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Honestly, there's no reason for anybody to be knocking on his front door at two in the morning.
Groggily he thinks, as he pulls himself from bed wearing nthing but loose fitting boxers and a bed-head from hell, that there isn't a single person on this planet who could willingly be up at this hour, except maybe if you're a trained "I only need 3 hours of sleep a month" assasin like Killua, but Leorio doubts it's him at the front door. Furthermore, there's really not anybody that Leorio's willing to wake up for - well, maybe one person. There's no use getting his hopes up, but even that slim chance that it is him is enough to make him stumble to the front door. Just in case.
Leorio's shocked wide awake when he sees Kurapika standing in his doorway, dark eyes tired. Leorio hasnt seen him in months, but he's still him, bearing that same wild look in his eye, the desperation crawling from his irses (webbing out in scarlet). "Leorio," he greets, a soft fond smile in the shape of his mouth.
"Oh," Leorio breathes to himself because he knows he's fallen all over again.
It's always such a relief to see him, to know that he's okay, that he hasn't gotten himself killed chasing the ghosts of his pasts. It’s been a long time since Leorio’s seen him last; he looks so tired, dark circles threatening to engulf his face, and a fatigued step in his walk. He looks so beaten down, so worn out, all bruised and streched thin, that Leorio reaches for him, willing to do anything to make him feel better. Upon realising that there’s not much he can do, not for someone who won’t accept it, he pulls his hand back, curling his fist into his chest.
“Where have you been?” he asks, voice quiet. He wants to bring up Gon - your friend’s in the hospital, where have you been, he needs you, I need you - but ultimately decides against it.
“Finding the eyes,” Kurapika answers tiredly. “I’m making progress.”
Leorio wonders if Kurapika’s killed for them.
He wants to ask more, a million questions lining the inside of his mouth, but before he has even the quickest of chances to ask a single one, Kurapika sighs, jumps on the concern in Leorio’s eyes.
“Can I rest?” he asks, but he’s already stretching out on Leorio’s couch like he owns it, like it's the most comfortable place he could ever imagine sleeping. He’s still fully dressed and there’s nothing but a throw pillow in sight, but he looks so perfectly content that Leorio doesn’t think to offer him anything else. He realises that Kurapika’s probably slept in far worse places.
Before he loses the nerve, Leorio stutters out, “Y-you could stay with me, that couch is pretty ratty, I got it at a thrift shop for too much money because the bastard conned me, but - you don’t have to stay there - you could -” he swallows.
Kurapika doesn’t move, just keeps his arms crossed across his chest, eyes closed. Leorio knows he isn’t asleep but also knows Kurapika and so he relents with a sigh. “Goodnight, Kurapika,” he whispers, lingering in the hallway before turning the light out. He wants to stay there, even if the whole “watching someone sleep” thing is really creepy; mostly, he’s just scared that if he doesn’t, Kurapika will vanish like smoke.
He always seems to.
“Are you hungry?” Leorio asks in the morning when Kurapika wakes, not looking the slighest bit refereshed.
He’s surrounded by the failed remnants of a pancake batch gone wrong, because he never could cook to save his life, and the instructions on the box were loose guidelines at best. His entire counter’s a mess and if he leaves it like that the ants (not of the Chimera variety, hopefully) will probably come out to have a fiesta. Kurapika blinks at Leorio with tired eyes, raises an eyebrow at the mess, and then chuckles.
The sound is slight, and Leorio probably wouldn’t have caught it if he wasn’t always so in tune with Kurapika, always paying attention, always on a knife’s edge just to catch him being his old self. As quiet as it is, it rings loud in his ears.
“Perhaps we should find other breakfast options,” Kurapika suggests, the smile on his face worth all the pain.
Leorio takes him to down the street to one of those food carts that always save his life when he’s running late to school; it’s nothing five star, but Kurapika looks so starving that Leorio nearly expends his bank account buying everything on the menu. The cart owner is thrilled, piling various open-cartoned things in Leorio’s arms. Kurapika laughs again when Leorio dunks his hand into powdered sugar.
“Sorry, I should’ve just asked,” he grunts, trying to keep from dropping anything; after all, it was all very expensive. Not that he minds when it comes to Kurapika. “What you wanted, I mean. I should’ve asked what you wanted.”
“This is fine,” Kurapika says, plucking a donut from amongst a pile of weirdly, almost-funnel cake shaped pastry . . . things.
Leorio isn’t the slightest bit annoyed, although in another life he probably would’ve been.
