Author's Notes:
PAIRINGS: Leorio/Kurapika (Leopika); Hisoka/Kurapika (Hisopika); Hisoka/Illumi (HisoIllu); Hisoka/Illumi/Pariston/Kurapika
RATING: Mature
NOTE: To read this story's missing scenes with sexual content, check the uncensored version on Archive of Our Own (AO3 username: lemonpika).
CONTENT WARNINGS (in the uncensored AO3 version): Explicit sexual content, non-consent/dubious consent, public sex, suicidal ideation. Please skip this chapter if these topics are triggering or objectionable to you.
Chapter 12: Safeguards going up in smoke
When Kurapika gets up at dawn, his body is aching all over from last night's events.
He takes another thorough shower in the communal bathroom. But no matter how hard he scrubs his skin, he still feels dirty and disgusting.
He glimpses himself in the mirror when he walks out of the shower stall. At least, it should be himself. He isn't certain he knows who he sees there anymore.
Reflexively, his fist flies forward and punches his reflection. The broken glass nicks his knuckles. He strides out of the bathroom before any of the residents of Milsy Hall can discover what he's done.
Back in his dorm room, he pulls on a black sweater and black trousers. He puts on his circular sunglasses before donning a newsboy cap, also black.
Sure, the sunnies and cap are only precautionary measures that can't promise to ward off every evil in the world. But he may as well employ any safeguards he can. Given his volatile emotional state, there's a higher probability of his eyes flashing red in public.
On his phone, he looks up the address of a sexual health clinic in the city. Being a few stations away, it should be relatively safe. It won't be likely anybody recognizes him there.
As he's mentally preparing himself to leave the room, his gaze drifts toward Leorio, who's still sprawled out and snoring on his bed. It's unfair, really, how good-looking this guy can be even in the throes of sleep and with saliva trickling from his lips to his chin.
Kurapika smacks himself on the forehead to stop himself from staring at Leorio as if he's the last drop of water across a bone-dry desert. Why the hell is Kurapika like this? Even though he has a million other things in mind, he can't keep from pining after things he should never want, things he can never have.
His roommate's interested in women. Women. Kurapika should internalize this once and for all. Leorio was literally talking about hooking up with a random woman last night. He spoke as if it was no big deal, as if it was the sort of thing he did all the time.
Of course, Kurapika noticed from day dot that Leorio fit his type to a T. His towering height. His lean body. His muscled chest and thick biceps. His tanned, healthy-looking skin. His potent, masculine scent. His handsome face, which hits not like an atomic bomb but more like shrapnel creeping closer to one's heart with every day that passes. And, last but not least, his glasses. Kurapika has always had a weakness for glasses.
Dizzyingly good looks aside, Leorio sets Kurapika in a tailspin in other ways. Was Hisoka telling Kurapika the truth about his roommate's betrayal? Leorio's concerned language the night before seems to contradict this accusation. But who knows? Leorio could very well be as talented a deceiver as Hisoka. Leorio could possess ulterior motives, just as other men have harbored when faced with Kurapika.
If Hisoka's crackpot theory on pheromones is to be believed, Kurapika emits a distinct smell that drives these men to the brink of insanity. Is Leorio no different from any of them?
With a lingering look at his roommate's pillow-creased face, Kurapika leaves before he can wake.
The sun has only just risen outside. To Kurapika's infinite relief, barely anybody is up and about, especially this early on the weekend.
After a brisk walk to the station, he boards the train. As is his habit, he keeps his distance from the rest of the early-morning commuters.
Beneath all its innocent artifice, this world is a ravenous inferno, ready to swallow him whole. This is the mantra informing his every action and reaction.
In a near-empty carriage, as the train rumbles in subdued motion, he gazes out the window and loses himself in his thoughts.
Last night's reunion with Hisoka, after two years of being apart, couldn't have gone any worse. Not only did Hisoka effortlessly worm his way back into Kurapika's body and mind, but he also brought friends.
After Hisoka graduated from Lukso High and loosened his chokehold on Kurapika, a realization seeped into Kurapika's brain like the onrush of oxygen: Hisoka's mission, perhaps from the very beginning, had been to isolate and manipulate him. To keep Kurapika under his thumb, Hisoka maintained a stream of lies, which worked to gradually realign Kurapika's perspective and to shake his faith therein. Amidst all this deception, Hisoka peppered in just enough of the truth to keep Kurapika constantly confused, always a step or two behind. That was why Kurapika could never catch him in the act or call him out on it.
This epiphany had all the benefits of distance and hindsight.
Though Kurapika is now privy to the seedy underbelly of the relationship he previously perceived as his salvation, that doesn't mean he can reverse overnight all the damage Hisoka has already inflicted upon his psyche.
The fear of being attacked or even slain for the unusual gradients of his eyes remains. After all, if it happened to his cousin, who's to say the same fate won't befall him someday?
Although Kurapika has learned to take Hisoka's explanation for the events leading up to Pairo's death with a grain of salt, it's an immutable fact that the eyes were missing from his cousin's corpse when they dug it up in the woods. Thus, it's a reasonable inference that those who last saw Pairo alive stole those parts — and those parts alone — for a particular reason. This reason may be unknown to this day, but the likelihood of the killers having a fixation on the sometimes scarlet hue of the cousins' eyes is still high.
