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The door opened before Kurapika’s knuckles made contact. Leorio’s towering frame filled the entire space, and judging by his round eyes and slack jaw, he had not expected to find someone on the other side.
“Hello,” Kurapika said simply.
After several seconds of dead air, he raised an eyebrow. “May I come in?”
Leorio was still searching for his voice, so Kurapika invited himself inside. His shoulder brushed against Leorio’s elbow as he slipped past. He heard Leorio’s teeth click together like a trap.
Kurapika walked to the center of the living room and turned in a slow circle. He took in the familiar shabby couch and chairs, the threadbare carpet, the limp curtains that at some point in their lifespan might have been white. Despite its modest furnishings, the room was scrupulously clean. Buttery light flooded the western-facing window, and on the narrow coffee table was a brown mug blooming with wild daisies. Where Leorio had gotten his hands on those in the middle of a smog-choked city, Kurapika had no idea.
“It’s been ten months,” Leorio pointed out, sounding altogether winded. He shut the door and joined Kurapika.
Kurapika didn’t respond, but let his gaze rake across the small room until it finally came to rest on Leorio. Though he was obviously still shaken by the sudden company, he was gathering his features in what promised to be a truly impressive scowl.
“Y’know, Kurapika,” he said, grinding his teeth. “Most people would call before appearing like a bolt from the blue.”
Kurapika matched Leorio’s blistering stare with utter impassivity.
“I thought I would surprise you,” he said calmly.
Leorio’s eyes widened. Something in them softened: just slightly. But Kurapika saw, and filed it away in a deep vault for him to withdraw and pore over at some undetermined future date, a miser over his gold.
“Well, you succeeded,” Leorio muttered, looking down. His gaze fell to the object in Kurapika’s left hand.
“What’s that?”
Kurapika didn’t answer. His attention was drawn to the only detail of the room that didn’t fit his memory. It sat on top of a small table against the wall, and it also seemed to be the only thing in the entire apartment that had cost real money.
“A terrarium?” he asked, genuinely bewildered.
Leorio coughed into his fist, half-covering a bark of laughter.
“Yeah. It’s…new.”
Kurapika approached the glass tank, peering through the rocks, sticks, and greenery for any sign of motion.
“Gon’s gift,” Leorio said, by way of explanation.
Kurapika looked over his shoulder, arching an eyebrow. “Gon got you a terrarium for your birthday?”
Leorio shook his head. One of his eyelids seemed to be twitching.
“No. Inside.”
Kurapika examined the terrarium again, searching the little habitat for signs of life. After a few seconds, he saw it: the sleek, fluid shape uncoiling itself from the shadows. It flowed across the pebbles at the bottom of the tank, moving with alarming speed, and wound its long, mottled body around a stick. Kurapika stared at its dart-shaped head. Its pale, forked tongue flickered lightning-quick, tasting the air.
“Gon gave you a snake?” His voice rose in shock.
“Yeah. Apparently she’s not poisonous.”
Kurapika straightened, looking from the snake to Leorio.
“She?”
Leorio’s shoulders had migrated up to his ears in a sort of permanent shrug. “Well…I haven’t named her yet.”
“Was the terrarium part of the gift?” asked Kurapika. “Or did Gon just hand you a snake?”
“No…no.” Leorio scratched the back of his neck, looking away. “The terrarium was…later.”
Kurapika’s lips twitched at the sheer absurdity of it.
“So you had a snake loose in your apartment.”
“No!” Leorio bridled, drawing himself up to his full, terrifying height. “I’m not an idiot, Kurapika. I had a snake loose in my bathroom.”
When the ridiculousness of that distinction clicked into place, Leorio’s cheeks and ears suffused dark red. Then his shoulders slumped, and he spread his hands in supplication.
“What was I supposed to do?” he asked earnestly.
Kurapika stared at him, his cheeks aching with the effort of holding back a smile. Leorio was so delightfully himself. He still managed to fill a room with the boisterous gale of his presence.
Kurapika’s lips finally curved upward, and Leorio’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“What’s so funny?” he barked.
Kurapika caught the inside of his cheek between his teeth, shaking his head slowly.
“That just sounds…so like something Gon would do,” he said. “Snake first, think later.”
Leorio’s face opened, and he laughed in delighted surprise. The sound of it was warm and healthy.