He’s glad he had that one single moment with Kurapika, that one brief reprieve in the rocky fabric of their relationship
When Leorio comes home from school, late in the night with nocturnal rain sticking to the fabric of his suit jacket, he finds his apartment achingly empty. It hurts, walking in and knowing there’s a solid chance Kurapika isn’t there and won’t be coming back anytime soon. Leorio thinks he should’ve grown used to it by now, but somehow every time Kurapika leaves, it’s worse than the time before.
Leorio walks through the halls, a small kernel of hope nestled in his chest, but it’s dashed when he finds every light flicked off, every room as vacant as the one before it. He doesn’t think he has the energy anymore to really feel anything besides a sad acceptance and trudges to his bedroom, undoing the tie around his neck. Sometimes he wishes he could just tighten it enough that - but those are dangerous thoughts.
He sits at the edge of his bed, suitcase forgotten on the floor, shoes kicked off, and buries his eyes into his fists. Behind the pressure, his eyes burn, but he’s not going to cry. It’s a lie. He always seems to cry when it comes to Kurapika.
“Leorio.”
Leorio’s head snaps up; it takes several agonising seconds of blinking out the white spots in his vision before it clears and he’s focusing in on Kurapika’s face. It’s as inexpressive as it always seems to be these days, but the light of the moon (reflected sun, really - Leorio thinks its an ironic metaphor for them) is draining the colour from his features. He’s still beautiful. Always.
“Kurapika,” he breathes, voice watery with relief. He reaches a hand out, not really expecting Kurapika to take it. He doesn’t, no surprise, just walks forward and draws a knee up to balance it on the bed, a hand touching Leorio’s shoulder.
Leorio reaches up to cover Kurapika’s hand with his own. It’s small; most of it fits comfortably into Leorio’s palm. He wants to say something, maybe, “I’m glad you came back” or even “I love you” but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth as Kurapika stares at him, eyes dark.
“Kura-” he starts again, but now Kurapika’s kissing him, with a gentle kind of force, mouth soft but fervent against Leorio’s. He responds immediately, opening his mouth wider, cupping Kurapika’s jaw in his hand. There’s nothing poetic about the taste of Kurapika’s mouth - it’s mostly stale, like he hasn’t eaten in a while. He probably hasn’t. He didn’t even finish his donut.
Kurapika’s quiet as he throws his other knee on the bed, straddling Leorio now with his finger gripping the back of his dress shirt. His breathing is masked by Leorio’s heavy gasps as he grinds up against Kurapika, always so desperate. “Are you okay?” he asks, finally, afraid it’s lost in the skin of Kurapika’s collar bone.
“I’m fine, Leorio,” Kurapika says gently.
He’s not. Leorio can taste it in his kiss, can hear it in the evenness of his breathing, feel it in the press of his fingertips into Leorio’s shoulder blades, but he says nothing. Anything he says will be met with denial and feigned ignorance, just like always.
Kurapika holds onto him and matches the rhythm of his grinding for a few more minutes before climbing off him, Leorio’s hand dragging over his hip. He’s confused until Kurapika drops to the floor on his knees, each hand on Leorio’s thighs.
“Kurapika,” Leorio says, hesitantly, but he’s already pushing his hand into Kurapika’s hair. He’s still wearing it long. Leorio likes it like that.
Kurapika says nothing, just presses a kiss to the inside of Leorio’s thigh, looking up at him through long eyelashes.
Leorio’s not sure what this is supposed to mean.
(Later, when it’s over and Leorio’s cried himself dry in more ways than one, he breathes “Stay with me,” into Kurapika’s ear. It’s not the first time he’s asked, and he knows it won’t be the last.)
Leorio’s terrified to wake up, thinking he’ll find everything as empty as he is, but when he stumbles into his living room, Kurapika still there, the terror blooms into the sweet relief he can never get enough. It’s almost addicting. He’s not sure if he means the relief or Kurapika.
He sits on Leorio’s couch now, head in his hands and a weary look on his face that makes his eyelids slide close every so often before he shakes himself awake again. He points to a map splayed out on Leorio’s coffee table, index finger creasing the paper. “The last I heard of their whereabouts was in -” he names a city off the top of his head, one Leorio doesn’t recognize, but he’s not listening. He doesn’t want to hear about this.
Leorio looks at Kurapika sadly, but clears his expression when Kurapika glances up at him. “You’ll find them,” he says, although he prays Kurapika doesn’t.
He’s still there (thank the gods) when Leorio comes home again, but instead of snapped wide awake with a phone pressed to his ears and his eyes borderline scarlet, he’s passed out over the table. It’d be funny if Leorio didn’t know any better.
“Kurapika,” he tries once he’s abandoned his briefcase in the hallway, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder and attempting to shake him awake. He doesn’t have the heart to try any harder when Kurapika mumbles something that sounds like agony.
