“Do you want to stay over at my place?”

“No.”

“Just for one night?”

“No.”

“Or I could stay over at your-“

“No.”

At least Hisoka spoke with a little emotion in his voice. Even if it was anger; anything was better than that flat, expressionless tone that practically screamed to Tsuzuki that something was very, very wrong. He wanted to catch Hisoka’s eye to see even just a glimmer of something to let him know what Hisoka was really thinking – Hisoka was the Empath, not Tsuzuki - but the slighter man was turned away, buttoning up his coat with a quiet intensity that warned Tsuzuki not to interfere. He didn’t count on Tsuzuki’s persistence. That man could wear anyone down with that endearing smile of his. Tsuzuki constantly smiled, even when Hisoka knew he must have hurt him with his careless words.

“...Please?”

Those puppy-eyes again. Hisoka hated his partner at this point; he couldn’t help but hesitate. Tsuzuki jumped right in, as if the small space of silence was as good as Hisoka’s consent. And indeed, perhaps it was.

“Hmph. You’ll have to sleep on the couch”, Hisoka said by way of finally caving in. Tsuzuki didn’t argue the point, happily trailing after his partner as Hisoka strode out of the building and past the lines of eternally-blossoming cherry trees without a look back in Tsuzuki’s direction. Anyone else looking at the way he walked, stiff and silent, would have mistaken him for being angry. And Hisoka was annoyed, it was true. Tiredness, however, was rapidly shadowing all else within his mind, and was focusing into a sharp point building up into a headache that made Hisoka want to lie down somewhere comfortable – alone – and close his eyes before he threw up. It was far too late to get rid of Tsuzuki, and the older Shinigami knew it. If he didn’t know about the headache, Hisoka was certain he would get rid of Tsuzuki for the night that much faster. He’d just point him in the direction of the refrigerator and leave him to it, leaving Hisoka himself to go upstairs and find the relative solitude of his bed, and... and then...

“Hisoka!”

He turned bleary green eyes towards his partner. “What?”

“You just stopped – you looked like you were going to faint on me or something...” Tsuzuki rubbed a hand threw his hair, shrugging at Hisoka’s glare. “But obviously I was wrong. Here.” And with never a by-your-leave, Tsuzuki had put an arm firmly around Hisoka’s waist and was teleporting them to the doorstep, Hisoka being pulled along after him by sheer force.

“We’re home!” called Tsuzuki cheerfully, somehow not appearing to notice Hisoka’s weakened state, while also managing to keep his arm fastened securely around Hisoka while the the blonde swayed on the spot. He didn’t take it away until Hisoka had quickly clenched his eyes shut and opened them again, standing up straighter and searching for the key in his pocket. He handed it to Tsuzuki without a word, while Tsuzuki in turn obeyed the unspoken command to refrain from comment. They understood each other well enough, it seemed. Tsuzuki bounded in, as full of energy as ever and heading straight for the kitchen, allowing Hisoka to have at least a few moments to recollect himself.

“Shall I cook us dinner?”

“No. You have what you want – I’m not hungry. I just want to sleep.” Hisoka threw his coat down on a chair but remained standing. He didn’t want to sit down lest it became impossible to get up again.

“Aww, but it’ll help you feel better, ‘Soka. Food always helps”, he added confidently from the kitchen. “You should eat something, even if it’s just something small.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it down.” It cost a lot for Hisoka to admit this. If he hadn’t been so very tired, perhaps he would have cared too much for even that. He looked across the room toward the stairs, his eyes glazing over despite his best efforts. God, it suddenly seemed like such a long way to climb...

Tsuzuki was there just as suddenly, right by his side like he hadn’t been rummaging in the cupboards only a second ago. “Need a little help?” he asked a little too cheerfully. Hisoka clenched his teeth and allowed Tsuzuki to guide him up the stairs. He did need help, and he’d be a fool not to notice, but he also refused to dignify Tsuzuki’s question with an answer. As far as he was concerned, the less said on the matter the better. So he kept up his stony silence all the way to the bedroom. It was not a fancy affair, but it spoke to Hisoka of comfort nonetheless. There was a traditional futon in the corner rather than a Western-style bed, and the room was quite clean and not crowded in the least; Hisoka preferred not to feel too closed-in, so there was plenty of space between the bed and the rest of the room’s necessary furniture. To anyone else, perhaps, the room might have felt overly spacious and even depressing in its bareness. To Hisoka, it was the place he went when he simply didn’t have anywhere else to go. A haven, of sorts. Hisoka turned to glare at his partner, daring him to comment. If Tsuzuki had, Hisoka would have kicked him out of the house then and there, never mind any promises made earlier. But Tsuzuki didn’t bat an eyelid.

