hello darkness, hello goodbye;

[soukahisoka]

Day: 21
Characters: Hisoka Kurosaki soukahisoka, Grell Sutcliff chainsaw_juliet, Matt loadsavedgame, Joshua naturalpuppy, Rin cutest_avenger, Reeve felis_fidelus
Summary: Hisoka is using his empathy to recover, if not his own memories, at least others' memories of him. At least that's something.
DAY/NIGHT & Time: DAY/All day
Status: Open to those listed above, who replied to this post with an affirmative, and feel like logging

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[soukahisoka]

The accent tipped Hisoka off right away. While Matt also had an English accent, his voice was flatter than Grell's, whose rollicking tones recalled some sort of wild hilly countryside blooming with colors in unreal shades, saturated greens and the most blood-soaked reds.

But Grell all on his own was very memorable aside from merely his voice, and Hisoka stood still for a moment, large green eyes serious and intent on the tall, well-dressed patient. Carmine hair all down his back, eyes a match for Hisoka's behind delicate spectacles, old-fashioned Western clothes, a disarming shark grin. In comparison, Hisoka felt ill and shabby and sallow indeed, in need of a good shower, a good healing, a good, uninterrupted rest. None of which was relevant. Anyway.

"Yes," Hisoka said, once he was done committing Grell's figure to his unsteady memory. "You know me, right? You said we'd talked at significant length before." He looked up to Grell for confirmation, the vertebra in his neck protesting the degree to which he had to tilt his head back to do so.

[chainsaw_juliet]

"Of course I do! You were my very first friend here in this dreary place." He made himself quite at home, making the bed before sitting on it and delicately tucking one ankle behind the other as he placed his hands on his lap. "Come sit with me?"

"We got off to a shaky start you know." Grell explained, a pout on his lips. "We talked about our Divisions and our 'work-family'. I wanted to swap stories and give you a hug but you weren't quite keen on that."

"When I..." The smile wavered for a moment as Grell unbuttoned his shirt to show the barely healed stitching on his arm. "When they did this to me, you came to my room with tea and bandages. You took care of me when I was scared and you..."

A shy smile, not so full of mischief and sunshine.
"You told me a story until I fell asleep."

[soukahisoka]

Hisoka couldn't say he minded the bed being made, even if it was a bit high-handed of his visitor to up and do so himself. He sat beside Grell, fighting his instinctive need to move away, to keep a certain amount of distance. He would need to touch Grell for this to work, anyway.

But the things Grell was saying... Hisoka looked at Grell's face, reading what looked like vulnerability, what felt at least a little less like cheerful amusement than when Grell had walked in. Even though Hisoka couldn't imagine, the way he felt right now, talking to anyone about the Division, about the way he felt towards them, he believed the redhead. Even though Hisoka couldn't remember the last time he'd had a good cup of tea, certainly couldn't recall telling a story -- him? A storyteller? He was bad at talking to begin with -- he believed Grell because Grell felt like he was telling the truth.

Hisoka opened his empathy wide, as wide as it could go, and winced a little as the erratic sparks and flames of other people's emotions burned his senses. Then he focused it on Grell and turned to him, Hisoka's gaze abstracted as he said, "Please think hard about the memories you've just shared with me. If you feel anything about them at all -- focus on those feelings. I should pick them up." Then Hisoka swallowed, took a breath, and closed delicate fingers around Grell's wrist.

Touch was all it took.

[chainsaw_juliet]

Think hard? Grell Sutcliff was nearly all instinct and little else. His thoughts came secondary, and were an intricate mess of emotions and an underlying current on something inexplicably sinister.

Still. A smile on his lips and a carefree little shrug.
"Of course." So he closed his eyes and leaned his head against Hisoka's as he tried to grasp the emotions connected to his memories. Of amusement and endearment, of childish fear and innocence, of hurt and comfort.

Then a gentle tide of contentment washed over them both, coming from Grell. It was an emotion he strongly connected to Hisoka and to one other person here. A feeling that for the moment, nothing else mattered but the physical comfort that someone was beside you.

Contentment, no matter how strong, was still not strong enough to mask that creeping feeling of unease that ran through every Reaper's body. Even confined to a human shell, the supernatural essence of his soul could not be taken away. It reeked of Death and an obsession with love.

[soukahisoka]

It was so odd seeing himself through someone else's eyes. He always looked so small, Hisoka thought disdainfully, so fragile and breakable. But Grell's memories were washed in winsome romanticism, in a contented fondness that turned to real comfort when the memories themselves turned from mere conversation to moments of actual connection.

The Division, their work-families, yes; they had spoken about their lives before Edelweiss over the intercom, and it hadn't taken more than that for Grell's caprice to settle on Hisoka. (A tiny thrill of shock ran down Hisoka's spine at the discovery, the rediscovery, that Grell was a shinigami also, responsible to a division and a division chief just as Hisoka and Tsuzuki were.)

That conversation was but a flicker in Grell's long memory, although one regarded with benign amusement. The night of Grell's therapy, however, when Hisoka had stayed nearly the whole night and told Grell a Japanese children's story to lull him to sleep -- in return for a story Grell had told him in the first place, about a girl's red shoes and the solace of death -- those memories were colored more deeply, the connection there more vivid. Grell's physical pain, his horror at the fact that he bled, at the ugliness of it, of feeling so sick and so mortal, had been eased by Hisoka's presence. To Hisoka, watching from a distance, the story he'd spun off the simple child's fable was ridiculous, but to Grell...

In the empathic trance, Grell's emotions were echoed on Hisoka's face, and the slightest of smiles touched the boy's lips at the image of a tall, elegant man (dashing William, came the whisper from some corner, rosy with adoration) in striking blue Japanese silks.

The nature of Grell's emotions were tinged with an underlying dissonance that was part and parcel of the shinigami, as inseparable from Grell as the color red, and as suited to him, a danse macabre in the blood and in the mind that whirled along like leaves in the wind. A small sigh escaped Hisoka as death and love twirled together in his senses. Slowly, he opened his eyes, which had fallen shut at some point while he concentrated. Unreal green met unreal green, and Hisoka released his grip, the faint smile gone, but gratitude in his gaze.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

[chainsaw_juliet]

To him, it felt no different. Simple contact, that was all. However, the emotions flickering on the boy's face captivated him, and Grell watched him intently. Hisoka was a human blackboard; people wrote all over him with little regard, their emotions placed and erased in his mind day in and day out. How positively marvelous...

"That's all?" Grell asked, tilting his head curiously. "I wish I had my Scythe here, then I could learn about people's memories too."

The redhead fussed over Hisoka's hair, knowing it would now be familiar to him (though probably still just as contested). He pulled the boy to him, chin resting on Hisoka's hair, an arm snaked around his waist and the other curled at his back to cup the back of Hisoka's head.
"You take care of yourself, alright sweetheart? I couldn't bear to think of what I'd do without my fellow Reaper in this dismal atmosphere..."