A/N: *arrives back into ffnet panting and sweating* Hi guys! I had to battle my way into updating because adult life has been kicking my ass on so many levels. It was not agreeing with me for a while. If you're here and reading, you should know I like you very much. Thank you for your amazing patience and support, your reviews, tumblr likes and tags and messages, and for always, always making this fun and worthwhile. You're the best readers a writer can ask for.

Shoutout to everyone, and I mean everyone, who's been sending me nice things on tumblr and drawing fanart for the story that I want to keep in my wallet and flaunt to every person I see after hello, whether it was publicly or privately; you're a lovely, talented bunch and I'm so grateful to be followed by such amazing people.

You guys who follow me on tumblr have suggested that I split this monster chapter into three chapters that I shall update over the next weeks and so that's what I'm doing.

Music for the chapter: Electric Love by BORNS and Dirty Laundry by All Time Low.

Now is your favorite drink ready?


Chapter 52:

Red: Part II

Rouge

Killua


Yuki's keys jangled in her hand as she pushed me against the door of the bar, bringing our mouths back together and kissing me frantically. I laughed into it again, if I'd ever stopped, not since we'd both nearly tripped and clumsily stumbled across the slippery ground of the roofed porch of Lev's bar. The sound of our laughs was drowned out by another clash of thunder.

It was two hours after midnight and around us, a thunderstorm was at its height, angry pounding rain and crackling black skies. The merciless hails had started one minute after Yuki had opened her mouth to tell me whatever it was that she'd dragged me all the way up this hill for. The howling of the wind was choked off by the heavy strand of tall pine trees surrounding the hill from every direction. As we'd scrambled to pack up everything into the picnic basket in a rush, she'd suggested that we run to the dry safety of her friend's bar. The nearest and only shelter around. Lev's now-empty bar.

Lev's now-empty, securely locked bar.

I rolled, pressing her back to the door instead. "Get the damn lock," I said into the kiss, my hands cupping her ass and pulling her into me.

"Well, then stop kissing me."

"No, never."

With a laugh, she tussled against me and pushed at my chest, wiggling her body around in an attempt to unlock the door, her back to my chest. So I kissed her neck. The storm continued to brew and rage just a couple inches away from our bodies, raining hell as though the sky was on a mission, rumbling chaos in the sky, thunder crashing and booming louder each time.

Somehow in the dark, between the twenty keys in her keyring, with me smashed up against her and her shaking with silent laughter, Yuki found the bar's key. Once she had it in the door, I turned her around and back to my mouth, my hand replacing hers on the keys and taking over. Her arms came around my neck, her lips falling into rhythm with mine, easy and smooth in contrast with the chaos all around.

The wind howled somewhere right beside us and the next thing I heard was the distinct sound of an old pine tree snapping in half and maybe, possibly, probably falling close by. Really close by. Too close. Fuck.

"Holy shit," I muttered.

"I know," she whispered, taking my bottom lip in between both of hers until my brain nearly shut down. "I miss you."

While I still had the chance, I pulled back enough to say, "I miss you too, but no. I think there's a tree that's about to" —before I could finish the sentence, the broken half of the pine tree crashed down, heavily and noisily, onto the porch's roof above our heads. My arm shot out and up, blocking the bare trunk with my hand just a second before it landed smack over us— "…Do that."

The two of us looked with wide-eyed horror and awe at the crumbling part of the roof, the chunks of wood falling off of it, the fucking tree trunk in the palm of my hand, then back at each other. She fought the smile as much as she could but ended up bursting out laughing, because it was absurd and stupid and hilarious that we almost literally died right now by a tree, while kissing. She brought my face down to hers and kissed me again because, at this point: why not. Her hand reached up, taking a hold of the trunk and flinging it away with an effortless flick of her wrist. It collapsed somewhere on the hill, safely on the opposite direction of us.

My hand was still on the keys and we were still on the nearly destroyed porch giggling into each other's mouths, teeth scraping and sloppy kissing. I'd already twisted the lock but the stupid bar's door wouldn't open. She managed the word "Up," in between her kisses and my curses and I complied, blindly reaching for the rusty deadbolt at the top of the heavy door, grasping and pulling hard at it.

The good news was that the bar was finally open for shelter. The bad news was that I gave the door a slight, impatient shove, and since my body was still pressing hers up against it, she fell backward into the bar's floor flat on her back with a shriek. And since we'd had our hands all over each other, I went down along with her. And if it it'd be hard to stop laughing before, it was real damn impossible now.

So much for Hunters' agility.

Even though we'd made it inside, the wind returned with a vengeance. The ground vibrated beneath us when a sudden, strong gust of wind that burst right inside the open door, a watery blast of rain thoroughly drenching me from behind and making me wish that I'd been the one falling on my ass. I groaned, bracing my hands on the floor by her shoulders and kicking the door shut with my foot.

"Wait, Killua!" she laughed. "The basket is still outside and it has my phone and your bag."

Right. Shit. Groaning again, I pushed myself off the floor and ran back to the wreckage outside, snatching the picnic basket in, yanking her keys out of the lock, and slamming the door shut in the face of the storm. For good this time.

"Alright, now get back on top of me."

A little out of breath, I lowered and straddled her hips with my knees as I started removing my soggy jacket, still laughing. At least the rest of our clothes were still clean and dry. At least we were still alive.

Only slices of moonlight were cutting onto the bar on where we'd fallen and our eyes had yet to adjust to the dark. Now that we were cocooned inside, the quietude of the bar seemed nearly dystopian with how the world was falling apart just a door away.

I gave up on taking the jacket past my shoulders and collapsed on my back next to her, catching my breaths. "Holy shit. That was a mess."

Still breathless with residual chuckles and moving in the dark, Yuki tried to straddle me. She climbed over what she thought was my hip but really were my ribs. It knocked the breath out of me and I jerked back, which resulted in her entire body landing on top of mine, hitting several, delicate valuable organs.

"Argh," I bellowed, throwing my head back and croaking out, "Careful."

"I'm sorry!" She re-positioned to sit a little lower as I coughed a few times. "Are you okay?"

"Motherfuck… Windpipe. Ribs. Balls. All crushed." I squeezed my hand in between our bodies and between my legs. "Nope. They're good."

She rolled her eyes and I sat up, letting her help me yank the sleeves of my jacket down my arms. She flung it at the back of a nearby chair. "Well, no one can say we don't know how to make an entrance."

"Hell." Holding her in my lap, my hands slipped inside her jacket to spread across her hips. The adrenaline was still running high and crashing through me. "Okay, now answer me. I'm not asking again."

Soft, slow kisses dotted over my cheek and my jaw. "What?"

"How come you waited until we were trying to survive a thunderstorm to mention that you own this bar?"

She bent to press her face into the crook of my neck. "God, you're like a dog with a bone when you're onto something," she said, her voice muffled by my skin.

Reluctantly, I pulled away from her lips, tugging her ponytail and gently urging her head back. "How could you never mention it to me before?"

"It just never came up."

I was incredulous. "Never came up? We were here two hours ago. You couldn't tell me then?"

Her hands pushed through the mess of hair coming out of my now half-assed bun and loosened it. "You forgot to mention your total self-indulgent private jet until I asked about it."

"I share that jet with four other Hunters who also use it for missions. I only paid one-fifth of its cost. It's not all mine to indulge in," I told her. "All you had to do was say, 'Hey, by the way, this place is mine'."

She worked on tying my hair back again. "Oh, come on. A lady doesn't brag about her assets."

I snorted. "What else do you have that I don't know about? Do you also own a crime-fighting force? An island? A drunken marriage?"

"Well, not the island. That's way too excessive."

"Funny."