And Kurapika, whose heart was a dark, quiet lake, felt a ripple pass across the surface. Something was stirring. Something tender and starved. Something that had lain dormant for so long, he hadn’t recognized its quickening.
He went very still.
“Snake first, think later,” Leorio agreed, still chuckling.
They both sat on the very low, very secondhand couch, which necessitated Leorio nearly folding himself in half. He picked up the bottle Kurapika had set on the table, eyes flicking over the label.
His eyebrows furrowed, then rose so sharply they almost met his hairline.
“Holy shit—!” he choked.
“Yes?” Kurapika asked, all innocence.
“This is—where did you—how did you even find this?!”
Kurapika ran a thumb casually along the inside of his sleeve.
“Being a mafia kingpin does come with its perks, I suppose.”
He waited for that laugh again, waited for the wind to disturb the lake. But it didn’t come.
He looked at Leorio out of the corner of his eye and realized he was in trouble.
“That was a joke,” he quickly clarified.
“Was it?” Leorio asked, his tone a warning.
Kurapika looked back down at his fingers, examining his nails closely. He was careful not to move a single muscle in his face, which became progressively more of a challenge as Leorio’s eyes burned into his skin.
“Clearly a bad one,” he muttered. “Heavens, Leorio, is it really so incomprehensible that I have a sense of humor?”
“Yes!”
Kurapika shot him a glance at the unflatteringly fast response. Leorio’s face was pinched, and when Kurapika met his eyes, he recognized something in them he hadn’t seen in some time. It twisted his heart like a dishrag to see Leorio’s face full of that old misery: the futile agony he reserved for when Kurapika had done something outstandingly self-destructive.
He sighed, leaning back against the couch and crossing his legs.
“I was on a job for a Yorknew wine merchant—entirely aboveboard and legal, so you can put all that righteous indignation away—and she tacked on a bonus,” he explained coldly. “You’re welcome.”
Leorio’s attention returned to the bottle, inspecting it with reverential care.
It was a rather ugly thing, the cork almost blackened with age. The label had peeled off at the corners, leaving little but the name and year legible.
“Kurapika,” said Leorio quietly. “You should have kept this.”
Kurapika kept his tone even. “And why is that?”
Leorio’s long fingers traced the weathered label, his thumb smoothing out the corner.
“Well, unless you got two,” he mused.
“I did not,” said Kurapika. “Regardless, I’m not much of a sommelier. That particular vintage would be entirely wasted on me.”
Leorio set the bottle down, so gently, like it might be shattered with a breath. Kurapika knew the sturdy glass had survived much worse, but Leorio’s careful handling of it was endearing.
“I suppose I should thank you,” he said. He turned to look at Kurapika, dragging a hand through his hair and standing it even more on end: a nervous habit he would never break.
“You could,” Kurapika acknowledged. “Or, you could just uncork it.”
Leorio blinked. “Right now?”
“Why not?”
A blush crept up his neck.
“I was kinda thinking I’d…save it.”
“For what?” Kurapika tilted his head, genuinely curious.
“I don’t know. My last meal?”
Kurapika frowned. “That seems like a terrific waste.”
Leorio’s mouth curled mockingly. “Now who’s missing the joke, huh?”
Kurapika lifted his chin in disdain.
“It was not particularly funny.”
“And yours was?!”
“It was a jab at my checkered past. Yours was just morbid.”
Leorio opened his mouth to retort, but shut it again, grinding his jaw. His nose and ears were an angry red. At some point during the short disagreement, he had leaned into Kurapika’s space, dramatically lessening the distance between them. As Leorio apparently realized this, a tight, breathless little sound broke from him.
Then, his eyes slid to Kurapika’s mouth.
The air shifted, heavy and warm, almost claustrophobic. Kurapika’s mouth was as dry as sand. He swallowed, and Leorio’s gaze dropped from his lips, hungrily following the movement of his throat.
“So,” Kurapika said. He seemed unable to speak louder than a whisper. “When would you open it, then?”
“Uh?” Leorio tore his eyes away from Kurapika’s neck, looking rather dazed.
“The wine,” Kurapika clarified. “When would…?”
He trailed off, short on air. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he blinked away the dizziness. But the smell of Leorio was strong: soap, and coffee, and something with no name except Leorio, and it filled Kurapika with the unbearable, insane urge to hold him, to cling there until he dissolved like sugar.
“You want to know?” Leorio asked. His hands curled into tense fists on the couch, knuckles jutting bone-white against the skin.
