In the House of Lies

A/N: Thank you very much to those of you that read the prelude, and especially to those who reviewed. I hope that this update was not too late? As of today, there are four finished chapters, and one partial. Tatsumi and Watari have hijacked my brain, thank you very much (not that I am complaining in the least). So…as to this chapter…

Warnings:

S-ai--Shounen-ai hinting

C--Content: uncommon terms labeled and defined at end of chapter

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Chapter 1: Lady In the Water

Watari grunted, feeling something sharp jab him in the ribs. “Huh…” he rolled away, drawing the covers tighter around himself. Someone was talking nearby, but it was little more than a droning hum. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. The futon was warm, and the air above his blankets was not. He had been up until three studying medical books, as usual, and had planned upon sleeping until no earlier than noon, but…there was that sharp thing again!

“—said get up, Watari!” the voice sounded annoyed.

Sticking his head out of the covers, Watari shoved hair away from his face, to see the tall, blurry form of his partner on this job. “Tatsumi?” Even without his glasses, Watari could see that Tatsumi was fully dressed, and irritable. His hand fumbled to the right, grasping his little orange alarm clock. Bringing it close to his face so that he could read the time, he groaned. “It’s only seven in the morning, Tatsumi…do all secretaries get up this early?”

Tatsumi clicked his tongue before straightening his tie and running fingers through his hair (probably needlessly). “You are wasting daylight, Watari-sensei.” The tall man put emphasis on the word, sending a barb of guilt through Watari’s guts. Damn but he was good at giving a man a guilt trip. His eyes narrowed as he squinted up at Tatsumi. Maybe he should slip some sedative into Tatsumi’s tea? He had a spare vial of Ativan(1)… “I’m going to go and see if I can find anything at that school house. Maybe I can turn up something that the police missed in Doctor Hazama’s laboratory.”

Watari shoved his glasses onto his face. “Are you sure you want to do that?” He leaned on one hand, fidgeting with his feet beneath the blanket. “I thought you were joking last night when you said that was where you were going!”

The taller man leaned down toward him, hands on his hips. “Just make yourself presentable, and available to the family. You are supposed to be the doctor. I’m just your assistant. If they ask, make an excuse and say I’m skiving off. Staying up with those dratted books of yours is no excuse for wasting electricity and sleeping all day.” Watari frowned, and Tatsumi returned the expression, though the secretary’s had more force, by virtue of the fact that he had practiced far more than the scientist had.

Sitting up a bit straighter, Watari began carding fingers through his hair, which had become nearly uncontrollable in the night. Honestly, he was surprised that it had not attempted a coup and tried to strangle him. “I thought that there was nothing left there?” His golden eyes looked up innocently (falsely) at Tatsumi, who narrowed his blue ones dangerously. They both knew that small-town cops were sloppy, and that there was bound to be something that they had missed, but what that might be, Watari could not guess. He simply found it amusing to ruffle Tatsumi’s all-too-straight feathers.

“You know, this is why I hate academics,” Tatsumi growled, annoyed at the other man’s willful naïveté. “Watari, you are supposed to be a scientist. Why don’t you analyze? The doctor, who was apparently in good health up until now, suddenly dies of a mysterious ‘accident’. This accident was attributed to a fall. Kurosaki-san insists that it was an accident, no matter how suspicious it might seem. The local police let the matter drop, writing it off as the accident Kurosaki-san says it was. What does all of this tell you?”

Watari blinked at him. This dogged determination was something he expected from Hajime, or perhaps Tsuzuki, but Tatsumi? When there was no money to be gained? What could this man be after? Instead of thinking of this, he decided to humor Tatsumi by thinking aloud. “Well…let’s see. Small town…idolizing the prominent family. This family has influence over all levels of government. Government including the police, that means that the police were influenced by Kurosaki’s desire for the man’s death to be ruled accidental. Obviously, if he is hiding something, then there is reason to suspect that he knows something about Hazama’s death that he is not telling, or was involved in some way.” His eyes brightened at Tatsumi’s smirk, which was ten times better than his frown. It meant that Watari had drawn the same conclusions he had.

