuzuki stared, confused, at his partner's bowed head. One heartbeat, two, three - suddenly realization struck, and he reached out to pull Hisoka into a hug. Of course. They couldn't fly, and they couldn't heal, or summon, or cast spells: of course Hisoka couldn't feel his emotions. It's okay, he thought better of saying (Hisoka really would have smacked him).

"Your empathy's been suppressed?" he asked aloud, a moment late. It was going to be hard even for him to get used to this.

Tsuzuki was not helping the disorientation at all, and he struggled away and tried to shake himself back to composure. "I'm fine," he snapped, messing with his shirt and trying to sort his thoughts.

But now that he realized why the city felt so quiet, organizing his thoughts was like trying to alphabetize two books on an empty bookshelf.

He crossed his arms and tried to look stoic. "I should've thought of it earlier."

Stepping back, and slipping his hands back into his pockets, Tsuzuki offered a sympathetic smile. "It took me a few days to get used to. ...What happened to your thumb?" The scab was clearly visible against the pale skin. Severe injury it wasn't, but it must have happened yesterday sometime. It was odd enough to see the unhealed mark on Hisoka's hand - and a little chilling. All these monsters, no magic, and here their injuries would not heal.

He held his hand up and observed it with a furrowed brow, trying to let himself get distracted but failing miserably. "I was curious."

"Hisoka!" Tsuzuki cleared his throat after the outburst, faintly embarrassed. "...I just hope it doesn't get infected." That could happen with small cuts, couldn't it?

It had been so long that he couldn't remember. He swallowed, more than a little disturbed by the realization. Seventy years, after all, and the worst injury he'd had here was a bruised side from tackling Dr. Lee out of the way of the bullets.

"It's already scabbed over and my hands were clean enough," he snorted, though part of the nonchalance came from the realization that he hadn't even thought of the possibility.

"Are we just going to stand around out here? Where's Watari-san?"

"Inside," Tsuzuki replied cheerfully, turning to walk back towards the main building of the school. "I think he was doing laundry or something like that - anyway, I didn't want to bother him, especially because I don't want to know what he'd come up with to entertain himself while standing around waiting...." He shook off the horrible images, and shot Hisoka a smile.

"Anyway, I should show you where we're staying! Have you met Ichinomiya yet?"

Hisoka muttered something about underwear, following Tsuzuki back inside with still a generous amount of space between them. "I spoke to a few people on the network last night, but no one with that name."

Was he watching too much? How much attention were you supposed to give someone if you were listening to them, anyway? ...What did that face mean? Was Tsuzuki going to tease him like a moron for staring?

"Ichinomiya's the one who Watari claims is his husband," Tsuzuki explained, leading the way through the school's run-down hallways. The one who sees ghosts, he didn't add. He still needed to ask Ichinomiya more about that himself.... "Short, red eyes, white hair?"

Busy counting turns and staircases, he didn't even notice Hisoka's fraying nerves.

Hisoka was thankful for that.

"...Was he the one talking about a chip removal causing the time loop?" He saw the small icon on the network, but what with the pixels, it was really just a stab in the dark.

Also, he really wished Tsuzuki would remember that his legs were much longer than Hisoka's were.

"That's him," Tsuzuki agreed, coming to a stop by one of the doors and turning back. "He's from... oh, what was it? Taisho something. Taisho 15. I've only talked to him a few times so far. And this is Watari's room! I've just been staying with him the last few weeks. There isn't any coffee to spike, you see."

As he spoke, he pushed the door open, peering inside. "Watari, are you there?"

"Taisho--"

The room was empty. Of people, anyway - which he again noted he would have been able to sense without actually opening the door, but he really shouldn't be thinking about that. "...Apparently not."

He tilted his head. "Last few weeks. How long have you been stuck here?"

"Just about two weeks now," Tsuzuki said absently, walking into the room and staring around once more. No, there was definitely no Watari here. "I wonder where he went? Oh, and Watari's been here longer than I have. More than a few months."

He came to a stop by the window, looking out. Silent dusty devastation stretched out to the edges of the city. "There are some people here from the past. Others from different worlds entirely - I met a young man who didn't know what England, Japan and Germany were."

"I talked to a man who said he was from a planet named 'Gaia'," Hisoka shrugged, following and shutting the door behind him so he could lean against it. He needed some sort of stability, even if it was artificial. And superficial. But as he moved, he heard a weird and very loud sound rumble from somewhere near him.

And promptly realized that it was his stomach.

Tsuzuki turned around, blinking. "Was that you, Hisoka?"

...Ignoring the bright color of red his face was turning, he crossed his arms and stared his partner down. "No."

A rumbling stomach wasn't quite normal for a Shinigami. On the other hand, Tsuzuki told himself, neither was a scabbed-over finger. And he'd kept himself fed out of habit; cooking was a pleasure and pleasures were something to cling to.

"Have you eaten since last night?"

"I haven't eaten since--" when? It was before he'd gone to confront Kurikara, and since he spent all that time with the Tengu...

"I think it's been a few weeks."

Being a mother hen was, as far as Tsuzuki was concerned, all part of being partners. He closed his mouth with a snap and pointed firmly at the table.

"Hisoka, we don't heal here. I think you need to eat." Without waiting to make sure that Hisoka sat down, he bent to rummage through Watari's collection of canned foods. There, soup. Soup was probably good, and all he'd have to do was reheat it... where did Watari keep the bowls again?

It took him a moment to understand what the pointing meant. Table? I see the table. There's nothing on the table. What do you want me to know about the ta-- oh.

He rigidly went to sit down. "I guess I thought of that, but what was I supposed to eat? A bit of tombstone or a rusty doorknob?"

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]

[action / mini log]