"Why does it matter anyway?" She ran warm palms up my stomach and over my chest. "I'd rather talk about your assets."

I took my hands off of her and set them on the floor, leaning back on my arms and staring her down. "There are times where I'd get you off the hook and let you manipulate me with mushiness and flattery. Now isn't one of those times. I want to know why you didn't want to tell me something like that."

Catching that I was serious about giving her no quarter, she sighed, saying, "It's not like that. I can count the number of times I've come here on one hand. I just never felt like I owned the place because Lev's always here running everything and I'm not. He knows it more than I do."

A scoff left me. "That's a fancy way of saying you're just too scared of actually belonging to any place or owning anything of significance."

"Shit." Her lips pursed with half-hearted disappointment. "I was hoping it wouldn't get that deep."

Grinning at this, I asked, "What made you want to buy it?"

"It's a long story. I've always liked this spot, and it was around the time Lev had just moved across the oceans to the city with his partner and he was struggling with unemployment. I made the smart investment of turning this abandoned town house into a bar that he could run at the pace he liked and I could have as a nice place to chill at whenever I'm in the city. It was a win-win."

We were cut off by the shrill ringing of her phone.

"That has to be Gon checking in on us." She stretched herself out to pull the phone from the basket. Returning with it, she held it up between our faces and hit the speaker as she answered, "Don't worry, we made it out alive."

"Barely," I said.

"Yeah, there might be some bruises and near-death experiences," Yuki seconded. "But otherwise we're fresh as a daisy."

Through a quiet laugh, Gon's voice replied on the other end: "Why, what happened?"

"We'll get you the fantastically embarrassing footage from the bar's surveillance camera."

"Bar? I thought you guys went to a hill uptown? But I guess you two could end up anywhere. I'm glad to know you're okay," Gon said, the sound of a coffeepot brewing on his end. "I tried calling Killua, but it didn't even ring."

"Here, ask him yourself." Yuki handed her phone to me and got off my lap, pushing to her legs. "I'll go get the lights and freshen up in the ladies' room."

"Alright." I stood, taking Gon off speakerphone and answering his question, "I left my phone in the car. Did Aunt Mito stay up throughout the whole movie this time?"

"No." He chuckled. "She was out ten minutes after you left."

I smiled, walking over to watch the raging storm through the window as Yuki flipped on the warm lights above the main bar. "You know one day of this week you should try to get some of that, too: sleep. Remember sleep?"

"Yeah, well," he exhaled. "I tried, but PTSD is kicking my ass all week."

I winced as a bout of guilt hit me at once when he said that. I had been noticing the familiar pattern of Gon's PTSD seasonal flare-ups, but I hadn't had the time to be of much help all week between my training sessions and my own anxiety flurry following up Zymiral's party, and every other ugly mess on my plate. "Just hang in there until I get my nen back at the end of the week, then we'll pick one of the fun grounding techniques."

"Oh, yeah," Gon said and I could hear his wistful grin. "It's been a while."

Our 'fun' grounding techniques to help with Gon's PTSD consisted mainly of sparring for a few hours, taking some Beast Hunting jobs, travel to see some old friends, go fishing. Things that brought back good memories. "Yeah, I won't be able to do any of it until next week. But I could check with some of the peeps? See if they're up to do it? Quon is lazy but he won't say no to a good spar, and I think Noah and the girls are in town. Or if you want, you could come over here once the storm clears a bit—"

"Killua. Stop." He let out a short, sighing laugh. "Stop worrying for once, okay? You're not in any better shape than I am. It's not like you've had enough sleep since Yuki has moved out, and I know you wouldn't have left your phone in the car if you didn't really need a break. And you do."

I pressed my forehead to the chill glass of the window. He wasn't wrong. Between the mental-physical toll of the daily poison-exorcism sessions with Leorio, the other impending storm of all the family secrets and lies and covers I hadn't yet laid bare, and the responsibility to act like I had it figured out, I was drained for the week. I straightened up and scrubbed a hand down my face. "I wish everything was still as easy as it was before that goddamn Christmas party."

"Yeah, our biggest worry before that was where we'd have dinner tonight," he agreed with a smile in his voice. "And whether or not Yuki will make us decorate another Christmas tree for the suite."

"I never thought I'd ever miss decorating that wonky tree."

"Just forget about it tonight." The sound of computer keys clacked through the line. "You're miles outside the city. Everything you worry about is right here far, far away. Enjoy your date, have lots of drinks. Get laid."

"I can't do that." I groaned, emptying my pockets over the bar. "Leorio made me promise to abstain from all physical activities until he's done medically exorcising all the poison out."

"What? Why?"

I moved to locate the rest of the bar lights. "He said that building up testosterone and channeling my frustrations into training was going to be more effective because so much of nen is a culmination of our own emotions or whatever."

"Huh. That's smart. And it says so much about how much Leorio loves you if he's willing to put up with you when you're that antsy," Gon teased. "A hundred says you're going to get laid tonight anyway."

Taking slight offense in that bet, I pressed the phone close to my face. "Do you think I'm that dismissive of Leorio's opinions?"

"No, I think you're that oversexed."

"Whatever. I'll take that bet. You're going down."

"I think you'll be the one happily doing that tonight, Killua," he chirped.

I bit back a half-annoyed half-amused laugh at the idea of Gon saying better innuendos than me, and felt my body react to the idea of doing what he said as soon as I pictured it. "Even if I do that, it won't count as losing the bet. It only counts if I come."

He snorted. "Typical you, Killua. Getting away with things on a technicality and working the angles."

"That's not what this is. Leorio only said no physical release," I argued, finding the light switch and flipping on the hanging bulbs above the booths. Though I'd been inside this bar just a couple hours ago, it felt as though I was seeing it for the first time now that I was alone and it was empty of energy and the distraction of conversation. Nothing about the bar was singularly remarkable, but something about it felt safe and beckoning, even without factoring the violence of the storm outside the walls or the fact that it was built on top of a hill and in the middle of the woods.

Something about it gave away the secret of being someone's happy place; a much-needed corner of escape, a disconnection from the urban cluster of the city. The secret was there in the warm rich wood, the worn dents in the black leather seating, the Christmas tree in the far corner that was obviously decorated by at least ten different sets of hands, the names and memories carved onto the tabletops.

It was the kind of place so familiar that people didn't need to give a name to anymore. All they had to say was, "See you tonight?" without saying having to say where. They'd just know.

More lights flickered on the other side of the bar, drawing my attention to the wall above and around the electric fireplace, and suddenly, I wasn't so alone anymore.

"Fuck," I whispered to myself, awed.

"Hello?" Gon was saying. "You still there?"

I adjusted my grin on the phone. "Lay off the coffee. Make yourself a toddy instead. I gotta go."

"Okay. And you—have fun."

"I will." I hung up, my feet shuffling me to take a closer skim at the wall.

It was a red brick wall, massive and covered from top to bottom and end to end. Every inch of it was filled with something, everything and anything a person could have on a wall. None of the flashy, generic, customary things people usually put on bar walls. Everything I was seeing here had a life of its own. Posters and photographs in a variety of sizes. Framed words that had wisdom, humor, and wry wit in equal measures. Artwork, typography, lyrical prints. B&W pictures of gifted, distinctive artists caught in moments. Newspaper cutouts of celebratory headlines from around the world from different time periods—Pride parades, marches for equality, ends of wars. Polaroid's of pets from the bar's faithful customers.

I smiled as I came across the rest: a small floating house toy aided by the help of hundreds of balloons stuck on top of a world map. A pink neon sign that read show some fucking passion. An ace of Spades card with handwriting on it. Many, many train tickets. A hospital bracelet. A worn tie hanging from a picture's frame. A graduation cap. A tiny Snorlax graffiti inside one brick. A dedication page ripped off from a book.

