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It’s August, the weather hot and sweltering. The air feels like thunder, heavy and warm with moisture that cloys against Illumi’s bare arms as he strides through the sweaty crowds.
He’s at a summer fair. Illumi has never been to a fair before, never tasted caramel apples or candy floss or any of the other tooth-rotting sweets that Milluki had been so interested in last year before he discovered flavoured popcorn. Despite the dark clouds overhead and the electricity in the air the throng of visitors is thick, trampling down the thirsty grass underfoot. There are dozens of booths made from old tattered cloth lining the paths through the grounds, much of the fabric torn and washed so thin daylight would shine through, were there any. Now, under the cover of night and illuminated by hundreds of tiny bulbs, they look attractive and mysterious. Some sell food and drinks, others games for prizes. There are tents too, advertising tricks and spectacles and monstrous wonders.
Illumi walks through all of it without seeing any of it. He was trained to be single-minded at all times, to focus solely on his goal.
You’ll know him right enough, his client had said earlier an empty ice cream parlour overlooking a wharf. He’s dressed like a fucking clown.
Illumi hadn’t pointed out that he’s never seen a clown in person. He understands the reference; that’s enough. He counted the stack of bills shoved into his hand as a down payment before taking the streetcar out to the fairgrounds. Zoldycks do nothing without first seeing the money.
The crowd is thick enough that he sees the sign before he sees his target: Fortunes told, mysteries unravelled! It’s painted in a neat cursive on a plain wooden board decorated with stars that rises above the table. Although the people flow by the stall in a thick river, not one stops to hear their future.
Illumi stops on the far side of the lane formed by stalls and tents and, while pretending to consider a pair of truly appalling sunglasses at the booth beside him, regards his target in the convenient mirror there.
Hisoka Morow is… unusual. It’s not his appearance or his clothes that tell Illumi this. He’s been killing people since he was five, he’s not interested in finery. He knows when someone is dangerous, and he knows how to see madness in the eyes of men who otherwise appear sane.
Hisoka Morow is very, very mad.
In appearance he’s broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, his height impossible to determine sitting down but certainly over six foot. He looks to be roughly Illumi’s age: just entering his twenties. His long legs are crossed under his shoddy wooden table, his boots heeled. He’s wearing dangling earrings and face-paint; his fly-away hair is an impossible shade between hot pink and crimson. His eyes are the gold of ancient hordes, of buried troves and kingly grave goods.
He’s looking straight at Illumi in the mirror.
Illumi turns around to stare at him directly, his face expressionless as always. Don’t just give nothing away, Father had said. Don’t let there be anything to give away.
“Fortune told?” calls Hisoka across the space between them. His lips are curled upwards in a knowing smile. There’s a short tablecloth over his table decorated with stars and moons. Sitting on top of it is a deck of cards.
Illumi steps across the flattened grass, effortlessly weaving in between passers by. He doesn’t sweat but he can smell it thick and pungent on the crowd, can see it lining hairlines and staining shirt backs and underarms. It’s a hot night, and Hisoka Morow seems entirely unbothered by it. His skin and his hair and his make-up are all perfect. His tongue is pink and moist as it wets his lips; his teeth are straight and white. His clothes, as his client had said, are clownish, bright and colourful and decorated with card suits.
“Care to know your future?” he asks, as Illumi steps up to the table.
There are many ways to kill a man, and many ways to go about it. Illumi prefers quick and anonymous killing; death from a distance. He can’t pick off Hisoka from afar in this crowd, though, and killing him with his hands would cause a stir – albeit not one he couldn’t handle.
He decides instead to play for time. Get to know his target. Learn his weaknesses.
“Very well,” he agrees. Hisoka indicates the wooden stool in front of him, and Illumi sits.
“Cross my palm with silver,” he says, holding out an elegant hand. Illumi stares at it, then looks up at him. “Five dollars,” adds Hisoka blandly.
He pulls out the roll of bills he had been paid earlier and peels off a five. Puts it down in his target’s hand. Hisoka closes his hand over it slowly, eyes thoughtful. When he opens it again the money is gone.
The cards, Illumi sees, aren’t tarot cards but ordinary playing cards. Hisoka shuffles them adroitly, his eyes on Illumi the whole time. He has fake nails on, long and pointed. “What brings a looker like you to a fair like this?” he drawls. The way he raises his chin crookedly, the way his wrists and hands move, is appealing, sensuous. Intended to provoke attraction.
