A/N: Hi, guys, what's up? I hope your summer is better than mine and filled with more chill time and gelato and not overbearing bosses, sore legs, and those dreadful thirty minutes when you start your car's a/c and hell fire explodes in your face.
I want to give a quick s/o to my tumblr readers: christa, for constantly beta'ing my writer self esteem and amusing me with her naughty Yuki dreams. Jesus has left all of our chats, cee. To delsin, who gave me the sweetest ego boost a writer could have and shared my batman phone pin. I don't have to say how cool she is because the previous sentence just did it. And jess, the newest member of the tln family who now probably knows my characters better than I do already.
Also, one of the best people, mocha-nay, is working to publish her own original Killua OC fic and I already adore every single one of her super hot OCs. So if any of you could please go to her fic's tumblr page so-gabz and maybe badger her to share her story already, I'd be very grateful.
And of course thanks to all of you for the reviews, likes, tags, asks and messages. Like I always say, this and all the other updates wouldn't have happened without you. You keep the story alive and kicking.
Now enough out of me.
Chapter 53
Red: Parallels
Killua
"Boy," Yuki muttered. "Where to start."
I shook my head, irritation still grating at my nerves after everything I'd heard, but I only contained it by folding my arms across the bar and leaning sideways towards her. "So let me get this straight. You assembled a team, fought an army of the world's worst terrorists, saved a few nations with your friends, busted your ass all so you could earn a chance at your big break. And when you got your dream mission and nailed it, everything went to waste when your own friend betrayed you by stealing your work and sending the criminals you caught to her creepy ass organization. And the the Association blamed you for the whole thing."
She winced slightly after knocking back another shot, her voice coming out hoarse: "Yep."
"And you didn't tell them where to shove that blame why?"
She waved a hand in a careless gesture. "I didn't give a crap what they thought," she argued, tossing a juiceless lime wedge onto the bar. "I made it my responsibility first. Even if the whole thing was a score sheet between Cleave and the Association, it was me who was used in the game. My powers. My efforts. My right to say no. It became personal the minute Cleave decided to use dirty tricks and make a fool out of me. It was between me and them now."
"Did the Association at least offer to help you clean that mess?"
"No."
"Why the hell not?"
"They had their Hunters working on something at the time." Leaning back in her stool she propped one knee up against the edge of the bar. "Besides, Cleave had a clean record. For all the world knew, Cleave was only catching and using criminals for good research and brutal training fun. That was their image. Everything else? Just hearsay. Nobody was able to pin anything concrete on them because they knew exactly how to cover their tracks for their benefits. They were not seen as class-A threat, and so the Association put all investigations aside in favor of other more solid calamities, and no one was interested enough in Cleave to dig deep. Or…at all. They weren't going to help me just because I was jilted and spiteful."
Grumbling quietly, I reached into the bowl of pretzel sticks and snapped one in half between my fingers. "I don't know if I'm more mad by the thought of you shouldering something like that that all on your own or because it's exactly what I would have done, too."
She almost started grinning. "Maybe a little bit of both? Or better yet, don't get mad over something I've done three years ago. Like seriously."
"I get that, but I still don't like it. For real though." I swiveled in my chair to face her directly. "You were one. The Cleaves were several elusive Hunter scientists who allegedly loved to torture beast powers into renowned criminals. You couldn't possibly go against them on your own."
She nodded without offense. "True. That's why I didn't do anything right away. I had plan, but I took my time with it. I knew if I wanted to get back at Rae and the Cleaves then there was going to be a lot of strings I had to pull."
Strings to pull. As in… "Stakeholders," I guessed because it was once again what I would do. Yuki lifted her empty shot glass to me in assent. "It's the smart move, yeah. But finding the right stakeholders usually takes a lot of time. Often months."
"Not if you're skilled in the art of collecting favors," she countered. "That usually speeds things up. I had to track and hit up twenty seven people I knew on the job who owe me favors and ask them what they knew about Cleave before I finally found the one. He was a Treasure Hunter who I once spared for stealing pink star diamonds from an Archeological Hunter. But alas, Fortune is a fickle mistress with her wheels. He didn't know much about Cleave himself, but he did point me to another Treasure Hunter whose ex wife worked for Cleave once. Beaumont Viraldi."
Viraldi. I heard that name before. "Wait, that's a Heaven's Arena resident, isn't he? A Floor Master."
"Yes. He lives on the 250th floor. A hotshot Single Star Treasure Hunter. Next problem was, Viraldi was very snobby and only worked with the people he respected. I knew the only way to get close to him and his attention was by reaching his level. He wasn't going to agree to work with me unless I proved myself worthy for a meeting with him… so I did. It might have cost a few fights."
I stopped, blinking twice before narrowing my eyes knowingly at her and asking, "How many are a few fights?"
"Just a few," she mumbled around the lip of her glass.
I knew what just a few meant when she said it. She had just a few racks of jackets and pairs of shoes for me to pick up for her. She was going to read just a few pages of the book before bed. She wanted just a few copies of the Zymiral's mansion before the mission. "Oh please," I scoffed. "Like I don't know that just a few in Yukinese means a fuckload too many."
It hit me then.
Too many fights. Reaching the guy's level.
A mocking grin spread over my face. "You became a Floor Master for spite?"
One finger held up in my face. "For a great plan motivated by spite," she corrected. "But yes, I did. Floor 235th to be exact. I had my own swimming pool. And patio. And a damn nice view."
I stuck a pretzel stick in between my teeth. I wasn't surprised that she did that; becoming a Floor Master wasn't too hard considering how most of the fighters at the 200th floor are either newbies at nen or crippled by their initiation to it. It wouldn't be easy to win ten fights there for a mid-tier nen user like her at seventeen. I was more impressed that she did it all for one small part of a plan. She was like a hurricane when she wanted something, relentless and unstoppable. "Did the guy at least offer something of good use? Did he offer it for free?"
She snorted, stirring her drink with her straw. "Of course not. He knew the secret location to Cleave's extremely exclusive auctions. I had to trade it for a secret I knew about a treasure he was interested in."
My brows pulled together with confusion. "Auctions?"
"Yes. Cleave ran secret members-only auctions for Blacklist Hunters."
"Auctions for bidding on… what, exactly?"
"Hm, how do I put this in the least creepy way?" She shifted forward in her seat and rested her elbow on the bar, her fingers toying with the ends of her ponytail. "They ran auctions for buying criminals."
I eyed at her flatly. "They what now."
"It was like making a reservation at a restaurant except the restaurant is the underworld. There were courtesy and rules for their auctions: When a Cleave member 'buys' a criminal, that criminal is reserved with the bidding price. If the criminal is caught and delivered—alive, of course—then Cleave will pay the Hunter the bidding price they'd requested. If the criminal is failed to be captured before the deadline, then the Hunter has to pay Cleave the bidding price, only doubled. As long as you bid on a criminal, they're temporarily marked as yours and no other member is allowed to share the chase with you. It's like marking your meal in a jungle, and there's either a hefty prize or a huge debt waiting for you. Once the criminal is 'yours', Cleave will give you free information about the criminal's set of skills, powers, last-seen locations, backstory, without you having to do much work. It was a game, really. A challenge for the powerful. The perfect seduction for a Hunter's ego."
Damn. Blacklist Hunters are weird and scary. "What kind of criminals did they bid for?"
"Usually serial killers with special powers. Hunters gone out of control. Criminals that Cleave members had already caught before and played around with in their creepy labs before throwing them out into the world for some political anarchy mission."
"And you were there to…?"
She reached into the small bowl of peanuts with a shrug. "To steal back my criminals, of course."
I bit back a smile. Only she could say a line like that and make it sound like the most normal thing.
"I went all out, with a wig and an alias. I'll spare you the logistics. Long story short, I manipulated my way into membership. Of course, by that time, it'd been weeks since I'd caught my two criminals the first time. During those weeks they'd undergone through several freaky experiments before they were unleashed free again. They were on a whole new level of deranged, basically. More developed, more challenging. But so was I," she said, with a cocksure edge to her voice. "I won the bid, reserved my sociopaths as mine, and one month later, they were mine. I caught them."
"And?" I asked in a rush.
"And I didn't go by Cleave's rules. I sent the best criminal, alive, to the Hunter Association. And I left the other one at Rae's office door—dead with a gift bow on him."
I stared at her, my lips curving up. Blood rushed in my veins, warm and dizzying, a thrill down my spine coiling tightly at the base. "That's fucking hot."
She turned to me with open amusement, but didn't look a little bit surprised. "Diabolical people turn you on?"
"No." I reached out with my hand curled under her seat, hearing her slight gasp when I jerked her stool in my direction and closer to mine. "You being diabolical turns me on. Kicking ass and taking names."
