Not Really A Coincidence (Hunter X Hunter, Kuroro/Kurapika, #4 - our distance and that person)
Title : Not Really A Coincidence
Author/Artist : kye_kestrel, partnered with yukitsu
Fandom : Hunter X Hunter
Pairing : Kuroro/Kurapika
Theme : 4 - Our Distance and That Person
Rating : PG-13
Disclaimer : We do not own Hunter X Hunter, its characters, or anything associated with it. Kuroro and Kurapika are legal properties of Yoshihiro Togashi. Any resemblance of the piece to actual people and situations is entirely unintentional and accidental.
Warning : Not proofread, only partly beta-read, moderate spoilers for the main fic over at FF.net.
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When Leorio prepped his mental faculties for a grueling four-day convention that he needed to attend for one of his courses, he forgot to prepare himself for surprise encounters of the social kind. He was just that focused on his studies that the possibility of meeting anyone outside of his academic life never occurred to him, so he was understandably flabbergasted when he spotted Kuroro Lucifer on the very last day of the event.
His first panicked thought was that the man was there for one of the Brigade’s dreaded group missions. His second was a nearly incoherent wish, half-hysterical and half-indignant, that Kuroro would wait until after the convention was done - he really needed those units to pass that course. It was at that point that reason caught up with the part of his mind that liked to jump to conclusions and reminded him that he couldn’t afford to make premature accusations where the Geneiryodan leader was concerned. Besides, the thief didn’t look like he was planning anything diabolical.
Then he was probably there on other business. Maybe even for leisure - Nippon was famous for its hot springs and its heritage sites, after all. The man must have a normal life outside of his work with the Geneiryodan. It would be absurd to think that he was always stealing and killing and sowing mayhem and destruction all three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, otherwise there was no way that Kurapika would ever agree to be with him.
Kurapika. Leorio perked up visibly as the thought hit him. If Kuroro was staying at the hotel for non-Ryodan-related reasons, then maybe Kurapika had come with him. He swept his eyes over the bustling hotel lobby, but didn’t see the blonde anywhere. He looked back at the café, and his heart made a graceless lunge for his throat when Kuroro’s eyes flicked up to meet his.
There was surprise there, for all of a split second, and it was probably the one thing that stopped him from turning around and hightailing it out of the front doors. He struggled to master his own reaction by thinking that it would have been too much to hope that the Geneiryodan leader wouldn’t notice his scrutiny. But for a brief moment Leorio wondered if he could get away with something that worked over long distances - like a nod or a wave. He really wasn’t prepared to face the man that Kurapika had fallen in love with.
Leorio sighed in resignation. Thinking about Kurapika inexorably reminded him that he’d racked up lots of questions for Kuroro Lucifer, and - depending on what the answers will be - there were a few more things that he needed to tell the man up front. Now was as good a time as any to have that discussion. He squared his jaw and marched across the lobby towards Kuroro’s table, and got there just as the man was carefully tucking a bookmark into his paperback.
Posh, classy son of a bitch -
Of course, now that he was close enough to see the details Leorio could begin to understand how Kurapika might have become attracted to the dark-haired man. It made sense that a person of the Kuruta’s refinement would need someone with similar class and style to match him. That was what his mind whispered, stirring the tiniest seed of resentment he thought had already died a long time ago. In this case though, mind didn’t translate to action easily, so rather than being boosted by that potential source of anger, Leorio found himself faltering because of uncertainty in the last few steps.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked slowly after he’d parked himself behind the unoccupied chair opposite the one Kuroro was sitting in.
“You’re Leorio, right? One of Kurapika’s friends.”
Even his voice sounded cultured and educated - which begged the question of how the man managed to attain that smooth accent when he’d supposedly hailed from the poverty-stricken junkyards of Shooting Star City. Leorio caught the suspicious frown before it could form on his overly expressive face, and reminded himself once more that he needed to focus on the important questions.
“Yeah.” Sit down first; he wouldn’t want to spend the entire conversation looking like an interrogator. Leorio waved at the empty chair. “May I?”
“Go ahead.”
At least the man was being polite. Translated to Geneiryodan terms, Leorio was sure that it meant Kuroro wasn’t going to turn psychotic on him for at least the next few minutes. He felt a small bubble of relief push his heart back to its proper place as he sat down - or maybe it was because of the chair. He blinked as he realized just how comfortable the cushion was.
Kuroro was watching him intently, but he seemed more curious than anything else. “What are you doing here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Medical convention,” Leorio answered as he wriggled into a more comfortable position. “You?” He looked up and tried to look shrewd and knowing. “… You’re not here for a heist, are you?”
The other man smiled in apparent good humor. “No. I’m just here on bodyguard duty, I’m afraid. I’m keeping Kurapika company.”
“Where is he?”
“He went out on an errand for the Hunter Association. He’ll be back in an hour, I think.”
“Right. So we have plenty of time to talk.”
Kuroro blinked, and Leorio had to suppress the sudden urge to laugh at the other man’s perplexed expression and at his own recklessness. He had just used a brisk and businesslike tone, as if he and Kuroro were equals, when in reality he was like an infant looking up at an adult in terms of the difference in their nen ability and battle experience. But there was nothing for it; he needed his answers.
“How did you do it?” he asked without preamble, to which Kuroro’s first reaction was another confused blink.
“I’m sorry?”
