Birthday fic for mistressrenet
Also for b_hallward, who incautiously encouraged me. Neither one should be held accountable for this: they probably thought I was going to come up with something good.
Inspired by a prompt I didn't grab over at yaoi_challenge: "Muraki wants to teach Hisoka a few more lessons." I'm reasonably sure that this was not what the person making the request had in mind (hey, who would have this in mind?), so I didn't want to take the prompt away from a writer who would come up with something the requester liked. But not glomming onto it there didn't mean I was going to walk away from it, either.
Short-form warnings: Unbeta'd, because I wouldn't inflict this on a beta reader. Fluff. Cliches. Shopping. HisokaxMuraki. In an established relationship. Oh, and if you’ve thought that my characterization of Hisoka was on crack on previous occasions? This is guaranteed not to convince you otherwise.
You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Additional warnings/note (what, you’re still here?): This is a side story from a WIP that nobody’s seen any of, and it’s set a fair distance down the timeline in the universe of that WIP. It is accordingly missing all the backstory needed to explain how these two people got to this point, and where the dynamics of this relationship are coming from. I can only ask you to take it on faith that there’s an explanation for it, and that it makes as much sense as any other relationship I write. Which is perhaps not saying very much.
-------------------------------
And Not Your Yellow Hair
"It's been almost two years," Hisoka said. "He knows my name."
It was a stupid thing to be complaining about, especially when he considered what Watari had been trying to do and who he was telling this story to, but it was still the thing that bothered him. Not that Watari had been trying to use Tsuzuki as an unwitting test subject in the latest of his dubious experiments; not his maneuvering to draw Hisoka’s attention away for long enough to convince Tsuzuki to eat something Watari had had access to (as if that had been possible; the tainted doughnut in question had felt almost radioactive with Watari’s nervous anticipation, as impossible to ignore as if it had had a flashing green poison warning in the air over it); but the damned eternal cry of, "Kid!"
Kazutaka's visible eye widened for an instant, the way it always did when he'd figured something out, and then he was laughing. "God, is that all?" he said.
Hisoka grinned back down at him and backhanded him across his face. He didn't really mind about the laughter, but there was a principle to be upheld here; and besides, all reasons to hit Kazutaka were good reasons. Not that it ever made much of an impression on him, or did now. His breath caught for an instant at the blow, but he went right on laughing. "I can fix that," he choked out, in between giggles.
Which was an odd thing to say. Hisoka was dead, and the dead don't age: if there really were any way to fix that, then presumably Lord Enma, who had an interest in his operatives being as competent as possible, would have done it. He thought about pursuing it. But there were certain advantages to being eternally sixteen, and one of them was the way that the naked body stretched out beneath him, and all that he could do with it, was already more interesting than the question of what the hell Kazutaka thought he could fix. So he put the matter aside, and gave his full attention to the infinitely enjoyable project of forcing Kazutaka to stop laughing.
* * *
But he thought about it again later. "You can't fix it," he said. "You killed me, and I'm going to wear a kid's body forever, and that's the way it is. Unless you think you can go back in time and not murder me. Don't tell me you can fix it."
"I didn't say I could restart the physical maturation process." Hisoka saw him reach automatically toward the bedside table for his cigarettes, then abort the gesture. Kazutaka had swapped out for Muraki, then. The cigarettes were as sure an indicator as Hisoka had found: Kazutaka knew better than to even think about smoking in Hisoka's presence; Muraki observed the smoking ban voluntarily, out of a kind of courtesy; Muraki-sensei was perfectly well aware of it and didn't care. (And that too was a courtesy, Hisoka sometimes thought: a signal that Muraki-sensei trusted him know his own limits, to have the wisdom to not pick fights he couldn't win; to not need protecting from situations that might tempt him into bad judgment.) Hisoka would have liked to keep Kazutaka, but he was resigned to the switch. As best Hisoka could tell, Kazutaka existed only in the horizontal: to get to him you had to knock Muraki down and tie him to something, and even if you managed that you only got to see Kazutaka if he wanted to see you.
But Muraki was still talking. "I'm not wholly convinced that isn't theoretically possible" -- there was a change in cadence, a flash of Muraki-sensei surfacing to think about the science, then vanishing again -- "but that's not your issue."