Her smile stayed put as she turned around in her stool to face mine, fitting her knees in between my spread thighs. There was the whisper of clothes between us, the fabrics of her pants and mine, smooth leather against soft denim. I wanted them off. I wanted her legs bare and in other places, like around my waist. Or on my shoulders.
Her voice cut me out of my lust-ridden trance. "The plan doesn't end there. If there was one thing that Rae had taught me when we were friends, it was to always reach higher. I realized I didn't want to just be the bitter bitch. I also wanted to be the better bitch."
"That's my girl." My eyes moved to the long, smooth arch of her throat, the delicate chain of her necklace curling over her defined collarbones and moving ever so slightly with her breaths. The skin there was taut and golden smooth, so creamy it made my mouth water. "So, uh, what did you do?"
"I got one of the criminals to spill the beans on Cleave's secret underground location," she replied, "then I snuck in there. Into their 'workshop'. Their working lab where they conducted their gruesome experiments on criminals."
"How did you sneak in? The security had to be pretty tight in a place like that."
"It was. I might have had to use a lot of En to manipulate the surveillance cameras guard and carry the unconscious head of security on my back for an hour to use his handprints to open doors."
"Not bad."
"I found the room where Cleave kept their best experiments. They were four in total. Four subjects. Poor bastards looked horrible. Horrific scarring and the monstrous disfigurations and proportions. Their bodies were like topographical maps of hell. They seemed strong but they barely looked human anymore after all the experiments done to them."
"First they lost their human souls in the crime life and then they lost their human bodies to the people who are supposed to fight said crime."
"Almost poetic, isn't it?" She shrugged. "Been long since they'd lost the essence or the soul of what meant to be human, and only days since they'd stopped being human in the earth-founded sense of the word. Inside that facility they were only numbers. Rates. Experiments. A testament of human innovation and lifelong learning. The irony is pretty thick there."
"Were they being kept inside Thor's Walls?" I asked. A Thor's Wall in the Hunter world was a play of words on Thor's Well: the gaping sinkhole of water where no person came out of alive. A true wonder of nature, so much like the notion of nen. Designed with nen to be indestructible, Thor's Walls were literal gates of hell. Whoever goes in never gets out. I'd once rescued Gon out of a cage made of Thor's Walls after he had one of his flirt-and-skirt time with death. I could only do it by threatening the key out of the measly cage's wardens. Otherwise, the only person capable of breaking through Thor's Walls was the woman whose nen designed, and now her ability was something of a brand in the nen world, and she was one of the ten wealthiest Hunters of all time because of it.
"Yes, they were," she said. "I knew I wouldn't be able to go in but I came prepared. It was in those rare occasions that a gun becomes fun and useful. I used my nen ability to lure them close to the cage bars. Not that it was too necessary; they were practically begging to die. It took four bullets in each head. I ended their suffering, and Cleaves had no more worthy experiments to work on."
Pride swelled in my chest. "Still hot."
She rolled her eyes, her smile playful. "But that wasn't my primary reason for sneaking into the workshop. I was there for a bigger purpose. I managed to snag a lot of secret information out of Cleave's databases for Oswald and Sun-Mei that I thought they'd find interesting for their future jobs. That was the hardest part, but I wanted to do it. I felt like I was responsible to give them their own justice as well because it was me who'd brought Rae into their lives."
I was about to strongly argue against that but she beat me to continue, her voice taking on a hard, serious lilt now. "Of course, I sent them the information anonymously. I didn't want them to know that it was me and get involved in what I did. I wanted my revenge plan and its consequences to be all mine. If the Cleaves were going to go after someone, I only wanted it to be me."
My stomach bottomed out at the thought of Yuki being someone's target, anxiety tying itself in knots in my guts. "What do you mean by consequences?"
"There were good and bad consequences to what I did. The good was that Sun-Mei used the information I stole and sent her and did her badass Terrorist Hunter business to expose and frame Cleave for their secret terrorist activities. And in a matter of days, she managed to destroy their reputation as Hunters and dismantle their entire organization. Some Hunter members were caught and thrown into Fecciafort, some managed to run away and became outlaws and are still blacklisted to this day. Rae is one of them. Sun and her team terminated at least thirty secret experiments on criminal mutants that had the potential to start another messy Ant war. She gained so much more recognition afterwards and became a single star Hunter at eighteen."
"Whoa."
"I know," she agreed, smiling with pride. "Amazing, isn't she?"
"But none of that would've happened if it weren't for you, beastie."
She shrugged, waving a dismissive hand. "What matters is that Cleave had their asses handed to them. I already got what I wanted then."
"What were the bad consequences?"
"Well…" she sighed. Her knees still tucked between mine, she picked out a blade of grass stuck to the black denim of my jeans and flicked it studiously on the bar top by my drink. "Cleave eventually found out that I was behind the whole thing, and they came after me for their own revenge. They wanted me to pay for their organization's defeat—so they sent three of their outlaw members to hunt me down."
My heart tripped over her words. "Did they catch you?"
"Yeah, they did. I wasn't strong enough to go against three Hunters, let alone three angry Hunters. They caught me and locked me up for two weeks in a remote farmhouse, and I'm woman enough to admit that they damn well kicked my ass."
I froze, my blood thundering in my veins. Tension stretched across my shoulders. "Two weeks? Why exactly did they keep you for two whole weeks?"
"They were waiting for their politically powerful friends to smuggle them out of the country, and because Sun's team of Hunters was tightly controlling the borders, they had to hide and do nothing until they were safe to escape. They thought they could use that time to hit two birds in one stone: wait for their freedom and get their revenge on the person responsible for taking that freedom away from them, a.k.a yours truly."
"What kind of revenge did they want?"
She waved an offhanded hand. "They were petty sadistic pieces of shit. At least one of them was. The other two were just his minions. For the most part they kept me cuffed to a chair and alone in a room until my clothes practically molded into my skin. Try to get into their mindset: They were three men who did everything society expected from them. They got themselves the pretty wives, the kids, the right houses and cars. They got the privilege of the Hunter license and advanced nen and the right jobs where they got to kiss a lot of capitalist ass and get a lot of benefits from it. When they got exposed by Sun they were immediately abandoned by all the people in power that were protecting their business. After all, in politics, dirty work is all right as long as it's done in secret. They were abandoned by their own version of god."
"They wanted a scapegoat," I guessed numbly.
"Yes. And I was there for them to take it out on," she said. "They didn't want to kill me as much as they wanted to break me so I'd feel remorse for what I did to them. Killing me was too easy for them. They wanted to toy with me and get me to a point where I'd feel sorry and beg them to let me go." She let out a soft scoff at the idea. "They probably would have let me go if I weren't such a prideful sassy bitch to them. I swear, I look back at it and feel like my personality would the cause of my death one day."
The anger flared like steam in my chest, threatening to sear my throat. Yuki was making light of it but I was unable to think past the word break. I knew first hand about being locked in and punished into becoming the focus of someone else's hatred and disdain. Of having them want nothing more than to watch me stripped off my control, pride and dignity just to satisfy an ego. But my brother was one man. The Cleaves were three. Three vengeful, experienced nen users who wanted to break her. And I wasn't powerless against Milluki. She was on her own against them.
She was alone in that farmhouse. No friend, no helpmate, no one. She could have died alone and no one would have known. No one would have found her.
I didn't feel how hard I'd been clenching my teeth until my jaw started to ache. Memories roared to life inside of me, blurry but gripping, overshadowing my mind. "What did they do to you?" I asked again, trying to keep my voice calm as a fury of emotions burned through me.
Seeming to suddenly notice how quiet my ever-restless body had gotten, she frowned, studying me slowly. Her eyes went to my neck where I could feel my pulse pounding. "Killua… what's wrong?"
"You don't expect me to be calm knowing that a bunch of crazy dickheads had tortured my girlfriend for days just because it was all in the past, do you?"
Her eyes softened, taking in my whole face for a long beat before looking into my eyes again. She sat her drink down and reached out for me instead. My nerves were jangled and vibrating. My whole body was locked rigid under her hands as she ran them up and down my thighs in hopes to soothe me away from what I was feeling, but all her touch did was make me half hard and more helplessly irritated at the world.
"I didn't want my story to upset you," she murmured. "Maybe I should have censored that part. I don't want to be the reason you have that look on your face."
Hearing the guilt in her tone made my heart lodge in my throat. Jaw tight, I closed my eyes shut and tried to find the leash holding my thoughts together. "No…" I pleaded, "don't feel bad. Please." My hands covered hers, partly just to hold them but also to stop their perfect and torturous slide up my thighs. "Don't censor. I don't ever want you to ever—damn it. I just—tell me how they hurt you. I need to know everything."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why are you asking me to upset you even more with the details of it? It happened years ago. I dealt with it. I survived it. And I turned it around. None of it matters right now."