He’d wondered, several times before, if Kurapika had told Kuroro about their meeting. Leorio was inclined to believe that his friend had chosen to keep his confidence, because of the simple fact that he was still alive and in one piece. Kuroro Lucifer hadn’t hunted him down and killed him - yet. It was that or the alternative, where Kurapika had told Kuroro, in which case Leorio would have to revise his impression of the dark-haired man as a cold and ruthless killer, because he just couldn’t see any way that Kuroro would let him live after finding out about his feelings for Kurapika. Not unless Kuroro was actually more benevolent than the rumors painted him to be.
Then again, Leorio was being a bit too vague on just what it was that they were supposed to be talking about.
“Kurapika went to see me, around six months ago,” he began. The other man nodded to himself, as if he was affirming something. “He gave me the general gist of what happened to him, what happened between the two of you.” Or rather, Kurapika had been forced to reveal his strange love affair with Kuroro right after Leorio confessed to him. Maybe the blonde had been trying to be merciful by putting him out of his misery before any more hope could be kindled. He’d succeeded, in part - his rejection was by far the most gentle and yet most painful that Leorio had ever experienced.
“I couldn’t believe it at first. I mean, you two had the whole mortal-enemy thing going on. I thought that you’d brainwashed him, or that you were controlling him somehow.” Kuroro arched an eyebrow at that, and Leorio shrugged self-consciously. “You didn’t exactly encourage a kind and loving image, you know,” he added somewhat reproachfully. “I looked for the only explanation that would make sense to me back then.”
Kuroro nodded again, at him this time, and then gave him a searching look. “So what made you change your mind?”
Leorio thought back to Kurapika’s visit and tried to recall the primary emotions he’d felt once the initial outrage and disbelief had subsided. “The little things,” he replied. “He just seemed more open. His smiles looked real. And when I resorted to cracking sarcastic jokes - you know, the kind that insulted you and yours and just about everything I could think that was connected to you - he started to laugh.” He paused and pinned Kuroro with what he hoped was an accurate mirror of the man’s earlier searching look. “Do you know how hard it was to make Kurapika laugh, before York Shin? I mean, really laugh, and not just as an immediate reaction to a joke or a momentary source of amusement. We’ve seen him laugh, of course, but it always felt as if he was holding back. It was like he was afraid that he’d lose something if he allowed himself to let go.”
Memories, most likely. Memories of his family, and the promise he’d made. Leorio wasn’t a psychiatrist, but he didn’t need to be one to guess that Kurapika had always kept thoughts of his murdered tribe close to his heart. It was the only way that he could have kept his determination alive and going for so long.
He opted not to volunteer that information. By the look of agreement on Kuroro’s face, he probably already knew what that something was.
“It wasn’t only that,” Leorio continued. “He looked healthy and happy. Not what I’d expected he’d look like after he’d escaped from your clutches.” He looked away for the first time since the start of the conversation, and nervously picked at an imaginary speck of dust on the coffee table. “I think part of me understood back then that you’re good for him. And he chose you -” Over me, that still-resentful part of his mind muttered. “- and I’m going to respect that decision and try my hardest not to run away screaming whenever I run into you or any of your Ryodan.” Kuroro snorted and Leorio felt his lips curve up in an involuntary grin. “But I need to know how you succeeded where Gon, Killua, and I failed,” he said, bringing the dialogue back to his original question. “We’re his best friends; you killed off his tribe, and yet you got him to open up and let go of his past. So how did you do it?”
Why did he fall for you? was the unvoiced question, and Leorio swallowed and hoped that Kuroro wasn’t a mind-reader on top of everything else.
The Geneiryodan leader took a long time choosing his words. “I didn’t exactly go at it systematically, if that’s what you’re asking,” he finally said. “I worked on gaining his trust. My objective was to get him to want to stay with the Ryodan willingly, even in the eventuality that I’d allow him to release the conditions binding him to me.”
Leorio bristled. “So you were manipulating him,” he said accusingly.
Kuroro’s eyes didn’t waver despite Leorio’s rapidly-heating glare. “That was the original idea, yes, but believe me - by the time I realized it, I’d already grown attached to him. I found that I wanted him to stay with me not solely because of his abilities, but also for who he was and still is.” Kuroro paused. “And contrary to what you might think, I did not manipulate him into sleeping with me.”
Leorio started and stared in disbelief. There he was skirting around the more sensitive phrasings, and Kuroro just went and tackled the beast by its horns. The dark-haired man returned his gaze, coolly daring him to interrupt. Leorio conveyed that he wasn’t going to do that, by closing his gaping mouth with a click.
“The thought did occur to me several times,” Kuroro continued. “He’s a good-looking kid, and I don’t have any specific gender preference when it comes to these things. But I never forced myself on him. The end result was the same, nonetheless. It just… happened.” The man stopped and faltered, visibly struggling to choose the right words. “Proximity might have had something to do with it. And shared problems and life-threatening situations. The fact that his conditions forced him to stay with me certainly helped. And there was a period of about two weeks when the two of us separated from the rest of the Ryodan. His nen had been sealed and I was the only one who could help him. By the time we reached Shooting Star, it was already obvious that we were physically attracted to each other.”
“The least you could do is make it sound more romantic,” Leorio muttered. “Hell, you sound more like a doctor than I do!”
Kuroro folded his arms. “You want to know how it’s possible that we’d fall in love with each other at the same time. Simple. Like I said, it just happened. I hadn’t been expecting to fall in love with him, mind you, but since I already did, I’m not going to say that I regret catching him and forcing him to use his abilities on himself, because we wouldn’t be where we are now if not for my actions.”
“You’re not the type to pull any punches, are you?” Leorio asked with a disbelieving shake of his head. The hard glint in the other man’s eyes softened just a little bit.
“If it’s any comfort, I think it’s possible that the same thing could have happened if you’d been in my place instead.”