“Business,” replies Illumi, simply, his own body-language subdued.
Hisoka knocks the cards into a straight-edged deck and puts them down on the table. “The curse of capitalism.” He waves a hand at the cards. “Cut the deck and place the bottom on the top,” he instructs.
Illumi reaches out and does so, the cards firm and new under his sensitive fingers. He divides the deck and places the bottom half on the top. Hisoka draws his hands up and makes a platform of them, resting his chin on them. His eyes glitter like seams of gold in the low light while shadows dance on his face cast by the passing crowd. “What would you like to know?” he purrs.
Illumi considers. He’s not good with parlour tricks, was always bored by Gotoh and the other butlers’ coin games. He shrugs. “Whatever you want will do.”
“Then I will ask the cards about you.” Hisoka draws three sets of threes and places them face-down on the table. “Past,” he says, tapping one pile with a long acrylic nail. “Present,” he continues, tapping the middle cards, “Future,” he finishes, tapping the final set. Illumi nods.
Hisoka turns over the first three cards, the ones supposedly dealing with his past. He looks down at the cards, his eyes shuttered by black-painted lashes. After a moment he looks up, head canted to the side. His eyes are intense, watchful. “The past is usually very dull. In fact, most peoples’ entire lives are usually very dull. People like you make it interesting.”
A con man’s pitter-patter, thinks Illumi, he’s doing just what I am: playing for time. He makes no answer; the statement deserves none.
“This,” Hisoka says, tapping the Jack of Spades, “tells me you’re an oldest son, but not the best-loved one. This,” he adds, tapping the Two of Hearts, “tells me that your childhood was bereft of love, without tenderness.” He taps the third card, the Six of Diamonds. “In an adult, I would say you worked yourself to the bone for money, but you’re too young for that. In a child, I read tortured for profit.”
Illumi stays perfectly still, while reflecting on how quickly he could slit this man’s throat. Clearly, Hisoka knows who he is. But he remains motionless, watching flat-eyed. After all, he still has the ultimate advantage: he is the trained assassin here.
“No applause?” asks Hisoka light-heartedly, apparently unaffected by the facts he just laid out. “Most people are impressed, you know.”
“I’m not most people.”
“I knew that before you sat down.”
“Oh?”
Hisoka smiles. “I’ve never seen anyone wear a sleeveless tunic with gold knob buttons and green plaid trousers before. Not that it doesn’t look good. In fact, you look quite delicious. You have eyes I could lose myself in.” He lowers his chin and pulls up his shoulders, expression admiring.
The man knows he’s a professional assassin, and is flirting with him shamelessly. Illumi was clearly correct in his initial assessment: Hisoka is insane.
“You hardly know me,” says Illumi.
“Mm. Shall we change that?” Hisoka turns over the next three cards, those supposedly detailing his present. He runs one long fake nail over the first card, Ace of Spades. “Death walks in your shadow, or you in His.” He turns over the next card: Ten of Clubs. “You are focused entirely on your work, but you don’t do it for the money.” Final card: Ace of Hearts “You’re entirely alone. No friends, no lovers.”
He’s right of course, or rather whoever fed him this information is right. As eldest son Illumi’s an important bargaining chip to further the family interests through an arranged marriage, but love is not expected to come into the equation. Friendship has never even been considered a possibility.
“It’s positively criminal that a man like you has no lover,” murmurs Hisoka huskily, the ambient light flickering in his eyes like a pyre. He straightens supplely, twisting his hips as if grinding them, his chin momentarily raised to show off the long pale line of his throat. He is beautiful, Illumi admits to himself. But beauty holds no tie over him; he has ruined models and artists, has deprived the world of many gifts without a second thought.
Illumi wonders whether he hopes that, by seducing him, Illumi will spare his life.
“I would make a poor partner,” replies Illumi, playing into the game.
“Only for those who fear waking up beside their death,” says Hisoka. “But myself, I find the prospect mesmerizing.”
“Do you know why I’m here?” asks Illumi suddenly. Hisoka smiles languidly.
“Of course. I’ve known since you paid me with that sweaty bill. How much am I worth, I wonder?”
“Ten thousand. Two up front.”
“It doesn’t seem very much,” he says, frowning comically, his eyes curving like a crescent moon.
“It’s not,” replies Illumi, flatly. “Work has been slow, or I would have refused.”
“Do you want to hear your future? Before you try to kill me?”
Illumi’s eyebrow arches up. “Try?” he asks.
