Author's Notes:
RELATIONSHIPS: Neon Nostrade/Kurapika, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
RATING: Mature
NOTE: Azzy and Cherry provided illustrations. To view the images, check out the uncensored version on Archive of Our Own (AO3 username: lemonpika).
Chapter 2: Gold and Irreverence
It's midway through the second week of the countdown to Neon's death. Two-thirds of Nostrade's inner circle — namely, the heiress knocking on heaven's door and three of her most trusted bodyguards — have just touched down at Yorknew City.
Kurapika has, for all intents and purposes, assumed the mantle Light abandoned. As de facto head, he entrusted Linssen to stand guard over Nostrade's mansion on the mountains for the duration of their trip. They'll remain in the city for less than three weeks so Linssen won't have to hold down the fort for long.
Neon initially insisted upon bringing her last handmaiden along with them. Then Kurapika gently reminded her of the very real possibility that taking Eliza would reopen the wounds she suffered due to Squala's murder on their last visit to Yorknew. Wouldn't losing her lover, her employer, and her mistress in the course of less than a year only compound Eliza's trauma?
"I'll be your Eliza till the end," Kurapika assured Neon as he was waiting for the printer at headquarters to spit out four airship tickets. "Every object you desire and every service you require, I'll deliver."
Apparently, Light left behind an envelope in his bedroom, which Neon has refused to enter ever since his unexplained departure. Inside the envelope was a note, and on the note were details to a trust account with funds in the ten figures. Kurapika was designated as trustee and Neon as beneficiary.
Given that the source of such riches could only be Light's earnings from selling off nearly her entire collection of precious playthings, she felt no gratitude upon hearing the news about the money set aside for her. She raised not a word of complaint when Kurapika declared his intentions to pay off everything the family owed as soon as possible.
A substantial amount of Jenny remained even after the satisfaction of these debts, inclusive of interest and penalties, Kurapika reported afterward.
"How much?" she asked as she rose from her bed for what felt like the first time since succumbing to her seven-day stupor of sadness.
"Enough for us to visit wherever your finger lands on a world map."
She almost couldn't discern his answer amidst the creaking of her bones as she stretched. She felt more like the skeleton of a prehistoric dinosaur accumulating dust in a museum, less like a girl.
So here they are now, back again in Yorknew City. Neon's eyes were fully open when she spun the globe and pointed at the star of the United States of Saherta.
She feels like she's only barely scratched the surface of this sprawling seaside metropolis. Last time, it was auction season, and Light practically had her on lockdown in the hotel. This time, Kurapika is actively encouraging her to take the lead and indulge in all her favorite hobbies and activities.
Apart from peddling flesh, which is Kurapika's only prohibition as it was precisely this pricey habit that caused Nostrade to remain in the red for many months, shopping is Neon's greatest joy in life.
She dumps her luggage in their reserved suite at the Beitacle Hotel then drags Kurapika into the first high-end fashion boutique she encounters on the streets.
She rifles through a rack of dresses, but none of them succeed in snagging her attention. She sighs and sidles over to the next rack.
"Shall we move on to another store?" Kurapika offers once he notices the sagging corners of her painted mouth.
She's about to express her assent when she spots an inconspicuous shortcut at the back of the boutique. The wheels in her brain start spinning.
She turns to face the storefront, where Basho and Melody are waiting on the pavement beyond a pane of glass. The former is puffing on one of his foul cigars, while the latter is polishing her flute.
Neon elbows Kurapika then raises her chin in the direction of the shortcut. She dares not speak, lest Melody discover her intentions with her hypersensitive hearing.
Neon hopes the glitter of her eyes suffices as a nonverbal message, especially to someone as astute at decoding languages as Kurapika. She once spotted his journal and attempted to read its pages, but all the entries were etched in a dialect she'd never seen before. Kurtan, he claimed as he snatched the journal from her hands and snapped it shut. She understood, of course, that he was only playfully referring to the extinct language of the slaughtered clan whose scarlet eyes he was still keeping safe in a place nobody — not even Neon herself — could access.
Her eyes are trying to communicate with him at present. So what do you say? Is it time to carry out my great escape?
He shakes his head, ever so slightly. There's no point in having an entourage if you'll only end up going your own way.
She seizes his chained hand and squeezes it. I'm going nowhere alone. You and I, we're leaving together.