Somewhere at the back of his mind was a hysterical voice that managed to catch that one sentence, and the implications that went along with it - Ah shit he knows - but Leorio had already taken that last jump off the cliff, and instinct told him that their conversation was fast heading towards the conclusion that he’d been unconsciously yearning for. He couldn’t bail out now even if he tried - not that he was even mentally capable of trying. Kuroro’s olive branch made his ears burn, as they tended to do whenever his professors praised his diligence and good performance.
“I’m not sure if I should kick your ass for that attempt at flattery,” Leorio grunted. “We both know that I couldn’t have pulled off what you did when you rescued him from his maniac brother.”
The Geneiryodan leader tilted his head in graceful acceptance of the indirect compliment. “Just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And I was fortunate enough to have maniac subordinates who were more than happy for the chance to wreak havoc. But I mean it,” he added. “I wouldn’t have gone after him if I didn’t already know that I couldn’t stand to lose him.”
“All right. And what do you plan to do from here on out?” It was the last important question that he wanted to ask, probably the most important of them all.
Kuroro Lucifer’s dark eyes looked at him steadily, calmly, the keen mind behind them probably already dissecting his question and pegging it for the test it really was. The man smiled.
“If you’ll allow me to speak in a forward manner, I’ll go as far as to say that Kurapika is the other half of my soul. I’ll admit that we are different, but we’re also alike in many ways. We understand each other and we know each other’s hopes and fears. We’ve accepted each other’s faults and pasts, we’ve found that we deal with the present better when we’re together, and we’ve vowed to face our future to the best of our combined abilities.” Kuroro paused for effect, raised his eyebrows for additional impact, and asked, “Does that satisfy you?”
“Fair enough,” Leorio replied with a grudging nod. If anything, the man was a really skilled speaker. He also used far too many touchy-feely words for Leorio’s comfort, but it was obvious - at least to him - that Kuroro was being sincere. That should have been the end of it, but to his horror he found himself leaning forward until he was almost sitting at the edge of the chair, saying, “But if you ever hurt him, I won’t care that you can kill me as easily as snapping a toothpick. I’ll come after you, and I’ll find a way to waste you.”
Kuroro’s lips twitched once. Once for humor, and the ever-present intelligent glint in his eyes had acquired another gleam, almost as if the man was getting excited about the prospect of a challenge. But he nodded to acknowledge the warning. “Fair enough,” he said respectfully, lobbing Leorio’s words back at him in an effortless throw. “Personally I prefer a proactive rather than a reactive policy, but should anything happen to him, you’ll be the first on your side to know,” he added.
It should have been hypocritical for Kuroro to make such a promise after letting Leorio see his amusement at being given a threat, but Leorio had a pretty good guess of how his mind worked. Someone like him probably couldn’t help showing that almost-patronizing reaction to an ultimatum. If he had been completely serious and earnest instead - now that, Leorio would have found suspicious.
On the other hand, “if anything should happen to him” covered a lot of things, not the least of which was the fact that Kurapika’s existence as the sole survivor of the Kuruta massacre had been made public to certain interested parties more than six months ago. Kuroro most likely had that in mind when he gave his promise - as an action to external, not internal threats. Leorio wanted to talk about that, too - grill Kuroro on how he was planning to protect Kurapika from Hunters who were after the bounties placed on him by the black market.
But maybe that issue could wait until later. Leorio suddenly realized that he was exhausted. He fell back into his chair and exhaled noisily.
“I can’t believe you just made that speech with a straight face,” he mumbled.
Kuroro smirked. “Not exactly what you’d expected to hear?”
“No. Or maybe yes. I already knew that you had to be a smooth talker. Only way for someone to match Kurapika’s vocabulary is to be a smooth talker.” Leorio flapped his hand in a vague waving motion. “Just that, it’s a bit surreal to hear you saying ‘love’ and ‘half of my soul’ and other words that you’d expect to find in a love song.”
“Well, you know what they say about that particular emotion and a certain eye condition,” Kuroro remarked. He would have sounded cheeky if he wasn’t trying so hard to sound dignified. Leorio managed to snicker despite his bewilderment at suddenly finding himself bantering with one of the most feared criminals in the world - bantering, and enjoying it, even. He would have liked to talk some more, and maybe see how Kurapika would react upon finding him and Kuroro sitting and chatting like they were perfectly friendly acquaintances, but he had to go. He checked his watch and stood up.
“You’re not going to wait for Kurapika?” Kuroro asked in surprise.
“Another lecture to attend in five minutes,” Leorio said ruefully. “It’s going to be boring as hell, but I promised Kurapika that I’d become a doctor, and if there’s one thing that I’ll always take seriously, it’s this.”
“I can… tell him to meet with you later, if you want,” Kuroro suggested hesitantly - either because he was unused to making such offers or because he didn’t really want to give the offer, Leorio couldn’t say, but the fact that he still offered counted as another point in his book.
“Nah,” he said easily - which surprised him even more than all the other shocks he’d already encountered that day. He really didn’t mind turning down the offer to spend time with his friend - it was something that he wouldn't have done half a year ago.
“You probably have something planned for tonight, I mean, hotel, hot springs, room service - have mercy on Housekeeping and don’t mess up the sheets too much, okay? Oh, no, I did not just say that,” he muttered in horror. It would be best to retreat now, or risk embarrassing himself further. For a second Leorio wondered if he should shake Kuroro’s hand, but he decided to pass this time. For all he knew the Geneiryodan leader might not be the hand-shaking type. And just because they’d reached an agreement didn’t mean that he wholly approved of the way the other man lived. He grinned instead, mouthed a cheerful “Well, I’m going,” and sauntered away.