Hisoka grins and turns over the cards. As his eyes fall to them the smile drops off his lips, replaced by surprise. Illumi glances at the cards: Three of Clubs, Queen of Hearts, Joker.
“There will be a large rift in your life,” he says, tapping the Three. “But nevertheless, you will find love,” he adds, tapping the Queen. And then, looking up, head cocked to the side and eyes coy: “With me.” He pushes forward the Joker.
“Is this how you intend to plea for your life?” wonders Illumi.
“Oh, I never lie about the cards. Most everything else, but not them.” Hisoka runs his nails along the tablecloth and scoops up the cards, shuffling them back into a deck. “We should go,” he says.
Illumi blinks. “Go?”
“It’s about to pour cats and dogs.” Hisoka pulls a small lock-box out from beneath the table, the sound of coins jingling coming from within, and stands. “Come along. Or would you rather get soaked?”
Illumi stands and glides along after his target as he slips into the crowd.
They reach the streetcar station at the edge of the fairground just as the skies open up, rain cording down with the fury of a summer storm. They cram themselves into the last car just as it leaves the station, and just before the exodus of visitors from the fairgrounds.
This close, Illumi can feel Hisoka’s breath on his skin, the heat of his body in the muggy streetcar. He can tell by the way the fortune-teller holds himself that he has a switchblade in his pocket and a credit-card knife beneath the decorative band on his right wrist.
Illumi could kill him in 0.6 of a second, faster than a heartbeat. Could have him dead on the streetcar’s wooden floor before he ever had the chance to reach for one of his blades. Knowledge is power, and this knowledge gives Illumi the confidence to stay his hand for the moment; he’s curious about Hisoka. Curious about the way he courts death.
“Want a drink?” asks Hisoka as they rumble towards downtown. “First round’s my treat.”
“Do you always buy drinks for assassins?”
“Only the cute ones.”
***
The bar is called The Cellar and is underground. The walls are brick with white mortar and exposed wooden joists, the ceiling white. It’s very Arts and Crafts, or as Killua had said memorably once, Farts and Craps. Mother had insisted on a liberal education as well as a strict regime of torture.
It doesn’t seem at all the type of place Hisoka would frequent – he seems more at home with astrology and chrome and velvet. Here the lighting is good and the music is soft jazz, the venue clean and welcoming.
Hisoka seems to sense his surprise, because he smiles at Illumi as he makes his way over to a corner table. “Even I tire of puke and peanuts on the floor,” he says lightly, sliding into a circular booth upholstered in cognac-coloured leather. Illumi has no choice but to slide in beside him, albeit on the other side a good three feet from his target. The table holds a menu with tonight’s drink specials; neither of them glance at it. “Besides,” he adds, “it seems prudent to stay somewhere I can see your lovely hands.”
Illumi looks down at his hands. They’re long and thin, the nails rounded and well-cared for. There’s a burn on the back of his left hand where Mother once pressed a clothes iron, and a scar running along his right thumb from a too-hasty disembowelment when he was seven.
No one has ever called anything about him lovely.
“Who told you about me?” he asks, filing the compliment away to consider later, like a body under a pathologist’s knife.
Hisoka once again makes a platform of his hands and rests his chin on it; it makes him look fascinated, and fascinating. “No one told me anything,” he says. “That idiot who hired you handed you the bill, and you handed it to me. Simple enough to read its past.”
Illumi ignores this. “Do you know who hired me?” He has to find out where the leak is, who has been feeding his target this information.
“Of course. I told his wife’s fortune last week. Told her all about how her fool of a husband was cheating on her with her younger sister.”
“Is that true?”
Hisoka gives him a steady glance. “I told you; I don’t lie about the cards. That’s the way the gift works.”
Illumi opens his mouth to say: gift? But at that moment the waitress arrives, a middle-aged woman in black slacks and a grey low-cut t-shirt. “Ready for some drinks?” she asks with a tired smile. There are crows feet beside her eyes and loose flesh beneath her throat. She smells of cigarettes and vermouth.
“Gimlet,” says Hisoka. “And you?”
“Rum and coke,” replies Illumi, who otherwise never drinks soda. She nods and leaves.
Hisoka lounges back against the rounded booth, his long well-muscled arms resting on the seat back. He shaves beneath his arms, Illumi notes, and he plucks his eyebrows. His legs are once again crossed beneath the table; the toe of his raised foot brushes Illumi’s calf, then presses it gently.
