Work Text:
I was listening to this while writing this.
⋆⁺₊✧ ♬ ₊.🎧⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
The cabin was too small for two people who wanted each other dead.
Kurapika had known Chrollo Lucilfer was aboard the Black Whale before they'd even cleared the harbor. He'd felt it like a low-grade fever, that crawling alertness his body had never learned to shake. Four years since York New, and Kurapika's skin still prickled before his eyes ever found Chrollo in a room.
What he hadn't accounted for was the room assignment.
"Administrative error," Cheadle had told him, her voice clipped and unapologetic. "We're at capacity. You'll manage."
He would manage. He'd managed worse.
The problem was the drink.
It had been offered at the Tier 1 reception, a pale pink liquid in a crystal glass, carried on silver trays by attendants who moved like ghosts between the Zodiacs and the Kakin royals. Kurapika had taken couple of sips to be polite, tasted honey and cardamom and an undercurrent of citrus that burned on the way down, and set it aside.
That had been forty minutes ago.
Now, back in the shared cabin with his Kurta robes laid across the narrow cot and the remnants of the evening's disguise still clinging to his skin (the dress, the wig, the careful feminine posture he'd perfected years ago for infiltration work), Kurapika pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the cabin wall and tried to make sense of what was happening to him.
His pulse was running too fast. Skin oversensitive, prickling where the fabric of the dress brushed his collarbones, his inner arms, the backs of his knees. A slow, rolling heat had settled low in his belly sometime between the reception hall and the corridor, and it wasn't subsiding. If anything, it was building, tightening, spreading outward through his limbs like ink through water.
Nen-laced. The drink had been Nen-laced.
He pressed harder against the wall, the metal biting into his skull. His heart was hammering, pupils felt stretched wide, and every surface his skin touched sent a flare of heat lancing through him. oh...Arousal. Persistent, maddening, completely indiscriminate arousal that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with whatever was currently dissolving into his bloodstream.
He needed to change. Get out of this dress, get into his robes, drink water, meditate, ride it out.
He reached behind his back for the zipper and his fingers were shaking.
"Trouble?"
Kurapika's hand dropped. Chrollo stood in the cabin doorway, shoulder against the frame, eyes tracing Kurapika head to toe with an attention that made his teeth ache. Like he was reading a book he'd already decided to steal.
"Get out." Kurapika spit, struggling with his blue dress.
"This is my room as well." Chrollo stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him, lock latched with a click that sounded, to Kurapika's overstimulated ears, obscenely loud.
His gaze dragged over Kurapika from the heeled shoes to the white-knuckled grip on the cot's edge. "You look flushed."
Kurapika's tongue was thick in his mouth. He swallowed and tasted honey residue from the drink. "I'm fine."
Chrollo's gaze tracked down the length of him, slow and deliberate, taking in the dress (midnight blue, high-necked, slit to the thigh for mobility), the sweat beading along his hairline, the tremor in his hands he couldn't quite suppress. "You drank the hua-lei."
His eyes went wide, "The what?"
"Kakin aphrodisiac. The sixth prince has been distributing it through the reception staff." Chrollo shrugged off his coat and draped it over the back of the single chair, then rolled his sleeves to his forearms, unhurried, like this was a conversation about the weather. "It's Nen-enhanced. Derived from a parasitic plant native to the Azian continent. The effects are..." He paused, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Considerable."
"How do you know what it is." Kurapika glared at him.
"Because Shalnark flagged it before we boarded. I declined my glass."
Of course he had. Of course Chrollo Lucilfer had identified the trap and sidestepped it, while Kurapika had walked straight into it because he'd been too focused on maintaining his cover to scan a cocktail. His fingers curled into fists at his sides and the pressure of his own nails against his palms sent a jolt of sensation up his wrists that made his breath hitch.
Chrollo heard it, he tilted his chin, eyes narrowing.
"It rewires your skin," he continued, conversational, settling into the chair like he planned to stay. "Everything you touch will feel amplified. Your restraint thins out. Duration varies, six to ten hours, depending on how much you swallowed."