Perhaps it was a coincidence that the table Kuroro had chosen could be seen from the entrance to the ballroom where the lectures were being held, but Leorio had a wary opinion of coincidences. Was it a coincidence that, out of the hundreds of Hunter Exam participants, he’d met the three who were most likely to accept him as one of their own? Was it a coincidence that they’d become the best friends that he could ever ask for? Was it a coincidence that one of them would ensnare his affection so thoroughly, lose concentration at the most critical of moments, get captured by the enemy, then fall fast and hard for said enemy - leaving him standing alone by the ballroom door?
Well, it certainly didn’t feel like a coincidence, when Leorio looked back to see Kurapika arriving, Kuroro greeting him with a tender kiss to his forehead, and Kurapika’s face lighting up with a brilliant burst of laughter, perfectly visible and audible from all the way across the hotel lobby. Leorio smiled sadly and slipped into the ballroom, finally reassured that his friend would be all right with someone that wasn’t him.
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The last lecture had killed off all his brain cells, but Leorio still called his dorm mates over to his room for a study session. They were flying out tomorrow, and then they had an exam on the convention topics the day after, so they needed to pool their notes together and organize the knowledge into something they could remember more easily. It wasn’t that he needed the extra help, of course - he could do fine on his own, but he found that he studied better with a bit of peer interaction. Complete silence made him fidgety as much as chaotic noise drove him batty; the middle range - the murmur that their discussions would produce, in this case - was just right.
Leorio had his pen poised on his notebook, readied for a few more hours of mind-numbing scribbling and diagramming, when the doorbell rang.
“Danne, you didn’t order room service again, did you?” he called out exasperatedly.
“No! At least, I haven’t yet…” The chubbiest out of his three dorm mates got up and trotted to the door. Leorio heard him open it, heard him ask a question in a low rumble, then heard the clear voice of the last person he’d expected to see standing outside the door of his hotel room.
“Hi. I’m looking for Leorio…”
Leorio’s head snapped up and swiveled around to see Kurapika giving him a lopsided grin.
“… Oh, there you are.”
“Hey, who’s the hot chick?”
He resisted the urge to turn around and chuck his notebook at the offending mouth, and waited for the outburst that he was just sure would ensue following the girl comment. But rather than fly off the handle like Leorio expected him to do, Kurapika merely raised an eyebrow and said, rather wryly, “Well, I’m glad that your friends approve of me.”
Leorio gave him a weak smile before turning to scowl at his classmates. He kept his glare on them as he made the introductions. “Kurapika, this is Danne, Merow, and Vincent. Vince, this is Kurapika, one of the Hunters I was telling you guys about. Stop hitting on him if you don’t want to get your ass kicked.”
The look of horror that spread over Vince’s face teased a smirk out of him, but he turned back to Kurapika and let Danne and Merow handle the ribbing that Vince’s latest blunder would cost him.
“Umm, not that I’m not deliriously happy to see you, but what are you doing here?”
“Don’t you want to talk and catch up on things? I can at least treat you to a cup of coffee in the café downstairs.”
“I do, but…” he looked back at his classmates, who had stopped their bickering and were watching them with encouraging grins on their faces. Leorio made a mental note to talk to them later - he might have to quash any notions that they believed they had before the prats could turn them into university gossip. He certainly didn’t need word of this making its way, however far-fetched, to the man he had just talked to that afternoon.
It was Merow who finally told him to go. “Come on, man. You don’t need to review this much to get top scores, and you know it. You can come back after a couple of hours.”
It didn’t take much to persuade him, really.
“All right. Feel free to use my notes. And don’t touch my stuff, Vince, you’re not going to find any porn in there.” Leorio quickly took his coat and the room key and slipped out of the door before Vincent could hurl one of the pillows at him.
Kurapika’s eyes were sparkling with humor when Leorio joined the teen in the hallway. “You seem to be handling university life pretty well,” the blonde remarked.
“Those three have their comedic moments,” Leorio replied with a grin. “I told Kuroro that he didn’t have to arrange this,” he said to the blonde quietly. “And how did you find me, anyway? I didn’t give him my room number.”
Kurapika gave him a fairly incredulous look. “Hunter privileges, Leorio. It was easy enough to ask for your room number, and when you’re checking out. And Kuroro knows how important you, Gon, and Killua are to me,” he added. “He wouldn’t do anything to sabotage our friendship.”
Kuroro Lucifer was an enigma. A walking puzzle, one that Leorio thought he could unravel easily once he discovered whatever it was that Kurapika found endearing in the guy. He thought that he’d found it somewhere in their conversation that afternoon, but apparently there was more to the man than first impressions and stories and rumors, especially where the last Kuruta alive was concerned.
No matter. Leorio knew that there would be a need for them to communicate again in the future, because watching over the blonde that they both loved would be an ongoing, never-ending job. For the moment he was content to talk with his friend, and muse over their memories and experiences, and marvel at the feeling of his earlier resentment fading away into nothing more than another memory.
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Nippon is a nod to Japan, obviously - I was running out of countries to invent for my drabbles, and Togashi isn’t being very forthcoming about new locations in the HxH universe.
