I'm not looking for the rest of your life
Feb. 8th, 2017 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kagekachouTitle: Holding On Underneath
Rating: G
Words: 7315
Summary: That time when death was temporarily permanent.
Warnings: death, suicide, YnM-typical angst
--
"On second thought," said Tatsumi, "I'll take that drink."
Dee grabbed a second tumbler and started pouring. "Tell me when."
"...that's good. Thank you."
With a grunt that was equal parts impressed and angry, Dee set the bottle down on the table between them and raised his own glass, which was maybe about half as full as Tatsumi's.
"Here's to Camp bein' actually the worst sometimes an' not just fucking obnoxious. An' to us gettin' through it."
Tatsumi nodded in agreement and swallowed back more than Dee would ever have expected. They didn't drink together often, especially considering their circumstances of being forcibly employed by the "summer camp" from hell, but on the occasions that they did, Tatsumi drank just the way that Dee would have expected him to: manly but refined, tending toward sake or wine, with the occasional glass of scotch that Tatsumi had finagled from who –knows-where. Certainly it wasn't taking shots of the Canadian Mist they kept in stock here at the Canadian embassy.
Then again, these weren't normal circumstances, even for Camp.
"Soooo..." Dee tilted his glass back and forth, struggling to push through the log-jam of questions that had been piling up at the back of his throat. "How... I mean, if you're already, y'know... dead, then shouldn't that actually make ya... safe or something? 'Cuz whatever is messin' with the Moogles an' stoppin' folks from resurrectin', it's just makin' death permanent, yeah? So shouldn't you just stay how you are?"
"The issue seems to be more deeply rooted. Death itself is reasserting itself – the Moogles no longer functioning is just a side effect of that. So my guess in my case is that... So, in order to inhabit the plane of the living, we have to be in physical, living bodies. The soul is taking precedence over the body, so the force that normally binds the two together is... hmm..."
Tatsumi took another drink.
"...and?" Dee prompted when a few moments had passed without response.
"...sorry. I was about to say that the force that normally binds the two together is fraying, but if that were the case, then logically, I'd just appear to drop dead. Maybe instead, the force is strengthening, which is dragging the body back..."
Dee nodded, even though it didn't really make sense. Then again, being told fifteen minutes ago that a guy you'd known for four years had been dead for decades didn't really make sense, either. Tatsumi seemed to be putting his mind to figuring out the current crisis, though, so he could at least be moral support for that. Although...
"Hold on a sec," said Dee. "Your co-workers... they're like you, yeah?"
Tatsumi nodded, an eyebrow raised in question.
"So what'd be the logic to them not... regressin' or whatever like you are?"
"They died somewhat differently than I did. Their bodies have lost their regenerative powers, but they wouldn't be connected to physical trauma in the same way mine was.... What?"
"Nothin', nothin', I just... well, how else're ya gonna die other than...?"
Tatsumi smirked with far more sass than an apparently dying man should. "Honestly, Laytner-san... I just told you that I'm dead. The rest is not my business to share, but surely a bit of the supernatural shouldn't be so hard to swallow. In the end," he sighed theatrically, "I'm afraid that I'm rather ordinary."
"Oh, no, don't you go pullin' that shit on... Tatsumi?!" He jumped to his feet as the other man's knuckles went white around his glass.
"Do you..." Several deep breaths. "Do you have a first aid kit here?"
"....yeah." Dee felt himself slip into professional mode, felt the cop take control of the situation. "I'll go grab it now, okay? You just stay here, I'll be back in a sec."
--
Shit had been going to hell, and Rikuou was going to the library. He'd just come from the mess hall, where bodies were continuing to pile up in the freezer, so the plan was to make the rounds of all of the main communal buildings, to keep on informing as many people as possible at a time. But as he turned the corner around the stacks in the alternate history section, he pulled up short at the familiar sight of Tatsumi's tall, broad-shouldered back with the unfamiliar detail of the left arm of his customary brown suit jacket dangling loose.
"Uh... Tatsumi-san, are you...?"
He turned around, revealing his left arm resting in a sling, and that bound up tightly against his body. "Ah, Himura-kun," Tatsumi said, as if he didn't also have a smear of blood at his hairline, "perfect timing. Could you please grab the stack of books that I have here and help me get them back to the cabin?"
"One, yes? Two, hold up and rewind. Three, what the hell?"
Tatsumi sighed and waves his free hand dismissively. "Walk and talk? I'd really much prefer to leave."
"...yeah. Yeah, okay, sure." Rikuou grabbed the small stack of old and, in his more-than-averagely informed opinion, possibly cursed looking books that were sitting on a table nearby. Not many, but more than could be carried one-handed. Which was... Tatsumi's current situation, apparently.
"So, uh..." he prompted as the two of them left the library.
"I'm hoping that there might be something in here to help with the current death situation that we have on our hands. The malfunctioning of the Moogles seems to be a side effect of whatever is happening, not the main event itself. There still isn't a sense for if this is emanating from Camp itself or if this is the work of an individual, and so particularly if the latter is the case-"
"Okay, right, I get it, the whole spirit detective thing is kinda your real job, but... What the hell? Like, I know that I'm always telling you to live a little, but given how death has actually become permanent here, I hereby retract all of my recommendations for you to get into trouble."
"You're many decades too late for that," he chided in a way that made Rikuou's pride bristle and gut twist.
"Listen, can you just-"
"Ah, we're here," Tatsumi interrupted, opening the door of his cabin and disappearing inside. Rikuou followed, kicking the door shut behind him.
"Okay," Rikuou said, dropping the books onto the table. "With all due respect for whatever is going on with you right now, what the hell is going on with you right now?"
Tatsumi was standing with his back to him again, pressing a handkerchief to the left side of his head. The white cloth came away with far more than a smear of blood on it. Rikuou's knuckles scraped against the table as his hand clenched into a fist.
"I've been being unfair," Tatsumi said abruptly. "The situation is..." He took a deep breath and sat on the edge of one of the beds, which was covered with some sort of plastic tarp. "Whatever powers resist death or restore life after death have been failing. That includes the body that I live in here, given the fact that I'm already dead."
Rikuou looked at the pile of research books as a relatively plausible excuse for looking away. "...so how many times have you had to explain to people that you're dying?" he asked finally.
"It's getting a little tiresome," Tatsumi admitted.
"Yeah. I don't blame you for getting sassy with me. Well. Sassier." He turned back to Tatsumi, and he could see blood seeping through the sling and bandages that held his left arm immobilized against his side. "Hey, is there... anything I can...?"
There wasn't an immediate response. Tatsumi looked like he was staring very hard at something located on the floor a couple feet in front of him. Rikuou squinted to see if he was missing something. A weird crinkly sound pulled his attention back to Tatsumi.
"Are you seriously pulling a self-Dexter?"
"I am not getting blood all over the bed." He was laying down, his left side toward the wall. "Actually, if you could...?"
"What?" Rikuou demanded, jumping to his feet.
"Find Kurosaki-kun and tell him not to come back here for a while. Ah... and if you find..."
"...Tatsumi-san?" He started over toward the bed. "Hey, are you still-"
He waved a hand at him to stop. "If you find Fuuma, just let him know that I'm here. I... think I was supposed to meet him at the library."
"Okay. Empath and boyfriend, because reasons. Are you sure that you'll...?"
"I'll be fine here. It's not like I'm going anywhere else."
"Sure." Simultaneous feelings of relief and unease dug at him. It felt wrong to leave, but it was so much easier to follow someone providing clear things to do. And was this really the moment to fight someone on what they said they wanted? There were some people, Rikuou knew, whom he'd fight to the very end, even against their own selves. But in this case... "Anything I can get you before I go?"
"No." A pause. "Thank you."
"Yeah, sure."
As he closed the cabin door behind him, the sound of the plastic rustling slipped out with him, and it hit him that he hadn't gotten any pushback on the boyfriend terminology. He headed straight for the library.
