Fandom: Hunter x Hunter

Summary: How much more of those poor kernels should be subjected to merciless pop-tinction before Kurapika finally wakes out of his twisted nightmare?

Title: Popcorn

Author: Hana Rui

Genre: [delusional]shounen-ai

Pairing: Leorio x Kurapika [LeoPika]

He could hear the crisp popping sound of the helpless little kernels, struggling, yelping, fighting against themselves to break free from the gradually bloating pack inside that small, curious-looking chamber. How many minutes did Leorio say he should watch over this again?

Five?

Ten?

An hour?

The whole day?

Perhaps Leorio had meant to use this as an aberration to keep him in the house. Pouting, sighing, shrugging every single minute as he looked through the gaping kitchen window, torturing his already aching heart with the sight of him talking and laughing with some dumb girl over a bunch of stupid memories from a past they once shared.

They obviously were having the fun of their lives, reminiscing the old times. They were so engrossed in it too that they couldn't be bothered to think of a certain blond guy seething and cursing them from afar. Kurapika would've put upon them every noxious spell in the book, if he knew of one to begin with. Unfortunately, he was a nen-user, not some spell-weaving warlock doting for a secret love...

Here he was standing before this pyretic box-like thing, which he would very much like to turn into a big cauldron to cook that bitch in, watching as some white paper bag got filled with hot air and inflate itself slowly... slowly... The bizarre sight forced him to watch in amazement, forgetting for a while that he was here and they were out there, and that this dazzling technological phenomenon he was witnessing for the first time was shrewdly used to keep him away...

Away from their path.

Their path... His and... that girl's.

Kurapika's literally flaring eyes snapped back to the couple in a more intensely scathing gaze of hatred and antipathy. What was merely a vaguely implied notion before had by now turned into the soul-devouring, nerve-whacking truth gnawing at his very core... His shattered heart.

The chains that suddenly appeared in his clenched fist chimed with contempt and injurious fury. So this was what Leorio had wanted to do all along. Keep his utterly inquisitive young mind dazed and occupied enough with listening to some stupid corns pop while he, in turn busied his mature self with that whorish girl!

Well, he'd show them what his then overly angered will-which was not at all inexperienced-could do in such a mature situation as this.

Without another thought, the utterly disillusioned Kuruta left the heated seeds to their nonchalant popping and stormed out into the backyard with such reckless force as would've easily pried the backdoor from off its hinges. The poor door held on, though, mutinously swinging back and forth on its spring for about half a dozen times as the furious young blond stalked towards the moaning couple shamelessly making out on the garden swing.

The enraged lad was beside himself with so much fury that he couldn't even see straight. It was merely by his rage-driven impulse that he managed to reach the swing and wordlessly began his confrontation just as the mature pairs of lips halted their ravenous exploration for a gulp of air.

"K-Kurapika!" the utterly stunned Leorio exclaimed as soon as he opened his eyes and met the murderous Kuruta gaze directed upon him.

The girl, this being her first time to see a pair of eyes literally blazing with fury, screamed at the top of her lungs and clung all the more tightly to her gulping lover.

"K-Kurapika, what's wrong?" Leorio's voice trembled with apprehension at the mere thought of what the fiery kid could do. Add to his agony the taut pair of blanched arms mercilessly wringing his neck in a choking grip as Mary squealed all her guts out into his ears.

Not bothering to utter a single word of threat or malediction, the irrevocably miffed Kurapika just reached out one wrathful hand and grabbed the tousled tuft of auburn hair. A startled shriek was all that made it through the heavily shaded feminine lips before one chained fist drove itself without preamble into the girl's wan face, knocking all teeth and terrestrial breath out of her.

Even before the lifeless body fell on the ground with a dull thud, Kurapika's still very much incensed hands had already made a grab for the other half of the indecent show.

"K-Kurapika!" Leorio exclaimed again, as though it was the only word he ever knew.

The crimson-eyed Kuruta pulled the shivering older guy closer by the lapels of his polo and slowly, almost painstakingly stretched his lips into a devilish smile as he drawled in a scary, nasal voice, "Yes, Leorio-kun?"

