YnM: Surpassing Part 2
Jun. 8th, 2011 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorTitle: Surpassing
Rating: R (explicit sexuality, profanity, description of rape)
Part: 2/5
Disclaimer: They are not mine at all. Alas.
Learn how to touch Tsuzuki was harder than he’d thought, Hisoka found. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity or will-- he just didn’t know how people touch each other. Tsuzuki, of course, touched him all the time-- tousling his hair, or putting a hand on his arm. It felt like he didn’t even think about it. That didn’t feel natural to Hisoka. He tried exactly once to tousle Tsuzuki’s hair and discovered that he had to reach up so high as to feel stretched and ridiculous. He could put his hand on Tsuzuki’s arm, but then how long did he leave it there? It all felt so tentative, even though Tsuzuki welcomed anything he cared to give. Hisoka hated feeling so uncertain about what he was doing. Kendo, at least, had set moves to practice until you got them smooth and skillful. Was there a manual for this?
He crept into the library one afternoon to find out. He felt exposed and out-of-place, though he was sure it would look to anyone else like he was just standing in front of the computer, searching the card catalog. The difficulty came when he tried to figure out what to type into the “subject” box of the search engine. He didn’t have a word for this. “Love,” maybe, but that brought up several thousand titles, and half of them were poetry. “Love and sexuality (400 titles)” was definitely not it, even less so than “Love and the samurai code (2 titles).” “Love and relationships” might be more promising, but most of the titles looked like they could easily have been cross-referenced with “pornography,” and he didn’t see why people had to make this so complicated. I just want to know how to do what he does, Hisoka thought. He makes it look so easy. How does he do that?
“Hisoka-san?” Hisoka jumped at the cheeping voice behind him. It was hard to be alert to the Guoshoushin, Hisoka had found to his dismay. For one thing, they could pop out of the air at any time, moving just as easily in three dimensions as most people did in two. For another, their sunny helpfulness didn’t follow them, but seemed to have soaked into the library, so that he sensed them the instant he walked in, and couldn’t track them afterwards. He choked. He could close the search window, but not subtly, not without raising suspicion. Besides, the little god was hovering behind Hisoka’s shoulder now, reading the screen. He gave a squawk. Hisoka thought about teleportation. “Ah,” the Guoshoushin said. “Hisoka-san, did you find everything you were looking for, or can I help you search?”
“Um,” Hisoka said. “Love and relationships (148 titles)” blinked back at him. “No, thank-you, Guoshoushin Younger. I’m fine.”
The Guoshoushin’s beaks were not made for smiling but they always managed somehow. “All right.” The librarian moved away, fussing with books on the next shelf.
Hisoka stared at the screen, humiliation writhing in his gut. He knows now, he thought. It’ll be all over the damn office. Not that I care about that, why should I? But this is private. It’s between me and Tsuzuki, it’s got nothing to do with anyone else, and I don’t want them thinking about us. I’ll hear them. And if I don’t even know what we’re doing, why should they get to? “Guoshoushin?”
“Yes?” The Guoshoushin turned cheerfully, radiating helpfulness.
“I,” Hisoka said. “Library searches are confidential, aren’t they?” It was the best he could come up with.
The Guoshoushin winked at him. “Of course they are.”
Hisoka glared, annoyed by the wink. “It’s for a case.”
“Oh?” The Guoshoushin took a minute to process that. “Sounds interesting.” He hovered in front of Hisoka, hands clasped in front of his belly. “Do you have any questions about it?”
He doesn’t believe me, Hisoka thought. I should leave now, before this gets any worse. But then he wouldn’t know anything and he needed to know... “How do people touch each other?” Hisoka blurted.
The Guoshoushin sweat-dropped. “Um...”
“Not like,” Hisoka snapped, and did not care to finish the sentence. “As friends. I need to know how friends act.” After this, he swore to himself, he wasn’t coming back into the library for a month. Maybe a year. Maybe a few decades.
The Guoshoushin mused, hand on beak, and Hisoka hoped he wasn’t wondering why Hisoka was looking up love if he wanted to know about friendship. “Hmmm,” the Guoshoushin said, bobbing up and down thoughtfully. “It depends on the person, Hisoka-san. Different people have different things that feel right to them. The real answer is whatever feels natural.”
”Nothing feels natural,” Hisoka said. “I don’t know what natural would feel like.”
The Guoshoushin was so intrigued that Hisoka could barely keep from hitting him. “Why not just try something and see what happens?”
“I did,” Hisoka ground out.
“Mmmm?” the Guoshoushin said, leaning in attentively. Hisoka said nothing. “Did something bad happen?”
“N... no,” Hisoka said. “Nothing.”
“Then why worry about it?” the Guoshoushin asked. “Try that again, and see if you get used to it. Do whatever you feel like doing.”
