Kurapika's Short Story: Leorios

Kurapika wasn’t carved from stone. He honestly had no idea where Leorio had gotten the notion that he had all the sexuality of a rock resting at the bottom of a lake, but it was patently untrue — and, to be honest, kind of offensive.

Well...okay. If Kurapika was honest with himself (admittedly, not something he indulged in very often) he supposed he could see how Leorio had arrived at that conclusion. He’d always been rather modest, even by the fairly conservative standards of the Kurta, and the intervening years had only made him more prickly, slower to trust; Kurapika understood, in an abstract sort of way, the feelings most people associated with sex — love and companionship and procreation, simple thrumming lust, but he never really thought he’d get to experience those things for himself.

The act itself seemed...messy, at best, and maudlin at worst, a completely unnecessary distraction. Kurapika would be the first to admit he had Issues (capital I absolutely fucking intended), and that those aforementioned issues had perhaps colored his opinion on the whole thing, just a smidge. He couldn’t deny that the thought of lying down, touching someone and being touched by them, the intimacy and vulnerability and trust involved with sex made him feel...not disgusted, exactly. But definitely uncomfortable, in some formless way he’d never been able to put into words. Kurapika trusted people to be cruel, to be thoughtless, to disappoint him or leave him or become a hindrance in some way, but he’d never trusted anyone to make him happy. Sex required letting one’s guard down, and the last time he’d done that, everyone he ever knew or loved was