And Danne, Merow and Vince are names I came up with on the spur of the moment. They’re just extra characters. (Well, I might use them for future Leorio-centric drabbles… Vince seems to be taking on a life of his own. +_+)
I’m serious when I mentioned that this hasn’t been edited yet - starting from when Kuroro answered, I forced myself into a Nanowrimo mindset and just typed everything in the last few hours, so I have a feeling that there might be embarrassing errors lurking around waiting to jump out at unsuspecting readers. x_x
Finished May 31, 2007, and cross-posted to kye_kestrel
Author/Artist : kye_kestrel, partnered with yukitsu
Fandom : Hunter X Hunter
Pairing : Kuroro/Kurapika
Theme : 4 - Our Distance and That Person
Rating : PG-13
Disclaimer : We do not own Hunter X Hunter, its characters, or anything associated with it. Kuroro and Kurapika are legal properties of Yoshihiro Togashi. Any resemblance of the piece to actual people and situations is entirely unintentional and accidental.
Warning : Not proofread, only partly beta-read, moderate spoilers for the main fic over at FF.net.
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When Leorio prepped his mental faculties for a grueling four-day convention that he needed to attend for one of his courses, he forgot to prepare himself for surprise encounters of the social kind. He was just that focused on his studies that the possibility of meeting anyone outside of his academic life never occurred to him, so he was understandably flabbergasted when he spotted Kuroro Lucifer on the very last day of the event.
His first panicked thought was that the man was there for one of the Brigade’s dreaded group missions. His second was a nearly incoherent wish, half-hysterical and half-indignant, that Kuroro would wait until after the convention was done - he really needed those units to pass that course. It was at that point that reason caught up with the part of his mind that liked to jump to conclusions and reminded him that he couldn’t afford to make premature accusations where the Geneiryodan leader was concerned. Besides, the thief didn’t look like he was planning anything diabolical.
Then he was probably there on other business. Maybe even for leisure - Nippon was famous for its hot springs and its heritage sites, after all. The man must have a normal life outside of his work with the Geneiryodan. It would be absurd to think that he was always stealing and killing and sowing mayhem and destruction all three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, otherwise there was no way that Kurapika would ever agree to be with him.
Kurapika. Leorio perked up visibly as the thought hit him. If Kuroro was staying at the hotel for non-Ryodan-related reasons, then maybe Kurapika had come with him. He swept his eyes over the bustling hotel lobby, but didn’t see the blonde anywhere. He looked back at the café, and his heart made a graceless lunge for his throat when Kuroro’s eyes flicked up to meet his.
There was surprise there, for all of a split second, and it was probably the one thing that stopped him from turning around and hightailing it out of the front doors. He struggled to master his own reaction by thinking that it would have been too much to hope that the Geneiryodan leader wouldn’t notice his scrutiny. But for a brief moment Leorio wondered if he could get away with something that worked over long distances - like a nod or a wave. He really wasn’t prepared to face the man that Kurapika had fallen in love with.
Leorio sighed in resignation. Thinking about Kurapika inexorably reminded him that he’d racked up lots of questions for Kuroro Lucifer, and - depending on what the answers will be - there were a few more things that he needed to tell the man up front. Now was as good a time as any to have that discussion. He squared his jaw and marched across the lobby towards Kuroro’s table, and got there just as the man was carefully tucking a bookmark into his paperback.
Posh, classy son of a bitch -
Of course, now that he was close enough to see the details Leorio could begin to understand how Kurapika might have become attracted to the dark-haired man. It made sense that a person of the Kuruta’s refinement would need someone with similar class and style to match him. That was what his mind whispered, stirring the tiniest seed of resentment he thought had already died a long time ago. In this case though, mind didn’t translate to action easily, so rather than being boosted by that potential source of anger, Leorio found himself faltering because of uncertainty in the last few steps.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked slowly after he’d parked himself behind the unoccupied chair opposite the one Kuroro was sitting in.
“You’re Leorio, right? One of Kurapika’s friends.”
Even his voice sounded cultured and educated - which begged the question of how the man managed to attain that smooth accent when he’d supposedly hailed from the poverty-stricken junkyards of Shooting Star City. Leorio caught the suspicious frown before it could form on his overly expressive face, and reminded himself once more that he needed to focus on the important questions.
“Yeah.” Sit down first; he wouldn’t want to spend the entire conversation looking like an interrogator. Leorio waved at the empty chair. “May I?”
“Go ahead.”
At least the man was being polite. Translated to Geneiryodan terms, Leorio was sure that it meant Kuroro wasn’t going to turn psychotic on him for at least the next few minutes. He felt a small bubble of relief push his heart back to its proper place as he sat down - or maybe it was because of the chair. He blinked as he realized just how comfortable the cushion was.
Kuroro was watching him intently, but he seemed more curious than anything else. “What are you doing here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Medical convention,” Leorio answered as he wriggled into a more comfortable position. “You?” He looked up and tried to look shrewd and knowing. “… You’re not here for a heist, are you?”
The other man smiled in apparent good humor. “No. I’m just here on bodyguard duty, I’m afraid. I’m keeping Kurapika company.”
“Where is he?”
“He went out on an errand for the Hunter Association. He’ll be back in an hour, I think.”
“Right. So we have plenty of time to talk.”
Kuroro blinked, and Leorio had to suppress the sudden urge to laugh at the other man’s perplexed expression and at his own recklessness. He had just used a brisk and businesslike tone, as if he and Kuroro were equals, when in reality he was like an infant looking up at an adult in terms of the difference in their nen ability and battle experience. But there was nothing for it; he needed his answers.
“How did you do it?” he asked without preamble, to which Kuroro’s first reaction was another confused blink.
“I’m sorry?”
He’d wondered, several times before, if Kurapika had told Kuroro about their meeting. Leorio was inclined to believe that his friend had chosen to keep his confidence, because of the simple fact that he was still alive and in one piece. Kuroro Lucifer hadn’t hunted him down and killed him - yet. It was that or the alternative, where Kurapika had told Kuroro, in which case Leorio would have to revise his impression of the dark-haired man as a cold and ruthless killer, because he just couldn’t see any way that Kuroro would let him live after finding out about his feelings for Kurapika. Not unless Kuroro was actually more benevolent than the rumors painted him to be.
