Tease

{ Well Off? Not So Much }

a/n: I might be losing my mind, who really knows. Thanks for encouraging it though hehe :D

Smoke curled from his lips. It spilled, milky white and heavy in the air, and sank in his lungs like the warm, heavy blanket he craved. He sighed into it, enveloping the chatter in his brain in a thick fog. His anxieties dissipated. Now... he could think.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," he said, eyes trailing up to the ceiling. He dipped back into the couch he had picked up from the side of the road several months prior to the current shit show that became of his life. "I don't get paid for another week and rent's due in three days. I can't ask for another extended grace period."

"How much are you light on?"

He rubbed a hand through his thick black hair, coughing a little. "Like, two hundred," he said. "My next check's... fuck, I can't math. Kurapika, help."

Beside him, the couch shifted. Kurapika leant over his knees and reached for another hit. When he spoke next, it was through the fog. "You said you average around three hundred per check? I keep telling you to get a better paying job or ask for a raise."

"I can't," he insisted, devastated. He didn't want to put his boss through that—what if business wasn't as good as he thought it was? What if his boss was one excuse away from firing him?

"Then I don't know what to tell you, Gon. Get another job?"

"That won't pay for my next rent."

"Do something quick then. Like... I could hook you up?"

Gon sighed. He really didn't want to tread into that category. He was already treading that line, and he couldn't ask more from Kurapika without feeling guilty about it. One day, he'd pay the guy back. "No, I couldn't ask that of you."

"It's not a big deal."

"Yeah, well, it is to me," Gon said. He sat up a bit straighter and flopped his hands on his lap. "I can't keep living like this!"

"Like what," he said, head tipped back against the cushions. His blonde braid was pulling apart at the seams.

"From paycheck to paycheck! I want a cushion. And I'd blame it on my mathematical stupidity, but I don't think that's it anymore," he said. He was, quite literally, taking a home economics course to correct his issues with paying rent. No matter how he budgeted it, his rent was always short and his food cupboard scarce.

Kurapika had a few bright ideas—if by bright, he meant blindingly idiotic. He chuckled a little at the thought, eyes back on Gon's pouting profile. Gon, who couldn't, not for the life of him, fathom the reasons why everyone in his classes wanted to bone him—guys and girls included. He was a sweetheart, sure, but that was just the cherry on top of an already perfect sundae. Kurapika couldn't blame them one bit. The guy was fit as all Hell, had hair suitable for any magazine cover, and a light, open face that screamed, "Talk to me! I'll make your day 100% better!"

So yeah, Kurapika had a few bright ideas.

"Dude, just become a porn star," Kurapika said.

Gon's eyes snapped to his in an instant. "A what?"

"You know. Make money from getting off, or whatever," Kurapika said with a little wiggle of his shoulders. He turned his cheeky grin up to the ceiling. He blamed the idea on the high, but he'd be lying if he hadn't thought about it before. Gon had the body build of a porn star, but what was underneath that waistband was beyond Kurapika's current knowledge of his best friend.