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“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower tonight.”
“Oh really?” Hisoka asks, lounging across the bed.
“I saw it on the weather channel,” Chrollo continues, sitting on the edge of the mattress and folding his hands in his lap.
“You watch the weather channel?” Hisoka asks, propping his head up with an arm in mock interest.
“The news too. It’s good to stay informed.”
Hisoka scoffs. “You’re so boring, you know. You’re like a dad. No one who met you on the street would ever guess you’re one of the world’s most wanted.”
“That’s by design.”
Hisoka makes a noise that’s hard to describe, annoyed yet playful, rolling over onto his stomach and stretching out his limbs like a cat. He’d just gotten out of the shower, clad in nothing but a towel around his waist. Chrollo is surprised he’s wearing that much.
“Anyway, the meteor shower,” Chrollo says. “I want to watch it. Would you like to join me?”
“What time does it start?”
“3 AM.”
“Then no, I would not.”
“Very well,” Chrollo says, smiling with his eyes closed. “I suppose you need your sleep.”
“As do you,” Hisoka points out. His expression turns playful, reaching out and tugging on the sleeve of Chrollo’s shirt. “Come to bed with me, Chro. Lie with me.”
Chrollo rolls his eyes, but it’s fond. Hisoka looks like a panther, strong and lean, playing with some string. Yanking his sleeve back, Chrollo stands, stepping away from the bed. “Later. I still have some work to take care of before turning in for the night.”
“What kind of work gets left to a crime lord?”
“You’d be surprised.”
Groaning, Hisoka whips off the towel and tosses it to the floor, diving under the covers and tucking them up to his chin, looking like a little kid waiting for his parents to come and kiss him good night. Chrollo wants to throw him a teddy bear.
“I’m impressed you’re still sleeping in the nude when it’s starting to get this cold out,” Chrollo says.
“What can I say? I’m committed.”
Laughing softly in agreement, Chrollo walks over and switches off the bedside lamp, kissing the bridge of Hisoka’s nose and ruffling his hair. Sometimes he does feel like a parent.
---
Walking into the living room of the apartment, Chrollo switches on the TV for some faint background noise and makes a home for himself on the sofa. He brews some herbal tea and sets it on the coffee table with a coaster to let it steep. “Witches be Sippin,” the mug reads in black, calligraphic lettering. A cheeky gift from Hisoka.
He pulls out his laptop. For the most part, it’s just responding to emails, keeping in touch with the troupe members at their various stations around the world. Between missions, he lets them do as they please. Some of them have entire lives besides: friends and even family who have no idea they’re part of the spider. It’s risky, but Chrollo trusts them. His only condition is that they come when he calls.
He’s no different. Since reconnecting with Hisoka, they’ve started up a bizarre brand of relationship, their own spin on what some might call a domestic partnership. They never stay in one place too long, though. This is their fourth apartment in two months. Sometimes they live out of hotel rooms.
Sipping his tea, he skims through his emails. There’s some actual business mixed in with the personals—updates from the fronts and nonprofits the troupe distantly runs—but those can wait. He just wants to see how his spiders are doing.
Shalnark seems well. He’s set to participate in an upcoming… esports?… tournament, chattering on excitedly about the details in a long, intricate email heavy with stats and graphs Chrollo finds hard to wrap his head around. He responds by wishing him luck. He’s happy Shal found something that excites him so. He took Uvo’s death particularly hard.
Kortopi settled back into his side gig as a counterfeiter, assisting small timers with museum heists. Lately he’s been going straight, though, working with accredited appraisers. The name ‘Zepile’ jumps out. Chrollo replies with an inquiry about some ancient relics Kortopi mentioned.
Feitan, Phinks, and Bonolenov have been traveling together lately, which Chrollo is happy to see. As a newer member, he worried Bonolenov was finding it hard to mesh with the rest of the group. It’s not surprising Phinks would be one of the first to take him under his wing, being one of their friendliest once the hard, macho eggshell was cracked, and Feitan goes where Phinks goes. They’d been like that since childhood.
Machi’s email, per usual, is short and curt. She doesn’t always give Chrollo updates on her location, but this time she did. She’s backpacking through a well-known mountain range, and she attached some lovely photos. Of all the troupe, he knows Pakunoda’s death left the biggest hole in her, so he’s glad she’s trying to fill it, even if mountains are no stand-in for love.