Straightening his tie once again, Tatsumi said, “And that’s exactly why I’m going to the school. Hopefully, I can find some evidence left behind by these smalltime rental cops.” Watari waved at Tatsumi as he left, giving his partner a bright smile. This grin faded when he realized that he would not be getting back to sleep any time soon. Sighing, the scientist threw off the covers.

“I guess I should get started setting up my stuff.” Watari stood, cracking his back and stretching several times before he went to ‘make himself presentable’ for the day. A large north-facing window brightly lighted the bathroom that adjoined his and Tatsumi’s room, and he smiled at it as he shed his pajamas. He could still smell the soap his partner had used, the humidity from the other man’s shower hanging in the air. It was like the scent of oatmeal and cinnamon, mixed with something sweet that reminded him of cold mornings spent sleeping in, and a warm body nearby to cling to. He almost laughed at that thought. While the secretary might smell warm and fuzzy because of the soap he used, Watari knew better. Tatsumi was cold and distant. The only thing that could thaw the block of ice that was his heart was his old partner, and that was rare, since he was usually angry with Tsuzuki for overspending on sweet things.

Which brought him back to the current case, and his present partner. Watari let the water run for a moment in the shower, the steam fogging the glass. Then, he smiled wickedly. He should check on the patient, and then make himself useful. “If he’s going to look for stuff that the cops left, then maybe I can take a peek at what they took with them?” Hacking into the database that the cops had couldn’t be too hard, could it? And then there was that strange reptilian scale he’d found. What the hell was that thing? It was enough to keep his brain occupied while he washed his hair with the new shampoo he’d formulated before they left the office…Tatsumi was right about one thing. None of what Kurosaki-san had told them was adding up.

--

The room was dark as Tatsumi entered, still grumbling about the stupidity of the man with whom he’d been paired for this assignment. Watari Yutaka was one of those men that had always infuriated him. He was wasteful, had little to no idea of what a work ethic was, and none of his ‘experiments’ had a point, except to annoy the general population. And, it seemed, to occasionally turn them into ten-year-olds. “Useless…” he grumbled, adjusting his glasses and stepping around the barricades that read, Closed until further notice.

Kurosaki-san said that the accident happened a month ago, Tatsumi thought curiously, but if that’s true, then why can I still feel Hazama’s presence? The residue of the soul faded quickly from a place, unless a person’s life force was cut short suddenly, and usually in a violent way. This was his first indication that Kurosaki-san was lying about the accidental death. He walked around the room, examining the way the place had been man-handled by the police. Shaking his dark head, the secretary stepped lightly over the masking-tape outline on the floor. There was a dark stain on the floor, where blood had been spilled, just to the right of where the outline indicated Hazama’s head had been.

Death from a fall…but by what cause? The splatter of brown looked too small. If Hazama had died from blood loss caused by a large cut on his head, resulting from his fall, there should have been an enormous pool of blood, shouldn’t there? Unless…something else is going on here. Yes, he thought, there was most certainly something going on that he was not to ‘excessively inquire’ into. Those had been the words of warning passed on by Kurosaki-san. Why should he not inquire into someone’s death that was the doctor of the woman that he was supposed to be caring for? Especially when the man’s records concerning the patient had been stolen at the time of his ‘accident’…

Tatsumi began tiring of merely looking. His search was fruitless. Now, he moved to the center of the room, sighing. Why had Watari not wanted him to come here? It was not as if there was anything here that could hurt him. He closed his eyes, relaxing until he felt as if he could melt into the floor. When he felt his body completely relax, Tatsumi released his shadows. They slithered over every surface, between sheets of paper and still onward, funneling information back into his mind until he found what he was looking for. Beneath one of the tables, under the heavy leg, he found a photograph. Sliding the furniture aside, he reached down, his fingers barely grasping the edge of the glossy paper.