--
Fuuma knocked on the cabin door but didn't bother to wait for a response before going inside. It was a little dim, that late afternoon hour when you're just deciding to turn on the lights, and still enough that a quiet shifting noise caught his attention immediately.
"Hey," he said, walking over to the bed where Tatsumi was lying.
"Sorry for missing you at the library," Tatsumi said.
"It's all right. It took me a while to get back there, and I'm guessing you were finished up well before that. I ran into Rikuou, and he told me you'd already left."
Fuuma had been bracing himself for... he wasn't sure what, but Tatsumi didn't look all that different from when he'd seen him at the mess hall that morning. His left arm was in a sling and bound tightly to his side with bandages that wrapped his entire torso, which was new, but other than that, he appeared to be intact. As he perched on the edge of the bed, however, he also took in the half-removed suit jacket and loosened necktie, the ashy paleness of his skin and tense deliberation of his breathing.
"Can I touch you?" he asked, the memory of Tatsumi's wince when his hands had landed to heavily on his shoulders playing fresh in his mind. A smile ghosted across Tatsumi's face, and that lanced through his heart in a way that Fuume hadn't expected.
"From here over," said Tatsumi, drawing a bisecting line down the middle of his body and parting it to the right.
Fuuma gently squeezed Tatsumi's shoulder. "How are you doing?"
"Not as well as I'd like. But." He waved his hand toward the table on the other side of the room. "I think that I got a good start."
Fuuma's laugh sounded impressively non-hysterical to his own ears.
"You're a piece of work, you know?"
"Oh, like you wouldn't be being stubborn if our roles were reversed," Tatsumi scoffed, impending death evidently not impairing his ability to roll his eyes.
Fuuma chuckled, a little calmer this time, though it faded as he glanced down at Tatsumi's free hand, which was digging into the plastic-covered bed. When he sent an inquiring glance back to Tatsumi, the other man was giving him a hard stare.
"Will you do something for me?" Tatsumi asked, but not really. "Make sure that Kurosaki-kun doesn't come back here for a while? He went out a while ago and would probably be getting back soon, and I'd really rather he didn't run into..."
"I... can," Fuuma replied, frowning.
"Just convey my apologies and ask if he'll come back later. I'll be right here."
Fuuma laughed again. "You shouldn't be the one reassuring me."
"Well, just go do it, then."
He gave Tatsumi's hand a squeeze as he stood up. "Yes, sir. And then I'll be back."
There was a cool breeze outside. Fuuma closed his eyes as he leaned against the outside of the cabin with crossed arms. The fact that Tatsumi didn't want Hisoka around... He had appeared calm enough, calmer than other times when he hadn't tried to avoid his empathic co-worker, but the physical strain was probably doing a number on his mental shields. It didn't feel great to be sent away specifically because Tatsumi was feeling some sort of distress that he didn't want to expose others to, but knowing him, the idea of being some sort of burden to someone he felt responsible for only made things worse. At the very least, Fuuma could help to alleviate that.
A strange noise from inside the cabin suddenly grabbed Fuuma's attention. He froze, listening – then a dull thump and a muffled shout. Biting off a curse, he ran back to the door, throwing it open.
Tatsumi was a goddamn liar, Fuuma thought as he stared at the inside of the cabin that was empty, save for a wisp of dissipating shadow. Then, he took off running.
He couldn't have said how long it was before he found Tsuzuki behind a rotting barn far across the fields. The rush of air filling his lungs as he slowed to a stop almost made him a little lightheaded. The other man was standing next to a body-sized shape on the ground that was covered by one of the Camp-issued blankets. It looked like an image from some crime movie, Fuuma thought.
"Hey," he called as he walked over, not wanting to startle the other man.
"I just found him," Tsuzuki said, not looking up. He kneeled and lifted up a corner of the blanket, holding it as a screen between Fuuma and whatever it was Tsuzuki needed to see. Tsuzuki reached underneath, re-arranging something, then gently laid the blanket back down. His legs folded so that he was sitting on the ground next to the body, head resting in his hands. "This is payback, isn't it?" he murmured.
"Can I...?" Fuuma asked, not so much because he had any idea of what to offer but he felt like he had to remind Tsuzuki that he was there.
When Tsuzuki looked up, he was wearing a polite smile and a smear of blood on his face. "Could you please find someone to help move the body? There might be spare body bags in the mess hall. Or at least a couple more blankets from the cabin and some... rope or something."
Fuuma nodded, trying to push down a selfish and uneasy sense of insecurity at once again being sent away. He didn't realize until Tsuzuki shook his head that he'd taken a few steps toward the body.
"It's nothing I haven't seen before," Tsuzuki said quietly, "but... I don't think that he'd want you to."
He drew in a sharp breath and nodded again. 'Sloppy,' a detached, critical voice in his head commented, as he looked at the edges of the blanket that Tsuzuki had so neatly adjusted but which failed to conceal the gun peeking out from underneath. He wasn't sure if the voice sounded more like himself or Tatsumi, or even who it was aimed at.
"I'll be back," he said.
"I'll be right here," Tsuzuki said, to someone.
--
Sitting on the ground, his back against the barn wall and his knees pulled into his chest, the November winds were starting to make Tsuzuki shiver a little, but the idea of standing up and moving around seemed absurd nearly to the point of being unthinkable. He felt bad for sending Fuuma away, but he hadn't trusted him not to look. Maybe it wasn't his place, but Tsuzuki felt the urge to protect... both of them, he supposed. He might be shit at knowing how to help Tatsumi be happy, but he didn't think it was too presumptuous to say that, in general, he was at least better at it than Tatsumi was. And however ambivalent he might feel about it, he could sometimes even be good at his job.
It was true that he and Tatsumi had both seen each other in very bad states over the years, just as an occupational hazard. Being able to heal from almost any conceivable injury could make a person rather cavalier toward one's physical well-being. But it had been a little white lie to imply that he'd seen Tatsumi exactly like this. Unless the cause of death was subject to an investigation and, thus, a work issue, a person's death was generally treated as a private matter, up to an individual's own discretion. And while there had been a person or two with a morbid fascination over the years, even if someone was relatively open about their death, it wasn't exactly something they kept a photo album of. So no, Tsuzuki had known that Tatsumi had died of battlefield injuries, but he'd never actually seen what Tatsumi had looked like when he died.
And besides, that wasn't what had killed him this time.
Tsuzuki reached under the blanket again, pulling out the wadded up necktie that had almost broken his composure in front of Fuuma. It was still slightly damp, though no longer warm as it must have been. He traced this thumb over the surface of the silk, feeling the stretched fibers of what must be bite marks.
"...I'm so sorry," he whispered.
--
In the future, Tatsumi would drink poison to save a life he wanted to end. There was only one way to bring relief to the head of the Kurosaki family, he knew, but when he laid eyes on the gift delivered courtesy of the duplicitous brother, he also knew that this wasn't it. He could argue with Kurosaki Nagare about why the bottle was suspect, but talk was cheap. Better to show than tell. It would only hurt briefly, and then he would be back again. He couldn't have said how Watari or Kurosaki reacted, as all he saw was his own hand reaching for the bottle, and then: darkness.
By the time he reached his one-month anniversary starting as the chief's secretary, it was clear that Tatsumi was very good at his new job. As the decades passed, he was rarely out in the field and directly dealing with the deceased, but he knew all of the cases that his co-workers investigated. Once in a while, he would feel a slight pang, wishing that he had been there. And then he would scold himself, because what did he think he could say or do that would justify it? He was, certainly, better off as he was.
In the recent past, he watched the black flames roar to the sky and said this is fine, this what Tsuzuki had wanted for all these years and apparently now he was finally strong enough to let Tsuzuki take what he wanted. But then Watari was shaking him by the shoulders, and if he had punched him instead, he would have deserved it.
By the time he was a teenager, he hated the sound of crying, but he was seventeen years old when he'd come to hate silence even more. She'd told him that she was going to sleep, and that time, he said that he'd help.