A few members don’t email much, so Chrollo relies on social media to stay updated. He isn’t too familiar with most platforms beyond the basics, so he usually just sends messages. Every now and then, he scrolls through his feed, tapping likes under Shizuku and Kalluto’s selfies and the angry, blurred candids showing the aftermath of their pranks on Nobunaga, who lately has taken it upon himself to become their unofficial guardian. He misses Uvo and Paku, too.
And a select number (Franklin) are not to be heard from at all, preferring to keep to their solitude in between missions. Chrollo has long suspected he works at some kind of farm, though, working the land as a means of grueling therapy. It’s probably the coveralls.
Taking another pensive sip of tea, he closes his laptop, calling his work finished for the night. He checks the time on his phone. 11:23 PM. A ways to go until the meteor shower starts. Glancing at the door to the bedroom, he considers joining Hisoka for a while, but decides against it. The man is a light sleeper, and he doesn’t want to risk disturbing him by getting in and out of bed. Instead, he curls up on the couch and switches the channel back to the weather. Hisoka doesn’t know what he’s missing.
---
A half hour before the shower is predicted to start, Chrollo makes his way outside, tiptoeing through the bedroom to get to the apartment’s balcony, shouldering the sliding glass door open with as little sound as possible. He still hears Hisoka toss in his sleep. He must be part bat or something.
The outside air is brisk, but it’s nothing Chrollo hasn’t tolerated before. Leaning against the railing, he gazes down at the city below. This apartment is in a quieter side of town, and almost everyone has gone to bed for the night. There are barely any cars. The peace of it is a little unnerving, like the eye of a tornado. Chrollo supposes it’s a byproduct of growing up in a volatile wasteland, where conditions could change at any moment. Chrollo learned to fear the quiet.
A memory hits him then, out of the blue. He used to scavenge for old magazines in the trash heaps. Fashion and toy catalogues were the best. He used a rusty old scissors to cut out the figures, free them from their pages and turn them into dolls—not unlike Kalluto’s ability, he realizes. He made up stories about them, gave them names and jobs and families—all things he heard about from the visitors who came to his city but never experienced firsthand. At least not until he figured out that he could give them to himself just as easily as he gave them to his dolls.
‘Chrollo.’ He can’t remember where it came from or when he started going by it—he just remembers it sounding nice, and he liked that it didn’t sound like any other name he’d heard before. ‘Lucilfer’ came later, after he learned to read, and his job and family came later still.
He’s grateful for it all. If not for them, he’d probably still be that kid sitting on a pile of trash, cutting out paper dolls.
On second thought, he wonders if they have any old magazines lying around the apartment…
“Fuck, it’s cold.”
Chrollo turns around, watching Hisoka tug the sliding glass door open to join him on the balcony. Chrollo raises an eyebrow at his bare shoulders and torso. He’d managed to tug on a pair of boxers at least.
“Actually, never mind, fuck this,” Hisoka curses, rubbing his arms and retreating back into their warm apartment.
Laughing, Chrollo shakes his head and returns to the night sky, scanning for the first signs of shooting stars. He’s surprised and impressed that Hisoka tried at all. There are few things he despises more than the cold and waking up too early. Chrollo is a creature of the night by nature. The cold he could have less of, though.
The sliding door opens again, and Chrollo looks up in surprise.
Hisoka trudges out, fully clothed in slippers and pajamas—what look to be Chrollo’s pajamas, specifically, and several sizes too small—and carrying a mound of blankets, including the comforter quilt of their bed.
“Here,” Hisoka says, draping the comforter over Chrollo’s head and shoulders, turning him into the human approximation of a snow bank. “Why aren’t you wearing your coat, at least?”
“Forgot about it,” Chrollo admits.
“Were you raised in a junkyard or something?” Hisoka teases, wrapping himself in the remaining blankets, one of which seems to be wool. Of course he took the best for himself.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to join me,” Chrollo says.
“Changed my mind.”
“So it would seem. What got you to come around?”
Hisoka doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches out and takes one of Chrollo’s hands, lifting it from where it rested on the balcony’s metal railing. “You’re freezing! Are you even alive?”
“Far as I can tell, yes.”
Cupping Chrollo’s hand between both of his, Hisoka blows warm breath in an attempt to revive Chrollo’s icy digits, pausing occasionally to rub them.
“Sometimes I do wonder, though,” Chrollo adds.