-- And it was as well to have had that glimpse of Muraki-sensei, reminding him of the value of caution, and of keeping his temper. It would have been pleasant to respond with anger -- pleasant, and justified -- but he'd asked the question himself. And Muraki could tell you useful things, if he wanted to, and if you let him. "Isn’t it?" Hisoka said, as indifferently as he could.
“I think not.” Bruising was beginning to bloom over Muraki’s right cheekbone, beneath the fall of silver hair. It was pretty to see, however fleeting it would be, and it made the cool amusement in Muraki’s voice much easier to tolerate. “Tell me, have you ever had occasion to fight Watari hand to hand?"
"No. By which I mean, yes. Plenty of occasion, but I've restrained myself."
"Say you didn't restrain yourself. Who would win?"
"I would." He spoke without thinking, and realized as he said it that it was true. "Probably. If no one interfered. I've had combat training from early childhood, and he's not a fighter, and I'm stronger than I look."
Muraki was nodding, as if he’d expected the answer. “So, the problem is not that your current body puts you at any practical disadvantage. What other advantage would having an older body give you, then?”
He rolled his eyes. "For one thing," he said, "people are less likely to think of you as a child, and to treat you as a child, if you don't actually look like a child."
“Exactly,” Muraki said. “The real issue is one of perception, and power. You have confused a set of symbols with the substance of the thing, and compounded the error by assuming that the symbols in question are the only ones capable of doing what you want done.” He made a little dismissive gesture with one hand. “They’re good symbols, I grant you. We’re primates; we’re programmed to respond to greater height and muscle mass and depth of voice as markers of authority. But as it happens, you have trumps for them. If you care to use them.” The smile widened, and his gaze caught and held Hisoka’s in open challenge.
It was very lovely, and it made Hisoka want to take him by the throat and force him down onto his back, and at the same time to freeze him in that moment and look at him forever. He could have the first, if not the second, and for a moment he was tempted. But to take it would require that he turn aside from whatever Muraki was offering now, and there was no assurance that it would ever be offered again. “Do I,” he said, keeping his voice cool. “What are they, then?”
Muraki chuckled, and when he spoke it was in English. “’Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair.’ You have great beauty, and beauty has inherent authority. The more so in your case, for your particular beauty is that of a fleeting moment that in you is made eternal: it carries the terror of the uncanny with it. People fear the numinous, far more than they do the chest-thumping of the apha primate. You need merely learn to make sure that people see it.”
The voice was soft, rich, persuasive as a serpent selling apples; and it was time for Hisoka to reestablish some authority here. He snapped his fingers, at once summons and invitation, and Muraki slithered from the side of the bed to rest his head across Hisoka’s thigh. Hisoka ran his fingers along the stretched line of his throat, pressing down a little over the windpipe, letting Muraki feel the edge of his fingernails. It was absurdly like having a cat on his lap, and when Muraki’s tongue flicked out to swirl around one of his fingers, he was almost surprised to find it without any rasp. ”Tsuzuki is beautiful,” he said after a few minutes.
“So he is,” Muraki agreed. “But our darling values his beauty the same way he values his power: he cares for it only for the pleasure it gives his lovers, just as he values his power only for the protection it gives to those he cares for. Even so, he has to work to make his presence as unthreatening as it is. Or at least, he’ll have worked to learn to do it; it may be automatic now.”
Hisoka nodded, acknowledging the point. It made sense: a Tsuzuki without his blushes and apologies, his eternally unfinished paperwork and fierce pursuit of sweets, might be a Tsuzuki who was formidable indeed. “All right, then. Say I believed you. How would I learn to use it?”
Muraki was silent as if thinking, his visible eye focussed somewhere beyond the ceiling. Then the smile changed again, turned happy and conspiratorial, and his gaze came back to Hisoka. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid that you will need to allow me to take you shopping.”
It was a continuing issue, of course, and Muraki was usually good about not pushing it. Money was power, inescapably, and there was no way of creating any kind of balance between Muraki’s resources and his own. He might some day, he supposed, command such authority that he could treat Muraki’s possessions as his, but that day was far away, if it was ever going to come at all. It was all very well for Tsuzuki to let Muraki wrap him in luxuries: Tsuzuki sought only to set aside his own power, and if possible to forget where he’d left it. Hisoka could not afford it: it was enough of a compromise to spend time in Muraki’s house, to eat his food and drink his wine. “Oh, please,” he said, temporizing. “You’re not going to tell me that what I need is a celebrity makeover.”