“Sleep tight, Hisoka!”

“There’s spare blankets in the cupboards in the hallway by the lounge”, Hisoka said, already lying down and knowing he was being rude, but too tired to really care. “Raid the kitchen all you like, just don’t make too much noise... and...”

Tsuzuki watched Hisoka’s eyelids flutter closed in mid-sentence. Poor kid, he had been dead on his feet. He made sure Hisoka was breathing deeply and evenly before Tsuzuki went downstairs to find the spare blankets Hisoka had spoken of. As for the couch mentioned earlier... well, Tsuzuki pretended he hadn’t heard that part. There was no way he was going to sleep all the way downstairs when Hisoka was in this condition. And if he woke up before Hisoka in the morning, he could sneak back downstairs with his partner being none the wiser. Good plan.

Hisoka was still deeply asleep by the time Tsuzuki had returned. There was no spare futon that Tsuzuki could find, but the floor wasn’t so hard after it had been padded with some of the blankets. It was quite comfy, in fact, once he had finished building himself a kind of nest in which to sleep, at a short distance but not too far from Hisoka’s side. If something happened, if Hisoka needed him after all, Tsuzuki would be there. It was his last thought before the slow quietness of the room crept up on him, too, and sent him also to sleep.

Hisoka was dreaming. He knew it was a dream the moment it held him in its clutches, but knowing that fact and being able to do something about it were as far apart from him at that moment as ever. The house had been stretched out somehow, so that the hallway upstairs was immensely long, and room after room was presented to him. He had to walk along to these rooms and open each door as he came to it, trying to find the one that led back to his bedroom. His head began to ache again dully at the thought, but there seemed to be no other way.

The first room opened into nothing but a heavy, inky blackness, so Hisoka closed that door hurriedly, feeling that some unnameable menace hid in the shadows just beyond where his eyes could see. The next room led to another staircase that spiralled around so much it made Hisoka dizzy from trying to see where it went. The third room he tried was something he did not dare open the door to because of all the bumping and shrieking he could hear behind it. And so it went on, until it seemed that Hisoka had tried hundreds of doors, each of them threatening to him in one way or another. He was thinking of simply lying down to rest right there in the hallway when the row of doors suddenly came to an abrupt ending. There was only one door left for him to open, and he knew at once it must be the correct door if all the others had not led to his bedroom. He opened the door excitedly, and there it was in front of him. His futon lay in the corner, just as it always had, and he stumbled gladly towards it.

He was only a few steps away when the room grew brighter. Hisoka had no choice but to shield his eyes against a light that was quite suddenly overpowering; when he eventually lowered his arm, the bedroom was gone. His breath quickened at the stench of something foul he could not place, and he whipped around to try and find a means of escape. Muraki blocked his way.

“Won’t you scream for me again, Hisoka?”

Hisoka’s breath was coming hard and fast now, because something seemed to unfurl in his chest and make it impossible to breathe naturally. “You... you’re... just a dream-“

“Oh no, not this time, I’m afraid.” Muraki’s expression was almost sympathetic. “You see, I just couldn’t stay away.” He began walking slowly forward, and Hisoka backed up until his body was pressed up against the rough bark of a tree behind him.

“No, no! You’re just a dream, go away!”

“I’m sorry; I can’t do that. You’re mine, you see. I can never let go of what is mine. I need something from you, Hisoka. I won’t leave until you give it to me.”

Quick as a flash, Muraki’s hands were around Hisoka’s wrists, pinning him so that his arms were lifted above his head and pressed roughly into the bark. Hisoka’s panic rose. He could hear his breath, sharp and almost sobbing as Muraki leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

“You screamed so beautifully for me the first time. You begged, you pleaded, you screamed until you had no voice left to scream with. I doubt you even knew what you were saying at the end, you were so lost.”