In his months as a new field agent in the afterlife's judgment bureau, Tatsumi stopped being a man who had never begged for anything, and maybe this was all he would get and he should cut his losses now.
By the evening that he died, Tatsumi could not remember the last time he had watched the sun set because he was always busy with the numbers of yesterday's casualties.
If he could travel through time and say one thing to himself, it would be: "This isn't it."
--
It felt wrong to be sitting at Tatsumi's bedside, waiting for him to wake up, even if Tsuzuki wouldn't willingly be anywhere else at the moment. It made Tatsumi too vulnerable in a way that gave Tsuzuki a squirmy feeling in his gut. Fingers restlessly worrying with the edge of a sheet, he wondered if maybe he could sneak out the blood-stained bedding from underneath him and throw it away before Tatsumi found out – he'd absolutely refused to go along with that plastic tarp business that Tatsumi had been trying to pull – but he wasn't confident in his ability to do so without rolling Tatsumi onto the floor and, well. That wouldn't be any good, either.
The curse or fracture or whatever it had been had ended earlier that day, and Tsuzuki had yanked off the blanket covering Tatsumi's face the moment that he'd heard the news. Sure enough: whole again and breathing, if not yet conscious. Since then, he hadn't left his side, except to grab a snack from the mini-fridge when his stomach had started growling, even though he hadn't been aware of feeling hungry.
How many times had their positions been reversed? Opening his eyes after some incident at work, or otherwise, to see the same broad-shouldered silhouette in a chair next to him – sometimes doing paperwork, sometimes tapping away on his phone, sometimes nodding off, but most often, just watching him. Even during the years when they hadn't really been speaking, Tatsumi had still been there, and in the brief moment between awakening and Tatsumi lecturing him about how much trouble he'd caused, Tsuzuki had been able to pretend that Tatsumi didn't hate him.
(Once, maybe more than once, he'd kept his eyes closed for a few minutes after coming to, clinging to the dream of a tender touch to his face.)
Motion from the bed pulled Tsuzuki out of his memories. He inhaled sharply as his gaze snapped up to Tatsumi's eyes, not yet open but...
"Ah..." Tsuzuki jumped to his feet. "Glasses... glasses..."
As he scrambled about trying to remember where he'd set them down, the squirmy feeling began changing into a buzz in his brain. He needed to be calm! He needed to be strong! But how to be that for him? It felt almost like a sort of stage fright, being pushed in front of an audience in a role for which he was ill-prepared. Was there any other role he could play that would be suitable, though? But that wouldn't give him away as a fake?
He looked back to the bed and saw Tatsumi scrubbing a hand across his face. It was a familiar motion from him yet different from usual – instead of the weary frustrations at the end of the day, it was like the disorienting exposure of the morning, almost youthful rather than tired.
Tsuzuki's hand closed around the eyeglasses, which had been sitting on the table on top of a pile of library books.
"Good morning," he said, walking back over to the bed with a smile that he was pretty sure Tatsumi couldn't actually see right now.
"Is it?" he replied, voice a little rough, squinting toward the windows.
"Aah, no, not technically," Tsuzuki laughed, handing over the glasses. "But close enough if you're just waking up, right?"
"That's not how it works," he grumbled without any bite, a mannerism that Tsuzuki now recognized as the way that he'd been since he was a young man
"Maybe, maybe not." He smiled, taking a seat again and praying that Tatsumi wouldn't be able to tell that he was thinking about someone else. "How are you feeling?"
--
It's been a few hours since Tatsumi has woken up, but he's still in bed, exhausted by the whole "dying" thing.
"I know it's nothing compared to your own cooking," says Fuuma as he opens the cabin door with one hand and balances a few tupperware containers with the other, "but mess hall food is better than nothing, right?"
"I've made do with worse. The delivery service is nice, at least."
The passive-aggressive snark makes Fuuma smile more than it probably should. He grabs some napkins, then perches on the side of Tatsumi's bed with their mini-picnic.
"Sandwiches tonight. They were easy to pack, at least. I think they're ham. I hope they're ham," he jokes.
"I'm willing to take the risk."
They eat in silence, Tatsumi apparently as hungry as he is tired and Fuuma not feeling particularly chatty. Fuuma stacks the empty Tupperware containers and is about to go put them in the sink, but Tatsumi grips his wrist. Frowning, Fuuma pauses and sees the tension around Tatsumi's eyes, which are staring down at their hands. After a moment of nothing further, he settles back down on the bed.
"Tatsumi...?" he prompts.
He shakes his head but continues to stare in silence. Finally, almost a whisper: "I'm sorry."
"You're...?" Fuuma drops the food containers and turns so that he's fully kneeling on the bed with him, facing Tatsumi and taking a hold of his shoulder with his free hand. "What the hell are you sorry about?"
"For putting you, all of you, through that."
"That's... What happened affected everyone. Not just you."
He shakes his head again. "Not the... What I did. At the end."
"You mean when you lied to get me out of the cabin?" He doesn't bother trying to keep the displeasure out of his voice. It isn't a conversation he'd been planning on having immediately, but if Tatsumi wants to bring it up, he isn't going to back away. "Yeah, I can't say I really appreciated the whole self-sacrificing mission you put yourself on."
Tatsumi chokes out an unpleasant laugh and finally meets Fuuma's eyes. "That... was not..." He laughs again, letting go of Fuuma's wrist to cover his face. "That was... Do you know how I died? I was in the military, serving abroad, and got caught in an explosion when we were attacked. My left side was toward the blast, most of the impact around torso-level, pretty much took off my left arm, although the left side of my skull was fractured as well. It was quick, I hardly felt a thing." His shoulders slump, face still resting in his hand and voice growing quiet. "This was... not. Not quick. And I couldn't... It was too much for me to endure."
The all-too-stoppable rhythms of breath and heartbeat are loud in Fuuma's ears as Tatsumi's words leave a blank space in their wake. The first articulate thought to come to him is that it might be a good thing that Tatsumi's face is still covered, because the expression on his own is probably a little horrified and not particularly comforting. It isn't necessarily the physical details, he'd been able to extrapolate something along those lines, but...
He turns and pushes himself backwards so that they sit shoulder to shoulder, sliding his hand down to Tatsumi's, trying to give him something to hold other than his own head. He doesn't take it, so Fuuma stays stopped at his wrist, thumb tracing circles around bone.
"I know why you didn't say anything," he says, "because I know you. But still." He squeezes Tatsumi's wrist. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"I thought... that I could... that I'd be able to wait it out."
"And when you found that you couldn't, you sent me away?" He sighs and leans against him. "You could have asked, you know."
Fuuma nearly falls over as Tatsumi sharply twists to face him, slipping his grip to grab Fuuma's leg so bruisingly tight that he winces.
"I would never ask you that," Tatsumi insists, looking the most blazingly alive that he has since he'd woken. "I couldn't- I'd never ask for that."
These must be the sorts of things that keep people around after they die, Fuuma thinks, feelings as strong as these. He reaches to pry Tatsumi's hand loose because it honestly kind of hurts. Tatsumi looks down like he's just noticing what his hand is doing and releases him with a sort of detached bemusement.
"I won't expect you to, then," Fuuma says, threading their fingers together.
Slowly, unsteadily, Tatsumi settles back to resting against the head of the bed, though the tense energy hasn't yet dissipated. Fuuma feels a tug on his hand. He looks to Tatsumi for further direction, but all he gets is an unfocused stare into the middle distance, a furrowed brow. Raindrops start to tap against the windows as they again sit in silence. Well... what's the worst that could happen? He swings both legs up onto the bed and leans himself against Tatsumi's side. There's a moment where it's like coming up against a statue... but then Tatsumi's entire body exhales.
It seems to be the right answer for now.
--
"It's not really something I want to ask him," Rikuou said as he balanced his chair on its back legs, foot propped against the library table, "which I guess means I really know that it's none of my business? But like, I'm at the point where I feel like I need to know how to stay out of what's not my business, and I need more to go on than what I've got. And, shit, this is probably awkward for you, too."