And more. So much more and so distracting my eyes were unable to catch up. It was an eclectic and off-beat expression of aesthetics, vintage and contemporary, splashes of color and references and cultures and stories, open and displayed to everybody to see. Seen but not known.

It wasn't the stellar collection of alcohol bottles behind the main bar that had Lev lock and seal the place so tightly. It was the fact that the room was filled with many other people's memories and pieces of history.

It was hard to miss Yuki's touch. Like her new apartment, it was cluttered and vibrant and deeply personal, where there seemed to be a story in every corner. I recognized some replicas of the pieces that she had made me and Gon deliver and nail on the walls of her apartment earlier this month. And by 'deliver', I meant from the storage unit here in the city that she used to keep everything she'd found and brought from her travels. Old used books, souvenirs, furniture, even clothes—two full racks of jackets, and shoes. She'd made us pick up pairs of stilettos that looked so delicate they couldn't possibly be safe and drilled it into our heads to handle them with 'care and love'. Her whole life used to be in that storage unit before she decided to have a home for it.

As I walked from one end of the wall to the other trying to encompass everything on it, the bathroom's door swung open. "Is everything okay with Gon?" Yuki called out from the hallway.

"Yeah! Everything's fine."

"He should come over when the storm clears." The bathroom's door closed and there she was. She took off her bulky jacket and tossed it at a barstool, revealing her clothes underneath.

I saw her and my feet slowed down on their own volition, my throat tightening. Her tan, muscular arms were bare in a little button-down shirt that was the same faded blue color as her eyes. My eyes raked from her wine-red lips, to the open collar to those sexy tight leather pants that always made me want to simultaneously tear off and keep her wearing them forever. But she wore it all like she did everything else: easily. The sight of her was a physical presence in my body, heavy in my neck, in my chest, in my legs.

"Fuck," I whispered, again.

I could tell she'd fixed herself up in the bathroom. Her lips looked redder, her ponytail sleeker and more deliberately styled. Not that she needed to. With the way she carried herself, she could climb up a small mountain, run through a raging storm, walk out of a burning building, and still turn up looking fresh.

She'd said something and I missed it. I tore my eyes away from the perfect shape of her breasts in that shirt. "I'm sorry, what?"

Her eyes laughed at me before they trailed below my face, checking me out the way I did her from a distance and lingering on my T-shirt. Casual and soft, just the way she liked it. And I knew she did, the way she clenched her jaw and looked almost frustrated with me for wearing it. I grinned, a healthy dose of cockiness seeping through me, just from that look.

"I asked if you like what you see," she said, gesturing to the mess of aesthetics on the wall.

"Ah. Yes. It's fascinating. It's like a scavenger hunt on a wall." I walked toward her, my hands sliding around her waist, bracketing her. "But I would take it all down just to put up a picture of you in this outfit."

Her smile was like a rush of dopamine spreading down my body. "What did Gon say?"

"He bet that I won't be able to follow through Leorio's orders and keep our clothes on for the night." My fingers brushed at the small of her back, in the sliver of bare skin between her shirt and her pants. "I think I'm going to lose."

She splayed her hands along my arms, her smile distracted and all kinds of off, making her feel a thousand miles away.

"What's wrong, beastie?"

Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment when she heard that, then she opened them and looked at me. "It's a little embarrassing. So you can't laugh at me until after I'm done talking about it."

"Okay. I promise." Taking both of her hands, I backed us to the sofa, lowered to sit on the armrest, and pulled her to stand between my legs. Giving her the physical advantage to loom over always made her feel more mentally in charge, and I wanted her to feel like she was, like she could tell me anything. "You never shy away from saying what's on your mind. Don't stop now."

The words escaped her on an exhale. "I just think that I'm not really good at this. Being a girlfriend."

My brows furrowed, my chest twisting with confusion, dread, and a flash of panic. "Did I do something wrong?"

She lifted her brows at me, wry teasing on her face. "I tell you that I think I'm a bad girlfriend, and you ask if you did something wrong? Damn. We seriously need to work on your self-love."

"Well, knowing me, and given that I was recently punched by my best friend for accidentally making him feel like a liability to me, it's safe to say that I can be a little obtuse when it comes to handling other people's feelings."

She shook her head, saying softly, "You're anything but obtuse. You're the least obtuse person on the planet. And I told you the Gon thing wasn't your fault, just like it's not your fault that I suck horribly at this whole girlfriend thing."

"You don't suck horribly. If you ask me, I think you suck like a champ—" I grinned when she placed her palm on my cheek and playfully turned my head to the side. "Alright, alright. Tell me why you feel that way."

A long sigh, then: "After seeing how you looked last night when me and Gon were Skyping, I knew you were having one of your mood drops."

"Okay?"

"I also knew that you weren't going to talk about it right away, that's why I've been trying to cheer you up, but without being too obvious about it because I know you don't do obvious anything. I went to the suite this morning to deliver you those turkey sandwiches you love, but then I saw you at that meeting. I stayed at the lobby for almost an hour to give you a piece of my mind, yes, but also to let you know I was there. If you needed me. But then you acted all flirty and fine and I knew you weren't ready to deal yet. I asked you to come here because it's new to you and away from the city, and a good chance for you to get out of your head a little. Just me and you and my sparkling personality. It's also why I wanted you to meet Lev. I wanted to pull you more into my world. I suggested the silly chalkboard game to ease us into the serious talk. I want to tell you all this new stuff about me that I never told anyone to let you know how much I trust you. Just— It's not your fault. I've been putting my own self through the wringer here. Maybe I don't know what I'm really doing." She groaned. "God, I hate how wine makes me extra honest."

"I…" My words trailed off because I'd tripped over them. "You've been doing all of this for me?"

"Yes," she said, growing more frustrated. With herself or with me, I didn't know. "I'm kind of upset about my picnic plan falling apart because of the storm. But now I realize that I probably shouldn't have dragged you up the hill and instead taken you someplace that's more snazzy and your speed with a bottle of Dom and large pineapple pizzas where you'd be more comfortable and enjoying yourself— oh my God. I'm in the middle of a meltdown and your dopey smile right now isn't making admitting this any easier."

"You have to give me a minute to feel completely smug by that admission first before I could form a better response."

"Fine. Go ahead." And she did, begrudgingly giving me a minute, during which I just continued smiling, unabashedly eager and self-satisfied, until she was perfectly goaded and trying not to smile back. "You're such an ass."

"You're so fucking cute. I'm wondering how someone so hot could also be so cute."

"I'm not. This isn't cute. This is me melting down over being a good girlfriend—me," she grunted and made a face of disgust. "What have you done to me?"

I pulled her closer. "Nothing you didn't want me to do."

"It's really not funny. I was so close to suggesting a quickie or putting on a striptease to cheer you up as a basic resort. Like some sort of a cavewoman."

My head ducked between my shoulders as I laughed away for a couple silent beats, trying to keep it down before it transitioned into a full-on laugh burst before looking up at her again, meeting her narrowed eyes. "I'm laughing because you're adorable, but also because I'm just realizing that you're just as good as I am at giving yourself relationship insecurities over nothing. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in this and that we can both be dumbasses."

"It's not over nothing. It's you," she argued. "I guess after the crazy week we had, with the whole masquerade party and family drama, I'm just tired of feeling so passive in my life. I'm not used to this. I wanted to feel like I'm getting something done right. I thought, if I can't figure out this family mess we're in the middle of, then I can at least help you out of your foul mood. But I'm starting to realize this isn't something I can fix."