Hisoka waited. The Guoshoushin just kept beaming at him. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s all your advice?”
“Have fun,” the Guoshoushin said, giving him a big thumbs-up.
“Fun?” Hisoka said, not sure where that came into the matter.
The Guoshoushin winked, and punched him in the arm with a feathery paw, not hard enough to hurt. “Do your best, Hisoka-san!” Then the little god fluttered away, his work here done.
Hisoka left the library, walking the halls without seeing them. Fun, he thought, mystified. This wasn’t fun. This was strange and scary and sometimes shiveringly wonderful, but he wasn’t doing it for entertainment. It wasn’t some trivial little thing, some passing amusement. He wasn’t doing it for no reason. It mattered. He needed to let Tsuzuki know how he felt, because Tsuzuki felt so hopeless when he thought Hisoka didn’t care. Then he’d start to feel rotten about himself again because loving Hisoka uninvited became one more thing for him to feel guilty about. Hisoka hated Tsuzuki’s guilt with a passion and he wasn’t going to add to it, not when there was no reason to. So I have to let him know, he thought, and wondered why he didn’t just tell him.
He didn’t want to just tell him. That would be... embarrassing, he thought. How do you bring that up? ‘Here are your case files, and by the way, I love you’? And what would he say afterwards? No, Hisoka thought, that would be stupid. What he was doing worked better. Tsuzuki seemed happy with it, anyway, and that was what mattered. Besides, this was interesting. It gave him something to think about, something to look forward to when he woke up in the morning. He would keep doing this. He just had to figure out how. ‘Do whatever you feel like doing’ was horrible advice. He didn’t know what he felt like doing. How was he supposed to recognize it when the things he felt lately were like nothing he’d ever felt from the inside before? Where was he supposed to get a reference point? How was he supposed to know what felt right when he didn’t know how anything was supposed to feel?
His dilemma came out of an office down the hall, and spotted him immediately. “Hisoka!” Tsuzuki called, waving a piece of paper as he approached. Whatever had been irritating him the moment before vanished when he saw Hisoka. “Tatsumi said we can’t count lunch as an expense if we’re working in Meifu, so I told him he should talk to you about it, and he said that if you redo our budget for the month and write up an invoice for each time with a memo justifying it, he’d let us. You will, right?”
Hisoka punched him in the arm.
They blinked at each other for a moment, both equally startled. “Hisoka?” Tsuzuki complained, startled. “What was that for?”
Hisoka paused. ”I felt like it,” he said thoughtfully.
Tsuzuki punched him back, not as hard. “You hit too hard,” he said, but he didn’t feel like he minded. Hisoka shrugged. They went on together back to the office, arguing agreeably all the way.
Punching Tsuzuki, Hisoka found over the next few days, was remarkably satisfying. Much better than sighing or glaring or, at the times he hated most, blushing. It was easy. Tsuzuki would usually accept it as his due with a good-hearted whine. Sometimes he’d hit back, feeling playful, and Hisoka was left wondering what to do next. Hit him again, he decided one evening, because Tsuzuki deserved more than one punch for being that cheerful about stealing Hisoka’s dim-sum. (It didn’t matter that there were five more in the bowl, or that Hisoka was starting to feel full, or that he could always make more if he wanted them. It was the principle of the thing.) A hint of challenge glinted purple in Tsuzuki’s eye. He dipped his hand into his water glass, grabbed an ice-cube, and jumped, faster than Hisoka could see, to drop the ice down the back of Hisoka’s shirt. Hisoka yelped. “Idiot! What the hell are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Tsuzuki said, but he felt like he was laughing.
Hisoka shook the freezing chip out of the back of his shirt. “It’s not funny.”
“No?” Tsuzuki asked. “Sorry, Hisoka.” He didn’t sound very sorry, Hisoka thought. Which was a change, actually-- sometimes, it seemed like Tsuzuki apologized for breathing. Sometimes he actually did. This felt different, though. It was all part of the same thing-- the offense, the attack, the apology-- and that should have bothered Hisoka, because surely Tsuzuki spent too much time being hit and apologizing for it. But Tsuzuki felt so much more relaxed right now than he usually did. Playful. A game, Hisoka realized, startled. It’s a game. That’s what a game is. And I’ve been playing, too. “Hisoka?” Tsuzuki said, snapping him back to the moment.
“What?” Hisoka said, and stole Tsuzuki’s dim-sum.
“You--!” Tsuzuki snapped with a fine imitation of outrage, and went for him.