Hisoka gave him a look over the top of the book he was reading that was simultaneously sympathetic and unimpressed. "I live with both of them. How much more awkward do you think that it gets?"
"Point." He let his chair tip forward with a clatter, leaning his elbows on the table. "So, uh... just tell me that it's private for whatever you need to but... I know the whole deal with you guys all being dead and working for some kind of afterlife government X-Files department. And I know that Tatsumi and Tsuzuki used to work together. And I don't need their whole story or anything but... I mean, you saw it, too, the whole 'oh here I am sitting on the ground with blood all over my face, talking to a dead body' thing. And... shit, just tell me to fuck off, but-"
"I don't blame you for being worried." Hisoka set down his book. "I think that any friend would be. Especially someone who all of that is new for."
"So, uh, what you're saying is that it's not..."
"I mean, it's not normal. But no, it's not new." He rested his chin in his hand and bit his lip.
Probably was weighing his friends' privacy against Rikuou's concern. Rikuou was perfectly fine with letting people reveal themselves as they chose. How well you knew someone, how much you could trust them, wasn't the sort of thing earned by facts or sending your baggage through a security scan. But sometimes things that had been non-issues suddenly became relevant, and now Rikuou felt like he had just learned that he was walking through a minefield thanks to watching someone blow themselves up. Not only that, but he'd pointed someone else in the same direction, not that it was his responsibility, not in any way, but-
"Fuuma will be fine," Hisoka interrupted him. "He won't let Tatsumi pull the usual crap on him, but he's patient, too."
"You sure you're not actually a telepath?"
"Yeah." The corner of Hisoka's mouth quirked into the flash of a dry smile before he grew thoughtful again. "Tatsumi has always had to play the role of supporter, even when he was alive. So he isn't very good at accepting help in general. But especially when it comes to people who are in pain... Tsuzuki was his first work partner, right after he died, so it was a long time ago. Like, decades. And back when they met, I know that Tsuzuki was a lot more... His struggles were a lot fresher then, and more open, so that's what Tatsumi was met with. And Tatsumi, too, was probably less... But because he couldn't ask for help, he just walled up everything to try to appear solid. So that's their history. We've all seen each other in some pretty bad states because of work injuries. But they've also- well, Tatsumi, at least, has been there when Tsuzuki wasn't well. It isn't really often that their positions are reversed."
"So... baggage."
"Yeah. Baggage."
"And it just... sits there?"
Hisoka raised an eyebrow. "You mean, does it bother me?"
Rikuou shrugged. "Not saying you have some soap opera love triangle going on. But it's a lot to... have around."
"All of us are here because we couldn't move on from something. None of us have room to talk."
"And Tatsumi can't move on from..."
Hisoka shook his head. "No. I mean, yes, obviously, but... I think Tatsumi-san sometimes forgets that he didn't meet Tsuzuki until after he died. That he isn't the reason he is where he is. That it's the other way around."
"...have you ever considered opening a therapy business?"
"Oh god, no."
Rikuou laughed at Hisoka's face and glanced at the clock on the wall. "Okay, they've had over an hour. It's probably safe for you to head back to the cabin at this point, if you want to."
"Worth a try, at least."
"If it's too much, offer to crash at our place tonight still stands."
"Appreciate it." Hisoka closed up his book and started putting on his coat. "And... thank you. For all of the help you've given us."
"Hey, no sweat. Honestly, I just hang around and give people boyfriends sometimes."
"I still can't believe that happened."
"If they ever get Camp-married, I call dibs on officiating."
That pulled a snicker out of Hisoka, which also wasn't half-bad work. Even as someone outside of their tight little circle, Rikuou had an inkling of how addictive it could be to try to capture those prizes: a laugh from Hisoka, a peaceful calm from Tsuzuki, a relaxing of Tatsumi's defenses. But that was just the bitch of life, wasn't it, always getting those glimpses of how things should be, like spotting that perfect person on a crowded subway platform but never catching up to them. Get too caught up in the chase and you miss your damn train.
"Come on," Hisoka called. "I don't think the rain will hold off for much longer."
Some random nobody hushed them, but neither of them paid them any mind as they headed out together.
--
Subject: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:10 AM
Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: Out of office RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:10 AM
Due to the ongoing camp effect, I will not be responding to e-mail until further notice. Please contact Kurosaki Hisoka with any immediate concerns.
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:18 AM
Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:31 AM
Did you seriously have an out of the office message
But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that not much going on things are normal now
>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much better, thank you. I haven't
>gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
>
> Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:48 AM
It got the point across.
Glad to hear it.
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>
>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall yesterday when a bunch of
>folks woke up in the freezer but other than that not much going on things are normal now
>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much better, thank you. I haven't
>>gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:52 AM
Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO YOU THAN THAT
>It got the point across.
>
>Glad to hear it.
>
> Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>
>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much
>>>better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though.
>>>Are all of your people all right?
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>>
>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:59 AM
-
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>
>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you
>and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>
>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO YOU
>THAN THAT
>>It got the point across.
>>
>>Glad to hear it.
>> Thank you,
>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>
>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much
>>>>better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though.
>>>>Are all of your people all right?
>>>> Thank you,
>>>>
>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Tatsumi Seiichirou
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 12:03 PM
jfc your also such a dick
But for real, we've got the whole meal taken care of, no need to bring anything. I need someone to help me finish drinking all this Canadian Mist.
>-
>
>Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>>
>>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you and
>>your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>>
>>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO YOU
>>THAN THAT
>>>It got the point across.
>>>
>>>Glad to hear it.
>>>Thank you,
>>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>>
>>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much
>>>>>better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though.
>>>>>Are all of your people all right?
>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>>
>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 12:05 PM
It is very much appreciated. I'll talk to the others (he's not my boyfriend) and let you know.
Also, I would sooner die a third time. I'll bring a bottle of Hakushu if you feel like not stripping your insides with cheap paint thinner.
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
>jfc your also such a dick
>
>But for real, we've got the whole meal taken care of, no need to bring anything.
>I need someone to help me finish drinking all this Canadian Mist.
>>-
>>
>>Thank you,
>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>>>
>>>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you
>>>and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>>>
>>>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO
>>>YOU THAN THAT
>>>>It got the point across.
>>>>
>>>>Glad to hear it.
>>>>Thank you,
>>>>
>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>>>
>>>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>>>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>>>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling
>>>>>>much better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet,
>>>>>>though. Are all of your people all right?
>>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Layter
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 12:08 PM
LOL never change my friend
>It is very much appreciated. I'll talk to the others (he's not my boyfriend) and let
>you know.
>
>Also, I would sooner die a third time. I'll bring a bottle of Hakushu if you feel
>like not stripping your insides with cheap paint thinner.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>>jfc your also such a dick
>>
>>But for real, we've got the whole meal taken care of, no need to bring anything.
>>I need someone to help me finish drinking all this Canadian Mist.
>>>-
>>>
>>>Thank you,
>>>
>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>>>>
>>>>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you
>>>>and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>>>>
>>>>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO
>>>>YOU THAN THAT
>>>>>It got the point across.
>>>>>
>>>>>Glad to hear it.
>>>>>Thank you,
>>>>>
>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>>>>
>>>>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess
>>>>>>hall yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other
>>>>>>than that not much going on things are normal now
>>>>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling
>>>>>>>much better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large
>>>>>>>yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
>>>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
Rating: G
Words: 7315
Summary: That time when death was temporarily permanent.
Warnings: death, suicide, YnM-typical angst
--
"On second thought," said Tatsumi, "I'll take that drink."
Dee grabbed a second tumbler and started pouring. "Tell me when."
"...that's good. Thank you."
With a grunt that was equal parts impressed and angry, Dee set the bottle down on the table between them and raised his own glass, which was maybe about half as full as Tatsumi's.
