For Hisoka, there’s a sense of security in having a house to return to. He’s spent a great deal of time making sure that such would be the case, collecting things he enjoys cohabiting a room with. Some are miniscule, but they’ve slowly become an indispensable part of living. In this, as in so many other things, he has found he is Tsuzuki’s diametric opposite. Maybe once his partner went through the same phase, the relief of materialism, but if so he’s transcended it.

Tsuzuki likes to move house every few years, he explains as they put a pathetically small set of kitchenware into dilapidated cardboard boxes. A change of scene, a little excitement. Hisoka, rubbing the pad of his thumb over a stain on the side of a coffee mug, wonders if it doesn’t have more to do with what the man is leaving behind. There’s an unmentioned stockpile of memories in these rooms that they won’t be packing.

“Is this really all you want?” he asks later, when they’ve piled it all next to the front door. He’s looking over their neat labels on the crates, written on his own insistence since Tsuzuki would happily have thrown everything in helter-skelter. Tallied up in his head, there’s only one small carton in the bunch that has what he thinks are non-essential items.

“The house came with furnishings,” Tsuzuki agrees. “Anything else here we can pitch. Or leave for whatever poor soul takes my place.” He chuckles a little.

“Didn’t you like this house?”

“Sure. I did. But change is good, don’t you think?”

Hisoka examines his shoes. The laces are getting dirty. “You’ve never had a partner for more than a year before, have you?”

“You know I haven’t. Come on, let’s clean out the kitchen. There’s food, and it can’t go with me!” And he’s bounding off, completely oblivious.

Hisoka, having declined the offer of a bite to eat and told his partner to just throw out the last of that milk, accepts a soda and watches as the enthused man clears out his cupboards. His silence is less companionable than usual.

“Cookies! Don’t know how old they are…. Not stale…”

He looks up as Tsuzuki slumps casually into a chair across the table from him.

“You know,” he announces around a mouthful, “I’ve been eating sweets ever since I was a child- a living child, that is,” he laughs. “I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of them.”

A weight lifts. “So there are some things that never change?”

“Of course. Some things are too good to leave.”

“Of course.”

“You’ll visit me more in my new home, right? It’s got a better view.”

“If you want,” Hisoka shrugs.

***End
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