Leorio’s not exactly Mr. Macho Man, but Kurapika’s still so sickly thin that it doesn’t actually require a whole lot of muscle power to get him into his arms. He fits so nicely that Leorio chokes back a sob. He’d do anything to keep him safe like this for as long as he could. Forever.
He doesn’t want to do anything Kurapika wouldn’t want, but he can’t leave him sprawled across the coffee table, using marked maps as pillows, so he settles him into his own bed, makes sure he’s comfortable. Leorio will take that disgusting ratty couch.
Kurapika wakes, in the last moment before Leorio pulls away. Shit. “Hey, sorry, I was just, I was um -” he flutters his hands uselessly. “You looked uncomfortable so I figured I’d - move you. I’m gonna go to the couch -”
“It’s okay,” Kurapika reassures, and for the first time reaches a hand out. “You can stay.”
Leorio does, because one of them has to.
There’s something fucked up, Leorio believes, in that the first thing he does when he realises that Kurapika has left for longer than a few hours this time, is head to the nearest bar. He likes it there - it’s quiet, dark, has that desperation aesthetic. They’re all lonely, messed up bastards here.
Leorio feels that there’s something wrong with the way that he uses alcohol as a distraction from Kurapika. Something unhealthy, toxic, something inherently not right, but he’s not a psychology major so maybe he shouldn’t analyse it. He doesn’t know anything, besides the fact that his drink is burning his throat and chest something fierce, and that he’s missing the feel of Kurapika’s hair in his hands.
Leorio always does double-takes when he’s buzzed; all it takes is the right body type hair and golden hair and he thinks he’s found the person he’s always looking for. Today, it’s a girl who offers him a smile when they make eye contact. She’s wearing all-white, and although it doesn’t look good with the shade of her hair or eyes, he sees the irony in it and smiles back. She’s cute, but maybe it’s just because he has a thing for brown eyes.
Up close, she’s nothing like him, but she smiles in the same way if he closes one eye and drinks a little more, and that’s all he needs. He wonders, as he puts a hand on the small of her back and leads her from the bar, if she’s trying to forget someone too. He wonders if he looks like them.
“I love tall guys,” she giggles to him in the back of a taxi, hand pressed to the inside of his thigh, thumb rubbing against it. Leorio wonders, in his stupor, if he would ever touch him like that.
“You’re okay?” he asks her when he gets her into his bed, because they’ve both been drinking, and although he feels alright, he’s not going to take any chances. She looks at him quizzically before a thankful realisation dawns on her face and she’s nodding in consent.
Her fingers dig into his back the same way his do, and so when he exhales a name, he makes sure it’s buried in the fabric of his pillow in case she hears. It doesn’t seem to matter - the name she whispers certainly isn’t his . When he pulls away to see her face, to see how much of him he can salvage in it, he notices the red neon from the numbers of the alarm clock glinting in her eyes and feels a sick sort of thrill.
He’s barely finishing when he hears the distant click of a door.
There’s a stutter in his chest that just might be his heart turning over, and any footsteps are lost in this woman’s gasping, but he knows, he knows, he can always feel nestled deep in his marrow. Fuck. He looks at the woman beneath him. Fuck.
The door opens before he has time to react, and shuts just as quickly, and the girl gasp and flees and Leorio’s left there wondering when things went so wrong.
She’s gone by the time Leorio has the strength and bravery to leave the dark of the room, to face the red eyes he knows is waiting for him, and his heart hammers in his chest; the alcohol in his system makes his brain fuzzy and his world a little tilted, but maybe that's not the alcohol, maybe it’s just everything else.
He finds Kurapika standing in his living room, hands clenched tight to his sides like he’d drive a fist through Leorio’s lungs if he could.
“I didn’t think you would come back so soon, you never do -” Leorio swallows his words down when Kurapika looks up at him sharply, the edges of his irises tinged with vermilion. Somehow, the thrill he felt earlier is absent.
“Do you make this a habit then?”
Something sharp pierces Leorio’s right lung. He can’t breathe. Atelectasis. Pneumothorax. They’re not synonymous, but the pain is. You don’t understand, he wants to say, choking. You always leave me, I need a distraction from you, you hurt too bad.
“I suppose it doesn't matter,” Kurapika goes on to say. “We’re not a couple.”
He’s right, of course. He usually is.
“I only came to say goodbye.”
He always, always leaves.
Kurapika walks out the door for what feels like the last time, eyes as bright as Leorio’s ever seen them, revenge awake and thrumming through his veins. Leorio goes out for another drink and wonders if the black hole inside him will one day collapse.