Fun, Hisoka thought quizzically as he fended off Tsuzuki’s attempts to take the dumpling back, fencing with a chopstick. Tsuzuki was grinning, intent on the food on Hisoka’s plate, and Hisoka could just barely hold him off. This might be fun. Right up to the point where Tsuzuki grabbed his wrist, trying to hold it down and reach over. Hisoka jerked away, knocking over his chair as he sprang to his feet. “Stop!”
Tsuzuki stopped instantly, a painful shock of recognition going through him. He knew exactly what he’d done, Hisoka felt, and was immediately sorry for not having thought about it beforehand. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding nothing like he had a moment before. “Are you all right?”
“Sure,” Hisoka said, and Tsuzuki wilted. That sounded sharper than I meant, Hisoka realized. “I’m fine. It-- you stopped.”
“Of course I did,” Tsuzuki said. He hesitated, feeling that the few feet between them was a terribly large distance to cross. “I always would.”
Hisoka nodded shakily. “I know,” he said. “Just-- just watch your hands next time.”
Tsuzuki started to apologize again, looking stricken. Then he paused. “Next time?”
I said that, didn’t I? Hisoka thought. I must have meant it. He moved forward, picking his chair up off the floor, until he was standing just in front of Tsuzuki. Keeping his eyes on Tsuzuki’s face, he picked up the dumpling and popped it into his own mouth. Tsuzuki’s lip trembled, his emotions twisting over each other as he tried to figure out what was going on. Hisoka reached up and put a shaky hand to his face, too gently to even pretend it was meant for a slap. Tsuzuki leaned his face into it, closing his eyes. “Next time,” Hisoka said.
It was later that night that Hisoka had the dream.
The dream was different from most-- blurry, indistinct, unconnected by narrative. It wasn’t terrifying, either, not even the sort of dull horror that shaped his calmer dreams. This one was warm and he could see Tsuzuki’s face lit by sunlight. Tsuzuki was smiling open-mouthed, his pupils huge and dark and very close to Hisoka. Hisoka could feel his breath on his own mouth and he could feel Tsuzuki’s body under his hands, warm and solid and full of movement. Their clothes had gone somewhere else and he was trying to say something, but he kept forgetting what it was. So instead he murmured Tsuzuki’s name, making the syllables into a kind of poetry, a mantra. Tsuzuki smiled at him, and nothing had ever felt better than that smile exploding through him.
Waking from the dream was odd, because it felt like he’d had a nightmare. His heart was racing, he was panting, but when he thought about it, he realized that he wasn’t afraid. He felt relaxed, somehow very satisfied. He also felt sticky.
Oh, Hisoka thought, squirming, one of those. He knew he’d had “wet dreams” before. He’d wake up to find himself stuck to the front of his pajamas, the sheet disgustingly crusted. It meant laundry that morning, a hassle and an inconvenience that he tried to get done with and forget as quickly as possible. He’d never remembered the dream before. I’m glad I didn’t, too, he thought. How weird.
Because he knew Tsuzuki wanted to do that, he spent a lot of time every day trying to ignore it, but he didn’t see how Tsuzuki’s emotions could be affecting him now. Surely Tsuzuki was out of range? He’d felt him go when he left that night, he’d felt him move further away than Hisoka could track. Maybe there was something about dreams that increased his empathic powers? But surely, that would have shown up before now. And he hadn’t felt Tsuzuki’s feelings in the dream. He’d only felt Tsuzuki. A shiver went through his body at the memory and he gasped, astonished by the sensation. This isn’t Tsuzuki, he thought, not right now.
Maybe it’s me.
Ridiculous, Hisoka thought sharply, sitting up and turning on the light. He bundled the sheets in the hamper, grabbed a spare pair of pajama bottoms, and went into the bathroom to wash off. What would make me want to do that?
Besides the fact that I’m in love with him? The thought was annoyingly persistent. Maybe I wasn’t just feeling his desire, all those times. Maybe I was feeling mine, too, and I just didn’t notice.
But I don’t ‘desire’ that, Hisoka thought, flipping on the light switch in the tiny white-tiled bathroom, and running a washcloth under cool water. I don’t want to let him hurt me, and I really don’t want to hurt him. But he’d let the images into his head with the thought, just when he’d started cleaning himself off, and he felt something. Something persistently physical, even after the release of the dream. Hisoka closed his eyes, just wanting to clean up and go back to sleep. That’s not me. That’s not actually me.
There’s no-one else here it could be.
Hisoka changed quickly, throwing the soiled pajama bottoms into the hamper and slamming the lid down over them. He sat on the couch, arms curled around his knees, staring out the window at dim lights among the trees. What’s wrong with me, that I want to let that happen? Am I really that sick, that there’s some part of me that likes pain? And fear, and degradation, and I can’t tell if it would be worse if I wanted to do that to him, or if I wanted to let him do that to me. The feelings were indistinct on that question-- they just seemed to want Tsuzuki. They wanted to touch him, really touch him, without having to be civilized about it. They wanted to be close to him, to smell his smell, to hear his voice soft and rough and wanting. I don’t have to be that, Hisoka thought. Just because I feel it, that doesn’t mean I have to follow through. Tsuzuki feels things he doesn’t act on all the time.
