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The first time that he sees Kurapika again, neither of them are expecting it, and there’s a shootout in the dining hall.
Chrollo isn’t a coward, but he is a reasonable person, so he steps behind a bar counter and sits down on the ground against it, legs pushed in front of him, with the intention of waiting it out. There’s a metal bottle cap on the floor, so he picks it up, spins it around between his fingers, bored.
There are two loud bangs, closer. The hairs on the back of Chrollo’s neck stand up. His eyebrows draw together.
Then, a body slams into the wall of drinks in front of him and collapses on the ground in a glimmering shatter of glass. Splintered wood and sloshing liquid fall in waves as bottles crash to the floor. A broken bottleneck rolls towards Chrollo, and he lets it hit his leg. He looks up.
To his right, pushing himself to an upright position, alcohol dripping from his hair and blood from his face, is Kurapika.
The first thing he notices: Kurapika is paler, a little taller, a lot thinner. The second: he is dressed like a bodyguard.
Chrollo allows himself a moment to feel surprised.
There’s a handful of seconds where Kurapika doesn’t seem to notice Chrollo at all, lips curled into a frustrated snarl, hands curling into fists on top of crushed shards of glass. He stumbles to his feet, eyes flashing, weight heavy on his back leg, reaching for his gun at his side, when something seems to catch his eye. He looks over at Chrollo, sitting on the ground behind the bar counter, and startles.
Chrollo lifts a hand, giving him a small wave. Kurapika stares at him.
Then he’s stomping over to where Chrollo is, bending down to grab him by the shirt. Chrollo catches his wrist before he can, forcing Kurapika to halt, their faces mere inches from one another.
“What the fuck are you doing here,” says Kurapika. It’s not a question.
“Hunting,” says Chrollo softly. “And yourself?”
“Defending. What are you hunting?”
“Who,” corrects Chrollo. There’s another shot, this one hitting the wall right behind Kurapika. Kurapika flinches, hard, and his head jerks around. Whatever he sees gets a curse out of him, and he ducks so that he’s behind the counter, crouched beside Chrollo. “You should know that that isn’t going to work. They didn’t know I was here, but they certainly know that you’re here now.”
There’s another shot, and this time, Chrollo feels the vibration of it against his back. It must’ve hit the counter. “Seriously,” he says, mildly annoyed. “I was going to wait this out.”
“You’re sitting here,” Kurapika grumbles, and Chrollo thinks that the adrenaline must be getting to him because he doesn’t even sound all that hateful, this time, “just—behind this fucking counter, like nothing matters, looking for all the world like you’re a bored teenager while there are two groups shooting at each other behind you—”
“It wasn’t a problem until you showed up.”
“I was thrown into the—”
“Like I said,” Chrollo interrupts. Kurapika’s grip tightens in his shirt, the harsh crook of his fingers grazing his chest. Chrollo had almost forgotten his hand was there at all. “Are you planning on staying?”
“Where are you going?”
“Where there aren’t people shooting at each other,” says Chrollo. “I’d prefer to go somewhere more productive.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Are you not part of this gunfight? It looked like you were involved.”
“I’m—tangentially related,” says Kurapika. He huffs. “It doesn’t matter. If you’re leaving, then I’m following you.”
Chrollo’s lip quirks. “To kill me?”
They look at each other.
Then, Kurapika is pulling out his gun, and Chrollo has a knife to Kurapika’s stomach before his finger finds the trigger. Kurapika stills, swaying a little with how fast he stopped himself, eyes searching Chrollo’s. Chrollo swears that he sees the faintest glimmer of red.
Kurapika grabs Chrollo’s wrist, wrenches it away. Chrollo lets him, sheathing the knife. The gun ends up pressed to Chrollo’s side—quiet, like a secret. Hard enough that Chrollo knows it will bruise. He can feel Kurapika’s breath on his neck, ghosting.
“Eventually,” says Kurapika at last. “You said you’re hunting someone?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not concerned that I’ll kill you here, right now?”
Chrollo smiles—just a little, just enough to see Kurapika’s eye twitch. “You won’t,” he says.
Another bullet slams into the bar counter. Chrollo takes that as his cue to stand up. Kurapika stands as well, hand still tangled in his shirt. Chrollo looks down at it, then back up at Kurapika, before turning to walk through the side door behind the bar. Glass crunches under his shoes. He kicks open the door, and it swings wildly on its hinge, nothing to stop it, as the two of them slip through.
Chrollo sits down on the ground again, this time by the stove. He looks up at Kurapika, takes him in full for the first time.
He’s wearing a suit—all black, his white button down splattered with red. The gun is still in his hand, held tight at his side, enough that his knuckles are turning white, the press of his palms red. He cuts a sharp figure, made nearly black and white under the fluorescent lights—blonde hair, pale skin, black suit—but for the blood smeared on his face, leaking from cuts. His hair is still dripping with alcohol. Glass shards litter his shoulders. He smells like something ready to burn.