“How can we know for sure?” Hisoka asks.
Chrollo grins wickedly. “You could try and kill me. Then we’d know.”
“That would cause other problems though, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. You seem pretty set on it, one way or the other.”
“Things are different now.”
“Are they?”
Hisoka lets go of Chrollo’s hand, pressing it into Chrollo’s chest as if demonstrating how to keep it warm on his own. “Yes, and no, I suppose.”
“‘Well, that’s just maddeningly unhelpful,” Chrollo says, grinning. Something about being around Hisoka always gives him the urge to say silly things.
“That sounds familiar…”
“Don’t worry about it.”
They stand in comfortable silence for a while, Chrollo watching the stars and feeling Hisoka’s eyes drift over to him every now and then. It’s a little incredible how they don’t even have to touch each other to feel close. Just the simple ease of being next to someone who fills the silence without disrupting it. Because as much as the quiet made Chrollo uneasy before, having Hisoka with him transforms it into something pleasant.
Chrollo feels hollow. The night makes it worse. But when Hisoka is there, he fills in the gaps, with color and light. It isn’t always beautiful, but that’s what makes it fun. Art isn’t always meant to be beautiful, and if ever there was a person who encapsulated art, it’s Hisoka.
“Look, I think it’s starting.”
Hisoka points, and Chrollo follows the vector of his arm, catching a glimpse of a cluster of falling sparks before they wink out of existence. Keeping his eyes trained on the spot, he starts to see more. Pinpricks of light stream from the sky, like the whole universe is raining.
“I can’t believe I sat out here for over half an hour, and then you waltz out a few minutes late and spot it before me,” Chrollo gripes good-naturedly.
“Well, I’m just born lucky, I suppose.”
“You really are. I’ve never met a person with better luck.”
“That makes two of us,” Hisoka says. “Fate always seems to favor you.”
Chrollo smiles, keeping his eyes fixed on the twinkling meteorites. It’s hard not to think about fate while gazing at the vastness of space. He agrees with Hisoka: he’s incredibly lucky—and blessed. Blessed with love and good friends, despite not really doing anything to deserve them. Sure, he came up with the idea of the spider—a home for people without homes—but his legs built it themselves. They all think he’s so smart, but they’re the clever ones. Without them, he’s nothing.
The meteor shower starts to pick up in earnest now, the cosmic equivalent of a downpour. It’s so heavy Chrollo wonders if there will be any stars left in the sky once it’s done. He looks over at Hisoka, curious to see his reaction, and he’s not disappointed. Hisoka is leaning over the balcony railing, staring up at the sky with childlike glee. He’s so transfixed he’s letting the blankets slip from his shoulders, exposing more of his undersized nightshirt. He makes no move to pull the blankets back up. Perhaps he’s not feeling as cold now.
That’s something Chrollo loved about Hisoka from the beginning: he makes no effort to conceal his delight in things. So many people try to cover it up, as if it’s shameful to feel joy. It always puzzled him.
Hisoka puzzles him in different ways.
“Have you made any wishes yet?”
Chrollo starts. “What do you mean?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to do when you see a shooting star, right? And more stars, more wishes.”
“I’m not sure if it works like that,” Chrollo says.
“Well, I’ve made a few.”
“What did you wish for?”
Hisoka wrinkles his face. “If I told you, they wouldn’t come true.”
“You seem to abide by a very strange set of rules.”
“Thank you.”
Chrollo laughs, and their comfortable silence resumes. The concentration of the meteorites is starting to thin, making him feel strangely apprehensive, as if he’s missing his chance. The way he’s heard it, he can only make a wish on one shooting star, not a whole shower, and only if he’s the only one to spot it. But just in case… what should he wish for now?
Therein lies the second problem: he already has everything he could want.
He settles on making it for someone else: wishing peace for his troupe. Not happiness, because he doesn’t really believe in it as a long-term state, but peace. He thinks of large, sweeping fields covered in freshly fallen snow, rolling waves breaking against the shore, rows of trees turning autumn-colored gold—that kind of peace. It’s more of a prayer, he realizes.
“I want a snack, but I don’t feel like cooking,” Hisoka says, breaking the silence. The meteor shower has stopped, but they’re both still on the balcony, wrapped in their blankets.
“Okay,” Chrollo replies. He’s noticed Hisoka has a tendency to think out loud, not always expecting a complex response.