“Not unless I actually wanted you to start stripping pieces of my skin off,” Muraki agreed. “You do need different clothes, though, and you can’t afford my tailor on what that secretary pays you.” He stared off into the distance once more, and then the eternal smile was back. “We could make a bet of it, if you like. If you give this a fair trial and it works, I win, and you keep the linen shirts and let me settle the bills.”
He could only laugh. “I know your bets. If it fails miserably? What are you staking?”
“What am I staking?” Muraki said. “How about this? If it turns out that I’m wrong, you get to rip it all up and tie me to the bed with it.”
It was good enough, although . . .. “You win, either way,” he pointed out.
And now it was definitely his Kazutaka again, laughing back up at him. “Well, duh,” he said, lapsing back into English. “But then, so do you.”
It was true enough. “All right. Done,” Hisoka said, and twisted his fingers through Kazutaka’s silver hair, and leaned down to kiss him.
* * *
Neither Muraki’s tailor nor his assistants spoke English, for which Hisoka was grateful: it allowed him to complain about the process without being discourteous to people who were only doing their jobs. There seemed to be an improbable number of measurements involved. “I can imagine what they think,” he muttered, as the measuring tape slid around his thigh. He was being unreasonable, and he knew it - he could feel nothing but professional interest, and a faint sense that Hisoka would make a satisfying client, one who would flatter the finished clothes as much as they would flatter him, in their surface emotions. But the measuring process required that he allow himself to be touched, and it still made his skin crawl.
“Nonsense,” Muraki said. He lounged in a chair in the far corner of the fitting room with a medical journal, and he did not look up from it. “He’s my tailor, not Oriya’s tailor. Besides, you make a plausible younger cousin for me. I looked remarkably like you when I was fifteen: different coloring, but the same bone structure.”
“I can’t believe they can’t do this with computer imaging,” Hisoka said. He moved his left arm in response to one of the assistant’s instructions and tried not to twitch as the tape wrapped around his arm at his shoulder, then his bicep, then his elbow, bent and straight; the swell of muscle in his forearm; his wrist; his knuckles. Length was next: length from shoulder joint to wrist, shoulder to elbow, inner arm from wrist to armpit. Then the whole procedure began again on his right arm.
“They probably could,” Muraki said indifferently. “But a full body scan and having it read wouldn’t take any less time, and wouldn’t be any less intrusive. You should be grateful: you’ll only have to have this done once. If you really were my cousin who’s going to spend the summer in Europe, nothing you’re ordering would fit in a year, and you’d have to do it all over again.”
Hisoka glared. “You’re only saying that because you know I can’t do anything about it right now.”
“True.”
“I still don’t see why I need all this stuff.” It wasn’t just shirts, as it had turned out: Muraki had swept into the workshop and begun talking about jackets, and trousers, and even suits and coats.
“Because you’re going to throw away everything you already own,” Muraki told him. “And as much as I might regret it, you need to wear something.”
“Throwing everything away wasn’t part of the deal.”
“No, that’s a prediction. Six months from now you’ll never want to wear clothes that don’t fit again. But you’re right: that’s beside the point. This is a set of tools. What matters is the way you carry yourself, your gestures, the muscles of your face. What you wear changes the way you move, just as carrying a sword across your back changes the way you move. Once you’ve relearned how to carry yourself it won’t matter if you want to wear orange jersey shirts. While you’re learning, though, it’s like any other physical discipline. Immersion works better than picking away at it, an hour here and there.”
Now one of the assistants was measuring the distance between his shoulderblades. “If this turns out to be about my orange shirt, I am going to tear strips of skin off you.”
“If you can,” Muraki agreed. “But it’s not an issue. You’ll like linen better, it doesn’t stick to your skin in hot weather. Do you have cufflinks, or do we need to go buy a set?”
Hisoka caught his gaze in the tall mirror in front of him, and caught his breath, suddenly and vividly aware that Muraki was teasing him. It was a hell of a place and time for it, for all that he seemed to have waited until the below-the-waist measurements were finished. And he was not going to think about what he was going to do to Muraki for it until they were out of this place, he was not. He took another long, careful breath. “I don’t have shirts yet,” he said. “I don’t need to buy cufflinks for them.”
“You will, though, in two weeks. You’re welcome to borrow a pair of mine, of course.”
