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Five days. It has been five days since the Black Whale arrived at the shores of the Dark Continent. Five days where the sun rose on piles of corpses and set on shrill screams that grew louder and louder with the dying light. The native life in the island rejected the visitors’ intrusion with a ferocity for which no one accounted, weaponizing the wildness of nature in all its forms — hurricanes rose and storms brewed and volcanoes erupted and earthquakes split the ground.
But the most insidious attack beckoned the violent streak that resided in every human's soul and nourished it. Something dark and malignant whispered to paranoid ears, nurturing only what is foul and igniting a craving for the smell of blood. If the island’s creatures didn’t claim a life, then an intimate friend or a spiteful foe did. Perhaps even a complete stranger who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes people took their own lives. But that was the story of the ill-equipped and untrained. For a select few, no whispers were needed to cultivate their bloodlust.
In the mayhem of it all, blood and the sea merged at the feet of one man who bore the weight of his trousers’ drenched fabric and the irritant waves to race to the fallen body of a friend and an enemy and a lover.
“Kurapika!” Chrollo shouted at the top of his lungs, voice gruff and grating. A lungful of water entered his throat, and he was almost thrown into the sea if not for his tenacity. He coughed violently, spitting out saltwater and sand that scraped his throat and left it raw.
Kurapika’s unconscious body was just ahead of him. He could see it getting nearer with every leaden stride he took. Crimson marring gold spun hair, grit nicking pale skin, and taunting waves pushing a prone body to the coastline one minute and pulling it seaward the next.
“Kurapik—”
Another wave with its lungful of water came to suffocate him. Chrollo faltered and coughed, dazed, his body already weak from fights that stretched on for weeks upon weeks and climaxed only a few days ago. He inhaled and exhaled with a rattle to his breath; and with screaming muscles and torn tendons, he pushed onwards. His steps grew faster and longer the closer he got to Kurapika, until he finally grasped him from under his arms and dragged him to safety, sparing no time to loosen his tie and undo the top buttons of his dress shirt.
“Come on,” Chrollo whispered shakily, pressing his palms to Kurapika’s chest in one firm push after another before angling his head to breathe into him. Open lips pressed against open lips — a prayer in the form of a frenzied breath. He pushed against Kurapika’s chest and pumped air into his lungs, again and again, growing more and more desperate as time dragged on so that he wasn’t sure if the burn in his eyes came from the sea spray with its briny projectiles or from the ache in his heart.
But Kurapika’s chest convulsed, and he choked on the water stuck in his throat. He coughed bitterly, turning on his side and leaning on his elbow to spit.
And the relief that fell upon Chrollo was so immediate and sudden that he questioned his senses for a moment. His dark eyes shone, and he allowed himself to feel the exhaustion that has been gnawing at his bones. Weakly, he let his forehead fall onto Kurapika’s back, and the whisper that left his lips tasted so sweet. “Kurapika…”
“Mm I can’t…” Kurapika slurred, his body already caving in as his elbow bent. “I can’t keep my… eyes… so… weak… I feel so… weak…”
Chrollo straightened up, alert, his lips parting in a gasp when Kurapika collapsed one more time. Heart pounding, he grabbed onto him and gathered him in his arms with a frenzied urgency, two shaky fingers gauging his pulse and finding relief at its slow yet certain pace.
“My, my…”
The voice that cut through the silence was the last thing Chrollo wanted to hear. Melodious like death’s call and rancid like the rotten corpse that produced it.
Panic morphed into bitter hatred, and Chrollo’s wide eyes narrowed so that no light could be reflected off of them. He turned his head to meet plague incarnate.
“All this time I was focusing on the wrong targets,” Hisoka said. His lips were drawn in a pitiless smirk. “Silly me. I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to resist a tragic little reaper like Kurapika — especially if it’s your soul he wanted to reap.”
Chrollo said nothing. His aura shrouded him and Kurapika with its black grimness. He could feel Kurapika stir in agitation in his arms.
“I have to hand it to you both,” continued Hisoka, crawling ever closer to the two of them. “You were very discreet. I had no idea you were fucking.”
“Your jaw is moments away from splitting off your face,” Chrollo said blandly, “and yet you’re still talking.”
And this was only the start of it. In fact, the strings that held together Hisoka’s marionette of a body were all withered down to their last thread. His glued-on skin peeled off to reveal the rot and decay, and his legs carried him with lumbering effort. He was dying. But weren’t they all? The only thing that stood between them and death was a flipped coin that would decide who would be the one to deal the lethal strike first.
Hisoka put his fingers to his cheek, his nails caked with dried blood. “You don’t like it? I don’t think I’ve ever looked so me before.”
