#potential trigger

“You can’t do this.”

The words that leave your lips are dry, drained, and pointless.

“I know—but let’s think of it as a compromise between lovers.”

Lovers? Chrollo says it with a charm and a practiced smile; twisting, the corners of his lips barely raise and his eyes almost look like they’re smiling. It’s fake, his smile, the way he moves and talks, everything. Even the way he breathes might be fake.

The room is large and shadows creep up on the sides of the walls, but the way he looks at you, how his gray eyes reach into yours and invade your thoughts, makes it feel like it’s shrinking. Small, smaller, so, so, so small. There’s a light shift in his facial expression, and your heart screams, telling you to leave, leave, leave, you’ve got to leave. He’s read you. He’s done digging through your expressions (and probably thoughts, too, he’s always been a master at mindreading).

He’ll be done playing pretend soon.

“A compromise? Chrollo, you can’t keep taking everything away from me.”

Stupid, you’ll make him angry. He’ll kill you—you know this. He doesn’t need you like you need him.

Unchanging, his expression is the same. If you were anyone else, anyone who didn’t know Chrollo, then you’d think that he’s being patient, considering, even, by his expression alone. That’s not how things are. That’s not how things will ever be with him.

A shift in the atmosphere comes a second later. He’s walking now, no longer at a moderate length away; slow, deliberate, and heavy, his footsteps thunder in your ears along with the rapid torrents of blood your heart pumps. Your eyes are burned onto him. Not glued, not clinging, something more powerful, more intense. Circling you, that’s what he likes to do.

Chrollo never walks straight to you. Once, he said that it was because he liked seeing all of you.

Your feet move, and your body tenses. Still tracing his movements, your eyes are focused.

The exits are too far away.

Closer, closer, closer—

“I suppose so, yet you’ve gone along with it. Why? Are you tired of us now?”

He’s in front of you and stands tall. Poised and collected, he’s everything he’s always been—this is Chrollo. Eyes ghastly, he’s reading your facial expression again, digging around.

You know he’s provoking you. Don’t—

“You know that isn’t it! You know how much I love. . .”

The words dry up and shrink back into your throat. Launching into a frenzy, your mind panics, squabbling in every possible direction, wanting to get away, to hide until his watchful eyes can’t find you anymore. There’s a pleased gleam in his eyes. He knows, and he knows that you know. That’s what makes it so fun and enjoyable, the fact that you’re walking on eggshells around him, how you’re being so very mindful about what spills out of your mouth. It’s stupidly endearing how your eyes widen; he takes special note of how the red blood vessels in your eyes strain.

Dipping down (sluggishly, reminding you that he’s the one in control), he’s nearly eye level with you. Nearly. Never completely your equal. A tense moment of silence drags on between you two as his eyes dissect you.

Everything is unbearably quiet, and his soft breaths that caress your face sound like cannon fire.

“Is that so? I’m glad. I’d find it unsavory if you didn’t return my feelings anymore.”

A gulp.

Delicately, he moves one of his nimble fingers around a lock of your hair, feeling it with his finger pads, before moving it back behind your ear. It’s something so small, so tender, but it blasts a shiver down your spine, a shiver that clamps its boney hands around you. The shiver rides on your spine from start to finish.

“It’s getting late,” he comments. Your eyes shift to the nearest window and see the night sky swaddling everything that you can see; the day ran away, tucked behind the horizon, leaving you here.

Your nerves are shaking.

“I should get going,” you say, voice awkward, somewhere between shaking and ghostly.

Lethargically, without a single ounce of worry or hurry (because he knows you’ll always be here. Even if he leaves with the door open, he knows you’ll be here), his frosty hands slink around you. Resting on your upper back first, they glide down to your waist, chilling every inch of skin.

“I wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” he says; his voice sounds like sugary honey steadily dripping, sounds like he’s got all the time in the world with you, here, in this still, unmoving room. “Spend the night.”

It comes abruptly.

Chrollo pulls you closer to him.

Rushed thoughts of your skin grazing against his flushes your cheeks. They turn a deep red, powdered with a cocktail of emotions you can’t pick apart. It’s nothing new, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s the way he says it, like he’s inviting you into a sculpted throne room. Whispering something else into your ear—

The way his lips move, how they curl just right, don’t. . .

The way your body relaxes gives it away, and even if you can’t see it you know that a satisfied smirk tugs at his mouth.

You know. He knows.

He’s got you.

He’s always had you.

Standing up, towering, confident, never your equal, he takes your hand in his. Lacing his fingers with yours together easily (too easily, almost), his hold on you is gentle, ever-present.

This isn’t. . .right. Stop. . .

“Chrollo, I—”

Keep going! Don’t give in!

One glance wipes it all away when his head turns to face you. Beneath his familiar clear gray eyes, he renders you weak, helpless, submissive.

“Yes? What is it, darling?”

“I. . .I love you, Chrollo.”

A familiar smile plays with the edges of his lips.