"Here's to Camp bein' actually the worst sometimes an' not just fucking obnoxious. An' to us gettin' through it."
Tatsumi nodded in agreement and swallowed back more than Dee would ever have expected. They didn't drink together often, especially considering their circumstances of being forcibly employed by the "summer camp" from hell, but on the occasions that they did, Tatsumi drank just the way that Dee would have expected him to: manly but refined, tending toward sake or wine, with the occasional glass of scotch that Tatsumi had finagled from who –knows-where. Certainly it wasn't taking shots of the Canadian Mist they kept in stock here at the Canadian embassy.
Then again, these weren't normal circumstances, even for Camp.
"Soooo..." Dee tilted his glass back and forth, struggling to push through the log-jam of questions that had been piling up at the back of his throat. "How... I mean, if you're already, y'know... dead, then shouldn't that actually make ya... safe or something? 'Cuz whatever is messin' with the Moogles an' stoppin' folks from resurrectin', it's just makin' death permanent, yeah? So shouldn't you just stay how you are?"
"The issue seems to be more deeply rooted. Death itself is reasserting itself – the Moogles no longer functioning is just a side effect of that. So my guess in my case is that... So, in order to inhabit the plane of the living, we have to be in physical, living bodies. The soul is taking precedence over the body, so the force that normally binds the two together is... hmm..."
Tatsumi took another drink.
"...and?" Dee prompted when a few moments had passed without response.
"...sorry. I was about to say that the force that normally binds the two together is fraying, but if that were the case, then logically, I'd just appear to drop dead. Maybe instead, the force is strengthening, which is dragging the body back..."
Dee nodded, even though it didn't really make sense. Then again, being told fifteen minutes ago that a guy you'd known for four years had been dead for decades didn't really make sense, either. Tatsumi seemed to be putting his mind to figuring out the current crisis, though, so he could at least be moral support for that. Although...
"Hold on a sec," said Dee. "Your co-workers... they're like you, yeah?"
Tatsumi nodded, an eyebrow raised in question.
"So what'd be the logic to them not... regressin' or whatever like you are?"
"They died somewhat differently than I did. Their bodies have lost their regenerative powers, but they wouldn't be connected to physical trauma in the same way mine was.... What?"
"Nothin', nothin', I just... well, how else're ya gonna die other than...?"
Tatsumi smirked with far more sass than an apparently dying man should. "Honestly, Laytner-san... I just told you that I'm dead. The rest is not my business to share, but surely a bit of the supernatural shouldn't be so hard to swallow. In the end," he sighed theatrically, "I'm afraid that I'm rather ordinary."
"Oh, no, don't you go pullin' that shit on... Tatsumi?!" He jumped to his feet as the other man's knuckles went white around his glass.
"Do you..." Several deep breaths. "Do you have a first aid kit here?"
"....yeah." Dee felt himself slip into professional mode, felt the cop take control of the situation. "I'll go grab it now, okay? You just stay here, I'll be back in a sec."
--
Shit had been going to hell, and Rikuou was going to the library. He'd just come from the mess hall, where bodies were continuing to pile up in the freezer, so the plan was to make the rounds of all of the main communal buildings, to keep on informing as many people as possible at a time. But as he turned the corner around the stacks in the alternate history section, he pulled up short at the familiar sight of Tatsumi's tall, broad-shouldered back with the unfamiliar detail of the left arm of his customary brown suit jacket dangling loose.
"Uh... Tatsumi-san, are you...?"
He turned around, revealing his left arm resting in a sling, and that bound up tightly against his body. "Ah, Himura-kun," Tatsumi said, as if he didn't also have a smear of blood at his hairline, "perfect timing. Could you please grab the stack of books that I have here and help me get them back to the cabin?"
"One, yes? Two, hold up and rewind. Three, what the hell?"
Tatsumi sighed and waves his free hand dismissively. "Walk and talk? I'd really much prefer to leave."
"...yeah. Yeah, okay, sure." Rikuou grabbed the small stack of old and, in his more-than-averagely informed opinion, possibly cursed looking books that were sitting on a table nearby. Not many, but more than could be carried one-handed. Which was... Tatsumi's current situation, apparently.
"So, uh..." he prompted as the two of them left the library.
"I'm hoping that there might be something in here to help with the current death situation that we have on our hands. The malfunctioning of the Moogles seems to be a side effect of whatever is happening, not the main event itself. There still isn't a sense for if this is emanating from Camp itself or if this is the work of an individual, and so particularly if the latter is the case-"
"Okay, right, I get it, the whole spirit detective thing is kinda your real job, but... What the hell? Like, I know that I'm always telling you to live a little, but given how death has actually become permanent here, I hereby retract all of my recommendations for you to get into trouble."
"You're many decades too late for that," he chided in a way that made Rikuou's pride bristle and gut twist.
"Listen, can you just-"
"Ah, we're here," Tatsumi interrupted, opening the door of his cabin and disappearing inside. Rikuou followed, kicking the door shut behind him.
"Okay," Rikuou said, dropping the books onto the table. "With all due respect for whatever is going on with you right now, what the hell is going on with you right now?"
Tatsumi was standing with his back to him again, pressing a handkerchief to the left side of his head. The white cloth came away with far more than a smear of blood on it. Rikuou's knuckles scraped against the table as his hand clenched into a fist.
"I've been being unfair," Tatsumi said abruptly. "The situation is..." He took a deep breath and sat on the edge of one of the beds, which was covered with some sort of plastic tarp. "Whatever powers resist death or restore life after death have been failing. That includes the body that I live in here, given the fact that I'm already dead."
Rikuou looked at the pile of research books as a relatively plausible excuse for looking away. "...so how many times have you had to explain to people that you're dying?" he asked finally.
"It's getting a little tiresome," Tatsumi admitted.
"Yeah. I don't blame you for getting sassy with me. Well. Sassier." He turned back to Tatsumi, and he could see blood seeping through the sling and bandages that held his left arm immobilized against his side. "Hey, is there... anything I can...?"
There wasn't an immediate response. Tatsumi looked like he was staring very hard at something located on the floor a couple feet in front of him. Rikuou squinted to see if he was missing something. A weird crinkly sound pulled his attention back to Tatsumi.
"Are you seriously pulling a self-Dexter?"
"I am not getting blood all over the bed." He was laying down, his left side toward the wall. "Actually, if you could...?"
"What?" Rikuou demanded, jumping to his feet.
"Find Kurosaki-kun and tell him not to come back here for a while. Ah... and if you find..."
"...Tatsumi-san?" He started over toward the bed. "Hey, are you still-"
He waved a hand at him to stop. "If you find Fuuma, just let him know that I'm here. I... think I was supposed to meet him at the library."
"Okay. Empath and boyfriend, because reasons. Are you sure that you'll...?"
"I'll be fine here. It's not like I'm going anywhere else."
"Sure." Simultaneous feelings of relief and unease dug at him. It felt wrong to leave, but it was so much easier to follow someone providing clear things to do. And was this really the moment to fight someone on what they said they wanted? There were some people, Rikuou knew, whom he'd fight to the very end, even against their own selves. But in this case... "Anything I can get you before I go?"
"No." A pause. "Thank you."
"Yeah, sure."
As he closed the cabin door behind him, the sound of the plastic rustling slipped out with him, and it hit him that he hadn't gotten any pushback on the boyfriend terminology. He headed straight for the library.
--
Fuuma knocked on the cabin door but didn't bother to wait for a response before going inside. It was a little dim, that late afternoon hour when you're just deciding to turn on the lights, and still enough that a quiet shifting noise caught his attention immediately.
"Hey," he said, walking over to the bed where Tatsumi was lying.
"Sorry for missing you at the library," Tatsumi said.
"It's all right. It took me a while to get back there, and I'm guessing you were finished up well before that. I ran into Rikuou, and he told me you'd already left."
