The Lollipop Incident
By Icka! M. Chif

Tsuzuki is like a dog in many ways. Both he and dogs crave the same things to make them happy. Food, attention and knowledge that they are loved on occasion.

They also need to be thrown a bone once in a while. 

Take today for instance.

It was an off day for Tatsumi, I think. Those don't happen very often, but when they do, they're killer on everyone around. And today, Tsuzuki just happened to be the one to catch him at just the wrong moment. 

Now Tatsumi has informed me, with many graphic visual images and big words, just what he will do to me if I hurt Tsuzuki in anyway. He's never bothered to cover what -I- will do if he harms my partner in anyway shape or form. 

Bad Tatsumi. 

People think that I don't have a sense of humour. That is in correct. I do have a sense of humour. It just happens to be hidden most of the time. 

Enter... the lollipop.

It was a very nice lollipop. Rich chocolate dark brown, on the squareish side on a white stick. Clear wrapping with a light brown grid on it that made the brown of the sucker look even darker, almost a black. Sweet and gooey enough to make your teeth ache just by looking at it. Sin on a stick for less than 100 yen. 

I left it on Tsuzuki's desk right before a meeting. 

As anyone can tell you, NEVER leave sugar around Tsuzuki. It's gone in a matter of minutes. It would be gone in seconds, but on occasion he likes to savour the flavour.

It was gone from his desk when I walked by en route to the meeting, and I had a hard time resisting a smirk. He wasn't sucking on it just yet, but he had obviously hidden it away some where, smuggling it in. I could also smell the cookies he was attempting to smuggle in. Konoe would have those in a matter of minutes. 

We walked in and took our customary seats at the table and began the meeting. Tatsumi was still having a bad day, as was evidenced by the amount of shadows around the room that in all likely hood shouldn't have been there. Watari had picked up on this and he and 003 were doing their best to stay out of arms range from the Kagetsukai.

As predicted, Konoe had the cookies with in 5 minutes of everyone sitting down. That's not to say that the cookies weren't welcome, but made Tsuzuki pout a bit more than usual. 

And then the lollipop came into the scene. He had stealthily un-wrapped it while the others were busy munching on his cookies, and popped it in his mouth to suck on. 

Now when Tsuzuki likes something, he's rather vocal about it. It's when he's silent that you have to worry about him. This was not the case with the lollipop. Not only was he in blissful happy puppy mode, but he was also purring contently. 

People think that in addition to not having a sense of humour, I'm also immune to Tsuzuki's charm. That's also not true. I just have a bit more restraint around him. Which is why it was so funny when Konoe asked Tsuzuki a question. 

To answer, he had to pull the lollipop out of his mouth first. Tsuzuki being Tsuzuki, he couldn't just take it out of his mouth like a normal person. He had to be sucking on it as he pulled it, resulting in a soft 'pop' sound that caught the attention of almost everyone in the room. He answered the question neutrally, he was still slightly depressed from earlier but the confectionary was definitely cheering him up, and then put the lollipop to his lips. 

Notice I didn't say in his mouth. Propping his head up with one hand, he played twirled the lollipop with the other, the tip of the sucker just inside of his lips as he licked on it, the pink of his tongue flashing occasionally as he hummed a tune under his breath. He'd occasionally pull it into his mouth to suck on it for a second, then pull it back out with a look that grew more content as he played with the candy.

I watched as Tatsumi, Konoe and Watari slowly became more and more distracted as this went on. Tsuzuki, for all his years as a Shinigami, still is completely naive when it comes to the reactions he causes in other. Which, in all honesty, is part of his charm. 

He eventually grew bored with this, and settled for resting his head on both hands, sticking the lollipop in his mouth. I think this caused the others to relax, until they noticed that he was swirling the candy around in his mouth, causing the stick to spin in small circles, with this little contented look on his face. Tatsumi started to shift un-comfortably as he continued to do this, while Watari gave up and just watched him and Konoe attempted to continue the meeting as normally as possible while still sneaking looks at him. 

This continued for several minutes, and the meeting began to wind down, primarily due to the fact that the majority of the people were distracted by Tsuzuki and the lollipop.

Then it happened.

::CRACK!::

The majority of the people in the room jumped as Tsuzuki bit down on the hard candy. Winces and grimaces followed as Tsuzuki leaned back on the chair, crunching on the crystallized sugar without a care in the world. Then he happily licked the stick to get the last of the chocolate flavoured residue, wrapped the stick up in the wrapper and put it in his pocket to dispose of later, all completely ignorant to the reactions to the rest of the people in the room. 

Konoe decided that was a good point to end the meeting.

As we rose from our seats, I caught Tatsumi's eye and smirked. He blinked, pushed the glasses up on his face and glared at me, in a bad mood but now for a different reason than before. 

I guess you could say I'm efficient that way. If all it takes is one simple act to cheer up my partner and get a bit of revenge on Tatsumi for hurting him, who am I to argue?

-fin-

The lollipop in question is one of those rich chocolate ones from Sees Candies. Those are good!!
Alas, I was sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop at the time. Cherry flavoured. *snickers*