With a little shake of my head, I brought our hands to my lips and kissed her knuckles. "Okay, you need to stop and listen. There's nothing to fix here. I'm having a bad week because of the party too, you moving out, and other things on my mind. I know that in Relationship Communication 101 they say you're supposed to talk to your partner about what's bothering you right away, but that's crap. Some people need time. Especially if they were never once taught healthy ways to communicate their feelings like me. I need to do things at my own pace. There's a learning curve. I will get better, I know I will. Just know that if I'm not telling you something, deep inside I'm counting the minutes until I could tell you."

She nodded and took a sobering breath. "I like that. Keep going."

"And those moods? They come and go and sometimes there isn't much neither of us can do about it. We're not supposed to always know what to do or say at all times. You're my partner and my best friend; I don't expect for you to guide me through a hard time or figure out how to help me deal with it. That's bullshit. I don't want you to go through your day feeling like it's your job to better my day. And this weird week will pass. What matters is that you're here, and that's more than enough for me."

I could almost see the gears of her brain shifting into place, her posture steadying back to confidence with my words.

"Two," I continued, "I know I've been giving you shit for bringing us here, but I don't really give a shit about the place. We can be us wherever. I enjoy myself anywhere that has the two of us together. I'm never happier than I am with you."

It was her now with the dopey smile. "Yeah?"

I laughed. "Yeah, you idiot," I said, my thumbs swiping over the network of veins on her hands that she hated and I loved.

She stared down at them. "I'll get better, too. With my commitment-phobic stuff. Last week, I felt guilty that you felt like you had to make a big plot out of asking if you could keep a toothbrush at my place."

"Jeez, I didn't make a big plot."

"You kept beating around the bush too much and being all cryptic and saying things like, 'a spare green toothbrush would look cool with your bathroom's colors'. What do you call that?"

"Are you talking about the day you had one too many tequila gimlets and had your lip-sync party in my room wearing my suits for no reason?" I asked, straight-faced. She pressed her lips together in an effort not to smirk. "I'm surprised you even remember that day let alone anything I'd said. I however will forever remember it as the day I realized I'm so much cooler than you."

It was a lie. Watching her wrinkle three designer suits twice her size and dance to 90s hits with gusto and then strip it all off in the least sexy, graceful way was cooler and better than any TV or movie.

"Shut up. I wasn't drunk; I was just happy. I remember everything. And if I weren't so weird about commitment, you would have felt more comfortable asking me things."

I scoffed. "The toothbrush thing had nothing to do with your commitment-phobic stuff though. We'd only been dating for two months. I'm nowhere an expert on relationships either, but at least I know that I should make a big deal out of leaving a toothbrush at someone else's place. Even if Gon got his own apartment someday, I wouldn't just leave my stuff there without asking and he's my best friend of eight years."

She contemplated that. "But I'd practically lived at your place in those two months."

"Yeah, but I live in a hotel's suite. It's not my own place. You pitched in with the suite's charges like a roommate. You used the hotel's toothbrush. The rules were different there."

Giving Yuki the basics of long-term adult relationships was like teaching a baby deer how to walk. But I very much enjoyed being the one holding her hands through it. As much as I enjoyed knowing she'd been going through her day obsessing over me on her mind, chasing me despite not being the girl who'd chase after anybody, and letting me into her bed and her life. And soon, into her past.

She seemed to ponder everything I'd said for a minute, then asked quietly, "So I'm not that bad, am I?"

"Not at all." I pushed her back gently so I could stand and took her face in my hands, my thumbs at her jaw tilting her eyes up to mine before smoothing them down the arch of her throat. "Stop worrying about the family mess. It's going to go well," I reassured, as I'd been doing all month. She held up a finger near my lips and I playfully bit the tip. "Even if it doesn't, we'll figure it out like the badass motherfuckers we are."

Her hands wrapped around my wrists. "Mmmm, you always know the best words to say."

"Do I now?" I laughed. "That's the thing I'm worst at."

"I think you're better than you think you are," she said, smiling at me. "And it doesn't matter what anyone else says 'cause my opinion matters the most."

I kissed her nose. "Too true."

There were other words that I could say that would make her feel even better and more secure. Three words, one phrase. The single truth that was a constant in my life in the face all the lies and all the tricks I'd lived with. They were all I could think of sometimes. They sat at the tip of my tongue, waiting to spill over between us, but they didn't. I choked up on fear, conflict and guilt, and I hated everything that had a hand in making me like this. Scared of what I felt, scared of what I remembered. Scared of expressing myself in a way that reflected me in the barest sense. No lies, no make-beliefs or pretty cover-ups.

I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to hers, leaning into her, heavy with everything that I was feeling and unable to let it out. I felt her smile from the twitch in her cheeks against my thumbs, and I knew she heard it anyway.


I slapped two coasters down in front of the two stools where we would be sitting, set Yuki's drink I'd finished making for her down on the right coaster, and dipped a straw in the big glass.

She was by my side behind the bar, her hands busy making my own drink. Drying off my hands, I leaned my hip against the counter and took some joy in looking at her work. Watching her be all domestic, with the way she looked tonight, stylish and current and ready to ruin a man's life, was slightly disconcerting and yet oddly hot. "I'm a feminist and I never want to sound like a caveman, but I like watching you make things for me in the kitchen."

She chuckled. "Same," she said, appreciatively eyeing the margarita I'd made before adding the sweet vermouth to the glass in front of her. "But it's not like it's the first time you've seen me do something like this."

"No, but I still find it fascinating," I said, watching her stir the mix vigorously with the back of a bar spoon. "That first time I saw you in that robe and your face covered in black mask was so satisfying. It was the equivalent of watching the scary villain out of costume at the grocery store buying a loaf of bread."

She scoffed, picking up the stemless glass that she'd left to chill with soda water. Her arm stretched toward the sink to empty the glass and my eyes dragged over the lines of muscle in her back beneath her shirt. I thought of the way they'd feel beneath my lips and teeth as my hands pinned her wrists on the bed over her head.

Fuck. At this rate, I'd lose Gon's bet faster than I thought I would.

Dropping a cherry in the glass, she smoothly poured the crimson drink over it. "Speaking of, how come you've never made dinner for me before?"

I frowned. "What are you talking about? I was the one who ever cooked anything at the suite."

"No, I mean, romantic dinner. Just for me." She pulled the bar towel over my shoulder to dry off her hands. "With candle lights and rose petals and all that jazz."

"Really?" I asked, taking the the towel back and swiping it across the prep space in front of us. "Is that something you like?"

"I don't know. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't." She shrugged. "Wouldn't know unless we try. If I'm going to have the transition from wandering commitment-phobe into domesticated girlfriend, I want to do it right. I want romantics things done for me."

"I did that last week, remember? I baked you that romantic cake just for you," I reminded her.

"That was a romantic cake?" she asked, eyes teasing.

"Yes." I gave her a skeptical look. "I decorated it with flowers."

"You wrote 'I love your tits' on it."

"Exactly, I wrote 'love'."

She laughed and handed me the very nice-looking Rob Roy. "I think I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here. The only reason I want you to make me dinner is to watch you do this assassin thing with your hands."

"You just want me for my body." I pretended to sigh as I began to lift the glass to my lips, but my hand paused, midair. "Wait. What assassin thing?"

"That dexterous assassin thing you do sometimes when you cook. Not just when you cook. There's also the beautiful handwriting, the deck shuffling thing you do, the way you dice. You can crack two eggs with one hand without a drop of mess. It's fascinating to watch."

I waved it off. "I told you, I had to be taught to be precise with my hands. That level of dexterity is not so hard to learn for you. I can show you how to be good at it, too."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You just have to consciously time your thoughts along with your limbs and sync your body up to the commands of your brain. We'll tackle all that when I train you on speed. Because you can't be too fast and not precise; that's how you lose fingers." I leaned fully back into the counter and took a tasting sip of my drink. It was sweet, vicious, good. "It's settled. There will be assassin precision and a romantic dinner in your future. They're gonna be romantic as fuck."