Tugging slightly, he pulled it from under the table, and finally went to the window to examine it. His eyes widened. There, pictured in nearly indistinguishable kimono, with identical faces…were two Kurosaki Ruis. Tatsumi stood staring at the photograph for a long, long time. There was no indication that it was a fake. No microscopic cut-out shadows, no distortion. The ramifications of this photograph’s existence were staggering. And then there was the location. Why was it so well hidden?

Did Hazama know that he was too close to something, and did he want to leave a clue for someone as fastidious as he was? Tatsumi licked his lips nervously, slipping the picture into his wallet. He wanted answers, but he was decently sure that he wouldn’t get any from Kurosaki-san. Perhaps the girl, Miya, would be more forthcoming. There was nothing else here that could possibly interest him, so he walked quickly out of the school, and away, back toward Kamakura. His mind was immersed in thoughts of what he had found, and he barely noticed that he had arrived back at the house.

He did, however, notice when Watari’s overly-cheerful voice cut through his contemplation. “Tatsumi! You came back just at the right time! You’re such a good assistant!” The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on end at the syrupy tone of Watari’s voice, especially when he said, “I’ll just let you go ahead and take over now, won’t I?” The blonde man promptly sat down behind his computer, tapping furiously at the keyboard. Tatsumi opened his mouth to ask what in the world Watari was up to, but he was cut off by his own indignant squawk when he felt himself grabbed by his collar and hauled across the room.

“Ack!” He cried, feeling several pairs of hands on him. They were all small, and when he glanced around, he found himself surrounded by women.

“Ooooh!” He heard Miya say as she held his shirt in her hands—one of the other maids had removed it and tossed it aside, and Miya was now folding it neatly—“Then…you’ll come with me, Tatsumi-san?”

Now utterly confused (and mortified…they’d just stripped his pants off!), Tatsumi yelled at Watari, “What is the meaning of this?”

Waving a dismissive hand, Watari muttered, “I’m sorry, Tatsumi. I can’t talk now. I’m quite busy, as you can see. Please cooperate with the ladies.” For some reason, Tatsumi had the sneaking suspicion that Watari had done this to him on purpose.

Tatsumi’s hands flew to the elastic waist of his underwear when hands reached for them, as well. “Not the boxers!” he barked, listening to a volley of giggles at his embarrassment. Several of the women then began arguing over which kimono would look best with his eyes, and which obi would offset which shade of his hair. After what seemed like an eternity of standing in the middle of the room in his underpants, Tatsumi was shoved into a dark blue kasuri (2) kimono, belted with a dark red obi. Surveying himself briefly, he saw that the casual kimono fit him well, and he sighed while adjusting his glasses nervously as the girls clapped and squealed.

“Oh, you’re just so handsome, Tatsumi-san! The color looks beautiful with your eyes,” Miya said enthusiastically, her smile broad and genuine.

“Thanks,” he murmured, feeling his cheeks heat. Tatsumi was still unused to compliments on his physical appearance. He fingered the finely woven cloth of the yukata with one hand, holding the fan that Miya had shoved at him with the other. “Whose yukata is this, exactly?”

Miya smiled brightly, “Oh…it’s the master’s. We asked if we could borrow it for you, and we had a few others that we thought might look nice on Watari-sensei, but since he’s so busy, it will just be the two of us at the festival.” He nodded, trying to seem gracious. It had been his hope to discuss the investigation, and the picture he had found. But now…

--

Now that all of those pesky maids were gone, Watari could work without worries. The system the local police were running seemed to be locked down, and his golden eyes fixed upon the screen, narrowing in irritation. “Why do they have such advanced encryption? They’re just the police!” Watari gave himself a little shake, clearing his throat. “Hm…let’s see. I’ll just do…this.” He opened a file folder, and extracted one of his best decryption programs. “If this doesn’t do it, then I’ll kiss Tatsumi.”

For some reason, that gave him a little shiver. The thought of kissing Tatsumi Seiichirou was less appealing than the old bet he had with Tsuzuki. Once, when they’d both been drunk, they said that the first of them to pass out would have to be the other’s slave for a week, and do anything that the better drinker wanted. Later in that week, when they both had been sober, Tsuzuki had said that if they hadn’t both passed out at the same time, he would have made Watari clean his bathroom. The older shinigami’s bathroom was a disaster area the likes of which even Watari’s lab did not match. Even after an explosion.