Fuuma had been bracing himself for... he wasn't sure what, but Tatsumi didn't look all that different from when he'd seen him at the mess hall that morning. His left arm was in a sling and bound tightly to his side with bandages that wrapped his entire torso, which was new, but other than that, he appeared to be intact. As he perched on the edge of the bed, however, he also took in the half-removed suit jacket and loosened necktie, the ashy paleness of his skin and tense deliberation of his breathing.
"Can I touch you?" he asked, the memory of Tatsumi's wince when his hands had landed to heavily on his shoulders playing fresh in his mind. A smile ghosted across Tatsumi's face, and that lanced through his heart in a way that Fuume hadn't expected.
"From here over," said Tatsumi, drawing a bisecting line down the middle of his body and parting it to the right.
Fuuma gently squeezed Tatsumi's shoulder. "How are you doing?"
"Not as well as I'd like. But." He waved his hand toward the table on the other side of the room. "I think that I got a good start."
Fuuma's laugh sounded impressively non-hysterical to his own ears.
"You're a piece of work, you know?"
"Oh, like you wouldn't be being stubborn if our roles were reversed," Tatsumi scoffed, impending death evidently not impairing his ability to roll his eyes.
Fuuma chuckled, a little calmer this time, though it faded as he glanced down at Tatsumi's free hand, which was digging into the plastic-covered bed. When he sent an inquiring glance back to Tatsumi, the other man was giving him a hard stare.
"Will you do something for me?" Tatsumi asked, but not really. "Make sure that Kurosaki-kun doesn't come back here for a while? He went out a while ago and would probably be getting back soon, and I'd really rather he didn't run into..."
"I... can," Fuuma replied, frowning.
"Just convey my apologies and ask if he'll come back later. I'll be right here."
Fuuma laughed again. "You shouldn't be the one reassuring me."
"Well, just go do it, then."
He gave Tatsumi's hand a squeeze as he stood up. "Yes, sir. And then I'll be back."
There was a cool breeze outside. Fuuma closed his eyes as he leaned against the outside of the cabin with crossed arms. The fact that Tatsumi didn't want Hisoka around... He had appeared calm enough, calmer than other times when he hadn't tried to avoid his empathic co-worker, but the physical strain was probably doing a number on his mental shields. It didn't feel great to be sent away specifically because Tatsumi was feeling some sort of distress that he didn't want to expose others to, but knowing him, the idea of being some sort of burden to someone he felt responsible for only made things worse. At the very least, Fuuma could help to alleviate that.
A strange noise from inside the cabin suddenly grabbed Fuuma's attention. He froze, listening – then a dull thump and a muffled shout. Biting off a curse, he ran back to the door, throwing it open.
Tatsumi was a goddamn liar, Fuuma thought as he stared at the inside of the cabin that was empty, save for a wisp of dissipating shadow. Then, he took off running.
He couldn't have said how long it was before he found Tsuzuki behind a rotting barn far across the fields. The rush of air filling his lungs as he slowed to a stop almost made him a little lightheaded. The other man was standing next to a body-sized shape on the ground that was covered by one of the Camp-issued blankets. It looked like an image from some crime movie, Fuuma thought.
"Hey," he called as he walked over, not wanting to startle the other man.
"I just found him," Tsuzuki said, not looking up. He kneeled and lifted up a corner of the blanket, holding it as a screen between Fuuma and whatever it was Tsuzuki needed to see. Tsuzuki reached underneath, re-arranging something, then gently laid the blanket back down. His legs folded so that he was sitting on the ground next to the body, head resting in his hands. "This is payback, isn't it?" he murmured.
"Can I...?" Fuuma asked, not so much because he had any idea of what to offer but he felt like he had to remind Tsuzuki that he was there.
When Tsuzuki looked up, he was wearing a polite smile and a smear of blood on his face. "Could you please find someone to help move the body? There might be spare body bags in the mess hall. Or at least a couple more blankets from the cabin and some... rope or something."
Fuuma nodded, trying to push down a selfish and uneasy sense of insecurity at once again being sent away. He didn't realize until Tsuzuki shook his head that he'd taken a few steps toward the body.
"It's nothing I haven't seen before," Tsuzuki said quietly, "but... I don't think that he'd want you to."
He drew in a sharp breath and nodded again. 'Sloppy,' a detached, critical voice in his head commented, as he looked at the edges of the blanket that Tsuzuki had so neatly adjusted but which failed to conceal the gun peeking out from underneath. He wasn't sure if the voice sounded more like himself or Tatsumi, or even who it was aimed at.
"I'll be back," he said.
"I'll be right here," Tsuzuki said, to someone.
--
Sitting on the ground, his back against the barn wall and his knees pulled into his chest, the November winds were starting to make Tsuzuki shiver a little, but the idea of standing up and moving around seemed absurd nearly to the point of being unthinkable. He felt bad for sending Fuuma away, but he hadn't trusted him not to look. Maybe it wasn't his place, but Tsuzuki felt the urge to protect... both of them, he supposed. He might be shit at knowing how to help Tatsumi be happy, but he didn't think it was too presumptuous to say that, in general, he was at least better at it than Tatsumi was. And however ambivalent he might feel about it, he could sometimes even be good at his job.
It was true that he and Tatsumi had both seen each other in very bad states over the years, just as an occupational hazard. Being able to heal from almost any conceivable injury could make a person rather cavalier toward one's physical well-being. But it had been a little white lie to imply that he'd seen Tatsumi exactly like this. Unless the cause of death was subject to an investigation and, thus, a work issue, a person's death was generally treated as a private matter, up to an individual's own discretion. And while there had been a person or two with a morbid fascination over the years, even if someone was relatively open about their death, it wasn't exactly something they kept a photo album of. So no, Tsuzuki had known that Tatsumi had died of battlefield injuries, but he'd never actually seen what Tatsumi had looked like when he died.
And besides, that wasn't what had killed him this time.
Tsuzuki reached under the blanket again, pulling out the wadded up necktie that had almost broken his composure in front of Fuuma. It was still slightly damp, though no longer warm as it must have been. He traced this thumb over the surface of the silk, feeling the stretched fibers of what must be bite marks.
"...I'm so sorry," he whispered.
--
In the future, Tatsumi would drink poison to save a life he wanted to end. There was only one way to bring relief to the head of the Kurosaki family, he knew, but when he laid eyes on the gift delivered courtesy of the duplicitous brother, he also knew that this wasn't it. He could argue with Kurosaki Nagare about why the bottle was suspect, but talk was cheap. Better to show than tell. It would only hurt briefly, and then he would be back again. He couldn't have said how Watari or Kurosaki reacted, as all he saw was his own hand reaching for the bottle, and then: darkness.
By the time he reached his one-month anniversary starting as the chief's secretary, it was clear that Tatsumi was very good at his new job. As the decades passed, he was rarely out in the field and directly dealing with the deceased, but he knew all of the cases that his co-workers investigated. Once in a while, he would feel a slight pang, wishing that he had been there. And then he would scold himself, because what did he think he could say or do that would justify it? He was, certainly, better off as he was.
In the recent past, he watched the black flames roar to the sky and said this is fine, this what Tsuzuki had wanted for all these years and apparently now he was finally strong enough to let Tsuzuki take what he wanted. But then Watari was shaking him by the shoulders, and if he had punched him instead, he would have deserved it.
By the time he was a teenager, he hated the sound of crying, but he was seventeen years old when he'd come to hate silence even more. She'd told him that she was going to sleep, and that time, he said that he'd help.
In his months as a new field agent in the afterlife's judgment bureau, Tatsumi stopped being a man who had never begged for anything, and maybe this was all he would get and he should cut his losses now.
By the evening that he died, Tatsumi could not remember the last time he had watched the sun set because he was always busy with the numbers of yesterday's casualties.
If he could travel through time and say one thing to himself, it would be: "This isn't it."