I grunted out a breath. "Like hell it doesn't. It matters. It always matters."
"You're right. It does." She stroked my forearms, placating, trying to steer me out of the deep-end I'd fallen to in my head, to anchor me back to her. To myself. "We're Hunters though. You're telling me you've never had trauma beaten into you too? What good would it bring talking about it now?"
"I don't know," I replied honestly. "But it's you."
She looked back at me with worried but steady eyes. "I get that. And maybe one day I will tell you all about it. But I know right now is not the time, and you just want to know for all the wrong reasons."
"Why won't you just tell me how?" I insisted, not even fucking knowing why anymore. I didn't only understand what she was saying, I respected it. Logically, she had the same marginally chill attitude I had about the damage my shit family had put me through—spit out the blood in your mouth, get back on your feet, turn it around, rise and come back better than before.
No. I did know why.
It was the sick and familiar part of my brain that wanted me to dig up things I knew would only hurt me. The curiosity stemmed from somewhere dark and toxic. It was the same self-loathing part that'd showed its voice after Alluka's death. The same part that'd made me ignore my physical and emotional well-being for as long as I had. The same part that'd made me smoke too many cigarettes and fuck too many wrong people. It'd made me overthink myself into sleepless, lonely nights and not let my friends ever share my burden because I thought I didn't deserve their time and comfort. That part of my brain had been my one and only true enemy for years.
She countered my question, "The same reason why you didn't want to tell me how you could transmute your aura into electricity."
Without thinking, I countered back, "I didn't want to tell you because it's all logistics now and some things are just obvious, beastie."
She twitched her eyebrows as if to say Well? There you go.
Damn it. I was outwitted.
My eyes searched her skin for the answers she wouldn't tell me, a dumb knee-jerk because I knew every inch of her body better than I knew mine. I knew I wouldn't find any signs of abuse or torture on it. She had the same scars that I did, not as frequent but as similar. Training scars that scattered about here and there, unnoticed, neglected, never efficiently healed because the skin was too young and tender when we'd earned them. They took the shape of cuts, animal scratches, small burns, knife slashes and dry skin.
But we were nen users now and speed healing was on our list of perks. Knowing how vain Yuki was, she'd probably taught herself how to manipulate her nen into healing any skin scarring as soon as she had it. Even if she'd been hurt, I wouldn't be able to tell or know anything about the how of it.
I let that sink in for a minute. I took a deep breath. I sighed it all away. There were going to be things that I didn't need to know now. There would be a better time for them. I'd just have to let it go. It was about time that I shut that self-destructive voice in my head down to the ground.
I swiveled back in my stool toward the bar and grabbed my drink, desperately needing to rein in my verbal filter and body's reactions. Having her hands on me wasn't going to help distract me in my hard-up state.
But she didn't let me get far; she leaned against me. She pressed a kiss to my arm and then propped her chin on my shoulder blade. I could feel her eyes on the side of my face, waiting and patient. She always wanted to understand me, but not without me wanting her to, not without me letting her in myself. She knocked at the door of my heart without going in and sat patiently by the threshold, waiting for me. I wanted her to make a home there.
My heart was still beating too hard and angry in my ribs, with both the frustration and her proximity, but I managed on instinct to keep my breathing steady and silent.
"You're pretty hot when you're feeling something so much," she whispered next to my ear. "All the amazing hot things it does to your jaw and neck."
I closed my eyes and fought the damned smile she was goading. Half amused despite myself, I turned my head to look at her over my shoulder, and she was right there. Hypnotic eyes and plum lips, a breath away from mine and distracting. So distracting. "My neck?"
Nodding with a happy hum, she nuzzled down the side of my face, making me shiver. "I love when your body go tense and hard and I can see how much you're holding back…" she trailed off, her lips moving across my jaw, directing my senses and my thoughts to her. Her hot breath on my ear. The seductive edge in her mellow voice. "It makes me think of you naked. But then again, I'm always thinking of you naked." She pulled back to look at me, her gaze darkening. "And how good you always look under me, asking for more and harder. You know what I'm talking about, right? You always hold out for so long to make it good for me, but I love it when you lose focus and your neck arches because it feels so good for you that you can't hold back anymore. It makes me so crazy when I get you to that point."
A groan rumbled low and deep in my throat, leaning my forehead against hers and closing my eyes. I was dizzy with longing and lust, but feeling steadier somehow, settled now that my thoughts were all about her, us and how she made me feel. It was like she'd knocked down all the windows in my head and let the air and light in. I breathed her in, letting her closeness and warmth pervade my entire being. My whole body sighed with it, relaxing seamlessly.
"That's it," she purred, kissing my jaw. "That's better."
My blood was on fire for her.
I took a moment to reach down and discreetly adjust myself in my jeans. "Is that going to be your go-to for calming me down now? Making me so hard I can't think?"
Her gaze drifted over my face, her eyes bright with affection and thrill. "Only when you look like you're thinking so much it hurts. It's an easy solution."
"Easy for you. You don't have to deal with inconvenient boners."
Her eyebrow rose with a sardonic look, making me realize what I'd said. "You might want to think first before saying that to a woman."
I laughed shortly through a groan and leaned my head back, turning my attention to something less… confining; the wide high ceiling with its pretty hanging lights. Perfect.
But all it did was remind me of the ceiling of my car. Few nights ago on Christmas. Of her straddling my lap in the backseat, patient and focused on my pleasure before hers, muscles straining with the effort and knees digging into the seat on either side of my hips as she moved with amazing, steady friction on top of me, pushing and pulling, up and down, taking more of me inside…
I straightened and found her watching me. Her eyes caught mine with a knowing smile around her upraised glass. She was the devil, of that I was sure. And now the only thought I had was sliding off my stool and kissing her angrily.
But that thought was pushed aside by another. Now that the mood had lightened again and my head was clearer, I began to realize how ridiculous I'd been before. I bowed my head, squeezing my eyes. "I'm sorry," I said, a heavy pang of remorse dropping in my stomach. "I shouldn't have been so persistent before. You're allowed to have things that you don't want to talk about. It was so selfish of me to ask you to relive something like that by telling me."
"Shh, it's okay."
"No, it's not." I was packing up a fresh patch of anxiety all week, but insecurities were no excuse to be a self-absorbed asshole. Exhaling out a bitter, incredulous laugh, I said, "You ended up comforting me when it should've been me giving you all the attention. This is exactly why I suck at comforting people myself. My emotional filter clogs up and I lose control over my reactions and clam the fuck up."
"Hey. Don't do that," she admonished, her voice firm but somewhat still soft. "Don't apologize for the way you feel. Don't ever do that. We mess up, and we'll mess up again, it's okay as long as we talk about it." She ran a gentle hand through my hair with a wan smile. "You have empathy in you that can carry the world and you're too hard on yourself. It's a tough combination. But you told me not to censor. I don't want you to do that either. Don't censor and don't filter. It's me. I'll always understand. Even when I don't, I'll still always try for you."
The relief that washed over me with these words was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. It was liberating, something I never knew I needed to hear so much.
I inhaled deeply. Shifted slightly to reach for my glass. Focused to put more light into my voice. "Tell me something funny."
Her head jerked in surprise. "Something funny?"
"Yes. Anything."
"Alright." She sat up straighter, thought about it for a second, and then: "'Defenestration' as a word literally means 'throwing someone out of a window'."
I nearly coughed out my drink. "Seriously?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Why the hell is there a specific fancy-ass word for that?"
"Very few people know that word exists but it's actually pretty ancient. Dates all the way back to the 17th century when two important dudes were tossed out of a window and for some reason it sparked a raging war that lasted three decades."
My eyes narrowed, suspicious. "You're fucking with me now, aren't you?"
She giggled delightedly next to me. "Nah. It's a very true history fact."
"Why do you even know that?"
"I just know a lot of useless facts." Her eyes gleamed with humor. "But you know what the fun part is?"
"What?"
"The fun part is that I, personally, can use that word in a sentence. 'Hey, you know, one time, my loving boyfriend defenstrated me at a masquerade party'."
Shit. A loud, deep laugh burst out of me before I could help it, my head rolling back on my shoulders. I wasn't expecting that.
"So thank you, Killua, for giving me this golden opportunity to use that stupid word in a sentence," she spoke over my growing laughing fit. "I would say that line to people and they would be so confused and think I probably meant something sexual and I'd be like, 'Oh God yeah, he defenstrated me hard. Best ten seconds of my life'."
I shook with uncontrollable laughter for another full minute, relishing the invigorating rush of blood all over my body that came from laughing hard from the heart.