The anger washed through him, feeling oddly cool for once rather than hot, carrying him out of himself. He felt his eyes narrow a little, and his chin come up. He half-turned toward the corner. “Kazutaka,” he said, and his voice was low and cold. “That will do.”
Muraki nodded, but there was still the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “You see, that’s it,” he replied. “That’s it exactly.”
* * *
“I’m conceding your bet,” Hisoka said, and tossed a parcel onto the bed. It had only been a little over three months, and he could have drawn the game out. But the outcome was clear, and there was no point in refusing to admit it.
Muraki bowed in acknowledgement. “What happened?”
“Saya and Yuma,” he said. “They were down from Hokkaido, and they brought a dress like a wedding cake with them on this trip, and they dressed Watari in it. He tried to fob them off on me, but Saya told him, ‘We can’t make Kurosaki-san put it on. He might look at us.’” He paused, savoring it again, and then added, “It’s not the first thing I’ve noticed. But it’s definitive. I’d be a fool to pretend otherwise.”
Muraki laughed. “Do you want to keep the cufflinks?”
“I’m thinking about it,” Hisoka told him. “Although I don’t need them. The refolded paperclips Tsuzuki strews everywhere when he’s avoiding paperwork turn out to make good ones.” He turned and reached for the package. “I brought you a present,” he said.
“How thoughtful of you,” Muraki said. He made no move toward it. “Would you like me to open it now, or should it wait?”
“You might as well have it now,” Hisoka told him, and watched as he undid the perfect folds of the paper to find the flash of orange inside them. “I thought you might want to burn it yourself. Since you won.”
“So I did,” he said, and it was Kazutaka’s cadence in his voice; and Hisoka could see him turning over the terms of the bet in his mind. “Although as you said at the time“ - he drew the shirt out of its wrapping, holding it fastidiously at the very ends of his fingers - “I was going to win, either way.”
Hisoka looked at the orange shirt, and then at Kazutaka, and plucked it from his hand.
Kazutaka smiled slowly. “It won’t hold me.”
“Maybe not,” Hisoka agreed. He looked for a knife, found it, and began ripping the orange shirt into long strips. “But I think it’s worth a try.”
------------------------------------
Go on, tell me I'm on crack. It's all an elaborate excuse to argue about canon, isn't it?
Inspired by a prompt I didn't grab over at yaoi_challenge: "Muraki wants to teach Hisoka a few more lessons." I'm reasonably sure that this was not what the person making the request had in mind (hey, who would have this in mind?), so I didn't want to take the prompt away from a writer who would come up with something the requester liked. But not glomming onto it there didn't mean I was going to walk away from it, either.
Short-form warnings: Unbeta'd, because I wouldn't inflict this on a beta reader. Fluff. Cliches. Shopping. HisokaxMuraki. In an established relationship. Oh, and if you’ve thought that my characterization of Hisoka was on crack on previous occasions? This is guaranteed not to convince you otherwise.
You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Additional warnings/note (what, you’re still here?): This is a side story from a WIP that nobody’s seen any of, and it’s set a fair distance down the timeline in the universe of that WIP. It is accordingly missing all the backstory needed to explain how these two people got to this point, and where the dynamics of this relationship are coming from. I can only ask you to take it on faith that there’s an explanation for it, and that it makes as much sense as any other relationship I write. Which is perhaps not saying very much.
-------------------------------
And Not Your Yellow Hair
"It's been almost two years," Hisoka said. "He knows my name."
It was a stupid thing to be complaining about, especially when he considered what Watari had been trying to do and who he was telling this story to, but it was still the thing that bothered him. Not that Watari had been trying to use Tsuzuki as an unwitting test subject in the latest of his dubious experiments; not his maneuvering to draw Hisoka’s attention away for long enough to convince Tsuzuki to eat something Watari had had access to (as if that had been possible; the tainted doughnut in question had felt almost radioactive with Watari’s nervous anticipation, as impossible to ignore as if it had had a flashing green poison warning in the air over it); but the damned eternal cry of, "Kid!"
Kazutaka's visible eye widened for an instant, the way it always did when he'd figured something out, and then he was laughing. "God, is that all?" he said.
Hisoka grinned back down at him and backhanded him across his face. He didn't really mind about the laughter, but there was a principle to be upheld here; and besides, all reasons to hit Kazutaka were good reasons. Not that it ever made much of an impression on him, or did now. His breath caught for an instant at the blow, but he went right on laughing. "I can fix that," he choked out, in between giggles.
