A/N: A warning once again. There's a severe case of the naughties beginning about halfway through the chapter. Proceed with caution.

xv.

After that, looking Chrono in the eye was hard. Shameful, even. Eri couldn't shake the feeling that she'd trusted him with a part of herself – albeit one very new, but still very raw – and now that the moment was over, now that Chrono smiled between her and Kai with a small, suggestive knowing, it seemed she'd violated the sanctity of this new and raw something. It had been hers, hers alone. Now, by a delicately established dependence, she'd made it Chrono's too. And he expected her to make it Kai's as well.

Eri couldn't exactly blame him for it – the sense of betrayal wasn't fair, because technically she wanted him to think these feelings were for Kai; and technically, it was better if everybody stayed fooled. Maybe she could even fool herself a little bit, and so make the whole secret just that much safer.

It floated about the dinner table that evening, an ominous and glaring specter which only Eri seemed to notice. It followed Chrono and Kai into the basement that night; and no matter how Eri tried to eavesdrop, she only heard it hissing back at her like static, disguising Chrono and Kai's low and clandestine voices. They were talking about her, probably, but they always spoke about her: her, and bullets, and business, and unravelling plans, and how much they hated working with the Russians. The shadowy quietness of their conversation was nothing new, and Eri tried to assuage her uneasiness by reminding herself of it.

And later, when Kai came to bed, she tried to tell herself that the way he seated himself precariously on her side of the mattress was also nothing out of the ordinary.

She was still awake, and for a tremulous few moments the two of them stared at each other. Kai, unreadable. Eri hoping she was equally so. His eyes' golds bore into her through their bedroom's darkness, searching for something in the same way they always did – only now, with a certain difference, a docility Eri couldn't place or believe. A long time went by. A long, long time of very strange, very confusing silence. Timidly, Eri pushed herself to sit and, in a charmed, brave moment, brought her face close to Kai's.

His voice was soft through the mask. "Will you tell me what you and Kurono were talking about earlier?"

It made Eri feel a little more daring than she should have been. "Nothing," she said. "It was nothing."

"Nothing. I see."

There was a Russian saying – the nose of curious Barbara was torn off at the market – which had been played on repeat to Eri when she'd been younger. And indeed, she knew it well. Her nose had been torn off many times before. Yet somehow still, against all the odds of punishment and isolation, she'd almost always gotten answers in the end. Her curiosity was almost always fed, unlike curious Barbara, and though she didn't have the luxury of being greedy she did have excuse enough to try her luck.

Just as she'd done earlier with Chrono. Just as she did now, lifting a finger and tucking it into the edge of Kai's mask. Pulling down, slowly, with false tenderness, to expose the carved ridge of his nose, the perilous bow of his lips.

The gentleness of it was bold. The clean, familiar taste of his mouth was exciting and sickening all at once. Eri kissed him, her lips on his lips for a while longer than usual, and Kai let it happen as though the motion were some foreign, paralyzing magic. He touched a gloved hand probingly to her cheek, her neck. His breath slid against her lips in a mess of hot-cold air. For him to kiss her was rare – and for it, Eri had always been grateful, because it left her mouth burning and her bones hollow. But somehow, this time, she was able to pretend that it wasn't so bad. That she even wanted it.

Although maybe it had to do with the fact that she was also pretending the man she was kissing wasn't Kai at all.

The next three days bristled with an inexplicable impatience. Chrono's words circled through Eri's brain intrusively and obsessively – she woke up in the morning with a heat on her chest and a knot in her stomach; she stared down at herself in the bath through an abashed, eager fugue, marveling at the new sensation of hot water against her skin; she repeated the words to herself when she was awake at night. Circular motions was what all the websites had said, what Chrono had read aloud so chokedly. Circular motions at first, then faster and more concentrated.

When she'd finally mustered the courage to actually try it, her fingers had felt clumsy and thick. Like vines not knowing where to go. Not knowing what feeling good was actually supposed to feel like. The explanations had made it sound so easy, and in frustration Eri had quickly given up. Embarrassed despite there being no one to be embarrassed in front of, and disappointed with herself for having absolutely no idea – even now, after that whole tip-toe with Chrono – what to do. It was supposed to be normal. Biological. Instinctual. Mirio had done it so… nicely. Yet, Eri could not banish the self-conscious sense of absurdity in sticking her hand where hands weren't supposed to be.

And then there was Kai.