"Six to ten hours," Kurapika repeated.
"You had couple of sips, by my count. So closer to six." Chrollo crossed one leg over the other. "Unless you'd like me to leave. In which case you'll spend the next six hours alone in this room, climbing the walls. Literally, possibly."
As his words washed over Kurapika, his body heat pulsed. Kurapika gripped the edge of the cot harder, and the friction of his fingertips against the rough wool blanket sent sparks skittering up his arm and across his chest. His nipples peaked under the thin fabric of the dress and he watched Chrollo watch it happen, those dark eyes drop to his chest and linger there, pupils swelling.
"You're enjoying this," Kurapika gritted out.
Chrollo tilted his head, and the corner of his mouth curled. He didn't deny it.
"Don't look at me like that." Kurapika snarled at him, covering his chest.
"Like what?" Chrollo's fingers laced together over one knee. "You'll have to be more specific."
Kurapika whimpered at the pain of being overdressed.
Chrollo's mouth lost its smug smirk. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped.
"Let me help you with the zipper."
Kurapika laughed before he could swallow it. "Touch me and I will kill you."
"You've been trying to kill me for four years. And here we are."
"Here we are," Kurapika agreed, and the anger in his voice was real but the effect of it was blurring, softening under the warmth flooding his system. He needed to change. He couldn't reach the zipper. He couldn't ask Chrollo Lucilfer for help undressing and maintain any semblance of the hatred that had kept him alive since he was twelve years old.
He reached back again, fingers scraping uselessly between his shoulder blades, and the stretch pulled the dress tight across his chest and stomach, and Chrollo's gaze followed every line of tension in the fabric like he was memorizing it.
"Turn around," Chrollo murmured.
Kurapika's shoulders squared, causing every muscle in his back went rigid, and he kept his eyes locked on the far wall where a water stain bloomed across the riveted panels.
"You can't reach it yourself. You know this. I know this." Chrollo stood, and the cabin shrank. He was taller than Kurapika remembered, or maybe the heels weren't as high as he'd thought, or maybe the drug was warping his sense of distance along with everything else. His voice dropped lower, intense, savoring Kurapika's full name on his tongue. "Turn around, Kurapika."
Kurapika turned around, Chrollo smelled like musk and mint.
He heard Chrollo close the distance, his body heat collided before his hands did, a wall of warmth at his back that his body curved toward without permission. Then fingers at the nape of his neck, brushing the clasp of the wig first (he'd forgotten the wig, the blonde was pinned beneath it), and the touch was light, careful, almost detached, and it hit his nerves with waves of shock.
His knees buckled, and Chrollo's hand was on his hip before he felt it, fingers spanning the jut of bone through the thin fabric. Kurapika bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood.
"Sensitive," Chrollo noted, his breath ghosting over the exposed skin at the back of Kurapika's neck, and his voice had dropped, thicker now, rougher at the edges.
"Drink, hua-lei. You said it heightens—"
"I know what I said." Chrollo's breath hit his naked shoulder, Kurapika shuddered.
The wig came free first. Chrollo set it aside (where? Kurapika didn't care, couldn't track it) and the pins followed, each one drawn out with careful fingers that grazed his scalp, and every point of contact lit up like a flare. His real hair tumbled loose, shorter than the wig, still long enough to brush his jaw, and Chrollo's hand lingered at the crown of his head for one beat too long.
Then he focused on the zipper.
He drew the zipper down tooth by tooth. The sound of it was deafening in the small cabin, a metallic whisper that tracked down the center of Kurapika's spine like a fingernail. Cold air hit the newly exposed skin and he shuddered hard, full-body convolusing, and behind him Chrollo exhaled through his nose sharply.
"You should step back," Kurapika managed. His voice didn't sound like his own. Too low, too rough, wrecked already and nobody had done anything yet.
"I should."
The zipper reached the small of his back. Chrollo's knuckles had been dragging against bare skin for the last several inches, and at the base of the zip his hand went still, resting against the dip of Kurapika's spine, heavy and unhurried.
