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The day at the H.A.N.D headquarters building stretched up high. Where the Section 6 office was, it was quiet. Miyabi and Harumasa were the only ones present, and both were slacking…one more than the other. The team's archer had his head on the table as he sipped his bitter coffee from its straw that he’d gotten from the coffee shop in one of the building's lower levels. Meanwhile, Miyabi was multitasking by reading a book and handling some non-essential paperwork.
“Where's Yanagi and Soukaku?” Harumasa asked, lifting his head. It was odd not having Soukaku running around, and Yanagi wasn’t scolding him for slacking or telling Miyabi she has to go to meetings since she's the chief. It was odd.
Miyabi's big ear flicked at Harumasa's words, and she looked up at the other, “The two went out to get lunch.” She explained before going back to her book.
Harumasa looked confused for a second, “They never took my lunch order…Or was I asleep?”
Miyabi shook her head, “No. She just went off of what we got last time.”
“Oh, the place down the road? The pasta place?”
The fox therian nodded, “Indeed. The one with that nice chicken pasta.”
Harumasa put his head on his arms on the desk again and was about to close his eyes when he heard the elevator let out a ding! Noise down the hall, a few feet from the door. After a minute or two, in stepped an excited Soukaku and Yanag, who was telling her to slow down and who was also holding the food bags in her arms.
“Soukaku! Slow down! You'll be able to eat once I get everything out of the bags.”
Soukaku sat down at her desk, kicking her feet, “Sorry! I’m just hungry!” She rubbed her neck, chuckling.
Yanagi peeked over the desk to see Harumasa slacking. She walked over and gave him a light smack on the head. “I thought you said you weren’t going to slack off today.” She pointed out to him
“Ow…” Haruamsa rubbed the spot Yanagi hit and sat up, slacking back into his chair, “I did! I did all the paperwork in that stack a few-” He then looked to his right, where the table used to be empty and was now filled with a new stack of papers, “Huh?! When did these get here…” He lazily grabbed a pen and slid the first one off the pile in front of himself, “Damnit….” He mumbled, clicking the pen.
Yanagi walked over to where she had set the bags of food, getting out containers of each of their orders and handing them out to Miyabi and Soukaku, respectively, before setting hers on her desk. The pink-haired deputy chief then walked over to Harumasa and handed him his food, which was a bowl of pasta that was topped with hamburger, chili, and some vegetables.
“Atleast eat before you weigh yourself down with paperwork.”
“If I do that, I may not get this done.” He teased, taking the plastic utensils out of their wrapper before taking a bite out of the pasta.
Section 6 sat, eating their food while doing some paperwork, but mostly just eating their lunch. Harumasa finished his relatively quickly so he could finish his paperwork and go home. Well, he could go home at the same time as normal, but Yanagi would either chew him out or try to do his paperwork for him and stay late. Neither of which sounded appealing.
As the young man set another paper onto the arbitrary done pile, he saw his phone ding with a text. He couldn’t see the name but figured he’d check it later since he was currently busy. He was about to sign his name at the bottom of a form when his cheery ring tone filled the office. Frantically, he grabbed his phone and looked at the name of who on earth was calling him; it was Tsubaki.
“Ah, I’m going to be right back! I need to answer this!” He stood up, pushed his chair in, and spedwalked to the hallway and didn't bother to listen to the couple of murmurs of ‘who's calling him?’ and ‘it's kind of late to be calling someone, isn’t it?’.
Harumasa let out a breath and answered it.
“Hey, Tsubaki! What's going on?” He greeted in a happy tone of voice
“Hi, Harumasa…I didn’t call at a bad time, right? I know you're usually at work right now.” The strawberry-haired girl seemed slightly concerned on the other end of the phone
“Oh, it’s fine! I needed a break anyway!” Which wasn’t entirely a lie, but said break came earlier than he’d like.
“Good, good! I was wanting to ask you about something, well, kind of important to us.”
Harumasa hummed at her words, intrigued, “Well, don’t keep me waiting in suspense. What do you need?”
He heard a click of a pen on the other end of the line, “Well, Kana, Ryosuke, and I are graduating in about a week.”
Harumasa smiled brightly at those words. Every time he heard of any of their accomplishments, it made him proud, “And I’m proud of you guys for that. Good job!”
Tsubaki laughed a bit and replied, “Well, we were wondering if you’d like to come to the ceremony.”
Harumasa was a bit taken aback, not in a bad way though, “I mean, yeah, I’d love to, but are you sure?”