And she didn't stop there. "It was actually kind of sweet if you think about it. Nothing says 'I have trust in my girl's level of badass' like throwing her out of a four-story window in six inch heels. It's a code to romance in Killua-ism."
"Jesus."
As I barely recovered and looked back at her, I found her watching me with a little shit-eating smile of victory and… Adoration. Complete, beatific adoration. Just because she'd got me to laugh. And there was something about seeing her look that self-satisfied, that accomplished and content about it that made me feel like the fucking king of the world.
Our eyes locked, both smiling. The moment of silence that followed was full of unspoken recognition, unguarded ease and open gratitude, and neither of us broke the slow-evolving tension by looking away.
I was the first to do it. My eyes flickered away from hers and focused on her mouth instead. Her lipstick was a bit obscenely smudged from drinking, her mascara ran slightly and her cheeks and chest were warm from the alcohol. It made her hair look darker, her eyes bluer. She was the sexiest girl I'd ever seen, but it was her brain that knocked me over with every word she said. The more she stared at me, the more desperate I was for contact and her, my skin starved for her touch and her hands everywhere on me, her tiny sounds in my mouth propelling me to kiss her harder.
"Don't," she rasped out, her voice barely above a whisper. "I won't be able to stop."
Heat blazed down my body from the sweet warning. I could feel my pulse everywhere, in every joint and muscle and all along my skin. Get a grip. I pushed a hand through my hair and swallowed, focused on breathing deeply enough to will the blood from my lower body back into my head again.
"Besides," she said, voice brighter now. She poured two more shots and handed me one. "The story's not over yet. Almost. Don't you wanna know how I got out of the farmhouse?"
Right. The story. Cleave. The psychos that punished her.
I cleared my throat. "How did you escape them?"
"I didn't. I mean, I did, obviously. But I didn't do it alone. I tried to escape the barn on my own several times, but I was too weak and too powered-down for any of my attempts to be a success. I still tried to stay conscious and alert as best as I could. On the 15th day, I remember hearing wreckage outside the room I was kept in. Thuds and shouts and screams. Then few minutes later and suddenly, Sun-Mei and Oswald were crashing into my room like action heroes. I was shocked and relieved to see them come to my rescue. The last thing I remember was sassing something at Oz and telling Sun that her heels were smashing before I passed out cold."
I chuckled. But then I frowned, confused. "Wait, how did they know you were there? You said you sent them the information anonymously."
"Rae told them."
My eyebrows nearly entered my hairline. "What."
She gave a little, wry laugh. "Rae tipped them off that it was me who broke into Cleave's workshop and me who'd sent them the information, then she gave them the location to the farmhouse so they could help me out. Oswald told me that she begged them to help me. And Oz, with his one hell of a temper, told her to fuck off with the begging because he wasn't waiting for it to save a friend."
I was reeling. I couldn't understand Rae and her murky loyalties. First she betrayed her friends for her organization, then she betrayed her organization by snitching on her colleagues and offing them when she sent them two of the friends she'd previously betrayed. To save her old best friend, who was the very reason her organization had been torn down.
All that aside, at least one thing about Rae was clear enough: She loved Yuki, too. Not in a way that was enough, and certainly not in a way that Yuki deserved. But in a way, period.
I looked at her, trying to figure it all out. "And you didn't see or hear from her after all that?"
"Rae?" She started nibbling on a salted pretzel stick. "Not for a whole year I didn't. She knew I wouldn't want anything to do with her again and she was wise enough to keep her distance from me for almost two years after. At least until last year. I was called by a collective of Hunters in Mizr. They were looking for a consultant on a cold case and they said they'd heard of my work from over there. They heard that there isn't a criminal that I can't find in a week. It was true especially then; I'd had some of my best missions that year and I'd just started making a name for myself. That's why I didn't think much of it. I arrived there and it was a mess. They were four Hunters and the case had been cold for months," she said with a little head shake. "No murder case is supposed to take more than a month for a Hunter. Their work was so damn sloppy."
"Sounds like you were one summer breeze of a consultant," I teased with a smirk, reaching forward with my thumb to wipe a tiny dotting of salt from her top lip and then licking it off. "Did you boss them around and make them bring you coffee and wish they'd never become Hunters?"
"Of course not," she said, shrugging regally. "We were in Mizr. I made them bring me sweetened chai. It's the national drink, Killua."
"That's my girl."
She slipped a pretzel stick in between my lips. "Anyway, as it turns out that it was, once again, Rae and another one of her well-executed manipulation plan. Behind the whole thing. She was the one who told the Hunters about me and tempted them to ask for my help. All so she could create a 'coincidence' for me and her to work together again, so I'd be reminded of how good it was."
A quick and ungraceful scoff left me.
"Exactly," she agreed, scoffing herself. "I kept it professional until the case was closed. Then she and I had our… let's say 'reunion'."
"How did that go?"
"Not quite warm and fuzzy," she said. "We had a fight. And I don't mean spitting words and hurling insults—a real fight. A true grueling, nen-fueled, no-holds-barred, much-needed fight. It was good. We hashed things out, got all the resentment out, and got some closure. In a moment of surrender, she confessed to me why she did everything she did. She told me that working with Cleave was mandatory for her at the time and she didn't have much choice. That she owed them too much and had no other option because they were holding too much over her head and that she didn't plan on caring for me that much. She said she had greater things at stake and losing me was the easier sacrifice."
I closed my eyes as my heart dropped in my chest, exhaling the painful weight of the last words. The heartbreak in them. "Beastie…"
"No, listen." She placed a soothing hand on my forearm before the moment got too grim and heavy. "It did hurt hearing her say that. Actually, it sucked. But I've had the time to think about it and I understand it better now."
With that sure and quiet command in her voice, she sounded much older, so much wiser beyond her years. "I know Rae's not a bad person inside. It would be so easy to make her the bad guy and blame her and Gary for my baggage and resent them for the way I'd sucked at relationships and kept people at an emotional distance almost my whole life. And trust me, I had put all the blame on her for a while. But I can't do that now. All that negative energy wasn't good for me. It'd taken a lot of me, a lot of self work and maturity, to finally admit to myself that Rae wasn't a bad person because of what happened between us. I know Rae never wanted to do any of it, and that's all that matters, isn't it? We're defined by what we want. It's what we want that makes us good or bad. And it's this shitty world that put people like her in situations where they can no longer reach into the goodness inside, where they can't have the choice to be good. Some people in life inspire the good inside us to come out, and some people kill it. In a way, Rae was also a victim. It wasn't her fault that she was exploited and extorted too young by a fascist organization like Cleave that distorted her priorities in life and gave her no option but to take terrible decisions on behalf of things that were good for her. Just like it wasn't my fault to love someone like that."
I stared at her as I absorbed that for a minute. "Yeah."
Again, I thought of Gon. Though he never betrayed me before, he did hurt me once. Years ago in the Chimera Ant war. He'd hurt me by losing himself too far beyond my reach, which made him say things to me and do things to himself that he shouldn't. It wasn't because he was a bad person. He is one of the best people I know. It wasn't his fault that no one had prepared him enough to see in the shadows that he had no choice but to lose perspective and himself there for a while.
"Rae had her reasons and I don't have to justify them or excuse them. I don't even have to understand them, but they're still there. I can't just put the blame on her and get on with it. It's just never so simple. Any of it. Life is way too complex to have just one of anything. One right, one wrong. One way to express, one way to love, one sexual orientation. One cause, one reason, one person to blame. It's not possible. It's not real."
I smiled, letting the words sink in, and watched her hand, still covering mine on the bar top. I flipped my hand around until I could hold hers in between my fingers. Her hand was unbelievably soft, elegant but strong and capable, fitting almost entirely inside my palm. "You have the prettiest hands."
She chuckled at the sudden compliment. "Thanks."
Quietly, I played with her fingers, my thumb stroking the length of her long, slim fingers and relishing the silken feel of them against the rough, warmer pads of mine. "Does that mean that you forgive Rae?"
She took in a deep breath and watched as she traced the calloused lifelines on my palm with the pink tip of her nail. "It's complicated. I understand her, and she'll always be a part of my story. But I don't want her in my life ever again."
I knew exactly what that was like. It was the same way I felt about my family.
I sat back in my stool and let out a breath in a whoosh. "Damn. You said no angst," I said. "But that was significantly heavy."
"I didn't say it wasn't a significantly depressing story," she said with a sweetly wry smile. And that smile… it was real. It wasn't the clichéd smile of lies, not perfected or forced or generated to mask or hide something else underneath like a lot of people do. It was as honest as it could get. It was one of the things I loved about her. She didn't put a face for anybody; she didn't do anything unless she truly wanted to do them. And that smile struck me with its honesty. She wasn't waiting for sympathy or affirmation, and she wasn't pretending like she was deeper, or stronger when she wasn't. She was just honestly that strong.