There was this: Eri knew him. Eri knew, whether she wanted to or not, his ins and outs as though they were her own – because after years of watching his every move, learning him with the oversensitivity of how a rabbit learns a fox, every inch of Chisaki Kai had been ingrained onto her like a tattoo. Through burning habit, she paid very close attention to the way his secrets unraveled themselves, to the way his soul ripped through his skin in a million unspoken ways. And never had she been more aware of it than now.

Now that she deliberately put on the perfume he liked – the one which smelled of lotus blossoms – and now that she purposefully started to wear the dresses he'd bought for her – ruffles around her chest, sashes in her waist, all very grown up and womanly, and always succeeding in making his eyes dim to a shade like molten black-gold.

None of it was for him, of course. The ritual of washing, and dressing up, and acting sweet – even though it was all done exactly the way he would have wanted, none of the images in Eri's head were of Kai when she scrubbed herself clean or spritzed perfume onto her skin. Kai would writhe, of course, as Eri had seen him do so many times before. And the idea made her dizzy. She didn't want him to writhe for her. But still, without fully intending to and at the same time intending it exactly, she did all the right things at all the right times and places.

That evening, she picked the yellow dress dotted with white flowers. It was one of the few which wasn't long, just barely reaching the middle of her thighs, and to see herself in the mirror was odd. The scars on her legs were exposed and loud: a gruesome, fleshy pink compared to her paleness, and for all the world to see (all the world being Kai and Chrono, and maybe the two maids). Eri second-guessed it while she did and re-did her hair at the dressing table, avoiding the all-knowing, all-judging eye of her matryoshka doll.

Its many-layered body pregnant with treasures.

Eventually, one of the maids came poking – a mousy, inconspicuous head around the door, murmuring, "Dinner is ready, Chisaki-sama…" – and Eri's body moved through a sheer burst of electric rush, fizzles up and down her spine with a new anticipation.

Kai and Chrono were both eating already, passing a bottle of sake between themselves when Eri got to the dining room. A plate of chicken stir fry had been dished up for her, next to Kai rather than her usual place at the end of the table. Also a glass of pale apple juice. Only, when Eri sat and sipped, excruciatingly aware of Kai's eyes flickering towards her and then away again wordlessly, she was horrified and delighted to find that it was not apple juice at all, but wine. Wine like sour sugar down her palette, shocking in its burn.

Chrono watched her, and pretended to talk as easily as always. Kai watched her, and pretended to talk back as clearly as always. Eri imagined her ghost into the corner of the room and watched herself, fascinated and disgusted by how Kai's fingers grazed the skin of her thigh under the table. So feather-light it should have gone unnoticed. But the touch burned tracks into Eri's flesh, and left her shivering full and sensitive and wanting more when he stopped. It was hard to eat, and for the majority of the hour she only pushed her food around with chopsticks; so too, she could hardly bring herself to drink more than a few sips of her wine. Her throat was closed. Her stomach ached.

When Chrono left the table, Kai was quick to point it out. "Something wrong?"

Eri shook her head.

"You hardly touched your food."

"I'm not very hungry."

"Oh, aren't you?"

When Eri didn't reply, Kai twisted himself upon the cushion towards her – eyes hard, fingers stretching and clawing against his thigh. The look frightened Eri, made a black claw rise out from her ribcage into her throat as she imagined pinpricks over all the places he scraped with his gaze. But she didn't shy away. Not after all this. On the contrary, in an uncharacteristic moment of bravery which made Kai raise his eyebrows, Eri turned herself to meet him head-on and return his stare.

Every inch of her started to tremble. She tried to hold her breath, pushing down the pang which extended through her veins while also relishing it: the expectation with which her heart pummeled itself, the adrenaline in such a small act of defiance. She saw it in his eyes, in their rigid darkness – he was writhing. It made her insides die and bloom. It made her feel. Not desire. Not for him. But something so close, it teetered on pain: power.

She, Eri, had power. And for the first time, he – Chisaki Kai, Overhaul – was right where she wanted him.

But it came with its own level of terror. Seeping into her thrill and strangling like an ivy.

He'd looked at her like this so many times before. Ghosting illusions of his hands made her blood run cold, made her freeze before him as she recalled how it had felt the first time. The first time. How much it had hurt, as though her innards had turned in on themselves like socks, and how she'd dreamed about his hot, breathy moans in her ear for weeks afterwards. She didn't want him. She wanted this, but not him.

"Eri."

"Mmm?"

Before she could pull away, his hand was on her hip, and she was grateful for her petrified stillness – it meant she wouldn't give him the upper hand, she couldn't struggle and relinquish her thin sliver of control.

