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His hair is still damp when he leaves the bathroom and exchanges his towel for a pair of linen shorts.
The towel goes in the hamper. The main lights are switched off. The loft is plunged into near darkness and the flickering skyline of the city reflects like glitter in Hisoka’s eyes when Illumi sits down on top of him.
“Oof,” Hisoka wheezes out. “Someone’s touchy-feely.”
He’s sprawled flat on their bed like a starfish, arms to his sides. Illumi settles comfortably, knees pressed against the sides of Hisoka’s chest. His skin is warm, already tacky with sweat despite his own bath earlier that evening.
He had scuttled off while Illumi was away, picked a fight with someone, someplace under the cheerful summer sky, with nothing to show for it upon his return but a pile of bloodied clothes on the bathroom floor for Illumi to find. Foolish, as always. Impulsive. Irrational. He’s always picking fights. He didn’t put the clothes in the hamper.
Hisoka’s hands settle on Illumi’s bare thighs, running aimlessly up and down, and up and down.
Illumi bends down and kisses him. Touchy-feely, yes. He needs this. He likes to be reminded, he thinks, that he’s human, that he’s a real person with a body of his own, that he matters, that he loves and is loved in turn. It’s hard to convince the voice in his head sometimes.
He leans down on his forearms and sinks slowly into the mattress.
Hisoka’s pale eyes, when they part, are like molten gold. Glittering gold. White gold. Warm and reassuring—and cold and cruel—but never to Illumi. No, he wouldn’t be.
Illumi is a creature of brittle glass in Hisoka’s hands when they're like this.
They fight dirty and they draw blood, again and again, and they cut down anyone who stands in their way, even each other. They do, they have no choice but to do it. Occupational hazard. They’re monstrous. An unstoppable force and an immovable object. That’s what they are. But when the smoke clears and the sirens die down and the grime swirls down the shower drain, Illumi is precious glass.
Gentle hands cradle his face.
There’s a puff of warm breath against his lips. Illumi blinks, comes back to himself. He’s alive, he remembers. He’s let his guard down and surrendered. He can do that here. He’s safe. He’s glass.
“Are you here with me?” Hisoka asks him, soft and careful like the way he holds him. “Where’d you float off to, my little love?”
Illumi blinks again
“I’m here,” he mutters.
Hisoka smiles against his mouth when he leans back down. He smells like vanilla, like something sweet, but he smells like blood, too, even now, scrubbed clean to the bone. He always smells like blood, just a little bit.
Illumi weaves his fingers through Hisoka’s hair. It’s soft and frizzy and wavy, down just past his jaw. It’s a pale peach now, the dye long faded, almost entirely. It’s too hot to think, Hisoka says, he laughs, let alone hotbox himself in the bathroom with whatever chemicals his favorite little bottles contain. That makes sense. But it doesn’t matter, doesn’t change anything. He’s still pretty. Pretty pretty pretty.
Even with the healing cut across the bridge of his bare, freckled nose, and an uglier, angrier one just above his left eyebrow, he’s pretty. He’s always picking fights. The inner corner of the left eye is bruised, too. Someone got close enough. No one is allowed to get close enough.
Hisoka’s spindly fingers slide from Illumi’s thighs up to the dip of his waist like skittering spiders. He’s always so warm. Tactile. Illumi likes it. He doesn’t mind it, not even now. The humid air seems to roll like molasses around them. Their skin is sticky where they touch. They do not stop touching.
The hands settle just above the jut of his hips. For a moment, he is simply held. He likes it. Hisoka kisses him like they have all the time in the world, and Illumi’s hair is a curtain between them and everything else. They’re alone. Safe. The hands move. They map out the flat of Illumi’s stomach, cataloguing each line and every abrasion.
Illumi has scars, too. There’s one through the middle of his abdomen, the biggest one of all, skin pinched and pink still, months later. It looks almost like a star, sharp and pointed all around. Hisoka traces its edges. He likes to put his mouth to it, sometimes, likes to call it just that, a star, to call Illumi his star. His beloved star-shine. He calls Illumi his love.
“You're thinking very hard, precious.”
Hisoka pulls gently away and tucks a strand of Illumi’s damp hair behind his ear. Illumi mirrors the motion, absently touches his hair, his ear. He backs away too, sits up just so.
He hums. He is thinking very hard. He’s unable to stop it.
With a groan of exertion, Hisoka picks his head up to press another soft kiss to Illumi’s mouth before flopping hard back down onto the bed. Greedy. He wants the upper hand. The last laugh. The last kiss. He wants and he takes and he takes.
“Tell me a secret, 'mimi. Something nobody knows.”
“I like you better without makeup.”