“There's nobody, I think we’d want there more. You’re the reason we even got the chance to graduate high school and the reason we’ll even get the chance at a future.” She said, clearly wanting it to be known how important the archer was to all of them.
“Well, in that case, of course I’ll come.”
He then moved his phone from his ear and opened up his calendar app and put the phone back up to his ear, “What time is it?”
He heard a slight noise of paper flipping, “Uh…It should be 6 pm next…Thursday.”
Harumasa set that date into his phone's calendar and mentally tried to figure out if he could take that time off…Well, he would either way, but it was a matter of getting in trouble or not.
“I’ll be there, Tsubaki! Tell the others I said hi!”
“I will! Thank you! I’ll see you then.”
After a few more sweet goodbyes, the archer ended the call, put his phone back into his pocket, turned the corner, and went back into the office.
The black-haired man could hardly sit back down when he got asked by Yanagi, “Can I ask who you were on the phone with?”
Harumasa stretched over, grabbing a time-off request sheet, “Tsubaki.” He answered simply before picking up his pen, quietly cursing himself for it being out of ink and getting a new one.
“Oh, what did she need?” The pink-haired woman looked up from her paperwork
“Her, Kana, and Ryosuke graduate next week, so I’m taking time off to go see it.”
Yanagi smiled at the sweet gesture, “Oh, that's nice. I’ll make sure your day off is approved then.”
Harumasa gave her a hum of gratitude before going back to the headache-inducing paperwork and emails he had to deal with
—
After many, many, MANY hours…Well, maybe only two, but to Harumasa, it felt much longer. He had finished all of his work for the day. He quickly left and got into his car, and drove off, bidding very short goodbyes to his colleagues since he was already quite tired and didn’t want to stay longer than necessary.
“Have a good evening, Harumasa!” Yanagi called before walking off with Soukaku to their car. Harumasa waved to them and got into his car, sighing loudly as soon as the doors closed. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel, trying to take a minute to relax a bit before driving.
Harumasa began driving towards Lumine Square, both to get home and to pick up his boyfriend, a junior officer of public security, a feline thiren named Seth Lowell. The roads were packed with cars and motorbikes of every size so which made getting into the packed square of New Eridu even more difficult than it normally was. Harumasa normally wouldn't mind, as it gave him more time to decompress and listen to the radio. However, tonight, he just really wanted to see his boyfriend, go home, eat dinner, and sleep.
Soon, Harumasa arrived at a building he had gotten all too familiar with in the past few months. The PUBSEC logo shone in the sunset outside as Haruamsa pulled his car into the parking lot. The bark of their police dog, Eugine, could be heard quietly as Harumasa turned off the car and got out, stretching his arms as he did. He walked over to the front door, greeting the officer outside. He entered and was instantly greeted by Zhu Yuan, the captain of the criminal investigation special response team. Harumasa always questions how she says that title with a straight face in its entirety.
The black-ponytail woman waved politely to him, “Oh, Harumasa. What’re you doing here? I figured Section was long off shift by now.”
Harumasa hummed, absentmindedly putting a loose paper on the front desk onto its pile where it seemed to belong, “Yeah, I got off work a while ago, I’m just waiting for Seth to finish work,” He peeked through the doorway of their office where all of their desks were, “I doubt it’ll take long so I figured I’d come inside for bit.”
Zhu Yuan chuckled. Harumasa looked slightly confused. “What's so funny?”
“Nothing, nothing! During our lunch break today, I just saw on Seth's phone that he was frantically looking up dishes and also putting things like ‘bitter’ or if specific foods or drinks could be eaten on a medication of some kind.”
Harumasas ears flared, “He’s so cheesy…”
Zhu Yuan nodded in agreement, “The girls and I are going to head home. If you want to help him finish up, you’re more than welcome to.”
The archer nodded, then headed towards the office, while Zhu Yuan headed out the door to the parking lot and went home. It didn't take long at all to reach their office. It was a lot more homey than how the Section 6 office felt. Don't get Harumasa wrong, he liked the office as much as he could, but there was something about the office of PUBSEC that felt a lot less…demanding? Intimidating? Harumasa didn't know for sure, but he liked it. He stood in the doorway and quietly watched as Seth typed on his computer, wrote the most post-it notes the older had ever seen, and he watched Seth throw away two empty pens and click new ones just as fast.