Still rather awed by the sudden change in his friend's usually calm demeanor, Leorio's attempted retort first ended in a snort, before it finally formed into the fearful accusation that came rushing through his mouth before he could even consider its horrid consequences. "Y-YOU KILLED HER!"

Kurapika let out a throaty chuckle as he bent down and pressed his forehead against the paling guy's own.

"A-Are you gonna kill me, too?" Leorio asked at a notion, his eyes widening in alarm.

The younger guy's smiling eyes glinted with subtle mischief. "Would you like me to?"

"Yes..." Leorio replied in a quiet, seemingly hypnotized voice as he stared into the fathomless abyss of those beautiful cat-shaped eyes which had by now returned to their natural greenish hue. Then, abruptly realizing what he had just said, the utterly startled guy roughly shook his head and cried, "I mean no!"

"Make up your mind, idiot!" Kurapika snarled into the blanching face, tightening his hold on the sweaty shirt as though to stop his hands from clobbering that idiotic head.

Leorio winced at the warmth and proximity of the fresh smelling breath wafting against his face. Before he knew it-and despite the dread welling up within him-the fine, submissive lad had subsequently closed his eyes and was soon basking in the glorious feel of the divine yet menacing life-form hovering over him.

"Would you... like me to kill you... Leorio-kun?" Kurapika asked softly, brushing his hungry lips against the quivering adult's smooth cheek.

"Yes," came the whispered reply as the faintest dab of a blush tinted Leorio's cheeks. "Kiss me, koibito."

And not one to disappoint a lover, Kurapika was at it as fast as a hungry butterfly upon the last juicy flower in the backyard. It didn't matter that the half-witted, subtly perverted Leorio had heard him wrong. This was what he had intended to do in the first place, anyway.

The passion-driven blond ravenously partook of the godly nectar freely granted him by his eagerly responding prey. Soon thereafter, both irrevocably lustful individuals were inexorably plunged deeper in the overwhelming whirlpool of libidous desire and fleshy ministrations. This was even while the lifeless body of the girl Kurapika killed lay in an apathetic, fly-infested heap on the ground just beside them.

Their noses had by then stoically shut themselves up against the miasmic smell mixing with the afternoon breeze. They were lost in a world where everything about them answered relentlessly and solely to their bodies' carnal desires...

Kurapika was now lying subserviently on the swing seat, Leorio's tongue and very able hands expertly stimulating all sentient nerve endings in his body. All possible obstructions to their heated coupling had earlier been discarded in a careless heap of rumpled fabric piled on top of the stolid cadaver, whose discomfiting proximity either of them had yet to remember.

By this time the couple was so wrapped up in the magic of the moment that they could hardly think about what they were doing. They kissed relentlessly, moaned shamelessly and wiggled thoughtlessly to the ancient rhythm of life. They were just answering to their raging sex drives in a goddamn humane way, after all. Who would have the mind to bother what sex was the other?

And who would waste a second thinking about the draffy presence of a human carcass on the ground, buried underneath their own clothes? If anything, the now very dead Mary served as a mere aphrodisiac to the passionate union transpiring in such a gruesome closeness to her neglected existence.

Everything went well within the limits of routine, brutish sex until two pale, slender arms indiscreetly wrapped themselves around the tanned, brawny body, perhaps merely intending to pull his partner closer. But they might've squeezed too hard that something inside the startled Leorio snapped and his face was instantly marred with a grimace of extreme pain.

"Ku... Kurapika! My... bones! Ack!"

Unfortunately for the older guy, Kurapika seemed to have lost it completely. The deranged blond, eyes flashing in their lovely crimson hue, was even sneering diabolically as he kept on squashing the pathetically grunting Leorio against himself.

Squashing his bones... Squashed them until they popped.

Bones... Popping.

Popping Bones.

Popping... Popping...

POP... POP...

"KURAPIKA! THE POPCORN!"

