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The thing about kneeling is how small it makes him feel.
Kurapika's knees ache against the hardwood. Chain Jail cuts into his ribs with each breath—his own chains, forged from grief and meant to bind Spiders. Now holding him here between Chrollo's spread thighs, and the humiliation of it burns hotter than the ache in his shoulders.
Chrollo's fingers thread through blond hair, guiding him forward with pressure that's almost gentle. Almost.
"Stay," Chrollo murmurs, and the command settles into Kurapika's bones like he's been waiting for it.
Three weeks ago, a hotel in Yorknew. Chrollo's blood on his hands and the desperate need to know if the thief would bleed red. He did. But he'd smiled through it, like pain was just another experience to collect, and Kurapika had wanted—
He opens his mouth for him.
The sound Chrollo makes is quiet surprised, and Kurapika hoards it somewhere deep alongside every other crack in that perfect composure.
There aren't many. He's learned to treasure them.
Expensive wool scratches against his cheek. The taste of salt and skin and something darker he can't name fills his mouth. Chrollo's thigh tenses under his bound hands, muscle going tight, and the chains rattle when Kurapika shifts to take him deeper.
"You don't follow orders well." Chrollo's fingers tighten in his hair. "Except when you want to."
The first time he dreamed of Chrollo, it was violence—chains around that pale throat, squeezing. The second time, it was still violence, but his hands had moved lower. The third time, he stopped counting.
Neither does Kurapika know where he draws that line anymore. It started at vengeance and somehow ended here, with Chrollo's cock in his mouth and scarlet burning in his eyes that has nothing to do with rage.
"There was a manuscript I stole once," Chrollo says, conversational despite his breathing going uneven. "Medieval. The illumination showed a saint on his knees before a demon." His thumb traces the stretched corner of Kurapika's lips. "The caption read: this is how we worship what we cannot kill."
Kurapika's throat works around him and he makes a sound that might be laughter or might be sobbing. Leave it to Chrollo to turn this into a lecture.
"I burned it after." Chrollo's other hand comes up to cup Kurapika's jaw. "Seemed sacrilegious to keep."
York New, eight months ago. Watching Chrollo steal a necklace—palmed it so smoothly Kurapika only noticed because he'd been watching those hands. Still watches them. Dreams about them around his throat, inside him, making him into something unrecognizable.
The chains dig deeper with each movement. His own power turned against him, holding him in place for this. The irony would be funny if it didn't make him want to claw his skin off.
"You're thinking too much." Chrollo's hand slides from his hair to the back of his neck. "I can see it. You go somewhere else."
Kurapika pulls back just enough to speak, voice thoroughly wrecked: "Maybe I don't want to be here."
"Then why are you?"
He's not challenging him, it's a real question, and that's worse. Chrollo actually wants to know the mechanics of Kurapika's self-destruction.
"You tell me." Kurapika takes him back in, hollowing his cheeks. "You're the one who reads people."
"You're not easy reading." His words strain. "Every time I think I understand, there's another layer underneath. Older albeit angrier." He cuts off with a sharp breath as Kurapika swallows. "More honest than you want anyone to see."
The Kurta buried their dead with their eyes open. Let them watch the sky one last time before the earth closed over them. Kurapika thinks about thirty-six pairs of eyes that never got that final glimpse. About how the last thing they saw was probably Chrollo's face.
His breathing's gone shallow, lightheadedness makes everything feel like he's underwater, sounds muffled and distant.
"Easy." Chrollo's hands gentle, guiding rather than taking. "Breathe through your nose."
His casual competence of it twists deeper in Kurapika's gut. Of course Chrollo would know how to do this, he'd be good at guiding someone through their own unraveling.
"I've wanted this," Chrollo admits, voice gone soft. "Longer than I should have. You're supposed to be my enemy. My perfect opposite." His hips shift forward in shallow thrusts. "And yet."
Three weeks ago, tracking him to a museum. Chrollo standing in front of a painting for twenty minutes, perfectly still, absorbing it. The look on his face had been tender enough to hurt. Kurapika had wanted to destroy the painting just to see that tenderness die. Had wanted to be looked at like that. Both or Neither. All of it.
The taste of precum on his tongue. Salt mixing with the salt of his own tears because apparently he's crying now, and this is somehow worse than violence—more intimate than any fight they've had.
"Close," Chrollo warns, and his control is fraying, Kurapika can sense him twitching in his mouth. "Kurapika, I'm—"
Kurapika doesn't pull back, instead he takes him deeper instead, throat relaxing, and the hand in his hair has gone brutal while the other cups his face like he's something precious. The contradiction is so perfectly Chrollo it makes his chest ache.
When Chrollo comes it's with Kurapika's name on his lips and his eyes locked on scarlet ones, and Kurapika swallows it down, takes everything, refuses to look away even as his vision blurs.
The aftermath is just breathing for a long moment, then Chrollo is sliding down to the floor, pulling Kurapika against him before the chains have even fully dissolved.
"The manuscript was wrong," Chrollo says against his hair. "This isn't worship."
Kurapika's laugh is broken. "What is it then?"
"Consumption." Chrollo's hands map his spine like he's memorizing him. "Mutual destruction. Two black holes trying to devour each other."
And somehow that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to him, which says everything about how far he's fallen.
They stay there on the floor until his breathing evens out and the scarlet finally bleeds from his eyes. Until he can pretend, for a few minutes, that this is something other than what it is.
Then he stands and straightens his clothes, walks out without looking back.
Chrollo doesn't stop him. He never does. That's part of the game they're playing.
Kurapika makes it three blocks before he stops in an alley, bracing against brick, and throws up. His body finally rejecting what his mind has already accepted: that he's lost something tonight he'll never get back.
And the worst part is he's not sure he wants to.