Before he can voice out any of his reservations, she drags him by the hand through the narrow doorway. The shortcut leads to an adjacent establishment. Judging by the eye-popping display of feathered carnival masks and floor-length velvet capes, they've arrived at a costume shop.
She snaps up a navy blue flight attendant's outfit, complete with cap and scarf, and grabs a blond wig for good measure. He looks askance at her as she shoves a pilot costume into his arms.
Since a show tune is blaring from the sound system, she should be safe to speak without alerting Melody, right? "This is your disguise! It's going to match with mine! If we want to keep those two bodyguards from breathing down on our necks for the remainder of our adventure, we've got to take precautions, right?"
"I'm not sure about this, Neon."
"Well, I am! And this is my day — no, my week — no, my last three weeks, remember? I should get my way, and you shouldn't complain!"
She's willing to twist his arm if he tries to fight some more, but he only sighs and says, "Fine."
Costume in hand, he strides into a fitting room of his own volition. Humming in pleasure, she prances into her own stall. She can't believe he's really indulging her whims like this!
As soon as she casts off her original outfit, she shimmies into the skimpy stewardess dress without bothering to unbutton it. She arranges the synthetic honey tresses over her real hair, dons the cap at a jaunty angle, and knots the scarf around her neck. After applying a fresh coat of lipstick and blowing a kiss to the mirror, she's ready to go.
She marches out, hips swaying from side to side as if she's a model taking over the catwalk. She's prepared to wink and wave and whirl around so that she can wow Kurapika with her boundless beauty and star quality.
However, her feet halt and her jaw slackens at the sight of him. She isn't often rendered speechless. But she is now.
The short sleeves of his white oxford shirt expose his sinewy forearms, and the gold-winged insignia on his black cap accentuates the streaks of sunshine in his hair. As she gapes at him, she knows one thing for sure. If he was her pilot, she wouldn't give a damn if he crashed her airship or dropped her over the mythical terrain of the Dark Continent sans parachute. She wouldn't complain — she'd only thank him for revving up her engine and for commandeering the trajectory of her trip, regardless of its destination.
Exquisite fingers, momentarily freed from chains, reach up to fidget with his black necktie. "Did I do this right? It's my first time wearing something like this."
"It can go a little tighter." As she slides the knot more snugly against his collar, she watches his Adam's apple bob. "Relax. I've assisted guys with matters of fashion before so I know what I'm doing."
"Aside from your father's, whose neckties have you been tying?"
"Why? Are you jealous?"
He doesn't dignify her taunting with an answer.
They pay at the counter, request a paper bag in which to carry their original outfits, then leave the costume shop in their disguises. In her periphery, Neon can see Basho and Melody searching the street for her and Kurapika.
Neon chances a single glance backward before she pulls Kurapika into another boutique. She glimpses Basho barking rapid-fire questions at a frightened passerby and Melody patting his bulging bicep with her small hand in an effort to reel in his hysteria.
"Looks like our disguises are a resounding success!" Neon cheers as they settle into the new establishment. She claps her hands in time to the jazzy stylings pouring from the speakers.
Kurapika raises a quizzical brow. "You played Basho like a fiddle, perhaps, but there's not a snowball's chance in hell Melody was fooled."
Neon's palms freeze mid-clap. "You think she can hear us conversing over all this music?"
"Oh, she can definitely hear every single word of our exchanges, whether in this store or in the two previous ones. We'll need to walk a few blocks away to truly elude her notice, as familiar as she is with both of our sound profiles by now. I have no doubts whatsoever she caught wind of your plans to flee from the moment you formulated them. Something in your heartbeat would've changed drastically, and this is far from the first time you've attempted or succeeded to escape from right under her nose."
"I don't get it! If she knows exactly where we are, why doesn't she accost us?"
He shrugs. "She might've realized we preferred to be left to our own devices for the evening. If I had to guess, at this very moment, she's doing her best to focus on Basho's interrogations of strangers on the street to afford us some privacy. And if Basho tries searching for us here, she'll probably invent some excuse to steer him away."
Neon's heart thumps unevenly in her chest. Does this mean Kurapika yearns for alone time as much as she does? Why, oh why, does this knowledge make her heartbeat hasten to this extent?
His dark eyes drift from her face toward the merchandise behind her. "Why don't you take your time and have a look around? It appears as if this establishment is much more your speed."
As it turns out, his instinct is absolutely right. The fashion sense of this boutique is a lot more promising than the first one they visited. In no time at all, she's picked out a number of clothing items she's interested in fitting.