Which was an odd thing to say. Hisoka was dead, and the dead don't age: if there really were any way to fix that, then presumably Lord Enma, who had an interest in his operatives being as competent as possible, would have done it. He thought about pursuing it. But there were certain advantages to being eternally sixteen, and one of them was the way that the naked body stretched out beneath him, and all that he could do with it, was already more interesting than the question of what the hell Kazutaka thought he could fix. So he put the matter aside, and gave his full attention to the infinitely enjoyable project of forcing Kazutaka to stop laughing.
* * *
But he thought about it again later. "You can't fix it," he said. "You killed me, and I'm going to wear a kid's body forever, and that's the way it is. Unless you think you can go back in time and not murder me. Don't tell me you can fix it."
"I didn't say I could restart the physical maturation process." Hisoka saw him reach automatically toward the bedside table for his cigarettes, then abort the gesture. Kazutaka had swapped out for Muraki, then. The cigarettes were as sure an indicator as Hisoka had found: Kazutaka knew better than to even think about smoking in Hisoka's presence; Muraki observed the smoking ban voluntarily, out of a kind of courtesy; Muraki-sensei was perfectly well aware of it and didn't care. (And that too was a courtesy, Hisoka sometimes thought: a signal that Muraki-sensei trusted him know his own limits, to have the wisdom to not pick fights he couldn't win; to not need protecting from situations that might tempt him into bad judgment.) Hisoka would have liked to keep Kazutaka, but he was resigned to the switch. As best Hisoka could tell, Kazutaka existed only in the horizontal: to get to him you had to knock Muraki down and tie him to something, and even if you managed that you only got to see Kazutaka if he wanted to see you.
But Muraki was still talking. "I'm not wholly convinced that isn't theoretically possible" -- there was a change in cadence, a flash of Muraki-sensei surfacing to think about the science, then vanishing again -- "but that's not your issue."
-- And it was as well to have had that glimpse of Muraki-sensei, reminding him of the value of caution, and of keeping his temper. It would have been pleasant to respond with anger -- pleasant, and justified -- but he'd asked the question himself. And Muraki could tell you useful things, if he wanted to, and if you let him. "Isn’t it?" Hisoka said, as indifferently as he could.
“I think not.” Bruising was beginning to bloom over Muraki’s right cheekbone, beneath the fall of silver hair. It was pretty to see, however fleeting it would be, and it made the cool amusement in Muraki’s voice much easier to tolerate. “Tell me, have you ever had occasion to fight Watari hand to hand?"
"No. By which I mean, yes. Plenty of occasion, but I've restrained myself."
"Say you didn't restrain yourself. Who would win?"
"I would." He spoke without thinking, and realized as he said it that it was true. "Probably. If no one interfered. I've had combat training from early childhood, and he's not a fighter, and I'm stronger than I look."
Muraki was nodding, as if he’d expected the answer. “So, the problem is not that your current body puts you at any practical disadvantage. What other advantage would having an older body give you, then?”
He rolled his eyes. "For one thing," he said, "people are less likely to think of you as a child, and to treat you as a child, if you don't actually look like a child."
“Exactly,” Muraki said. “The real issue is one of perception, and power. You have confused a set of symbols with the substance of the thing, and compounded the error by assuming that the symbols in question are the only ones capable of doing what you want done.” He made a little dismissive gesture with one hand. “They’re good symbols, I grant you. We’re primates; we’re programmed to respond to greater height and muscle mass and depth of voice as markers of authority. But as it happens, you have trumps for them. If you care to use them.” The smile widened, and his gaze caught and held Hisoka’s in open challenge.
It was very lovely, and it made Hisoka want to take him by the throat and force him down onto his back, and at the same time to freeze him in that moment and look at him forever. He could have the first, if not the second, and for a moment he was tempted. But to take it would require that he turn aside from whatever Muraki was offering now, and there was no assurance that it would ever be offered again. “Do I,” he said, keeping his voice cool. “What are they, then?”
Muraki chuckled, and when he spoke it was in English. “’Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair.’ You have great beauty, and beauty has inherent authority. The more so in your case, for your particular beauty is that of a fleeting moment that in you is made eternal: it carries the terror of the uncanny with it. People fear the numinous, far more than they do the chest-thumping of the apha primate. You need merely learn to make sure that people see it.”