Neither of them moved, Kurapika breathed heavily, chest rising and falling.
"I have killed for less than this," Kurapika whispered.
"Yes." Chrollo's thumb swept a single arc across the knob of his vertebra. "But not tonight."
Kurapika spun. The dress slipped off one shoulder with the motion, baring the line of his collarbone and the strap of a thin camisole underneath (he'd needed the silhouette, the disguise required layers), and Chrollo looked at him, and whatever mask he'd been wearing cracked.
The hunger in his face was naked and open, stripped of his cocky philosophy and performance, just the raw thing Chrollo kept locked behind his teeth every other waking moment he refused to show it to others.
Kurapika grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand the rest of the way, pressing Chrollo's palm flush to his jaw, and the contact was exhilarating and exquisite. His eyes flared scarlet, the burn of it searing behind his lids, and Chrollo inhaled sharp enough to cut, his fingers tightening reflexively against Kurapika's cheekbone.
"Your eyes," he breathed, lips parting in wonder.
"Chrollo." Kurapika could feel Chrollo's pulse hammering under his thumb, fast, faster than it should have been for a man who hadn't touched the hua-lei. "Don't look at them like that. Don't look at them like they're yours."
"They're not," Chrollo murmured, and his voice came out quieter than Kurapika had ever heard it, stripped of its authority. His free hand found the dress at Kurapika's shoulder, pushed it down his arm, knuckles grazing the curve of his shoulder. He traced the strap underneath with his thumb, featherlight, and Kurapika's breath caught in his teeth. "You are nothing of mine. I am very aware of this. And it's killing me. Has been, since York New."
"Then what are you doing...?" Kurapika whispered, and it was accusation more than question, his fingers tightening on Chrollo's wrist.
Chrollo's throat bobbed. "Burning."
He kissed him.
Or Chrollo kissed him. Or they crashed into each other at the same time, violent, clumsy, tasting copper from where Kurapika had bitten his own cheek. Chrollo's hand slid from his jaw to the back of his skull, fingers knotting in his hair, and Kurapika's hands fisted in the front of his shirt and yanked him closer, and there was nothing tender about any of it. Teeth caught his lower lip and he gasped against Chrollo's mouth and felt the answering groan vibrate through his chest.
The dress pooled at his waist. Chrollo pushed him back toward the cot without breaking the kiss, hands gripping his bare sides, and Kurapika's skin was so sensitized that every inch of contact sent heat lancing through him. He arched into it, hating himself, hating the noise that tore out of his throat when Chrollo's mouth dragged down the side of his neck and bit down at his throat, his jaw and along the junction of his shoulder, marking his body.
"More," Kurapika snarled, it was desperate than a plea.
Chrollo pulled back just far enough to look at him, pupils blown black, hair falling across his forehead, mouth swollen. The bandage across his forehead where the cross tattoo hid was starting to peel at one corner. He looked ruined, and Kurapika wanted to ruin him further.
"Say that again," Chrollo demanded, and his voice had gone rough, stripped of its usual lacquer.
Kurapika held his gaze and let the silence stretch until it hurt. He would not repeat himself. Not for Chrollo. Chrollo knew this, and his mouth twisted with a laugh that sounded startled out of him, genuine, the least calculated sound Kurapika had ever heard him make. He dropped to his knees.
The dress was tangled at Kurapika's hips and Chrollo pulled it the rest of the way down, taking the thin layer underneath with it. His fingers hooked the waistband of Kurapika's briefs and paused, a question in the stillness, and Kurapika sucked in a breath and shifted his weight so Chrollo could drag them off. Cold air hit him everywhere at once and he grabbed for Chrollo's shoulders because his legs were going to give out.
Chrollo pressed his mouth to the jut of bone above Kurapika's groin, it was hot, tongue dragging along the ridge of it, and Kurapika's head dropped back, his fingers digging into the muscle of Chrollo's shoulders hard enough to leave marks through the shirt.