Kai squeezed, something demanding and frustrated. "Go brush your teeth. Then come to my study." Then he was up, and without dropping his eyes towards her once again, he left the dining room.

The only light was from the lamp on his desk. For a while, Eri stood silent in the doorway. Watching his back. Willing back the daring which quickly leaked away. She still quivered, and the feeling was delicious and terrible, a devilish cocktail of the things that had made her toss hopelessly in her bed these past few nights. She fingered at her dress, pulling at the folds around her waist and wondering if maybe she could delay just a little longer. He hadn't seen her yet. There was still time–

Without looking around, Kai said her name. The sound of it came as a deep slice to Eri's core in all its honeyed darkness, and she moved out of a habit of fear. But no. To be afraid now would ruin everything – she took purposeful, slow steps despite the sudden limpness about her body; she held her shoulders back, set herself straight even though she would have been perfectly fine to have curled up into whatever grave she was digging for herself.

More than anything, she tried – tried hard, though without entirely succeeding – to pretend that the man waiting for her wasn't Kai.

In a swift movement, he stood from his chair and was facing her. Glowing eyes staring down, locked and glinting black over his bedtime mask. "What are you trying to do?"

Eri's chest ached with her ragged breaths. "I… just… thought you might like this."

"This?" Kai questioned, trailing his eyes suspiciously. She saw how his gloved hands clenched and opened and clenched again at his sides. She saw through the mask how his lips twisted.

What was this? Even now, Eri wasn't entirely sure. Curiosity. Barbara getting her nose torn off. Longing – longing for an idea which until now hadn't even existed in her mind. And as Eri forced herself to meet Kai's gaze, taking a small step closer and considering with every ounce of willingness how the air seemed to grow tight around them, she mustered every ounce of insolence and innocence-lost she could bear to bare.

"Me," she said.

He watched her. Watched her like a snake watched its prey. A creeping uncertainty, a hesitation in the way he raised an eyebrow at her.

It was quiet, and Eri became agonizingly aware of all the things she wanted to do – to try – playing through her mind in a speeding film of images and sounds and sensations. Circular motions. Slow at first, but then faster and more concentrated. The euphoria of the women in books, over which Eri had stewed and analysed: the fluttering, earth-shattering, stomach-churning niceness. And most of all, Mirio. How his kiss had made her tremble in ways she'd never trembled before – good ways, like butterflies down her skin. Mirio.

Mirio, Mirio, oh god, Mirio.

She shook when there was a snaking of fingers down her shoulder, and she crashed back to the clinical dimness of Kai's study. Back to the weight of Kai's golden eyes burning into her. His body closer now, his finger hooking around the sleeve of her dress and pulling it off from over her collar bone. Slowly. Painfully slow, slow, slow. And with the same slowness, he used his other finger to pull down his mask.

He slipped his face into her neck, smelling at first. A deep, steady sniff, something that had never seemed so animal before now – now that Eri could think how Mirio never smelled her like this. And then Kai's lips were light behind her ear, down along her jaw and the ridges of her neck in fleeting softness. One hand cupping her naked shoulder, the other clawing itself around her hip to pull her into him. Eri arched her back, half an attempt to cringe away, half in hopes of pushing herself deeper. Deeper, so that she could sink and disappear. No. Deeper, so that she could pretend for a moment that she wasn't absolutely disgusted and terrified, and that this wasn't Kai. This wasn't Kai.

Already, through the folds of her dress and the thick material of his pants, Eri could feel that nauseating, familiar bulge. He pressed her against it, and with the slightest of rocking movements he ground his hips into Eri's. He continued to press his lips into the hollows of her neck, down into her collarbones where he parted his lips and – with a suddenness that made Eri jolt in his grasp – sank his teeth around the shape of the bone.

It wasn't Kai.

And if it wasn't Kai, it almost felt good.

Good enough to make Eri moan quietly.

And reminding herself that this was what she wanted – this, but not him, and it was fine to pretend it wasn't him – she lifted her hand tentatively. Shaking with the vigour of a dried leaf in autumn wind. With the same slowness as he sucked on her neck's flesh, she lifted her hand and softly, uncertainly, cupped her palm around the absurd swelling in his groin. It was almost larger than her palm. The shape like a bowl, and hard and hot. Eri only had the vaguest semblance of an idea of what to do now – she rubbed, lightly, so lightly she was sure Kai probably wouldn't feel anything.

But his frame went rock solidly stiff. His lips paused in their path over her neck. Eri touched him with an inkling more pressure, and he made a breathy noise into her skin.