“You know far more than you should,” says Illumi, ignoring the pressure. Ignoring the unexpected warmth that kindles low in his intestines.
“Mm, so I’ve been told,” purrs Hisoka, eyes heavy-lidded beneath the white incandescent light filtering down from overhead. It washes him out, his yellow star buttery and his blue tear-drop pastel. “But you like it, don’t you? I intrigue you.” His foot runs up Illumi’s calf, pressing in beneath his knee. “I excite you.”
Illumi is excited, his heart beating fifteen beats per minute faster than usual, his stomach tense with a sensation that reminds him a little of arsenic poisoning. But none of that shows in his face, his posture. “I don’t believe you’re psychic,” he says bluntly.
Hisoka’s smile is wide, generous. “I know. But just think of all the fun we could have while I convince you.”
Their drinks arrive. Hisoka takes a delicate sip of his, then lifts off the cucumber slice and bites white teeth into it, all while watching Illumi. Illumi’s eyes track the bob of his throat as he swallows, the sweep of his pink tongue over his rose-painted lips, the stroke of his finger around the wide rim of the glass. Hisoka’s every movement is sensuous, seductive. His gold eyes are laughing.
Illumi takes a swallow of his drink. He enjoys the mixture of sweet and stiff, almost like the ammonia Mother used to slip in his juice as a child.
“Why do you work at the fair?” he asks. “If you truly did have second sight, surely it would pay for you to seek out rich clients, or work for political powers.”
“I’m not interested in the money, anymore than I think you are. I like nice things, but I can always pull in contract work if I have a hankering for something expensive. There’s much more potential for sowing mischief working small-time.”
“Sowing mischief is what got a hit put on you,” replies Illumi.
“And look who I got to meet,” purrs Hisoka. “I have no regrets.”
“You certainly should,” says Illumi. “For instance: your clothes.” He looks down at the bright mis-matched colours of the fortune-teller’s outfit, cinched at the neck and arms with silk bands. Appalling colours, and hideous textures.
Hisoka laughs. Laughs so hard he has to wipe tears from his eyes, the manoeuvre delicate so as not to smear his eyeliner.
No one has ever laughed at anything Illumi said. Well, not after they knew who he was.
“I’m not funny,” he says, a simple statement.
“You’re hilarious,” replies Hisoka. “Especially given your own sartorial choices. Drink up: I want a round of shots.”
***
They do shots, then sidecars, then more shots. Hisoka holds his liquor well, but not like Illumi who would have to drink a full bottle of vodka to feel it.
Hisoka drunk is like Hisoka sober, only more. He takes his boot off and runs his foot up between Illumi’s legs, presses the toes against his thigh while he sprawls back over the back of the booth. His crop-top shirt rises to reveal pale skin and toned abs, the band of his trousers low over his hips. “Tell me,” he rumbles, voice low in his throat and words just a little slurred. “Why d’you do what you do, if not for the money?”
“Why do you?” replies Illumi.
Hisoka blinks his bright gold eyes, his irises iridescent like pools of molten glass. “Because I was born this way. Born to madness and mayhem. Born to meet you, and you still haven’t told me your name.”
Illumi freezes. “Surely you were told that.”
“Love, no one tells me anything,” whines Hisoka. “I just know.”
“Illumi,” says Illumi, because why not? He’s relaxed and comfortable and is pleasantly warm with desire. Hisoka’s foot is stroking his thigh, his skin hot even through the sock. It pushes higher, between his legs, inching towards his groin.
“Illumi,” repeats Hisoka, as if tasting the name, rolling it on his tongue and savouring it. “Why do you kill, Illumi?”
“It’s all I know.” An honest answer, if not a good one.
“Do you still want to kill me?”
“Want has nothing to do with it,” says Illumi flatly. Hisoka tilts his head to the side.
“That’s a bad answer,” declares Hisoka with drunken fervour. “You shouldn’t do anything you don’t want to.”
Illumi looks at the litter of shot glasses on the table, some upside-down, others on their sides. There’s peach Schnapps spilt on the wooden surface; Hisoka puts a finger in it, draws a line, then picks his finger up to lick it. Illumi watches as he sucks the pad of his finger slowly, noisily.
“I was raised to be what I am,” Illumi says quietly. “There was never any consideration of wants or dreams.”
“Ah, right, the awful past.” Hisoka drops his fingers into his lap, apparently remembering the reading he did a few hours ago now. “But your future will be different. For one thing, I’m in it.”