Kurapika made a vague noise of assent. He was certain that words were, at this moment, quite beyond his power. Leorio’s breath was against his cheek.
“I have no idea.”
And then their lips connected, open and starving. Leorio’s hands flew off the couch, trapping Kurapika’s jaw, pulling him close, closer, desperately erasing every centimeter of emptiness between them. Kurapika fastened his fingers around the front of his shirt, drawing himself up into the kiss. He opened for Leorio’s tongue and felt him moan, the sound shocking every nerve in his body awake.
Kurapika bit Leorio’s lower lip, carefully worrying it between his teeth, and then pulled away. The strangled groan that broke from Leorio’s throat nearly unraveled him. But Kurapika wanted to look. He wanted to see the delicate crescents his teeth had left on Leorio’s lip. He wanted to see the shiny slick of saliva on his chin, and the feverish need in his half-lidded eyes. With firm fingers, Kurapika pried Leorio’s hands off of him. Then he twisted his body, rising on one knee and swinging his leg over Leorio’s lap, straddling him.
Leorio stared up at him, his mouth agape.
“I probably should have mentioned,” Kurapika said. “That was only half of your gift.”
It looked like Leorio was about to say something, but Kurapika hooked his thumb in the corner of his mouth, encouraging him to open wider. He complied, and when Kurapika kissed him, wicked and heavy and wet, his eyes rolled back in his head. His hips surged upward as Kurapika sucked languidly on his tongue.
“Shh,” Kurapika stole a shallow breath from the humid air between them, his heart hammering all the way in his temples. He lifted himself up, leaning on his knees against Leorio’s broad chest. Leorio whined at the loss of friction, his head sinking onto Kurapika’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” he grunted. “It’s been—a while—”
Kurapika’s fingers drifted against Leorio’s face. His thumb feathered across the shell of his ear, the tender flesh just under the jawbone. Leorio shivered under him.
“How long?” he asked. Leorio grunted.
“God, I don’t know.”
He shifted, turning his head, the hint of teeth against Kurapika’s throat.
“How long has it been since you were last here?”
Kurapika’s eyes fluttered shut. The bottom of the lake swirled, something vast and ravenous rising from its depths.
“Good answer,” he whispered.
Leorio opened his lips wide against Kurapika’s neck, sucking and biting until Kurapika arched into him with a quiet moan. His nose was buried in Leorio’s scalp, fingers gripping handfuls of thick hair. He let Leorio worship his throat a little longer, relishing the thought of the enormous, half-obscene bruises that would decorate his flesh.
Finally, he tugged Leorio’s hair—not harshly, but just shy of rough—and stifled a whine as the separation of mouth and skin made a wet, crude noise. Leorio blinked up at him, eyes half-lidded, unfocused, the naked arch of his throat fully exposed. For a moment it was impossible for Kurapika to order his thoughts.
“I thought we agreed that I was the one giving gifts,” he said, mildly chastening.
“Guh,” said Leorio intelligently. He swallowed hard, and Kurapika fought every instinct not to salivate at the frantic bob of his Adam’s apple. It was nice to go slow…in theory. Now, it was taking every grain of resolve for him to keep his hands still, to not shed his trousers this instant and eat Leorio alive.
Instead, one hand slid out of Leorio’s hair, down his neck, passing feather-light over the silk tie that was now quite badly askew. When it reached his waistband, Leorio’s fingers tightened on Kurapika’s waist, and a soft whine tore from his throat.
“I never…agreed to that, actually. Ngh—!” Leorio’s neck arched, the rise and fall of his chest quickening as Kurapika palmed him through his pants.
“Then you don’t wish me to continue?” His thumb dipped below Leorio’s waistband, stroking through the coarse trail of hair, but no further.
“Never said that either.” Leorio’s voice was strained.
A smile played with the corners of Kurapika’s mouth. He unzipped Leorio’s pants in one fluid motion, cupping him through only the thin layer of his boxers.
Leorio bucked upward with a groan, the blaze of his Nen shockingly bright. Kurapika—so rarely caught off guard—gasped at the wave of energy rolling off him, like the aftershock of an earthquake.
“Sorry,” Leorio whimpered. “Sorry, sorry, I—I didn’t—”
Kurapika took stock of his hand and Leorio’s underwear. There was no mess, as far as he could tell.
“You didn’t…?”
“No! No. Not that.”
