Work Text:
We tell tales to be known
Or be spared the sorrow
You're so fair to behold
What will be left when you're gone?
Sea breeze sweeps his hair up and the sun glints off his ruby earring.
He's unmistakable.
Leorio feels the outline of the phone in his pocket and his stomach sinking. He hesitates, but decides to pull his phone out anyway. Was he close enough for Kurapika to already know he was there?
All of their unspoken words threaten to drown him.
He dials the number. If phones still had keypads, the buttons would probably be rubbed off. Even when he doesn’t send the call, he punches in the number just to see it on his screen. Lately, even that feels like contact.
He hits call.
Kurapika is still far from where he’s standing, but close, and isolated enough, for Leorio to hear his phone go off. The ring is nearly drowned out by the fuzzy sound of the sea and the air.
Why does he leave his ringer on? His job is dangerous. His phone is important. Drawing attention to himself in any way is certainly not a mistake Kurapika is sloppy enough to make. Leorio can get that far. He could think about how, perhaps, feeling his phone buzz against his leg feels like contact. Like a touch. But he doesn’t. How could he?
Because, if he were willing to be right, he would know that Kurapika lets his phone ring for the same reason Leorio keeps calling. Being right would hurt more than just wondering why he never picks up.
Kurapika doesn’t budge. His phone rings out from his pocket. He stays leaning against the railing of the deck. Leorio just watches as the wind pulls his hair, red exposing in flashes.
It rings. Waves wash into the sides of the boat, rocking it melodically. The sounds blend together, soothing and agonizing all the same.
Leorio hangs up before he can bear for it to finish out and pockets his phone in a single movement. He watches Kurapika from afar. Flight nearly takes over when Kurapika straightens his back and places his hands on the railing. The motion is gentle, but the rest of him is bracing. He turns.
The numbness tethering Leorio to his place evaporates when he’s met with an unreadable expression. Whether he’s pained to see Leorio here, embracing the inevitable, or feeling nostalgic would neither be distinguishable nor important. The distance Leorio feels between himself and Kurapika has never felt farther than it does now standing fifty feet away from him. Kurapika lowers his gaze and faces the sea again.
He is much easier to approach this way. The roll of the sea breeze feels thick and abrasive, like a turbulence requiring physical strength to move through. It pulls Kurapika’s hair along with it, light and airy. Stopping beside Kurapika at the edge of the deck, he slinks onto his elbows against the railing and doesn’t say a word.
“Leorio.”
Leorio responds by pulling deeply into his lungs, filling them to the brim, and then exhaling as violently as he can.
Kurapika laughs, in the way that he does, a single puff of air from the back of his throat. As if the ice is broken, he reaches into the pocket of his blazer and holds a metal tin. He flips the lid open with one hand and pulls out a cigarette with the other. Both the filter and the paper are black and it lacks branding. Pocketing the tin again, he retrieves a lighter and places the cigarette to his lips. Leorio can’t believe what he’s seeing.
He fails to pick up his jaw before Kurapika catches his expression.
Leorio clears his throat. “Since when do you smoke?”
Kurapika holds a hand up to block the wind and clicks the lighter a few times. It doesn’t ignite. He slips the lighter back into his pocket and pulls the cigarette out of his mouth between two fingers. “I don’t remember when I started.”
Leorio blinks. Why was he so jarred?
“Hah…” Kurapika trails off, considering his words. “It’s a matter of fitting in with my coworkers. At times.”
“And other times?”
Kurapika shrugs. “And other times, Leorio, to allow things like this to happen.”
Leorio shifts back slightly, away from Kurapika, then drops his head forward in defeat.
Kurapika smiles but Leorio doesn’t see it.
He furrows his brow and scowls. “Flirting, after all you…” Leorio grumbles. He says a few more things, muttered so low and whiny that neither of them would be able to recount it.
“Do you have a light?”
Picking his head up instantly, he locks eyes with the sun setting in the distance, and squints. “I quit,” he says, face still scrunched in a mix of playful and genuine anguish.
“And?”
As annoying and rude as ever, Leorio thinks. As if he doesn’t know which choice he’ll pick, he hesitates. Then he shoves his hand into his side pack, pushing past some first-aid supplies and a book. At the bottom, well-loved yet abandoned, is his lighter. He offers it to Kurapika, extended limply between his fingers, still facing the ocean. “Be grateful I haven’t broken this habit yet.”
“I am. Always, Leorio.” He takes the lighter, careful not to touch Leorio’s fingers.
Kurapika lights his black cigarette. He pulls slowly and deeply into his lungs, eyes shut, wishing somewhere that it’d kill him sooner rather than later.
They stay like that. Kurapika smoking, Leorio craving one for himself.
The sky grows dark quickly, as it does on the Black Whale. Kurapika ashes his cigarette on the rail.
“I have to go,” he starts, sharp and quick, like he knows it will hurt before continuing. “You must know that I do not have very much time these days.”
“Time for us?” Leorio throws in, sharp and quick, expecting the same.
“You have no idea,” Kurapika says, curt.
This is more like it.
“I sure don’t.”
Saying two things at once was always their style. Words that hurt as much as they care.
Leorio swears neither of them moved, but the space between them feels smaller. Kurapika puts a hand on Leorio’s arm and his senses suffocate him. This is the first time in...
“I don’t expect anything from you, you know,” Leorio says, breaking the short silence.
“But you do,” Kurapika rolls his hand to the other side of Leorio’s arm, his thumb stroking him softly. The chains feel warmer than his hands do. “I have a feeling-”
He pauses. Leorio feels his hand disappear a moment later.
Kurapika is already walking away as he finishes his thought.
“-that we’ll be bumping into each other more often.”
And just like that, he was gone again.
Leorio doesn’t ask for his lighter back.
Maybe he would look at it and think of him sometimes.
Maybe they would look at it and think of them sometime.
And it shakes everything you know
How we were when the waters were low
Southern winds, scattered clouds from the cove
And, oh, spare me the glow