In spite of this, the prospect of showing physical affection for Tatsumi was even more chilling. It would be like kissing a block of ice that was only slightly softer, and no warmer. While he thought of such unpleasant things as kissing Tatsumi, and getting his tongue stuck to a freezing flagpole (which he suspected might happen if he ever kissed the secretary), Watari ran his decryption software. Never one to do only two things at once, the multi-tasking scientist picked up the vial that held the scale he’d found.

They had just been given the brush-off by Kurosaki-san, when he picked his hand up from where it had been resting on the floor. The roughly triangular scale had been stuck to his finger. Narrowing his eyes at the little thing, Watari decided that he needed to figure out what this was. The maids in the house were far too meticulous for such a thing to be lying about for very long. Therefore, it must have been deposited on the tatami mat only a short time before he and Tatsumi had been seated.

Carefully, he unscrewed the lid on the vial. When he upended the thing into his palm, the small scale stuck to his skin, just as it had in Kurosaki-san’s sitting area. Now, he pondered the best course of action. The second terminal might be able to handle this job. A small portable scanner was hooked up to this computer, so he figured it might be best if he were to use it to digitize the image of the scale.

He gently took the keratinous sliver in a pair of rubber-tipped forceps, then placed it in the middle of the scanner’s glass imaging surface. Without closing the lid, Watari pressed the scanning button. The light ran up and down the length of the device several times, taking a composite image scan of the object. Once it was finished, he pulled up the image, and enlarged it by about twenty times. The screen then showed the brownish-green translucent scale, and Watari stared at it for a long moment. It was large, he thought, for something that looked to be a snake scale.

Using his reptile database, he was unable to find a species that matched it. It came close to the appearance of a water snake, but those did not get large enough to produce this size scale. Based upon his estimation, the animal that this thing came from would be no less than thirty feet long, and be nearly as big around as a decent-sized tree. And this was a molted scale, one that had been sloughed off when the thing had grown even larger. Watari shivered. This was no normal snake.

--

Tatsumi growled in irritation. He had gotten no good information out of Miya, who refused to answer any questions about Rui, or who else might be in the photograph. He kicked at the ground with his sandal as he walked along the path back to Kamakura, once again thinking about how irritating this case was. All he had heard from the mayor were legends, though he did get the indication that the man knew more about the family curse than he let on. Annoyed and potentially delayed in his work, Tatsumi decided to follow the little river back to the house, since it flowed no more than sixty meters from the place.

There were fireflies everywhere here. His mind drifted to the times when, as a boy, he had captured dozens of the things, only to release them again in his bedroom. He would then turn off all of the lights, and draw the shades. The blue-green bursts of light would fill his room until he fell asleep. In the morning, though, the little insects would always be dead on the floor. “Seiichirou,” his mother had said, “why are you so cruel? These things are meant to be in the world, without interruption until they die. You robbed them of that.” And she would look sad. She always looked sad. But there was something beautiful about this place. It was almost magical. The darkness shattered in countless pinpoints of light as the little fireflies glowed, and the river rippled and gurgled just to his left. It was easy, he thought, to believe that legends such as the one that the Mayor had told him…of a horned marsh serpent and Kurosaki Ren locked in an epic battle for seven days and nights…he could imagine such a thing happening in this place.

He continued on toward the house, and was soon lost in thought once more. Suddenly, when he was less than a kilometer from Kamakura, he felt something cold and clammy wrap around his ankles. Gasping, he looked down to see a woman, inky hair plastered wetly to her face and shoulders, eyes staring up at him with a kind of longing that would not be denied. “Nagare,” her raspy voice called softly, “Nagare, you finally came for me…” Tatsumi tried so hard to pull himself from her grasp, but it did no good. “That kimono! It’s the one I wove…”

And then he was falling. He barely avoided hitting his head on the ground when the woman pulled his feet from beneath him, dragging him bodily into the water. Beneath the surface, where her hair flowed away from her face as she grasped at the front of his kimono, he could see. Tatsumi would have gasped again if he had air to breathe. It was Kurosaki Rui! Or…was it?