Then again, Leorio was being a bit too vague on just what it was that they were supposed to be talking about.
“Kurapika went to see me, around six months ago,” he began. The other man nodded to himself, as if he was affirming something. “He gave me the general gist of what happened to him, what happened between the two of you.” Or rather, Kurapika had been forced to reveal his strange love affair with Kuroro right after Leorio confessed to him. Maybe the blonde had been trying to be merciful by putting him out of his misery before any more hope could be kindled. He’d succeeded, in part - his rejection was by far the most gentle and yet most painful that Leorio had ever experienced.
“I couldn’t believe it at first. I mean, you two had the whole mortal-enemy thing going on. I thought that you’d brainwashed him, or that you were controlling him somehow.” Kuroro arched an eyebrow at that, and Leorio shrugged self-consciously. “You didn’t exactly encourage a kind and loving image, you know,” he added somewhat reproachfully. “I looked for the only explanation that would make sense to me back then.”
Kuroro nodded again, at him this time, and then gave him a searching look. “So what made you change your mind?”
Leorio thought back to Kurapika’s visit and tried to recall the primary emotions he’d felt once the initial outrage and disbelief had subsided. “The little things,” he replied. “He just seemed more open. His smiles looked real. And when I resorted to cracking sarcastic jokes - you know, the kind that insulted you and yours and just about everything I could think that was connected to you - he started to laugh.” He paused and pinned Kuroro with what he hoped was an accurate mirror of the man’s earlier searching look. “Do you know how hard it was to make Kurapika laugh, before York Shin? I mean, really laugh, and not just as an immediate reaction to a joke or a momentary source of amusement. We’ve seen him laugh, of course, but it always felt as if he was holding back. It was like he was afraid that he’d lose something if he allowed himself to let go.”
Memories, most likely. Memories of his family, and the promise he’d made. Leorio wasn’t a psychiatrist, but he didn’t need to be one to guess that Kurapika had always kept thoughts of his murdered tribe close to his heart. It was the only way that he could have kept his determination alive and going for so long.
He opted not to volunteer that information. By the look of agreement on Kuroro’s face, he probably already knew what that something was.
“It wasn’t only that,” Leorio continued. “He looked healthy and happy. Not what I’d expected he’d look like after he’d escaped from your clutches.” He looked away for the first time since the start of the conversation, and nervously picked at an imaginary speck of dust on the coffee table. “I think part of me understood back then that you’re good for him. And he chose you -” Over me, that still-resentful part of his mind muttered. “- and I’m going to respect that decision and try my hardest not to run away screaming whenever I run into you or any of your Ryodan.” Kuroro snorted and Leorio felt his lips curve up in an involuntary grin. “But I need to know how you succeeded where Gon, Killua, and I failed,” he said, bringing the dialogue back to his original question. “We’re his best friends; you killed off his tribe, and yet you got him to open up and let go of his past. So how did you do it?”
Why did he fall for you? was the unvoiced question, and Leorio swallowed and hoped that Kuroro wasn’t a mind-reader on top of everything else.
The Geneiryodan leader took a long time choosing his words. “I didn’t exactly go at it systematically, if that’s what you’re asking,” he finally said. “I worked on gaining his trust. My objective was to get him to want to stay with the Ryodan willingly, even in the eventuality that I’d allow him to release the conditions binding him to me.”
Leorio bristled. “So you were manipulating him,” he said accusingly.
Kuroro’s eyes didn’t waver despite Leorio’s rapidly-heating glare. “That was the original idea, yes, but believe me - by the time I realized it, I’d already grown attached to him. I found that I wanted him to stay with me not solely because of his abilities, but also for who he was and still is.” Kuroro paused. “And contrary to what you might think, I did not manipulate him into sleeping with me.”
Leorio started and stared in disbelief. There he was skirting around the more sensitive phrasings, and Kuroro just went and tackled the beast by its horns. The dark-haired man returned his gaze, coolly daring him to interrupt. Leorio conveyed that he wasn’t going to do that, by closing his gaping mouth with a click.
“The thought did occur to me several times,” Kuroro continued. “He’s a good-looking kid, and I don’t have any specific gender preference when it comes to these things. But I never forced myself on him. The end result was the same, nonetheless. It just… happened.” The man stopped and faltered, visibly struggling to choose the right words. “Proximity might have had something to do with it. And shared problems and life-threatening situations. The fact that his conditions forced him to stay with me certainly helped. And there was a period of about two weeks when the two of us separated from the rest of the Ryodan. His nen had been sealed and I was the only one who could help him. By the time we reached Shooting Star, it was already obvious that we were physically attracted to each other.”
“The least you could do is make it sound more romantic,” Leorio muttered. “Hell, you sound more like a doctor than I do!”
Kuroro folded his arms. “You want to know how it’s possible that we’d fall in love with each other at the same time. Simple. Like I said, it just happened. I hadn’t been expecting to fall in love with him, mind you, but since I already did, I’m not going to say that I regret catching him and forcing him to use his abilities on himself, because we wouldn’t be where we are now if not for my actions.”
“You’re not the type to pull any punches, are you?” Leorio asked with a disbelieving shake of his head. The hard glint in the other man’s eyes softened just a little bit.
“If it’s any comfort, I think it’s possible that the same thing could have happened if you’d been in my place instead.”