Leorio’s eyes were screwed shut. His breath heaved through him, whistling through his clenched teeth. Kurapika kept himself very still, though his thighs were beginning to cramp from hovering above Leorio’s lap for so long.
“I’m sorry,” Leorio repeated, after several heartbeats. He lifted his head to look at Kurapika, clear-eyed. His hands thumbed tender circles beneath his ribs. Kurapika frowned.
“Why do you keep apologizing?”
“Because.” Leorio swallowed again. “No matter how softly you touch me, I feel like…that’s it.”
Kurapika’s frown deepened. “‘It’?”
Leorio’s cheeks, already flushed, grew several shades darker.
“You know—it. The grand finale. Show’s over, everyone.”
Kurapika didn’t bother holding back a snort.
“Is that how you refer to your orgasm?”
Leorio made a disconsolate noise, which slid into a groan as Kurapika drew a firm thumb down the length of him.
“I’ll be very careful,” he said.
He leaned the weight of his upper body into Leorio, pinning him to the couch, and sank slowly, agonizingly, into his lap. There was heat between his own legs: a wet, hollow craving that begged for friction. He shifted, slotting a leg between Leorio’s and straddling one hard thigh. He squeezed, and the tortured drag of fabric against aching flesh had him quivering. In response, Leorio’s thigh jerked upward. Kurapika’s eyes fluttered shut and a weak, eager noise tore from his throat.
“Holy shit,” Leorio said, reverently.
The hand in Leorio’s pants tightened, then withdrew. Kurapika slid off Leorio’s lap and rose to his feet, straightening his clothes.
Leorio made a desperate noise. He stood up to reach after him, but Kurapika backed away, out of range of those long arms.
“Pants,” he commanded. “Off.”
Leorio’s pants flew across the room, landing somewhere near the terrarium. His shirt followed, snagging the edge of the windowsill.
“Those too.” Kurapika indicated the boxers, which they would later discover caught on the doorknob to the bedroom.
He moved closer, step by measured step. Leorio watched him, his eyes hazy, half-lidded. Kurapika moved forward until he was a bare inch from Leorio’s chest. He had to tilt his chin sharply to look him in the eye, which was on some level absurdly hot, but also posed a few considerable roadblocks.
“Sit, please,” Kurapika said quietly.
“Oh, now you’re polite?”
Leorio’s mouth twitched into a grin at the lightning-stike glare Kurapika leveled at him. Before he could manage a comeback, Leorio cupped his chin with a large hand and stooped to kiss him.
The brush of his lips and fingers was filled with such raw, humble devotion that Kurapika’s legs turned to wax.
There was no world where he deserved this.
It was surely a cosmic fluke, a mistaken collision of stars flung by some bewildered god. That was the only possible explanation for why Kurapika was allowed to have this—to have Leorio touch him like he was a sacred thing.
Leorio pulled away, just far enough to press their foreheads together.
“You’re thinking so loudly,” he said, mildly rebuking.
Kurapika released his breath in an exasperated huff. “Are you going to sit or not?”
Leorio obediently sank to the couch. Kurapika nudged his legs apart, moving between them. His eyes raked a lewd trail from Leorio’s face down his chest and stomach, coming to rest at his crotch.
Leorio waggled his eyebrows.
“Sure you don’t want a picture?”
“Please,” Kurapika said, kneeling. “Don’t talk.”
He had Leorio’s dick in his mouth before he could fire off a retort. Rolling his tongue against the head, he wrapped his fingers around the base of the shaft and squeezed it, dry and tight and ruthless. Leorio cried out, sobbing. His head fell back, and he clutched the back of the couch with one white-knuckled hand, the other hovering uncertainly over Kurapika’s head.
Kurapika pulled off just long enough to say: “Go ahead.” And then Leorio’s fist was in his hair, winding deep to grip a thick handful at the back of his head. Kurapika relaxed, opening wider, and released his stranglehold on Leorio’s dick to bury the hot, thick heft of it in his throat. Leorio made a noise that might have started as his name, but tumbled into an unintelligible string of moans and curses as Kurapika hollowed his cheeks and moved back, inching Leorio out from between his lips.
As he dropped his mouth and throat back onto the shaft, Kurapika swallowed. The convulsion of muscles around Leorio’s dick had him swearing at top volume. His hips jabbed upward in a frantic, abortive thrust. Kurapika coughed and pulled away, eyes watering.