The creature holding him fast had the woman’s face, that was sure, but her lower body was that of a great crocodile. What was going on? He needed to get out of here, so that he could figure things out, and avoid drowning (not that he would die from it, but it was still uncomfortable). Sharp nails started scraping up his legs, gripping at the hem of the kimono he wore, and still further. Tatsumi knew he would not panic, but this was still a very disheartening development. His shadows obeyed his summoning, enveloping him and taking him away from the cold fingers that now gripped at his throat. When he saw light once again, he was standing outside the window of the room he shared with Watari.

The scientist sat on the floor again. He was working at something on that massive computer he’d lugged here, glancing every now and again at a triangular image on the right-hand screen, and then at endless amounts of computer code on the other. Tatsumi could make neither heads nor tails of any of it. Watari was concentrating deeply, however, upon what he was doing. He chewed lightly at his lower lip, pushed his glasses up his nose—only to have them promptly slide down once again—and made notes in a little journal as he nodded to himself.

Tatsumi found that in spite of the fact that he was wet, and needed to speak to the man on the other side of the glass, he was having difficulty actually alerting Watari to his presence. He’d never seen such a serious expression on the other man’s face, and he was unsure what could have put it there. Once during his observation, Watari leaned over to note something in his journal, and his hair fell into his eyes. One slender hand reached up and shoved golden waves behind his ear violently, impatient to put his thoughts on paper. It was very strange to see Watari work so hard. Usually, he bounced around, never lighting in one place for too long. An odd feeling developed in his chest at the way the light glanced off of the unruly hair that kept getting in those amber eyes. Only when the wind picked up, chilling him sufficiently that he knew he must get inside, did he knock on the glass.

--

Watari jumped nearly a meter off of the floor. His heart seized in his chest, and he let out a rather girlish scream. “A monster!?” The dark figure on the out side of the glass continued tapping, moving strangely, as if it were waving a hand at him. Watari scrabbled away, around the computers, and into the wall, completely disregarding the fact that if it were a monster, it would not do him the courtesy of knocking before it came in to devour him.

“No, you idiot. Watari, it’s me. Let me in before I disembowel you with my shadows.” Golden eyes closed as he gripped the dark purple cotton that covered his chest. Tatsumi…the bastard nearly gave me a coronary incident! Not that such an incident would kill him…he was already dead. But it was the principle of the thing! When Watari scrambled to open the door to the outside, Tatsumi was glaring at him, water rolling down his face, pouring off of his borrowed kimono, and onto the walkway out side. Before he could come in, Watari made him stand there for a few more seconds, so that he could get towels from the bathroom. Laying a few of these down, he then signaled Tatsumi to come in.

He settled back down behind the computers, resuming his study of the scale. Offhandedly, he asked, “So, how did you get so wet?” Tatsumi made a very annoyed sound, and snapped something about tea. Watari got up and called one of the maids, who soon returned with a steaming pot of what smelled like gyokuro. He heard the oddly muffled rustle of wet cloth as Tatsumi began struggling out of the soiled yukata, and then the squishy plop that followed, telling him that the entire garment had flopped to the floor.

At this second louder sound, he glanced over at the still-dripping secretary, who had just dropped his glasses onto the pile of clothing. Tatsumi was using one of the dry towels to blot water off of his face, before running the fluffy white cloth over his arms and stomach. Watari only half-listened as Tatsumi explained about what the mayor had told him, how Miya had refused to answer his questions about some photograph he had found, and the strange creature that had pulled him into the river. The secretary’s voice had become nothing but a low drone in his ears, which was difficult to hear over the blood that rushed there.