She shifted to stand in front of me and stepped close, looking me up and down like I was displayed on a platform. "When you train me, will you still be my boyfriend, or will you transform into a mean, surly coach? Because I might like that."

Amused, I arched a brow at her. "I still need you to write me that list of all your weird fetishes. It's getting hard to keep up."

At that she gave me my favorite smile: the one that started in her eyes, slow-growing before it reached her lips. Full and flirty. "What other weird fetishes?"

"Our first night together, you had sex with me because of a piece of fabric," I said. "Four times."

She shrugged. "I'll admit the white shirt was an aphrodisiac for me, but we both went on that trip knowing the sex was inevitable when you hinted that it would be when you suggested that trip. But it wasn't me that kept us up all night."

I brought my eyes closer to hers. "Is that right?"

There was now a glint of thrill in her eyes. "It's not? Jog my memory."

"So after the first round, it wasn't really you who rolled on top of me and took charge of the second round?"

Her hands braced on the counter by my sides, trapping me. I let her willingly, feeling the brush of her chest against mine when she inhaled. "Maybe…"

"And then after some little pillow talk, when I went to get us some needed water and came back to the bedroom, it wasn't you who crawled to the edge of the bed and then started doing very dirty things with her pretty mouth?" I murmured, watching the way her eyes glazed over with the memory. "Right before I bent her over that same edge of the bed?"

She moved close, running her nose along my jaw. "Oh, right. Forgot about that."

"And then later in the shower…" I reached a hand to finger her collar slightly to the side and bent in to press a kiss to the hollow of her collarbone, closing my eyes and lingering there, just feeling her skin with my lips. Always like a shock to my system even after all that night and all these weeks. She smelled amazing, somehow always warm, sweet soap and the intoxicating undertones of her feminine, sultry perfume and… Like the top of a mountain. Crisp air and summer, free and addicting at once. I knew I'd associate that scent with her forever.

A gravelly sound tore itself from my throat and I shivered against her, feeling her soft exhale on my neck, and I knew she was markedly remembering each four times as I was—the intense, exploratory one, the gasping one, the rough, loud one, and the slow, lazy shower one.

Her face tilted toward mine, and distinctly, I sensed her smile. "You're going to spill your drink."

It was then that I noticed how my hand was shaking. I let out a rough breath and wrenched away from her neck, feeling too hot and tight in my body. "Well, whose fault is that?" I muttered, placing the drink down by my hip. "I need a shot. Or nine."

Looking pretty satisfied with that declaration, she reached for the bottle of tequila left on the prep space and poured a shot glass to the brim, handing it to me and watching me kick it back. "Before that night when was the last time you had sex with someone?"

Swallowing down the burn and wiping a hand across my mouth, I shuffled through the haze in my brain for the answer. It felt like forever ago. "Last week of July. Before Leorio's engagement." I hesitated for a beat before asking her the same question. If she'd been with someone else around the time we'd been just friends-slash-colleagues-slash-flirting adversaries, it would drive me a little crazy. "When was the last time for you?"

She took her own shot, winced, and reached for a lime wedge. "Valentine's Day."

"Was that last time so tragically disappointing that you'd sworn off sex for ten months?"

Her next wince wasn't because of the hard alcohol. "It was pretty bad," she admitted. "But it's not the reason I'd sworn off sex. It's not that I had sworn off sex. I'd just… lost interest, I guess. I was also too busy with work anyway. The last two months were the first real vacation I'd had since I can remember. Maybe the first real vacation in ten years, where I wasn't either training or taking jobs."

I made a face. "What did you do for fun between all that?"

"I'm an intercontinental Blacklist Hunter," she pointed out. "I traveled a lot. I've been around. It's not like I was bored or stuck with what I did in my life. My job was what I did for fun."

"That's sad. Your job shouldn't be the only thing you do for fun."

Taking her empty shot glass with her, she headed outside the main bar. "It wasn't the only thing. I was having fun in between jobs. Just that my fun didn't include a lot of people or getting laid. My job never disappointed me. It knows what I like and I don't have to give it a lot of instructions to please me."

I smirked at that, watching her walk away to her barstool. "Why do you assume I meant getting laid when I said fun? I also meant taking a break from work, hobbies, friends—" I held up a finger before she argued that she had those things "—who you see regularly or at least keep contact with. Before tonight, when was the last time that you saw Lev?"

She took a moment to think about it, proving my point. "Well," she said, climbing onto her stool right in front of me and curling her fingers around the frosty glass of margarita. "You could at least wait for me to tell you the stories from my past before you psychoanalyze my life choices."

"I can already smell the angst."

"Yeah, we should make that a rule." She raised her glass. "No matter what I say, there will be no unnecessary angst tonight. Okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

With that agreement, she took the first sip of her drink, and started talking. "In order to understand the history of how I'd developed my nen ability, we have to go back to what had pushed me forward to do it in the whole past ten years. As you know, I was whisked away into training just when I turned ten, and for six years, I did nothing but that—train. I only had a distant idea of what I wanted my ability to be, but I wouldn't have developed it to the way it is right now if it hadn't been for one person. Rae."

I was all ears, more so than ever now. I'd only heard Yuki mention that name once, in bed and after sex, when I, in a spur-of-the-moment curiosity, asked her when and who her first time was. She'd only replied with two words—sixteen and Rae, then she'd gotten oddly quiet for a couple minutes before she'd rolled on top of me and kissed me, laying the topic to rest.

At least until now. It was clear to me now that Rae was a part of a bigger story that couldn't have been told in a passing, lazy post-coital conversation. Or perhaps she wasn't ready to talk about it then. She'd talked plenty about her family and interests, little about her work and less about her friends, but Yuki's relationship history was a mystery. I got the feeling it wasn't only a mystery to me. We were both similar in that way where we talked less about the things that mattered to us the most. I was that way because I'd never learned how to talk while she just needed to take things at her own pace. She didn't give her heart all at once.

With my eyes still on the drink I was making, I went for sounding cool and airy as I asked, "And that Rae person was your…?"

"She was my first and ex best friend," she answered.

"That's cute."

"And current arch nemesis."

"Oh." I blinked up at her. That sounded as odd as me calling Gon my enemy. "What happened there?"

"I'll get to it in a minute, but first, have you heard of Cleave?"

Cleave. It'd been a long, long time since I'd last heard that name.

"The Empire organization of Blacklist Hunters? Of course I've heard of it."

All I knew about Cleave was that it was an independent organization of Blacklist Hunters co-founded by four people and joined by several 'members', and the rest was rumors. I knew they worked under the radar and under the table and under every other shady slang one could think of, independently outside the Hunter Association. And like some kind of a club, they had their own set of rules, games, rallies, and competitions to catch renowned criminals, often by covertly competing against the Association.

The reason why Cleaves were judged as the 'bad Hunters' was the nasty rumor that Cleave didn't only work on catching criminals, but also on making criminals. They did it by using the combination of their extraordinary understanding of nen abilities, extensive genetic research, and support from multiple governments of power, and conducting horrific experiments to develop criminals to their high potentials. However, nothing was ever revealed as official.

"I know some of the rumors around them were ridiculous," I said. "It could all be a hoax. It could all be a bunch of trolls churning out online conspiracy theories."

"Most of the rumors are true."

"Come on. The rumor saying Cleave developed war criminals and sold them to countries was plausible, yeah. And I could believe the one about Cleave harboring Chimera Ants from the Ant war in order to use their bodies for transplants and augmentation experiments. But the rumor that they collaborated with some governments on wiping out all Hunters?" I shot her a look as I picked up my drink. "Please."