Hisoka breathed out a shaky sigh. All right, he thought. That’s true. I don’t have to do anything about this. I can just let it go, and do what we’ve always done. And then both of us can restrain ourselves. And we’ll be fine. So we don’t have to worry about that.
That’s settled, Hisoka thought, standing up. But he didn’t feel settled. He felt distinctly unsettled, and he didn’t know why. He went into the kitchenette and poured himself a cup of water, trying to concentrate on nothing except the cool weight on his tongue. Because it’ll get worse, he thought. The more I do with him. The more I touch him, the more I let him know how I feel, it gets worse. His-- my-- whoever’s feelings those are, they keep getting more intense, more frequent. I’d have to stop, if I really wanted to avoid this.
There was an instant howl of rejection from somewhere inside him. But I can’t, Hisoka thought. I can’t let this go on. How long will it be before one of us runs out of control? And then we’ll have to end the partnership, because I couldn’t stay with him after that. I hope he couldn’t stay with me. But part of him hoped he could, part of him could see them going on like that for years and part of him liked the vision. No, Hisoka thought, slamming the cup down on the counter. I’m not like that. I don’t have to be like that. When I said I’d get over Muraki, I didn’t mean by becoming him. No. Dammit, he should have known having Ajari Joan in his head like that would affect him for the worst. Maybe he should try exorcism.
Actually... Hisoka froze. That was it. Exorcism. He’d had a ghost in his head, and he hadn’t done anything about it at all? He’d thought he’d expelled Ajari with his last spell, but clearly he’d been wrong. Hadn’t the world been looking different for weeks since he’d gotten back? Had he really thought that that had nothing to do with the grasping ghost? “Idiot,” he cursed himself. Still-- at least he’d caught it in time to do something about it. He could do the spell this morning-- he glanced at the clock, which assured him that yes, it was morning. He’d exorcise these left-over feelings before they could do any real harm, and everything would go back to normal.
Resolved, Hisoka showered, dressed, and headed over to the Ju-oh-cho offices.
His footsteps got slower as he approached the offices and the basement level where Meifu employees went to practice spellcraft. Maybe he should wait for back-up, he thought, signing out the practice room, then dismissed the idea. Who would he tell? “Tsuzuki, I need your help-- I must still have the ghost in my head, because I keep thinking about--” No. It would just make things more complicated. He would be careful, and do one simple exorcism, and things would go back to the way they were. He ignored the protest in his mind at that idea. That was just one more piece of evidence that there was something still in him, something not right.
The practice room was simply that-- a bare room, its stone floor polished smooth by years of drawn and rubbed-out chalk lines. The walls were reinforced; the hundreds of overlapping scorch marks burned onto them showed why. Hisoka said a few words to activate the spell lighting the room and took candles out of the supply cabinet in the corner. All right, he thought to himself. I won’t try anything complicated.
He set the candles around himself in a pentacle and lit them. The words of the spell were a meditation in themselves, raising power around him, letting him channel it. Let me see what doesn’t belong here. Give me the power to cast it out!
Nothing. Hisoka panted in the flow of glowing power at the end of the chant, but it wasn’t working. He couldn’t see a thing out of place. That shouldn’t be, he thought, running over the words in his mind, checking that the circle was cast correctly. He could feel the energy swirling around him, but the ghost stayed hidden. Let me see the trespasser, he chanted, louder. Give me the power to cast him out!
Nothing. Hisoka tried again. And again, and again, starting to shake with exhaustion and frustration. These feelings, he shouted, throwing all his strength into the spell. These desires, these things that I don’t want. Get them out! Catch them, do away with them, destroy them! Now!
Hisoka screamed. The spell hurt-- he hadn’t realized how much it would hurt. It felt like being ripped in half. He was being torn to pieces, he couldn’t tell where he stopped, he couldn’t find his hands any more, he could just feel pain. Abstractly, he noticed the sounds of his own sobs, the writhing of his body on the floor, and he tried to pay attention to those because it might block the agony. So deep, he thought, I hadn’t known he got so deep. This feels like I’m ripping out my own heart. I can’t, I can’t do this. I have to. I can’t stop. He tried to pull himself together, to keep chanting, but all that came from his throat were screams. I can’t find the ghost, the thought screamed at him. I can’t see him anywhere. He’s not here. There’s no-one here but me. That couldn’t be, that wasn’t possible, but the spell was catching nothing. Only him. Only him, and he could feel himself coming apart...