“Fuck, Kurapika, I’m sorry,” Leorio gasped. His voice was strangely muffled.
Kurapika caught his breath, blinking the tears away. He looked up to see Leorio with his face buried in his elbow. The hand that cradled Kurapika’s head was trembling.
“I really wish you’d stop apologizing so much.” He leaned his cheek against the inside of Leorio’s thigh. “It doesn’t suit you.”
He let his eyes fall shut as long, deft fingers sank into his hair. Scraped delightfully against his scalp. Doctor’s hands.
When Leorio spoke, he’d regained some of his breath, but his face was still pressed into his elbow.
“Kinda feels like you never see the best side of me,” he muttered.
“Whatever does that mean?” Kurapika asked, punctuating the question with a soft, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of his thigh. “This is, I believe, my favorite side of you.”
The hand in his hair tightened; Kurapika swallowed a purr.
“You know what I mean,” Leorio said in a strained voice.
“Do I?”
Kurapika’s tone was light, almost playful. Instantly, the hand in his hair disappeared. He opened his eyes at the loss, and almost jumped in surprise. Leorio loomed over him, his face blazing with something that was not quite anger, but a close cousin.
“Leorio, wh—hey—!”
Kurapika squawked as he was hauled up onto the couch and dumped unceremoniously onto the cushions. Leorio loomed over him, a hard set to his mouth.
“You show up after ten goddamn months,” he growled. “You throw some priceless wine at me, tell me to take my pants off, give me the fastest, dirtiest blowjob of my life—and then what? You vanish?”
Kurapika waited for something clever to rise to his lips—he should at least correct Leorio’s gross misapprehension that the truncated blowjob was the extent of his offerings. But the words didn’t arrive in time, and Leorio wasn’t waiting for him to find them. He reached for Kurapika’s fly, nearly destroying the zipper in his haste.
“Not fucking likely.”
He was vaguely aware of lifting his hips, allowing Leorio to slip his pants off, and then there were fingers there, pressing into the wetness of him through his underwear. A choked moan tore through Kurapika as those hands—damn doctor’s hands—spread him open, thumb dragging over the bundle of nerves. He keened helplessly, gripping Leorio’s shoulders until his fingers turned white.
He felt, rather than heard, the words that rumbled through Leorio’s chest.
“I’m giving you something to remember, Kurapika, before you pull a disappearing act again.”
The fingers between his legs slid upward, feathering the hard ridges of Kurapika’s ribs, across the white, level plane of his stomach. Leorio could nearly span his ribcage in a handbreadth. As his chest burned with harsh, quick breaths, Kurapika let himself fantasize for the barest sliver of a second.
Maybe he wanted to be held down. Perhaps he wanted to be told, You’ll stay.
Not asked, You’ll stay?
And the implied answer: For now.
Leorio lifted himself away, searching Kurapika’s face with too-sharp eyes.
“You’re doing it again,” he said.
Kurapika shivered, chilly and exposed without the weight of another body against him. “Doing what?”
“Thinking.”
“I was not,” he lied.
“You’re always thinking.”
Kurapika frowned deeply, refusing to make eye contact. “If that’s the case, why would you bring it up now?”
“If something’s on your mind, I don’t want this to just be a distraction,” Leorio said. “We can talk.”
His hand began to move away from Kurapika’s ribs, but Kurapika snatched it around the wrist, holding it still. It took a herculean effort to keep the distress out of his voice.
“It’s not a distraction,” he whispered. “I promise.”
Leorio’s fingers against his torso twitched, maddeningly gentle, and Kurapika’s grip tightened in response. Finally he looked up, allowing Leorio to probe his expression for honesty.
After a couple seconds, the lines between Leorio’s eyebrows relaxed, and he leaned in to bump the tips of their noses together. Kurapika nudged his face up against Leorio’s, chasing his lips. The kiss was sweet and lingering.
Then Kurapika squirmed. Heat pulsed between his legs and he shifted his thighs together, seeking friction. Above him, Leorio went very still.
“What are you doing?”
The deepest part of him quivered in reaction to the threat in Leorio’s voice, but Kurapika forced his legs to be still. Suddenly, the hard, lean body pressing him into the couch shifted away. Kurapika’s dismayed whimper hitched into a gasp as Leorio dragged his hips close, grinding a knee into his covered groin.
“Come like this, first,” he demanded, softly.
