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Hisoka has never been in love before. Tsuzuki has.

If he were to ask, Hisoka knows, Tsuzuki would give him names, faces, stories: first kiss, first lover, the first person to break his heart, and the person whose heart he had broken in turn. Hisoka doesn't ask, and works hard at not knowing more than he already does.

The ghosts of Tsuzuki's past loves linger in unexpected places. A cloudless sky of perfect, pale blue fills Tsuzuki with a feeling of wistfulness; it is a soft, well-worn love that brings with it hardly any pain at all. Tsuzuki's smile is bright and brittle when he sees shoulders held just so: straight, and precise, dignified beneath the fall of a dark suit-jacket. This is the memory of love that makes Tsuzuki ache with loss, and want, and helplessness.

Hisoka isn't jealous of ghosts--

(he isn't)

--because no one else has been able to put up with the idiot for as long as Hisoka has, and Hisoka isn't going anywhere. Resenting ghosts is foolish, and childish, and if Hisoka hates Tsuzuki's old loves, it is only because their loss is bearable.

Hisoka hadn't ever imagined being in love, not even when he'd clung to Tsuzuki as if letting go were the worst kind of death. Hisoka hadn't imagined, hadn't thought himself capable--and realizing that he loved his whiny, childish, idiot of a partner had been wonderful, and terrible, and nothing that Hisoka had been prepared for.

Sometimes (often), Hisoka thinks that being in love is the last thing he wants. As happy as Tsuzuki can make him, he also leaves Hisoka feeling young, and vulnerable, and helpless. He had thrown up after the first time he'd come, Tsuzuki's hand warm and sure against him, breath hot at his ear. Hisoka had felt humiliated, and ashamed, and that memory is still easier to bear than the thought that he might one day be another of Tsuzuki's ghosts, one old love among many.

Hisoka doesn't believe in happily-ever-after, but he wants to. He wants this--Tsuzuki, and warmth, and fights that have more to do with love than anger--to last forever. When he feels Tsuzuki's love--bright, and hot, and real--Hisoka can almost dream of a happiness that will span years.

Almost.

Because, he thinks, this must be what the wistful love of cloudless days once felt like. This must be the same kind of love that now makes Tsuzuki ache at the sight of proud shoulders, and a dark head angled just so. In times past, Tsuzuki must have loved his ghosts with bone-deep certainty, and yet, those loves are gone, and Tsuzuki loves Hisoka now as if he'd never known the emotion before.

Hisoka fears what time does to love. He is happy, now, happier than he'd ever imagined himself. Tsuzuki loves him, and he loves Tsuzuki--and Hisoka does not think he has the strength of heart to move forward with anything approaching grace if Tsuzuki ever stops.

Hisoka wants to believe in his own happy ending, but he can't stop searching the ghosts of Tsuzuki's old loves for the sight of his own face.


--end