Rating: R (explicit sexuality, profanity, description of rape)
Part: 2/5
Disclaimer: They are not mine at all. Alas.
Learn how to touch Tsuzuki was harder than he’d thought, Hisoka found. It wasn’t for lack of opportunity or will-- he just didn’t know how people touch each other. Tsuzuki, of course, touched him all the time-- tousling his hair, or putting a hand on his arm. It felt like he didn’t even think about it. That didn’t feel natural to Hisoka. He tried exactly once to tousle Tsuzuki’s hair and discovered that he had to reach up so high as to feel stretched and ridiculous. He could put his hand on Tsuzuki’s arm, but then how long did he leave it there? It all felt so tentative, even though Tsuzuki welcomed anything he cared to give. Hisoka hated feeling so uncertain about what he was doing. Kendo, at least, had set moves to practice until you got them smooth and skillful. Was there a manual for this?
He crept into the library one afternoon to find out. He felt exposed and out-of-place, though he was sure it would look to anyone else like he was just standing in front of the computer, searching the card catalog. The difficulty came when he tried to figure out what to type into the “subject” box of the search engine. He didn’t have a word for this. “Love,” maybe, but that brought up several thousand titles, and half of them were poetry. “Love and sexuality (400 titles)” was definitely not it, even less so than “Love and the samurai code (2 titles).” “Love and relationships” might be more promising, but most of the titles looked like they could easily have been cross-referenced with “pornography,” and he didn’t see why people had to make this so complicated. I just want to know how to do what he does, Hisoka thought. He makes it look so easy. How does he do that?
“Hisoka-san?” Hisoka jumped at the cheeping voice behind him. It was hard to be alert to the Guoshoushin, Hisoka had found to his dismay. For one thing, they could pop out of the air at any time, moving just as easily in three dimensions as most people did in two. For another, their sunny helpfulness didn’t follow them, but seemed to have soaked into the library, so that he sensed them the instant he walked in, and couldn’t track them afterwards. He choked. He could close the search window, but not subtly, not without raising suspicion. Besides, the little god was hovering behind Hisoka’s shoulder now, reading the screen. He gave a squawk. Hisoka thought about teleportation. “Ah,” the Guoshoushin said. “Hisoka-san, did you find everything you were looking for, or can I help you search?”
“Um,” Hisoka said. “Love and relationships (148 titles)” blinked back at him. “No, thank-you, Guoshoushin Younger. I’m fine.”
The Guoshoushin’s beaks were not made for smiling but they always managed somehow. “All right.” The librarian moved away, fussing with books on the next shelf.
Hisoka stared at the screen, humiliation writhing in his gut. He knows now, he thought. It’ll be all over the damn office. Not that I care about that, why should I? But this is private. It’s between me and Tsuzuki, it’s got nothing to do with anyone else, and I don’t want them thinking about us. I’ll hear them. And if I don’t even know what we’re doing, why should they get to? “Guoshoushin?”
“Yes?” The Guoshoushin turned cheerfully, radiating helpfulness.
“I,” Hisoka said. “Library searches are confidential, aren’t they?” It was the best he could come up with.
The Guoshoushin winked at him. “Of course they are.”
Hisoka glared, annoyed by the wink. “It’s for a case.”
“Oh?” The Guoshoushin took a minute to process that. “Sounds interesting.” He hovered in front of Hisoka, hands clasped in front of his belly. “Do you have any questions about it?”
He doesn’t believe me, Hisoka thought. I should leave now, before this gets any worse. But then he wouldn’t know anything and he needed to know... “How do people touch each other?” Hisoka blurted.
The Guoshoushin sweat-dropped. “Um...”
“Not like,” Hisoka snapped, and did not care to finish the sentence. “As friends. I need to know how friends act.” After this, he swore to himself, he wasn’t coming back into the library for a month. Maybe a year. Maybe a few decades.
The Guoshoushin mused, hand on beak, and Hisoka hoped he wasn’t wondering why Hisoka was looking up love if he wanted to know about friendship. “Hmmm,” the Guoshoushin said, bobbing up and down thoughtfully. “It depends on the person, Hisoka-san. Different people have different things that feel right to them. The real answer is whatever feels natural.”
”Nothing feels natural,” Hisoka said. “I don’t know what natural would feel like.”
The Guoshoushin was so intrigued that Hisoka could barely keep from hitting him. “Why not just try something and see what happens?”
“I did,” Hisoka ground out.
“Mmmm?” the Guoshoushin said, leaning in attentively. Hisoka said nothing. “Did something bad happen?”
“N... no,” Hisoka said. “Nothing.”
“Then why worry about it?” the Guoshoushin asked. “Try that again, and see if you get used to it. Do whatever you feel like doing.”