Blushing furiously, but unable to look away from the way that lean muscles flexed and stretched, the scientist soon started biting the inside of his cheek in an attempt to center himself. It was difficult to do so, however, when Watari saw that the plain white cotton of Tatsumi’s underwear had gone translucent, and was sticking to his skin. Get a grip, Yutaka…and he did, but only with a tremendous effort. Wrenching his eyes away from a view of flexed thigh muscle (and something else that goes better unmentioned), Watari coughed lightly, focusing his attention on the ruined kimono. “Perhaps you should have a shower, Tatsumi. It would not be good for you to catch cold.”

There was a grunt from Tatsumi’s general vicinity before Watari heard him stomp off to the bathroom. A few seconds later, the shower roared to life, and he had a few moments to calm himself and begin to direct his attention toward the scale again. With long, slow breaths and eyes focused on the screen in front of him, Watari suddenly felt much better. It was the strangest thing…and then something that he’d half-heard Tatsumi say jumped to the forefront of his mind.

In the same instant, he shot to his feet, and ran to the bathroom door, ripping it open. “Tatsumi!” he called excitedly, ignoring the clouds of steam floating around the bathroom. “Tatsumi, I’ve got it!”

The other man’s deep, annoyed voice came over the top of the glass shower stall, “Got what, Watari?”

“You said…that legend that the mayor told you. The one with the big snake-thing! I found a scale, Tatsumi. It was on the floor in Kurosaki-san’s sitting room.” He leaned against the shower’s side, pressing the side of his head against the glass. “That scale is far too large for a normal snake, but that is not the strangest part.” Watari absently let his fingers follow the progress of fat water droplets down the glass, ignoring the flesh-colored blur within. Sounds of scrubbing and rinsing from the shower continued, and he was beginning to feel ignored. Why couldn’t Tatsumi make the connection the way he had? “Are you even listening to me, Tatsumi?”

The shower door opened a little, admitting a thoroughly wet head. Dark blue eyes glared at him, only inches away from his face. “Spit it out, Watari.” The scientist swallowed, knowing that Tatsumi heard it, and damning himself for letting himself be nervous because of the perpetually irritated office worker. He understood now why Tsuzuki always cowered away from him on days when Tatsumi did the budget…One of those slender, wet eyebrows rose, and the other man asked tauntingly, “Cat got your tongue?”

Watari wanted to growl at him. Instead, he allowed his expression to become carefully blank as he informed the other man of his findings. His tone matched his face for lack of emotion. “When analyzing the genetic structure of the scale, I found some small amounts of human DNA.” Blinking slowly, the scientist leaned a bit more heavily on the glass, his hair falling over one side of his face. “That DNA, I cross-referenced with a sample I still had from Hisoka, just out of curiosity. It was a match, to some extent.”

Now, Tatsumi’s eyes were wide, and he asked in quiet disbelief, “What does that mean, exactly?”

Watari removed his glasses, which had gotten sprayed with a bit of water, and began cleaning them on his shirt. Making the supercilious bastard wait and feel stupid gave him a warm feeling of satisfaction after the comment Tatsumi made. “It means,” he said as he shifted a hair closer, “That the genetic material mixed in with whatever massive reptile that scale came from belongs to Kurosaki Nagare.” Tatsumi blinked rapidly at this information. “The ‘curse’ that the family seems to hold, on the other hand, is different.” Watari raised one gloved hand and put one fingertip in the middle of Tatsumi’s forhead. “Finish your shower, Mr. Secretary. Then I’ll explain this technical stuff to you.” With that, he pushed on the paler man’s forehead, shoving him back into the shower and shutting the door.

That feeling of contentment grew just a little when he heard Tatsumi snap, “Damn it, Watari!”

He was barely able to suppress a giggle as he left the bathroom, but managed to get in one last jab. “You should watch your language, Mr. Secretary…” The smooth slide of the door and the snick! that came with its closing very nearly covered up a string of obscenities that would have made Hajime Terazuma blush. Now, settling down at his work again, Watari did giggle.

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A/N: Thanks for sticking around for this chapter. Review.

(1)ativan--most commonly used brand of lorazapam, a sedative that is often used in hospitals, and available in tablets, injectables, and an oral solution.

(2)kasuri--a finely woven cotton usually used for kimono in Japan.