And it should have been humiliating, how quickly the fog filled Kurapika’s head as he screwed his hips into Leorio’s thigh. The noises he was making: strange, throaty cries he hardly recognized as his own. Leorio folded over him, working a thumb against his clit, and Kurapika clenched around him, whimpering. He reached blindly between his legs for Leorio’s hand, needing to add speed, pressure, something. Instead, his wrist was captured, the flushed skin kissed.
“You’re unbelievable,” Leorio murmured against his palm. Kurapika groaned, and rocked against him, senseless with want.
The roll of Leorio’s thumb over his clit brought a helpless wail to his lips. He drove his hips up, his other hand grasping at Leorio’s hand to hold it against him, to give him something to rut against. The blood churned at the back of his eye sockets, that simmer of red: but he was there, the crash of orgasm heaving through his muscles. He clutched Leorio so tightly his thighs ached, riding the solid ridge of his knee until he slumped back, whimpering, wrung dry.
“Not,” he gasped, “fair.”
“It’s still my birthday.” Leorio hooked his fingers in the waistband of Kurapika’s underwear, easily slipping them off his still-twitching body. “So you have to let me do whatever I want.”
“I don’t recall…those specific terms…”
Leorio moved down his body as he pulled Kurapika’s shirt up, dropping light, ticklish kisses on the furrows of old scars, the dips between his ribs, the shallow curve of his navel. He arranged the intimate slope of their bodies, pressed his lips to Kurapika’s hipbone, massaged circles into his shivering thighs. He didn’t move further.
Kurapika forced his half-melted limbs to cooperate as he lifted himself up on his elbows, only to see Leorio staring at him. His face was wide open, overflowing with something Kurapika was too cautious to name. His throat tightened.
“You’re so beautiful,” Leorio murmured, his voice sleepy. Then he jolted, blushing furiously as he realized he’d spoken aloud.
“Wait,” he said. “That isn’t—that wasn’t what I meant—”
Kurapika blinked, taken more aback by Leorio’s raging embarrassment than the compliment. Then he chuckled.
“You don’t think I’m beautiful?”
Leorio groaned, burying his steaming face in Kurapika’s navel.
“I don’t know.” His words were muffled, ticklish against the skin. “I don’t know.”
Kurapika ran his fingers through Leorio’s hair, fingernails lightly scraping his scalp. Leorio shivered, and lifted his face to let Kurapika cup his cheeks. As he considered his next words, Leorio’s mouth pulled into an odd shape.
“You’re…soft.”
Kurapika raised an eyebrow. “I’m soft?”
“Mmhm.”
Leorio drew two fingers down Kurapika’s thighs to his knees, and up again. He nuzzled his stomach, the rough scrape of stubble sending little jolts of tension through Kurapika’s muscles.
“You’re very soft here.”
He opened his lips against Kurapika’s stomach, rolling his tongue against the hollow of his hip. Kurapika’s fingers curled around the back of his head, arching hungrily into his mouth.
“And here…”
Large hands gripped his knees, lifting them over Leorio’s shoulders. He licked him then—the trembling, tender wetness of him—and Kurapika cried out, fingers grappling Leorio’s hair like it was the only thing tethering him to the planet. He hooked his ankles together and tightened his legs, driving Leorio’s lips and tongue hotter and closer against him. The sloppy noises Leorio’s mouth made between his legs ratcheted the pleasure coiling inside him.
Leorio buried his tongue in him, moaning. He hitched Kurapika’s legs higher over his shoulders, clutching his ass. He made greedy, unabashed sounds as Kurapika’s muscles clenched around his tongue. Kurapika was gasping: dry, sharp breaths that tore out of his aching throat. He felt his thighs clamp viciously around Leorio’s ears, and the response was a low, rumbling growl that burst against every nerve ending in his body. Kurapika’s fingernails ripped at the couch, his entire being funneled into the flood of heat between his legs. His mouth hung open, and if he were screaming at Leorio, or cursing, or begging, he didn’t care.
He nearly wept when Leorio pulled back, his lips and chin shiny. His face was very red, hair sticking up at odd angles. Kurapika was sticky and wrecked, a mess of saliva and his own fluids smearing the inside of his thighs.
Leorio let Kurapika’s legs slip from his shoulders and moved over him, breathing heavily.
“But you’re softest here.”
