Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kite takes two croissants and a coffee to the park at one in the afternoon, an hour after he woke up. He isn’t used to sleeping at night yet, isn’t used to sleeping indoors, isn’t used to sleeping somewhere warm. He kicks his blankets off and lies still on the bed because the bed shifts when he moves. The mattress gives way beneath him in a way that concrete or dirt never would. So he lies still so it won’t, with his blankets and his pillows on the floor beside his bed and Ging just says, ‘okay.’

The park is quiet because it’s not that warm out, even if the sun is shining on the golden leaves of the stretching maples. Kite sits on a green bench by a yellow archway and watches the people who pass by his bench, pass by the gravestones.

His phone is in his bag, and he jumps every time it buzzes or makes a sound. But he doesn’t put it on silent because Ging might need him to come back.

They’re staying at a hotel again because that’s where they stay. That’s where they leave. This one is right in the centre of the city, and it’s dark on the outside and in the lobby, and it has these golden lamps that make the whole place feel like it’s in a different world where the sun isn’t bright enough to chase away the darkness.

Ging says it’s stupid. Ging says guess they don’t have to clean so well this way. Ging says if I need you, I’ll call.

So Kite’s sitting on the bench in the park while the sun glints on yellow leaves, and everything is still, and his blue coat is buttoned all the way to his chin, and golden-brown crumbs float down from his croissant and rest on it. He picks them off with his finger and eats them crumb by crumb.

These are things that normal people eat. Warm croissants that leave the taste of butter in your mouth. Hot coffee with milk and sugar. And it’s warm food, fresh, and it doesn’t taste of rot.

He smells the coffee. He’s always surprised by how strong it is, even with the milk and sugar. It has a rich taste of the roasting, the lingering taste of the process. Sometimes, when he walks a bit aways from the city centre, he can smell the coffee roasting in the factory. The scent of it carries through the air, just rich and warm enough to make him hungry, just comforting enough to make him wonder if maybe he could find a home somewhere here where the roasted coffee scents the air and the leaves turn yellow and there’s only trips you take to go and return.

But he’s playing games in his head with that because here they go again, throwing the last bits of their things into their already packed bags, slipping out in the morning when everything is grey and frost lingers on every surface, catching the first golden light of the sunrise.

Because people like them don’t have homes. They aren’t normal people.

You can’t just stay somewhere, Kite, Ging says, standing in a new room that smells of Lysol in a shirt and boxers. What’s the point in that?

Kite thinks that maybe there would be a point in finding a place to love and finding someone to love and maybe making a family with children who can point to a pin on the map and say that’s where I’m from.

But that’s not thrilling. That’s not how a Hunter lives. Or at least not one like Ging. Because Ging has to run to a new place and find a new project, and Kite thinks he could be okay with that if he had someone to bring with him, and then they could be home. Then he could point to any pin on the map where they were and say this is home, though he still couldn’t say this is where I’m from.

He sips the coffee, and it’s still hot. It leaves a point on his tongue that is almost a burn, but it’s not enough to be a proper burn, so he starts on the second croissant and watches the leaves move with the wind.

What if I’m sick of it? he says sometimes to his reflection in the mirror. And his reflection is hazel eyes and a long nose and hollow cheeks, and it never answers, because he doesn’t know what it is that he is sick of. Maybe just the leaving when something begins to get familiar.

He wonders what he looks like now, sitting on this bench in the park near the city centre eating from his bakery bag with the coffee held in one hand. If he still looks like he’s from the gutter, even with the new blue coat, and the black boots, and the leather bag. His hair is cut in uneven layers where it was cut or where it broke, but maybe it looks like he’s an art student.

He smiles for a moment, imagining his life as an artist. He would wake in the morning and eat blueberries and a bagel with cream cheese and lox. He would take coffee to his studio and sip it while he studied an unfinished canvas. Light would drip in through the large windows, and there would be paint on his jeans, paint in all colours, paint in bright spots, paint smudged on his fingers, never able to get out fully from beneath his nails. He would pick a deep yellow and draw a brush stroke across the canvas. It might mean he was happy.

But that is a life he could have, but he doesn’t want it enough. He wants to be outside and lie on the ground again and watch the stars and not die. And maybe he’ll look for animals and argue with world leaders until they save them, and he’ll be taller then, and his hair won’t be uneven layers, and his fingernails won’t break so easily. Maybe no one will know then that he came from the gutter, that he was going to die young.

But how do I make a life? he asks Ging when they’re eating dinner and Ging’s had some beer.

You live, Kitkat. You’re breathing so you have a life, don’t you?

But I don’t know what I want.

Then follow me until you find something.

And you won’t leave me?

I won’t leave you, Kite.

So maybe, if he had a pin for the map, this would be home. Just for a moment.

