The world is so big. Sometimes Melody is afraid that one day, in the middle of simply existing, she'd be swallowed up whole by the world's vastness. To be swallowed in a bad way would mean somehow losing parts of herself, leaving pieces everywhere for no one to find.
Like most people, she has dreams. However, not being a person of natural luck, achieving them will take a lot of time. Which she has plenty of. She waits outside of the cleaners for her old friend Gaku. Any time now, his car will come sputtering down the street.
Today, someone had asked her 'do you even smile'?
She smiles all the time. Just not when she's at work. Its been bothering her all day. Why would anyone expect people to be happy about work?
Ten more minutes pass. She tugs her tacky bucket hat down by her ears and groans, frowning up at the evening sky.
York New isn't a safe city. There's too many kinds of people that come and go, but it is a good starting point for folk like Melody—who want to experience what it's like to never have to mow a lawn. One thing she does miss about her home town is the smell of wet grass in the summer.
Right as she begins to dig in her purse for her phone to give him a call, Gaku's pick-up truck screeches down the compact one-way street. His front right-side tire pops the curb.
"What if it had started raining?" Melody taps the passenger side window with two fingers.
"You woulda just gotten wet!" He rolls the window down wearing a smile that touches the corners of his eyes. They haven't seen each other in a year and some odd months.
Melody throws her bag through the window first then opens the car door. She does her best to control her excitement—she wanted to know all of what he had been up to. Had he passed his Hunter exam? Did he have a new song he wanted her to learn? Gaku's imagination is his strongest trait. She compliments him with her scientific way of understanding sound. What he could only describe as feeling, Melody could perfectly give the music in his head form.
Her eyes water. It has been a long time since they've written music together.
Gathering her long skirt, she wiggles into of the passenger seat, slams the door shut. As she kicks off her sandals, Gaku dangles a card in her face. It takes a second for her vision to correct itself, he holds it so close to her face. She takes it from his hand to better observe its sleek lamination and the bold symbol stretched to each corner.
"Did you?" She hiccups.
"Yes. I'm officially a Hunter."
She doesn't want to hear anymore until they make it back to her cold apartment—a smelly corner in a quiet slum she had managed to find immediately after being evicted from her old place two months ago. A good story needs a safe space, where the going-ons of the world cannot interrupt the magic. Gaku gives her a nod of agreement, taking his license back, speeding down the trash littered road.
Melody turns on the radio. It plays the bridge of a song she has heard a million times in the supermarket, but she doesn't know the name of it nor the artist. A light tune like it's from the past but timeless in its clever rhyme. Melody sings along and the sorcery of her voice gives the song a layer of unique prettiness that only she is capable summoning.
Gaku has yet to meet anyone else capable of turning an echo into a harmony.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Chrollo guzzles a double shot of honey flavored whiskey instead of taking cold medicine. If it's not D², he thinks taking over-the-counter drugs is a pitiful way of surrendering to weakness. He'd rather be flayed in the street, or worse, go to prison, before he numbs the flow of 'weakness' leaving his body. He will only ever do drugs to triple his extreme 'good' feelings.
The fat tabby Shalnark refuses to name nuzzles against Chrollo's bare ankle. Thirty minutes have passed and Pakunoda still isn't ready.
"Franklin and Nobunaga's train is delayed. They won't make it for dinner." Machi stares at her cellphone.
"Can't we just cancel the reservation?" Shalnark leans over the back of the couch. Chrollo's head is sunken in the cushions.
"They'll charge me a cancellation fee." Chrollo balances the almost empty glass on his knee. Money doesn't matter, however, Chrollo sometimes cares about the principles.
Machi doesn't enjoy watching Chrollo suffer with a stuffy nose. His face is flushed cherry red. Bullets of sweat line his forehead. The loose fall of his bangs cling to his face. His breathing rattles the drainage in his chest.
None of them challenge Chrollo. Even when he suggests something mildly irrational. It's an unspoken rule that they follow among themselves, unbeknownst to him. He encourages 'healthy' debate all the time, but their instincts know better. Pakunoda calls it their rule of 'unconditional love'.
Chrollo is polite about his stubborn behavior. He can't be talked down from his highs but he sure as hell possesses the divine capability of talking everyone else down the side of a cliff.
Shalnark winces at Machi when Chrollo begins to wheeze. If Chrollo were less beautiful, he wouldn't have such an affect on people. The cat jumps into his lap, Chrollo begins to cough. The whiskey slops over the glass and stains the carpet.
"Chrollo." Machi rarely speaks informally to him, "I speak to you as a human first. We should just cancel the reservation. You clearly don't feel well anyway."
Clearing his throat, he doesn't give her his usual prompt reply. He stares into the cat's green eyes, narrowing his gaze when he finally makes out his reflection. Chrollo drags a hand down his fuzzy back, up the curl of his tail and says, "Cat, what do you think?"
Of course, Cat doesn't respond. Satisfied purrs rumble from his big belly.
"What does being human mean to you, Machi?" Chrollo's large eyes find hers. Growing up, she learned how to read secrets in wide stares. Chrollo is the only person in the world, and she's been everywhere, that lacks detectable expression in his gaze. The eyes are suppose to glitter, dim, water, glass over. His eyes are just big gray mirrors.
Machi gets nervous. She folds her hands over a knee, searching her head for a way to explain herself. She lacks the language of emotional articulacy.
"Cat, do you think you're human? Do you know you're just a cat?" Chrollo rubs Cat's head. Cat purrs fiercely.