He kissed him, deep and honey-slow, and Kurapika opened at once, tasting himself on Leorio’s tongue. He moved, then felt Leorio stiffen and writhe as Kurapika’s leg slid against his erection. Reaching between their bodies, Kurapika stroked him firmly, guiding him into place. At the first nudge of his swollen cock against slickness, Leorio ripped his mouth away with a tortured groan.
“I don’t think I can handle any teasing, ‘Pika.”
A second later, Leorio lay sprawled under him on the couch, pinned by the wrists. He stared in shock up at Kurapika, whose lips twitched. His body hummed with the red, uncanny strength of the Kurta bloodline, and it was sometimes exciting to remind Leorio of that.
“I have no intention of teasing you,” he said quietly.
To prove it, he raised his hips and lowered himself onto Leorio’s cock, taking the generous stretch of it in stride.
Leorio felt the shudder of every breath, and clenched his teeth at the quiver of Kurapika’s Nen against his.
“You okay?” Leorio wished his wrists were free, so he could brush the sweaty hair off Kurapika’s face. He was hiding his eyes, which meant something, though Leorio did not know what.
“Yes…” The word died in midair.
Kurapika’s grip on his wrists loosened, but before Leorio could move, he clenched around him: tight and utterly without warning. White-blue fire zipped down Leorio’s spine, and he thrust up, a strangled cry jerking out of him.
“Wait, wait, waitwaitwait—” he babbled, clutching Kurapika’s hips. “Are you okay? Really?”
Kurapika glared at him then, and Leorio stifled a sharp breath. Beneath the long fringe of his hair, his eyes shone a fierce crimson.
“Yes,” Kurapika growled. He rolled his hips, the slick friction of Leorio within him dragging twin moans from their throats. Anchoring himself with his hands on Leorio’s thighs, Kurapika picked up speed. And with the fluttering, hot pressure around him, Leorio was helpless to it. Teeth clenched, he managed to cling to coherent thought, enough to grasp blindly for Kurapika’s hands. His fingernails had torn red crescents into Leorio’s thighs, the pain an exquisite edge to the heat storming through him.
He wound his fingers through Kurapika’s, encouraging him to unlock his grip. Unable to anchor himself properly against Leorio’s legs, Kurapika lost speed, sank deeper, longer into each thrust. Leorio saw the hitch of his throat as he swallowed, heard the dry click of his breath.
“Kurapika.”
The response was a tight, unhappy noise. At that, Leorio let go of his hands, hauling himself into a sitting position. He cradled Kurapika’s face, smoothing away the hair that fell forward over his closed eyes.
Leorio ordered, gently: “Talk.”
Kurapika’s eyelids fluttered open, spilling crimson light across the delicate arch of his cheekbones. He would never get used to those eyes, which were hunted for reasons beyond their odd hue. Now, Kurapika’s were volcanic, smoldering like dying stars.
They were also wet.
“Shit,” Leorio hissed. “Kura—mmf!?”
Kurapika’s mouth crashed against his: an aggressive, silencing kiss that Leorio submitted to. But when he tasted salt on Kurapika’s skin, he pulled back.
“Stop.”
He punctuated it with a kiss, excruciatingly tender.
“Please.”
However unwillingly, Kurapika obliged. He stilled in Leorio’s lap, his breathing shallow as a bird’s as Leorio swiped a thumb over his wet cheek. Before he could pull away, Kurapika took his wrist and held it against his face, eyes falling shut again.
He turned his head, nuzzling his nose into Leorio’s palm. The sweetness of the gesture wrung his heart, but it also pulled at him with a warning sort of wrongness.
“Are you going to tell me?” he asked. “Or do I have to start guessing?”
He could not mask the savage ache in his voice, and Kurapika’s eyes opened.
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Bullshit,” Leorio retorted.
He tried not to whimper when Kurapika’s fingers slotted through his, intertwining their hands against his cheek.
“Nothing is wrong,” he repeated.
Leorio leaned in, pressing his face to the top of Kurapika's head. He squeezed his eyes shut, so tight they crinkled at the corners, and sucked his cheeks in. He made himself take long breaths, matching Kurapika’s soft, regular exhales against his throat.
“Please,” he whispered into Kurapika’s hair. “Please, whatever dangerous thing you’re going to do, don’t.”
Kurapika shifted, angling his face upward.
“Leorio—”
“No. No, you have to listen to me, because it’s still my birthday and if you think I’m not going to use all the leverage I’ve got to guilt you into just goddamn staying alive, then you really are a dumbass—”
Kurapika put a hand on his chest.
