Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/412056.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Katekyou_Hitman_Reborn!
  Relationship:
      Chrome_Dokuro/Rokudou_Mukuro
  Character:
      Chrome_Dokuro, Rokudou_Mukuro
  Additional Tags:
      6996
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-05-24 Words: 1982
****** Overture ******
by Anusaya
Summary
     Mukuro's movie taste is probably very questionable. Also: Relaxing
     hobbies at Kokuyoland.
     Timeline: Set vaguely in the recent arc at Some Indeterminate Time
     [but not, or not yet, addressing the issues presented in 386...
     perhaps in later parts! I do like a smidgeon of angst amid other
     things].
Notes
     warning for sexual thoughts/actions :|a between minors, oh noes.
     I wanted to write shameless smut. More parts forthcoming, I think, as
     I have more ideas.
See the end of the work for more notes
He has a belly button.
Chrome has seen it, during fights, when the wind catches the lower hem of his
camouflage top. With the way Mukuro-sama talks, sometimes you would expect that
his navel would be flat as a sea of glass, but that little indention, perfectly
fit for the thumb to hook itself into, a corkscrew curlique pushing inwards,
broadcasts to the world the news of an umbilical cord, severed; a mother,
somewhere, and a round curve of rising, breathing baby flesh that existed
fifteen years ago. Chrome compares it to her own, which is frequently even more
visible. Sitting on the couch, in that hectic, bruised, glowing after-math of
battle -- that in-between space before another wave of opponents comes -
- licking creamsicles, she lifts her shirt with her free hand and plays a
little.
Breathe in, breathe out. Watch as it sinks and rises, but not in the way that
leaves you unable to move. Never let it sink so far again. Watch your navel.
Wash your navel. The old words of the absent mother: Wash your navel, but do
not place your hands lower, for if you do, that's called masturbation. So look
away when you scrub, dear.
Mukuro-sama is standing in the back room, bent over a bowl of cereal with milk
and little o's; generic brand, and Chrome does not know whether it tastes of
apple or honey.
"Probably," he ventures, aloud, "more like cardboard."
Chrome perks. Sits upright, and wonders how long he has been listening to her
at that level.
A soft laugh. "I only sensed your curiosity," he explains. "And now your
amazement. It's easy, after so long."
"Ah," she answers, wondering how far back that curiosity sensing might trace,
and whether he sensed from her that earlier curiosity about his navel, and what
it would feel like to dip her tongue into it; would Mukuro-sama be ticklish?
(But that might be inappropriate to think about.)
Mukuro neither confirms nor denies anything. "Would you like some?" Sound of a
cereal box shaking; rattle: tat-tat-kat, tat-tat, dry, musicless, like little
bones. Otherwise, it is as quiet as Chrome can ever remember at Kokuyoland;
quiet because -- "I never had a taste for such foods," Mukuro continues. "I
bought them for Fran, you know."
Fran is asleep. Ken and Chikusa are at the local hospital, receiving treatment
for battle wounds, possible fractures and concussions, alongside Gokudera,
Yamamoto, and others. Mukuro would be more concerned, as would Chrome, if there
were not precedent of them surviving worse injuries (in the case of Chikusa, a
certain childhood incident involving bodily immolation). Ken will grumble; if
the doctors prescribe pills, he will peel off the labels and attempt to dip
them down the sink while no one is looking, replacing mugi chocolates into the
bottle. Mukuro, however, is used to such tricks; if Ken attempts to play dirty,
he will refill the prescription, illusion the pills into mugi chocolates in the
first place, and feed them to him one by one, on a perfect schedule.
Without the others represented bodily, there's a strange quiet, a surreal sort
of vacancy not fully filled by the fitful sounds of food preparation. Mukuro
does not cook, habitually. Verde has wired him something of a microwave.
There's a small refrigerator for milk and minor cold goods. Dry bags of finger-
ready items, chips and the like. Soft drinks, stacked together, row on row,
plastic choke-neck connections, their aluminum skins gleaming silvery in
flashes of moonlight peeping in through the broken windows. The high overhead
lights, in the style of an auditorium, have been shattered, dirtied, rendered
useless by the mudslide of years before, so the teenage inhabitants rely on
lamps, or sometimes the glow of candles on nights when the wind is too weak to
pose a threat of snuffing out the tiny fires. Tonight, the candles are lit, and
the evening is young, and the melted run-off of Chrome's creamsicle drip-drip-
drips into a puddle on the hard floor just beyond the edge of the couch. Her
eye follows the motion.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the cereal box thunk its way onto the
table, sharp corner first: "Froggy Flakes," she reads, dispassionately, eyeing
the exclamatory amphibian mascot.
"As I said -- " Mukuro seats himself comfortably beside her. "For Fran."
Another careless laugh. "He -- selected the brand, of course. I prefer the
chocolate and marshmallow varieties, if I must have cereal."
He begins crunching wetly beside her, sitting haphazardly with his feet on the
couch beneath him, his shoulders leaning heavily on the pillows, his head and
face bowed almost reverentially over the bowl, scoop-shovel-slurping in great,
unforgiving movements. Somehow, even like this, he is not entirely without
grace in those slim fingers; Chrome cannot help but steal a few looks,
mesmerized by the contrast of shuffling messiness and "charismatic" elegance.
The latter is implied in the lines: Mukuro-sama does nothing without care, no
matter his mussed appearance. That is something Chrome would like to have in
common with him -- a point she hopes she is on her way towards transitioning
to, but the self is always the hardest to measure.
When the creamsicle becomes a popsicle stick, Chrome wraps the leftover piece
with some wax paper on the coffee table -- something which had once esconced a
sandwich.