Maybe.

Chapter Text

Razor has dark grey eyes. It surprised him the first time he saw his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t know how old he was because no one bothered to keep track of things like that with him, but he was tall, so probably an adult. (Probably.) It was a few weeks after he killed someone for the first time. He walked past a mirror in a rich house where he was being a thief again and caught his reflection in the hall mirror: grey eyes and black hair. He looked terrifying or terrified, and he couldn’t pick out which one. But those can often be the same thing.

He knows that now, sixteen years later when he’s most definitely an adult, though he’s barely done anything to prove it. But he is alive. And he was supposed to be dead, so he can’t complain, not really.

He peels an orange. The peel is thick, and it leaves bits of colour on his fingers and beneath his nails. He drops the peel on the ground behind a bush where it will decay and become food. Maybe not right away, but soon enough.

The sun is high, and it’s hot for June, though the Island is often hot. Makes it a bit hard to keep track of time. But it’s been years since he was sentenced to die and saved by that crazy man who actually saw something in him.

What it was, Razor can’t say. And he’s seen his reflection thousands of times now, and he still can’t see what it was that Ging saw in him that made him say his name, strong and gentle, and so, so carefully.

But still he can’t see what it is. He looks the same though his hair is purple now because that’s something can control. But his eyes are still grey, and he still looks terrifying, even when he smiles, because he’s tall and strong and radiating of life energy.

Is it enough? He doesn’t think about that. He eats the orange and one sandwich and then another. He drinks a litre and a half of water with it. He watches the grass as it begins to wilt already beneath the sun.

He still can’t say what is exactly Real on the Island and what Isn’t. Ging’s the crazy one who pulled it all together because he was bored with his life for a few years or something.

Why Ging ever left Whale Island, Razor will never know. He had people who loved him, people who called him Ging and cooked him breakfast in the morning, and he washed laundry, and he went fishing, and he dried plates and put them away. And that wasn’t enough for him. So he became Razor’s salvation.

And really he should be grateful. He is. He just doesn’t fully understand it. But here he is playing at life on the Island, eating meals and playing Dodge Ball, not sure where he is in the world, but you can get there by boat, right? So it’s real enough or whatever.

He rubs at his neck and then stands and cracks his back and then his knuckles. That has to be the real sun too. His skin burns beneath it, so that’s real enough. It’s all real enough.

And Ging has eyes like an entire universe, and he speaks so fast he sounds like he went mad back on his island waiting for Something More than This. But his hand on Razor’s arm is the softest memory that Razor has. He looked into Razor’s eyes, and his own eyes were flashing golden-honey-brown, and they were gentle, and they said something that Razor had never heard in his life. Not once.

So Razor swallows down the last of the water even though it is warm and makes his way down the grass that is turning brown at the edges even though it’s still early because the sun is hot and they have to remember to water the grass if they want to keep it. Because you have to care for things that you want to keep. And no one wanted to keep him except for Ging.

So he plays Dodge Ball and plays at security, and he tries to relish every morning and every afternoon and every orange sunset, because these were all things he wasn’t supposed to see. He was supposed to be dead by now, remember? And he isn’t. Because Ging was bored. Because Ging was gentle. Because Ging wanted to make something that no one would agree to live in unless they had a death sentence hanging over their head like a boulder ready to fall. But really he can’t complain because he is content, as content as he can be, with Ging’s eyes wide as the world in his memory, and Ging’s hand on his arm an imprint on his skin that no one else can see, and Ging’s voice sounding out his name the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, had hoped to hear, because Ging – Ging the crazy, wide-eyed boy who was anything but naive – Ging really, even for a moment, loved him.

Razor laughs to himself because that’s such a silly thing to live for. Just specks of love. So he found other things to live for: like the second wave of energy that bursts through you when you think you can’t run a second longer, like the sweetness of fruit, like the orange sunsets on what must be a real sea, where the waves turn orange, where the waves turn golden, where the waves run up over his feet, and the water is cool, or the water is warm, but the water is never cold, and the sea is a prison, but it’s gilded with the sunlight, and the world wasn’t good to him anyway. So it’s all right to stay there on the Island and pretend at a real life because it has to be real enough for him. It has to.

Sometimes he tells the devils this. The devils inside him. (The devils outside him.) And they don’t answer, but they hear, and that has to be good enough, so he lets it be. They’re real enough, anyway. So his words are heard, as much as he can ask for.

And sometimes Ging comes back, and he carries sunlight in his eyes more real than any sun Razor’s seen, and he speaks so gently, and he says, ‘you’re doing a good job, Razor,’ and Razor glides off his tongue, a real name, and Razor is a real person. And that’s enough. That’s enough. That has to be enough.

(Really.)