“You do know that I’m here to kill you,” says Illumi.
“You’re not gonna. Because you’re falling in love with me,” murmurs Hisoka, head dropping back against the seat-back.
Illumi is not in love with Hisoka. He has never been in love with anyone, and he’s certain he would know. But he is interested. No one outside the family has ever interested him before.
“Get up,” he says, fishing out his wallet – not the down payment money – and throwing some bills on the table.
Hisoka rolls his head against the seat-back, looking up at him. “Hmm?”
“I’m taking you home.”
His stupid, ridiculous, beautiful face splits into a wide smile.
***
It turns out that Hisoka lives only two blocks away in a basement suite accessed by stairs off the road. The building is brick, and there’s a tall square front window that must get hardly any sun. There’s a tiny space outside the door that has a pot with bright orange nasturtiums in it sitting on a wooden crate. Illumi digs into Hisoka’s pocket, past the switchblade and ignoring the way Hisoka moans and presses his hip against Illumi’s hand, and comes up with the key. He lets them in and pulls the fortune-teller inside.
It’s a small apartment; there’s a den beside the window with an L-shaped sofa in grey and a TV on a small cherry-wood table. The TV separates the den from the kitchen, which has a counter that acts as a table with two high stools. There are two doors in the side wall; he opens the first one first and finds the bathroom. The second one leads into a dark window-less bedroom. His eyesight is keen enough that he can see the shadowy shapes of a bed and dresser, as well as a long rug on the floor and at least two pairs of underwear cast off on it.
He makes to throw Hisoka down on the bed; the fortune-teller twists in his arms, grabs him, and pulls him down on top of him.
The instant he lands his knife is at Hisoka’s throat. “That wasn’t very smart,” he whispers, his long hair hanging down around both their faces like a veil and pooling inkily on the bedspread.
Hisoka reaches up, without disturbing the knife, and cups Illumi’s cheek. His touch is electrifying, actually sends a jolt through Illumi, running from his skull to the base of his spine and coming to ground there in his tailbone. Lying still, pinned to the bed beneath him, Hisoka draws him down into a kiss.
He tastes of peach Schnapps and bubble gum.
His hands slide over Illumi’s shoulders and run down his sides to catch at his narrow hips. He pulls, and Illumi pulls back, the two of them caught in a stalemate. Hisoka moans into the kiss, which is now deep and hot and full of tongue, something Illumi is not used to. Just as he’s not used to the heat beneath his skin and the throbbing in his groin. He’s not a virgin, but sex has never been something he’s thought much about or had much experience with.
When they’re both desperate for breath Illumi breaks away, his lungs burning, his shoulders heaving; only the knife at Hisoka’s throat is steady. “I’m here to kill you. That means I can’t fuck you,” he says, straightforwardly.
“Did it say that in your contract?” asks Hisoka curiously.
“It’s just good business,” replies Illumi seriously.
Hisoka laughs, his head lolling back against the mattress. When he’s done he looks up, a smile still on his lips. “What if you didn’t have to kill me?”
“But I do. I took a down payment.” Illumi can feel it in his pocket, weighing him down.
“I could return it. If I kill your client, you don’t have to kill me. End of problem.”
It’s a surprisingly logical conclusion. Slowly, Illumi retracts the knife, folding it away and leaning back. Hisoka remains sprawled on the bed staring up at him. He looks supremely confident, like a lion who has rolled onto his back for his own purposes and knows at any minute he could ruin any animal on the savanna. His eyes are the same golden yellow.
Illumi pulls out the wad of cash he was given to end the fortune-teller’s life. He tosses it down on the bed beside Hisoka. “There’s the price of your head. If you don’t complete your part of the bargain, my reputation is forfeit.”
Hisoka sits up, the bedcovers rumpled beneath him. There’s hints of pink in his cheeks and his hair is mussed; he looks delightfully disheveled. “We certainly can’t have that,” he murmurs. He pulls out his phone and unlocks it. “What’s your number?”
“Can’t the cards tell you that?”
His smile makes Illumi’s heart beat uncomfortably fast. “Much easier just to ask you.”
Illumi holds out his hand, and Hisoka hands over his phone. Illumi puts himself into his contacts, then hands it back.
“Will you come when I call?” wonders Hisoka.
“We shall see,” replies Illumi, stepping away. Hisoka doesn’t follow him, and he lets himself out of the dark apartment and into the rainy street beyond.
His prevarication was a lie, of course. He’s already waiting for the call.
END