“That's where you and I can agree,” Chrollo said. “Ugliness becomes you so spectacularly.”
“Ah, you flatter me.” Hisoka was close enough now that Chrollo had to look up at him and squint at the sun behind him. “But I’m tired of the sound of your voice now. Do you think I’ll like it better when you’re screaming?”
Chrollo smiled, hollow and malicious. “I'll have your measly gum catch on fire before it even touches me. It will ignite so smoothly you won’t know that it claimed the entirety of your makeshift body until your limbs fall in a heap of ashes. A fiery departure to help you ease into a fiery afterlife.”
Hisoka hummed. “I'm not catholic myself,” he droned. “Not the eye-for-an-eye kind of person, either. I like to make the things that can hurt, hurt as much as they can.”
He raised a finger and pointed at Kurapika. “So I’ll start with him. That will get you screaming, won’t it?”
And like gasoline thrown into an open fire, the maliciousness brewing inside Chrollo’s heart erupted so heatedly that no living creature other than an unconscious Kurapika and a man who was not truly alive to begin with dared to stay in his orbit. His hair fell in his disdainful eyes, and his face twisted so that only shadows gave it color. Chrollo pressed Kurapika impossibly close to him as he glared at Hisoka. Everything in his posture screamed mine, mine, you will not touch what’s mine.
It was a dead giveaway. He laid his heart bare and exposed his weakness. But he couldn’t help himself. The fear that overwrought him was too sudden, too powerful to be suppressed. He didn’t dare look away from Hisoka, but he could feel Kurapika’s shallow breath against the side of his neck and the wet head of hair pressed under his chin. Chrollo’s fingers wove through the blond strands and tangled with them, while his other hand encircled a thin waist possessively.
“You're making this so delicious for me,” Hisoka purred, revealing a card. In a split second, it spliced through the air, heading squarely towards the exposed side of Kurapika’s neck. But Chrollo’s instincts were finely attuned to such attacks, and so he fell back onto the sand with Kurapika against his chest so that the card ended up digging deep into the trunk of a tree.
Sweat dripped down Chrollo’s temple. How was he going to be on the offensive while protecting Kurapika? He couldn’t hide him. He couldn’t keep him a mere centimeter away from him. He couldn’t pocket him in the Fun Fun Cloth either — he lost it by what could only be the death of its previous owner.
There was only one strategy he could follow.
Chrollo straightened up, deathly pale in his dark clothes, and activated ken. His defensive aura encompassed him ferociously, but he stretched and focused it until it left his body altogether and encircled Kurapika instead. This was the first time he used his aura to protect someone else. Exhausted as he was, it drained away his remaining energy at an alarming speed. His nen abilities were instantly compromised and weak at this rate. When he tried to summon his book, it materialized for some seconds before withering away from his feeble grasp. He could only breathe out, cynical, before raising his frigid gaze to Hisoka, his knife in his hand.
For his part, Hisoka looked surprised. He laughed, and his aura morphed into that sticky pink substance at the tip of his index. “No burning my measly gum now, hm?”
Chrollo stared at him, nonplussed and calculating.
“You killed his family,” Hisoka said, infinitely delighted, “and now you’re dying for him?”
And perhaps it was illogical. Perhaps it was against all rhyme and reason. Perhaps it was in their crossed stars, and perhaps it was the irony of fate. Chrollo didn’t care much to contemplate the dissonance of two facts that were equally cemented in his timeline. If it was engraved in his palm or if it was by a stroke of dumb luck that he should fall in love with Kurapika of all people, Chrollo didn’t care.
“Are you surprised that I love him?” he asked by way of inane conversation.
Hisoka’s chest rumbled with quiet laughter. “I’m surprised you could love anyone at all.”
Chrollo’s lips quirked up a bit. He didn’t disagree.
At the verge of mutual collapse, the two men lunged at each other at full speed.
Hisoka aimed to weaken Chrollo enough so that he would dismantle the shield surrounding Kurapika, and Chrollo put all the remainder of his nen into his knife so that its blade was as fortified as could be. It was difficult at his best state, with enhancement being his least developed ability, but he was staking everything he had on this.
They fought quid pro quo, strike for strike.
At a slash from Hisoka’s card, Chrollo’s shirt fell open with a gash tearing at his breast. The blood burned as it seeped down his skin, but he took the opportunity of Hisoka’s momentary celebration at his first victorious strike against him to deal his own blow. He angled his knife whose edge burned with a black hue and tore through what remained of the gum that held Hisoka’s left arm to his shoulder. The arm fell of with a grotesque sound.
Hisoka watched its descent to the ground with a twisted look on his face. It fed his bloodlust and gave him a boost of energy in the form of reckless abandon — he charged at Chrollo without a moment’s calculation.