Kurapika's eyes snapped open just in time to see Leorio's noble rescue of the then extremely overcooked popcorn. The grunting guy fished the deflated bag from the foggy microwave and hurled it all into the gaping trash can's grace.

"Moron! What were you doing?" Leorio's virile voice thundered with vexation as he frantically opened cupboards after cupboards in search of a new bag of popcorn.

Kurapika kept on staring blankly at his griping friend. I was having great sex with you in my dreams... was the impudent response that kept chugging through his mind, but which he could not voice out for fear of scaring the other guy away.

Or perhaps he might even incite the already seething older guy to as much anger as would compel those tanned, brawny arms to wrap around his pale, slender body and crash his bones to pop-tinction-just as he did to him in his frenzic dream.

Actually, wouldn't it be nice if that should happen? As this thought came slithering through Kurapika's depraved mind, the same diabolical sneer from his dream wantonly assaulted his lips. Fortunately for the both of them, the faintly blushing blond was of enough sanity by now to stop his exterior mien from revealing his inner... censored thoughts.

"That was the last bag," the younger guy was finally able to say much to Leorio's annoyance. "If you like... we can go pop some bones instead..."

"N-Nani?"

Equally astounded by his own unwarranted statement as the guy who was presently giving him a subtly terrified look, Kurapika forced an innocent smile on his lips and quickly asked, "By the way, where's Mary?"

"Mary who?" The older guy asked incredulously, now squinting his cautious eyes at him.

"Y'know Mary?" Kurapika frowned at the look of pure confusion smeared on the other guy's face. If this freak was playing him out for a fool, he definitely wasn't buying it.

And as though sensing his quiet warning, Leorio's face lit up with sudden realization. "Oh, Mary!" he exclaimed, triumphantly snapping his fingers in the air. "Didn't you just kill her?"

Kurapika's eyes widened in shock. Even more so when he glanced at the gaping window and caught sight of a rotting feminine corpse by the swing, being feasted on by dozens of humongous flies.

He could hardly believe that what he thought was a mere dream was actually the horrifying reality!

"No," he muttered under his breath, greatly disgruntled and terrified by the repulsive sight, yet unable to deviate his already blurring vision from it.

"You killed her!" came Leorio's gruff accusation. Kurapika turned his eyes to his friend and saw him pointing an angry finger at him as he screamed, "YOU KILLED HER!"

"No." Kurapika took a step back, and another, and another, until his foot slipped into an abysmal chasm that sent him flailing into nothingness. Lower and lower he went in a seemingly endless pit of doom. He screamed and screamed but no one seemed to take notice. Until finally, his young, fragile body hit ground with the loudest THUD!

Popping his bones out of their sockets, out of himself.

Bones... Popping.

Popping Bones.

Popping... Popping...

POP... POP...

"KURAPIKA! THE POPCORN!"

Kurapika's senses came rushing in just in time to hear the deafening crash of the glass bowl on concrete, creating a mixed heap of broken crystals and popped kernels on the floor.

"Good thing the movie's over," Leorio remarked with a sigh as he tightened his arms around his beloved who sat as still as a doll with the gravest facial expression possible, eyes unwaveringly glued on the TV screen. "Are you all right?" he couldn't help but ask. His koi had been sick for the longest time and wasn't even showing any signs of recovering in the near future.

Kurapika, on the other hand, hardly heard what his lover said. Had he just woken out of a frenzic dream, yet again? Or had he not been awake at all?

Am I really awake right now?

The perplexed blond kid could hardly tell which was dream and which was reality anymore. What the hell was happening to him?

"Man, for someone of your reputation, it's hard to believe you've been down with a fever for three days!" Leorio said in mock disbelief, turning the television off with the remote control. "Three long days, Kura-chan! Are you really this sensitive to the altering weather?"

Things were beginning to make sense to him now. He had been nurturing an ascending body temperature ever since he came to live with Leorio in this strange place. He had never known that the weather could actually be so crazy as to undergo several alterations in a single day... In a single locality...