Somewhere at the back of his mind was a hysterical voice that managed to catch that one sentence, and the implications that went along with it - Ah shit he knows - but Leorio had already taken that last jump off the cliff, and instinct told him that their conversation was fast heading towards the conclusion that he’d been unconsciously yearning for. He couldn’t bail out now even if he tried - not that he was even mentally capable of trying. Kuroro’s olive branch made his ears burn, as they tended to do whenever his professors praised his diligence and good performance.
“I’m not sure if I should kick your ass for that attempt at flattery,” Leorio grunted. “We both know that I couldn’t have pulled off what you did when you rescued him from his maniac brother.”
The Geneiryodan leader tilted his head in graceful acceptance of the indirect compliment. “Just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And I was fortunate enough to have maniac subordinates who were more than happy for the chance to wreak havoc. But I mean it,” he added. “I wouldn’t have gone after him if I didn’t already know that I couldn’t stand to lose him.”
“All right. And what do you plan to do from here on out?” It was the last important question that he wanted to ask, probably the most important of them all.
Kuroro Lucifer’s dark eyes looked at him steadily, calmly, the keen mind behind them probably already dissecting his question and pegging it for the test it really was. The man smiled.
“If you’ll allow me to speak in a forward manner, I’ll go as far as to say that Kurapika is the other half of my soul. I’ll admit that we are different, but we’re also alike in many ways. We understand each other and we know each other’s hopes and fears. We’ve accepted each other’s faults and pasts, we’ve found that we deal with the present better when we’re together, and we’ve vowed to face our future to the best of our combined abilities.” Kuroro paused for effect, raised his eyebrows for additional impact, and asked, “Does that satisfy you?”
“Fair enough,” Leorio replied with a grudging nod. If anything, the man was a really skilled speaker. He also used far too many touchy-feely words for Leorio’s comfort, but it was obvious - at least to him - that Kuroro was being sincere. That should have been the end of it, but to his horror he found himself leaning forward until he was almost sitting at the edge of the chair, saying, “But if you ever hurt him, I won’t care that you can kill me as easily as snapping a toothpick. I’ll come after you, and I’ll find a way to waste you.”
Kuroro’s lips twitched once. Once for humor, and the ever-present intelligent glint in his eyes had acquired another gleam, almost as if the man was getting excited about the prospect of a challenge. But he nodded to acknowledge the warning. “Fair enough,” he said respectfully, lobbing Leorio’s words back at him in an effortless throw. “Personally I prefer a proactive rather than a reactive policy, but should anything happen to him, you’ll be the first on your side to know,” he added.
It should have been hypocritical for Kuroro to make such a promise after letting Leorio see his amusement at being given a threat, but Leorio had a pretty good guess of how his mind worked. Someone like him probably couldn’t help showing that almost-patronizing reaction to an ultimatum. If he had been completely serious and earnest instead - now that, Leorio would have found suspicious.
On the other hand, “if anything should happen to him” covered a lot of things, not the least of which was the fact that Kurapika’s existence as the sole survivor of the Kuruta massacre had been made public to certain interested parties more than six months ago. Kuroro most likely had that in mind when he gave his promise - as an action to external, not internal threats. Leorio wanted to talk about that, too - grill Kuroro on how he was planning to protect Kurapika from Hunters who were after the bounties placed on him by the black market.
But maybe that issue could wait until later. Leorio suddenly realized that he was exhausted. He fell back into his chair and exhaled noisily.
“I can’t believe you just made that speech with a straight face,” he mumbled.
Kuroro smirked. “Not exactly what you’d expected to hear?”
“No. Or maybe yes. I already knew that you had to be a smooth talker. Only way for someone to match Kurapika’s vocabulary is to be a smooth talker.” Leorio flapped his hand in a vague waving motion. “Just that, it’s a bit surreal to hear you saying ‘love’ and ‘half of my soul’ and other words that you’d expect to find in a love song.”
“Well, you know what they say about that particular emotion and a certain eye condition,” Kuroro remarked. He would have sounded cheeky if he wasn’t trying so hard to sound dignified. Leorio managed to snicker despite his bewilderment at suddenly finding himself bantering with one of the most feared criminals in the world - bantering, and enjoying it, even. He would have liked to talk some more, and maybe see how Kurapika would react upon finding him and Kuroro sitting and chatting like they were perfectly friendly acquaintances, but he had to go. He checked his watch and stood up.
“You’re not going to wait for Kurapika?” Kuroro asked in surprise.
“Another lecture to attend in five minutes,” Leorio said ruefully. “It’s going to be boring as hell, but I promised Kurapika that I’d become a doctor, and if there’s one thing that I’ll always take seriously, it’s this.”
“I can… tell him to meet with you later, if you want,” Kuroro suggested hesitantly - either because he was unused to making such offers or because he didn’t really want to give the offer, Leorio couldn’t say, but the fact that he still offered counted as another point in his book.
“Nah,” he said easily - which surprised him even more than all the other shocks he’d already encountered that day. He really didn’t mind turning down the offer to spend time with his friend - it was something that he wouldn't have done half a year ago.
“You probably have something planned for tonight, I mean, hotel, hot springs, room service - have mercy on Housekeeping and don’t mess up the sheets too much, okay? Oh, no, I did not just say that,” he muttered in horror. It would be best to retreat now, or risk embarrassing himself further. For a second Leorio wondered if he should shake Kuroro’s hand, but he decided to pass this time. For all he knew the Geneiryodan leader might not be the hand-shaking type. And just because they’d reached an agreement didn’t mean that he wholly approved of the way the other man lived. He grinned instead, mouthed a cheerful “Well, I’m going,” and sauntered away.