The two traded attacks amid a dazed dance of maneuvers and feints. They were quickly running out of steam, and with Hisoka having lost both legs and an arm, it seemed certain that Chrollo would win until…
… he fell to the ground on his knees.
On his elbows, heaving and blinking away a fainting spell, Chrollo felt his aura retreat into the pores of his body until Kurapika was no longer shrouded in its safety. With every ounce of what remained of his energy, Chrollo crawled on the sand, stopping when his face was above Kurapika’s. He wanted to cover Kurapika's body with his own. But he couldn’t move a muscle. His arms strained and shook with the effort to keep him upright, and the blood trickling from his forehead and cheek fell in drops onto Kurapika’s face.
It was only then that he noticed. Kurapika’s eyes were open, but only slightly.
“Idiot,” whispered Kurapika through cracked lips and a grated throat. “Why did you waste your nen like that? You could’ve won…”
Without breaking eye contact, Chrollo whispered, “Won? Won what? You’re all I have.”
“You'd have your life…”
“You're all I have,” Chrollo insisted. His forehead fell atop Kurapika’s. They were both delirious with blood loss, but this was as candid as the two of them could get without fear of losing face.
Kurapika swallowed, closing his eyes. A tear fell down the side of one eye. “Chrollo, I…”
But a murderous grunt caught his attention and cut the string of his thoughts. Hisoka has been edging closer to them in a painful crawl, having nothing but an arm to support the dragging of his torso. When he reached them, he raised his trembling arm in the air, card charged to its maximum.
“This ends now,” he heaved, “and forever.”
Before he could strike, Chrollo’s body gave out. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Kurapika’s eyes widened, burning with an invigorating, terrified scarlet. He summoned his chain at this burst of energy and launched it at full speed at Hisoka. It cut through the tenuous gum holding his head in place. Kurapika watched the shock give way to cold realization in an already deceased face, before there was nothing to be given at all.
Hisoka’s lifeless head fell to the ground, never to speak again.
The scarlet of Kurapika’s eyes faded away as quickly as it came. His body too heavy to keep him upright, Kurapika allowed himself to collapse, his head nestled next to Chrollo’s so that both their bodies lay in opposite directions.
A raindrop struck his eyelid.
Another struck his lips.
And the rain fell in earnest.
By nighttime, both of them were awake. A fire burned nearby, crackling in the otherwise absolute silence. Most of the people who came with them on the Black Whale were dead. The creatures of this island didn’t bother with the two of them for some reason — perhaps they only preyed on those who were alive in every sense of the word, and Chrollo’s and Kurapika’s souls held too much death to include them in the world of the living.
Their bleeding had stopped. They fed on berries and little more. It was enough to keep them awake.
Kurapika lay on his side with his legs pulled up, and Chrollo embraced him from behind. Their eyes were open but sightless.
“We'll go back to our world soon enough,” whispered Kurapika. “And we’ll have to live with ourselves.”
Chrollo’s arms tightened around him. “We'll be together.”
Silence.
“We've ruined each other. We’ll remember that when we leave this hellhole. And you’ll hate me and I’ll hate you,” said Kurapika.
Chrollo closed his eyes and nuzzled the back of Kurapika’s neck. “Do you truly believe that?”
“Yes. But…”
“But?”
Kurapika closed his eyes as well. He clutched Chrollo’s arm closer to his torso. “I wouldn’t want you to leave my side,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t bode well without you…”
Chrollo smiled. “You will deny saying this one day. You’ll blame it on a nonexistent narcotic in those berries we ate.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know you. You’re a creature of guilt.”
“And you? What will you do?”
“I'll humor you,” Chrollo said, tracing soft patterns on Kurapika’s arm. “I'll say, yes, it must have been the berries. You’ll change the subject. We’ll both know that it wasn’t the berries. You’ll prove your point by distancing yourself for a few days, but you’ll come back. You’ll come back because being away from me ignites a craving in you that no self-hate or hard logic can dispel. I’ll tolerate the push and pull of your behavior because,” his voice dropped to a hot whisper against the nape of Kurapika’s neck, “I don’t hate you. I’ll never hate you.”
And Kurapika became quiet.
He didn’t speak for long, long minutes, and Chrollo thought that he fell asleep.
But when he spoke, his voice came in a tremble. It was laden with tears.
“Perhaps loving me is your punishment.”
Perplexed, Chrollo contemplated the ominous words but didn’t ask anything further. He only wiped Kurapika’s tears, noting that this gesture caused him to weep harder.
He always knew that the biggest threat to Kurapika was Kurapika himself, but it would be a while before he found out about the poison that laced his most specialized ability.
For now, they slept under a moonless, star-cluttered sky.