One day, it would be raining, cloaking the whole place with a chill that could only be warded off his system by Leorio's thickest coat and a seat before his hearth. The next, it would be so sunny that a single ray of Phoebus's fireball could easily scorch the bone.

He had been delirious for three days. For three long days he had been having series after frenzic series of delusional mental images in his sleep. And it was always about Leorio having an affair with somebody else. A famous actress, a fellow doctor, an old friend... Even with a three-breasted alien, for petessake! No need to have a shrink tell him he was definitely losing it. Losing it terribly. Horribly...

He felt his lover's arm tighten around him once again. A loving gesture that was immediately followed by a valiant kiss upon his dry, flaking lips.

He was awfully sick and yet, Leorio had never ceased giving him this kind of warmth.

He was contagiously ill and yet, Leorio had never left his side. It had always been like this—the two of them sitting in front of the television while watching a movie; he falling asleep and having those dumb dreams; and Leorio cuddling him like this... Kissing him like this... Not having the heart to scold him every time he happened to have moved impulsively, thus sending another one of his koi's beloved glass bowls shattering to the ground…

And not bothering to clean up the mess he had made until he was appropriately punished. With Leorio tiring him this much, it wasn't much of a wonder why he couldn't regain enough strength to pull him through this stupid fever.

He wasn't complaining, of course. In fact, he would choose to fall sick any day of the week just to feel this close to his lover.

How could he dream of this guy betraying him? How could his subconscious mind doubt such a fine, gentle, loving soul?

Kurapika's eyes snapped open when Leorio suddenly pulled away from the kiss. "Doushite?" he whispered in his weak and strained voice.

"I almost forgot to tell you," Leorio began, putting on his lips an almost juvenile smile of excitement. "An old friend of mine is coming over next week. Y'know, Mary?"

Kurapika's heart skipped disapprovingly as images of his recent dream came drifting into his mind. "M-Mary... who?"

"Mary," Leorio replied with an enthusiasm that both sickened and irritated the younger guy. "The girl I've been telling you about!"

Oh, the guy had been telling him about that girl, all right! Telling him more than he should know. He sure didn't wanna hear how this Mary was Leorio's first kiss, or how she became his first girlfriend at the fresh young age of seven! Now he knew why he had been having those dreams. His subconscious mind was more anguished than doubtful.

So this was the person who had swayed Leorio's heart first.

So he was finally gonna meet her in a week's time!

So his dreams where not without basis after all...

"Why are you giving me that look?" Leorio frowned questioningly at him. He could hardly tell what expression was currently pasted on his face. He had been numb and paralyzed the very moment he heard about Mary coming over and was even more so when he remembered his dream. "Your eyes are turning red, Koi. You're not thinking of killing me, are you?" The older guy even managed a mock look of alarm, not knowing the gravity of his statement.

"Mary... Why... I don't want to... She... Kiss... Kill," Kurapika's words trembled in their broken cadence.

"Nani? Kurapika, are you all right?" the extremely worried Leorio tried to shake some sense into his seemingly hallucinating beloved.

"Bones... Pop... Pop..."

"Popcorn? Would you like some more popcorn? But that was the last bag, Koi."

Kurapika stopped talking-or forcing himself to anyway-and kept still long enough to watch the look of deep concern and apprehension on the other guy's face. One sappy thought leapt into his mind, He loves me... Which was closely followed by another, He really does... And another, He really, really does...

Oh hell, he did still have one whole week to get well. Surely by the time the enemy intruded his territory, he would be ready to face her head on.

Right now, he would have to content himself in savoring this moment he had with his lover.

Without another word-nor any clear Kuruta thought, for that matter—Kurapika pounced on Leorio, bearing his startled lover flat on the couch, and abruptly plunging his voracious tongue into his mouth before the older guy could make any stupid complaints.

Next week, he would have to deal with that dumb whatever-her-name-was girl. Tonight, however, was exclusively for dealing with more important matters at hand.

And so the still very sick, very delusional, yet very passionate Kurapika took much pleasure in breaking his koi's bones that night.

Not literally, of course-if you know what I mean...

-end-

Thanks for reading! :)