Harumasa always admired that about his junior. Seth was always incredibly hardworking, even back at their time in the academy when they were learning how to do their jobs. While Harumasa always considered himself laid back and relaxed during their schooling years, it always seemed like every time he was going to get something for an assignment from the library, Seth was always there studying, whenever Harumasa was getting coffee for himself, he’d see the feline getting coffee for a table of friends and when he went to give paper copies of stuff to professors or facility, hed see Seth helping out teachers or helping younger students struggling with their work. It was always impressive and also incredibly endearing…Even if he was dense when it came to students wanting help or just wanting Seth to do their work for them.
Seth never seemed to grow out of this caring nature, which seemed to carry into his work, even if it was potentially harming to his physical and mental health. This was on clear display as Harumasa watched Seth work, in his opinion, above his pay grade. He didn’t blame Seth for working so hard, but he also doubted Seth really knew the word break, atleast not when he was working like this. The archer knew he could wait to have romantic, lovey-dovey thoughts about Seth later. Now, it was a matter of snapping him out of his bubble.
Harumasa walked as quietly as he could behind the chair where Seth was sitting. He put his hands on Seth's shoulders, leaned down, and whispered into his feline ears, “Boo~!”
The other jumped, “What the-!” He exclaimed, spinning around in his chair
Harumasa smiled, seeing Seth's purple eyes looking up at him from his chair, “How's work, dear?” He said teasingly as he held Seth's hand to his lips and kissed it
Seth's cheeks flushed a lovely pink color as Harumasas lips touched his skin, “Good- wait…What time is it?”
Harumasa looked at the time on his phone as he grabbed Seth's bag for him, “It's about… 8:30,” He read aloud.
Seth's eyes widened as he, too, looked at his phone screen, “Oh dear…Sorry for making you wait. I thought it was still 6:00…”
The two walked out of the office and through the building to the front. “It’s fine. I like bothering you while you work.”
They walked out to the parking lot and went to the only car there, Harumasas, and got in. Seth yawned as soon as he got in and Harumasa started the car, turning the radio down from earlier.
“Don’t fall asleep on me now! I heard you were wanting to make me a nice dinner.” Harumasa went back to holding Seth's hand like he was earlier, both of them resting on the top of the center console while Harumasa drove down the familiar streets with the other hand to use the steering wheel.
As Harumasa drove, his mind began to relax from the stresses of work and socialization, and he began to focus on the person beside him. The person who broke down the barrier, Harumasa, worked so, so hard to keep up. The white-haired man means more to him than he might understand. They take care of each other, and the other asks for nothing in return except for the other's continued Love and support. Something like that would get Harumasa to call Seth cheesy, but internally, he knew Seth was right.
Thankfully, Harumasa's house was near the PUBSEC building, which Harumasa always teased was on purpose, but Seth knew it was a simple coincidence. Either way, the two didn't have to go far, and there was less likelihood of Seth falling asleep in the car. Harumasa pulled into the driveway, and Seth was the first one to get out and stretch, though, quickly getting their stuff from the back. The archer smiled and sneakily caressed his tail as he passed to tease him.
Seth jumped slightly at the sudden touch, “Harumasa! I've told you not to do that!”
Harumas grabbed Seth's hand on his own, dragging him towards the house, kissing his forehead on the way.
“Sorry~ you just look cute when you're flustered.”
The two were blushing at the other's actions and words…one more than the other. Harumasa fiddled around to find his keys and opened the door. Seth walked in with a sense of familiarity, like he'd been here a thousand times already. Which Harumasa knew wasn't too far off from reality. Harumasa put his stuff down and slumped onto the couch right away, like he'd been wanting to do that all day.
Seth soon joined him and sat comfortably beside him. “What do you want for dinner?” Seth asked, laying his fluffy head on Harumasa's shoulder.
“Hm…what were you planning on making?”
Seth pulled out his phone at the question and scrolled through some recipes on an interest app. After a minute, he finally found the recipe he needed. He held his phone out for Harumasa to see better,
“What about this? It's some baked potato soup, but it has steak in it rather than bacon, since I know you don't like bacon very much.”
Harumasa scrolled through the ingredients list on Seth's phone, looking at it. “I don't even know if I have potatoes in that pantry.”
He pointed out, even though it looked good, it wouldn't be much of a meal without, yknow, food.
Seth got up, taking the phone, “Don't worry. I went grocery shopping yesterday, remember?”
Harumasa did not, in fact, remember, “When did you go grocery shopping? I don't think I was with you.”
Seth chuckled at Harumasas rare show of confusion, “While you were napping yesterday. I went to that one grocery store down the road that you like.”
Now it all made sense to Harumasa, “So that's why there was coffee in the kitchen yesterday after we ran out…I thought I was going crazy.”