“Think I’ll order something.”
“Is there anything even open this late around here?”
Hisoka pulls out his phone, the glow of the screen interrupting the perfect blue of the night. “I’ll find something.”
A few moments later: “Ah yes, a two AM pizza place. Do you feel like pizza?”
Chrollo doesn’t answer.
“—and ordered. I hope you like onions.”
Chrollo makes a face.
Hisoka grins. “Just kidding. I got five cheese, and a fun one with pears and nuts.”
“You got two pizzas?”
“I’m hungry, and I don’t want to share just one.”
Chrollo nods. That’s fair. If they weren’t thieves, Hisoka would probably eat them out of house and home. And he’d much prefer Hisoka being a little over-indulgent than him whining when Chrollo takes the last slice.
The pizza arrives surprisingly quick, and Chrollo volunteers to retrieve it from the apartment’s lobby, making sure to give the delivery guy a substantial tip. Back upstairs, Hisoka is still on the balcony.
“I thought you said it was too cold out,” Chrollo says, setting the boxes on a small glass table. It smells wonderful.
“I adjusted.”
Walking up behind him, Chrollo wraps his arms around Hisoka, feeling for his ridiculously tapered waist underneath all the blankets. He drapes his head on the back of Hisoka’s shoulder, neck straining a little from the difference in their height. It’s nice: just simple, warm contact like this. He could stay here forever.
Hisoka twists in his grip, turning around to face him. He leans down to press a quick kiss to Chrollo’s cheek, likely just as a distraction.
It works, though. Chrollo drops his arms and lets the clown escape, watching with amusement as Hisoka descends on the pizza, tearing open the boxes and collapsing into a pile of blankets on the concrete of the balcony, taking large, exuberant bites out of a slice and groaning. Once again Chrollo is struck by how shamelessly Hisoka exhibits any kind of pleasure. It makes him a little envious.
Taking the cushions off the balcony chairs, Chrollo curls up beside him on a makeshift seat, handing Hisoka the other pillow. “If you’re going to insist on not using the chairs, at least take this.”
Hisoka grins between bites. His first two slices are already gone. “I figured it was more fun this way. It’s like a picnic.”
“You got impatient.”
Sliding onto his cushion, Hisoka nods. “I’m prone to that.”
Chrollo tries a slice of the pear and nut pizza first, curious about the sweet and savory combination. It’s surprisingly good, unlike anything he’d had before. Part of him is just glad there aren’t any onions.
The pizza goes fast. As expected, Hisoka finishes off most of it himself, with Chrollo only getting a few slices between the two. It’s amazing what constitutes as a ‘snack’ for him. Not that Chrollo minds at all. He’s just happy to have an excuse to spend more time with Hisoka this late. He looks different like this: somehow the moonlight makes him even more surreal. Otherworldly. His handsome features look carved from marble, like the statue of a Greek hero of myth. Not for the first time, Chrollo is struck by a bizarre sense of surprise that Hisoka even exists, that he isn’t just the make-believe subject of some legend.
Without thinking, Chrollo leans over and kisses Hisoka on the mouth, still tasting some of the pizza. Stiffening a bit from surprise, Hisoka recovers quickly, threading a hand through Chrollo’s hair and kissing back.
They part, coming up for air and pressing their foreheads together. Peering through his lashes, Chrollo looks deep into those inscrutable golden eyes, wondering what Hisoka thinks about when they’re like this. His own thoughts are only full of one thing.
“It was lonely,” Hisoka says suddenly, pulling away a little to look at him properly.
The corners of Chrollo’s mouth twitch inquisitively.
“Being in bed by myself,” Hisoka explains. “I missed having you next to me. I couldn’t sleep. That’s why I came outside.”
Chrollo smiles, a little smugly. “You missed me that much? Enough to brave the cold?”
Hisoka scoffs. “Of course. Don’t act so surprised.”
It’s hard not to. Chrollo has never known Hisoka to depend on anyone for anything, especially something so small.
“Well, do you miss me enough to spend the night out here?” Chrollo asks, teasing. He slumps onto Hisoka’s chest, sliding down and making a bed for himself in his lap and blankets. “I don’t intend on moving anytime soon.”
Hisoka glares, gathering Chrollo and the blankets in his arms in one swift motion and sliding the balcony door open with his foot. “Too bad.”
It’s funny how sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.