She had a high awareness and understanding for what happened to her and why it happened to her, for herself and the world around her, enough to make her a little too cynical sometimes. But not hateful or resentful. She had accepted that story as a part of her, dealt with the burden of it, and carried on, without complaining or ever feeling sorry for herself.
She'd fallen off the wagon and she'd gotten back on, and now she was here in a bar, talking about it over drinks.
And as someone who'd lived his whole life through lies and plays and whimsicality, I found the honesty with which she lived by so refreshing, daunting and badass. She was tough, self-sufficient with a backbone of steel and with everything she had in her, strength, and boldness, and fire. Wit, spark, and self-possession.
In contrast with me.
To the observer, I had control. I had the command, the moderation, the awareness of myself, the possession in my walk, in my speech, in my self-expression. Even in my style, clean-cut and sharply honed as it was. But it was an artifice. A stratagem. A conscious performance that I'd scripted and mastered over the years. A good assassin knows how to use cover, my father used to say in one of his many "A good assassin is… A good assassin isn't…" lessons. A good assassin knows how to disguise and act an assumed role.
And eventually I did know. How to use the tools, how to separate the emotions from what was at hand, how to leave people constantly wondering what I had hidden under my sleeve, and what my next move was going to be. Lie, scam, trick, bluff, outplay, misdirect. Rinse and repeat. And even when I didn't want them to be, these tools were in my pockets and in between my fingers; always ready, always there, immaculately instilled deep underneath my skin.
All day I was aware. Aware of how and when I should use the tools.
She wasn't like me in that prospect. We both loved control, but hers came easy to her. Like everything about her, her control was effortless and free-willing and real. Carried out extemporaneously like she just had it in the palm of her hand. I held onto mine with clutches, stubborn and desperate at times, all for the purpose of appearances, my cover, my self-image; a need to look as if I had it all figured out in front of those who mattered. But she didn't care about any of that. She was unapologetically herself every minute of every day. She was impulsive and devil-may-care when she wanted to be. And when she lost control, she did so on her own terms.
Because she knew she could pick herself right up afterward. She knew she would pace herself back together and come to the other side.
Me, on the other hand…
I put it all… off. Dealing with things… feelings.
I deal with the grief every day, I'd said it before to Leorio's psychiatrist friend, Dr. Tomasz. I'd also said it to my friend Artemis, the old and spunky casino dealer who I'd met on one trip.
Tomasz had doubted me—"Do you?" he'd asked—and Arte had interrupted me with one of her world-weary head shakes. "Grieving is a five-stage process that starts with denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ends with acceptance. You, slick-head, are still stuck in anger, and you're not even letting yourself feel it."
I didn't know how that could be possible. I felt the entire five stages every day. I passed by them every day. Sometimes I felt them all in one night.
Was there a flaw in my grief? Could it be a possibility that I was, in fact, doing it all wrong? How do you grieve wrong? How do you feel something the wrong way? But how would I know? My family had taught me how to deal with everything in life except for strong human emotions. Heck, even the simple ones. Not because they weren't important, but because they weren't convenient.
Illumi had implanted his needle in my head the day of Alluka's death. To him, the needle was meant to protect me from myself and the ravages of my emotions, effectively numbing my grief process for a while and paralyzing it into near oblivion.
Like sticking a pin in the grief; a thought held, a pain paused and abandoned.
Shortly after I'd ripped the needle out, all the feelings had come rushing back in like a dam crumbled apart. Every feeling I'd been made to repress; the sadness, the guilt, the anger, the self-hatred, the heartbreak—I'd felt them all at once. They'd come back vicious and corrosive, magnified by my new emotional awareness that had developed with age. I'd read somewhere before that every person felt stuff in different places in their bodies or whatever, and in that moment, I'd felt the memory of Alluka's death in pinches and in bursts. Heartbreak like a ripple in my breastbone, sadness like a fist squeezing my chest, guilt like a weight in my ankles, anger in my hands. Self-loathing, everywhere.
But I was in the middle of the Ant war then, and I had the hopes of saving Gon from himself and the depths of his own emotions. The right way. There was too much at stake and I couldn't risk it. I'd had no other choice but to block the grief all out, push it gently aside and out of the way before it could overwhelm me and screw with the second chance that life had granted me. By giving me another good thing to fight for.
I'd put another pin in it.
And perhaps Dr. Tomasz and Arte were right. Perhaps I never took the pin out. Perhaps I'd never really dealt with it.
Perhaps I was just an anxious, scared fuck.
Ironic, how my liberation from Illumi's mind control had pushed me into another emotional isolation, one that was a creation of my own.
In the years that followed, I'd kept myself impossibly, blissfully busy, adamant to not have the time to reflect or feel more than necessary. I'd made a deal with time. I'd bet on it to make things better because I had no idea how to do it myself.
I didn't know how to deal with the burden; I only knew how to carry it.
My life had become a stage play where I'd called cues to reveal and dim the lights on certain corners. I'd become a master of evasion. And everything I'd left unsaid and unexpressed had turned into smoke, loud music, reckless speeding down the highways and naked, sweaty distractions.
But Yuki here, she said and she expressed herself in a way that inspired everyone around her to do the same. She put herself right at the edge and dared the entire world to push her. She had no problem saying, This is me. I am my memories and my mistakes and my terrible decisions and my imperfections, and I'm everything I've learned and still learning from them. And she'd be damned if she let anyone make her feel bad for being exactly who she was.
"What?" she suddenly asked me, making me aware of the fact that I was staring at her. "You're smiling."
I was suddenly aware of that as well. "I guess I am."
"Why?" She lowered her glass after a sip. "Are you thinking of how you've finally unlocked the full backstory of why I'm such a hot mess?"
I shook my head no. "Have I ever told you how amazing you are?"
Her head whipped to me, eyes slightly wide at the simple, raw words, just for a second before she recovered with a teasing look. "I don't know. Jog my memory."
"Well, you're pretty damn amazing, beastie."
She smiled at me again. And just like that, everything in the world was okay for one long, beautiful moment.
"Honestly, I probably wouldn't have been as amazing without Lamar's therapy," she admitted, offering me a new shot. "He's always been there, behind the scenes, to help me put things in perspective. I don't know what I'm doing half the time. For the most part, I'm just… winging it." She gave another one of her wry smiles, pouring her own shot. "I mean, I embarked on a quest for revenge that could have easily killed me just to nurse my wounded pride. Without thinking much of the consequences."
I threw the shot back and swallowed with a grimace before I pointed at my chest. "You wanna talk to me about salty winning? During the Ant War, I voluntarily followed this Chimera corpse-guy into a trap just to kill him for launching nasty flea-bullets at me, and as a result, I got stuck in an underground cave with killer-fish and almost fucking died in a dartboard game. It was Ikalgo by the way, the octopus. My good friend." I stopped on an abrupt pause, frowning at how the whole of that mess sounded out loud. "That's got to be the wackiest combination of words anyone has ever used to tell a story."
She cracked up a silly tipsy giggle. Then frowned like I did. "Wow. I'm a little concerned that I didn't even notice how wacky that sounded. You said 'corpse-guy shooting flea-bullets' and in my head I was like, 'Sure. That happens sometimes.'"
"Hand it to the Hunter life for spectacularly screwing with our normal human reactions?"
"Wouldn't have it any other way," she vowed, lifting her shot glass up. I clinked it with my empty one.
"I chased after an enemy and you chased after Cleave. But hey, see." I leaned my elbow on the bar. "Our strong sense of pride eventually pays off. For me, it got me an awesome friendship. For you, it potentially, accidentally saved the world or whatever."
That made her laugh. "Great. So we're both crazy."
"At least we'll never be boring."
"My pride got me an awesome friendship, too," she revealed, nostalgia seeping into her smile. It was one of her rare smiles. "After escaping the damn farmhouse, and after a necessary visit at Lamar's to sort out my brain, it took me about ten sessions of self-care at three different beauty centers to finally look like myself again. I was on my way out of the city when Oswald called me and told me he was near and coming to see me. I met up with him and he thanked me again for sending him the information and told me how it'd helped him find someone he was looking for, then he suggested that I join him for his next hunt. We traveled together for a short while and had our cheesy transition from enemies to friends."
It took her a moment to notice the look that I was giving her and the flick of my eyebrow, and she asked, "…What? Why are you smoldering at me like that?"
"Is that all you want to tell me about him?"