The junior officer nodded and kissed Harumasas head as he walked over to go to the kitchen to cook dinner, while Harumasa grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch to settle in for a nap.
But right after he grabs the blanket, he remembers what he was going to ask Seth way earlier in their date night. He got up and went into the kitchen. Right away, he spotted Seth peeling some of the potatoes for the soup. He wrapped his arms around Seth's waist, which, surprisingly, didn't make Seth jump. He probably heard the sound of Harumasas' steps.
“So~ yknow Kana, Tsubaki, and Ryosuke?” Harumasa started simply.
Seth looked at the new presence on his shoulder, “Of course. What about them?”
“So~ Tsubaki invited me to come and watch their graduation.”
Seth smiled at this new information, “Oh, they’re graduating already? That's amazing! I’m sure you're proud of them.”
Harumasa hummed happily, Seth put a spoon with a bit of warm food to his lips for him to try. He ate it. “That's good,” He swallowed the food, “I am. I’m very proud of them; they’ve come a long way.”
He kissed Seth's cheek, “They want me to come to their graduation and I want you to come with me.”
Seth blinked a few times, moving to put the pot on the stove, “Huh? Are you sure?”
“Of course, I don’t think they’d mind.”
Seth set the pot on the stove and turned to give Harumasa his full attention. “Well, when is it? I’ll have to call the captain and tell her I’ll need the day off-” Before Seth could rant about everything he’d need to do at the precinct beforehand, Harumasa cut him off,
“It's on Thursday.”
Seth paused, “This upcoming Thursday?”
Harumasa checked his phone calendar, “At this point, yeah.”
The younger thought for a moment and nodded, “Of course. I’ll go with you.”
Harumasa smiled and kissed him gently, “I knew you'd never say no to me~”
Seth blushed brightly, “I-...just…go get me some spices from the drawer, please..” He sighed, flustered.
Wednesday morning. It was barely 24 hours from the graduation of Tsubaki, Hana, and Ryosuke. Sunlight peered through the yellow curtains of the room, hitting above the headboard of the bed and sneaking up to hit the face of Seth, making him awaken at the feeling of the beam touching his cheek and side of his face. Seth slowly stirred, getting out of bed right away.
Their white ears and tail swished and twitched as he stretched the sleep out of his body. The theiran walked over to the dresser, getting out actual clothes instead of just wearing his pajama bottoms all day…Even though Harumasa would probably enjoy that immensely. Seth went to the bathroom, put on his clothes, and then went out to the kitchen to make breakfast and coffee for himself and his boyfriend. He was about ready to start the coffee maker, beans and all already in it, when he heard a hard cough coming from the bedroom and continued painfully.
Seth instantly rushed into the bedroom, seeing Harumasa sitting up, arm covering his mouth as he coughed hard. Even from where he was standing at the door, he could hear how bad Harumasas lungs were suffering right now by how wheezy and hard it sounded. Seth walked over and sat with Harumasa, rubbing his back as he continued to cough his lungs out.
“Seth..cough… go grab my meds from the cabinet.” Harumasa managed to get out
“Of course. Which ones do you need?” Seth asked. There were over 20 bottles of pills in that cabinet alone, even with Seth's good sense of memory, not even he knew what they were all for; he only knew the ones Harumasa used daily.
“The ones with the yellow around the cap and the blue font. It should be,” He took a breath, “In the far back.”
Seth nodded at Harumasas' request, getting up, “Did you feel this bad last night?”
The archer shook his head, “No, this just hit me when I woke up.”
Seth thought for a moment about something but decided not to vocalize it. He walked out of the room and went over to Harumasas medicine cabinet, moving some to the side until he found the bottle Harumasa was talking about. He also grabbed Harumas's normal daily medication along with it. He got a plate of food, a drink, and the medicine, and took it into Harumasa and put it on the bedside table he had gotten Harumasa exactly for instances like this.
Harumasa looked at Seth gratefully, “Thank you, Seth…” He smiled, taking the medicine with his drink before eating.
The day didn't get any better. Harumasas medicine, while it worked for a while, didn’t last long, and his cough came back, and he'd already vomited up everything that could be in his system, so now he was just hacking up mucus. Seth looked at Harumas's face, seeing the red spots on his face of popped blood vessels from how hard he was coughing and vomiting.
“Can I see your phone?”
Harumasa nodded tiredly, not feeling well enough to tease Seth with a joke. He handed Seth his phone, “‘Passwords our anniversary.” He mumbled.