“No, I- I didn’t! I won’t!”

“Oh, but you shall. Do it now. Plead with me again. Beg with me to let you go.”

“No!”

“No? Are you sure you won’t do it voluntarily? Shall I have to make you, then?” Without warning, something stabbed into Hisoka’s head. His headache became something sharp which scraped along the inside of his mind, raw and terrible. He would have screamed then, would have given in to the pain that blinded him, only his mouth would not open to let the sound out.

Muraki smirked at him. “Still nothing. Shall we try again?” Now his stomach was being pummelled by that same force, and Hisoka would have doubled over if Muraki had not been forcefully holding him up. Still, Hisoka could not open his mouth – and what’s more, his throat was becoming numb, all the way down into his chest. He wanted to scream, knowing with a dreadful certainty that doing so would relieve the pain. But he couldn’t, and Muraki grinned at him, his body now pressing flush up against Hisoka’s. Listening, it seemed, with a perverse pleasure at the speed of which Hisoka’s heart was beating.

“You disappoint me”, he said after a moment, although the throbbing in Hisoka’s head and stomach had not lessened. “I ask you to scream, and you refuse. Then when you finally try to scream, it’s too late. It would have been easier, so much easier, if you had just given me what I wanted from you in the first place.” Now Hisoka was being pushed as far back as possible. His back was in agony from being scraped along the trunk of the tree, and his wrists where Muraki gripped them were a burning counterpoint to the throbbing in his head. If he didn’t make a sound now, he knew, he would die there against that tree.

“Ah...”

“I see”, Muraki said in satisfaction, his voice pure velvet. “ You find this... pleasurable? Allow me to help you with that.”

It was horrible. It was sick. The only noise he could make had sounded, in fact, like a moan of longing rather than of anguish. His body sagged as Muraki slackened his hold a little, no longer able to hold itself up on its own. It was growing too heavy, and whether this was a part of the curse or not, it made no difference. Muraki lifted Hisoka’s chin back up with one hand, still pinning Hisoka’s arms upward with the other. His hair was parted so that Hisoka could catch a glimpse of that enlarged blue eye. The look Muraki was giving him made Hisoka unable to look away, and the eye was growing larger by the second, larger and larger until it swallowed him whole, until Muraki laughed inside Hisoka’s mind, until Hisoka was drowning because his chest and throat had closed up completely so that it became impossible to even breathe. It was dark, he was dying, he was being held down so forcefully that his arms and legs could not move at all, he was finally screaming-

“Hisoka! Hisoka!”

His eyes opened and the heaviness moved slightly. Choking, gulping down huge mouthfuls of fresh air, his mind was still playing havoc. He could see Tsuzuki right in front of him, he could hear his partner yelling something at him, could even just about feel, if he concentrated, Tsuzuki’s hands on his shoulders in a gesture of support. But even though he registered these things as if from a long way off, his mind refused to release him from what he had seen and heard and felt only moments ago.

“No! I won’t, I won’t scream, I won’t, get off!” It was impossible to distinguish between the hands that held his shoulders now and the hands that had pressed him against the tree so roughly, and Hisoka struggled wildly now that he found he could move. There was more yelling, but it could have been coming from anywhere. He might have struck Tsuzuki, because there was a muffled yelp that he was sure didn’t come from him. Then he felt himself being shaken as his eyes tried to focus.

“Wake up, it’s only me, it’s over!”

Hisoka blinked, confused. Was this part of the dream? Was it real, and he had dreamed he had come back to his house with Tsuzuki? Or was he really here, with Tsuzuki shaking him like this to try and get him to snap out of it? It could be just another of Muraki’s tricks, trying to catch him off guard... He did the only thing that seemed sensible at that point, and curled up with his eyes shut tight, his arms wrapped around himself for protection. Someone was speaking. Tsuzuki? Muraki? Himself? He didn’t know anymore, and if he was babbling to himself he didn’t care. Perhaps it would all go away, if only he stayed like this long enough...

Tsuzuki watched Hisoka back away and close in on himself, shaking from a mixture of fear and exhaustion. He approached warily and kept his mind closed shut, not wanting to frighten Hisoka even more – if Hisoka lashed out properly with his mind, they would both be in trouble.