For a second, she looked like she was caught and was about to give in to her basic urge for blunt-force honesty, but then in that typical fashion of hers, she seemed impervious. She shrugged it off as she threw back the last of her margarita and then left her stool for a refill. "Well, he used to be a dancer," she said, going behind the bar where we'd kept the blender. "That helped me like him more. Since you know how obsessed I am with the Nutcracker—"
I snorted. "Cute deflecting."
"I'm not deflecting," she countered quickly, too quickly and started pouring herself another drink slowly, too slowly.
"Right." I leaned back in my stool, crossed arms and stared at her from across the bar top. "What's cuter than your terrible attempt at deflecting is the fact that you thought it'd work on me."
She let out a frustrated little growl. "I can deflect just fine but you're sitting there like this." She motioned to my body. "Looking good and… I can't think."
"What's there to think about? Why deflect in the first place? Just tell me."
"Tell you what?"
Getting a bit agitated myself, I slid off my stool and rounded the bar to where she was and stole the drink she'd just poured from her hand. "I saw the way you smiled each time you brought him up. I know your smiles. So you're either going to tell me or you're going to make me drag it out of you."
She relented and stared at me, eyes crinkling with a smile. "So bossy. Okay, what do you want to know?"
"Did you two hook up?"
She didn't have to answer; her silence was enough. Though I'd already expected it, my blood seemed to simmer inside my chest. I rubbed at it as I tilted the glass to my lips for a long swallow, forcing away the mental images of her with another guy… her focus on his body, her mouth busy with his. A guy that could still make her smile like that when she thought of him.
She hooked a finger into my belt loop and used it to pull me close before I got lost in my head again. "Don't go all quiet on me again. Tell me what you're thinking."
I inhaled deeply. It felt too heavy. "Just tell me what happened with him."
"We were together for few weeks, but he wanted more than I did. I wasn't ready to start anything with anyone at the time. I told him that. He respected it and understood, and we've decided to be just friends. We still are."
"So that whole nostalgic smiling thing… was just for a friend?"
She looked momentarily confused for a moment before her eyes cleared with understanding. "Is that what this is about? You think I smiled like that because I miss Oswald as… more than a friend?"
"No. Yes. I don't know." I scratched the back of my neck. "Look, I could dismiss this pretty ridiculous moment and laugh it off and change the subject like I always do, then let the thought chafe in my head for too long instead of dealing with it. Or I could be upfront about it and take the high—and embarrassing—road and tell you that I need reassurance and it helps to hear you say it."
She smiled, the way she always did any time I went on a tear, looking relieved but a bit taken aback still. "I told you you're too rusty on reading my smiles. I don't miss him like that," she affirmed patiently. "The only reason I think of Oswald fondly is because he's a good guy and a good friend. But just because we're on good terms doesn't mean I still like him the way I like you."
I exhaled for what felt like the first time in minutes and stood up straighter, trying to look more put together than I felt. "I know," I said sincerely and winced when it still fell flat. I immediately regretted my previous words. My hand did an unnecessary smooth-down over my shirt, patting down the spot I'd just wrinkled out of habit. "I didn't mean to think that you do. I don't doubt it, just…" I stopped talking, realizing it was pointless. "Yeah. Momentary brain fart."
She took my hand from my chest with both of hers and lifted it to her lips, kissing my knuckles softly. "I get it. If you had smiled while talking about someone you'd been with, it would have made me feel crazy."
I smirked. "Oh yeah?"
"You know how I'm jealous and possessive."
I let my thumb brush across her perfect bottom lip, overcome with the need to claim it. "Why didn't you want to talk about him before?"
"Because… I feel bad, I guess." Her smile faded. "Like I said Oz was a good guy all in all and he deserved better than what he got from me. I don't like talking about it because it still makes me feel a little shitty about the way I let things get messy with him."
"Messy how?"
Taking a moment to pick her words, she blinked away to study the wall, her fingers toying absently with my watch. "Oswald was sort of like Grimm. He liked me at a very bad time and it ended up hurting him. I was such a different person then. Rae's betrayal was still like a phantom limb pain and I was too scared of getting too attached to somebody again, care too much and lose myself the way I did before. I like sex, but I didn't want to date, and one-night-stands just weren't my thing. The friends with benefits thing worked for me then because I liked being with someone I could be myself around and I never stayed long enough in one place for things to get too friendly or too complicated. I guess I didn't expect Oswald to want more. Being around him made me feel guilty. I was too insecure to believe he liked me for real, and too messed up to give away more than few pieces of me. And none of it was fair to him. He was understanding to the end, but I knew it still hurt him."
"Ah." I winced. All of a sudden, I found myself feeling bad for the guy. I couldn't imagine what it'd be like to know her, be around her, have her, while knowing she'd never be mine.
I blinked down at the glass in my hand, slowly swirling the drink around and thinking of how she was right. It wasn't fair to start anything with anyone unless you were going to give it your all, mind and heart. Here she was all night, giving it all to me, unaware of how it was tripping my life on its axis. The more I knew about her, the more I was taken, the more my world was wrecked, the more I wanted to take my life with the same discernible strength and honesty that she lived by.
She hooked a finger into my belt loop to pull me close, her eyes bright with adoration, as if I were the one blowing her away and not the other way around. "I like that you asked for reassurance earlier," she told me. "I like that you felt secure enough to tell me how you really feel instead of ignoring it and pretending you were fine. You wouldn't have done that a week ago."
"I feel inspired," I admitted. "By this girl who enjoys ruining crime empires and then collecting sentimental mementos and buying lingerie that cost more than her actual clothes."
She pretended to grimace. "Ugh. She sounds like a pretentious diva."
"Eh, she has her moments."
She laughed and swiped her glass back. "At least her crazy matches your crazy."
The silence that followed was light with meaning, filled with quiet smiles and a sense wonder.
But we were still us, at the end. And we wouldn't be us if we didn't still try to take turns on top. "My crazy stories are still cooler than yours though," I said.
She snorted. "Fuck that."
"They are. Pretty sure my 'I tried to kill a humanoid octopus and ended up becoming his friend' story tops your 'I was responsible for ridding the world of a major crime syndicate' story in badass terms."
"True, but I did it in high heels."
Shit. "Fine. I'll fold that one," I said, graciously. And shuffled through my next point. "I was chased and caught by the Spiders. Twice."
"I was chased and caught by the Cleaves. Mad scientists always trump mad thieves."
"I finished Greed Island three times, twice on my own."
"I was too busy winning in real life, dude."
Now I snorted. "At least I was having more fun." Mostly.
The contest raged on. Next thing she said, "I broke two Black Bullhunters when I was eleven."
"Cannibal dogs? I broke Mike, and he weighs about fifteen thousand pounds over your little puppies."
Her eyes narrowed. "I once caught my target in a crowded bar without anyone noticing."
I acknowledged that with an impressed nod. "I caught a guy after taking all his money at poker."
She got frustrated enough to whip back, "My boyfriend defenstrated me at a party."
Damn it, I laughed at that again. "I was the boyfriend."
"I passed my Exam in three days."
"I was the only one who passed mine."
Silence, her jaw set, then, "Damn it," she muttered softly. "There's no topping that."
She still tried to, anyway, because she was still her and I wouldn't change a thing about her.
It was fascinating, how two people could have similar patterns in life and make entirely different choices at the stakes. We'd both been escaping. I'd escaped through distractions and obsessions, by not feeling too much and instead living every moment to its fullest. Every fight, every trip, every party, every friendship. I'd seen to the end of them all.
Yuki did the exact opposite. She felt everything, confronted every feeling and put a wrap on it, but she was too scared to live every story to its end or let anything take too much of her. Not a place, not a person, not a feeling. She always left too early.
I was going to change that.
After chattering on for the length of the margarita glass she'd refilled earlier, I'd excused myself to go to the bathroom, and returned few minutes later to find Yuki exactly where I'd left her behind the bar.
Her lithe and willowy form was half bent across the counter, leaning on her elbow and holding an empty shot glass she'd just knocked back in the air between her fingers. She looked lost in her own thoughts and distracted, her eyes faraway and fixed on the cluttered wall. The space hummed with her quietly commanding presence, along with the presence of the rain on the roof, her words and memories like another person in the room with us.
It seemed oddly bleak to see her like that now after all the spirit and charm and tongue-in-cheek wit that she was all about just a few minutes ago. In a busy bar, Yuki was that person who kept the conversation going, wry jokes and strong opinions and surreptitious, meaningful smiles flowing out of her with ease. The girl that always had something to say and a thought to share with everybody, making eyes with the cute bartender and somehow knowing their life story in a light hour, ordering shots and enjoying watching people loosen up around her. It was the version of her that everybody saw, the one they were familiar with.
This version of her was unseen. The girl that was separated from the crowd, alone in a corner, unassuming and lost in herself.
