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Hundreds of bodies mingle under crystal chandeliers, and the hands on your waist change with the song. Shoes click against the checkered mocha tile, only to be drowned out by aimless chatter and soft laughs. Champagne flutes fly across the ballroom like birds. Someone, you’re not sure who (nor do you really care), tries to snag your attention as the song changes, but as soon as your eyes meet gray ones across the room—the game changes. Everybody loses.
You’re over there before you know it, strutting on the titled floor with a mischievous quirk of your lips. The aimless chatter and clinking shoes dissipates, fading slowly like a wave rubbing against sand as he meets you halfway, legs long and clad in familiar black pants. Caressing your skin with playful fingers, the air trails a shiver up your spine, watching the mischievous grin that doesn’t leave your lips.
“So Yorknew loses a jewel in its crown now, hm, Chrollo?” The words fall from your lips, but he catches them when his lips kiss the back of your hand.
“Only as much as it needs to lose,” he says, standing up straight. Gray eyes locking with yours, the usual calm that blankets over his irises is gone, replaced by something alive, something that moves around just enough, something that’s not fire, not yet, anyway.
“Or as much as you’re willing to take.”
The smile that takes his lips should worry you, should set off bells in your head, should cause you to stiffen. Should being the keyword.
Enveloping your hand in his own—calloused and relaxed—he leads you through a complicated dance, feet automatically moving through the steps. His other hand melds to the side of your waist, and it’s a comfortable feeling, much more comfortable than the other dance partners you’ve had tonight; then again, it’s Chrollo. A tempting thought sneaks across the bridge of your mind, and you’d be lying if you said that you wanted his hand only on your waist tonight.
He notices the glaze that starts to swim in your eyes.
Moving his lips next to your ear, little puffs of his breath flirt with the shell of your ear. “And you’re willing to stand by while that happens?”
He doesn’t have to pull back to see the exhilarated look in your eyes—the look he’s seen before when you flirt with something thrilling, something that gets your heart going.
Picking and choosing your words carefully (because the first one to slip up loses the game, that’s how it’s always been between you two), you maneuver around—through all the complicated steps of the dance, dips and all—so that your lips are next to his ear, and your hair ghosts along his smooth cheek. “Well, Yorknew would be a much more exciting place, then. Wouldn’t it?”
You pull back, seeing the satisfied raise of his lips and curve of his eyes.
“Would you care to appreciate the view of Yorknew from the top floor?”
That’s definitely not what he’s asking.
“Let’s.”
And you let him lead you away as he always does.
The door to the room clicks behind you and locks. It doesn’t matter whose room it is, if it’s anyone’s room at all. All that matters is that it isn’t bugged and you can enjoy each other’s company in peace.
You’re both quick to sweep it just to make sure. Having an extra ear in here would set fire to all of Yorknew, to the mafia that runs it; the same mafia your family’s legacy is so heavily intertwined with, and the same mafia that you’ve scabbed your hands, your arms, and your legs for. The same mafia you hold a knife to, lovingly, of course, it’s got to be some variation of love that you do it for.
Or not. It doesn’t really matter. Not as long as Chrollo is here with you.
He’s like a season—coming and going as he pleases, in and out, in and out. He’ll leave you with a taste of his weather (rain for spring, clear skies and humid air for summer, cool air that makes you shiver for fall, and frigid, icy air that you can’t get enough of for winter). Then he leaves before morning rises, to disappear somewhere, a mysterious place whose name you don’t know, somewhere far, far out of your reach.
Maybe, you think, watching him finish sweeping his side (nooks, crannies, and all), I want him to stay. Or bring me. Maybe I want him to lo—
The thought is interrupted as he strides back over to you in the center of the room. Neat white sheets are visible behind him, and you wonder if—when, rather—you’ll both tangle up in them.
This air frozen between you is different from the whimsical ballroom air, still tense with a need, but different. Briefly, you wonder what he thinks about it, because it’s not a matter of if he noticed. He does, surely.
Standing perfectly still like a marble statue, he’s just a few feet away, lips tantalizingly close; it’s like seeing a season on the brink of an eve. Right there for the taking but out of reach all the same.
He doesn’t have to ask you to spill the information, when and where the auction will be, because he knows you’ll do it voluntarily sometime today, and that’s what makes this game better, the when factor. It leaves you both dangling in a state of suspense, somewhere between people with a mutual interest and occasional lovers.
Impulse.
With the way your heart thunders in your ears, how your eyes refuse to look away from his, and the stiff air in the room, you reach up to him, slowly sealing your lips together.
Reaching down for you is something he wouldn’t do, you think. You have to meet him up there.
Eyes closed, your lips continue to move, and quickly, almost silently, the thought of wondering if he has his eyes open while kissing you hops around in your mind.
Those gray eyes that never seem like they’re burning, that are always ten steps ahead of everyone else.
You both pull away. The air isn’t as tense.
The residual heat of his lips over yours remains.
A tiny fire licks the inside of his eyes, and by how your eyes hone in on it, how your body reacts to it—there’s something there, something wandering in uncertainty. And you ponder over if he knows what it means. Or if he’s faking it.
“Careful,” you say, testing the waters, “I could get the wrong impression if you look at me like that.”
Eyes flaring in amusement, he decides to play along, to ripple the waters. “Oh? And what impression would that be?” he says, softly, almost inaudibly.
You swallow—
—your galloping heart is silent, the tense air doesn’t faze you, and your nerves all quiet, patiently, patiently waiting—
“That you may be in love with me.”
It takes him a mere second to smother all traces of shock, and the smile that takes over his face is fake. You know it’s fake. He knows you know. You’re both going around in circles trying to figure out where the other stands.
His hand brushes against the side of you jaw, lightly grazing it.
He brings your lips within millimeters of his own.
“Well,” he says, “we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”
Your lips meet again, meshing too many convoluted emotions together into some form of cocktail; right now, you can’t get enough of it, the flavor, the texture, the addictive way it pulls on your senses and slithers down your throat.
His lying lips taste sweet.