Kurapika lifts the gun, pointing it at Chrollo. A bullet clicks into place. Chrollo sighs.
“I’m going to wait this out here,” he says. “I assume that exiting this room means that you’ll be targeted again, so you’re welcome to wait with me provided that you don’t try to kill me. You can try another time, if you remain so determined.”
Kurapika presses his lips together. The gun stays pointed at Chrollo.
“Are the rest of the spiders on this ship?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“And you’re here? Alone?”
“I told you. We’re hunting.”
“Separately?”
Chrollo looks up at him, eyelids lowered. “It’s a big ship,” he says.
For whatever reason, this is what gets Kurapika to lower the gun. He takes his finger off of the trigger, but he doesn’t put it away as he goes to sit down across from Chrollo, back to the other stove so that they’re facing each other. Their legs could touch, but Kurapika crosses his, folds them so that his whole frame is more compact, takes up less space.
“Who are you hunting?” asks Kurapika. His voice is hard, cold.
“Hisoka,” says Chrollo. “We’re hunting to kill.”
“A personal reason?”
Isn’t it always. On paper, he supposes, Chrollo is far more easily provoked than he would like to seem. “Yes. He has been—inconvenient.”
He blinks at Kurapika. He’s got a hand pressed to his side under his jacket, and there’s blood dripping from a scratch above his eyebrow. It must hurt, Chrollo thinks, with vodka and whiskey trickling from his hair. “Are your people’s eyes on this ship?”
Kurapika snaps to attention like Chrollo has just shot him, eyes blazing. He’s not wearing his contacts, Chrollo notes with some surprise—there’s a clearer shine to his eyes than Chrollo last saw, the faintest flicker of a bloodred hue smudged against the iris. “Why do you want to know?”
“It’s the only plausible reason you would be somewhere like this.”
Kurapika ignores the implied question. “What did Hisoka do?”
Ah. He’ll like this. Chrollo detaches from himself, looks at Kurapika with dead eyes, an empty face. “He killed some of us,” he says softly. “Weak, proud men don’t take their losses well, it seems.”
There is a short pause. Chrollo does not come back to himself.
“Are you talking about him, or about yourself?”
Kurapika is smiling. Chrollo stares at him. It’s a cruel, sharp, wild thing, carved like a crescent moon stretched too far.
“Look, Lucifer,” he says quietly. “How does it feel?”
Chrollo is not angry. He ignores the rage swelling in his chest, continues searching Kurapika’s face like there is something there, something that he can find and take for himself. He finds nothing to steal, but he thinks he might find something of himself in that smile, the way that Kurapika has kept it just at the edges of mild, pushing it slightly too far, disconcerting.
The perfectly symmetrical stretch of it, Chrollo thinks, that measured distance below each eye, is his own. He has worn this face before. This is something that Kurapika took from him, likely subconsciously.
This is not a person used to taking things from others. It sits unnaturally on his face, like it was never meant to be there at all: an amateur, fists clenched against his nerves under the spotlight before the black void of a faceless audience.
This is not a person capable of independently experiencing this sort of wild, sadistic joy. If it was someone else, Chrollo would think that this would make him kind.
“Careful, Kurta,” he murmurs. “Neither Uvogin nor Pakunoda’s lives were taken unfairly, so I have no reason to chase you, too. But I can make one, if needed.”
“Wouldn’t that be fun,” whispers Kurapika. Or maybe Chrollo is wrong. Maybe he is that kind of person, undiscovered. His voice trembles with something suppressed, the corners of his lips in constant motion. He isn’t smiling anymore. “You chasing me, for once. I’d hate to distract you from your most recent conquest.”
Outside, beyond the doors: a crash, like another person has hit the wall. They don’t look away from each other. The floor is ice under Chrollo’s legs.
A thought strikes him. “May I try something?” he asks, unbidden.
Kurapika makes a face, eyebrows raising. It is an honest expression: far too honest, raw, a reaction in its purest form. It isn’t Chrollo’s face—stolen, mutated, faltering—staring back at him anymore. Chrollo doesn’t blink. “You’re asking? I thought you were supposed to just take what you wanted.”
“I’m not quite sure if this is something that I want. May I try it?”
“Are you going to stab me?”
“No.”
Kurapika looks at him suspiciously. Chrollo tilts his head. After a moment, Kurapika nods slowly.
Chrollo stands. Kurapika watches him carefully as he approaches, taking two steps to cross the short distance between them. He drops into a crouch beside Kurapika.
Chrollo lifts his hands. He cups Kurapika’s face, fingertips brushing first the soft curve of his jaw. His skin is damp with drying alcohol. It still drips from his hair, like seawater. Kurapika’s breath hitches like he’s going to say something, but the words stutter when Chrollo leans forward, knees hitting the cold tiles for balance. He moves like he’s going to jerk backwards, but he doesn’t.