It was meant that there should be fireworks. A match in the dark. Something
with sound, with luminosity, so their eyes would look to one another in the
shadows; it would herald a new age, with Mukuro's living, breathing flesh, his
freedom, and Chrome's rising, falling stomach, filled by herself, and finally,
their impossible proximity. It was all that they had worked for, and even if,
in reality, it had been only months, a glimpse of a decade of this dream
unrealized had put the matter into staggering perspective. The future told an
unknown tale, but now it's time to get it right. There is no sound of
fireworks. No sparks.
When Mukuro finishes the cereal and deposits the bowl on the table, with the
spoon clinking loudly into the darkness (in lieu of the fireworks, the trumpet,
or another announcement), Chrome nearly jolts, but she manages, after so long
in solitary meditation, to keep firm in the face of that terrifying,
exhilarating reality of his nearness. She must still fight, even now, for it
almost brings her to her knees -- in spite of the banal setting.
No. Because of the banal setting.
Because it means, finally, he is near enough to touch, and she is ready enough
to want to. And perhaps, in the end, the want is difficult to grapple with.
Beside her, Mukuro sweeps his fingers through his hair, and when Chrome turns,
steals a sideways glance, she finds her chin caught by the set of appraising
fingers belonging to his other hand.
"Mukuro-sama," she says, unflinching; cheeks warm, but not hot enough to tint
pink.
"This is your last chance for a taste," he says, teasingly, and kisses her.
                                      ~*~
Mukuro-sama's lips are dry, bitten below, and chapping, though you could not
see this except very up close; Chrome wonders, wonders if she has been the
cause of those red furrows, and she would say sorry, would apologize for
hurting him from a distance, but perhaps it is too abrupt. Too abrupt like
kissing -- which begins slow, chaste, in little pecking gestures that
eventually involve tongues, and by the time the motion has become more sensual,
Chrome finds her military green school uniform jacket open and her bra
unclasped, areola prickling in the cool night air. After the kissing, or in a
pause, she lets Mukuro-sama give her a back massage while they sip soda and
watch movies on the DVD player of Ken's game station, as Mukuro sucks her neck
and reaches around every so often to apply spidery-fingered pressure to her
breasts, kneading them. She gets slick and wet like that, and has no idea what
the plot of the movie is. Something about blue people. Oh, no. Is this that new
Smurfs movie --
"It was for Fran, also," Mukuro explains, blowing a puff of her hair from her
neck. His hands are talented; he knuckles the knots from her back with
deliberate, rolling persistence. Chrome wants to give him a turn. He must be
sore, too, after the days of battle, the effects of her emotional crisis on
him, or Kokuyo in general.
"We could watch something else," Chrome says.
They shouldn't be relaxing at all, says the old voice. They should be training
somehow. Readying their weaponry. Going over a lesson. She hasn't decided
whether or not she's returning to school. She's fourteen and already almost
killed herself from separation anxieties; indecision over the future. She never
wanted to hurt herself, she wants to explain. It was never like that.
Mukuro-sama puts in another movie. A dramatic film with mournful faces and
epic, soaring musical numbers. Chrome realizes as the opening credits roll that
she is half-naked and cool, elbows to her breasts and top draped like a blanket
over her arms. Looking at the curve of Mukuro-sama’s back and shoulders as he
stoops to switch the video; it had seemed natural, to her – with him, to
disrobe to this extent – nothing he had never seen before in their world, and
yet –
“Did you ever,” she starts, “watch – when you were younger – “
“I loved to watch animated series as a child,” Mukuro answers, without
hesitation, as if the past is open and free and absolved. And then, a little
more quietly, with that somber gaze, that heart-sore smile with the little
creases at the eye, “And other things. With my senpai.” More quickly: “And
before. Before everything – when – “
A little more lightly: “There were old VHS players in that place, you know.
Would you imagine?” Tapping his fingers to his cheek, as if musing upon the
weather. Distant gaze – out through the broken windows, at the open night.
“VHS. And now, everything, gone to digital. Well.” Finger snap. “It’s the way
of progress. So.” And, finally, he turns to Chrome. “What about you?”
“No,” she says, simply.
She never watched cartoons.
Never had that spot of colour. Life was studying or attending events with her
parents, watching them socialize as necessity saw fit. Chrome’s soul, locked in
subjugation, proceeded to stagnate; has been stagnating, and only now, she
sees, the world is opening petal-bright, dew-wet, lively as if with the power
of a new morning.
Mukuro-sama goes down on her. It's kind of funny, quietly so, how he looks up
every ten seconds, with that expressive, soft, vulnerable expression he uses
with her, as if seeking approval. Chrome holds his hair and tries her best to
relax, to enjoy it, in the face of that sweet and silent supplication, a
distraction unto itself. She comes, for the first time with someone else,
against his mouth and the roughness of that tongue, while the others wait in
the hospital, in the bed, away, in the cricket-humming night. And he sags
against her: sigh of satisfaction, her hand through his hair, warm reversal of
proprietary feelings.
"Well," he says, "I think we missed the end of the movie." Smiling. "But that's
all right."
His eyes show his candour, Chrome thinks.
His eyes are honest. They've always been honest with her and with the boys. She
runs a hand along his face -- to the corner of his moist lips, the tips of his
hair, which Chrome smells herself on while they lie side by side, attempting to
find comfort in sleep. Strands sticky with her, with sweat; she thumbs the rise
in the back, and holds the pillows, the sparse sheets, bunching them into her
arms, sleeping in her teddy bear pajamas, top and shorts, waking in the middle
of the night to walk to the showers, lotion basket in hand.
End Notes
     mukuro just seems like the kind of ridiculously sincere person
     [albeit his pretending at deceit/villainy] who would make dere eyes
     at someone while eating pussy. esp. with chrome, right? all his damn
     dere.
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