“Leorio.”
“And even if you can’t actually stay safe, then just lie, but please put some effort into it, because I can’t keep fucking killing myself over you, Kurapika, it’s shaving years off my life and I swear I’m gonna be dead by forty if you keep this up—”
A scalding shudder of energy radiated from Kurapika’s palm into his chest. Leorio yelped, toppling back onto the cushions, and glared at Kurapika frowning down at him.
“That hurt!”
“You wouldn’t shut up.”
Leorio opened his mouth to retort. Before he could speak, Kurapika squeezed his legs around his hips, reminding him in no uncertain terms of their position. Leorio’s body answered with a sharp tremor and a strangled cry.
“If you had let me speak,” Kurapika said. “I would have said it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“What—” Leorio swallowed hard, fists clenching and unclenching. “What is it, then?”
Kurapika canted his hips and ground down, and Leorio’s mind was wiped absolutely blank. He felt himself twitch in that deep, soft heat.
“Can we talk about this later?” Kurapika asked sweetly. He flexed his inner muscles, which plunged Leorio, gasping, into what he sincerely believed might be heaven.
But this was important. This conversation was so important. Leorio was sure of it, though he couldn’t quite remember why.
“H-how—ghnn—how much later?” he groaned.
Kurapika leaned over him. Long fingers wound into his hair, and pulled.
“Right after this.”
And then Kurapika was fucking him, hard and frantic. Their bodies rolled together, possessed by a hungry rhythm. Leorio shifted, the angle of his hips adjusted, deepened, and Kurapika sobbed, his pace stuttering. He arched his back and cried out, chasing that flash of furious ecstasy. Leorio found it again, again, twisting more pleasure out of Kurapika until he was liquid and mindless, a gibberish stream of half-forgotten Kurta expletives spilling from his lips.
Leorio was close too; Kurapika felt it in the desperation of his thrusts, the merciless grip of white-knuckled fingers on his hips. He gasped when Leorio pulled himself upright, pressing their chests together. Leorio kissed him, his tongue sweet, a counterpoint to the punishing depth of him within Kurapika. And then his hand was between them, thumbing Kurapika in dizzy circles. He wrenched away from the kiss, a ruined wail tearing from his throat.
He came hard, arching violently, every nerve alight and vibrating. The rippling spasms of pleasure within him crushed Leorio, who shouted just once, and gripped his hips tight enough to bruise. His mouth hung open, hips jerking as he came in several quick, hot pulses. He collapsed back onto the couch, pulling Kurapika with him.
They stayed like that, gasping in lungfuls of humid air. Kurapika twitched, whining as Leorio softened and slid out of him. Even the cool air against his overstimulated flesh seemed like too much.
They could just be like this, Kurapika thought. They didn’t have to move. It was too brutal to think of using his body for anything else, ever again.
A gentle finger traced a line from Kurapika’s tailbone to the middle of his spine. And then there were two hands on either side of him, stroking his sides. It would be very nice, and very, very easy, to let those hands play a lullaby across his ribs…to float away on it.
“…‘Pika,” said a voice, from a great distance. He didn’t have the strength to wonder why Leorio was so far away.
“Kurapika.”
He winced. This time, the voice was much louder. He opened his eyes and rested his chin on Leorio’s chest, which rose and fell with his breathing.
“Yes?” he said.
Leorio wasn’t looking at him, or at anything. His head was slumped back against the couch armrest, eyes shut. But when Kurapika looked closer, he saw the tension in his jaw.
“It’s later,” Leorio said.
Kurapika pressed his lips together. He remained silent for so long that Leorio cracked open an eye to look at him.
When he saw the expression on Kurapika’s face, a resigned smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“That’s okay,” he said, eyes slipping shut again. He wrapped his arms around Kurapika.
“This is good enough for me.”
Kurapika stared a moment longer at Leorio’s quiet face. Then he turned his head, laying an ear to the broad chest beneath him. As he shut his eyes, the steadiness of Leorio’s heart nudged at his cheek.
It was a flourishing heartbeat, this metronomic tide that held him in orbit.
It was the sound of many phone calls across many continents.
It was the sound of something he would not say, and Leorio could not ask, because neither of them knew the words. But the heart against his cheek was loud, and honest, and Kurapika was slowly learning its language.