--
It felt wrong to be sitting at Tatsumi's bedside, waiting for him to wake up, even if Tsuzuki wouldn't willingly be anywhere else at the moment. It made Tatsumi too vulnerable in a way that gave Tsuzuki a squirmy feeling in his gut. Fingers restlessly worrying with the edge of a sheet, he wondered if maybe he could sneak out the blood-stained bedding from underneath him and throw it away before Tatsumi found out – he'd absolutely refused to go along with that plastic tarp business that Tatsumi had been trying to pull – but he wasn't confident in his ability to do so without rolling Tatsumi onto the floor and, well. That wouldn't be any good, either.
The curse or fracture or whatever it had been had ended earlier that day, and Tsuzuki had yanked off the blanket covering Tatsumi's face the moment that he'd heard the news. Sure enough: whole again and breathing, if not yet conscious. Since then, he hadn't left his side, except to grab a snack from the mini-fridge when his stomach had started growling, even though he hadn't been aware of feeling hungry.
How many times had their positions been reversed? Opening his eyes after some incident at work, or otherwise, to see the same broad-shouldered silhouette in a chair next to him – sometimes doing paperwork, sometimes tapping away on his phone, sometimes nodding off, but most often, just watching him. Even during the years when they hadn't really been speaking, Tatsumi had still been there, and in the brief moment between awakening and Tatsumi lecturing him about how much trouble he'd caused, Tsuzuki had been able to pretend that Tatsumi didn't hate him.
(Once, maybe more than once, he'd kept his eyes closed for a few minutes after coming to, clinging to the dream of a tender touch to his face.)
Motion from the bed pulled Tsuzuki out of his memories. He inhaled sharply as his gaze snapped up to Tatsumi's eyes, not yet open but...
"Ah..." Tsuzuki jumped to his feet. "Glasses... glasses..."
As he scrambled about trying to remember where he'd set them down, the squirmy feeling began changing into a buzz in his brain. He needed to be calm! He needed to be strong! But how to be that for him? It felt almost like a sort of stage fright, being pushed in front of an audience in a role for which he was ill-prepared. Was there any other role he could play that would be suitable, though? But that wouldn't give him away as a fake?
He looked back to the bed and saw Tatsumi scrubbing a hand across his face. It was a familiar motion from him yet different from usual – instead of the weary frustrations at the end of the day, it was like the disorienting exposure of the morning, almost youthful rather than tired.
Tsuzuki's hand closed around the eyeglasses, which had been sitting on the table on top of a pile of library books.
"Good morning," he said, walking back over to the bed with a smile that he was pretty sure Tatsumi couldn't actually see right now.
"Is it?" he replied, voice a little rough, squinting toward the windows.
"Aah, no, not technically," Tsuzuki laughed, handing over the glasses. "But close enough if you're just waking up, right?"
"That's not how it works," he grumbled without any bite, a mannerism that Tsuzuki now recognized as the way that he'd been since he was a young man
"Maybe, maybe not." He smiled, taking a seat again and praying that Tatsumi wouldn't be able to tell that he was thinking about someone else. "How are you feeling?"
--
It's been a few hours since Tatsumi has woken up, but he's still in bed, exhausted by the whole "dying" thing.
"I know it's nothing compared to your own cooking," says Fuuma as he opens the cabin door with one hand and balances a few tupperware containers with the other, "but mess hall food is better than nothing, right?"
"I've made do with worse. The delivery service is nice, at least."
The passive-aggressive snark makes Fuuma smile more than it probably should. He grabs some napkins, then perches on the side of Tatsumi's bed with their mini-picnic.
"Sandwiches tonight. They were easy to pack, at least. I think they're ham. I hope they're ham," he jokes.
"I'm willing to take the risk."
They eat in silence, Tatsumi apparently as hungry as he is tired and Fuuma not feeling particularly chatty. Fuuma stacks the empty Tupperware containers and is about to go put them in the sink, but Tatsumi grips his wrist. Frowning, Fuuma pauses and sees the tension around Tatsumi's eyes, which are staring down at their hands. After a moment of nothing further, he settles back down on the bed.
"Tatsumi...?" he prompts.
He shakes his head but continues to stare in silence. Finally, almost a whisper: "I'm sorry."
"You're...?" Fuuma drops the food containers and turns so that he's fully kneeling on the bed with him, facing Tatsumi and taking a hold of his shoulder with his free hand. "What the hell are you sorry about?"
"For putting you, all of you, through that."
"That's... What happened affected everyone. Not just you."
He shakes his head again. "Not the... What I did. At the end."
"You mean when you lied to get me out of the cabin?" He doesn't bother trying to keep the displeasure out of his voice. It isn't a conversation he'd been planning on having immediately, but if Tatsumi wants to bring it up, he isn't going to back away. "Yeah, I can't say I really appreciated the whole self-sacrificing mission you put yourself on."
Tatsumi chokes out an unpleasant laugh and finally meets Fuuma's eyes. "That... was not..." He laughs again, letting go of Fuuma's wrist to cover his face. "That was... Do you know how I died? I was in the military, serving abroad, and got caught in an explosion when we were attacked. My left side was toward the blast, most of the impact around torso-level, pretty much took off my left arm, although the left side of my skull was fractured as well. It was quick, I hardly felt a thing." His shoulders slump, face still resting in his hand and voice growing quiet. "This was... not. Not quick. And I couldn't... It was too much for me to endure."
The all-too-stoppable rhythms of breath and heartbeat are loud in Fuuma's ears as Tatsumi's words leave a blank space in their wake. The first articulate thought to come to him is that it might be a good thing that Tatsumi's face is still covered, because the expression on his own is probably a little horrified and not particularly comforting. It isn't necessarily the physical details, he'd been able to extrapolate something along those lines, but...
He turns and pushes himself backwards so that they sit shoulder to shoulder, sliding his hand down to Tatsumi's, trying to give him something to hold other than his own head. He doesn't take it, so Fuuma stays stopped at his wrist, thumb tracing circles around bone.
"I know why you didn't say anything," he says, "because I know you. But still." He squeezes Tatsumi's wrist. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"I thought... that I could... that I'd be able to wait it out."
"And when you found that you couldn't, you sent me away?" He sighs and leans against him. "You could have asked, you know."
Fuuma nearly falls over as Tatsumi sharply twists to face him, slipping his grip to grab Fuuma's leg so bruisingly tight that he winces.
"I would never ask you that," Tatsumi insists, looking the most blazingly alive that he has since he'd woken. "I couldn't- I'd never ask for that."
These must be the sorts of things that keep people around after they die, Fuuma thinks, feelings as strong as these. He reaches to pry Tatsumi's hand loose because it honestly kind of hurts. Tatsumi looks down like he's just noticing what his hand is doing and releases him with a sort of detached bemusement.
"I won't expect you to, then," Fuuma says, threading their fingers together.
Slowly, unsteadily, Tatsumi settles back to resting against the head of the bed, though the tense energy hasn't yet dissipated. Fuuma feels a tug on his hand. He looks to Tatsumi for further direction, but all he gets is an unfocused stare into the middle distance, a furrowed brow. Raindrops start to tap against the windows as they again sit in silence. Well... what's the worst that could happen? He swings both legs up onto the bed and leans himself against Tatsumi's side. There's a moment where it's like coming up against a statue... but then Tatsumi's entire body exhales.
It seems to be the right answer for now.
--
"It's not really something I want to ask him," Rikuou said as he balanced his chair on its back legs, foot propped against the library table, "which I guess means I really know that it's none of my business? But like, I'm at the point where I feel like I need to know how to stay out of what's not my business, and I need more to go on than what I've got. And, shit, this is probably awkward for you, too."
Hisoka gave him a look over the top of the book he was reading that was simultaneously sympathetic and unimpressed. "I live with both of them. How much more awkward do you think that it gets?"