Hisoka waited. The Guoshoushin just kept beaming at him. “That’s it?” he said. “That’s all your advice?”
“Have fun,” the Guoshoushin said, giving him a big thumbs-up.
“Fun?” Hisoka said, not sure where that came into the matter.
The Guoshoushin winked, and punched him in the arm with a feathery paw, not hard enough to hurt. “Do your best, Hisoka-san!” Then the little god fluttered away, his work here done.
Hisoka left the library, walking the halls without seeing them. Fun, he thought, mystified. This wasn’t fun. This was strange and scary and sometimes shiveringly wonderful, but he wasn’t doing it for entertainment. It wasn’t some trivial little thing, some passing amusement. He wasn’t doing it for no reason. It mattered. He needed to let Tsuzuki know how he felt, because Tsuzuki felt so hopeless when he thought Hisoka didn’t care. Then he’d start to feel rotten about himself again because loving Hisoka uninvited became one more thing for him to feel guilty about. Hisoka hated Tsuzuki’s guilt with a passion and he wasn’t going to add to it, not when there was no reason to. So I have to let him know, he thought, and wondered why he didn’t just tell him.
He didn’t want to just tell him. That would be... embarrassing, he thought. How do you bring that up? ‘Here are your case files, and by the way, I love you’? And what would he say afterwards? No, Hisoka thought, that would be stupid. What he was doing worked better. Tsuzuki seemed happy with it, anyway, and that was what mattered. Besides, this was interesting. It gave him something to think about, something to look forward to when he woke up in the morning. He would keep doing this. He just had to figure out how. ‘Do whatever you feel like doing’ was horrible advice. He didn’t know what he felt like doing. How was he supposed to recognize it when the things he felt lately were like nothing he’d ever felt from the inside before? Where was he supposed to get a reference point? How was he supposed to know what felt right when he didn’t know how anything was supposed to feel?
His dilemma came out of an office down the hall, and spotted him immediately. “Hisoka!” Tsuzuki called, waving a piece of paper as he approached. Whatever had been irritating him the moment before vanished when he saw Hisoka. “Tatsumi said we can’t count lunch as an expense if we’re working in Meifu, so I told him he should talk to you about it, and he said that if you redo our budget for the month and write up an invoice for each time with a memo justifying it, he’d let us. You will, right?”
Hisoka punched him in the arm.
They blinked at each other for a moment, both equally startled. “Hisoka?” Tsuzuki complained, startled. “What was that for?”
Hisoka paused. ”I felt like it,” he said thoughtfully.
Tsuzuki punched him back, not as hard. “You hit too hard,” he said, but he didn’t feel like he minded. Hisoka shrugged. They went on together back to the office, arguing agreeably all the way.
Punching Tsuzuki, Hisoka found over the next few days, was remarkably satisfying. Much better than sighing or glaring or, at the times he hated most, blushing. It was easy. Tsuzuki would usually accept it as his due with a good-hearted whine. Sometimes he’d hit back, feeling playful, and Hisoka was left wondering what to do next. Hit him again, he decided one evening, because Tsuzuki deserved more than one punch for being that cheerful about stealing Hisoka’s dim-sum. (It didn’t matter that there were five more in the bowl, or that Hisoka was starting to feel full, or that he could always make more if he wanted them. It was the principle of the thing.) A hint of challenge glinted purple in Tsuzuki’s eye. He dipped his hand into his water glass, grabbed an ice-cube, and jumped, faster than Hisoka could see, to drop the ice down the back of Hisoka’s shirt. Hisoka yelped. “Idiot! What the hell are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Tsuzuki said, but he felt like he was laughing.
Hisoka shook the freezing chip out of the back of his shirt. “It’s not funny.”
“No?” Tsuzuki asked. “Sorry, Hisoka.” He didn’t sound very sorry, Hisoka thought. Which was a change, actually-- sometimes, it seemed like Tsuzuki apologized for breathing. Sometimes he actually did. This felt different, though. It was all part of the same thing-- the offense, the attack, the apology-- and that should have bothered Hisoka, because surely Tsuzuki spent too much time being hit and apologizing for it. But Tsuzuki felt so much more relaxed right now than he usually did. Playful. A game, Hisoka realized, startled. It’s a game. That’s what a game is. And I’ve been playing, too. “Hisoka?” Tsuzuki said, snapping him back to the moment.
“What?” Hisoka said, and stole Tsuzuki’s dim-sum.
“You--!” Tsuzuki snapped with a fine imitation of outrage, and went for him.
Fun, Hisoka thought quizzically as he fended off Tsuzuki’s attempts to take the dumpling back, fencing with a chopstick. Tsuzuki was grinning, intent on the food on Hisoka’s plate, and Hisoka could just barely hold him off. This might be fun. Right up to the point where Tsuzuki grabbed his wrist, trying to hold it down and reach over. Hisoka jerked away, knocking over his chair as he sprang to his feet. “Stop!”