It comes out on its own, propelled forward like a bullet. He’s too tired to filter what leaves his brain and tumbles out of his mouth. And he’s honest. He’s always honest, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s the truth.
He’s been thinking it all night. Soft skin flushed pink from the summer air, the steam of the bath, from Illumi’s lips, the press of his fingers. Freckles, a pale dusting of cinnamon, like coffee in the mornings, milk, one sugar. Pretty scars like memories and lines around his eyes. He smiles so much. He smiles so much it leaves marks.
Hisoka’s bark of laughter cuts through the silence. He’s unbothered. He knows that already; Illumi has told him so in everything but words.
The arms around his waist wind and tighten, and Illumi is pulled down into another kiss. His arms give out, fold under him, and he cannot stop them, distracted suddenly by the pitter-patter beating of his own heart. He topples and crashes, and he doesn’t resist. He lets himself be engulfed completely. Hisoka is like a shroud, a cloak to crawl under and disappear. He’s hell and he’s heaven and everything in between. He’s everything.
One arm snakes up and around Illumi’s shoulders, pressing his chest firmly down against the body underneath him. Sticky, tacky. There’s fingers in his hair, tugging like an invitation, and the kiss is deep and hard and filthy; there’s a tongue sliding past his lips and dragging over his teeth, tasting, feeling, teasing. Horrible, greedy man. There’s a hand on his ass, the other arm, the vicious drag of a sharp fingernail just above the loose band of his sleep pants, and Illumi bites back the small, needy sound that bubbles up in his throat. That won’t do. They can’t, he won’t, not now.
“We just bathed,” Illumi reminds him. His voice comes out faint. Hoarse. He’s breathless, lightheaded. Desperate. He’s weak. He has a weakness and he shouldn’t but he does. He tastes Hisoka on his lips; he’s sweet, he’s like candy.
Hisoka hums; it’s like a little laugh. “Tell me another.”
“It's your turn.”
They have so many secrets from everyone else. Too many. They are a secret from everyone else, just about everyone. But there’s no such thing between them. No lies, no deception. Everything comes out sooner or later. Some things later than others, but that’s all right. They’re secrets now, but not forever. Never forever, nothing lasts forever.
Hisoka pauses for a moment. He stares at Illumi, at his chapped lips and the bags weighing heavy beneath his eyes, scrutinizing, and says, “I don't think I really want you to kill me. And I don’t think you want that, either.”
Illumi’s breath stutters. He pulls back an inch to look Hisoka in the eyes. Explain. Explain explain explain.
Hisoka titters. “Not yet, at least. You'd miss me too much.”
The giggle is forced and tight and there’s a strange, pained half-smile distorting his face, and his voice is so soft, so low. It doesn’t suit him. It doesn’t look very much like him at all.
“That’s not your secret to share,” Illumi whispers.
For a split second, Hisoka’s eyes go wide, something sharp and bright flashes through them, and then a genuine smile cracks through, splits his face in two, and he lets slip a little groan of satisfaction. It’s the only warning Illumi gets before Hisoka kicks down against the bed and uses the momentum to bounce himself upright and reverse their positions.
Illumi’s back hits the mattress, and he doesn’t mind, he lets Hisoka pin him down. He likes it, he thinks he prefers it, being crowded into the sheets, caged in from all sides. Safe, it’s safe.
Hisoka pushes his hair out of his face, out of the way. He kisses the corner of Illumi’s willing mouth, then he kisses his jaw, his throat, he bites gently down around his collarbone, marking him, branding him—mine, you’re mine, and I don’t like sharing—and soothing the sting with a flick of his tongue.
He doesn’t draw blood, not now, not today. He knows Illumi would be mad. He knows these things now, he’s learned them.
The sheets are clean. They're clean. They're going to bed, there’s no time to scrub blood from anything. There’s an order to things that Hisoka knows he can only upset so much, only every so often, before Illumi’s fragile peace is shattered. An order, a pattern. Not too much spontaneity. Not too much noise. Never too much, just enough.
He kisses all the way down Illumi’s body, lips soft and careful, barely brushing his over-warm skin, just a whisper, a promise. He runs his mouth over the bruises, the purpling imprints of his teeth he left that morning, and the night before, and before that, and every night. Illumi likes to prod at them. He likes the ache, the way it feels, because it’s a different pain. It’s good. He wasn’t hurt, he was loved, and it grounds him, makes him feel warm inside, the same warmth he feels when he looks at the ring on his hand, when Hisoka’s wearing one just like it and their fingers are looped together, intertwined.
There’s a cavern in him, carved into him, a cold, deep abyss, everything that real people should have inside them scooped out of him little by little since he was old enough to babble and crawl. But that warm feeling fills it back up in tiny increments. Little by little, bricks stacked together until he’s whole again. Maybe he can become whole again.