Then his hand was around her wrist in a harsh grasp, and with just the right flick he could have broken her bones. Eri, trance jolted, made a movement to rip away. But Kai held her there, and pulled her right back to where she'd been. Trembling, gasping for a breath she didn't need, she stared terrified into the blazing shade of his eyes as he narrowed them. She'd done something wrong. She'd done something bad. Eri waited for her legs to crumble beneath her, and for him to hurt her.

But nothing came. Only Kai's hand moving hers back over his hardness, and then his palm flattening to make hers stroke with greater pressure.

"Harder, Eri."

Bemused, she went harder, feeling her heart rise into her throat as she did so. Feeling a pleasant pooling of warmth somewhere low within herself as Kai – no, not him – groaned.

His hands moved with practiced deftness to unzip her dress. It gathered at her feet in yellow waves like water or silk, vivid and strange. Still with her hand against him, feeling the swell grow greater with each movement, Eri gawked down at her near-nakedness. The study air bit at her skin, the cleanly chill welcome against her own flustered heat. Her nipples beneath the flimsy bra of lace were pricked hard and sensitive – he took his breasts in her hands, flat in their gloved texture, and gently rubbed, stroked, kneaded. And at the feeling, even the sight, a throbbing mounted between Eri's legs.

Before she could stop it, her bra was gone.

Before she had a chance to fully realise how, Kai had picked her up and seated her on his desk. Her legs spread. He leaning into her, hands flat and shaking – he was shaking? – against her thighs.

He kissed her on the lips: forced his mouth against hers, hard and demanding, and soon his teeth were raw along Eri's with the shrill scraping of nails on a chalkboard. Eri gasped, unprepared, only half-unwilling.

She realised she didn't know what his tongue felt like, surprised as she was to find it sliding over hers in a possessive, heavy quickness. Mirio hadn't kissed her like this. Kai had never kissed her like this. She didn't know what to do, didn't know why she liked the wet slide of muscle on muscle even though it was disgusting and probably unhygienic and made Kai clasp her face in a callous squeeze to keep her from pulling away.

Breathy and clueless, Eri allowed her own tongue to press against his, imagining the slippery feel of Mirio's lips. Imagining that the soft moans through her mouth were his, and that the saliva pooling at her mouth's corners like the wetness in her underwear was because of him.

The hand around her jaw slinked down to her shoulder, ghosting over her breast over her ribcage into her hip. Kai pulled away, leaving Eri's lips tender and lonely, aching for more. She felt her spit glowing white along her skin, its moistness overwhelming and wonderful.

"Come closer," Kai said, both his hands over her bum, pulling her towards the edge of the desk. "Open your legs more. More. Wider."

Through a haze, Eri did so. She closed her eyes, relishing the cool air in all her body's crevices as her underwear was slipped from its place, to be cast aside like a ragged piece of skin. There were bubbles in her chest. A pleasure in her groin that bordered on agony. And Eri, lolling her head on her shoulders, had to swallow down hard on the urge to murmur Mirio's name.

She expected to open her eyes and to find Kai unzipping himself. To find the wet, throbbing thing he'd thrust into her bared and waiting.

But instead, she found him on his knees. For the first time, her legs spread wide and weak on his shoulders, Kai got onto his knees and pressed his tongue to the sensitive space in her legs. And Eri had never felt anything like it, the soaking drag over her nakedness. She whimpered, feeling the tip of his tongue dip deeper into her, feeling it flick, feeling it, feeling it, and shaking at the sensation. Ever more daring, she ran her fingers through Kai's hair, picturing it blonde rather than brown, picturing blue eyes glancing up at her hungry and glowing rather than those well-known golds.

His name teetered on her lips' edge. Mirio, Mirio, Mirio.

His tongue moved in circular motions at first. Slow around the specific spot that felt so good, then faster and sharper until Eri begged him to stop. He didn't stop. He licked her, sucked her, flicked with his tongue for what seemed a gorgeous age. He moaned when Eri balled his hair into her fist and pressed his face further into her. She moaned. He moaned.

Something inside of Eri started to unknot and quiver numbly: pinpricks of pressure up the backs of her thighs, a tightening about the walls inside of her. Small explosions. Mounting in a careful mingling of pain and pleasure.

Her legs stiffened against his shoulders and she waited eagerly.

But Kai stopped, and the feeling paused in its climb.

Pleading, Eri rasped, and looked down at him as he looked up at her. One hand scratching at his neck, his cheeks breaking out in that awful redness of bumps and bothered flesh, the welling pleasure receded dramatically as Eri saw the revulsion in his features.