"They could be true," she still insisted. "Some governments do hate us Hunters. They hate anything they can't control, and Hunters are a great threat to their canon law and order. Few years ago I caught a criminal called Donatello Bratva in this small town called Vladinberg. He was a post-soviet mobster and I was paid in secret by the acting secretary of the country himself. Their government had this rule against associating with Hunters after the Ant War because we're presumably"—she lifted a lazy hand to air quote—"'wildcards'. I had to pretend that I was just a regular mercenary."

I made a face at that. "Isn't the Hunter Association the very reason the Ant War had ended?"

"Yes, but after what the late Chairman did to win the day against the King by hiding a poisonous bomb inside his chest, some governments around the world now regard Hunters as proof of 'the ruthlessness of the human animal' and 'the marriage of brutality with nobility', and that's why we can't be trusted. They believe that many of us Hunters have no problem sacrificing too much in order to win, prove a point, or get our way." Shrugging, she added, "Which is true," and then took a long sip of her drink.

Well, that I couldn't deny. "What are you saying? That Cleave plays a role in the story?"

She nodded. "First I need to tell you about Rae."

Finally, quietly, she kicked off with her story.

"I met Rae a few years ago when I was a teenager. Sixteen, one year after my Exam. We met when I was at an airport in Roma waiting on my delayed flight. Back then, I used to choose my next destination by tossing my knife at the map and flying wherever it sticks. And once I was in that city, I checked to see if anybody would maybe want to hire me and take advantage of this commodity—" She gestured at her body. "But I was a kid then. Nobody wanted to hire a kid to catch the bad guys. But still, I always took my shot.

"Rae was at the same airport. We met at a bookstore there while I was debating my flight read. She walked up to me and made mocking book cover jokes that I remember made us laugh so much the salesman almost kicked us out of the store. Soon enough, I found out that she was also a Blacklist Hunter, and that we were on the same flight to Australis. She had her eye on a criminal there. We ended up buying tabloid magazines instead and snacks and tiny bottles of booze, and for the whole six-hour flight we enjoyed long conversations about our Hunter adventures, our tragically failed missions and respective fucked-up family relationships. You know when you get that feeling… when you know someone is going to be a big part of your life?"

I smiled. "Yeah. I know the feeling."

"That was how I felt with Rae. A sure feeling. I knew that even if we parted ways after the flight, I would definitely see her again. But we didn't part ways then. We walked together. My whole life would have probably been different if we'd parted ways instead. If that feeling remained what it was. Just a feeling."

That sounded so bleak it tugged at my attention, my hands gradually slowing around the drink I was making as an odd sense of unease flared in my chest over where the story was going.

She carried on, "Being around Rae was so easy. She was smart, funny, uninhibited. Charming and beautiful. And she was a prodigy at nen. A very talented Specialist. And I can't quite explain it, but she looked like the kind of person anyone would like to know. With Rae there was always the expectation that something special was about to happen. To you, around you. Just because she was there. That something could even be you. Because Rae could also make anybody feel special about themselves. She knew how to dig out the one awesome thing about someone and show it to them, and then make them feel like there isn't anything in the world they couldn't do."

She took in a heavy breath, like talking about all of this was taking from her, effort and energy, so I made her take a break by reaching out to pour us two shots, asking, "Was that when you started questioning your sexuality?"

Taking the shot from my hand, she shrugged. "I don't think I ever really questioned it. Keep in mind that I I left Gary's house when I was ten and my master took me to a small town in the mountains to train, so in the first years that I started developing critical thinking, I was practically sheltered from people. I didn't become aware of blatant heteronormativity until I was eleven."

I shuddered after throwing back the shot. "If only there was a way to protect all kids from heteronormativity."

She lifted her shot in agreement and downed it. "I remember it confused me so much when the town's bishop cut off his daughter for falling in love with a woman. When I asked my master about it, he explained to me, in simpler terms, that there are people in the world who haven't yet caught up with the true meaning of compassion and equality. He's not much of a talker, so he gave me a bunch of queer-positive books to read, and he answered every question I had and in few words he taught me that everyone should be free to be and love whoever they want as long as they're not hurting anybody. That's why I don't think I ever really questioned my attraction to people of all genders; I was told that it was okay and normal and great. However I wanted to label it."

I nodded, bending over the bar on folded arms. "I think it was the same for me, too. It's really all about what you normalize for the kid."

"How did you start questioning it?"

"When I first started watching porn around puberty, I guess." I shrugged. "I just remember that it didn't matter whether it was naked guys or naked girls I was looking at, I was having fun anyway."

She laughed. "And what do the Zaoldyecks think of that?"

"Of me enjoying porn?" I teased.

"No, smartass, of having a queer kid."

I reached over for her drink and took a sip out of her straw. Her eyes watched my mouth as I did. "I think they're fine with all expressions of sexuality. Everyone in the household knew that Illumi was casually banging guys at the time and that Milluki might be banging anime figurines and my parents didn't bat an eye. To them, as long as the family's business is going as planned, they don't give a damn where we direct our junks."

Laughing again, she concluded, "So the Zaoldyeck's parental motto is: 'We accept you no matter what, just keep killing people in our name'?"

"More like: 'We don't care about you or your feelings or your opinion, just don't die'." I watched her smile go on, until it tugged mine along, and decided the air was cleared enough to go back to the main topic at hand. I slid her drink back toward her. "So you and Rae."

"Oh, yeah." She leaned back, elbow on the back of her stool. "She and I became fast friends. We were our own girl gang. We had that kind of friendship that was all about talking, scouting missions together, teaching each other neat nen tricks, training furiously and having an ungodly amount of inside jokes. Eventually, one night, we became more. We were each other's firsts, as cheesy as that might sound."

Still half-bent at the bar, I listened attentively. I didn't want to break the moment by saying anything, but I knew it would always be into my history as the moment I'd watched the mechanisms of Yuki laying down all the little pieces of herself right in front of me to see.

So far I'd known the abbreviated version of her. The big picture of her. Along with the pieces that I'd found and noticed on my own for the past few months. Things like how her smile formed, which bracelets and rings she wore more frequently, how fast she could go through a crossword puzzle (insanely fast), which scenes that makes her tears well up in her favorite movies (the happy love scenes, who would have thought). Things like how she liked to be kissed and where she liked to be touched, when she wanted slow and when she needed hard, and everything in between.

But the things she was telling me now were somehow more intimate than that. More personal. They were what had shaped her into the person that she was right now. Life marks and defining moments and monumental people. Gon was that for me. So far, I'd only known two of hers—her master, and Gary.

And now Rae.

"Like me, Rae was looking for her breakthrough," she went on. "Her chance to prove herself to the Hunter Association as someone worthy of hire. Having the Association's recognition means being considered for their best missions and world discovery. Their own brand of adventure."

"Sure, and?"

"So, Rae and I had a plan. We knew that the only way we'd be noticed by the Association as the Blacklist Hunters we wanted to be, would be with a challenge. We wanted to go big. Big mission, big target. That was when we decided to hitch our wagon to Ve Ra Luna."

I gaped. "Ve Ra Luna? The third worst terrorist clan in history?"

Her smile was confident. "Yes."

I felt a mix of shock and pride rush inside me. "You were one of the anonymous Hunters that defeated Ve Ra Luna?"

"Yeah, but there were more than just the two of us," she clarified, leaning forward with her arms on the bar again. "We couldn't have done it alone. As I said, we went big. Me and Rae gathered around a group of newbie independent Hunters like us, from around the world, ones that shared our goal of a breakthrough in the Hunter world and being acknowledged by the Association. And a couple weeks later, we had formed our band of misfits."