A kiss is pressed to one of the bite marks on his hip, sore and tender, and another to the inside of his thigh where he knows he’s bruised, where he spread himself nice and wide before the sun rose into the sky that morning, before he had to go—reconnaissance, he was doing reconnaissance—where Hisoka yanked him down the length of the bed half into his lap and fucked him until there were tears in his eyes and gasps lodged in his throat and Hisoka dispelled the hurt with his hands, his mouth, and made it all better.
He does that. His touch is a balm, a remedy, a miracle cure. He makes Illumi melt, vanishes the composure he’s built up so carefully with a swift sleight of hand, and Illumi screws his eyes shut and sinks into it like a pebble in a pond. He hits the bottom with a thud, unsettling the sand, the sediment, and it feels like coming home.
Hisoka kisses the side of his knee next, bony and bruised, Illumi is always bruised somewhere, everywhere, and treads lower, takes the arch of Illumi’s foot between his fingers and kisses the jut of his ankle like even that part of him is treasured. Everything, every part, Hisoka would say. He’s generous that way.
Illumi is his blank canvas, his plaything, his doll. Hisoka unravels him, he unmakes him, he crafts something new. He builds Illumi up again, raises him from the ground up. Not in his own image, heavens, no, he says. He hands Illumi the brush instead. He hands him the choice, again and again, over and over again, as many times as it takes, to make himself, to learn himself, to be his own creation. It can be frightening. Illumi is not used to having a choice. He has so many choices to make now. It’s overwhelming.
Hisoka presses his lips to the side of Illumi’s foot, wrinkled from his shower, and Illumi wiggles his toes—painted black, he let Hisoka paint them black—in protest, and jabs Hisoka in the cheek with them. He makes a choice. A silly choice. He makes those too, now.
“Don’t put your mouth on my feet.”
“Oh?” Hisoka trills, amused. “Your feet is where you draw the line?”
He laughs and it’s so warm, too, the sound, so warm. Familiar. A comfort. Hisoka’s hair is in his eyes, curling damp around his nape, and there’s a wound on his shoulder that Illumi hasn’t seen before, another amongst dozens. Illumi’s brows pinch together and his lips part to speak, to ask, but before he can, Hisoka comes back up. He’s a bird of prey, he swoops in.
He steals the breath from Illumi’s lungs with a kiss, he’s kissing him like he cannot stop, he loves him, and Illumi really isn’t used to being loved like this. He’s defective. There isn’t enough of him to love. But in Hisoka’s hands he’s glass and he matters, and it makes him ache, deep down in that abyss of his, how tender those hands are with the shards of him.
“You’d miss me,” Hisoka sing-songs. “You love me.”
He does.
“I do love you,” Illumi says.
It’s punched out of him; he thinks it and he says it and there’s no in-between. It tastes strange, still, the way his lips curl around the words, the weight of them on his tongue. Another thing he’s unused to. They’re too precious a resource, those little words, to scatter around when the time isn’t right. He’s not good with words of any sort most of the time. They don’t fit right in his mouth. Let alone those three. I love you. I love you. He loves him.
Hisoka isn’t like him. He sings them. He shouts them from the rooftops like he’ll never run out. He burns the words into Illumi’s skin with every touch, every kiss, every swipe of his talented tongue, releases them between their bodies with every breath, every sweet exhale, until Illumi can’t help but believe them. Until he can’t help but want to say them, too.
“I know. Oh, I know. And I love you, too,” Hisoka says—of course he does, he never stops, “so very much.”
He hovers over Illumi, cages him in, and he’s so lovely like this, laid bare. He’s just a man. There’s no performance. No facade. For a moment, he’s no one and Illumi is no one, and they can be no one together. Illumi meets those eyes like molten gold and holds Hisoka’s gaze. He lets himself be held and he lets himself be selfish and greedy and careless, too, because he’s no one and doesn’t owe anybody anything.
“Tell me another secret, my darling.”
Illumi thinks he smiles. He isn’t sure. Maybe. Something is tugging at his cheek, pulling the corners of his mouth up.
“I want you to kiss me again,” he says.
Hisoka gasps, mouth agape, lips flushed pink and puffy from kissing and kissing and he’s the most beautiful thing Illumi has ever seen.
His hand flutters up to his bare chest in abject shock. “How scandalous, sweetheart. I never would have guessed.”
There’s a sound, a hitched breath, a laugh, and it takes Illumi a moment to realize it came from him. He smiled and he’s laughing now, and there’s a certain peace in his limbs, in his bones, in his lungs and his heart, the kind he’s never felt before Hisoka. Illumi loves him. With everything he has, he loves him more than he knows what to do with.
“My turn,” Hisoka whispers, and leans closer. “I really want to kiss you, too.”