Tsuzuki stopped instantly, a painful shock of recognition going through him. He knew exactly what he’d done, Hisoka felt, and was immediately sorry for not having thought about it beforehand. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding nothing like he had a moment before. “Are you all right?”
“Sure,” Hisoka said, and Tsuzuki wilted. That sounded sharper than I meant, Hisoka realized. “I’m fine. It-- you stopped.”
“Of course I did,” Tsuzuki said. He hesitated, feeling that the few feet between them was a terribly large distance to cross. “I always would.”
Hisoka nodded shakily. “I know,” he said. “Just-- just watch your hands next time.”
Tsuzuki started to apologize again, looking stricken. Then he paused. “Next time?”
I said that, didn’t I? Hisoka thought. I must have meant it. He moved forward, picking his chair up off the floor, until he was standing just in front of Tsuzuki. Keeping his eyes on Tsuzuki’s face, he picked up the dumpling and popped it into his own mouth. Tsuzuki’s lip trembled, his emotions twisting over each other as he tried to figure out what was going on. Hisoka reached up and put a shaky hand to his face, too gently to even pretend it was meant for a slap. Tsuzuki leaned his face into it, closing his eyes. “Next time,” Hisoka said.
It was later that night that Hisoka had the dream.
The dream was different from most-- blurry, indistinct, unconnected by narrative. It wasn’t terrifying, either, not even the sort of dull horror that shaped his calmer dreams. This one was warm and he could see Tsuzuki’s face lit by sunlight. Tsuzuki was smiling open-mouthed, his pupils huge and dark and very close to Hisoka. Hisoka could feel his breath on his own mouth and he could feel Tsuzuki’s body under his hands, warm and solid and full of movement. Their clothes had gone somewhere else and he was trying to say something, but he kept forgetting what it was. So instead he murmured Tsuzuki’s name, making the syllables into a kind of poetry, a mantra. Tsuzuki smiled at him, and nothing had ever felt better than that smile exploding through him.
Waking from the dream was odd, because it felt like he’d had a nightmare. His heart was racing, he was panting, but when he thought about it, he realized that he wasn’t afraid. He felt relaxed, somehow very satisfied. He also felt sticky.
Oh, Hisoka thought, squirming, one of those. He knew he’d had “wet dreams” before. He’d wake up to find himself stuck to the front of his pajamas, the sheet disgustingly crusted. It meant laundry that morning, a hassle and an inconvenience that he tried to get done with and forget as quickly as possible. He’d never remembered the dream before. I’m glad I didn’t, too, he thought. How weird.
Because he knew Tsuzuki wanted to do that, he spent a lot of time every day trying to ignore it, but he didn’t see how Tsuzuki’s emotions could be affecting him now. Surely Tsuzuki was out of range? He’d felt him go when he left that night, he’d felt him move further away than Hisoka could track. Maybe there was something about dreams that increased his empathic powers? But surely, that would have shown up before now. And he hadn’t felt Tsuzuki’s feelings in the dream. He’d only felt Tsuzuki. A shiver went through his body at the memory and he gasped, astonished by the sensation. This isn’t Tsuzuki, he thought, not right now.
Maybe it’s me.
Ridiculous, Hisoka thought sharply, sitting up and turning on the light. He bundled the sheets in the hamper, grabbed a spare pair of pajama bottoms, and went into the bathroom to wash off. What would make me want to do that?
Besides the fact that I’m in love with him? The thought was annoyingly persistent. Maybe I wasn’t just feeling his desire, all those times. Maybe I was feeling mine, too, and I just didn’t notice.
But I don’t ‘desire’ that, Hisoka thought, flipping on the light switch in the tiny white-tiled bathroom, and running a washcloth under cool water. I don’t want to let him hurt me, and I really don’t want to hurt him. But he’d let the images into his head with the thought, just when he’d started cleaning himself off, and he felt something. Something persistently physical, even after the release of the dream. Hisoka closed his eyes, just wanting to clean up and go back to sleep. That’s not me. That’s not actually me.
There’s no-one else here it could be.
Hisoka changed quickly, throwing the soiled pajama bottoms into the hamper and slamming the lid down over them. He sat on the couch, arms curled around his knees, staring out the window at dim lights among the trees. What’s wrong with me, that I want to let that happen? Am I really that sick, that there’s some part of me that likes pain? And fear, and degradation, and I can’t tell if it would be worse if I wanted to do that to him, or if I wanted to let him do that to me. The feelings were indistinct on that question-- they just seemed to want Tsuzuki. They wanted to touch him, really touch him, without having to be civilized about it. They wanted to be close to him, to smell his smell, to hear his voice soft and rough and wanting. I don’t have to be that, Hisoka thought. Just because I feel it, that doesn’t mean I have to follow through. Tsuzuki feels things he doesn’t act on all the time.