“I know, thank you.” Seth smiled, taking it and entering the password.
He went to Harumasas call app and hit the contact that said, “Chief (～﹃～)~zZ”. Seth chuckled softly at the emoji and contact name. He then hit the call button, anxiously letting it ring before Miyabi picked up,
“Oh, hello Harumasa. Is something the matter?” The fox thiren said plainly
“Hello, Miyabi…uh, this is Seth Howell. I’m calling on Harumas's behalf.”
Miyabi's tone became a bit more concerned than it normally was. Seth could hear Yanagi on the line, too. “Oh? Seth's calling for Harumasa? It must be serious…What's going on?”
“He's sick today. He hasn't been keeping anything down, and I’d rather him not be behind a wheel, much less work today.” Seth explained
“I see, thank you for telling me. He has the day off now.” Miyabi said, audibly typing something,
“Thank you, Miyabi.” Seth smiled, speaking respectfully and ending the call after saying goodbye.
Seth set the phone down. Harumasa wrapped his arms around Seth's waist, snuggling in. Seth was always a cool person…body temperature-wise, which was nice for Harumasa when he was ill like this.
The two sat like this for a while, and Seth had the urge to ask a question, something that was on his mind all morning, ever since he saw how sick Harumasa was.
“Harumasa?”
“Hm?”
“I don't think you should go to their graduation tomorrow,” Seth said, not to be mean, of course; he was just worried for Harumasas health.
He shook his head, “No…I’m going.”
“Harumasa, you’re super sick right now, and I doubt it’ll go away tomorrow! I can just go and let you see it on a call if that would work better! The school's website says they livestream it too.” Seth offered, trying to compromise.
“Seth, I want you to understand something for me…” Harumasa sat up, holding Seth's hand.
“Yes?” Seth listened intently,
“I…You know how Tsubaki wants to go to medical school?” Seth nodded to Harumasas words, “I don’t think I’ll be alive long enough for that. I don’t think I’ll be alive long enough to see any of them get married, have families of their own, get through the academy to become officers…”
Seth was going to cut him off “Haru-”
Harumasa shushed him and kept going, “I want to go to the graduation no matter what, Seth. I care so much for these kids, and I know, no matter how much you don't want to admit it, because it's depressing, I don't have a lot of time left to spend with them with my condition. I want to show them that I love them and will always be there as long as I can.”
Seth sat there, thinking for a few minutes, “...Ok. We’ll try.”
The archer smiled softly, getting a pen and paper, writing stuff down, “I need you to go to the pharmacy on Lumina Square and get me these medicines…Oh, and also get yourself some boba, you were talking about it yesterday.”
Seth kissed his forehead, “Alright, are you sure you'll be ok by yourself?”
Harumasa chuckled, “I’ve been alone through worse.”
Seth looked concerned again, “That doesn't mean you…”
Harumasa cut him off, “Go, Seth. I’ll be ok.”
Seth got up and got his stuff together to go out, and right when he was about to head out, Harumasas phone buzzed, “Oh? Who's that?” Seth asked
“It's just Yanagi, I was talking to them about getting the kids flowers since those are common graduation gifts, and I didn’t know what kind they'd want, so she was sending me ideas,” Harumasa explained, showing him the flower ideas.
Thursday. The day of the graduation. Less than 12 hours away, and Harumasa was already looking better. Seth was very impressed and surprised; he thought Harumasa would be sick for a lot longer.
The two walked around Lumina Square, killing time as they waited. They went over to the flower shop to pick up the flowers. Orchedia, as always, was standing out front, her skirt blowing in the breeze. They waved in greeting.
“Oh, hello, officers. How can I help you two?”
“We’re just here to pick up some flowers; they should be under the name Harumasa.”
Orchedia nodded and went to the back to pick them up. When she walked out with them, Seth paused.
“Honey, these flowers make no sense…did you pick out just random flowers for them?” He asked as nicely as he could.
Harumasa laughed at Seth's concern, “Oh? Are these not good flowers for graduation?”
“...Not flower language-wise, no.”
Orchedia looked at him and nodded, agreeing with Seth.
“Alright, well, let's see…is there a way we could switch them then?”
The flower shop owner nodded, “Of course, let's get you something proper.”
After that was all sorted, it was about time they'd get going to where the graduation was being held, a nice park just outside the city that had gorgeous flowers, trails, trees, views…
Harumasa sat down beside Seth, holding his hand
The two shared a soft kiss
“Yknow,it'ss days like this that I’m happy I've lived as long as I have.”
“I’m glad.”