"I should stop you," Kurapika gasped. "I should, this is—"
"Tell me to stop and I will." Chrollo's lips moved against his skin, words pressed into the dip below his navel. His hands were wrapped around the backs of Kurapika's thighs, steadying him, thumbs stroking the sensitive inner skin, and each press of his lips sent another wave of the hua-lei rolling through him. "I've never lied to you, Kurapika. I won't start now."
That was true. Chrollo had done many things, terrible things, unforgivable things, but he had never lied. He'd told Kurapika exactly what he was from the beginning.
Kurapika didn't tell him to stop.
Chrollo's mouth traced lower, his lips dragging across the soft albeit firm skin of Kurapika's stomach, and he pressed his tongue into the groove beside his navel, tasting the salt pooling there. His hands slid up the outside of Kurapika's thighs, over the swell of his waist, mapping the lines of his ribs with his thumbs, counting each one like he was committing them to memory. Kurapika's stomach caved under the attention, muscles clenching, and Chrollo exhaled against the tremor with his eyes half-closed.
He kissed the notch of Kurapika's lowest rib. Dragged his teeth along the skin below it and found the scar on his left side, a thin pale line from a knife fight years ago, and traced it end to end with his tongue, slow and thorough, as if he could read its history through taste alone.
Kurapika's hand pressed on the top of Chrollo's head, fingers curling into his hair, anchoring himself there.
Chrollo didn't rush. He turned his head and kissed the inside of Kurapika's wrist, the one still tangled in his hair, lips pressing against the vein where his pulse hammered. Then he moved back down, mouth open against Kurapika's sternum, breathing him in, and Kurapika felt the vibration of a low sound Chrollo swallowed before it became anything recognizable.
He kissed the hollow below Kurapika's navel. Nosed along the crease of his thigh, breath hot and close, and Kurapika's leg jerked, his heel scraping the floor. Chrollo steadied him with a hand behind his knee and pressed his cheek against Kurapika's stomach, staying there, just breathing him in, like he was trying to memorize this before it was taken from him.
"Chrollo," Kurapika gritted, and it came out ragged, stripped of the venom he meant it to carry.
Chrollo looked up at him from beneath his lashes, mouth still pressed to skin, and the question in his eyes was clear. Kurapika tightened his grip.
Chrollo turned his head and kissed the inside of Kurapika's thigh, open-mouthed, tongue pressing into the muscle. Then the other thigh, slower, teeth grazing the skin there, and Kurapika's knees threatened to fold. Chrollo's hands slid around to grip his hips and hold him upright while his mouth worked higher, kissing along the crease where thigh met groin, lips brushing the coarse hair there, breath coming heavier now. He nuzzled against Kurapika's length, not taking him in yet, just pressing his mouth along the shaft, and Kurapika heard himself make a sound he'd never made before, high, wrecked and furious.
"Stop teasing," Kurapika growled, his fingers twisting in Chrollo's hair.
Chrollo's lips parted against the head of him, tongue tracing a slow circle, tasting him, and Kurapika's hips stuttered forward. Chrollo let him, took the first inch with a groan that vibrated through both of them, and then sank lower, mouth stretching wet and hot around him, and Kurapika's vision whited out. The hua-lei had turned his entire body into a livewire and Chrollo's mouth was the current, devastating, and the sound that ripped out of Kurapika was barely human. His hips jerked forward and Chrollo took it, took all of it, hands tightening on his hips, and the rumble of another groan against his length sent Kurapika's grip tightening, yanking hard.
Chrollo's eyes flicked up, deep darkness, intent, consuming. Looking at Kurapika while he took him apart, and the visual of it, Chrollo Lucilfer on his knees with his mouth full and his eyes like that, burned itself into Kurapika's memory with the permanence of a scar.
"F-fuck," Kurapika breathed, his words jumbled and broke. His thighs were shaking. Chrollo's tongue did something wickedly sensual and Kurapika doubled over him, forehead pressing against the top of his skull, both hands in his hair now, pulling hard enough that it had to hurt. Chrollo responded by swallowing deeper, and the noise he made, guttural, hungry, like this was something he needed rather than something he was giving, destroyed the last coherent thought in Kurapika's head.