She didn't startle when I came up behind her, my hands bracketing her hips. I kissed the smooth arch underneath her ear, a sound of approval rumbling in my chest when she melted back into me. I enjoyed every version of her, but I wanted to enjoy discovering all of her rare, unseen versions. I wanted to be the one person who found her in that corner, the one she leaned on when she needed to.
I looked from over her shoulder at her lit phone on the bar, saw it was open to a page of a web store. A lingerie store. "Are you buying me a present?"
"I was shop-purging my feelings." She picked up the phone, opened the camera, and looked at herself. "Oh. I thought I'd look scary after all the shots we had but I don't look half bad."
I pressed my cheek to her temple and looked at her in the screen. "You look gorgeous."
"Thank you. You should see my boyfriend."
"That cocky, dreamboat and Godlike guy? Eh, I'm more your type," I said into a kiss on her cheek.
She smiled as my mouth moved across her jaw, leaning her head back on my shoulder. "I think we've been good tonight. Keeping up with your sex embargo."
"We are," I agreed. "Almost three hours alone together and your hand hasn't yet slipped inside my pants. Your personal best."
"I know. And you did look at my chest more than you looked at my face, but otherwise, my shirt is still in one piece. Good job."
I took her hand in mine and spun her into a dance. "Tell me what feelings you were purging," I asked as I threw her other hand on my shoulder, "now after all that talk."
The song playing from the far stereo was some acoustic stuff. Sentimental, a little hopeful, just the way I was feeling. She moved along with me without question. Her hand slid firmly in mine and we slowly began to sway. The space behind the bar was too tiny for dancing and we were in our sneakers, but we made it work. It was less a dance and more an excuse to hold her close for a few minutes and slow down. She let me lead, as if by some odd instinct she knew I needed this now.
"I was just thinking. Self-pity stuff."
"What about?"
"You know what sucked the most about the whole Rae thing?"
"Tell me." I grabbed her hand from behind my neck and held it high to spin her once, before drawing her back into me with my hand at the small of her back, and we both shivered when my fingers were met with the bit of bare skin there. Smooth and warm, enticing vivid memories of what the rest of her body felt like. I groaned a quiet curse before I could help it and she laughed silently. "It's fine. I'm listening. Tell me."
She propped her chin onto my shoulder. "Well, what sucked the most was knowing that if Rae had just been honest with me from the start and told me about Cleave, I would have given her the criminals myself. I would have let her take them, without her having to even ask. I would have willingly gone against the Association and taken the blame for it and ruined my reputation if it meant helping her out. Then I would have come up with the plan to eradicate Cleave anyway but then it would have been to save her from them. But she chose to toss me aside instead."
"That's the difference between the two of you," I told her. "You're loyal."
She let out a tiny scoff and looked away. "Too loyal."
I disagreed gently. "No. I wasn't referring to your loyalty to her," I said. Her eyes rose back to my face. "I was talking about your loyalty to yourself. You know who you are and what's important to you and you stop at nothing to protect it. You are fiercely loyal to those you care about, but it's your loyalty to who you are that counts the most. It's what makes you stronger than anyone I know."
Her lips curved up, and her eyes met mine again with that earnest look in her eyes that I came to recently notice was only reserved for me. She slipped her arms around my shoulders, humming. "Well, damn. I always knew I wanted to be with someone who's a lot smarter than me."
I laughed and twirled her again, catching a glimpse of the tattoo on her chest, behind her collar, the ink so dark against the gold and olive hues of her skin. Her body was marked by the stories she'd lived, every scattered scar, every accessory and every inked inch trailed out the ways to know her. She was like that wall of stories in the bar, distracting and easily the most attention-grabbing thing in the room, wide open and plain for everyone to see but somehow, all in all, still a mystery.
But not to me. Not anymore. She was a lot of things to others, a force to be reckoned who would go to hell and back to get to what she wanted. Here in my arms, she was that and more; open and known, discovered.
My arm twined around her waist, pressing the length of her body against mine. She fit against me so effortlessly, curves, lines, grooves and dips piecing together.
"I'm not smarter than you," I told her quietly. "You deal with your shit much better than I do."
She shrugged. "That's just work. It doesn't make a genius. Learning nen in a matter of hours? That does, and you did that. You know how long it took me to learn nen?"
"Learning is never linear, beastie."
"I know, and I'm not being self-deprecating. I'm not a clever genius like you and Gon," she said. "Except for my photographic memory, I wasn't born with any talents or skills. In fact, I'm an impatient teacher's worst student. Learning new things never came easy for me like it does for most people. I need time. A lot of time, sometimes. Sleepless nights and non-stop hard training. It took me two years to learn just the basics of nen, a full year to learn how to aim, seven years to control my nen ability, and I still have to do more. I was never inherently talented at anything. I had to work very hard on everything that I know and have now."
I smiled. Her words cracked something in me. A fissure of light. "You think I'm a genius?"
She tilted her head at me and her face fell with incredulity. "You know you are."
"Actually, I don't," I told her sincerely. "I don't know. You put me and Gon in the same spot, but it's not exactly right. I know I call him an idiot a lot, but I know Gon is smarter than me. Gon is the clever genius. Clever means creative problem-solving skills, Gon is more creative than I am. He's inherently imaginative. He always thinks outside the box. In fact, he doesn't think like anybody else—and that's what makes a genius. On a battlefield he's clear-headed and can come up with battle strategies on the spot. I usually analyze everything to a T and over-think my way into trouble."
"Yes, but you two are on the same level," she argued.
I shook my head slowly. "We are, but I'm the way that I am because of years of tremendous experience. I was made to be good at things when I was too young, but I lacked the agency. It wasn't my choice to learn and know everything that I do now. I was beaten into it by an outer force, not by something that is in me. I'm still figuring out what I want to be good at outside what I had to be good at. I guess that's why I can't say if I'm a genius, or if I'm like you—an upshot of hard work and experience."
She stopped dancing, hands on my arms, and was regarding me thoughtfully. Her expression had smoothed into something that seemed similar to what I'd felt before, as if I might have cracked a flicker in her, too. As if I'd somewhat bridged our two worlds closer when she thought they were too far apart. Or maybe they'd always been close. We just needed to meet in the middle of them. To find our common grounds and reveal them.
"Gon and I complement each other, but we're not the same. I learned as fast as he did because I'd had an advantage, having had a decade of constant training and experience under my belt. But still, Gon was able to catch up with me in record time, despite it all. To keep up with me from the start. That makes him the natural-born genius. Me?" I gave her a winsome smile. "I just had the tricks."
She chuckled, smiling my favorite smile, the unguarded one that crinkled up her eyes.
Fuck. I was a goner.
I shrugged magnanimously. "See, I'm pretty average."
Her hands slid up my shoulders, her wrists linked behind my neck. "Well, you're definitely a little above average."
"Yeah, true. It's a pretty great dick."
She rolled her eyes at me, smiling right after. "Yes, it is." Cupping her hand to the back of my neck, she slowly tipped my head down, bringing her blue eyes in line with my own. Our eyes locked for a span of what felt like a hundred pounding heartbeats, neither of us looking away. That single look in her eyes equaled the same feeling I got right before a Godspeed run—thrill sliding into my veins, adrenaline like a violent, steady hum in my blood before charging forward into the wide-open air and losing myself in the heady, addicting rush.
"Thanks for tonight," she murmured. "It felt so good to talk about all of that. I didn't know how much I needed it until I had it."
Briefly I wondered if she was talking about the story sharing, the opening up or something else, bigger.
She inched closer, watching me swallow before she said, "You were perfect tonight."
"At what, pathological self-loathing and lack of verbal filter?" I joked.
"No. Perfect with me." Her eyes unfocused, hovering on my mouth. "I was thinking, since for long hours, I've been so good, and you've been so good…"
I smiled, lowered my head until her mouth was so close and we shared the same air. "Then we deserve to be a bad?"
Her lips parted on a soft gasp, her breaths coming off short and choppy. "Maybe a little."
"Just a little?" My heart was a roaring beast in my chest.
"Yes." Her eyes closed, her body burrowing closer to mine. "I miss you so much."
Hearing those words purring from her lips sent a rush of blood down my body. My grip on her hips were the only thing keeping me steady.
"Tell you what," I managed gruffly, and pulled a couple inches back, feeling too lightheaded and heavy in my skin all at once. Too tight in my clothes. "You still have some things to talk about. Be good, tell me them, and then we play."
A smile flickered across her lips. "Okay. We do still need to talk about nen."
"We do."
Her hands flexed on my shoulders as she loosened her arms, her eyes still locked on my lips as she said, "Okay. Few more minutes."