He'd never done this before, slipped himself between her legs and lapped at her skin. Because it was disgusting. Eri felt herself shrink into a terrible shame. She was disgusting. His breath cold over the wetness inside of her. Her body throbbing and wishing desperately for more, though she flinched away in horror under his stare. She shut her eyes. There were tears she refused to cry – tears from the surge of dirtiness, tears from the foiled pleasure.

"S-Sorr–"

She couldn't finish. A gasp ripped through her. Kai, one hand still scratching violently at his neck, buried his head back into her legs and started again. Ripping his jacket off halfway and throwing it away to the side. The same with his tie. The same with his shirt. Ravishing her until she couldn't help the tears that flowed down her cheeks and the convulsing bursts through her body.

His name slid from her lips. She couldn't stop it, though the taste of the syllable was demise – "More. More, Kai, please."

Standing to his full height, undoing his belt in a skilled swipe of movement, he left her heaving for breaths on the desk. Unhurried. Rivetedly watching her impatience grow. He stepped out from his remaining shreds of clothing to reveal his naked body in its entirety: furious red in places with hives, muscular and frightening. He plucked off his gloves and dropped them where he stood. And then taking his cock in his hand, balancing himself between Eri's legs once again, he sunk himself into her.

He thrusted. Hard. Too hard, the feeling an ungodly sort of good, and Eri couldn't help a harsh cry as Kai began a rough, grunting rhythm. In-and-out, in-and-out, her body clasping to his as though she wanted him. And in that moment, she did. She wanted him, Kai. She wanted Mirio. She wanted the undistilled heat and tightness about her insides to mount further into indescribable points of painful ecstasy. Kai breathing heavy in her ear. Mirio's face plastered across her imagination. The feeling so perfectly–

"What are you doing?" Kai rasped quietly, slowing but not stopping in his thrusts.

Eri froze, and looked down to her fingers rubbing her pink flesh above Kai's cock. Automatic. Unconscious. The contact of her finger and wet skin feeding into her sharp, bright shivers. Face hot, Eri pulled her hand away.

"It just felt good," she said ashamedly, and was surprised when Kai took her wrist – gently, so gently – and moved her touch back to where it had been.

"Don't stop," he murmured, a peculiar weakness about the command. "Do it faster. And say my name again."

She did. She said his name, and every time she did he moved inside of her with a desperate, demanding insistence. Again. Louder. Again, Eri. Please. And as the feeling began a relentless ascent into heights Eri grasped longingly at, as the illusion of Mirio grew into ever greater vividness like a reflection upon calm black waters, Eri forgot entirely what it felt like to hate herself and to be revolted by Kai's hands all over her. For just a moment, he wasn't terrifying, and she was getting exactly what she wanted.

He gasped into her ear. A sharp, pained breath that made her name sound nothing at all like a curse.

Something unraveled completely, and Eri threw her arms around Kai's neck as a flaring spark plunged down from her heart into her body's depths. Every inch of her seemed to quake – for Kai, against Kai, for Mirio in all his imaginary realness – and she felt her walls flutter in despairing relief. Like every sort of pain washing itself out from her body.

In those few seconds, it was like every sensation Eri had ever squirmed against being turned on their heads. She came. She came around Kai as though they were lovers and it wasn't terrible. It wasn't filthy.

Kai flung himself into her once more too, freezing there precariously as he shook and released his own tension inside of her. One hand grasping at her fingers on the table, the other clawing down her back's skin with a sweet agony Eri didn't feel.

Just as quickly as it had happened, it was over. And everything disappeared into a quiet numbness.

Eri kept her eyes shut, overcome and near-exhausted by the feeling. The image of Mirio receded into blackness until it was only her and Kai, there in a strain of highly strung sensation and emotion. He said nothing, only leaned over her with his head heavy in her shoulder. Labored breaths and an itching skin to which he lifted his fingers every few seconds to pluck at and scratch. Not flinching when Eri hiccupped against an unstoppable welling in her throat, not moving when she breathed out a helpless, spent whimper.

She held herself closer to Kai, whose skin was the only skin she'd ever known so closely, and breathed wet sighs of horror and relief. Because for the first time, there in his arms, she felt so close to whole it was wounding. The foreign realness raw and tangible. The cold tremor of his palm over her naked flesh no longer so frightening – because now he wasn't so powerful. Not like this.

Not like this.

A/N: P.S. I will not be accepting hate for this chapter, please and thank you.