He came with Chrollo's name lodged between his teeth like a shard of glass, biting it back because saying it would mean something he wasn't ready to mean.
Chrollo swallowed him and drew back slowly, pressing his lips to the inside of Kurapika's thigh as he went, and the gentleness of it after the intensity of everything else made Kurapika's chest cavity clench like a fist.
"Don't be gentle with me," Kurapika rasped. "I can't stand it when you're gentle."
Chrollo rose to his feet and cupped Kurapika's face in both hands, he kissed him, and Kurapika tasted himself in Chrollo's mouth, salt and musk, and his scarlet eyes were still blazing and he didn't care.
"The cot," Kurapika ordered, shoving him backward. Chrollo went down and sat on the edge, Kurapika climbed into his lap and felt him hard beneath the fabric of his trousers and rolled his hips and watched Chrollo's careful demeanor shattered.
"Kurapika—" Chrollo's hands found his waist, gripping hard, fingertips biting into flesh. His head tipped back, throat exposed, and the trust implicit in that gesture from a man who trusted nothing and no one made Kurapika want to put his mouth there and bite until he bled.
So he did, he didn't make it easy, tasted his blood, he licked and sucked harder.
Chrollo groaned brokenly, his hips bucking up, and Kurapika ground down against him, feeling every ridge of him through the fabric, the hua-lei still singing through his nervous system and rebuilding his arousal like stoking a fire that hadn't finished burning.
"You don't get to have this," Kurapika hissed against his throat, sucking a bruise into the skin below his jaw. "You don't get to keep this."
"I know." Chrollo's fingers dug harder into his waist. "I know, I know."
"Then why—"
"Because you're the only thing I've ever wanted that I can't justify stealing." Chrollo's voice was wrecked, stripped bare, all the silk torn off to reveal the raw thing underneath. His hands dragged up Kurapika's back, nails raking lines that would still be visible tomorrow. "And it's killing me slowly. Every time I see you, it gets worse."
Kurapika pulled back enough to look at him. Chrollo's eyes were glassy, dark as oil, his mouth bitten red. The bandage on his forehead had come loose entirely, and the tattooed cross was stark against his flushed skin.
"W-what do you mean by it?" Kurapika whispered. "You know what, I can't handle these emotions right now."
He reached between them, unfastened Chrollo's trousers with fingers that were still trembling (the drug, always the drug, he could blame the drug), and wrapped his hand around him and watched the leader of the Phantom Troupe come apart like a man who'd forgotten how.
Chrollo's breath punched out of him. His head dropped forward, forehead pressing against Kurapika's collarbone, and his hands shook where they held Kurapika's hips. He groaned against Kurapika's skin, muffled, swallowing half of it before it escaped.
Kurapika stroked him slow, being deliberately cruel, twisting at the head, thumbing the slick gathering there, and Chrollo's teeth sank into his collarbone and the pain was exquisite, bright and clarifying, cutting through the haze of the hua-lei like a blade.
"Faster," Chrollo gritted against his skin. "Kurapika, faster, I—"
Kurapika tightened his grip and slowed further, dragging his thumb in a slow circle, and the sound Chrollo made was wounded, animal, stripped of every layer of sophistication he wore like armor. He lifted his head, visage was open in a way Kurapika had never seen, not in four years of hunting him, fighting him, dreaming about him in the dark hours he'd never admit to. Chrollo looked desperate and furiously aching.
"You're cruel," Chrollo rasped, his voice hoarse.
Kurapika leaned close enough that his lips brushed Chrollo's ear. "I learned from you."
Kurapika kissed him again and quickened his hand, he swallowed every sound Chrollo made as he came apart, hips jerking, fingers bruising crescents into Kurapika's waist.
They breathed against each other for a few seconds. Chrollo's forehead dropped to Kurapika's shoulder, his chest heaving, and Kurapika stared at the ceiling of the cabin and waited for the hua-lei to release its hold.
It didn't...