"You know, even though these are technically classified as women's clothing," she muses, passing him yet another skirt to add to the multiple swaths of fabric now hanging from his folded arms, "you can obviously pull off the androgynous look. You want to try anything?" When he shakes his head, she chirps, "Great! Come with me, then!"
Despite the vehemence of his protests, she drags him into a dressing room. The cramped stall barely contains enough space for both of their bodies and the mound of clothes he's carrying on her behalf. Her bosom presses against his chest as she reaches around his body to lock the door.
"Really, Neon, I should wait outside. These sorts of establishments often have strict rules against —"
"Oh, hush." She grips the door's latch to prevent him from attempting to unlatch it. "This isn't the worst thing you've watched me do. Not by a long shot. If I wind up becoming a criminal to the fashion industry, you have no choice except to act as my accomplice."
He doesn't try to run, but he does turn his back to her. He stares resolutely at the door as she starts undressing behind him.
"Hand me the baby pink frock," she instructs. "The one with the strawberry print."
Without swiveling his neck, he passes her the requested item over his right shoulder.
She can't help scowling. She was hoping he'd take this golden opportunity to steal glimpses of her bewitching body in nothing but lacy underwear. She does boast a supple, shapely figure! Eliza, whenever prompted, always assures her of her womanly wiles!
Just once, she wants to test for herself whether she indeed has a palpable effect on men. She does acknowledge, though, that Kurapika probably isn't the ideal test subject if she wants to make an average man's knees buckle. Nothing about him has ever suggested he'd be a suitable baseline for experimentation.
The most extreme reaction she can coax from him is probably this pinkish tinge presently diffusing over his nape, but even that fades in the space of a minute.
"So how do I look?" she asks, smoothing the frock's floaty fabric over her thighs.
He hesitates. "Is it safe to face you?"
"I'm not planning to scare you with my birthday suit, if that's what you're worried about."
He turns around and scrutinizes her outfit for all of two seconds. "Mm. You look nice."
"I know I look nice. What I'm really asking is do I look tasty enough to eat?" She gestures at the small strawberries adorning the frock, hand-stitched in crimson thread and spanning the fabric from its sweetheart neckline all the way down to its flouncy skirt.
He hums noncommittally before facing the door once more.
So he isn't exactly jumping up and down for her frock. Still, it's a good sign he respects her enough to keep the professional boundaries between them intact, isn't it? A lesser mafioso would be salivating over her by now, if not outright getting grabby.
She beams, confidence restored, then requests that he pass another dress for her to fit.
Before too long, the chair in the corner of the dressing room has two piles on top — the 'I'd proudly wear this to D-day' pile and the 'no, thanks, I'd sooner drop dead' pile.
She makes him check out each outfit she tries. He always mumbles a vaguely positive comment about whatever she's wearing. Since his words don't divulge all that much about what he's actually feeling, she's once again practicing the art of interpreting the unspoken. If she detects even the slightest twinkle in his dark eyes, regardless of whether the momentary gleam might only be generated by a trick of the light, she places the item on top of the D-day pile without question.
Throughout the fitting process, she barely glances at the mirror to check out how the clothes are hanging from her body. In the end, his reactions have much more of a bearing on the sorting of the two piles than her own opinions.
"Done!" she announces eventually, dressed in the flight attendant uniform again. "I'll get everything in the pile to the right!"
He gathers the left pile into his arms. "Very well. I'll return these rejects to their hangers."
"One last thing before we go!"
Without warning, she knocks off his pilot cap and musses up his hair. Since he's still balancing swaths of fabric in his arms, he's unable to fend her off as she starts messing with his clothes. She unbuttons his oxford shirt and rebuttons it haphazardly, with one button at the middle deliberately skipped. She then loosens his belt such that the strap's end dangles freely instead of being slotted into the proper hoop.
"What are you doing?" His voice is uncommonly high-pitched, and a rosy hue is flooding over his skin again.
"You mean what are we doing. You and I, we're going to scandalize the shop assistants. That's what's happening. When we walk out of here, we'll make their jaws hit the floor and send their tongues wagging."
"But why even —" His sentence dissolves into a yelp as she unexpectedly lunges forward to press her lips, just once, against his neck.
She pulls away, leaving behind a crimson kiss mark on his skin. As she pauses to admire her handiwork, the kiss mark flutters in time to his pulse beneath it. By this point, his face is glowing just a few shades of red lighter than her lipstick.