The voice was soft, rich, persuasive as a serpent selling apples; and it was time for Hisoka to reestablish some authority here. He snapped his fingers, at once summons and invitation, and Muraki slithered from the side of the bed to rest his head across Hisoka’s thigh. Hisoka ran his fingers along the stretched line of his throat, pressing down a little over the windpipe, letting Muraki feel the edge of his fingernails. It was absurdly like having a cat on his lap, and when Muraki’s tongue flicked out to swirl around one of his fingers, he was almost surprised to find it without any rasp. ”Tsuzuki is beautiful,” he said after a few minutes.
“So he is,” Muraki agreed. “But our darling values his beauty the same way he values his power: he cares for it only for the pleasure it gives his lovers, just as he values his power only for the protection it gives to those he cares for. Even so, he has to work to make his presence as unthreatening as it is. Or at least, he’ll have worked to learn to do it; it may be automatic now.”
Hisoka nodded, acknowledging the point. It made sense: a Tsuzuki without his blushes and apologies, his eternally unfinished paperwork and fierce pursuit of sweets, might be a Tsuzuki who was formidable indeed. “All right, then. Say I believed you. How would I learn to use it?”
Muraki was silent as if thinking, his visible eye focussed somewhere beyond the ceiling. Then the smile changed again, turned happy and conspiratorial, and his gaze came back to Hisoka. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid that you will need to allow me to take you shopping.”
It was a continuing issue, of course, and Muraki was usually good about not pushing it. Money was power, inescapably, and there was no way of creating any kind of balance between Muraki’s resources and his own. He might some day, he supposed, command such authority that he could treat Muraki’s possessions as his, but that day was far away, if it was ever going to come at all. It was all very well for Tsuzuki to let Muraki wrap him in luxuries: Tsuzuki sought only to set aside his own power, and if possible to forget where he’d left it. Hisoka could not afford it: it was enough of a compromise to spend time in Muraki’s house, to eat his food and drink his wine. “Oh, please,” he said, temporizing. “You’re not going to tell me that what I need is a celebrity makeover.”
“Not unless I actually wanted you to start stripping pieces of my skin off,” Muraki agreed. “You do need different clothes, though, and you can’t afford my tailor on what that secretary pays you.” He stared off into the distance once more, and then the eternal smile was back. “We could make a bet of it, if you like. If you give this a fair trial and it works, I win, and you keep the linen shirts and let me settle the bills.”
He could only laugh. “I know your bets. If it fails miserably? What are you staking?”
“What am I staking?” Muraki said. “How about this? If it turns out that I’m wrong, you get to rip it all up and tie me to the bed with it.”
It was good enough, although . . .. “You win, either way,” he pointed out.
And now it was definitely his Kazutaka again, laughing back up at him. “Well, duh,” he said, lapsing back into English. “But then, so do you.”
It was true enough. “All right. Done,” Hisoka said, and twisted his fingers through Kazutaka’s silver hair, and leaned down to kiss him.
* * *
Neither Muraki’s tailor nor his assistants spoke English, for which Hisoka was grateful: it allowed him to complain about the process without being discourteous to people who were only doing their jobs. There seemed to be an improbable number of measurements involved. “I can imagine what they think,” he muttered, as the measuring tape slid around his thigh. He was being unreasonable, and he knew it - he could feel nothing but professional interest, and a faint sense that Hisoka would make a satisfying client, one who would flatter the finished clothes as much as they would flatter him, in their surface emotions. But the measuring process required that he allow himself to be touched, and it still made his skin crawl.
“Nonsense,” Muraki said. He lounged in a chair in the far corner of the fitting room with a medical journal, and he did not look up from it. “He’s my tailor, not Oriya’s tailor. Besides, you make a plausible younger cousin for me. I looked remarkably like you when I was fifteen: different coloring, but the same bone structure.”
“I can’t believe they can’t do this with computer imaging,” Hisoka said. He moved his left arm in response to one of the assistant’s instructions and tried not to twitch as the tape wrapped around his arm at his shoulder, then his bicep, then his elbow, bent and straight; the swell of muscle in his forearm; his wrist; his knuckles. Length was next: length from shoulder joint to wrist, shoulder to elbow, inner arm from wrist to armpit. Then the whole procedure began again on his right arm.