"Okay." Neither of us moved. My hands tightened on her hips. "Now be a good girl and step back."
She splayed her palms down my arms. "You have to let me go."
"No." I shook my head. "We've been through this. You do it. Physically remove yourself out of my arms."
With a hoarse laugh, she did just that, pulling her body off mine and stepping back until my hold loosened and we were no longer touching, and I immediately felt hollow.
"Alright. I'm gonna need to load up on some water first." She walked to the fridge. "Then I'm gonna show my hand."
I groaned. "Don't start with the lame poker puns. Not sexy."
"I'm gonna ace in the hole."
"Jesus."
"Really, my pot is gonna be so sweet."
"Is that the lamest one you've got?"
Walking backward, just as she slid open the fridge's door, she put a hand to her chest and said, "I'm gonna hold my cards close to my heart: You."
I watched her with laugh, my blood warm with the most confusing mix of frustrated and smitten.
Then I frowned. "Wait, did you just say 'load up on water'?"
Instead of going back to the stools, we moved the party to a table. With my elbow resting on the back of Yuki's chair, I watched as she guzzled up not one, not two, but three chilled bottles of water. My eyes moved to the long and smooth arch of her throat as she swallowed, gulp after gulp of the three bottles. Consecutively. Without any pause in between.
Yuki lowered the near-empty third bottle and looked over at me, an amused smile breaking through wet lips as she saw the dumbfounded face I was giving her. "What, I'm hydrating."
"For a triathlon?"
She gave me a droll look. "Patience, and you'll know. And for the record, sex with you requires just as much hydration as a triathlon," she quipped and I dug a knuckle into her side for that. Tickled, she jolted, nearly spilling water on her chin. "That was a compliment."
"What do you mean 'I'll know'? I'll know what?" Then, it clicked. "You need to charge up on water first? For your nen?" I asked.
"Not charge up, per se," she replied. "But my nen ability could make me dehydrated if I overuse it, and we've had about seventeen shots. I've got too much alcohol in my system right now. So I need to hydrate, just in case."
I was already intrigued. Well, more intrigued. Nothing spoke of a person's individuality and character more than their nen ability.
Gon's nen reflected his direct, frighteningly proactive initiative.
Kurapika's nen reflected his clear-cut goal orientation.
Bisky's nen reflected her hedonism.
Mine reflected my evasive skills.
I was curious to see which part of Yuki's personality was mirrored in her nen. "How does your ability dehydrate you?"
Tilting her head back down, she put the bottle down and turned her in chair toward me, serious now. "How proficient are you in the other nen types? On top of Transmutation."
"Huh?" The abrupt question surprised me, but I answered anyway, "Uhh, probably a 45% in Enhancement. Roughly no more than 50% in Emission. I only started training in the latter last year."
"Nothing in Conjuration? You know that as a Transmuter you have an 80% limit of proficiency in it."
"I know," I said, shrugging. "I have no use for it now. Enhancement is my top priority right now because it'll give my electricity more shock damage, and that's what works best for me in fights. As for Emission, I had to train in it because my electricity attacks are primarily binding for close range combat. I worked on my Emission abilities to give the currents a longer range. The yo-yo's worked well with me for awhile, but they were also a chore to carry around and too easy to break. I wanted something made of my own nen."
She tipped the bottle back toward her lips, nodding. "So you want an ability where you can utilize both Enhancement and Emission."
"I think I already found it."
"You did? Can I see?"
"Sure." I left my chair and moved to a more open space, jerking my chin for her to follow me so I could demonstrate. She sat up straighter, excited now. Scanning the bar for the most appropriate pseudo-target I could find, I chose a chair that sat approximately twenty feet away. Pointing at it, I looked at Yuki and asked, "How much do you love that chair?"
She grinned wickedly. "Are you going to blow my goddamn mind?"
"I sure as hell gonna try. I just need something to demonstrate on. It's your bar; I wouldn't wreck something in it all willy nilly."
"Then I absolutely hate that chair. Please, wreck away."
"Alright."
I took a couple deep breaths and welcomed the build of aura, the rush of it down my arm to my fingertips, crackling underneath my skin and demanding to be tapped into.
I swung my arm in a sudden, sharp arc. A whip of concentrated, entwined currents of electricity shot out of my fingers and cracked across the polished flooring, the sharp sound echoing into the room. Swift and precise, the current slithered along the floor with a life of its own and arrowed with crackling tail toward the chair. It wrapped itself around the two adjacent wooden legs, then twisted upwards to the backrest.
I gripped the current and yanked harshly, the chair scraping its way down to us. The muscles in my arm strained as I channeled a boost of aura, feeding it into the electric current until it brightened, whirred and crackled with an angry flash of power. The chair vibrated and shook on its legs, the electric whip slicing into the wood as if it were paper and burning through with a hiss of smoke.
I cut the electricity all at once, watching as the chair crumbled and splintered into several broken chunks of wood, the edges charred and smoldering still.
Beside me on the table, Yuki sat with her arms crossed over her chest, eyes wide and her mouth open in a small O of awe, her eyes staring at the lingering wisps of smoke coming off the slight rubble in front of me. Soundly, she exhaled the breath she'd been holding.
"Wow. That sure puts a whole new meaning to the phrase 'rest in fucking pieces'," she breathed out, pulling a laugh from me. Then she turned her gaze to me, a slow grin growing on her lips. "Now that's hot."
"It's all I have of it so far," I said as I returned to my seat next to her, feeling giddy.
"An electric whip…" She toed at the chair remains. "That was a double Transmutation ability, wasn't it? You transmute the properties of both electricity and leather at once, at the same time, right?"
"Yes."
"That's… wow. Very impressive." She let out a fond sigh. "Transmuters have the coolest abilities. So crafty and versatile and unpredictable. You can destroy someone in the most annoying and confusing ways. I've always been jealous of that. Not to mention…" She pointed with her bottle toward the rubble. "I'm jealous of how kinky this is."
I rolled my eyes. "It is not."
"It is ridiculously kinky. Trust me. If you collar an enemy with that whip, drag them down to your feet, and they look up and see that"—her eyes raked me from head to toe—"hell, the first thing going through their minds would be, 'death has never looked more devastating, take me now.'"
I laughed dryly. "Whatever gets you going. Now your turn. What are the types are you most proficient at, besides Manipulation?"
She bent, offhandedly picking up a broken piece of the chair and studying it. "Enhancement. 60%."
"Sixty?" My eyes went wider than the bottles on the table. Certain things made sense all of a sudden. Why she didn't scar easy, why her skin was harder and more wiry than than all the girls—and even some of the guys—I'd touched before, and how, after getting attacked by the psycho twins, her body was completely healed from a gunshot wound to the chest and some minor injuries in less than a week.
But what came out of my mouth was: "Is that why you have so much hair?"
Yuki tossed her back laughing, a full belly laugh that took over her whole body. She jerked her head back and her eyes found mine again, dancing with adoration as she raised a hand to cup my cheek. "I love you."
I grinned. "That did sound pretty idiotic, didn't it?"
She responded by leaning it and kissing me once. "No, hair products is why. It is, however, why my right shoulder is bad."
My hand reflexively moved to touch her shoulder. "I thought you said your shoulder was injured in a mission."
"It was, but it could have healed naturally if I didn't think that I could heal the injury myself with Enhancement nen so I could continue the mission. I was young and too arrogant thinking it would work, but it didn't. I just made it worse."
I gave her chin a little scolding flick. "Because you're a stubborn pain in the ass. Don't do that again."
"I said I was young. I am better at it now."
"How long did it take you to get to a 60% proficiency in Enhancement?"
"A long time," she admitted. "According to my master, an efficient nen training should be a B.A.T.H. Basics, Advanced, Types, Hatsu. He made me train in all the nen types, right along with Manipulation, my type. Told me that I had to, if I ever want to improve quickly and efficiently in my own type, then I had to equally train in the others."
I nodded as Bisky's teaching words echoed in my head. "One of my mentors thought so, too. So you've trained in all the other nen types. That's amazing. But I still don't understand why using your nen can leave you dehyrated."
"It will, when I explain everything about Dorian's Decay."
"Dorian's Decay?"
"Dorian's Decay," she echoed. "My nen ability."
A/N: Extra romance and nen talk coming up next. And lots of confessions maybe? Maybe. Killua surprises me a lot.
Also, as from the next chapter, the story will officially be rated M. Yeah. It's time. So for those who don't have an account/don't have the story on alert, as from the next chapter, if you want to see the story on the main archive, all you gotta do is filter up the rating. Let me know if you're okay with that.
Until then, thoughts? Feelings? Please review if you can and let me know what you liked about this chapter. I love reading your thoughts.
Stay safe, awesome, and hydrated.