Given all this, Kurapika has no choice except to exercise caution and to continue keeping his distance from everyone else, lest he end up letting down his guard and dooming himself with a display of unchecked emotion. He was temperamental as a child and — despite his best efforts and Hisoka's dubiously-effective strategy of sexual catharsis — he's not much closer to mastering his moods as a young adult.
In the clinic, Kurapika gets himself tested for a number of sexually-transmitted infections.
Hisoka might've mentioned that he and his friends were tested and safe. Even so, Kurapika has to make sure. There's nobody in the world he can take at their word. Not even Hisoka. Especially not Hisoka.
As Kurapika waits for his results, he lowers the visor of his cap over his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. His sneaker taps incessantly against the beige tiles of the waiting area.
To his relief, the tests all come back negative.
He goes to pay at the billing station. The lady behind the desk glances at his knuckles, flecked all over with fresh cuts. She suggests he get his hand disinfected and bandaged at the primary care clinic next door.
He simply hums noncommittally in response.
Back at the train station, there are tons more commuters roaming around than earlier. His stomach starts to churn as more and more people line up behind him on the platform.
When the train finally arrives, several minutes late, he notes that the passengers inside are as packed as sardines in a can.
He steps aside to allow those lining up behind him to go ahead. He intends to wait instead for the next train, which may potentially be emptier than this one.
This plan is thwarted when two strong hands suddenly seize him around the waist and carry him forward. Before he can voice a word of protest, he's being lifted into the teeming train and being forced face-first against a wall. A broad chest is pushing against his back, and curtains of long black hair are brushing against his shoulders.
So this isn't Hisoka. His initial fear dwindles but doesn't disappear. There may be a faint possibility, after all, that this person breathing down his neck is worse than even Hisoka.
From behind, a pale hand materializes in front of his face. He fully expects the palm to smack his mouth to silence him, but it doesn't. Instead, the right hand displays the illuminated screen of a smartphone.
The monotone voice murmuring against his ear makes him freeze. He first heard this voice in his dorm room last evening. "If you even think about fighting back or alerting anyone, I'll circulate this clip right now to everyone you know. Your contacts aren't extensive at all so it was easy to organize their email addresses into a handy list on my phone. What will your parents think about your debut into the world of pornography, I wonder?"
His tormentor's thumb clicks on the play button on the screen. The video Pariston recorded last night plays silently on a loop.
(There is a deleted scene here.)
When Kurapika comes to, his cheek is still wedged against the grimy wall. The overbearing pressure behind and around and inside him has abated. His trousers have been zipped up and his belt rebuckled.
Illumi is nowhere to be found. He must've gotten off at the nearest station as soon as he was done with Kurapika.
With a handkerchief from his pocket, Kurapika wipes the wetness from his face. Surreptitiously, he then scrubs any evidence of ejaculations from his surroundings.
There's an immediate discomfort as he shifts his thighs.
Wincing, Kurapika whirls around to lean his back against the wall. He adjusts his lopsided sunglasses, only to notice that the bridge has been snapped in half. It must've been broken when Illumi slammed Kurapika's head against the wall, whether purposely or not.
The train isn't as crowded as it was before he fainted, but not by much. He studies everybody in the vicinity from behind his broken sunnies. Nobody is looking at him funny. Not one person, including a nearby child holding his mother's hand, appears to be aware of Kurapika's latest claim to shame.
Small favors, Kurapika supposes.
But how did Illumi even find him on the train in the first place? Has he been stalking Kurapika since he left Milsy Residence Hall? The thought makes Kurapika shiver.
The glowing red dot on the map overhead reveals that the train has already passed the station closest to Zaban University. He must've been unconscious for longer than he thought. How he remained upright against the wall without Illumi's support is a total mystery to him.
With wobbling legs, Kurapika gets off at the next stop so that he can take the train to the opposite direction. But he doesn't head back to the dorm just yet. After what transpired in the train, another trip to the sexual health clinic is next on the agenda.
He realizes, of course, that he'll have to come back to the clinic in the near future once he's accounted for the different incubation periods of any potential infections or diseases. But his brain won't let him rest until he gets tested. He's doing this primarily for his own peace of mind, if that's even possible to achieve.
Perhaps predictably, the results come back negative again.
He does his best to ignore the renewed scrutiny of the lady manning the billing station. She stares down at his still unbandaged hand but says nothing this time.
The first thing he does upon returning to his dormitory is take his second shower of the day.
Mercifully, Leorio has left the room they share by then. Kurapika can't bear to hear Leorio's pitying tone again.
Without hesitating, Kurapika drops his mobile phone to the floor and stomps on it until the screen darkens amidst a cobweb of cracks. As for the outfit he wore and everything else he brought on his brief trips to the clinic, they're going straight to the garbage. That would save him the energy of searching for any trackers possibly planted the night before.
Will any of these safeguards even improve anything, or will they simply go up in smoke? Who's to say?
Kurapika has a sneaking suspicion that, regardless of what precautions he takes, Hisoka and his ilk, with their untold strategies and resources, won't encounter any trouble tracking him down wherever he goes.