"Band? How many of you were there?"

"There were six of us. Four girls and two guys."

"Six young, aspiring Hunters seeking glory and attention? That sounds like the beginning of a comic."

"To do a small introduction, the girls were me and Rae, both Blacklist Hunters. Xandra, an Archaeological Hunter whom I'd known back from my first training days. Sun-Mei; she's a Terrorist Hunter, an actual president's daughter and the misfits' unofficial leader. The two guys: Ziad, the Gourmet Hunter friend I'd mentioned before, except back then he used to be a Contract Hunter. And finally, Oswald, a Lost Hunter, and my least favorite person in the world at the time," she said, but her smile was fond and nostalgic. "God, I hated his guts back then. Me and him were the antagonists of the misfits. We were all hostile vibes and constant bickering and animosity. We couldn't have gotten along even if you'd locked us in a room with puppies."

My drink was forgotten as I listened to this story. The way she narrated, so concise and intriguing, I felt like I could see it all in front of me.

"As misfits, we didn't care much for fame and world recognition. At least not at the time. That was why we were fine being known as the anonymous Hunters who defeated Ve Ra Luna. We were happy just as long as the Association recognized us and gave us their best jobs. We wanted to be challenged. We wanted to leave our own trail. That was our one purpose. But it wasn't so easy at first."

"How come?"

"Because nobody took us seriously. Me and the other misfits practically lived together for over a month in order to perfect a solid plan to defeat Ve Ra Luna. We begged the Association to let us have the mission instead of sending well-seasoned Hunters for the job. We even offered to do it for free, completely out of spite. Just to rise to the challenge. We were desperate. Eventually the secretary there relented and gave us a time limit up to two months to finish the entire mission and destroy Ve Ra Luna once and for all."

The absurdity of that. "Two months? For a terrorist clan?"

"I know." She shook her head. "It's ridiculous. Terrorist groups aren't only branched out all over the place, but they're also unpredictable because they're secretly funded from within numbers of nations. Like a global epidemic with mystery symptoms. I mean, even a superior Hunter would have needed more than two months to track the motherfuckers down. Obviously the Association was placating us like babies. 'Here's a toy, go away and play with it for a while and leave us alone'. They weren't taking us seriously or else they would have given us a more realistic timetable. I guess they were hoping we would give up before we started, or we would go there and see how impossible the mission was. But like I said, we were full of spite. We were relentless and stupid and we loved a good challenge.

"We bought ourselves a van, from our own measly money, and we road-tripped the majority of Aurasia. Ve Ra Luna had several affiliates—fifteen, to be exact—all over the continent. The affiliates were like snakes; all we needed to do was locate and weaken their heads and they were done for. We had to cross lines that not even heavy military intervention could step past and drive non-stop for seven weeks, switching drivers and barely stopping for rest and food until we got them all. We were six, stubborn nen users led by a woman. They had no chance against us."

As she went to explain to me that it still wasn't the smoothest mission because while the 'dickwards' didn't use nen, they still used guns and it was pretty inconvenient how insanely well-armed they were but it was 'fun' when she singlehandedly stole one of their military jets and attacked them with it to save the misfits a lot of time, I watched as more pieces of her came to join the other new ones.

Has attacked a terrorist clan with a military jet.

Owns a bar for a friend.

She talks so much with her hands when she gets into the story—and it's distracting because she has pretty hands.

She can handle her alcohol like a pro, but she knows when to stop.

"One other thing that made the job hard," she included, "was the number of hostages."

"I bet. It could really screw up an entire mission, trying to protect someone else."

"Someone? Try dozens." She trailed off then, her expression clouding slightly. "Ve Ra Luna kept over a hundred women and some children for sex trafficking. They'd been keeping them for months before we'd arrived. Months of constant terror and abuse. Two babies were born there. I still remember the looks on the women's faces when we freed them. Wary, tired… uncertain. It was heartbreaking." Her eyebrows tightened, her eyes fixed down on her drink. "Some of them didn't even look relieved to have their freedom back. It was like they weren't ready to go back to life after what they'd been through and seen. Like they didn't know how to go back to life. It was as if their hopes and dreams were just… finished."

"No, hey." I put my hand on hers, needing to take away the devastation of that memory from her face. "I'm sure a lot of them still found a way to go on. Humanity is a mess, but humans are strong and resilient in ways that defy all odds."

She looked at me, her gaze seemingly unconsciously traveling the path of my body leading down to the scars of my forearm on the bar next to hers, and smiled. "Yeah. That's true." Her finger absently traced the shape of one mark along my skin. "There was this one little girl with the hostages, Mara. I pulled her last minute out of an exploding truck. She was so scared, she clung to my neck for hours until we found her aunt. She didn't even let go to eat or drink or let me carry out with the mission. I had to hide away with her and talk about nonsense for goddamn hours until she finally stopped shaking and told me her name."

I broke into a grin. "That's cute."

Imagining Yuki, in all her bossy, statuesque body and sharp edges, being awkwardly forced to be gentle and indulge a child instead of kicking ass with her friends the way she wanted had to be one hell of an entertainment. It was a tragedy that I couldn't see it with my own eyes.

"The other misfits sure enjoyed that," she snorted, grumpily picking up her drink. "They thought that the idea of me being stuck with babysitting duty on a great mission was the best punishment I could deserve for acting on my own with the aircraft attack. I was so pissed."

"I would have enjoyed it, too. If they were smart, they would have taken pictures of it to use for blackmail."

"Well they didn't." Her answer came out way too quick.

She pinned me with a dirty look but she was smiling, too. "No. Anyway. After we defeated Ve Ra Luna, the Association did pay us each for the mission. We put the money into flying the hostages out and setting up proper rehabilitation plans for them. We didn't trust the government to do that job better than us. We wanted to make sure everyone was in the right hands before we wrapped up the mission. Before we left, Mara gave me this."

My gaze drifted to her toned forearm on the bar as she fingered through the bracelets on her wrist that she wore like a second skin, tugging at one yellow threaded bracelet. Smiling, I touched it.

I knew each one of these bracelets, shape, color, and the different textures of them on my finger-pads. All of them were seemingly taken from different travel spots, like her own carried handprints of the lands she'd been to. I knew them from all the times she'd fallen asleep with her hand on my chest, wearing nothing but. In the bedroom as the air lingered with the warm smell of skin and bedsheets and the echoes of moans, and through the haze of my tired, lust-addled eyes. I'd always traced them, inadvertently like she did my scars. But now that I knew the story of the child's bracelet, it felt like I was touching it for the first time.

"So you and the other misfits finally got what you wanted."

"Oh, yes." She poured herself a new shot. "We celebrated the success of the mission by having a 24-hour party. It was one of the best days of my life. And it got better a week later when the Association finally agreed to hire me to take over one of their serious missions."

"What kind of mission?"

"Before Ve Ra Luna, I'd had my eyes on two criminals on the Hunter Black List. An outlawed duo. Two cousins. Most wanted. The Association had been wanting to get a hold of them. They were on top of their list—number two and three. I could have gone for easier targets and worked myself up the list instead of leaping straight to the top, but I was chaotically ambitious like that. I really wanted to be the one to catch them. Of course, the Association pretty much laughed in my face and shooed me away at first. But after the glorious win against Ve Ra Luna, and a lot of begging, they decided to give me a shot."