“They probably could,” Muraki said indifferently. “But a full body scan and having it read wouldn’t take any less time, and wouldn’t be any less intrusive. You should be grateful: you’ll only have to have this done once. If you really were my cousin who’s going to spend the summer in Europe, nothing you’re ordering would fit in a year, and you’d have to do it all over again.”
Hisoka glared. “You’re only saying that because you know I can’t do anything about it right now.”
“True.”
“I still don’t see why I need all this stuff.” It wasn’t just shirts, as it had turned out: Muraki had swept into the workshop and begun talking about jackets, and trousers, and even suits and coats.
“Because you’re going to throw away everything you already own,” Muraki told him. “And as much as I might regret it, you need to wear something.”
“Throwing everything away wasn’t part of the deal.”
“No, that’s a prediction. Six months from now you’ll never want to wear clothes that don’t fit again. But you’re right: that’s beside the point. This is a set of tools. What matters is the way you carry yourself, your gestures, the muscles of your face. What you wear changes the way you move, just as carrying a sword across your back changes the way you move. Once you’ve relearned how to carry yourself it won’t matter if you want to wear orange jersey shirts. While you’re learning, though, it’s like any other physical discipline. Immersion works better than picking away at it, an hour here and there.”
Now one of the assistants was measuring the distance between his shoulderblades. “If this turns out to be about my orange shirt, I am going to tear strips of skin off you.”
“If you can,” Muraki agreed. “But it’s not an issue. You’ll like linen better, it doesn’t stick to your skin in hot weather. Do you have cufflinks, or do we need to go buy a set?”
Hisoka caught his gaze in the tall mirror in front of him, and caught his breath, suddenly and vividly aware that Muraki was teasing him. It was a hell of a place and time for it, for all that he seemed to have waited until the below-the-waist measurements were finished. And he was not going to think about what he was going to do to Muraki for it until they were out of this place, he was not. He took another long, careful breath. “I don’t have shirts yet,” he said. “I don’t need to buy cufflinks for them.”
“You will, though, in two weeks. You’re welcome to borrow a pair of mine, of course.”
The anger washed through him, feeling oddly cool for once rather than hot, carrying him out of himself. He felt his eyes narrow a little, and his chin come up. He half-turned toward the corner. “Kazutaka,” he said, and his voice was low and cold. “That will do.”
Muraki nodded, but there was still the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “You see, that’s it,” he replied. “That’s it exactly.”
* * *
“I’m conceding your bet,” Hisoka said, and tossed a parcel onto the bed. It had only been a little over three months, and he could have drawn the game out. But the outcome was clear, and there was no point in refusing to admit it.
Muraki bowed in acknowledgement. “What happened?”
“Saya and Yuma,” he said. “They were down from Hokkaido, and they brought a dress like a wedding cake with them on this trip, and they dressed Watari in it. He tried to fob them off on me, but Saya told him, ‘We can’t make Kurosaki-san put it on. He might look at us.’” He paused, savoring it again, and then added, “It’s not the first thing I’ve noticed. But it’s definitive. I’d be a fool to pretend otherwise.”
Muraki laughed. “Do you want to keep the cufflinks?”
“I’m thinking about it,” Hisoka told him. “Although I don’t need them. The refolded paperclips Tsuzuki strews everywhere when he’s avoiding paperwork turn out to make good ones.” He turned and reached for the package. “I brought you a present,” he said.
“How thoughtful of you,” Muraki said. He made no move toward it. “Would you like me to open it now, or should it wait?”
“You might as well have it now,” Hisoka told him, and watched as he undid the perfect folds of the paper to find the flash of orange inside them. “I thought you might want to burn it yourself. Since you won.”
“So I did,” he said, and it was Kazutaka’s cadence in his voice; and Hisoka could see him turning over the terms of the bet in his mind. “Although as you said at the time“ - he drew the shirt out of its wrapping, holding it fastidiously at the very ends of his fingers - “I was going to win, either way.”
Hisoka looked at the orange shirt, and then at Kazutaka, and plucked it from his hand.
Kazutaka smiled slowly. “It won’t hold me.”
“Maybe not,” Hisoka agreed. He looked for a knife, found it, and began ripping the orange shirt into long strips. “But I think it’s worth a try.”
------------------------------------
Go on, tell me I'm on crack. It's all an elaborate excuse to argue about canon, isn't it?