"Point." He let his chair tip forward with a clatter, leaning his elbows on the table. "So, uh... just tell me that it's private for whatever you need to but... I know the whole deal with you guys all being dead and working for some kind of afterlife government X-Files department. And I know that Tatsumi and Tsuzuki used to work together. And I don't need their whole story or anything but... I mean, you saw it, too, the whole 'oh here I am sitting on the ground with blood all over my face, talking to a dead body' thing. And... shit, just tell me to fuck off, but-"
"I don't blame you for being worried." Hisoka set down his book. "I think that any friend would be. Especially someone who all of that is new for."
"So, uh, what you're saying is that it's not..."
"I mean, it's not normal. But no, it's not new." He rested his chin in his hand and bit his lip.
Probably was weighing his friends' privacy against Rikuou's concern. Rikuou was perfectly fine with letting people reveal themselves as they chose. How well you knew someone, how much you could trust them, wasn't the sort of thing earned by facts or sending your baggage through a security scan. But sometimes things that had been non-issues suddenly became relevant, and now Rikuou felt like he had just learned that he was walking through a minefield thanks to watching someone blow themselves up. Not only that, but he'd pointed someone else in the same direction, not that it was his responsibility, not in any way, but-
"Fuuma will be fine," Hisoka interrupted him. "He won't let Tatsumi pull the usual crap on him, but he's patient, too."
"You sure you're not actually a telepath?"
"Yeah." The corner of Hisoka's mouth quirked into the flash of a dry smile before he grew thoughtful again. "Tatsumi has always had to play the role of supporter, even when he was alive. So he isn't very good at accepting help in general. But especially when it comes to people who are in pain... Tsuzuki was his first work partner, right after he died, so it was a long time ago. Like, decades. And back when they met, I know that Tsuzuki was a lot more... His struggles were a lot fresher then, and more open, so that's what Tatsumi was met with. And Tatsumi, too, was probably less... But because he couldn't ask for help, he just walled up everything to try to appear solid. So that's their history. We've all seen each other in some pretty bad states because of work injuries. But they've also- well, Tatsumi, at least, has been there when Tsuzuki wasn't well. It isn't really often that their positions are reversed."
"So... baggage."
"Yeah. Baggage."
"And it just... sits there?"
Hisoka raised an eyebrow. "You mean, does it bother me?"
Rikuou shrugged. "Not saying you have some soap opera love triangle going on. But it's a lot to... have around."
"All of us are here because we couldn't move on from something. None of us have room to talk."
"And Tatsumi can't move on from..."
Hisoka shook his head. "No. I mean, yes, obviously, but... I think Tatsumi-san sometimes forgets that he didn't meet Tsuzuki until after he died. That he isn't the reason he is where he is. That it's the other way around."
"...have you ever considered opening a therapy business?"
"Oh god, no."
Rikuou laughed at Hisoka's face and glanced at the clock on the wall. "Okay, they've had over an hour. It's probably safe for you to head back to the cabin at this point, if you want to."
"Worth a try, at least."
"If it's too much, offer to crash at our place tonight still stands."
"Appreciate it." Hisoka closed up his book and started putting on his coat. "And... thank you. For all of the help you've given us."
"Hey, no sweat. Honestly, I just hang around and give people boyfriends sometimes."
"I still can't believe that happened."
"If they ever get Camp-married, I call dibs on officiating."
That pulled a snicker out of Hisoka, which also wasn't half-bad work. Even as someone outside of their tight little circle, Rikuou had an inkling of how addictive it could be to try to capture those prizes: a laugh from Hisoka, a peaceful calm from Tsuzuki, a relaxing of Tatsumi's defenses. But that was just the bitch of life, wasn't it, always getting those glimpses of how things should be, like spotting that perfect person on a crowded subway platform but never catching up to them. Get too caught up in the chase and you miss your damn train.
"Come on," Hisoka called. "I don't think the rain will hold off for much longer."
Some random nobody hushed them, but neither of them paid them any mind as they headed out together.
--
Subject: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:10 AM
Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: Out of office RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:10 AM
Due to the ongoing camp effect, I will not be responding to e-mail until further notice. Please contact Kurosaki Hisoka with any immediate concerns.
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:18 AM
Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:31 AM
Did you seriously have an out of the office message
But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that not much going on things are normal now
>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much better, thank you. I haven't
>gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
>
> Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:48 AM
It got the point across.
Glad to hear it.
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>
>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall yesterday when a bunch of
>folks woke up in the freezer but other than that not much going on things are normal now
>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much better, thank you. I haven't
>>gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:52 AM
Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO YOU THAN THAT
>It got the point across.
>
>Glad to hear it.
>
> Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>
>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much
>>>better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though.
>>>Are all of your people all right?
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>>
>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 11:59 AM
-
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>
>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you
>and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>
>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO YOU
>THAN THAT
>>It got the point across.
>>
>>Glad to hear it.
>> Thank you,
>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>
>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much
>>>>better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though.
>>>>Are all of your people all right?
>>>> Thank you,
>>>>
>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Laytner
To: Tatsumi Seiichirou
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 12:03 PM
jfc your also such a dick
But for real, we've got the whole meal taken care of, no need to bring anything. I need someone to help me finish drinking all this Canadian Mist.
>-
>
>Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>>
>>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you and
>>your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>>
>>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO YOU
>>THAN THAT
>>>It got the point across.
>>>
>>>Glad to hear it.
>>>Thank you,
>>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>>
>>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling much
>>>>>better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet, though.
>>>>>Are all of your people all right?
>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>>
>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Seiichirou Tatsumi
To: Dee Laytner
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 12:05 PM
It is very much appreciated. I'll talk to the others (he's not my boyfriend) and let you know.
Also, I would sooner die a third time. I'll bring a bottle of Hakushu if you feel like not stripping your insides with cheap paint thinner.
Thank you,
Tatsumi Seiichirou
CFUD Business Advisor
>jfc your also such a dick
>
>But for real, we've got the whole meal taken care of, no need to bring anything.
>I need someone to help me finish drinking all this Canadian Mist.
>>-
>>
>>Thank you,
>>
>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>>>
>>>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you
>>>and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>>>
>>>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO
>>>YOU THAN THAT
>>>>It got the point across.
>>>>
>>>>Glad to hear it.
>>>>Thank you,
>>>>
>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>>>
>>>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess hall
>>>>>yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other than that
>>>>>not much going on things are normal now
>>>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling
>>>>>>much better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large yet,
>>>>>>though. Are all of your people all right?
>>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
-
Subject: RE: hey
From: Dee Layter
To: Seiichirou Tatsumi
Date: Nov 18, 2010, 12:08 PM
LOL never change my friend
>It is very much appreciated. I'll talk to the others (he's not my boyfriend) and let
>you know.
>
>Also, I would sooner die a third time. I'll bring a bottle of Hakushu if you feel
>like not stripping your insides with cheap paint thinner.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>CFUD Business Advisor
>>jfc your also such a dick
>>
>>But for real, we've got the whole meal taken care of, no need to bring anything.
>>I need someone to help me finish drinking all this Canadian Mist.
>>>-
>>>
>>>Thank you,
>>>
>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>Have I mentioned lately what a weirdo you are
>>>>
>>>>Anyways we're having American Thankgiving in Canada next week and you
>>>>and your people are all invited. (The boyfriend, too)
>>>>
>>>>Also for real a canned signature line I THOUGHT I MEANT MORE TO
>>>>YOU THAN THAT
>>>>>It got the point across.
>>>>>
>>>>>Glad to hear it.
>>>>>Thank you,
>>>>>
>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>>Did you seriously have an out of the office message
>>>>>>
>>>>>>But yeah all of my people are good. A littttttle bit of chaos at the mess
>>>>>>hall yesterday when a bunch of folks woke up in the freezer but other
>>>>>>than that not much going on things are normal now
>>>>>>>Apologies, I had not yet disabled the auto-reply, but yes, I am feeling
>>>>>>>much better, thank you. I haven't gotten a good sense of camp at large
>>>>>>>yet, though. Are all of your people all right?
>>>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Tatsumi Seiichirou
>>>>>>>>CFUD Business Advisor
>>>>>>>> Yoooo you feeling better?