She smiled a bitter smile that translated to so much shit happened. "Rae was the first person who knew about how much I wanted to catch these criminals. She was the one who suggested taking on a mission as huge as Ve Ra Luna, forming the misfits. She was also the one to give me tips on how to develop my nen ability like a Specialist. Since I'm a Manipulator and I had a greater chance at becoming a Specialist one day in the far future. Rae taught me how to always think bigger, to be audacious. And that used to make me believe that I could do anything. I think it was sort of how things are with you and Gon, where you help each other grow and develop. Always meet where you need to be. I had that with Rae."

The silence that followed was almost too heavy with meaning. Because I could feel it in the air, I asked, "What did she do?"

"I was seventeen the summer I worked hard to understand and develop all aspects of my Hatsu. After that, I was ready for my mission." She paused, the surfacing, long-buried memory taking over her expression, hardening her eyes and giving an imperceptible coldness to her tone. "Fast forward to the end of the year. The mission was done. My criminals were caught, chained and locked up where I wanted them to be. I was waiting for the Association to come pick them up. I woke up alone in the middle of that night, and the two criminals were gone, and Rae was nowhere around. A secretary at the Association called me. Angry and screaming. Calling me an idiot and a traitor. Because apparently, my criminals were taken away by Cleave."

"Wait… What?" I frowned, feeling my stomach ride into my chest as realization dawned on me. "What the…? You mean—"

"Yeah. Rae was a secret member of Cleave, and I had no idea. For over a year she'd kept that away from me."

"She was working for the assholes?"

"She was. She'd had her own agenda all along. Apparently our meeting wasn't as special and coincidental as I thought it was. She'd tracked down my missions before we'd even met. She knew about the mental damage that I could inflict on my targets with my nen ability. She knew that I could make criminals into well-trained puppies. And she knew it'd make her look good in front of her boss if she'd brought them my best targets. Since you know, the Cleaves loved nothing more than playing with damaged, obedient criminals for sadistic mission purposes."

"But you two were best friends…" I said, unable to believe. Friends didn't use each other like that. They didn't stab each other in the back like that.

"Our friendship was one-sided, apparently. Rae didn't love me," she said, without inflection. The acceptance of that fact was like ice in her voice. "Whatever we had wasn't strong enough to weather her loyalty to Cleave. Or for her to even be honest with me about who she was all along."

I was frozen and speechless. I could feel my pulse in my neck, that was how angry that made me. That was the most despicable and appalling thing anyone could do. To a friend.

"Me on the other hand," Yuki added before I could, "I ended up looking small in front of the Association. Not to mention naïve and stupid for letting somebody use me like that and steal away my targets right from under my nose. Not only had I lost the mission I'd worked my ass off to earn, but I'd also indirectly helped Cleave score against the Association, all because I had feelings for the wrong person. And I had to find out about it from the Association because she just took off without a word. No explanation or a cheap letter. Not even a goodbye. It's like I wasn't even worth any of that. So there's that."

I didn't care to compose my reaction. I just stared at her with a wide-eyed, disbelieving scowl, tension building in my shoulders until I felt like I wanted to break something. There were very little in life that I valued as much and undeniably as I did loyalty. The idea of a friend betraying and abandoning another friend like that made me incredulous with rage. Knowing it'd happened with Yuki made me livid.

The first thing I did was try to imagine myself in her place. If Gon had done something similar and betrayed me somehow—how that would have made me feel; how it would have changed me—and I couldn't even finish the thought. And it was worse for Yuki because Rae was more than just a first friend. I couldn't imagine what it had felt like to feel so strongly for somebody and trust them with your most honest self and then have them waste all that love away, to be unable to tell the lies from the true affections, to doubt yourself and your judgement for the rest of your life.

Another piece of her fell into place: betrayal by a loved one.

Guilt and regret rose to join the mess of feelings inside me. The way I'd kept big things about myself away from her at the beginning must have triggered the feelings of betrayal she'd already experienced before. No wonder she'd ruthlessly shut me and herself out.

Yuki's voice picked up, dripping sarcasm. "Oh and there's another cherry to add to the general delight that was Rae's friendship. Later I found out that Rae had also taken things from the other misfits during the Ve Ra Luna mission," she said, shocking me even more. "She'd stolen things from Oswald and Sun-Mi. Significant, hard-earned information that they'd acquired for their respective future missions. Oswald was searching for a missing war criminal, and Sun had hacks on terrorists hiding in the East. Rae had found a way to get her hands on their work as well. I don't know exactly how she did it, but I assume it couldn't have been too hard when you're on a road trip with someone for months."

I ran a hand through my hair and groaned, magnificently pissed now as I grabbed the handle of my Mason jar. I walked around the bar to join her on a stool, still failing to find the right words to express my reaction. I settled next to her and weaved my feet around the legs of the bar stool, taking a large swig of my drink and letting the burn smooth away the tight knot of fury in my stomach. "This is fucking disgusting."

When I looked at her, I saw that her lips were now curled into with a smile. "Look how angry you are on my behalf. It's oddly satisfying. And sexy."

"That's intense, beastie. I can't even imagine. Being betrayed and abandoned like that…" I shook my head. "How it made you feel after…"

"Hey. Not that face," she said, tapping the tip of my nose with her finger. "Remember what I said? No unnecessary angst."

I clenched my jaw. I got what she was saying; I never wanted any unnecessary angst to be squeezed out of my own life history, but still. I felt like I had to offer something more than curse words, anything, but any words like I'm sorry you had to feel that and you didn't deserve it sounded too bland and trite. What do you do when one of the worst things that you imagine happening to you, happens to the best people you know?

The angst of that question had to be written all over my face because the next thing she did was mutter, "Oh, for God's sake," and reach over with her hand to softly tilt my face towards her, and looked me in the eye.

"I celebrated Christmas in six different countries," she said.

My brows pulled down, confused by the abrupt change of topic. "What?"

She ignored me and went on, "I've been to thirteen awesome, life-changing musical events. I worked alongside talented Hunters from all the types and genders and colors. I was one of the youngest Hunters to take on criminals as globally threatening as Ve Ra Luna and completed several bucket lists. My life so far has been filled with failure and danger and passion and adventure." Her lips curved into a small, confident smile. "And now I'm locked in a bar with the most dishy guy in the world. You may want to save that sad face for someone who needs it."

My smile returned just like that, awestruck and fucking fascinated. "Smooth."

"I try."

"Fair enough. At least tell me the story ends with a more satisfying twist."

"Please. It's my story." She grabbed her glass again, an air of easy self-possession around her. In a typical Yuki fashion, she was back into gear. "There's no way I'd ever let my story end with me being a victim."

"Good."

"I was pissed off for a long time though," she confessed. "Pissed for myself and for my friends. And though I can't say my loyalties ever belonged solely to the Association, but I was pissed for them too. I couldn't blame them for the way they blamed me for this flop. A fascist organization like Cleave getting a hold on two criminals that dangerous? Who knew how they were planning to use them. I felt responsible. I knew I had to lick my wounds, pull myself together and be back in action. I knew I had to fix this."

I frowned, no longer concerned with any satisfying twists. I didn't like the sound of that. An odd instinct kicked in and spurred me into a make-believe vision where I was a part of that story, wishing I'd been there to stop her, grab her and beg her to stay out of it. Convince her that it wasn't her fault and she didn't need to prove herself to anybody or be the fixer of anything. Because I knew what it was like to take on too much responsibility, and I knew her well enough to know that she was going to fix it no matter what it cost her, even if it meant bargaining on her own life.

"What did you do?"


A/N: I forgot how to write bottom author's notes so the first thing my monkey brain told me to write is "Thank you for coming to my Ted talk."

The next chapter is ready go, which I'll post sometime in the next month hopefully.

Until then, leave me your thoughts? Feelings? Words? If you want to review, there's the little box below, or you can send me a message me on (beastied) on tumblr. I missed reading your reviews.

And until then, stay awesome!