Two fingers settle behind Kurapika’s ear, gentle on that tender point just behind the earlobe, three over his cheeks. His palms wrap Kurapika’s jaw and cheeks. They are nearly nose to nose.
Chrollo’s eyes skate over Kurapika’s face. He has a splattering of faint, sparse freckles beneath his eyes, sun given. Parts of his skin, this close, are tinged red, unevenly colored, and the faintest bumps are visible on parts of his cheeks, his forehead. He’s smeared black eyeliner on the edge of his upper eyelid. There is the faintest, fading gloss to his lips, an ever-so-slight red.
“What are you doing?” asks Kurapika. His voice is strained. He must be confused, searching for anger. He must not know what to do with himself.
And: Chrollo is an actor, and actors are liars. His expression of emotion is a presented, calculated thing, intentionally constructed, and so he recognizes the raw, the spontaneous. Kurapika is the definition of passion, the pinnacle of what the actor attempts to capture: a rage fully felt, tearing itself into existence. He learns Kurapika, learns what he misses, what to mimic, what to steal from those features that have not yet fully grown into themselves and take for his own. If he takes the crook of Kurapika’s lip—uneven, set inwards—when he puts a sarcastic, self-aware edge into his words, or the mild bewilderment he wears when a situation doesn’t quite go the way he planned for, then he can call it inspiration, and the world will think him more human for it. To act is an attempt at proving one’s own humanity, assuring a spot as something beyond animal, beyond corpse. To chase the stage is to search for the difference between the gaze of a corpse and the gaze of an individual willing to lose everyone, cyclical, in pursuit of a hopeless avenging—for the tender spot between, the dead apathy that swallows a brain in mourning.
The actor is a body—empty, hollowed-out, reaching for what he does not know. Chrollo is a liar, and he steals from those who are not. Mimicry—as honor, as they say.
Chrollo tilts his head and presses his lips to a second pair. Kurapika’s are slightly chapped. It is rough. He tastes like alcohol, burning. Kurapika does not move.
A moment passes. Two heartbeats—Chrollo counts. He pulls away.
Kurapika is staring at him. His eyes are red.
For some reason, that feels like a victory.
“You take this, too?” asks Kurapika quietly.
“You gave it to me.”
“I gave you the right to touch. I said nothing about this.”
“You let me.”
Kurapika’s lip curls. It might tremble. Chrollo doesn’t look away from his eyes. “You sound like a creep,” he says, soft. “Have you finally stopped trying to hide it?”
He starts to move away, but Chrollo tightens his hands, digs his fingers into Kurapika’s face—gentle, but firm. Kurapika freezes, like he’s suddenly aware of how close Chrollo’s fingers are to vital points, points that would spit blood if he dug in too hard.
“I’ve never tried to hide anything,” Chrollo murmurs, dropping one hand and slipping the other down to grip Kurapika’s chin, tilting it up. Kurapika sneers, something ugly that sits wrong and crooked on his face, looks down at Chrollo. Chrollo leans forward so that his lips brush Kurapika’s neck, right over the hard thud of his pulse. Kurapika swallows, and Chrollo feels it. “It’s a matter of what people choose to believe. That’s all.”
He pulls away. His hand stays on Kurapika’s chin, and he searches his face, expression blank. Kurapika’s breaths come fast and shallow, like Chrollo has a hand pressed into his ribs instead, pushing into his lungs.
Something like disgust—mild, pitying—twinges at the back of his mind.
“Let go of me,” whispers Kurapika, hoarse. Chrollo doesn’t at first. He pushes closer, tightens his grip hard enough to bruise. A match, he thinks, to the one in the shape of the muzzle of a gun blooming at his side. For a long moment, he just looks at him.
Then, he releases Kurapika, pushing himself to his feet and stepping away. Kurapika drops his head like Chrollo has just cut several taut strings above him, rubbing his chin, before looking up with a harsh, bloody glare. He inhales, chest visibly rising, like he’s coming back to his body. Chrollo watches with a mild expression.
“Well?” he spits, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He’s shaking a little. Chrollo doesn’t know if it’s from rage or something else. But then he looks up, right into Chrollo's eyes. His gaze is unflinching, almost a challenge, and he asks—condescending, mocking, like he's already figured out why Chrollo did this—like he understands something that Chrollo doesn't: “Was that something you wanted?”
He's smiling again. Chrollo leans back, hands in his pockets. He looks up at the ceiling—fluorescent lights, white, burning. The gunfire outside has stopped. “I don’t think so,” he says at last: to the ceiling, to the lights. Too honest, perhaps, but he has forgotten what that word means at all. His chest is empty. His heart beats something slow, uninterrupted. He gropes for something more, for a flicker of something, anything, and comes up empty, water slipping through his fingers. Alcohol dries stiff and salty in Kurapika’s hair. “It seems that I hated it, too.”