The heat rebuilt within minutes, crawling back through his veins, pooling low in his gut with a viciousness that made the first wave feel tame. His cock stirred again against Chrollo's stomach and he hissed through his teeth, nails biting into Chrollo's shoulders.
"It's not enough," Kurapika admitted and flushed more.
Chrollo lifted his head. His eyes searched Kurapika's face, and whatever he found there made his throat work around a swallow. "What do you need?"
Kurapika's jaw ached from clenching so hard, he wanted to admit. He knew what he needed. His body was screaming it, every nerve alight, the hua-lei demanding more contact, deeper, closer. He could feel the emptiness of it like a physical ache, a hollowness that his own hand or Chrollo's mouth couldn't fill.
"You know what I need," Kurapika ground out. "Don't make me say it."
Chrollo's hands stilled on his waist. "I won't assume. Tell me."
What a bastard, Chrollo an absolute bastard, sitting there flushed and wrecked with Kurapika in his lap, making him ask for it. Kurapika grabbed a fistful of his hair and wrenched his head back.
"I need you inside me." He spaced each word deliberately. "And if you say one word about it afterward, I will chain your heart and crush it in my fist."
Chrollo's pupils swallowed what was left of his irises. His hands tightened on Kurapika's waist, thumbs pressing hard enough to bruise, and the sound he made was guttural, carnal, torn loose before he could catch it.
"Where—"
"I have it." Chrollo lifted his hand between them, fingers spread, and his aura shifted. Kurapika felt it through his own Nen, a subtle change in the texture of Chrollo's output, his En contracting and thickening around his palm until a slick, warm residue coated his fingers. Transmutation, or one of the stolen abilities in that book of his. Kurapika didn't ask which.
"Of course you have a Hatsu for this," Kurapika hissed.
"It has other applications." Chrollo's mouth twitched. "This one is more enjoyable."
Chrollo's hand moved toward him but Kurapika caught his wrist and guided those slicked fingers to his own, pressing them together until the warm residue transferred.
"I'll do it myself."
Chrollo's eyes went dark. He leaned back on his palms and watched as Kurapika slicked his own fingers, reaching behind himself, and the first press inside made him gasp, his free hand bracing against Chrollo's chest. Chrollo's stomach muscles contracted under his thighs, his breathing gone shallow, and his hands gripped the edge of the cot on either side of him like he was keeping himself from reaching out by force.
Kurapika worked himself open with impatient, rough strokes, two fingers, then three, his forehead dropping to Chrollo's shoulder, teeth gritted against the stretch. The hua-lei turned even this into pleasure, every nerve ending firing, and he rocked back against his own hand with a choked moan.
"Kurapika." Chrollo's voice had gone hoarse. "Let me—"
"Shut up." Kurapika lifted his head, eyes blazing scarlet, and wrapped his slicked hand around Chrollo, stroking once, coating him, and the noise Chrollo made, broken and desperate, fed something vicious and starving in Kurapika's chest.
He lined himself up and sank down.
Thick stretch burned, pulsing and overwhelming, and Kurapika's mouth fell open on a silent cry. His hands clamped onto Chrollo's shoulders and his thighs shook, trembling with the effort of controlling the descent, taking inch after inch until he was fully seated and his vision had gone hazy at the edges.
Chrollo wasn't breathing. His head was tipped back, throat bared, the cords of his neck straining, every muscle drawn taut. His hands hovered at Kurapika's hips, barely touching.
"Move," Kurapika ordered.
Chrollo's hips snapped up, obliging him.
Kurapika's spine arched. The angle drove Chrollo deep, punching the air out of his lungs, and the hua-lei magnified every sensation until pleasure and pain blurred into one. He rolled his hips to meet the next thrust, and the next, finding a rhythm that was brutal and rough and exactly what his body had been demanding.
Chrollo's composure splintered. He fucked up into Kurapika with his hands finally gripping his hips hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises, his mouth hanging open, sweat tracking down his temples.
"You feel—" Chrollo started, and his voice broke.