Perhaps it was a coincidence that the table Kuroro had chosen could be seen from the entrance to the ballroom where the lectures were being held, but Leorio had a wary opinion of coincidences. Was it a coincidence that, out of the hundreds of Hunter Exam participants, he’d met the three who were most likely to accept him as one of their own? Was it a coincidence that they’d become the best friends that he could ever ask for? Was it a coincidence that one of them would ensnare his affection so thoroughly, lose concentration at the most critical of moments, get captured by the enemy, then fall fast and hard for said enemy - leaving him standing alone by the ballroom door?
Well, it certainly didn’t feel like a coincidence, when Leorio looked back to see Kurapika arriving, Kuroro greeting him with a tender kiss to his forehead, and Kurapika’s face lighting up with a brilliant burst of laughter, perfectly visible and audible from all the way across the hotel lobby. Leorio smiled sadly and slipped into the ballroom, finally reassured that his friend would be all right with someone that wasn’t him.
-----
The last lecture had killed off all his brain cells, but Leorio still called his dorm mates over to his room for a study session. They were flying out tomorrow, and then they had an exam on the convention topics the day after, so they needed to pool their notes together and organize the knowledge into something they could remember more easily. It wasn’t that he needed the extra help, of course - he could do fine on his own, but he found that he studied better with a bit of peer interaction. Complete silence made him fidgety as much as chaotic noise drove him batty; the middle range - the murmur that their discussions would produce, in this case - was just right.
Leorio had his pen poised on his notebook, readied for a few more hours of mind-numbing scribbling and diagramming, when the doorbell rang.
“Danne, you didn’t order room service again, did you?” he called out exasperatedly.
“No! At least, I haven’t yet…” The chubbiest out of his three dorm mates got up and trotted to the door. Leorio heard him open it, heard him ask a question in a low rumble, then heard the clear voice of the last person he’d expected to see standing outside the door of his hotel room.
“Hi. I’m looking for Leorio…”
Leorio’s head snapped up and swiveled around to see Kurapika giving him a lopsided grin.
“… Oh, there you are.”
“Hey, who’s the hot chick?”
He resisted the urge to turn around and chuck his notebook at the offending mouth, and waited for the outburst that he was just sure would ensue following the girl comment. But rather than fly off the handle like Leorio expected him to do, Kurapika merely raised an eyebrow and said, rather wryly, “Well, I’m glad that your friends approve of me.”
Leorio gave him a weak smile before turning to scowl at his classmates. He kept his glare on them as he made the introductions. “Kurapika, this is Danne, Merow, and Vincent. Vince, this is Kurapika, one of the Hunters I was telling you guys about. Stop hitting on him if you don’t want to get your ass kicked.”
The look of horror that spread over Vince’s face teased a smirk out of him, but he turned back to Kurapika and let Danne and Merow handle the ribbing that Vince’s latest blunder would cost him.
“Umm, not that I’m not deliriously happy to see you, but what are you doing here?”
“Don’t you want to talk and catch up on things? I can at least treat you to a cup of coffee in the café downstairs.”
“I do, but…” he looked back at his classmates, who had stopped their bickering and were watching them with encouraging grins on their faces. Leorio made a mental note to talk to them later - he might have to quash any notions that they believed they had before the prats could turn them into university gossip. He certainly didn’t need word of this making its way, however far-fetched, to the man he had just talked to that afternoon.
It was Merow who finally told him to go. “Come on, man. You don’t need to review this much to get top scores, and you know it. You can come back after a couple of hours.”
It didn’t take much to persuade him, really.
“All right. Feel free to use my notes. And don’t touch my stuff, Vince, you’re not going to find any porn in there.” Leorio quickly took his coat and the room key and slipped out of the door before Vincent could hurl one of the pillows at him.
Kurapika’s eyes were sparkling with humor when Leorio joined the teen in the hallway. “You seem to be handling university life pretty well,” the blonde remarked.
“Those three have their comedic moments,” Leorio replied with a grin. “I told Kuroro that he didn’t have to arrange this,” he said to the blonde quietly. “And how did you find me, anyway? I didn’t give him my room number.”
Kurapika gave him a fairly incredulous look. “Hunter privileges, Leorio. It was easy enough to ask for your room number, and when you’re checking out. And Kuroro knows how important you, Gon, and Killua are to me,” he added. “He wouldn’t do anything to sabotage our friendship.”
Kuroro Lucifer was an enigma. A walking puzzle, one that Leorio thought he could unravel easily once he discovered whatever it was that Kurapika found endearing in the guy. He thought that he’d found it somewhere in their conversation that afternoon, but apparently there was more to the man than first impressions and stories and rumors, especially where the last Kuruta alive was concerned.
No matter. Leorio knew that there would be a need for them to communicate again in the future, because watching over the blonde that they both loved would be an ongoing, never-ending job. For the moment he was content to talk with his friend, and muse over their memories and experiences, and marvel at the feeling of his earlier resentment fading away into nothing more than another memory.
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Nippon is a nod to Japan, obviously - I was running out of countries to invent for my drabbles, and Togashi isn’t being very forthcoming about new locations in the HxH universe.
And Danne, Merow and Vince are names I came up with on the spur of the moment. They’re just extra characters. (Well, I might use them for future Leorio-centric drabbles… Vince seems to be taking on a life of his own. +_+)
I’m serious when I mentioned that this hasn’t been edited yet - starting from when Kuroro answered, I forced myself into a Nanowrimo mindset and just typed everything in the last few hours, so I have a feeling that there might be embarrassing errors lurking around waiting to jump out at unsuspecting readers. x_x
Finished May 31, 2007, and cross-posted to kye_kestrel