Hisoka breathed out a shaky sigh. All right, he thought. That’s true. I don’t have to do anything about this. I can just let it go, and do what we’ve always done. And then both of us can restrain ourselves. And we’ll be fine. So we don’t have to worry about that.
That’s settled, Hisoka thought, standing up. But he didn’t feel settled. He felt distinctly unsettled, and he didn’t know why. He went into the kitchenette and poured himself a cup of water, trying to concentrate on nothing except the cool weight on his tongue. Because it’ll get worse, he thought. The more I do with him. The more I touch him, the more I let him know how I feel, it gets worse. His-- my-- whoever’s feelings those are, they keep getting more intense, more frequent. I’d have to stop, if I really wanted to avoid this.
There was an instant howl of rejection from somewhere inside him. But I can’t, Hisoka thought. I can’t let this go on. How long will it be before one of us runs out of control? And then we’ll have to end the partnership, because I couldn’t stay with him after that. I hope he couldn’t stay with me. But part of him hoped he could, part of him could see them going on like that for years and part of him liked the vision. No, Hisoka thought, slamming the cup down on the counter. I’m not like that. I don’t have to be like that. When I said I’d get over Muraki, I didn’t mean by becoming him. No. Dammit, he should have known having Ajari Joan in his head like that would affect him for the worst. Maybe he should try exorcism.
Actually... Hisoka froze. That was it. Exorcism. He’d had a ghost in his head, and he hadn’t done anything about it at all? He’d thought he’d expelled Ajari with his last spell, but clearly he’d been wrong. Hadn’t the world been looking different for weeks since he’d gotten back? Had he really thought that that had nothing to do with the grasping ghost? “Idiot,” he cursed himself. Still-- at least he’d caught it in time to do something about it. He could do the spell this morning-- he glanced at the clock, which assured him that yes, it was morning. He’d exorcise these left-over feelings before they could do any real harm, and everything would go back to normal.
Resolved, Hisoka showered, dressed, and headed over to the Ju-oh-cho offices.
His footsteps got slower as he approached the offices and the basement level where Meifu employees went to practice spellcraft. Maybe he should wait for back-up, he thought, signing out the practice room, then dismissed the idea. Who would he tell? “Tsuzuki, I need your help-- I must still have the ghost in my head, because I keep thinking about--” No. It would just make things more complicated. He would be careful, and do one simple exorcism, and things would go back to the way they were. He ignored the protest in his mind at that idea. That was just one more piece of evidence that there was something still in him, something not right.
The practice room was simply that-- a bare room, its stone floor polished smooth by years of drawn and rubbed-out chalk lines. The walls were reinforced; the hundreds of overlapping scorch marks burned onto them showed why. Hisoka said a few words to activate the spell lighting the room and took candles out of the supply cabinet in the corner. All right, he thought to himself. I won’t try anything complicated.
He set the candles around himself in a pentacle and lit them. The words of the spell were a meditation in themselves, raising power around him, letting him channel it. Let me see what doesn’t belong here. Give me the power to cast it out!
Nothing. Hisoka panted in the flow of glowing power at the end of the chant, but it wasn’t working. He couldn’t see a thing out of place. That shouldn’t be, he thought, running over the words in his mind, checking that the circle was cast correctly. He could feel the energy swirling around him, but the ghost stayed hidden. Let me see the trespasser, he chanted, louder. Give me the power to cast him out!
Nothing. Hisoka tried again. And again, and again, starting to shake with exhaustion and frustration. These feelings, he shouted, throwing all his strength into the spell. These desires, these things that I don’t want. Get them out! Catch them, do away with them, destroy them! Now!
Hisoka screamed. The spell hurt-- he hadn’t realized how much it would hurt. It felt like being ripped in half. He was being torn to pieces, he couldn’t tell where he stopped, he couldn’t find his hands any more, he could just feel pain. Abstractly, he noticed the sounds of his own sobs, the writhing of his body on the floor, and he tried to pay attention to those because it might block the agony. So deep, he thought, I hadn’t known he got so deep. This feels like I’m ripping out my own heart. I can’t, I can’t do this. I have to. I can’t stop. He tried to pull himself together, to keep chanting, but all that came from his throat were screams. I can’t find the ghost, the thought screamed at him. I can’t see him anywhere. He’s not here. There’s no-one here but me. That couldn’t be, that wasn’t possible, but the spell was catching nothing. Only him. Only him, and he could feel himself coming apart...