She's always found his dominant side attractive — the way he has seamlessly stepped into his unofficial role as Nostrade's new kingpin and has been doing everything in his power to restore the mafia family to its former glory. But she finds this side of him — so shy, so easily flustered — adorable as well.
She flashes a grin full of mischief. "If we're going to do this, we have to make it look real, right?"
"You're just going to get us blacklisted from this establishment."
"Who cares? It's not like you were ever interested in these clothes, and it's not like I'm ever coming back again. I'm never going to suffer from the long-term consequences of my actions. There aren't a lot of benefits to living by a countdown, you know? At least give me this, Kurapika. Please. I'm having fun for the first time in a long time."
He purses his lips as he thinks about it. He then nods stiffly.
He truly can't deny her anything, can he? She's seen enough of his excessively rigid interactions with his associates and subordinates at Nostrade and with his other connections within the mafia community to understand that he nurses a soft spot reserved only for her.
She tries to stare into his impenetrably black eyes, tries to figure him out once and for all. But he isn't paying attention to her anymore. Having shifted the pile of rejects onto his left arm, he pulls out his phone from his pocket. It's buzzing, its screen illuminated with an incoming call.
She watches as he jabs a button to reject the call. "Was that Basho? You can call him back, but try to say something to throw him off about our location."
"No need. Let's just get out of here."
To give herself a rumpled look matching his, she ruffles her wig considerably and undoes the top buttons of her stewardess dress to expose her cleavage. She's far from blessed in that arena, but her push-up bra is doing what it can. Satisfied, she stalks out of the dressing room with her head held high and with her arms full of the clothes she wants to buy.
As expected, whispers erupt everywhere in the store after the two of them emerge in their disheveled states. A shop assistant hurries forward to divest Kurapika of the unwanted clothes before he can even begin to return them.
"I'm perfectly capable of putting these back myself," Kurapika insists.
"That's quite all right, sir," the shop assistant replies as she wrenches the pile of fabric from his arms. Her eyes are glued to the conspicuous crimson kiss on his neck. "This is part of my job description, after all."
The telltale murmur of gossip follows the two of them all the way to the counter. Kurapika takes out his wallet, extracts Neon's platinum card, and sets it down on the countertop, all without meeting the cashier's eyes.
To her credit, the cashier rings up the purchases without any snooty glances or snide comments. Neon guesses her reaction to them would be a touch different if they didn't just present a platinum card.
Jenny truly has the power to smooth over every problem in the world, with the glaring exception of Neon's countdown conundrum. This lesson continues to ring true as their shopping spree progresses through the night.
For every new store they enter, Neon makes a point of playing another prank or trying to wreak havoc in some other way. But her every attempt to act like a menace is immediately thwarted once Kurapika whips out the platinum card and pays off any potential or actual victims. He's an undisputed master at damage control.
She's not six feet under yet, and he's already halfway through his transformation into an amoral mob boss. Character development as stark as his would likely disturb the general population, but it only amuses and amazes her.
Neon grabs Kurapika's hand and flees from the final establishment for the night before he's even finished putting out the latest fire she's started. As they come to a stop in an alleyway, she's panting as if she's just finished running a marathon.
He's not even out of breath. It's so unfair. Pro Hunters are truly a breed of their own.
Without knowing why she's doing so, she starts laughing her head off. His eyes widen at the sight of her howling beside him like she's some sort of hyena. His lips twitch — he's fighting back a smile but failing for the most part.
Their hands are still linked. Her fingers are burning from the friction of their most recent and most frantic escape, but she refuses to let go, not even when the disconcerting sensation of sentient chains begins rippling beneath her fingertips.
She feels something for Kurapika. She can't keep denying this, can she? She's known for a long time that she's been harboring an innocent little crush on him — a foregone conclusion, she supposes, since he's the only guy in her circle who's even remotely close to her age and who isn't bulging with muscles or sporting copious facial hair, which are both features she can do without. However, after tonight, she has to accept that her fluttery feelings for him are deeper than she initially suspected.
He's the only person who not only stood by her but also encouraged her to stand on her own two feet again after the man who raised her branded her as a failure and abandoned her without any excuse or explanation.
What is she supposed to do about this constant ache simmering in her chest, painful and pleasurable in equal measure? Do her feelings for him even matter now, given that the Lovely Ghostwriter has already written her off as someone who isn't long for this world?