“My... my head... stop-“

From this Tsuzuki deduced that Hisoka was having trouble readjusting himself, and quickly shielded his own mind as strongly as possible lest it tip Hisoka back over the edge. He knew Hisoka found Tsuzuki’s emotions too much to deal with sometimes, so that his mind felt overcrowded. Still, it seemed that he was still lost somewhere in there, although it was impossible to tell with Hisoka curled up so tightly like that.

“Hisoka?”

“N-no, I won’t let you, go away!”

“Hisoka, it’s only me-“

“It’s too much! Stop, please, I can’t do this anymore...”

Tsuzuki sat back. It wasn’t his own emotions that were too much for Hisoka to deal with, of that he was sure; his mind was sealed as tightly as he knew how. Muraki? But that man wasn’t here – Tsuzuki would have felt it if he was. So it must be Hisoka’s own mind then, running wild and making Hisoka only more confused as he tried to escape it... It occurred to Tsuzuki, suddenly, what he had to do.

Carefully, painfully slowly, he let down his guards and sent his own emotions towards Hisoka, who flinched away at once, sensing the intrusion. But Tsuzuki persisted, as gently as possible but also insistent, weaving in between the gaps that Hisoka’s confusion had made. It was a dangerous thing to do; Tsuzuki had to find exactly the right balance within his own mind. If he was pushing too weakly, the force of Hisoka’s mind would simply send him reeling back, and perhaps make it unable to take a second shot. If he pushed too strongly, Hisoka’s mind would be overwhelmed and perhaps make Hisoka snap completely.

So he was careful, so careful, to do it right the first time. He made sure to send no thoughts but only feelings through: concern, assurance, calm, quietness... there was nothing complex there, nothing to make Hisoka panic. But they were strong; they had to be strong enough to overcome everything else in Hisoka’s mind that made him want to hide from himself. Tsuzuki could not hear or feel what was going through Hisoka’s mind, but the physical signs showed that what he was doing was working. Hisoka’s breathing slowed a little, and his eyes began to flutter again as they took in their real surroundings. His arms loosened from their death-grip around his body, although probably too late to prevent the bruising. It all happened bit by bit, until Hisoka finally gave a sort of gasp of realisation and looked up, utterly spent.

“Tsuzuki...?”

“It’s okay. It’s over, it’s over...” He gradually withdrew his emotions, little by little until they were clear of Hisoka’s, leaving his mind as quiet and clear as if the dream had never happened. Even the headache had been washed away.

Hisoka sat up. “Tsuzuki, I didn’t hurt you... you’re okay?”

Surprised, Tsuzuki nodded. “You were a little too strong for a minute there, but I’m fine.”

Hisoka closed his eyes in relief, then found himself quite unable to open them again in time. His body was heavy again, but only from lack of energy. The room seemed to dip sickeningly for a second before it stopped in the middle of tipping Hisoka over, and he inhaled slowly the scent of his partner. At any other time he would have found the situation embarrassing at best, but right now he couldn’t bring himself to care. He felt the concern practically radiating off Tsuzuki, regardless of how the Shinigami was trying to hide it.

“You’re not mad?”

The question seemed a little out of place, and Hisoka blinked. “No. Just tired... oh.” He remembered now. Tsuzuki had been in his mind. Tsuzuki had covered everything else until anything but his own emotions had been blocked out entirely. Usually, this would have been an offence just about worth killing over. “Tomorrow, maybe. I’m too tired right now. Count yourself lucky...” His voice trailed off – it took too much energy to speak.

“Hisoka? Are you going back to sleep now?”

Tsuzuki’s voice was already far away. It seemed an awful effort to answer, but he hated letting Tsuzuki get away with the last word. “... Too late”, he managed. And it was, because he didn’t mind sleeping again after all that, and he didn’t mind that Tsuzuki had pushed into his head, and he didn’t mind that he was now falling asleep right there against Tsuzuki’s warm chest. If waking up in the morning to find himself in some awkward position was the consequence, he was content to deal with it when the time came. It appeared Tsuzuki agreed, because he didn’t seem in too much of a hurry to move, either. The older man eased the two of them down so that they were both lying comfortably and unshielded his mind again.

It was, perhaps, the time to break some habits. Tsuzuki would be careful to never quite block himself off from Hisoka again.