"In a past life, Cat, was a human. I know it." Shalnark tries to change the subject but Chrollo needles Machi down with his foggy glare.
"Human means being defenseless against death." She speaks calmly.
"Good thing I don't intend on dying." Chrollo woodenly retorts.
"Of course. No one ever intends on dying. It more often than not just occurs." Machi doesn't even realize that she is expressing affection. Chrollo doesn't receive it that way either.
"If a common cold kills me, then I deserve it." Chrollo sits up to straighten his back and Cat jumps to the floor, following Shalnark to the balcony of the hotel room.
Beneath Machi's stolid surface, deep down where her spirit is soft, she feels bad. It's a strange kind of bad too—like someone has taken a scalpel to her chest and cut her down the middle, exposing the pink supple flesh.
Pakunoda reveals herself from the steamy bathroom. Smartly dressed and wearing subdued excitement. It takes a moment for her to realize the atmosphere is somewhat rotten.
"You guys aren't ready?" She stands between Chrollo and Machi.
"Cancel the reservation. I don't feel good." He sits the glass down and sprawls out on the couch.
Machi stands to join Shalnark and fat Cat on the balcony, not being able to shake away this feeling of invasion within her heart-space. Pakunoda strangles on a disgruntled gasp. She had gotten dressed in her nice pantsuit for nothing.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Feitan and Phinks squish inside the back of a cab. Both of their phones ring in harmony. A harsh vibrato and a light ping. Feitan settles the pink box in his lap before retrieving the phone from his deep pockets.
"Dinner is cancelled." Feitan mumbles. Phinks lights a cigarette. There's a laminated 'no smoking' sign taped to the back of the plexiglass separating them from the driver. He rolls down the window and breathes out his soul. Smoke rolling around his face, wind raking through his neatly gelled down hair, a strand breaks loose.
"Damn. I was really anticipating a steak." Phinks coughs when the wind shoots up his nose.
"Medium rare..." Feitan gives a depressing sigh, closing the screen of his phone. They hit a speed bump and the severed head rattles around the box. He peeks inside. The smell wafts around the back seat. It's already muggy in the cab. Crammed with the scent of urine and sun-cooked pleather.
The cab drivers swerves to the side of the busy road.
"Excuse me, sir, you cannot smoke..." But he doesn't get another word out. Phinks reaches through the opening of the plexiglass and puts the cigarette out in the man's eye. His scream and the fist he jams into the horn sets the motion for the remainder of the evening. Another failed attempt at doing something together as a family that doesn't involve pillaging. Not that any of them have grown tired of their crimes, but it always seems to be at the expense of their need for balance.
.
.
Feitan comes down on the brakes at the tail end of a yellow light. He had missed a right turn.
"This is my second time ever driving a car." He can barely see above the wheel. Phinks sifts through the dead cab driver's wallet. It didn't take long to kill the man, but he had put up quite the fight—they'd gone easy on him for the sake of not ruining their clothes before delivering the bride's cleaved head to her mother. Phinks watches the dead body like it's bound to spring back to life, possessed by a spite demon. The man stays dead, slumped beside the hot pink box. Blood soaks through the bottom of it.
"Just don't run us in a ditch." Phinks grumbles when they drive over a pothole. He hangs his arm out the window so that his hand can fiercely glide along the fast currents. Feitan's eyes dart from one red tail light to another. Car zip past them like shooting stars.
"You don't drive like someone who hardly does it." Phinks states.
"I've seen enough high-speed chases on T.V." Feitan weaves around the traffic seamlessly.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"I really hate that you can't see the stars here." Their room is on one of the highest floor. The 'Get-away' suite. A courtesy of their client. Still, his eyes cannot penetrate the thick fogginess that hangs over York New. The last of the sunlight is a golden belt around the horizon.
But Shalnark doesn't speak to anyone but Cat, who is understandably indifferent about the sky. Cats don't pay attention to things like that. So he thinks...he doesn't not much about cats.
He drinks straight from a tall bottle of red wine. Expensive wine is supposed to taste differently than the cheap stuff. He can't tell the difference so, like Cat, he is indifferent. It tastes alright. Makes his gut burn a little. The bottle is cool looking. He leans over the rail, watching the cars go back and forth. In his fluffy white bathrobe, imaging that he has always been some rich kid sipping straight from an expensive bottle of moscato.
Cat meows at him.
"I know." Shalnark smacks his lip impassively. He has no idea what Cat is trying to say. The longer he drinks, the wobblier his legs become. He spills himself into the lounger. As he knees point towards the sky, his robe splits open and the breeze caresses his naked nether regions. Arguably the most relaxed he has been in a while. Cat speaks to him again a little louder. Shalnark sits the bottle down with a light 'clink' and scoops Cat up and onto his chest.
"What? Do you want more rats to eat? We don't eat rats around here."
He begins to wonder why the hell he felt compelled to pick up a stray. Cat stinks like outside pollution.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." ~ Tennessee Williams
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
A/N: I'd like to start by saying that I fiddled with the timeline and took some creative liberties. This is pre-Shizuku and Hisoka Phantom Troupe. They haven't killed the Kurta yet. I really don't know what direction I'm going in. I'm just writing out of my asshole. It's kind of like an experiment. I just need a good reason to write them. TLDR; this is an AU obviously. Thank you for reading. All errors I missed, I will get around to fixing them eventually. Sometimes if I don't just go ahead and upload, I end up hating it all and dragging it into the trash-bin lmfao.