"Don't talk." Kurapika ground down, clenching around him, and Chrollo's head slammed back against the wall behind the cot. The thud was loud enough to echo in the small cabin. Kurapika did it again, harder, and Chrollo's fingers dug so deep into his hips that Kurapika felt the bruises forming in real time.
The hua-lei was roaring through him now, every thrust feeding it and starving it at once, building toward a peak that felt like it might crack him open. Kurapika braced both hands against the wall above Chrollo's head and fucked himself down onto him with single-minded ferocity, his thighs screaming, his breath coming in ragged sobs.
Chrollo wrapped a hand around Kurapika's cock, stroking in time with his thrusts, and Kurapika cursed, his rhythm faltering, his body clenching tight around Chrollo.
"Come for me," Chrollo rasped, and there was no smugness in it nor any performance, he sounded wrecked and begging. "Kurapika, please—"
His please did it. Chrollo Lucilfer, begging. Kurapika came with a cry that he buried in Chrollo's neck, his whole body seizing, spilling over Chrollo's fist and across both their stomachs. Chrollo followed seconds later, his hips stuttering up in three hard, uneven thrusts, his mouth pressed open against Kurapika's shoulder, his groan muffled in skin.
The hua-lei loosened its grip. The maddening heat drained from Kurapika's limbs in slow degrees, leaving behind warmth, exhaustion, and the dull ache of muscles pushed past their limit.
They stayed tangled together on the narrow cot, breathing hard, neither speaking coming down from their high. Kurapika could feel Chrollo softening inside him and the intimacy of it was worse than everything that had come before. He lifted himself off with a wince, and Chrollo's hands fell away from his hips without resistance.
Kurapika pulled away first.
He stood, legs unsteady, and crossed the cabin to where his Kurta robes were folded. He cleaned himself with the small towel from the washstand and pulled the tunic over his head, wrapped the tabard around his waist, secured the sash. Behind him, he heard the splash of water from the basin, the rustle of clothing being rearranged.
"The remaining effects will fade in an hour or so," Chrollo offered, and his voice was almost normal again. Almost.
Kurapika tightened the sash. His fingers were steadier now, the hua-lei fading to a low hum beneath his skin, and with it went whatever temporary insanity had let him put his mouth on Chrollo Lucilfer's throat and bite down.
"Kurapika."
He kept his back to him and smoothed a crease in the tabard. He pretended to count the rivets on the far wall because looking at Chrollo right now would undo every stitch of composure he was pulling back into place.
"What you said earlier." Kurapika addressed it to the wall. His fingers worked the crease in the tabard flat, pressing harder than necessary. "About not being able to justify stealing me."
The rustle of clothing behind him stopped.
"What about it," Chrollo replied.
"Did you mean it." Kurapika's throat tightened around the question. He shouldn't be asking. He should walk out and let the hua-lei take the blame for everything that had happened in this cabin and never bring it up again. "Or was that the performance."
Silence that followed almost caused Kurapika to run out. Then the creak of the bed as Chrollo shifted his weight.
"I have performed for you before, Kurapika. You know what that looks like. That wasn't it."
Kurapika's hand clenched in the fabric of his sash. His scarlet eyes were still fading, the last crimson embers cooling at the edges of his irises, and he could feel Chrollo watching the color drain from them even with his back turned.
"Then you have a problem," Kurapika mumbled quietly, his heart beating at a maddening pace.
"I'm aware." Chrollo inhaled.
"Because I will never be yours. You understand that." Kurapika gripped his robe.
"I've understood that since York New."
Kurapika turned around. Chrollo was back on the cot, coat pulled across his lap, hands resting on his knees, looking at Kurapika with nothing left on his face to hide behind.
"You could have lied, it would've been easier." Kurapika swallowed a sob.
"I told you, I'd never lie to you." Chrollo smiled. "Because the hua-lei wasn't the only thing making it impossible to keep quiet tonight."
"I need air," He left the cabin without another word and did not think about Chrollo's smile, or what it meant that he had asked for the truth and Chrollo had given it.